Forged in Battle Read online

  “Yes?”

  The burgomeister seemed surprised to see Sigmund.

  “Good day,” he said, and shuffled the papers in front of him as if he were anxious to hide the papers he was reading.

  Sigmund had no interest in the burgomeister’s petty business dealings. “A trapper came to the barracks last night. He said that Burhens has been destroyed. I insist that we raise the alert!”

  The burgomeister frowned. “You want to raise the alert on the basis of one man’s report?”

  “I believe the man. It fits in exactly with what my men found.”

  The burgomeister sighed. “I think we have every right to expect you to defend us, rather than huddle in the city. Don’t you think, Captain Jorg?” Sigmund started to speak but the burgomeister cut him off. “Stop this talk of running and hiding and evacuating! Take your spearmen and do what you are paid for—Captain Jorg. Defend the town!”

  * * *

  Vostig stood in the doorway and watched his men sweep horse dung and used straw out of the stables. Holmgar and Richel carried sacks of pulses and oats from one side of the stables to the other to count them.

  “Twenty-three of oats. Fifteen of pulses.”

  Vostig nodded. He chewed a piece of straw and waited for Osric’s men to come over. The two horses snorted as they were led out and hitched to the cart by Baltzer and Kann.

  Osric climbed onto the driver’s seat. Vostig told him how much they needed and Osric nodded and lashed the reins and drove the cart out of the barracks.

  “Now, get those sacks back over there!”

  The men carried the sacks back across the stables.

  Richel tripped and swore loudly.

  “Language!” Vostig said.

  “There’s a boulder in here,” Richel said and began to pull the heaped straw aside, but when he uncovered it he laughed. “You should have a look at this!”

  The men came over to see what Richel had found. Buried in the old sacks and straw was a primitive kind of firearm. It was three feet long, and made of bands of copper around a steel barrel, with a primitive open powder pan for firing.

  “What is that?” Holmgar said with awe.

  “It’s a swivel gun,” Richel said. “You dumb oaf!”

  Vostig came over to look. “I’ve seen this kind of thing mounted on boats,” he said. “But I can’t imagine what it’s doing here.”

  The men shook their heads, and then Vostig told them to cover it over again. “No use to us,” he said.

  Along Tanner Lane, smugglers managed a good trade, sneaking goods across from Stirland under cover of darkness. It was into one of these dens that Theodor went. The stench of ammonia hung over the street. Theodor ducked into one of the tanneries. Inside the gloomy building the tanning vats bubbled poisonously. Cattle and calf skins dried over racks.

  A man in a stained apron swirled one of the vats. Theodor slipped a gold crown into his palm. “I’m looking for the Otter,” he said.

  The man bit the coin and slipped it into the folds of his shirt. He nodded over his shoulder. Theodor walked over to the back of the room, to where skins hung in rows, drying.

  “How can I help you?” a man’s voice said.

  Theodor pushed through the dripping skins, but he couldn’t see anyone.

  “Are you the Otter?”

  “None of your business. What do you want?”

  Theodor explained what he needed. There was a pause.

  “Ten gold coins,” the man said. “You are staying in the Crooked Dwarf, are you not? I will have it delivered there.”

  “No, there is an old stable at the back of the water tower. Have it put there.”

  “I will leave this here,” Theodor said and dropped the purse onto the floor.

  “The goods will be there tomorrow,” the unseen man said.

  Sigmund spent the rest of the afternoon watching the Vorrsheim spearmen drill. They seemed to be a solid group of men. When the drilling was over, Sigmund let Gunter know he was going out. He’d a little time before he’d to be back at barracks to check that the sentries were assigned their duties. If he was quick he could get to his father’s mill and back before then.

  The Kemperbad Road ran parallel with the banks of the river. To either side there were rich meadows and scattered trees. Sigmund’s stride ate up the distance. The watermill appeared around the edge of the hillside and for a moment he flashed back to his youth, when he remembered how proud he used to be of his father. He wasn’t sure when the disgust began to replace it. Maybe it was when he was old enough to understand that his father was a drunk; that the man he’d idolised for so many years was a fraud.

