Forged in Battle Read online

  Gunter’s men assembled on the left of the clearing; Osric’s on the right.

  “All present?” Sigmund called and Gunter replied, then Osric.

  “All present and correct!”

  “Gunter!” Sigmund commanded. “Lead your men out!”

  * * *

  For the rest of the day, the Ragged Company pushed on along forest paths and high mountain roads, where it was said that beastmen had been seen—but they saw nothing except a crazy old trapper, who was carrying a freshly caught badger.

  Baltzer moaned about the endless walking. When the men paused by a stream for a lunch of cold hard-tack and water he pulled off one of his boots and socks to examine his foot.

  “Sigmar’s balls!” he cursed, and took out his dagger to pop an enormous blister that covered half his heel. “How much more walking do we have to do?”

  “Shut up for once!” Freidel snapped. He spoke for a lot of them.

  “Since when did you become the model trooper?”

  “I’m just sick of your bitching!”

  “I’m sick of wearing my feet out!”

  “Well,” Freidel said, “I’m sure the captain has good reason.”

  “Bollocks!” Baltzer said. “He’s just tired of the burgomeister telling him what to do.”

  “Who isn’t?” Edmunt said and the men all laughed. The burgomeister had done much for Helmstrumburg: bringing in trade and expanding the town outside its historic confines—even barges from the port of Marienburg called into Helmstrumburg now—but he hadn’t made many friends in the process. His manner excited even less admiration. He had turned the town watch into his private army, raised taxes, and was rumoured to be involved in all manner of dubious business deals, possibly even smuggling. “Except of course,” Edmunt smiled, “those who take his coin!”

  Baltzer and Osric and many of the halberdiers had been part of the town watch before they joined up. “Used to!” Baltzer snapped.

  “Oh—I didn’t realise you’d stopped,” Edmunt said and pushed the drummer off the log, sending him sprawling into the ferns.

  “Dumb log-splitter!” Baltzer spat.

  * * *

  Late on the following day of their patrol the halberdiers found the Old Post Road, an ancient track that led towards more civilised parts. The road was overgrown with weeds but it allowed the men to move quickly under the leaf-cover.

  Sigmund wanted to reach the cabin of Osman Speinz before nightfall. Osman kept a boarding house of sorts, selling ale and food, and he had stables which he rented out as lodging. If there were any rumours going around the trappers about beastmen gathering, Osman would know them.

  “How much further?” Elias asked Gaston.

  Gaston shook his head. “A mile or so.”

  “And what’s Osman like?”

  Gaston shrugged. “He keeps a good cask of ale. Not cheap, but better than stream-water.”

  Elias nodded. He’d been orphaned earlier than he could really remember, and had been taken in by Guthrie Black, proprietor of the Crooked Dwarf inn, and raised as a son. He’d spent his life carrying barrels of beer up and down to the cellars or mopping the stale beer from the flagstones in the morning. He’d never thought he’d miss beer as much as he did when on these patrols. A stein would take away the aches in his feet and his shoulders. He could almost taste it as the Old Post Road twisted off the ridge down towards the cabin of Osman Speinz.

  As they walked Elias could not stop thinking about the luxuries that Osman’s cabin offered. After eleven nights sleeping rough, a night in stables seemed like luxury. The promise of ale made the weight of his pack disappear.

  “Do you think he’s still renting his daughters out?” Freidel asked.

  No one answered: they were all thinking the same thing.

  The sun was casting long shadows when they reached Osman’s sign, pointing towards his lodge. There was no writing, few men here could read. The worn sign was composed of hammered planks, daubed crudely with a barrel of beer and an arrow.

  “Not far now!” Osric told them and the men lengthened their stride, and even Gunter started to laugh and joke. The trees pressed in on either side, then opened out to a couple of small fields, with spring-green shoots of winter wheat starting to show. The road curved across a stream and then they were in the clearing where Osman lived.

  As they broke the tree-line they could see that something was terribly wrong. The cabin was surrounded by a simple palisade, but the crude timber gates of the farmstead had been torn from their hinges, the cabin door had been broken through, and the front yard was littered with shredded clothes.

