CHAPTER THREE
That afternoon Vostig’s men were drilling. Sigmund stood to watch, making sure they were lined up close together.
“Prime the pan!” Vostig shouted. The men moved as one, filling the pans with powder.
“Close the pan!” The men flipped the pans closed and blew away any loose powder.
“Charge with powder.” The men poured a measure of blackpowder down the barrels.
“Prime with shot!” A lead ball the size of a walnut was dropped down the barrels. The bullet and charge were rammed home. Each gun had a slow-burning fuse attached to the trigger. They blew on the fuse to make the end glow and then when the order came to “Present handguns” the handgunners lifted the butt to their shoulders.
“Prepare to fire!” Vostig shouted. The men flipped the pans open.
“Give fire!” Vostig called. The men pulled on the triggers and the fuse struck the powder in the pan, which belched and ignited the charge within the barrel. The guns flared flame and smoke in a ragged fusillade.
As the smoke cleared Sigmund turned to look at the length of cloth, a foot high and ten foot long, that had been pinned up along the back of the barrack wall, at chest height. Twelve ragged holes showed where the lead shots had ripped through. Three men had missed. There were new chips on the brickwork, well over head height.
Vostig cursed. “Again!” he shouted, and the men scrambled to remove the fuse from their guns and use the ram rod to clear any embers from the barrels. “Damn your hides!” Vostig cursed. “I want fifteen holes each time! Now—prime the pan!”
Sigmund left the handgunners to their practice and walked through the barracks to the sick room.
Elias did not look any better. His face was pale and sweaty. As he inspected the young man, Sigmund smiled to hide his concern. Where was that damned apothecary?
“How do you feel?”
“A little sore.” Elias seemed exhausted by the effort of speaking. His ragged breaths filled the room. He looked suddenly frightened. “If I die will you tell Guthrie that—”
“You’re not going to die,” Sigmund told him, quickly.
“Promise?”
“I promise,” Sigmund said, trying to hide his concern. Surely no normal infection could have taken hold so quickly and so violently? And there were no medicines for the supernatural.
As Sigmund sat with Elias, keeping him company, the sick room door creaked open. The woodsman, Edmunt, stood uncertainly by the door, his lips moving silently in a prayer to Taal.
Sigmund bowed his head. He knew why Edmunt had come. The woodsman’s face was white. He stared at Elias and nodded.
“The same,” he said, and then turned to go.
* * *
Osric’s men looked up as Edmunt came out of the sick room and walked past where they were polishing their halberds. Edmunt didn’t meet their gazes but walked straight past, across the drill ground to the barrack gates.
Baltzer spat. “What’s up with him?”
“Give it a break,” Freidel said. To anyone who knew the woodsman’s history, it was obvious.
The apothecary arrived at the barracks just before dinner. There was a fine smell of lentil broth coming from the kitchens and the men were standing around expectantly.
The apothecary nodded to them as he walked up to the door of the sick room. He paused at the door before knocking and stepping inside. Sigmund left the side of Elias’ bed to make way for him. The apothecary walked over to the bed, where the young man was dozing listlessly. He leant over, adjusted his spectacles, and pulled back the blanket to inspect Elias’ arm.
“He has been wounded by a poisoned blade,” Sigmund said and the apothecary nodded. Slowly and carefully, he unwrapped the bandages which were sticky with fluids. The wound was swollen and putrid, and a green pus oozed out.
The stench made both men’s eyes water. The apothecary took a pomander from his robes and held it close to his nose.
“Can you fetch me a bucket?” the apothecary asked. Sigmund hurried out to the kitchens and came out with one of their buckets, which the apothecary signalled he should put by Elias’ bed.
The apothecary lifted his case onto the bed next to Elias’ and took out a copper mixing bowl. In it he mixed red Tilean wine vinegar, mixed with salt, and used the mixture to clean out the wound. The procedure must have been painful, but Elias hardly seemed to notice what was happening. When the pus had been cleaned out the apothecary took a short knife from his case and bent over the wounded man. Sigmund watched with a morbid curiosity as he pared away the infected flesh and dropped it into the bucket. When true red blood began to flow freely the apothecary knew he’d hit living tissue and he washed the wound again with a fresh mix of salt and vinegar.