  The road dipped down to cross a stream, then up again to his father’s fields. The mill was a low building about twenty feet from the river bank. Just below it the water sluice rejoined the river. About fifty feet up the bank was their farmhouse. There were stables to the side and in front of it were a couple of ploughed fields.

  Sigmund could hear the creak of the wheel as the water drove it slowly round, the shouts of the men who worked there. As he approached the door, Sigmund called out. His mother’s face appeared in the doorway and she lifted her skirts and hurried outside.

  “Mother!” he said and held out his arms to embrace her.

  He was so used to soldiers that it felt strange to feel her large soft body. She looked a little older and more tired. There was more grey in her hair than there had been a year ago, when he’d first enlisted. She worried about him, he knew.

  “You look well!” he said.

  “So do you!” she told him, even though he looked thinner and tired. No doubt there were all kinds of things he’d to sort out. What with Sigmar’s star appearing again.

  “Come in! Come in!” she said. “I have a stew on the boil!”

  The house seemed smaller and more rustic than Sigmund remembered. Although his father was thought of as a rich man, it was a hovel compared to the richest houses in the town, which were filled with luxuries from Kemperbad.

  Sigmund shook his father’s hand, embraced his brother, and started to tell them about the news from town, and further afield.

  “I should get back to barracks,” he said after about an hour, when he heard the bells of the Temple of Sigmar ringing, but his mother looked crestfallen.

  “Surely they’ll be able to manage without you for one evening?”

  Sigmund nodded. He didn’t really want to go, but he knew he shouldn’t leave his men. He was their commanding officer, but it was important he explained the danger to his family.

  “Maybe I will stay,” he said at last, but felt torn between family and duty.

  Over the meal he brought up the matter of their moving to town. “I do not think it is safe for you to stay here.”

  His mother paled but Andres waved his hand in dismissal.

  “Why should we do that when we have you to protect us? The beastmen have never come so far down the valley. All they dare do is steal and run away,” he scoffed, refilling his glass. “They’d never dare attack somewhere like this. There are seven strong men here. We’d easily beat them off!”

  Sigmund could see the zweihänder, hanging as always over the fireplace. He shook his head in exasperation. “It’s not safe here. If you are too stupid to understand that then at least let me at least take mother and Hengel into town.”

  Andres slammed his wine cup onto the table and the room went silent. “I will not be spoken to like that in my house,” he spat. “I thought you became a soldier to protect us all—not to tell me that I should flee. What are you a coward?”

  Sigmund slammed the door behind him in rage, and stood for a moment, trying to control his anger. There was nothing he could do to make his father change his mind. As he strode off down the hill, his mother rushed after him to catch him up.

  “Your father’s drunk. He doesn’t mean what he says!”

  Sigmund nodded, but he was too angry to be understanding. His father had called him a coward!
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  “When he’s sober, try to make him see sense.”

  His mother nodded. Both of them knew how seldom Andres was sober.

  “I will try,” she promised.

  Sigmund nodded. “If you can, bring yourself and Hengel into town tomorrow, and I’ll find you lodgings. Now I have to go!” he said and kissed her on the cheek, then began to jog down to the bridge, heading along the water meadows, towards the east gate of Helmstrumburg. As he ran he thought of the beastman bands and hoped that his father lived long enough to regret his stupid pride.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It had been a thousand years since they had smelled the scents of life. For too long they had been buried. Hammers had shattered them. Fires had burnt their surfaces, water had cracked them deep. But not quite stone, they had lain long in the earth, slowly repairing themselves, moving slower than worms to reunite the fissures, and now it was time. They could feel it in the deep burrows of the world.

  One by one, tentative at first, they began to push for the surface. The turfs broke and split open, and the black stones began to rise, the jagged tips rising like mushrooms from the ground. There was strange writing on their sides such as would make any man who could understand the words go mad. Such was their power that the beastmen tribes had waited this long for their return. They were the slaves of the stones.

