Forged in Battle (6 page)

“We killed all the beastmen, and I lost one man,” Sigmund
said.

“So you dealt with the offending creatures. What is the
alarm? I am sure they will have learnt their lesson. They will not dare to stray
back down near human settlement.”

Sigmund was thrown for a moment. “But I do not think the
beastmen we killed were the same as those who—”

Again the burgomeister cut him off but Sigmund refused to be
silenced. “Sir!” Sigmund said, his voice rising as he rested his hands on either
side of the ledger and glared at the burgomeister. “I am sure that this was not
the party who slaughtered the Osman and his family. I believe we must call for
reinforcements and until then the outlying farmers must be brought into town for
their protection.”

The burgomeister looked up at the halberdier for a moment and
then laughed. “Captain Jorg—I think you have been listening to these stories
about Sigmar’s star. Meanwhile I have a town to govern. I cannot waste time with
superstitions!”

Sigmund slammed his hand onto the table. “Beastmen killed
Osman. More will be killed unless we get reinforcements and bring those living
in the forest down to Helmstrumburg!”

The burgomeister put up his hands and closed his eyes.
“Please, captain. I have heard your request and will consider it. If it is half
as bad as you think then I suggest you go and find those last few beastmen!”

“If you will not request more men then I insist that we put
in place a policy to bring the outlying villagers into town for their own
protection!”

“No,” the burgomeister said emphatically. “Now I have other
things to consider.”

Sigmund bit back his anger. “Sir—” he managed.

The burgomeister smiled politely. “My dear Captain Jorg,” he
spoke as if to a child. “I do not think we need more troops around
Helmstrumburg. You and your men are protection enough!”

Sigmund was furious, but he bit his retort back, and strode
from the hall.

* * *

In the burgomeister’s hall Eugen, Theodor and the
burgomeister listened to Sigmund’s footsteps depart.

The burgomeister rose in one fluid motion, swung the door
shut, and bolted it. He glared at the two merchants. “You were supposed to come
in secret!” he hissed. “In secret!” he repeated, his face purple. “I cannot
think of a less ostentatious arrival than to get yourselves attacked and be
rescued by that dolt and his team of drill-ground thugs.”

“Isn’t there a better way to greet your guests?” Eugen smiled
as he pulled himself a seat.

The burgomeister’s mouth clamped shut. He flopped into his
seat, his arms hanging at his side. Eugen drew a hand from under his jacket and
extended it over the table. He opened his fist and there was a loud thud as the
leather purse he’d been holding landed on the table top. The burgomeister stared
at the purse for a long while, but did not reach out to take it.

“Now,” Eugen said as he leaned in and spoke slowly and
softly. “I trust the second part of the agreement is in place?”

The burgomeister’s eyes did not leave the purse of gold.
Theodor cleared his throat but the burgomeister’s eyes did not flicker.

“Lord burgomeister,” Eugen said. “I trust you have fulfilled
your half of the bargain.” He spoke a little more hurriedly this time, stress
raising the pitch of his voice. “Lord burgomeister—” he began one last time but
the burgomeister put up his hand.

He drew in a deep breath and pulled himself erect in his
seat, took the purse. “It is,” he said.

Sigmund was still fuming as he marched across the courtyard
and took the stone staircase down to the vaults, where Maximillian, the
treasurer worked.

Not bothering to knock, Sigmund pushed open the heavy oak
door. Beyond, in a low-ceiling room, a man sat hunched over a large table
covered with ledgers. Maximillian was the long-suffering treasurer of
Helmstrumburg. A true-blooded bureaucrat, he ignored Sigmund for as long as
possible, then put his quill back into its ink pot and let out a long sigh.

“How can I help you?”

“I have come to take three crowns from your chests.”

“You lost a man?”

Sigmund nodded, but immediately felt uncomfortable with his
flippant manner. How many times had he done this now?

Ten—eleven? He couldn’t remember. The first man he’d lost
was Arneld, a childhood friend. That had been the hardest. It had been his own
fault. Not only had he persuaded Arneld to join but he’d failed to save him. He
still remembered turning and seeing Arneld’s horrified face—frozen forever in
that brief moment before death—when the greenskin chieftain disembowelled him.