Sigmund watched the apothecary mix medicinal herbs and more vinegar. He made a thick paste to spread over the wound—binding it tight with fresh bandages, then he let out a long sigh.
“There,” he said, but his voice did not sound hopeful. “That is the best I can do.”
The apothecary had been in the sick room for nearly an hour when Osric and Baltzer came out of the kitchen, their bowls full of steaming stew.
Richel was just coming back from sentry duty and his stomach was screaming for food.
“Richel!” Osric said. “Good to see you.”
Richel smiled nervously. “I don’t want any trouble,” he said.
Osric marched straight up to the handgunner. “I’ll give you trouble!” he said, pushing Richel roughly against the wall, then putting his hand on the handgunner’s chest. “Now,” Osric said, “who’s a scruffy bloody bastard?”
Richel could barely breath with the weight on his chest.
“Who?”
“Me!” Richel said.
“Who?”
“Me!”
“I can’t hear you.”
“Me!”
“Me what?”
“I’m a scruffy bastard!”
Osric took his foot off and gave Richel a kick. “Remember that—damned gun-boy!”
Edmunt took his bowl of stew round the back of the barrack building, to the short jetty. He’d grown up with his parents high up in the hills, on the edge of the high moors. To think he needed real quiet and solitude: and here, staring out over the grey water was about as quiet as it got.
He shovelled a spoonful of broth into his mouth, and took a bite of bread. It tasted stale, as always. He chewed it anyway, and took another spoonful of broth to wash away the taste.
When he was a boy his mother had been attacked by beastmen. Somehow she survived, but the wound had eaten her alive, in much the same way that it was eating Elias. The smell was the same: fetid and bitter, like the stench of the red stinkball in the forests. In the end the sickness had driven her mad. Her skin bubbled with boils and her tongue swelled up to fill her mouth.
It had taken Edmunt and his father a whole morning to dig her grave at the back of their cabin. They wrapped her body in her favourite shawl: a red-dyed woollen one, with fancy embroidery around the hem.
Years ago, when he’d first enlisted in the halberdiers, Edmunt had been wandering through the market one morning when he found a trader selling embroidered shawls.
“Two for ten pennies,” the trader had told him, but Edmunt had just wanted one. “Seven for one,” the trader had argued.
There was nothing Edmunt disliked more than a Reiklander with attitude—but it was the shawl he was concerned with. He paid the seven pennies and took it. The trader had assumed it was a gift for some trollop at Madam Jolie’s, but when he joked Edmunt’s glare had silenced him.
Only seven pennies, he thought. After his mother had died his father never spoke much. His wife’s death had taken the purpose from his life. He hadn’t spoken much when she was alive. After she was gone he had barely spoken at all. Four years after they’d buried his mother, Edmunt had had to dig a pit for his father as well. Woodcutting was a hard life. He’d buried his father next to his mother, raised a cairn over him and said the prayer of Taal over his grave. And that afternoon he’d carried on cutting.
His meal eaten, Edmunt tossed a stone into the broad, fast waters. There was a brief splash and ripples, before the current of the river swept them downstream. From here the Stir became the Upper Reik and then the Reik, and then it flowed into the sea at Marienburg. All his father had wanted him to be was a woodsman, but his mother had been more ambitious for her son, proudly imagining him in a smart uniform: feathered hat, puffed sleeves of silk and felt, an outrageous codpiece of striped cloth. He imagined her eyes filling with joyful tears as she put her hand over her mouth to laugh at her son dressed so well—then he threw another stone and stood up and turned to go back towards the barracks.
The barracks were quiet as the men sat on their beds and ate.
Freidel took a bite of his bread and cursed. “Can’t we get something that’s not full of pissing weevils?”
“When you stop being an ugly bastard we’ll give you weevil-free bread!” Gunter told him and the men laughed and dipped the bread in the stew.
