CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

 

To the herds of beastmen the narrow streets seemed like tunnels. People barricaded themselves into their houses, or hid upstairs and hurled stones, pots and even pieces of furniture down onto the startled beastmen from the upper storeys.

Bewildered for a moment by the tunnel of houses and the hail of missiles that rained down on them, the beastmen’s attack started to falter, allowing the last defenders time to scramble to safety. But it didn’t take the beastmen long to react to their new circumstances, and they started going from house to house, battering down doors and falling on the trapped populace with claw, horn and blade.

The screams of the dying chilled the defenders at the barricades, but they were forced to endure the savage spectacle for nearly half an hour, as living people were flung from the upper windows to the waiting packs of hounds below, who fell on them with horrific hunger, tearing them apart before the helpless defenders.

Vasir looked away as an old man and his wife were lowered from the upper windows of their house. The old man was wearing a nightgown, his wife was half-naked. He was calling on Sigmar, but she was screaming incoherently. Just inches below them the snouts of the jumping hounds gnashed and slavered—but the beastmen suspended them just out of reach and the pack of hounds started to bite and snap at each other in their excitement.

“They’re doing this for sport!” Vasir cursed, and cursed the fact that he had used up all his arrows.

“They’re worse than animals,” Hanz said but none of them went out to help. They stood helpless. Some made the sign of Sigmar. When the old man and his wife were dropped into the pack, Hanz and Vasir looked away but they could not stop their ears. The screams were mercifully short, but the horrific sounds of slavering and rending lasted for nearly a minute.

 

On Eel Street only Edmunt stood atop the barricade and watched the whole grisly spectacle, Butcher in one hand and the banner of the Helmstrumburg Halberdiers in the other.

He devoured each detail, remembered each scream, the face of each Helmstrumburger that died at the hands of these creatures. His stony glare did not shy away from even the most horrific of details. Each horror would be returned, he vowed silently, each death paid for ten-fold.

Butcher swung back and forth as he warmed up his wrist. “There is a lot of work to do today,” he told the heavy axe head, and the smile of sharpened steel flashed in the sunlight.

 

When the beastmen had cleared the last defenders from the houses, they surged up Altdorf Street, the charge led by the slavering hounds that bounded up and onto the barricade, snapping and tearing at the defenders’ throats.

Hanz held his shield in front of him and braced his spear-butt under his foot. The static spear blade caught a hound full in the chest, and the momentum of its leap impaled the beast, but even as the blade drove deep into its organs, its snapping jaws closed with a snap onto his forearm.

Hanz let out a horrified yelp of pain as the razor-sharp fangs sliced through skin, flesh and bone. He dropped his shield in horror, seeing his right arm ending in a bleeding stump. Another hound leapt over the barricade and caught him full in the throat. Hanz flew back into the crowded defenders, the spined hound still goring at his exposed neck. The men of the free companies fell back in horror but Sigmund leapt forward with sword drawn and stabbed the loathsome creature three times before it died.

Sigmund kicked it away from Hanz but the Vorrsheimer’s throat had been ripped out, the only thing keeping his head onto his shoulders was a few blood-smeared vertebrae.

It was a testament to the discipline of the Vorrsheimers that they held the initial assault and the death of their sergeant, but at the crucial moment that Hanz was punched from the line, Edmunt stepped forward, Butcher lashing out to left and right: spraying blood and brains over defender and attacker alike.

The beastmen shied back from him: cowed by the ferocity of a warrior who was not afraid to die: another child of the forests, meeting wildness with wildness, ferocity with hatred. Behind the fury of his onslaught, the line of spearmen held their footing and drove the last few hounds back. As the beastmen struggled to clamber up to them, there was a hedge of shields and spear blades against them.

 

Sigmund led the men on Altdorf Street, the halberdiers lashing out at the leaping hounds, until blood ran down their shafts and stuck to their hands.

No one spoke, their breaths came in ragged gasps as their arms began to hang from their shoulders. Sigmund stabbed and cut, but a shard of a shattered sword caught him on the brow and opened up a cut, and within moments the streaming blood began to blind him and he fell back.

“Water!” Sigmund shouted as he tried to wipe the blood from his eyes. He felt firm hands guiding him back, away from the barricade, and then a cool wet cloth wiped away the blood and renewed his sight.

“Osric!” he said in astonishment, but the sergeant would not look him in the eye, and turned and hurried back to the barricades. A short fat man ran to Sigmund and started to lead him back to the crude field station in the front room of a nearby inn. It was Fat Gulpen, the town crier—his fat face now topped with an ill-fitting steel cap.

Sigmund shook him off. “It’s just a scratch! Bind it up!”

There was a stinging pain as Fat Gulpen started to wrap a dirty cloth around his head.

“Hurry!” Sigmund snapped. “I need to get back!”

 

While the barricades on Altdorf Street and Eel Street held the initial onslaught, the charge of the hounds on Tanner Lane drove the men there from the barricade, and they began to stream back to the second line.

The daughters of Gruff Spennsweig helped to drag wounded men back, but one man that Valina was helping was caught by the foot by a spined hound, whose skin was splitting to reveal ribs. She screamed and let go of the man. The hounds fell on him and in an instant he was hidden by the snarling pack.