“Name?” Maximillian said and Sigmund snapped back to the
present.

“Petr von Blankow.”

The certificate was signed and stamped with red wax. Petr’s
death would earn his relatives three crowns. That was the price for each dead
man’s life. Sigmund realised how hardened he’d become to loss. It was a
soldier’s bedfellow. Edmunt was the only one he would truly miss now, he
thought.

The two merchants were coming out of the guild hall when
Sigmund came back up the stairs into the central courtyard.

“Delivered your message?”

The two men started. “Captain Jorg. Still here, I see?”

“Indeed. I suppose you’re here for the fur?” Sigmund said.

Eugen didn’t seem to understand.

“The furs,” Sigmund said. “Helmstrumburg is famous for the
quality of the furs.”

Eugen nodded. “Of course. How forgetful of me. We are
interested, but I have to say that there are other things that interest me
more.”

“Will you be partaking of our Helmstrumburg hospitality for
long?”

“I doubt it,” Eugen replied, and Theodor laughed.

Sigmund was reliving the argument with the burgomeister when
he stepped inside the Crooked Dwarf inn. There were a couple of regulars,
sitting at the bar, tall steins of beer in front of them. Sigmund acknowledged
them as he walked up to the bar.

“Now then, Guthrie,” he said and leaned his arms on the
smooth wood of the bar. “What’s new?”

“Nothing new.” Guthrie continued drying his tankard. “I hear
you brought my lad back alive.”

“I did,” Sigmund said.

“Coming home with living men is a good habit for a captain to
have,” Guthrie said. “Keep it up.”

“I intend to,” Sigmund snapped, surprised by the animosity of
the jolly ostler. Turning round, he saw Edmunt sitting in the corner with a
steaming platter of beef, bowls of pickled cabbage and good thick trenchers of
rye bread. Sigmund walked over to him, pulled out a stool, and sat down.

Edmunt nodded to Sigmund to help himself. The two men had
been friends long before they’d enlisted. That feeling still blurred the
distinctions between captain and halberdier.

“I saw Frantz,” Sigmund said.

“How was he?”

“Good.”

They ate in silence for a few moments.

“The burgomeister refused to ask for more men.”

“Did you expect anything else?”

Sigmund shook his head and kept eating.

“Did you deliver our friends to him?”

“I did,” Sigmund said and smiled. “Strange pair.”

“They are.”

“What do you think?”

Edmunt took another bite of bread. “Who can tell,” he said at
last, cut a piece of meat and began to chew.

Sigmund put his beer down. “I don’t trust them.”

Edmunt nodded. They ate in silence for a while. After they’d
finished wiping their bowls clean, Edmunt let out a belch of satisfaction.

“How’s Elias’ cut?”

“We cleaned it. He’s resting.”

Sigmund nodded. “I’ll go see him,” he said and stood up. On
his way out of the door he paused and looked back at his friend. Edmunt had
grown up in the high country. He’d known Osman, and even more than that he’d
known the trader’s daughters. He watched his friend take a long swig of his
tankard. After what they’d seen in the hills they were all a little shaken.
Getting drunk was one way to forget.

The Helmstrumburg barracks backed onto the river. Ringed by a
stone wall, meant as much to keep the soldiers in as angry fathers out, there
was a wide drill ground and then a “U” of buildings with their back to the
river, the long draughty barrack formed the right wing. The left housed
kitchens, the armoury and a stable, which was used to store grain and
blackpowder, and the two nags that the soldiers used to collect their provisions
from the docks.

Across the top were the officers’ rooms, sick room and
shrine, with its small statue of Sigmar. While Sigmar may have cleared the
forests of greenskins, it was Taal who created them, and Taal who had named this
land, and Taal who owned the hearts of the men of Talabecland. He shared his
shrine with his brother, Ulric, at the base of a tree near the river. It was a
crude thing, which passing soldiers had built up over the years. The coloured
strips of cloth upon which they’d written their prayers were completely faded.

The barracks had been strange at first to Sigmund, but now
the smell of oiled metal, sweat and waxed cuirboili breastplates seemed like
home.

Sigmund hailed Vostig, sergeant of the handgunners, who was
sitting with his men, cleaning their guns. They’d been shooting that morning and
their clothes and faces were dark with soot.

