03 - Call to Arms (22 page)

“We should get out while we can,” Krug said. “Head out under the cover of
darkness and make a run for it before they begin the attack.”

“And run where?” Rieger said. “There’s nowhere for us to go, Krug. Never mind
the fact the enemy are night goblins. You’re forgetting they can see in the
dark. The cover of darkness works in their favour—not ours.”

“Then, we should set fire to the mill as a diversion,” Krug said. “It will
ruin the goblins’ night sight. We can use the confusion it creates to slip away
without them seeing us.”

“You ask me, you are clutching at straws,” Hoist joined the argument. “You
say the fire would ruin their eyesight? How do we know that would even work? We
can hardly call out to the goblins and ask them.”

“At least it would give us a fighting chance,” Krug spat back. “Anything is
better than staying here like rats in a trap.”

They were standing in the kitchen of the mill house, part of a gaggle of a
dozen men who were busily debating the merits of various responses to the goblin
threat. No more than a quarter of an hour had passed since the skirmish with the
night goblin scouts at the wall, but the revelation of the enemy’s proximity had
thrown the entire group of Scarlets and their handgunner allies into a state of
consternation.

Every man in the mill took it for granted that the goblins were only part of
a much larger force. Since it was obvious, even from a distance, that soldiers
occupied the mill, there was only one reason a small group of goblin raiders
could have for trying to sneak over the walls.

Dieter had less experience of greenskins than some of the men assembled
around him in the kitchen, but even he understood the basic laws that operated
among such creatures. No goblin would willingly put itself at risk facing a
numerically superior foe in a fortified position—not unless it had been
compelled to by a leader whose orders it was afraid to refuse. In this case, it
probably meant they had been sent by an orc warlord or goblin chieftain. A much
larger greenskin force was probably nearby.

From the back of the group a man cleared his throat, the sound causing the
other men in the room to turn their heads to see the source. It was Markus
Brucker, the handgunner marksman. He had been listening quietly to the
discussion from the back of the room. Now, he offered his opinion.

“We’d be better off here than out in the open,” Brucker said. “I’ve fought
night goblins before. It’s not just the fact that they can see in the dark while
we can’t. It’s their custom to trap and train the monsters that live underground
with them. At the very least, they’ll have squigs with them. Maybe other
creatures besides.”

“What’s a squig?” It was Dieter who asked the question.

“Imagine an ugly ball of muscle with a pair of short, clawed legs at the
bottom of it. Then, imagine that its most prominent feature is a mouth nearly as
wide as its body, full to the brim with sharp fangs, any one of which is the
size of a man’s thumb. That’s a squig. The small ones are about as wide as a
doorway, though I’ve seen ’em as big as a bull. They’re good hunters, when it’s
dark, and they move by jumping. They’re the strangest animal I’ve ever seen, not
to mention the ugliest and probably the meanest. The goblins use them like we
use dogs.”

“So?” Krug glowered at the marksman. “You’re saying we should be scared of
these squigs, is that it?”

“Not scared so much.” Brucker shook his head. “They’re animals, and a bullet
or sword will kill them—just like anything else. But you said you thought we
should make a break for it and try to slip away to escape the goblins. I’m
telling you it won’t work. All they’d do is set their squigs on us like hounds
after a fox. We wouldn’t have a chance. We stand a better chance of surviving by
staying right here and defending the mill walls. That way, night or not, we’ll
see the night goblins and their squigs coming at us. Doing that, we can keep the
fight on our terms, not theirs.”

“I’m with the handgunner,” a familiar voice said.

Turning with the others to find out the identity of the speaker, Dieter saw
Gerhardt step through the doorway into the room with Sergeant Bohlen beside him.
Gerhardt looked tired. There were fresh bloodstains on his sleeves and hands.

“How did it go?” Hoist asked. “With Kuranski, I mean?”

“As well as can be expected, I suppose,” Gerhardt shrugged in exhaustion. “I
got the leg off. Hopefully, that will deal with the infection. Kuranski passed
out. He’s sleeping now. We’ll just have to hope for the best. But I know one
thing. There’s no way we can move Kuranski now—not without killing him.”