  The company was silent as they followed Sigmund up to the ruined gateway. There was a strong scent of animal musk.

  “Beastmen!” Edmunt spat. It was a scent a man would never forget.

  Elias followed the men into the yard. The stink was overpowering. There were clothes everywhere, as if the half-goats, half-humans had gone into a frenzy of looting.

  So much for the beer, or even Osman’s daughters.

  “Gunter—clear up this lot!” Sigmund snapped, pointing to the mess. “Osric check around the back. Elias, Petr and Gaston—stand guard!”

  Petr had joined up with Elias. He was a tall, quiet man with his hair pulled back into a ponytail. He had missed out on a uniform altogether, and wore a strip of cloth tied around his right arm.

  Elias leant on his halberd and stood close to Gaston. No one spoke as they worked. Each rag hit the pile with a wet slap. Elias looked back up the road that they had come down. The leaves rustled, but it was just a bird, flapping through the undergrowth. He looked back at the men clearing up the mess, then at Gaston, who was leaning on his halberd shaft.

  “Beastmen?” Elias asked.

  Gaston nodded.

  “Do you think they escaped?” Elias asked.

  Gaston pointed with his chin towards the scraps of clothes. “I don’t think so.”

  Edmunt overheard the comment. He stood up to his full height and held out a dripping rag at arm’s length: it was not a rag at all, but a tatter of human skin.

  Elias stared back at the front yard in horror. They were not rags at all, but body parts. Out of one torn sleeve he saw part of a hand. Another had some nameless body part—little more than shreds of muscle and a snapped bone sticking out of it. That was a part of a child’s head, there was a foot. He looked down and almost yelped in shock: wedged next to the palisade was the head of a young boy, not much younger than himself. The dead youth’s teeth were clenched, his eyes were open and staring. No, not staring, Elias realised, and this made his stomach lurch uncontrollably. The man’s head had been skinned—and from the terror in the eyes, and the set of the jaw, Elias could tell they had been skinned alive.

  Sigmund picked his way across the yard, pushed the broken doorway open and stepped inside.

  Osric came back round the house to find Elias bent over retching.

  The pile of body parts was almost waist high. Osman and his family had been torn to shreds. There were strange symbols daubed in blood on the cabin walls. He tried not to look because they made his head hurt, but they kept drawing his attention.

  Osric looked from the pile to Elias and back again. Gaston waited for him to say something, but not even Osric could make a joke out of this.

  “Sigmar’s balls,” Osric said at last, and shook his head. “They made a mess here.”

  The door of the cabin swung open and Sigmund came back out of the doorway. His face was deathly white, his jaw clamped against some greater horror inside the cottage. “Gunter!” he said. “I don’t want anyone else going in here. Get a fire started, we’ll burn this place down.”

  Gunter nodded and his men started piling brushwood against the cabin walls. “We’ll find these creatures!” Sigmund called as his men worked. “And we will pay them back!”

  A few of the men nodded, but Baltzer caught Elias’ eye. “Let’s hope we don’t!” he muttered under his breath.

&nb
sp; Elias looked away, but Osric pulled him over to the corner of the yard. “Look at this!”

  The beastmen had sprayed and defecated round the edges of the enclosure: the dung looked as if it had been kicked about to spread out their pungent stink.

  “It’s like they’re marking their territory,” Freidel said and his nose wrinkled at the thought of the filthy beasts. “Abominations!” he spat.

  Osric kicked a pile of dung that was the size of a cow pat.

  “Look at the size of that one!” he said. “I personally don’t want to see anything that made that.”

  Elias swallowed hard. He also hoped that the beastmen had gone back into the high hills and stayed there. He didn’t want to see the creature that made that either.

  The halberdiers set off following the path of the beastmen, but after an hour’s march Sigmund called a brief halt by a stream. While the men filled their flasks and drank long gulping mouthfuls of water, Sigmund went forward with Edmunt. The giant woodsman was crouched on the ground staring at the forest floor as if it were a book he was unable to read. “I am no tracker,” he said at last.