As she ran, Valina felt something hold her back. She screamed, turned and saw the same spined hound had clamped its jaws upon her skirts. She yanked and the dress tore and she was free. She started to sprint back towards the second barricade but felt jaws clamp themselves onto her left ankle. She tripped and fell and put her hands over her head, but the gesture was futile. For an instant she was aware of fetid breath and paws as the creatures leaped onto her—and then she screamed.

 

* * *

 

On Tanner Lane, Gaston grabbed running men and forced them to stand and fight. As dying men screamed it looked as if the whole retreat might collapse into chaos, but he managed to rally twenty men to hold the street.

After the hounds came the beastmen, clambering over the abandoned barricade, and charging.

The spiral-horned creature that had cut down Gruff picked out Gaston and charged. Gaston saw the raised axe and felt an incredible calm. This is it, you are going to die, a voice in his head said, just make sure you take him with you.

Gaston looked like a hero of old, with his long moustaches, as he drew his sword and stood ready. The axe went up for the killing blow and Gaston leapt forward, driving his weapon into the face of the spiral-horned creature. All the force from his legs was transferred onto the point of the sword and the spiral-horned head jerked backwards and was almost torn from the body.

The blade caught the creature just under the chin and punctured the soft under-tissue of the creature’s neck and palate, snapping its jawbone and spraying yellow teeth into the air. The blade carried on through the beast’s upper palate and went straight into the brain, buckling only as it hit the massively reinforced skull. But Gaston held his ground and the creature’s skull snapped free of its spine and the war-axe flew forward without aim or direction.

The men began to rally and soon Gaston’s forlorn hope had strengthened to nearly forty men; they retreated to the second barricade in four ranks.

Freidel stood shoulder to shoulder with Gaston. He was one of the few men to still have his halberd in his hand. He kept the creatures well back, but as he stabbed his blade into the neck of a creature that was crawling towards Gaston he felt a searing pain in his leg, stumbled and fell.

Gaston tried to reach down and drag the wounded halberdier back under the protective hedge of blades but before he could, three beastmen dragged the wounded man out of his reach and fell on him.

Freidel’s screams only silenced when they tore his chest open and tore out his heart. A moment later they had twisted his head from his shoulders and hurled it back at the retreating men.

 

When they felt the Tanner Lane barricade behind them, Gaston could feel the discipline of the men behind him begin to falter as they turned and scrambled for safety. There was no one to cover their backs and a number of men were pulled back down and cruelly slaughtered.

Only the courage of Gaston and the men with him allowed so many to get back onto the barricade and then farm-lads with pitchforks covered their retreat, penning the beastmen back like animals as Gaston—the last—clambered onto the barricade to safety.

 

On Eel Street, Butcher struck again and again, until the beastmen paused before coming near Edmunt, but the weight of numbers was almost overwhelming. Men were stumbling back from the front line and collapsing from exhaustion. Women gave out water and such little food as they could find, but there was no way so few defenders could hold back such a flood.

The tightly thronged herds began to part and the human defenders could see terrible creatures start to push their way into the top of Altdorf Street: things that had crawled straight from the world of nightmares—Chaos spawn.

Sigmund stood silently behind the lines, assessing the situation then he called to Strong-arm Benjamin. The burly black-haired man ran over.

Sigmund pointed. “See that building there?”

There was a tall thin house, the second and third floors of which over-hung the street. Benjamin nodded.

“Find a way in and set the place on fire!”

The street between the barricade and the house in question was full of baying beastmen. “How?” Benjamin asked.

“Through the houses!” Sigmund said, and Benjamin understood.

He took his twenty smithy men and clambered up to the top floor of the house next to them. It was a lodging house, with many doors and simple wooden steps leading up to the third floor, where the rooms had sloping ceilings.

Clothes were scattered on the floor. The occupants had fled. The blacksmiths began to pound at the plaster wall. Their heavy hammers made short work of the plaster and wattle walls, and soon there was a round hole that was large enough for them to duck through.

Benjamin’s men went from attic to attic, leaving ragged holes in each wall, until they reached the house that Sigmund had indicated. The second and third storeys hung well out over the street. If they were discovered, the beastmen would find a tunnel all the way to the defenders’ barricade. But for the fire to catch hold it would have to be on the ground floor.

Benjamin had two of his men gather lanterns from the deserted rooms as he stole a glance from the upstairs window. The street was black with bodies, the palisade seemed like a cliff holding back a stormy sea. The Chaos spawn were moving inexorably through the beastmen and Benjamin realised with horror that they eating their way through the goatmen.

Benjamin led two of his men down the stairs, listening for the tell-tale sound of hooves—but the house appeared to be deserted.

As they came down onto the first floor the banners of the beastmen were hanging in front of the windows. The air was thick with beastman musk. Their hearts pounded in their chests.

On the ground floor the lattice windows had been shattered. Beastmen were jostling each other, eager to get to the fighting on the palisade. But their attention was all focussed forward—none of them noticed the men in the houses just yards to the side.

Benjamin held the lantern in his hand. He gestured to the other men and they began to pour oil over the beams and timbers of the house.

Benjamin crept to the front room and unscrewed the flask he had, and shook it over the overturned furniture. But as he did so there was a pungent scent of roses.

Scented oil! He cursed and looked with alarm at the beastman, and for a second he was sure that he had escaped. But the noses of the beastmen were far more sensitive than his. The sudden draft of scented oil made a number of them turn and they bleated with shock and delight at seeing a human inside the building. Within seconds there were three beastmen chasing Benjamin through the rooms then the front door swung open and a stream of beastmen charged in, their hooves skidding on the smooth tiles.