After dinner Sigmund and Vostig sat at the gate of the barracks, which was set on the crossroads that led towards Altdorf Street. It was always busy at this time of day as people hurried home before dark. There were women with baskets of shopping; a ploughman, leading two shire horses in for shoeing; two old men, deep in conversation.
“Does it ever make you sad?” Vostig asked. “Watching all these people in their ordinary lives?”
“No. It makes me glad to be a soldier!” he laughed.
Vostig let out a sigh. “I left the army six years ago. Didn’t know that, did you? I couldn’t face it: normal, life that is. I’ve been a soldier so long I don’t know what to do unless someone tells me to eat, shit, sleep and shoot.”
Over the sounds of the town, they could hear a marching tune. Sigmund turned to see if Baltzer was anywhere near, but the drill yard was empty.
“Do you hear that?”
Vostig nodded.
The sound got louder and louder, and the two men stood up to see better. Down Altdorf Street marched a column of men. Their striped uniforms were clean and neat; they carried large round shields with red and blue quarters; on their shoulders rested seven-foot spears, the leaf-blades alone a foot in length.
Sigmund stood up as the men marched up towards him. Their sergeant was a tall thin man with a pencil moustache. He raised his spear and then gave the order, “Company! Halt!” He stepped forward. “Hanz Spurig of the Vorrsheim Spears. We are to join the command of Captain Jorge,” the man said in a thick mid-Talabecland accent.
Sigmund grinned. “Captain Sigmund Jorg of the Helmstrumburg Halberdiers! Welcome!”
The man glanced at Sigmund, trying to hide his surprise at the captain’s shabby appearance. “My apologies!” he said. “I did not recognise the uniform.”
“It’s a long story…” Sigmund said.
Hanz smiled, but he seemed bewildered.
“Head straight in,” Sigmund clapped him on the back. “And welcome to Helmstrumburg!”
That evening, the halberdiers sat outside the barracks, their equipment piled up in front of them. Gaston was polishing his steel cap, while Edmunt was diligently buffing the brass fittings to a shine. Osric had his whetstone out and was grinding an even blade onto his sword—but the cheap blade was bent slightly out of shape and he gave up. “Why don’t they give us something decent to fight with!” he cursed, tossing it on the ground.
At least the halberd blades were good Reikland steel. Freidel smiled as he saw his own dim reflection in the black polished surface of the cuirboili breastplate. Layers of stitched leather, stiffened with wax, the cuirboili breastplates wouldn’t stop a handgun shot, but they would stop all but the heaviest blows, and more than that they were a quarter of the weight of a steel breastplate. When he could see his own reflection Freidel put the breastpiece aside and picked up his braces and began to work, but then he heard the sound of marching feet and looked up and saw a company start to march across the drill ground.
“Ho! Look at this lot!” he laughed.
The halberdiers of both units put down their whetstones and oil clothes and gathered to gawp at the newcomers. The spearmen looked as if they’d just walked out of a tailor’s shop. Their uniforms matched, and instead of plain jackets and trews, their clothes were slashed and lined with fine striped cloth.
Osric shook his head and laughed to see such finely dressed soldiers. “Do you think they can fight?” he asked.
“I want to see them after Captain Jorg has taken them out into the hills,” Osric said and stood up to his full height. “They’ll not look so fine after that!”
Hanz did not appreciate the fact that his commanding officer looked little better than a tramp. The halberdiers snickered as his men marched up to the barracks. More galling still was to be told that there was no room for his men in the barracks.
“My men are tired! There is no food and no place for them to bed down! What kind of outfit is this?” he demanded angrily.
“Helmstrumburg,” Osric said.
“And who are you?” Hanz snapped.
“Sergeant Osric von Blankov. Second Company, Helmstrumburg Halberdiers!” He jutted out his chin and dared the new sergeant to say anything.
“Where are my men supposed to sleep?”
“In the stables.”
“My men sleep in the stables when your rabble are in the barracks?”
“Yes!”
Hanz put his hand to his sword, but just at that moment Gunter stood up to intervene. “I’ll take over!”
Hanz’s cheeks were red with anger, his men were tired and hungry. There was a tense silence as Gunter strode up to them and inquired which unit they were.