  And as the stone circles and monoliths retook their rightful place, between earth and sky, the beastmen knew, in the manner of migrating beasts, that it was time to move towards the river.

  On the slopes of The Old Bald Man, Fritz Shorr’s dogs began to bark. He came out of the cabin door and shouted. “Shut up, damn you!”

  The dogs strained on their chains. Fritz shook his head. Dumb curs. As he went back inside he noticed an odd smell.

  “A dead fox or something,” Fritz told his wife, who was breast-feeding their youngest by the fire. The other two children were already in bed, their blond hair visible in the bed that the whole family shared.

  “Worst-smelling fox I ever heard of,” Fritz’s wife said after a few minutes. She was right, the smell was getting worse. Fritz stood up, but as he turned to the door it flew open and a hooded figure stood in the doorway. Obscenely fat, the thing filled the doorway.

  Fritz gagged on the overpowering stench. One of the children woke up and started to cry. The stranger stepped over the threshold and Fritz saw horns curling around its head. The figure had the legs of a goat; they ended in brown hooves. Fritz’s wife screamed, clutching the baby closer to her for protection. The creature took a sharp skinning knife from its belt and took another step forward.

  They moved silently through the forests, pausing every few minutes to smell the air, nostrils flaring as they closed in. They had pushed on ahead of the other bands, but it was not far now.

  Red Killer moved at the head of band. His belt was plaited with fresh heads. Man-gore dripped down his thighs, and he gave a low snort of warning as he stopped at the end of the clearing.

  The stones had risen from the ground. There were four of them: black and jagged and throbbing with power. Red Killer would be the first to draw on their power. With the strength that the stones gave him, he would be able to challenge the Albino Abomination that had usurped the leadership.

  Red Killer snorted. His men began to herd the prisoners forward. They had gathered them as they marched down from Frantzplinth. There were fifty of them, their tongues torn out. Ready for sacrifice.

  On the upper slopes of Galten Hill, Gruff went out into the cold night air and paced across to the latrine. Just as he was about to bang the wooden door shut, he noticed the flicker of flames a little way down the hill.

  That was the Larsen farm. He was about to call his farm hands to come with him and see if they could help out when he heard a horn blowing: strange and eerie high in the forest. More beastmen, Gruff thought, and then another horn blew, lower in the valley. A third answered a little way up on the ridge. It sounded again, closer this time and Gruff suddenly became scared.

  Surely there couldn’t be more beastmen? But then another horn blew, even closer this time. He ran back to the house. “Wake up!” he shouted as he burst into the front room. “Get up now, for the love of Sigmar!”

  He waited for a few seconds until the sound of voices and doors banging told him his daughters had woken up, then he ran back out to the stables to hitch the cart up.

  Valina came out of the house in her nightgown. “What’s the matter?” she asked, shivering.

  “Another beastman raid!” Gruff hissed.

  “It’s not possible!”

  The horses shifted nervously and Gruff swore as he dropped one of the leather straps. He struggled to retrieve it, then pulled the second horse into place between the shafts.

  “Father, what’s the matter?” Valina asked, confused and frightened.

  But before Gruff could answer the horn sounded again, even closer now, and the dogs began to whimper and growl.

  “Get your sisters!” Gruff said as he dragged the horses out of the stables.

  Sigmund was woken by a fierce banging. He rolled out of bed and pulled the door open. It was one of the spearmen. When the man raised the lantern to his face, Sigmund could see it was a boy with a scar down his cheek.

  “What news?”

  “Sir—there are flames in the hills.”

  Sigmund frowned. “I will come and look,” he said. He threw on his jacket, pulled on his boots and together they hurried through the empty night streets, through the old stone gateway and down Altdorf Street to the top of the rampart and the palisade.