Benjamin reached the bottom of the stairs and realised that there was no way he could escape. Shaking the last of the scented oil over the stairs, he smashed the lantern on the banister and held it to his chest.

The oil caught flame and Benjamin screamed as he charged forward, a living torch. The beastmen skidded and slipped in their panic as the fiery apparition ran towards them—then the whole ground floor went up with a whumpf! of hot air—and they were incinerated in the inferno.

 

As the battle raged Josh raced back and forth along the old stone wall between Altdorf Street, Eel Street and Tanner Lane. There were ten young lads relaying messages from Sigmund to Gaston and Edmunt.

Captain Jorg was calm as he listened to each breathless report. He issued orders calmly but deliberately.

“Gaston has fallen back to the second barricade,” Josh said and Sigmund nodded and shouted to Guthrie, who stood at the back of the lines with his Crooked Dwarf Volunteers. They were a sorry-looking band of warriors, but they were all he had left. “To Tanner Lane!”

Sigmund looked back to see what was happening in Altdorf Street and saw the house that Benjamin had gone to suddenly erupt in flames. A wave of panic spread through the beastmen and the pressure on the front line eased.

The flames began to lick up the front of the house, and soon the whole bottom floor was aflame. The fur of those closest to the flames began to crinkle and singe. Two of the Chaos spawn had been driven off, but one—with blue spined legs like a spider that helped drag its bloated body forward, seemed oblivious to the heat and kept onwards, its skin blackening and bubbling as its watery insides started to bubble and boil. The intense heat drove the rearmost attackers back, while those at the front were trapped. They pressed forward, desperate to escape the heat and soon the beastmen at the foot of the barricade were so tightly packed that they could not even swing their weapons or even raise their shields.

Elias stabbed again and again, but the beastman below him refused to fall.

“He’s dead!” the man next to him shouted. “They’re too tightly packed for the dead ones to drop!”

As the inferno increased the heat was so intense that beastmen at the back of the press went berserk and began to attack their comrades in an effort to escape the heat. The fur on their backs blackened and began to smoke. Suddenly, the upper storey crashed down in a tumble of burning timbers. The whole front of the house toppled right across the road, burying the spawn, and killing many of the beastmen and cutting off about fifty beasts that were still fighting at the barricade.

Sigmund drew his sword and pushed through the startled defenders.

“Charge!” Sigmund yelled and suddenly the attackers were beset by a mob of furious men: halberdiers and free companies and handgunners all mixed. The terrified beastmen began to bleat in terror. Some tried to hide inside the buildings, a few tried to run through the burning ruins, one or two making it to the other side as flaming torches—their fur and skin peeling back from their bones as they roared their agony.

 

* * *

 

The flames quickly spread and soon houses were alight on Tanner Lane and Eel Street. In the next half an hour three more houses toppled as the flames spread from houses to house and Altdorf Street and Eel Street were impassable.

Only Tanner Lane offered the beastmen a chance to close with the enemy. Men stumbled back from the fighting and staggered towards a makeshift field station that the apothecary, Gustav, was running in the front room of a merchant’s house.

There was a queue of wounded men lying on the pavement outside. Beatrine helped to drag wounded men back from the barricades. Floss held the men down as Gustav inspected the wounds.

“Get some rest,” Gustav said to two young men whose wounds were beyond help—and they were piled in the corner of the room and given a little kirsch to soothe their passing.

The next man that was lifted onto the former dining table was a halberdier whose arm had been almost severed by an axe cut. Gustav nodded to Floss and the other helpers and they held the man down: a leather strap over his forehead pinning his head to the table.

Gustav reached for his knifes, already dripping blood and began to sharpen them. “You’ll be losing this arm,” he said to the soldier who nodded and bit his mouth shut.

Gustav cut quickly and cleanly about an inch above the cut, cleared the twitching muscles away from the bone that had shattered and was oozing bloody marrow.

“Saw!” Gustav said. Floss handed him the saw then shut her eyes as the apothecary lowered it to the man’s arm and began to saw.

 

The second barricade on Tanner Lane was not as high or as formidable as the others, but at least the lane was not much wider than a single cart. The fighting here was bitter and merciless. A pile of beastman bodies began to pile up outside the barricade, while Beatrine and her sisters helped drag the wounded men away.

Gaston didn’t know how he could continue to lift his sword—when the burning houses began to shed charred timbers and the beastmen seemed to sense that they would be cut off and retreated.

Gaston watched them leave, until the street was empty except for a carpet of twitching beastmen. The men did not dare to pursue, the flames were so intense that there was no way through. They collapsed where they were and Guthrie sent some men to bring beer from his inn. They came back ten minutes later with a barrel strapped to the back of a mule and the men passed the steins around, drinking deeply.

As the men rested Floss took a knife from the table side and clambered over the barricade. She had been driven from her home. Her father and her elder sister had been killed. She bent over the first wounded beastman. It was small, not much larger than a boy, with soft brown fur with a dark stripe down its back. Except for its fanged mouth, its face had a strange, almost feline softness to it. It had been stabbed in the chest, and its breathing was coming slowly and raggedly.

Floss’ skirts were knotted up. She could feel the heat of the burning house on her left cheek as she bent over the wounded animal and cut its throat.