“Vorrsheim Spears!” Hanz snapped.
“Cold Beck, Fritzburg and Dravin’s Wall. A fine history your unit has!” Gunter said and they were so astonished that they forgot to be angry. “Now—we could clean the stables out for you, but they’re cramped and there are rats. You’d probably be more comfortable bivouacking.”
Hanz was completely disarmed by the gruff old sergeant.
“You lot!” he gestured. “Get up and help these fine warriors put up their tents!”
Osric cursed as his men stood up. He refused to lend a hand and glared at the fancy cockerel that was their sergeant.
The sun had barely set when Roderick arrived at the guild hall to bring news to the burgomeister about the reinforcements. He could tell from the silence that followed his news that the burgomeister was not happy. As Roderick started to move towards the door, the burgomeister slammed his palm onto the table.
“The town is paying for enough troops as it is. Why should we pay for more?” he said, his tone rising as his anger flared. “All these rumours of attacks! Scaremongering!” he insisted and banged his fist on the table again. The guild hall echoed with the sound. Seeing the man’s anger, Roderick now he wished he’d sent someone else to bring the news.
“Can’t you send them back to wherever they came from?” he suggested.
The burgomeister seemed to consider this for a moment.
“It would take too long,” he said, finally. Would it change things or not?
* * *
It was the turn of Osric’s men to be on sentry duty that night. Six men manned each of the town gates, working in shifts. Two manned the gatehouse while two walked the walls and the other two rested. When dawn came the shift would change and the town watch would take over the day to day running of tithes and tariffs that the burgomeister charged.
The night hours were long and slow; the walls were quiet, dark and empty. In the guardhouse of the west gate Osric sat up with Kann and Schwartz playing dice.
Kann was on a winning streak and Osric was not in a good mood.
Schwartz sided with Osric. He was the sergeant after all.
“I don’t know about you,” Osric said, “but I don’t want to meet those beastmen!”
Kann took his winnings again. He shared the sergeant’s sentiment. He remembered the size of the beastman dung they’d found near the ruined farmstead. No one wanted to meet beastmen that size.
Schwartz was indignant. “There’s no way we should go out with warbands around. We could be ambushed at any moment!”
Kann was impatient to roll again. He got a double 6 and grinned so wide Osric could see his missing back teeth. Osric let out a sigh and pushed another three pennies across the table.
“If anyone’s going out it should be those Vorrsheimers!” Osric snapped as the door of the guard-room opened. It was Sigmund. The men jumped to attention. Osric froze, in case his comment had been overheard.
“All’s well?” their leader said.
Osric nodded. “All’s well.”
Sigmund nodded and shut the door behind him. Osric let out a long whistle and Kann elbowed him in the ribs. “You lucky bastard!”
It was the officer on watch’s duty to make sure all the inns were free of soldiers. After he’d checked the north gate, Sigmund walked down to Altdorf Street to check on the usual haunts of the men. The streets were dark and quiet, rats scurried from piles of rubbish, watched and then returned after he’d passed by. The only light was that cast by the moon and that which spilt out from the tavern windows.
The Blessed Rest was busy with a party of miners from Burholsen, a little way up country. In the Talabec Arms there were a few old men, smoking their pipes and talking in low voices.
He walked down towards the marketplace and stopped off in the Saddler’s Rest. Two Ostlanders, Sigmund guessed from the accents, were drunk and singing songs of their homeland. At the Crooked Dwarf inn there were maybe twenty men inside; dim candlelight and pipe smoke made it difficult to see too clearly. Sigmund stooped under the door, and the drinkers saw his uniform and a hush fell over the place. Sigmund could not see Guthrie anywhere. He nodded towards Josh.
“Can I have a word?”
Josh nodded.
“It’s Elias,” Sigmund said. “His wound is infected. It doesn’t look good.”
Josh nodded nervously. “I’ll tell Guthrie,” he said.
Sigmund nodded to the other drinkers and as he turned to leave he noticed the two Reikland merchants sitting by the fire, gave them a strange look and then stepped back out into the cold.