  High above the town, all along the hillsides, fires were burning. Sigmund could tell from their size and shape that these were not bonfires, but burning buildings. As he stood, shaking his head, another fire started: much closer this time, past the apple orchards on the outskirts of town. Embers spiralled up into the night sky. The low clouds glowed with reflected light, but they did not glow red, but a hellish green.

  Sigmund’s skin prickled.

  “Run back to barracks and ask the sergeants to come,” he told the soldier.

  Sigmund stood and stared at the flames for nearly half an hour. He was so immersed in the spectacle that he barely heard the footsteps of his sergeants as Gunter, Osric, Vostig and Hanz arrived, panting from the rush across the town.

  They clambered up the steps and stopped when they saw the fires spreading across the hillsides. “Sigmar!” Gunter swore, and Vostig and Hanz shook their heads in horror.

  “But look at that one?” Sigmund said and he pointed towards the fire that was burning along the river.

  “Is that a farm?” Gunter asked. Sigmund shook his head. There was nothing there but orchards and fields.

  Osric frowned. “Isn’t there a burial mound there?”

  Sigmund nodded. Something had brought the beastmen down so close to the city walls. They would not risk such a move unless the benefits were worth more than the risk. His sense of alarm grew. “There is something afoot. We must do something to stop it!”

  Gunter was adamant. “We cannot go out into the night with beastmen around. We do not know their strength or even their location. And these creatures are wild animals—they would pick us off at their leisure. It would be suicide.”

  “We cannot go out,” Hanz agreed. “Marching out there in the dark would be suicide.”

  Sigmund nodded. “But gentlemen, we do not need to march!”

  The other men gave him strange looks as he started to explain.

  In the barracks the men were sleeping soundly until the doors flew open and Gunter stormed in, lantern in hand. “Up men!” he yelled. “Up! Damn you all! Up!”

  Elias sat bolt upright and fumbled on the ground for his clothes and his boots. He heard Edmunt cough in the bed next to him and cursed Sigmar, the Emperor Karl-Frantz and the elector count in one long expletive.

  When Elias was half dressed he followed the other men outside. Osric was standing at the armoury door. Insid
e the lanterns had been lit and men were stumbling out, polished black breastpieces gleaming in the lamplight, tying their sword belts around their waists, halberds in hand.

  “Arm yourself!” Osric shouted and Elias ran into the armoury, pulled a sword belt from the racks, and tied it around his waist. He lifted one of the cuirboili breastplates and Gaston helped him strap it on, then he took a steel cap, grabbed a halberd from the rack by the door then went to line up in the yard with the others.

  Holmgar was behind Elias. He grabbed sword, powder belt and handgun. Vostig was waiting outside, and as each handgunner lined up he checked their powder flasks were full, then went from man to man, handing each twenty round lead shot that they dropped into pouches at their waists.

  In twenty minutes sixty halberdiers and fifteen handgunners were lined up, ready for battle.

  Gunter gave the order and Baltzer started beating the drum, and the men marched across the drill ground to the barracks gates, then turned onto the road that led to the docks.

  The horns were getting closer as Gruff Spennsweich helped his last daughter up onto the cart, and then checked the ropes that held all their possessions down. A few leaves rustled in the breeze and he turned as fast as he could—but the moonlit tree-line was silent and empty.

  He shivered. The Larson farm was still burning. Olan and Dieter held the horses. They clambered up after the farmer, and clutched their pitchforks nervously.

  The horn sounded again and Gertrude, the youngest, started to cry.

  “Hush!” Floss hissed and put her arm around her sister.

  They were all silent as the cart rumbled out of the yard onto the tree-lined road. It was uncomfortable in the back. Beatrine huffed and put her hand to stop her hair from blowing all over the place. The youngest, Gertrude, sat next to their father, her knees drawn up to her chin. The twins, Shona and Weina, sat together at the back. Valina put her arms around them. It was times like this that she felt like their mother. She brushed a lock of hair from her face. She had been born here, had grown up here, and now they were leaving. At any other time the prospect of moving to town would have filled her with excitement—but at night, like this, it was different.