The next beastman saw what had happened and struggled to get away. When Floss knelt at the side of its horned head, the creature bared its teeth to frighten her away, but she had seen more blood that afternoon than most soldiers. The vertical pupils of the beastman struggled to see what she was doing—then the knife kissed its throat and its hot blood spurted over Floss’ hands.

 

On Altdorf Street, Sigmund ordered a third line of barricades to be built and men and women worked frantically to empty their houses of every scrap of furniture, piling it up across the street. They barricaded the doors of their houses and knocked passages through the upper floors so the street would become a death trap for the hordes of wild animals should they break through.

When he had given his orders, Sigmund clambered up on the old stone wall and hurried the thirty yards to Tanner Lane.

The lane was clogged with dead bodies. The barricade was lined with exhausted men. “The lions of Tanner Lane!” Sigmund dubbed them and the men gave weak smiles.

Sigmund recognised Guthrie and grinned. “You made a warrior after all!”

“I will never fight again,” Guthrie said with a smile. “I only ask Sigmar to save me today!”

When Sigmund got to Gaston he laughed out loud and embraced the man.

“Last time I saw you, you were on the palisade!”

Gaston smiled weakly. He had lost almost all of the men here—and he hardly knew how he had survived himself.

“Sigmar blessed me!” he said.

 

When Sigmund got to Eel Street the air was much lighter. Everyone had a handful of stories to tell about how they had escaped and they were recounting them, laughing with the shock and relief that they were still alive.

“Captain Sigmund!” a voice shouted and Sigmund turned and saw Theodor. The merchant’s pistols were blacked with powder and he had a tear in his jacket where a knife had narrow missed disembowelling him. He saw the cut on Sigmund’s forehead and blanched. “You should not be in the front rank! You’re the only hope these people have!”

“There’s two hundred men fighting here. Each one is hope for Helmstrumburg.”

Theodor took hold of Sigmund’s arm. “Believe me! Your men are deserving of the highest praise, but you cannot hold the beasts of the forests forever. They will find a way to come around the defences. And when they do—their hounds will eat well!”

Sigmund’s lip curled in disgust at his talk, but then it struck him that the man was right. They had weathered only the first storm. These beastmen were not driven by any sane desires. They had a single purpose that had smouldered for a thousand years: to drive the humans from the town.

“These creatures are driven by a force older than Helmstrumburg. But we might destroy their unity if we destroy the herdstones!”

“How can we do that?” Sigmund demanded. “I have no men to spare and it would take a hundred men a day to destroy those stones!”

“Did you get my note?”

“What note?” Sigmund frowned.

Osric he realised what they were talking about and grinned sheepishly. Four barrels of blackpowder would have made a nice packet, but if it saved the lives of his men then it was probably worth it.

“Is this about four barrels of blackpowder?” he said.

 

Sigmund managed to find a number of carpenters from the men on the barricade and sent them down to the docks with Theodor. He had five of Frantz’s dockers go to the Crooked Dwarf and bring back ten empty barrels.

Then Sigmund went to the north gate, where there were about fifty free company and twenty spearmen. Since the attempted treachery of Squire Becker, there had been half-hearted attempts to attack the north gate—but they had been easily beaten back. The beastmen had not been expecting to find the walls held strongly against them.

Sigmund found a similar story when he met Gunter. The veteran had a bandage around his chest, and there was a red patch on his right side, near his armpit.

“A lucky arrow,” he laughed, giving no sign of the pain he must be in.

Sigmund described the battle at the palisade and the barricades and Gunter nodded in approval. Bringing the beastmen into the streets was probably the best thing to do. It limited their numbers and gave them no way to use their speed to outflank the halberdiers.

“We are going to try and destroy the herdstones,” Sigmund said.

“You’re doing what?” Gunter said. “That’s madness!”

“We cannot beat them.”

“We are beating them!”

“This is our only chance! I have seen the numbers that these beastmen control. We can fall back from barricade to barricade. We can burn each house to gain a respite, but it is as if the whole Drakwald Forest has emptied itself. And there are only so many houses in Helmstrumburg. When we have burnt them all then we will line up, shoulder to shoulder on the docks, and be killed?”

Gunter didn’t say anything.

“If we do not return by nightfall, take over command of the defences.”

Gunter nodded. “Good luck!” he said and the two men embraced and then Sigmund strode down towards the docks.

 

There was a crude raft on the dockside when Sigmund arrived, and twenty of Osric’s men standing round four firkins of blackpowder. With them were the best fighters that the barricades could spare.

The Vorrsheimers had sent Stephan, the young spearman with the scar on his cheek.

Next to him stood Elias, who had stopped feeling like a new recruit at the palisade. Already he had lost count of the number of times he had killed. Black-haired Schwartz grinned as Sigmund approached and Sigmund nodded to Theodor. He had seen the man fighting and knew that he was a man to be counted on.

Osric had found a shield from somewhere and had a drawn sword in his hand. Baltzer had a cut on his cheek, but was otherwise unwounded. The short thin man leaned on his halberd for support, regarding Sigmund with ill-concealed contempt.

Theodor had his pistols loaded and ready.

Frantz stood next to him, with an unlit clay pipe in his mouth. Four or his dockers stood behind him, still armed with their swords and shields and steel caps.

The dockers had put up a magnificent fight on Altdorf Street, but Sigmund didn’t want them here. He wanted trained soldiers only.

“Who is going to carry these barrels and let your lot do the fighting?” Frantz demanded.

Sigmund paused to consider. “Fine. Now you all know why we are here?”