When Sigmund got back to the barracks there were three neat lines of five white tents arranged in the courtyard. He strode to his room and imagined leading them out on patrol, but then he saw Gunter coming from the sick room. From inside he could hear moaning, and the noise dampened his excitement at getting reinforcements.
“Nothing more we can do?”
Gunter shook his head. He’d been a soldier for fifteen years, and in that time he seen death so often that its footsteps were like the approach of an old friend. “All we can do now is call the priest and have him say his prayers then we can let this boy die in peace.”
When Guthrie heard the news about Elias he left Josh in charge of the bar and hurried to get his coat. The two Reikland merchants watched the innkeeper hurry out. Eugen finished the beer with one long draught, and grimaced. There were gobs of yeast floating in the bottom of his tankard. The beer here was the same as the people: more than a little rough. “I better go.”
Theodor waited until Eugen had left before he went upstairs. With his accomplice gone he could get some real work done. Ten minutes later Theodor slipped outside, paused for a moment to let his eyes get accustomed to the dark and then followed Guthrie down the road to the barracks.
Guthrie caught Sigmund up in the streets and grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him round.
“What do you mean it doesn’t look good? That boy is my son!”
Sigmund said nothing. There was nothing he could say. Guthrie glared and then ran on ahead. Sigmund let out a long sigh and followed in his footsteps.
Guthrie cried out when he saw Elias: the boy’s skin was beginning to fester and his forehead streaked with sweat.
The man’s sobs echoed around the barracks, making the men uneasy, but after and hour, the man left.
Baltzer stood at the barrack jetty and listened to the footsteps depart. The lanterns around the barrack square cast long shadows out across the water. There was a mist rising over the river. Baltzer shivered. He missed the times when Osric was captain of the watch. Those were good days with lots of easy money to be made. “I need a piss,” Baltzer said and Freidel nodded.
Baltzer felt his way into the darkness, down to the jetty.
“What time do you reckon it is?” Freidel called from the other side of the trees.
Baltzer shook himself and buttoned his trews up again. “Late.”
As Baltzer reached for his halberd, he saw something at far end of the jetty. There was someone there. He was sure.
He kept as low as possible so he could keep the intruder silhouetted against the reflections of the river. It was a man, a large man. Definitely not one of the halberdiers. Baltzer had sharpened his knife that afternoon. Its blade was sharp enough to cut right through this intruder’s neck. He slid it from the sheath, and took another step forward.
The man was tying his boat to the jetty. His back was turned and Baltzer slid the last few steps. “A fine evening!” he hissed and the other man flinched at the feel of cold steel on his neck. Baltzer pressed a little harder. “Please tell me this is not a love-tryst?”
The man cleared his throat to speak.
Baltzer recognised the voice. It was one of the merchants they’d saved in the hills.
“I’m visiting a friend,” the man said. Baltzer saw the flash of gold but he did not take his sword away. Another gold coin landed next to the first. And another.
“The burgomeister sent me,” the man said. “And—if you are still making your mind up—understand that I have no more gold.”
Baltzer took his sword away. He didn’t want to interfere in the business of the burgomeister.
“Be quick!” he hissed. By the time he’d snatched up the coins the man had gone. There was just the empty boat, bobbing on the water.
Baltzer hid the coins in his boot. He could guess why the Reiklander was here. The burgomeister liked to get his way in everything. It was a shame, but after Sigmund was dead, then Osric would buy the captaincy.
* * *
From the edge of the barracks gate, Theodor could see three rows of five tents at the far end of the central courtyard. The barracks were quiet, and there appeared to be no one guarding the gate. Theodor crept inside, keeping close to the shadows of the walls, being careful not to catch his foot on one of the guy ropes.
From the sounds of snoring men inside, the room he’d just gone past must be the sleeping quarters. Theodor slipped silently along it, paused to check the door was not ajar, then hurried on.
Imperial barracks were usually built to a common design. If this was the, sleeping quarters then the other side must be the kitchen and the armoury. At the top should be the room he was looking for.