“Again with this nonsense,” Krug scowled. “I can’t believe you’re saying you
think we should all stay here just because Kuranski can’t be moved. It’s
madness. I have nothing against Kuranski, but we can’t put all our lives at risk
for one man. We should get out of here and leave Kuranski to look after himself.
That’s what I say.”

“Then it’s a good thing your vote doesn’t count for anything,” Sergeant
Bohlen grumbled. He fixed his eyes on Krug for a moment, staring him down,
before he turned to look at the faces of the other men around him.

“The problem here is that you all seem to think this is a council chamber or
some kind of debating society,” the sergeant continued. “Because it isn’t. It’s
a regiment of soldiers and that means only one man is given the luxury of having
an opinion—
me.
So, let me tell you what I’ve decided. We are staying
here. If the goblins come, we will make our stand behind these walls—at least
for tonight. In the morning, when there’s light, I’ll look at the situation
again and decide whether there’s any chance of us making a withdrawal. But,
until then, we stand and fight. From now on, this place isn’t a mill. It’s our
fortress. Any questions?”

He gazed at the men around him almost as though daring them to contradict
him. No one spoke. After a few seconds, the sergeant nodded in satisfaction.

“All right, then. We have a fight to win. Let’s get to work.”

Another two hours passed by the time the goblins made their first attack. By
then, it was midnight. The rain had stopped, leaving the ground outside the mill
walls muddy and sodden. To Dieter’s mind, muddy conditions underfoot were
something that could only work in the defenders’ favour.

As he was learning, the time before a battle was the hardest part. It was the
waiting that bothered him. He supposed he did not like being unable to know what
the enemy were planning. Out in the darkness, away from the feeble light cast by
the Scarlets’ lanterns, it felt like the goblins could be hatching all manner of
diabolical plans. Whatever they were up to, it would only become clear once the
battle began in earnest.

In the meantime, the Scarlets tried to make the best of the waiting. Efforts
were made to strengthen the mill’s defences. The long table of the mill house
kitchen was cleared while the room was made ready to serve duty as a makeshift
hospital. Stones were gathered from the courtyard and piled on the ramparts,
ready to be sent crashing down on the heads of any besiegers. Swords were
sharpened. The remaining butter and grease from the kitchen was applied to the
iron spikes on top of the mill’s exterior wall to stop climbers from gripping
them. Empty grain sacks were filled with soil and used to construct a small
redoubt ten paces behind the main gates in order to give the defenders a strong
point from which to resist the enemy advance if the gates were breached.

The space for men on the wall ramparts was limited, but Sergeant Bohlen
posted as many soldiers as possible to defend them, with his remaining forces
stationed in the courtyard as a mobile reserve. In order to maximise the
firepower of the soldiers guarding the wall, a handgunner was posted after every
fifth man. The handgunners were low on lead shot and black powder, but they
promised to do as much damage as possible to the enemy before their ammunition
was exhausted.

Markus Brucker took up a position alongside Dieter, Hoist, Rieger and
Gerhardt. Having never seen a long rifle up close before, Dieter watched
captivated as Brucker made a series of minute adjustments to the weapon. The
man’s manner seemed strangely prayerful in the run-up to battle, as though he
was communing with his rifle on an almost religious level.

“How far would you say it is to that tree over there?” he asked Dieter,
pointing his rifle toward a gnarled and ancient oak at edge of the forest’s tree
line.

“I don’t know… Perhaps a hundred paces.”

“Hmm. We’ll call it ninety,” Brucker said, looking through the brass cylinder
set on top of the barrel of his gun.

Earlier, he had explained the brass tube was like a telescope. It enabled him
to see targets in more detail and improved his aim accordingly. As he stared at
the tree through the brass tube, Brucker used his fingers to make a tiny
adjustment to a small metal wheel at the side of his gun.

“Yes, that’s right, ninety,” Brucker spoke softly, though whether to himself
or his gun Dieter could not be sure. “The wind is blowing south-westerly. The
light could be better, but it will have to do. We’ll kill some greenskins,
Hilde, won’t we? We’ll shoot for the big nobs first, the shaman—if they have
one—and any chieftains. Then, we’ll take our targets where we can find them.
We’ll kill some greenskins, though. That is certain.”