Baltzer and Stephan shook their heads.

“Putting it simply, we are going to cut the head from the serpent,” Sigmund smiled.

 

The dockers lifted the raft to the water’s edge and lowered it in. It bobbed on the water and the soldiers began to slip into the water, holding onto the sides as they slid their weapons onto the top of the raft to stay dry.

When all the men were in the water, Sigmund lowered the firkins of blackpowder and they were strapped onto the top of the planks, well above the water. Last of all he handed Stephan a hooded lantern.

“Keep that well away from those barrels!” Osric warned “Or we’ll end up in Tilea!”

 

The men paddled the raft out of the harbour then caught the current of the midstream water and began to drift downstream.

Sigmund clung on to the wet wood as he passed the houses of Helmstrumburg. There was black smoke billowing up from the burning houses. Half the new town seemed to be burning. When they were alongside the palisade he saw all the dead bodies that filled the ditches and that were piled up in drifts against the palisade. They had killed so many beastmen, yet there were still so many left.

 

Edmunt took over command of the barricades and as the houses burned there was no danger of attack. He went from barricade to barricade assessing the damage. The men saw him and felt heartened: people were already whispering that this was the man who had held Eel Street all alone. They imagined Butcher would be an enormous battle-axe, such as men used in ancient times, and when they saw the simple woodsman’s hatchet they were amazed.

Edmunt paid no attention to the whispers. He talked to the leader of each free company and took stock of how many fighting men each still commanded, laughed at their stories of bravery or sheer luck, made them feel like heroes, just by having spoken to him.

As the lull continued a few doors opened and here and there an old woman or child stumbled out into the dead-littered streets. Somehow they had managed to hide from the beastmen and only the approaching flames had finally driven them from their hideouts. They clambered to safety, shaking with terror.

Edmunt sent a number of his men onto the north wall to spy on the beastmen, then took ten halberdiers and a number of the blacksmiths and went from house to house, hunting any beastmen that had been trapped in the buildings. They came back with nine horned heads that they tossed into a pile in front of the barricade.

 

As Edmunt hunted trapped beastmen Gaston walked slowly along the lines of wounded men who were propped up against the walls of Tanner Lane.

“Well done, Johann!” he told a man he had known before enlisting, who had a bandage around his left ear. “That’s the poorest excuse of a wound I’ve ever seen!”

“I can’t hear you!” Johann retorted.

Gaston grinned. The next man was one of Osric’s. He had a stab wound in his leg. A dirty strip of cloth was seeping blood but the man had a tankard in his hand and was happy to be still alive. “You couldn’t face taking orders from that thieving lowlife any longer?”

“I just couldn’t let your boys keep running away!”

The next man was slipping in and out of consciousness. A girl was trying to stop the blood from a cut to his head. She saw Gaston and smiled shyly, but Gaston passed on.

He was too shaken to notice how pretty she was, and it wasn’t until he was three paces along the line that he caught himself and turned back to smile.

“He looks to be in good hands!”

“Thank you, sir.”

“What’s your name?”

The girl put a hand to her hair, where she used to have ribbons. But she had used all her ribbons as tourniquets on the wounded men.

“Beatrine,” she said, and blushed.

Gaston nodded. He put a hand to his moustaches and smoothed them down, feeling a knot. It was only after he had pulled the hair free that he realised that the knot had been a splatter of blood that had scabbed the hairs together.

“We are lucky to have such pretty nurses,” he said and promised himself that if he came through this day that he would seek this girl out.

 

Sigmund and his men clung to the crude raft like survivors from a shipwreck and steered themselves far out into the river stream away from the banks and spying eyes.

The water lapped against them, and here and there the men could feel long weeds reaching up to tug at their legs.

“There’s something in the water!” Baltzer hissed.

Osric reached up and took a knife from the raft, but no one looked reassured. If the forests had hidden all these beastmen for so long, then what might the waters of the Stir hide?

Sigmund kept his eyes on the land. There was no one he would rather not have on this mission than that cut-throat. His mind started thinking about the things that Theodor had told him. He didn’t believe in river monsters. He was sure that he and his men would reach the land. Who else would fight the beastman leader?

He laughed silently at himself. Now he was starting to believe the prophecies too.

As they followed the current of the river the beastman army came into view. They were all lined up the bottom of the hills and there were more scattered through the woods and orchards, well back from the river banks. There were countless creatures grouped in their warbands, their gruesome banners flapping in the breeze.

The men on the raft went silent. They kept as low as possible, paddled further into the wide waters, wishing that they were not so exposed on the plain water surface. If any of the beastmen thought their raft was anything more than a piece of floating debris then the alarm might be sounded, and their attempt would be little more than suicidal—and Helmstrumburg would be doomed.

 

As the flames kept the beastmen back, Edmunt led his men into a huge coaching inn on Altdorf Street, called the Blessed Rest. The bar was empty, but the sound of hooves on floorboards showed that there were beastmen inside, disorientated by the corridors and doorways.

Edmunt and his men were familiar with this drinking house. Many of them were patrons. They silently crossed the room and took a back staircase to the servants’ rooms in the back. From there they hunted, room by room. They found three beastmen in one room. One of the blacksmiths killed one, while the halberdiers stabbed the other two beastmen. One of them died but the other was only wounded. It shrank back, goat legs curled up to its stomach as it put its hands up to its horned head, and opened its mouth in something approaching a nervous smile of sharp teeth.

