Forged in Battle (14 page)

Fourteen men lost in such a short time.

When they mounted the crest of the hill Elias saw the three
barges tethered to the jetty below. Mist was rising over the river, and the
scene was so still and calm that it seemed impossible that fourteen men had died
that morning.

The rest of the men tramped on down the hill to Baltzer’s
jaunty tune.

The soldiers stood silently as they waited to get aboard.
Dead men were passed over and laid in the waist of the boat, the water lapping
over their dead hands. Schwartz’s legs were useless. He groaned when they tried
to lift him into the boat, and Elias’ hands slipped and Schwartz half fell
against the side of the boat.

“Idiot!” Osric snapped and caught the wounded man.

“It’s fine,” Schwartz hissed through gritted teeth.

One by one the boats cast off and floated downstream until
the sails were hoisted, and they began to tack back upstream. The going was
painfully slow. The men huddled in the damp bellies of the barges, the dead men
were laid out in the bows. Osric’s men were laughing and joking, even though
they had suffered most. Osric re-enacted beheading a beastman. He could still
see the expression of snarling hatred change to shock and then pain as its head
flew up from the neck. Freidel was laughing that he still had nine fingers and
Schwartz laughed because, although he was wounded, he was relieved that the
battle was over.

Gunter’s men were strangely quiet. Elias was still shocked—the battle felt like it had lasted mere seconds, but fourteen men were dead, and
he couldn’t believe he had survived.

Edmunt used the water in the boat to wash the blood off his
hands and axe-head.

Seven beastmen, he told himself with a grim satisfaction.

His breastplate was uncomfortable. He undid the buckles and
pulled it off and saw three deep gouges in the polished leather surface. The
deepest had gone through all but the last few layers of leather. It looked like
a spear thrust that had been turned aside, but he had no idea where it had come
from. He felt the bottom of his ribs on the left side and found a lump that had
swelled up. He laughed to think that he had never felt the blow or the bruise
until now.

Sigmund counted the dead men again. Fourteen—and from the
look of Schwartz, bent double between Freidel and Elias, he would soon be
joining them. And six wounded.

In truth, for sixty dead beastmen, fourteen dead men was not
bad. If the beastmen had attacked together then the result could have been very
different, but the halberdiers’ discipline had paid off. Sigmund was overcome
with pride in his men, he bent over the side of the barge so that no one could
see how emotional he felt.

Ehab kept them well to the side of the river, where the
current was weakest. Sigmund took a deep breath and then it struck him what they
had achieved and was eager to return to the town and spread news of their win.
If the journey downstream was slow then the trip upstream was much slower. It
took them three hours to tack back. They didn’t see anyone on the bank—man or
beastman. The orchards were empty. But as the sun rose higher and lit the
hillsides, Sigmund’s emotions turned from excitement to foreboding. From Galten
Hill to Forester’s Peak a hundred fires burnt—the long plumes of black smoke
curling up into the morning sky, each a sign of death and destruction. In the
valley where the village of Burhens sheltered, a huge cloud rose into the
morning.

On the hillside smoke from burning farmsteads crept
inexorably to town. Village by village, the beastmen were purging the forests of
human-kind. An army of nightmare creatures that had risen from fables and
legends to terrify their daylight and conscious hours.

Sigmund shook his head. He would have to prepare the town
against this onslaught. Even if he had started to bring the people in he could
never have managed to clear such a huge area, and if his men had been caught by
such a large force then they would have been decimated.

“Faster!” Sigmund urged, but there was nothing Ehab could do.

For two hours they slowly tacked upstream, but then the wind
changed and his crew hoisted a spinnaker and the prow began to cut through the
river water.

Viewed from the river, Helmstrumburg looked small and
vulnerable, perched on the river banks, its stone walls and tightly packed
houses dwarfed by the looming hills and forests. As they turned into the harbour
it seemed that the town was in a pitiful state.

Without leadership people were concerned about one thing
only: saving themselves.

