Chapter Nine

 

 

“Mummy, I’m scared.”

Hilda looked down at her daughter’s big wide eyes, and felt her grubby little fist close even tighter around her fingers. The rest of the children were gathered about them, huddled amongst the wheat bins of the town’s granary. It was the only building to be made of stone, and it was pleasantly cool compared to the sweltering heat outside.

Not that that was why they were packed in here today.

“You don’t need to be scared, Henni,” Hilda said and stroked the back of her daughter’s neck as she bounced her on her knee. She had only started speaking in the last few months, and her vocabulary had been shaped by the horror that had emerged with the green shoots of this spring.

“But will the beasties get me?” It was a heartfelt question, and Hilda felt like crying. Instead she smiled and kissed her on the forehead.

“Of course not, darling,” she said. “You said your prayers to Sigmar, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“There you go, then. Sigmar will protect you. Remember what he did to the orcs in the story?”

“Yes, but will he protect Daddy too?”

Hilda swallowed the lump in her throat.

“I hope so,” she said. “I hope so.”

The noise of battle that raged outside was muted by the thick stone walls and bolted oaken door of the place, but even so the roars and the screams were terrible. In the darkness several children were crying, and now somebody else started. Hilda realised that it was one of the other mothers and felt something like outrage. She sat Henni down with another little girl and went to quiet the woman.

It was Gerta, the baker’s wife. Her plump cheeks glistened with tears, and she was hugging her child to her chest as she rocked back and forth.

“Gerta,” Hilda told her quietly. “Stop that.”

“I can’t. I can’t stop it. They’re coming for us, can’t you hear them? They’re going to kill us all, even the little ones. The baron has abandoned us and now we’re all going to—”

Hilda slapped her, hard. It felt good.

“I said stop that,” she repeated and Gerta, her mouth a perfect circle of surprise, already had. Hilda thought about apologising, and decided not to. Instead she stood up and looked around the other women who sat miserably amongst their children.

“She’s right about one thing, though,” she told them, her voice carefully cheerful so as not to upset the children. “The baron is no help to us now. We’re on our own. I think that the grandmothers should stay here and look after the little ones. I think the rest of us should go and give the men a hand.”

“But Elder Ronald told us all to stay in here,” Gerta whined, and Hilda had to fight back the urge to slap her again.

“Oh, you don’t want to pay any attention to that silly old fool,” Elder Ronald’s wife said. A lifetime of grinding corn and scrubbing floors had given her strong arms, and she lifted the scythe off its rack easily.

“Hilda’s right,” said Mabel, and brushed back a strand of the jet-black hair that she was so fond of but could never quite keep in her bonnet. “So tell us, Hilda. What shall we do?”

Hilda, who couldn’t quite believe what she was getting them into, shrugged.

“Take a scythe,” she said. “And go and protect our babies.”

As a war cry it would never find its way into the histories of the war, but in the darkness, with the howling of the beasts outside and the crying of the children within, it kindled their hearts with a wild courage.

“Grandma, lock the door behind us,” she told one of the old women and then, after giving Henni a last, loving kiss, she led her little band outside.

After the gloom of the granary the brightness of the world outside made her eyes water and she squinted as she marched forwards, pitchfork held expertly in her hands. The gate to the stockade was fifty feet ahead, and she could see the bodies swarming over it. The men had been standing on a walkway behind the timber, but even through the dust she could see the twisted forms that were clambering over the sharpened tree trunks to bite and hack at the men.

As she watched, one of the creatures, a nightmare of goat and man and daemon all fused into one writhing form locked its jaws on a man’s throat and shook him as easily as a terrier shaking a rat. The victim fell back with a gurgling scream and the beast came with him. There was a crunch as the man’s body hit the ground, crushed beneath the weight of his assailant, and with a wet tear that Hilda could hear even at this distance it tore out a mouthful of flesh, swallowed it, and then caught sight of her.

She screamed as it bounded forwards, pink fangs bared in what looked like a smile, but it wasn’t a scream of terror. She had recognised the man that had been killed, and her cry was one of pure, blinding rage.

She rushed forwards to meet the thing, the other women following behind her. When it was in range she jabbed at it with the pitchfork. It twisted to one side, avoiding the thrust and grabbing at the haft. But Hilda was too quick. She reversed the weapon before the beast could close its grip, and used the blunt end to punch it between the eyes. Wood bounced off bone and it staggered back with a snarl of surprise.

Hilda reversed the pitchfork again and this time when she struck the vicious serpent’s teeth of the tines found their mark. They punctured the beast’s hide and slipped in between its ribs with every ounce of Hilda’s twelve stone of weight behind them.