Butcher hit it full in the forehead and the strange expression froze on its face. Edmunt turned away as he pulled Butcher free and wiped it on the back of an overturned couch. He didn’t notice the hand sticking out from underneath the piece of furniture.

There were two doors at the end of the oak-panelled room. Edmunt tip-toed to the left-hand door. There were strange sounds coming from inside the room. He nodded to the blacksmith and they came close to the door, then Edmunt kicked it open and rushed inside, axe ready to strike any that might be waiting inside.

The sounds were coming from a four-poster bed at the end of the room. Edmunt kept his axe ready and crept over the shredded bolsters and ripped clothing. There was something kicking and struggling on the bed. Edmunt bent low and edged towards the bed, ripped a curtain and brought his axe up to strike—but his axe stopped and he let out a strangled gasp.

Staring up at him was the skinless face of what he guessed had been a middle-aged woman: the eyeballs bulged and the lipless mouth opened and closed. He saw that her tongue had been torn out.

The hands and feet of the woman had been struck off and the wounds cauterised with hot irons. It seemed the beastmen had started torturing this hapless victim and then been disturbed or had broken off to find more prey.

Edmunt averted his eyes and pulled the sheets over the woman’s body. But one of the woman’s mutilated arms came up and touched him. He turned to face her and saw pleading in her unblinking eyes. Pleading and understanding and—in an instant—he saw forgiveness in her face, for what he had to do.

“What is it?” the blacksmith hissed from the open doorway.

Edmunt shut his eyes and brought Butcher down into the skinned forehead, keeping his eyes closed until he had pulled the axe free, and let the curtains drop.

“Nothing,” he said.

 

It hardly seemed credible to Sigmund that they had sailed this way in the White Rose just two days before. In some stretches of the river it was hard to believe that a ferocious battle was raging not more than a few miles away. Tranquil and undisturbed, chickens still pecked through the broad apple orchards. Behind an unburned hut, the first shoots of spring wheat were showing—but then another beast camp came into view and the effect was jarring. Beastmen had no place here. Smoke billowed up from Helmstrumburg, and every now and again the roar of battle or the blowing of a horn or ringing of a chapel bell came to them over the water.

As the raft floated on, Sigmund wondered if they might drift downstream all the way to Altdorf. Finally, when it seemed the men could endure the cold and the wet no longer, they came alongside the mound and the four black standing stones, sharp and angular against the scattered forest.

From the river, Sigmund counted at least ten beastmen as well as a strange shambolic figure that was capering around the top of the mound.

Sigmund tried to see what the figure was doing, but then the raft drifted past the ridge of land and the mound was hidden. Out of sight, they all paddled and kicked hard to bring the raft to the shore.

The jetty was unoccupied. The land behind the ridge of land was much as they had left it two mornings earlier: bushes and the occasional trees silent and still. The slopes were empty. It seemed that all the beastmen’s attention was focussed on the battle in the town. The only creatures were those that were around the mound.

Sigmund thanked Sigmar. It looked like they had a chance of success.

 

The men kicked and steered the crude raft towards the jetty. Osric caught the nearest upright and the raft swung round as he held them against the tug of the stream. For a moment it seemed that Osric would not be able to hold on and they would spin out of control back into the river, then Sigmund reached out and caught one of the uprights and they managed to drag the raft close enough to the edge for the men to pull it ashore.

They moved quickly and quietly, grabbing their weapons, while Frantz and his dockers grabbed the precious firkins and hefted them onto their shoulders.

Instead of going over the ridge, Sigmund led his men along the river bank, where the bushes and trees would offer them as much cover as possible. When they reached a patch of ferns Sigmund signalled them all to get down. He could see the beastmen guards, and recounted fifteen.

The hooded figure was still capering around the top of the mound. It was hooded and bent, and gave the impression of being incredibly old. But contrary to this, the thing leaped round the stones with a strange agility and purpose, as if it were performing some arcane ritual.

Sigmund’s mouth went dry. He had no doubt that he had to stop the ritual, but he also had to get close enough to allow them to kill the sentries without an alarm being sounded.

 

Without winds to fan them, the fires in the town had died down by late afternoon. Without the cover of the burning buildings, Edmunt and his men returned to the Eel Street barricade, eight more beastman heads hanging from their belts.

When they had slipped through the hole that the defenders had made in the barricade, each man dropped the heads onto the floor. The horns knocked against each other, gory necks dripped fresh blood, glassy eyes stared blindly up at the crowd of horrified onlookers. Some of the women started to cry, but the men stared at the things—not so much with hatred, but the certain knowledge that every beastman had to die, or the men and their families would.

Edmunt looked exhausted, but he was unable to rest. When he wanted to shut his eyes the face of the woman in the Blessed Rest came back to him, skinned and still living, and he touched the haft of Butcher at his belt.

The blade was dulled now, and he sat down, accepted a tankard of ale and a hunk of bread, and ate as he took out his whetstone and sharpened the blade into a smile.

As the fires died down it was only a matter of time until the beastmen attacked again. Edmunt had posted sentries high up in the buildings by the barricades and a boy shouted down, “They’re coming!”

There were shrieks of terror from some of the women, while the men took up their weapons with a weary resilience.