The White Rose tacked in through the harbour entrance then
the sailors hurried to furl the sails and lower the yardarm.

Sigmund was horrified at the sight that awaited them. Gone
was the usual frenetic hurrying of dockers with sacks on their backs and the
bartering of merchants. Instead, it was a scene of chaos. Crowds of desperate
people were rushing up and down the docks and jetties. Half-filled barges were
casting off, and there were merchant families hurrying to clamber aboard, stacks
of possessions piled up on the docks. White-faced wives and daughters of the
rich stood amidships as the poor looked on.

The door of the guild hall was shut and the town watch were
nowhere to be seen. A mob heaved back and forth as townspeople attempted to find
passage on any boat that was going. At the end of the jetty, they saw an
undefended boat and stormed towards it, but the crew clambered for their bill
hooks and fended them off. There were screams of pain and horror and Sigmund saw
one man who had scrambled aboard getting beaten down with a club. He shouted to
the men to stop, but the din of panic drowned out his voice.

Blood spurted out from the back of the man’s head and then he
crashed down into the water, and lay there face down in the ripples.

Sigmund shook his head. The town seemed to be floundering in
a leaderless panic. Ehab steered them towards the nearest berth and the mob
surged towards the barges, until they saw that the boat was full of halberdiers.
For a moment they thought it was a new unit of men sent from Kemperbad, but then
they recognised the ill-matched uniforms of the Helmstrumburg Halberdiers and
their hearts sank.

As the halberdiers began to lift their dead off the boats
then the panic only increased.

“We’re in town now!” Freidel shouted to Schwartz, but he
remained slumped over. Freidel lifted the man’s head, but his eyes were glassy.

“He’s gone,” Freidel said to Elias, and dragged him to the
side of the boat.

Elias watched in horror. A man had just died next to him:
silently and without a murmur. He saw the crowd and the panic and did not know
what the halberdiers could possibly do to save Helmstrumburg.

Farmer Spennsweich had driven by moonlight, all the while
praying fervently for Taal to shield him and his family. When dawn came it
seemed that the god of the forest had heard their pleas. The mare was foaming at
the mouth, her flanks were dripping with sweat, but they were only two miles
north of Helmstrumburg. Farmer Spennsweich flicked the reins and drove the mare
onwards. He knew he wouldn’t feel safe until they were inside the town walls.

Roderick was on duty on the west gate, on the Altdorf Road,
when he saw the cart came clattering down the road, piled up with possessions
and frightened children. He put his hand out to stop it. The last thing the town
needed was frightened country folk spreading panic and rumours in town.

“What’s your business here?” he demanded.

Gruff Spennsweich was white with fear. He pointed up to the
forests on the hills. “Look! Can’t you see the smoke!”

Roderick refused to be alarmed. It was probably some hayrick
that had caught fire. He cleared his throat and spoke with mock politeness.
“What is your name, good sir?”

“Gruff Spennsweich.”

“Well, Gruff Spennsweich,” Roderick said, putting his hands
inside the tails of his blue velvet coat and resting them on his hips. “I don’t
know what rumours and scaremongering have led you to bring your family into
town, but I assure you it is safe to return home and your honourable occupation!
Is spring not the time to sow your crops?”

Roderick expected the man to doff his cap and give in to good
sense, but the farmer refused to back down.

“The whole village of Struhelflossen has been butchered! We
saw it with our own eyes!” he said. All his daughters and the two farm hands
nodded mute agreement, but Roderick was not to be dissuaded and refused to let
them in.

“There is no room for rumour-mongers in town!” he snapped and
took the horse’s bridle to turn it away from the gate, but Gruff flicked the
reins and drove the horse straight at the officer.

Roderick leapt to the side and the four watchmen at the gate
jumped up, grabbed the horse, and manhandled the burly old farmer off his wagon.
Valina tried to pull the watchmen off, but her screams were ignored and she
turned to Roderick for help, who was dusting his coat down.