The beast vomited out a spray of blood along with its final scream. Hilda, struck with a sudden vision of what it would have done to her daughter, screamed back as she twisted her weapon free of the lice-ridden body.

She grimaced at the stink of its filthy hide, and then the even greater stink of its green guts as she struck again and opened a cavity in its belly. Filthy thing, she thought, and saw that some of the other women had reached the gate. But now the men were jumping down from their perches and shooing the women back as they fled.

Hilda felt a moment’s rage at their abandonment of the gate, but then she saw the dark shapes that were scurrying amongst the houses and realised why. The beasts had breached the wall somewhere else, and were free within the stockade.

“Back to the granary,” she cried, suddenly terrified that one of the foul creatures might get there first. The doors were strong, but they were only wood, and if one of these horrors got in amongst the old women and children…

Refusing to think about that, Hilda led the charge back to the granary. Within a dozen steps Johann, her husband, overtook her. His eyes were bright and his skin was as pale as it had been when he’d had the ague last winter, and for the first time in his life he looked afraid.

“I told you to wait inside, woman,” he barked at her.

Hilda didn’t deign to reply. Instead she concentrated on the sprint back to the granary. She reached the door of the granary and turned her back to it. The rest of the townspeople milled around her, confusion and then horror sharpening their voices as they realised that Elder Rijkaard was dead. One of the women was already keening as the beasts swarmed through the gates, which had now been torn off their hinges, and surged towards them.

They were a nightmare in the noonday sun. Although the beasts had fallen silent as they gathered for the final onslaught the air still buzzed with their presence. Clouds of flies swarmed around them, feasting on filth and mucus and wounds, and blood-glutted ticks burrowed busily through their matted fur.

Most were goat-legged, and all sported horns above faces made more horrible by the occasional hint of what might once have been humanity. But if their flesh still bore clues to what they might once have been, their slit-pupilled eyes burned with what they were now.

They were remorseless, rapacious, reviled. They were death made flesh and sent into the world. They were the enemy.

“Hilda,” Johann said, turning to look at her. “I love you.”

It was the first time he had said it, and now that he had she wished that he had not. The desperate truth in his voice sounded like a death knell.

“Never mind that silliness now,” she snapped at him, and scolded herself for the rush of warm tears that slid down her cheeks.

And then the beasts were upon them.

They came in a rush, roaring in a chorus of hatred that blended into a tidal-wave sound of bestial fury. Hilda peered from between the men who stood in front of her, and as beasts struck the defenders she was crushed back with the rest towards the granary.

In the pack she couldn’t see much of the onslaught. The occasional flash of sunlight on a raised blade. A gout of blood, black and ruby against the clear blue sky. A flailing limb, a snapping jaw full of razored teeth.

Even as she was crushed further back Hilda could hear that they were losing. The human voices seemed to do nothing but scream with agony whilst the beasts seem to do nothing but roar with blasphemous exultation.

In the sweat and the panic she realised that the bodies were now packed so tight that she could no longer lift her weapon. She turned to Johann, who stood beside her, their shoulders crushed together.

“I love you too,” she said, but before he could reply the crush slackened, the beasts drawing back.

At first she thought that the drumbeat was the sound of her own heart, but as it grew louder she could hear the sound of marching boots and the sharp, clear sound of men barking orders.

The crush eased further and Hilda elbowed forwards. Soon she was standing amidst a tangle of bodies, men and beasts lying side by side. She stopped to dispatch a wolf-faced thing which was still spurting arterial blood from a gash in its neck, and when she looked up it was to see the rout of the enemy.

If the beasts had stood their ground the carnage on both sides would have been awful, but trapped between the anvil of the defenders on one side and the relentless marching column of soldiers that had appeared behind them they panicked, tearing at each other as they fled.

The soldiers made no attempt to pursue them. Instead they slaughtered those too slow to avoid the churning steel of their first rank, then stopped in the town square. They formed a neat square box of men and muscle and cold, hard steel.

Hilda walked forwards, hardly daring to believe that they had been saved. As she drew closer to the soldiers she could see that they were not what she had expected. They were dressed in rags more than uniforms, and they had the scrawny frames of vagabonds rather than the well-fed beefiness of state troopers.

Not that it mattered. All that mattered was that they had arrived in time.

As she stood gawping, their leader strode out from amongst their ranks, swept off a hat that had enough feathers for a brace of geese, and bowed.

“Good afternoon, madam,” he said. “Might I enquire if this fair town is Nalderstein?”

“Yes,” Hilda said, and found that she was rearranging her hair. “Yes it is.”