 

Sigmund crawled through the ferns until he was within ten feet of the nearest sentry. The beastman leant on its spear as it turned its snout back and forth sniffing the breeze. There was a stink of musk. Sigmund loosed his sword in its sheath. He was so close he could see the flies that were crawling around the creature’s eyes. It stamped its hoof. The flies flew up into the air and it swatted at them with its hand. The mix of human and animal was horrifying, as if the wild beast had been mixed with the worst of human emotions: hatred, violence, and lust.

Sigmund had his sword out. He drew his feet up under him, ready to leap up.

The flies continued to buzz around the creature and it swatted them again. Sigmund leaped from the ferns, his sword a whirlwind of death as it struck the head from the beastman guard, and kept running as he struck the next down.

Behind him the whole river bank rose up in anger. The beastmen bleated in shock as twenty men leapt up, their swords dealing death to the left and right. Osric gutted one beastman and lopped the arm off another, forearm and hand still gripping the knotted club as they all flew into the air. Then Osric paused to drive his sword through the wounded beast’s heart.

Baltzer kept behind Osric and caught one creature on the back of the neck, his sword snagging as it caught in its spine.

Theodor’s first shot hit a beastman under the chin and snapped the horned head back violently. The second hit another beast in the shoulder and it swirled as it fell, to have its throat cut as it lay helpless. The remaining beastmen ran to the base of the mound to protect their shaman. There was a ferocious struggle as the men tried to cut their way through—but even in death the beasts clutched the blades of the men of Helmstrumburg.

Sigmund could feel the air begin to crackle with energy as the shaman’s voice rose in pitch, but even as his hair began to stand on end Stephan broke through the wall of fighting and roared as he charged the hooded spirit-charmer. It was only the roar that alerted the shaman to the danger. It turned and saw an Empire soldier charging towards it, spear held ready to thrust through its heart.

The shaman brought up the skull rattle and there was a clap of thunder. An invisible force struck Stephan in the chest, ripping open his ribcage and flinging him back onto the floor: pulsing heart exposed to the sky.

As Osric and his men struggled to cut down the last of the beastmen, Sigmund saw the shaman step up to the broken body of the spearman and reach down.

“No!” Sigmund shouted, but Stephan’s body spasmed and the shaman stood with his forearm dripping blood, and a pulsing heart clenched in his fist.

 

Sigmund cut the last beastman down, ran up the slope and grabbed the fallen Vorrsheimer’s spear, and hurled it at the cackling shaman. The steel head seemed to hang in the air before it struck the shaman full in the chest. Its body spasmed as a foot of steel impaled it. Bloody froth poured from the creature’s lips, its goat-legs buckled and it fell to the ground. Its rattle cracked with the impact, and human teeth fell out.

As the foul creature died, one of the beastmen in the clearing put a horn to its lips and raised the alarm.

“Blackpowder!” Sigmund shouted, and Frantz and his dockers sprinted up. At any moment there could be hundreds of beastmen charging through the trees. They used their knives to crowbar the firkin lids off, then placed one at the base of each of the four standing stones and then began to uncoil the fuse.

Already the first beastmen were streaming back to the standing stones. Sigmund screamed at Osric to block their approach.

Osric and his last ten men grabbed spears and shields from the fallen beastmen and spread out to cover the men working furiously at the mound. The first beastmen to arrive seemed to have been scattered in the forest. They did not come all together, but singly and without order.

Osric and his men formed a ragged screen, parrying and blocking the desperate blows of the beastmen who saw the dead body of their shaman and attacked with new ferocity.

 

Sigmund ran over the mound, trailed a fuse, then he suddenly tripped and fell into a hole that the beastmen had been digging. He gasped with shock when he saw that at the bottom of the hole, next to his right foot, was the enormous skeleton of a long-dead human warrior. A horned helm had slid across the skull’s face, scraps of cloth and armour had fallen through the collapsed bones. In its right hand the skeleton held an ancient broadsword, rimed and green with age, and in its left the old brass boss of a wooden shield, the thick linden timbers rotted away.

Sigmund felt a chill run down his back. The treasurer’s book had said how Ortulf Jorg was buried with all the men who had fallen that day. This giant must be the man who killed the beastman leader a thousand years ago—and now Sigmund was here, destined to fight their leader himself.

And this, perhaps, was his ancestor.

Sigmund stared at the bones, as if looking for some sign or feature that he might recognise—but there was nothing. He heard a desperate shout and looked up to see Osric and his men fighting a desperate battle to hold back the berserk beastmen. He ran down the slope and fumbled to ram the fuse into the hole in the firkin. As he worked, he could feel the power of the stones as they began to hum, and his head hurt so much he could barely concentrate.

“The lantern!” Sigmund shouted and Frantz’s face went ashen as he realised that they had left it in the ferns.

Frantz began to sprint off, and Sigmund saw one of Osric’s men being cut down, the beastman leaping over the dead man and charging Sigmund.

Sigmund’s sword hummed as he drew it. He took three strides forward, catching the creature at the base of one of its horns, slicing deep into its skull, but the creature ran full into him, and its momentum knocked him clean from his feet. Sigmund heard a gunshot and then another. He kicked the dead beast off, and was up, sword ready, when he saw Theodor, fumbling with the wheel-lock of his pistols as he reloaded.

Sigmund scrambled to his feet, but instead of charging, the beastmen hung back. Sigmund thought that perhaps the death of their shaman had broken the creatures’ resolve, and the battle was over—but then he heard a roar that sounded like a bear. Through the silent tree trunks strode an albino giant, curled ram’s horns spiralling down to its throat, shoulders that bulged with a primal ferocity.