“In Helmstrumburg we have laws,” he spat when his watchmen
had finished with Farmer Spennsweich and left him lying outside the walls, next
to the wheels of his cart. “I suggest you remember that!”

The burgomeister sent word that all refugees were to be
denied entrance into the town and ordered to return home, but within the hour
there were already fifteen carts outside the west gate, and at least as many
more at the east and north gates.

Roderick climbed up onto the gatehouse and held out his arms
for silence. Gruff and the other farmers shook their fists at him. Roderick’s
face reddened in anger. He gestured to his badge of office as if that would
still their protests.

“Good people!” Roderick started. “I implore you to ignore the
rumours and superstition that have driven you from your homes! If we are to flee
in the face of the smallest threats, then how can we hope to build a prosperous
and wealthy community?”

The people booed and the Roderick opened his hands and tried
to quieten them down.

“Why blame me for your plight? If you have not been protected
then you should take your complaints to the barracks and Captain Jorg!”

The jeering relented for a moment as another target of their
anger was presented. “I assure you it is safe to return home!” Roderick said
earnestly—then a fresh lump of horse manure flew up and splattered against his
blue coat. At the same moment a stone hit the man next to him and within seconds
there was a hail of missiles flying through the air. The farmers surged up to
the wall, hurling stones and abuse, but the gates were shut and instead of
offering them shelter, the city walls left them locked out.

At the Jorg family mill, Andres Jorg got up early to see his
wife and son to town. The upper slopes of Galten Hill all, the way across to The
Old Bald Man were shrouded in smoke.

“Please come with us!” his wife begged one last time, but he
shook his head and scowled. He refused to flee before beastmen.

His wife wiped the tears from her cheeks and Andres helped
him up onto the cart, and nodded to his son. Look after your mother, the nod
said.

His mill-hands stood behind him, watching the cart head down
the slope and over the bridge towards town. Their master was the most famous
soldier for fifty miles. He had served the count’s father himself in his
personal bodyguard. They would stay as long as their master did. Andres spat and
then turned towards his men, and gave them a look as if they were soldiers
waiting for orders.

“Right men! Back to work!”

The wheel of the watermill turned all morning. Andres stumped
under the rafters, listening to the hypnotic sound of the water splashing
through the mill mechanism. The huge grind stone turned slowly and ponderously:
one man fed grain into the hole in the centre, coming out from the outside edges
in a fine white powder.

The others sacked it up and piled the sacks against the far
wall. All the men were dusted with flour. Even Andres had started to take on the
ghostly white; he brushed the flour from his shoulders and went back outside,
for the tenth time that morning.

The smoke from the high forest fires crept steadily downhill.

What was that son of his up to, skulking in town when raiders
were terrorising the higher settlements? If only he had his leg back. If only he
were Marshal of Helmstrumburg. He would march out and destroy those cursed
goat-men!

The morning was well underway when the halberdiers clambered
out of the
White Rose
and lined up on the dock-side. The scene around
them was one of pure panic. People streamed from the town and there was a
terrible crush on the docks as they tried to find safe passage away from
Helmstrumburg. Fighting erupted over another boat and Sigmund barked an order
and drew up his men in rank, Osric’s men at the front, Gunter’s men behind,
Edmunt standing with the colours of the Helmstrumburg Halberdiers hanging from
the banner pole.

The mob shrank into itself, but pushed from behind by
terrified people the crowd surged forward again.

“Back!” Sigmund shouted to the terrified people, but they
were too frightened to listen. “Back to your homes!”

“So we can be torn apart by beastmen?” one man shouted, but
Sigmund could not see who.

“I am the Marshal of Helmstrumburg!” he shouted, trying to
find a way through to the people in the mob. “This morning we killed sixty
beastmen!”

People jeered him and someone shouted something about
refugees being shut out of town to stop the truth spreading about the numbers of
beastmen.

“You may have killed sixty but there are hundreds more!”
another voice shouted.