  Sigmund nodded. None of them were: from their clothes they were soldiers, but in their hearts they were still tailors’ assistants, woodsmen, farriers, farmers’ boys. And miller’s sons, Sigmund told himself.

  “If you had to guess, which way do you think?”

  Edmunt looked to the left and right: briars and ferns clogged the space between the tree trunks and the ground was thick with moss and well-rotten leaves. Dusk was closing in around them. On all sides the forest appeared impenetrable. Edmunt shook his head. He couldn’t tell. It seemed impossible that the beastmen had come this way and not left any sign.

  “I don’t know,” Edmunt said after a long pause, “but if I had to guess I would say that they went that way, to the left. There are a couple of farmsteads over the ridge, about half way to Gruff Spennsweich’s land.”

  He pointed to where the stream splashed down a staircase of slippery black stones. A fern waved as if caught in a breeze and Sigmund’s skin prickled. Since they had left the hut he felt as if they were being watched. He cursed himself. It was impossible hunting beastmen like this: they could disappear as easily as wild animals; to the untrained eye they left less trace than a passing ghost. And night was already setting in.

  “We’d better get to the nearest farmstead and raise the alarm,” Sigmund said. Edmunt nodded.

  “Does Farmer Spennsweich rent out his daughters?” Petr asked and Edmunt laughed out loud.

  “Touch one of his daughters and he will use your guts for sausages!”

  Behind them the men were filling their water skins. Sigmund felt his skin prickle again. “Keep your arms to hand!” he hissed, the tension showing in his voice as they started forward again.

  Sigmund led the way down along the stream bank. The stones were rough but slippery; they turned under foot and made the going difficult.

  Osric shouldered his pack. This was stupid. The only way they knew which way the beastmen had gone was the trail of burnt cottages and farmsteads, the dead bodies of women, children and men. He waited for Elias to go before him. No point having the new guy take up the rear, but taking the last spot made Osric too aware of how exposed they were, strung out like pack-horses in the thick forest at dusk.

  “We’ll be the ones caught next,” Osric muttered.

  As they filed through the forest, Osric kept muttering. Elias didn’t know if he should respond or not. “These are not deer we’re hunting,” Osric said, and Baltzer overheard and turned to join in the fun.

  “These animals hunt you back,” he whispered. “We could be walking into a trap. In the forest, at night.”

  Elias started to look around him.

  Gaston stopped on a stone in the middle of the stream. “Leave off him.”

  Osric gave him a half-smile, half-sneer. Gaston let him go in front, took the position of end man himself, but not even the presence of Gaston could soothe the new boy.

  As the first stars began to glimmer through the leaves above, Elias could sense the forest watching and waiting, a hundred eyes behind each tree.

  As Morrslieb rose behind the stark crags of Frantzplinth, the Ragged Company broke through the trees onto a walled field. They had come down to more civilised parts. Sigmund paused and conferred with Edmunt. He had grown up near this place, in a cabin deep in the woods.

  “If we go that way,” Edmunt said to Sigmund and pointed down towards a patch of tall cedars. “We will cut out a couple of miles.”

  Sigmund nodded and the men scrambled down the hillside, over a dry stone wall, and through the cedar copse. He did not tell anyone what he had seen inside the house. He tried to scrub the memory from his mind: but the unbidden sight kept appearing of the fresh hides of Osman Speinz and his three daughters, hair and face and legs, nailed across the inside of the wall.

  When the dogs started barking, Gruff Spennsweich went out to quiet them down. The animals were tugging at their chains, teeth bared. He could see shadows moving in the trees. The horses started to toss and neigh in the stables and the farmer’s skin prickled.

  “Who’s there?” he demanded. The shadows moved and he shouted again, louder this time in an attempt to bolster his nerves: but he felt more frightened than ever. A horn blew and Gruff ran back to the house. A strange scent hung in the evening air, vile and musky.

  “Dietrik! Olan!” he called the farmhands from the barn then hurried back inside, took the old crossbow from above the fireplace and began to wind it.

  Valina, his eldest, stared at him as if he had gone mad.

  “Father, what are you doing?”