The creature swung a two-headed axe from hand to hand. Over its chest was the crudely fashioned breastplate of some vanquished knight, battered out of shape and looking almost toy-like strapped onto the large chest of the beastlord.

Schwartz ran at the creature, but a swing of its fist sent the man flying, his neck broken and his head swinging uselessly on the shattered spine, staying at a twisted angle as he lay dead.

“Back!” Sigmund shouted to Osric and his men. “Get back! There’s no point you fighting it,” he told them. “It wants me!”

Osric’s men turned away and the sergeant dragged a wounded man with him, lest he should fall into the hands of the beastmen. They stumbled as they ran, through the standing stones, past Sigmund towards the bushes.

The albino beastman paused at the edge of the standing stones. Its fur was white from head to hoof and the only colouring was its pink eyes, which blinked painfully in the light. The beast opened its mouth and roared with pleasure at the prospect of killing the one that was foretold.

Sigmund said his prayers to the gods as the creature took a step towards him. Sigmund could feel the weight of the creature as its hoof stamped down, then pointed its axe and seemed to speak in some crude language.

Sigmund gripped the sword hilt two-handed to stop his fingers from shaking. His only thought was how he might wound this beastman before it struck him down. As the creature took another step forward there was the deafening shot of a pistol to the left—but Theodor’s aim was poor and the first shot either missed or had no effect.

“He’s mine!” Sigmund shouted, but Theodor drew his sword and strode up to the creature and fired again. This shot hit the creature in the thigh causing a red stain to spread over the white fur. It raged with fury and turned to face off against the second attacker, pink eyes blinking with anger. It ran at Theodor and swung its axe, but he leapt out to the side and stabbed the creature high on the shoulder at the base of its neck.

The beastman leader charged Theodor again and twice more he caught it with precise stabs in the shoulders, as if goading the beast to an insane rage, but on the third run the cunning creature feinted a charge to the left. Letting go of the axe shaft he caught the tail of Theodor’s jacket and even as he tried to pull away, the beastlord dragged him into his deadly grasp.

Theodor looked like a child in the clawed grip of the monster as it flung him to the ground then grabbed his feet and picked him up.

Theodor’s face was contorted with terror. Sigmund dropped his sword, grabbed a fallen halberd and stabbed it into the knotted muscles of the beastman’s back, but the blow seemed to have no effect on the enraged creature.

It swung Theodor round in a deadly arc and then brought his body down against one of the standing stones. There was a sickening crack as the man’s spine snapped and his head exploded with the impact, splattering brains and blood over the stones.

Sigmund stabbed at the creature again. It was occupied with the dead body, goring it against the stone, ripping Theodor’s inert body apart, and covering its horns and brow with gore. It was so consumed with animal hatred that even when Theodor’s body was little more than a broken mess of flesh it still butted and gored and bit.

“Hey!” Sigmund shouted and only another thrust of the halberd brought the creature’s attention away. It blinked the blood from its eyes and seemed to realise that the man it had caught was dead.

As Theodor’s mangled corpse fell to the ground, the massive beastman turned to Sigmund and charged.

Sigmund jabbed at it in much the same way as Theodor had done. The halberd gave him a much longer reach: he goaded the beast and then danced back a couple of steps.

The beastman ran at him a couple of times, and each time it did Sigmund was ready for a feint or a sudden swerve. The creature paused to catch its breath and then suddenly ran at Sigmund, head down to butt him. Sigmund was caught unawares and the sharp point of the horn caught him on the left thigh. He let out a strangled gasp of pain as the blunt horn opened a ragged cut up his hip and he only just escaped the reach of its claw.

Sigmund dragged his foot as he struggled up the mound, using the halberd as a prop to keep him upright, and the beastlord halted and snorted with satisfaction. It scented fear and weakness. Now the hunter had become the hunted.

Sigmund got to the top of the mound and it struck him how fitting it was that he would die here on the spot that his forebear was buried. As he felt warm blood running down his leg he felt a stab of disappointment that he had failed to kill the beast.

Edmunt and Gunter would save the people of Helmstrumburg. They were no longer his care.

For a moment he had an image of the town: burning as its people were slaughtered in the streets, the wild beasts tearing them apart. He put his hand to his belt to draw his sword, but the scabbard was empty. He had dropped his weapon in the fight at the base of the mound. And the halberd was now his crutch. Without it he could barely stand. He was defenceless.

Sigmund laughed bitterly. Trapped, wounded and defenceless. This was not how he had imagined his death. He could see the beastman’s nostrils flare as it strode up the hill towards him.

Sigmund’s hand slipped on the halberd shaft and he half fell into the open grave of Ortulf Jorg. Catching his balance, one of his hands fell on the hilt of a weapon. He looked down in amazement and saw the sword of Ortulf, slayer of the beastlord.

The leather bindings on the grip had long mouldered away, but the weapon itself was sound. Sigmund lifted the weapon from its thousand year-old rest and it balanced perfectly in his hand.

The beastlord saw its foe arm himself and roared as it raced up the final yards.

Sigmund rested on one knee. He only had time for one blow. He waited until the last moment then drove the sword forward. He felt the blade bite, then clawed hands tore into the flesh of his side and shoulders. The weight of the beastman hit him and he was picked from his feet and rolled down the mound, his enemy’s body crushing the wind from his lungs. He slammed against one of the standing stones and everything went black.