“You should try washing your clothes some day,” Sigmund told
them and Vostig grinned.

“When you get proper uniforms,” he bantered, “then we’ll
wash!”

Sigmund was still chuckling as he stooped to pass through the
sick room doorway. There were five beds, crammed together, and on one of them
sat Elias, looking bored.

“How’s the arm?”

“It’s alright,” Elias said but he didn’t look good.

Sigmund felt the young man’s forehead. The lad was feverish.
The wound must have gotten infected. “Let me have a look at that,” Sigmund said
and began to unwrap the bandage.

As the last wet wrapper came away he saw that the wound was
oozing green pus. Sigmund frowned. “Who cleaned this wound?”

“Freidel.”

Sigmund shook his head, stood up and moved to the doorway. He
could see Schwartz coming back from the latrine. “Get Freidel!” Sigmund shouted.
“I want him to fetch the apothecary. And run!”

Vasir did not dare sleep, but at some point he must have
dropped off and jerked awake as dawn began to bleach the sky. Beneath him he
could see shapes moving: horned shapes.

Vasir was so frightened he stopped breathing. They have come
for you, he told himself as the enormous figures passed not more than a hand’s
reach beneath his perch. They’ve tracked you here, he told himself, but that was
impossible. He’d crossed streams, ducked through stinking patches of wild
garlic, taken circuitous routes through rock fields. It was impossible to follow
a scent through all that.

Impossible, he told himself. If they’d tracked you then one
of them would be looking up this tree straight at you. Ill fate has brought them
here. Nothing more. Don’t move, don’t breathe, and don’t let them smell me!

It was several minutes before all the beastmen had passed.
Vasir thanked Taal for his benevolence.

The beastmen knew a different world to that of men: found
their way by sacred rocks or twisted and macabre trees that were imbued with a
dull sense of hatred for living things. They’d lived in the hills since time
immemorial: had ranged right down to the river—until the Great Slayer came and
killed their chieftain, and destroyed their most sacred herdstone.

Since then they’d brooded, nurturing their hatred as
carefully as a flame: feeding it, letting it grow. Deep in the hills they’d been
gathering their strength, and now the two-horned star had been seen, the
prophecies were true.

It was time for the gathering.

This sacred shrine had once been in the heart of beastman
country, but now humans had come up even into these hills: cut down trees and
planted seeds in the ground. The beastmen could smell their fires, smell cooking
meat, and knew that the time had come.

Azgrak knew that this was his time. As soon as he’d seen the
two-horned star, animal impulse had compelled him to follow the summons. He
stood, stark albino white, glowing in the half light of dawn, his fingers
flexing over and over in some mad impulse. Behind him his bodyguard stood,
bearing the banners they’d found on their way to the gathering: the skinned
bodies of men. Around the circle he saw the other tribal leaders. Fat Potgut—the Red Killer, whose belt was made of linked human heads, their hair plaited to
form a gruesome belt.

Brazak—the bloated beast, whose skin bubbled with
suppurating sores that boiled and popped and oozed a sticky white pus.

And of course, Uzrak the Black who had ruled the plateau
since Azgrak was weaned from his mother’s udders. But Uzrak’s fur was starting
to grey. If the star had come a few winters earlier then Uzrak might be the
undisputed leader but now…

Azgrak let out a low growl. It was involuntary: the bloodlust
was coming onto him again as the shaman strode into the middle of the square.
All the tribe leaders knew what they were here for: to choose a leader. Any who
contested leadership had to fight for it, or die.

The shaman shook his man-skull rattle. It was time.

Uzrak stepped into the crude ring of stones—daring any to
challenge his leadership.

Azgrak growled again, unable to keep the fury inside. He
snorted and flexed his hands, his muscles so tense that tendrils of veins stood
out from his arms and neck and forehead, right up to his horns.

Uzrak the Black glared at the display of dissention. He’d
fathered this whelp ten years before on the brood-goat of some dead chieftain.
He put back his horns, snout to the sky, and let out a roar that made the trees
above his head shake—but when he looked back down he saw that one challenger
had stepped into the ring. The contester glowed white in the dawn.