  He had kept the mechanism oiled, but it was still stiff from lack of use, and he began to sweat as it jammed.

  “Sigmar’s balls!” he hissed and Gertrude, his youngest, and Shona and Werna, the blonde twins, blushed.

  Olan and Dietrik stood at the door, uncertain whether to come into the house or not.

  “Here! Dietrik,” Gruff said and the farm boy stepped inside and took the crossbow hesitantly. “Olan, get a pitchfork. Watch the trees. Shout if you see anything.”

  Dietrik held the crossbow reverently while Olan hurried across to the barn, a worried look on his face.

  “Don’t point that at me!” Valina cursed him. The farm-boy blushed and pointed the crossbow out of the doorway.

  Gruff took no notice. He was digging through his chest for his blunderbuss. He unwrapped the oil cloth, and the smell of polished iron rekindled memories of hunting when he was a young man, up in the hills. He didn’t like to use too much blackpowder—it was expensive—but this time he poured a good measure in and then rammed home a good few handfuls of pellets and smithy scraps.

  “This is pointless!” Osric dared to raise his voice. Silently the rest of the men agreed, even Edmunt. They had somehow missed the road and were caught in a defile that seemed to be winding its way back into the mountain. They could barely see anything in the darkness, but if they could hit the road then at least they could make their way to a farm and get some shelter and protection. None of them fancied sleeping rough with a band of beastmen raiders nearby.

  Sigmund came and stood next to Edmunt. “Any idea which way?” he asked. Edmunt shook his head.

  Sigmund looked left and right. None of the ways seemed good. “We’ll double back,” he said, “and follow the stream down.”

  It was as good a plan as any. Osric imagined what tales he’d be able to tell Richel and the other handgunners all about the latest chase that Sigmund had led them on. He would have a platter of roast beef and the largest flagon of ale at the Blessed Rest inn. Then he might visit the House of Madam Jolie and see if she had any new girls in.

  “Quiet!” Gaston hissed. Osric snarled, but crouched down like the rest.

  The men huddled down low and listened. Even though the trees deadened noises, there were men shouting, the distant clang of metal. Then the unmistakable sound of a guns
hot. Sigmund sprang forward and his men followed slipping on the ground and tripping on the undergrowth.

  Elias tripped over a tree root and fell face forward into a tangled knot of briars. He felt a hand dragging him out and he yelped with terror, expecting a beastman to tear him apart. A rough hand grasped his shirt and hauled him to his feet, then Edmunt’s broad silhouette jogged ahead of him.

  Elias followed Edmunt’s silhouette through the trees. They ran as quietly as they could until they broke through the foliage and the open sky above seemed almost as bright as daylight. They had found the road. They saw two carriages, their horses lying in pools of blood, and around them were dead human bodies and cavorting goat-headed figures carrying spears and crude shields. Sigmund was at the front. He led the halberdiers in a ragged charge: all of them roaring furiously. Elias opened his mouth but had no idea if he made any noise at all, he just concentrated on following Edmunt’s hulking shape. Suddenly a beastman loomed in front of him. He jabbed and felt the blade smack through fur and flesh and then the beastman went down and Elias kept running and screaming.

  Elias caught another beastman in the gut, but this time the creature did not go down so easily. Elias was so terrified of being killed that he thrust the point of his halberd at it again and again, until it hung, impaled upon the side of the carriage. Elias tried to pull his halberd free, but it was stuck. He had a terrible fear that he would be caught and drew his sword, but when he looked around there were only halberdiers.

  The fight seemed to have lasted no more than a few seconds, but suddenly a gun flashed again, and the retort was so loud Elias dropped his sword in fright.

  The carriage stood amidst the ruin of its former occupants and attackers. From the spread of bodies it appeared that the carriage driver had attempted to crash through the beastmen, but the beastmen had torn out the throats of the horses, and with such superior numbers against them the defenders had been doomed. The driver’s blunderbuss had crudely beheaded one beastman and turned the creature’s shoulders into a mangled mess of lead shot, gore and bone. But he and his two guards lay gutted and dead, their eyes staring blindly up into the starry sky.