As time went on, the night grew brighter. The clouds obscuring the moon moved
aside, revealing a gibbous sphere. The full moon that Dieter had seen a few days
ago had passed, but there was still radiance enough in the moon that was left to
light the night brightly. He took it for another good omen—like the muddy
ground underfoot, a bright night would favour the defenders.

From time to time, as the men on the ramparts waited for the enemy to appear,
they heard movement out among the trees. Hidden in the depths of the forest,
some force was massing, but at first the Scarlets could only guess at its
nature. Dieter found he was eager to ask Brucker more about his experiences
fighting night goblins, but the marksman had fallen quiet.

The entire mill was silent. Even in the forest the sounds of movement had
stopped. It was as if the night held its breath.

Then, Dieter saw them. He heard an inhuman battle cry and an army of stunted
black-robed figures appeared on every side of the mill simultaneously.

It was clear the time for waiting was past.

Dashing from the cover of the tree line, the front rank of night goblins
charged toward the mill walls carrying roughly-made scaling ladders. The
handgunners responded with an opening salvo of shots—all except for Brucker.
Looking through the brass tube atop his rifle, he scanned back and forth among
the trees.

“Patience, Hilde, patience,” Brucker whispered. “There’s plenty of targets,
but we’ll save the first shot for one that’s worth it.”

Somewhere, from among the trees, a ghastly green bolt of magical fire
appeared. Shooting through the air, it hit an upper section of the wall about
twenty paces to Dieter’s right. Dieter heard men screaming, their flesh
shrivelled by the unearthly fire.

“And there he is,” Brucker said, his voice low and calm among the noise
around them. “A shaman. You shouldn’t have used such a spectacular spell, my
green friend. You think you are too far away for us to hurt you, but you just
gave away your position. Now, it’s mine and Hilde’s turn.”

The rifle barked once, the sound almost lost among the reports of gunshots
fired from elsewhere along the ramparts.

Satisfied, Brucker began reloading his rifle.

“Did you get him?” Dieter asked as the marksman opened the powder horn he
carried at his side and began to carefully tip out a precise measure of powder
into the barrel of his gun.

“Of course, I got him,” Brucker replied, his expression suggesting he could
hardly believe Dieter had asked him the question. “Head shot. A quick, clean
death.”

Outside the walls, the goblins with scaling ladders had reached their
objective. As the enemy began to raise their ladders into position, Dieter
joined his comrades in trying to drive them away. Grabbing stones from one of
the piles nearby, he dropped as many as he could on the goblins’ heads. Then,
helped by Hoist and Gerhardt, he pushed at the top of one of the ladders where
it had been propped up to rest against the wall. Dislodging it, he heard a
satisfying chorus of screams as the ladder fell and the goblins climbing it were
sent smashing into the ground.

“Watch out!” Rieger yelled. “Some of them are on the ramparts!”

Hearing his comrade’s warning, Dieter turned to see a group of goblins had
managed to get their scaling ladder into position in the gap in the wall’s
defences created by the shaman’s magical missile. Leaving Brucker to continue
sniping at the enemy on the other side of the wall, Dieter hurried to help his
fellow Scarlets repel the goblin assault before the enemy turned their breach
into a bridgehead.

The night goblins were armed with a bewildering variety of weapons, including
curved swords, clubs, picks, nets, knives, spears—one was even armed with
something that looked not unlike a cross between a cattle prod and a boat hook.
They swarmed onto the ramparts, exploiting the breach. Dieter saw one of his
fellow soldiers die, an unknown Scarlet whose attempts to hold back the green
tide had ended in heroic failure. Refusing to let the unknown man’s sacrifice go
in vain, Dieter pushed forward and launched himself into the enemy with the
regimental battle cry on his lips.

“Forward the 3rd! Forward for Hochland! Forward the Scarlets!”

With Gerhardt, Hoist and Rieger beside him, Dieter swept into the goblins.
Battering into them with his shield, swinging his sword in arcs of destruction,
he sent goblins squealing to their deaths as they fell back over the wall or
tumbled from the rampart into the courtyard below.