There were three doors. It was customary for officers to have one or two rooms to themselves; he guessed one must lead to the sick room.
Theodor stopped at each and listened carefully. When he was sure he’d found the right room, he took out a flask and dropped two drops of oil onto the heavy iron hinges then waited a few moments. The last thing he wanted was for a squeaky hinge to betray his presence. There was too much at stake.
When the oil had had time to work, Theodor lifted the latch as slowly as possible, and opened the door just enough for him to squeeze inside. It took a few seconds for his eyes to grow accustomed to the dark.
He made out a sleeping figure lying on one of the beds. That must be the man. Theodor drew something from under his cloak and crept forward. The floor of the room was packed dirt and his feet only made the slightest scrape as he crossed the room and bent over the prostrate form.
Theodor opened the pouch a little. Just a little, he thought, was all that was needed. He thought of their reaction in the morning made him smile.
Eugen took out the paper that he had been given that afternoon, unhooded his lantern and read the instructions.
The horse was where it had been agreed it would be. It was nervous and a little skittish as he approached. He wondered where it had come from—stolen, he guessed—and how it had survived thus far.
He soothed the animal as he took its reins from the branch of the tree around which they’d been wound. There was some crude knot that Eugen did not recognise holding them. He tried to tug at either end—but it looked like a child had tangled the whole lot over and over and around and through. It would take him half an hour to unpick it all.
He took out his knife and cut through the leather. He could not afford to be late.
Eugen mounted quickly and kicked the horse into a trot. White stones marked the trail, as the instructions had said, but in the darkness it was difficult to make them out at times, especially from horseback.
He had to double back a couple of times and at one point he thought he’d missed the trail completely—but Mannslieb rose above the trees and cast enough light to make the stones glow ghostly white.
After an hour, Eugen saw the split oak that had been described to him, silhouetted on the top of a hill. He couldn’t see anything there, but kicked his horse. Surely he wasn’t too late, he thought.
Eugen reached the split oak and paused. No one. He turned the horse around and cursed.
He would have to retrace his steps, he thought and turned the horse when a horned figure stepped suddenly out of the shadows. The horse reared up in terror.
Eugen struggled not to be thrown, and wrenched on the reins to force the horse back down.
The figure had a white hood pulled down over its face, and a rattle in its hand—a skull-headed rattle—that it shook in Eugen’s face.
It spoke in broken Dark Tongue, the syllables distorted by the inhuman lips. “Late!” it hissed. “We wait!”
“I’m here now,” Eugen said.
“We wait!” the thing said, but its tone was almost celebratory, as if waiting was a pleasant experience in itself.
“We’re agreed?” Eugen tried to say to the thing, but it was involved in a strange dance, stamping its hooves and shaking its curled rams horns to either side and jiggling the rattle. The dance lasted for a few minutes, and Eugen felt his skin prickle and realised that he’d been surrounded by a ring of horned figures. His horse sensed this too and snorted nervously, then the shaman’s dance ended suddenly and it shook his gruesome rattle in Eugen’s face.
“Agreed!” the shaman told him, its face so close to Eugen’s that he could see the goat lips curl back from the teeth in a gruesome smile.
“I will do what we agreed,” Eugen said slowly and deliberately.
The shaman shook its horns and started to stamp backwards. “Waiting for you!” it called out and Eugen saw the circle of warriors disappear as well.
Eugen let out a long sigh of relief. He hated dealing with creatures like these. They had different understandings of a pact. They were just as likely to eat you as wait to eat a hundred people tomorrow.
When Eugen turned his horse it reared up in terror.
Eugen had to fight to bring it back under control and then he saw what had terrified the animals so. Standing not two feet behind him was a huge beast, almost tall enough to look Eugen in the eye. The creature had bull’s horns which swept forward in a deadly curve and a shaggy mane of knotted fur hung down over monstrous knotted shoulders. What made it most terrifying of all was that the whole creature was an albino: head to foot it was stark white.
The snout opened in a snarl, and Eugen swallowed. As if in answer to his prayers, the beast took a step backwards, still facing him as it paced away until its ghostly white form disappeared from sight into the shadows.