“Excellent,” Erikson beamed, and for the first time Hilda realised what a bright shade of green his eyes were. “In that case we have arrived at our new posting. My name is Captain Erikson, late of Estalia and Marienburg, and this is the Gentleman’s Free Company of Hergig.”

“Very pleased to meet you, sir,” Hilda said and curtsied awkwardly.

“Maybe you should see to the children,” Johann told her, and she almost smiled at the jealousy she saw in his eyes. With a last look at Erikson’s ragged gallants she went to deal with the moans of the wounded and the crying of the children.

So much for the romance of war, she thought, and started tearing up cloth for bandages.

 

A hundred miles distant in Hergig, and secure in the cool vastness of the baron’s council chamber, the blood and the sweat and the dust of a hundred Naldersteins were marked on a vast vellum map that had been attached to the wall.

Cloth-tipped pins marked every settlement in the barony. Green marked those that were guarded, white marked those that had been left to their own defences, and red were the epitaphs of those known to have been destroyed.

Ganamedes was sitting alone in the hall, the low afternoon sun casting the shadows of the pins across the map. Every day more and more of the pins turned red. The depressing markers were scattered across the land like boils on a plague victim.

Some of the settlements they had lost had been tiny hamlets of no more than a few families. Others had been prosperous towns with their own markets and mills. Ganamedes wondered how many of the inhabitants had been killed and how many had fled.

He didn’t look up when the doors opened. It wasn’t until the clip of boots stopped behind him that he realised these men weren’t the servants. When he turned he found the provost marshal standing behind him and, behind the provost marshal, two other men.

“Good afternoon, Ganamedes,” Steckler said, and as soon as Ganamedes heard the sorrow in his voice he knew that he had been found out. To his surprise, the only thing he felt at this fact was relief.

“I want to see the baron,” Ganamedes said.

“Maybe later,” Steckler told him. “First of all we need to ask you a few questions. They’re about certain things we’ve found in your quarters.”

“Let me show you where the rest of the books are,” Ganamedes told him, and sighed at the feeling of an immense weight being lifted from his shoulders. “You won’t have found them all.”

“You’d be surprised,” said Steckler, whose men were nothing if not thorough. “And if you wouldn’t mind…”

He dropped the manacles onto the table in front of Ganamedes. They were silver, and beneath the dents and scratches sigils had been etched deeply into the metal. With hardly a heartbeat of hesitation Ganamedes snapped them closed about his bony wrists, and shuddered with revulsion as the enchanted metal narrowed around them in an almost organic movement.

The material was as cold and sinuous as a serpent, and it wriggled and squirmed about the contours of the old man’s wrists until it was snug.

“Here,” he said, holding his bound wrists up to display that none of the sigils was yet glowing a warning. Not yet, anyway. “Lead on. I’ve been wanting to get this over with for a long, long time.”

Steckler, by contrast, had only just begun to dread what they were going to have to do to the silly old sod.

He stood back as the two guards grabbed Ganamedes’ bony elbows and pushed him forwards. He stumbled and Steckler cursed them.

“No need for that,” he said. “Not yet, anyway. Let’s just go to his quarters and see what else there is to find.”

 

The pile of incriminating materials sat on the plain wooden table that ran along one wall of the torture chamber. They lent an incongruously civilised air to a place which was otherwise as businesslike as a blacksmith’s forge.

It was well lit with half a dozen oil lamps. The walls were smooth granite and the floor was a neatly tiled slope that angled down towards a gutter. The fireplace was a simple, unadorned hole in one wall. Even on this warm night flames licked at the tips of the iron implements that were racked in front of it, and the glow of the iron and the crackle of the fire was making every man in the cell sweat.

There were only the three of them. Steckler and the baron stood on either side of the fireplace. Ganamedes sat before them, his ankles and wrists now secured to an iron chair that was bolted to the floor. Of the three men, he looked the least concerned.

“You should have told me earlier,” the baron said reproachfully. “If you had volunteered the information…” He trailed off, and for the first time Ganamedes saw him at a loss. It was a strange experience. The baron had fought and schemed and bluffed his way to his position, a ball of energy who was as positive and direct in his manner as a beam of sunlight.

“I wanted to tell you,” Ganamedes said. “That’s why I did it. I wanted to help. And, your lordship,” he lowered his voice, “I have succeeded. As soon as Steckler arrested me I understood that it had been there all along.”

“What had been there?” the baron asked.

“The answer,” Ganamedes said with the wild-eyed joy of the religious convert. “The key to our victory.”

All three men turned to look at the evidence which had brought the baron’s most trusted advisor to this iron chair. There were half a dozen scrolls, yellowed and stained by the ages, a pile of books and a folder of bound woodcuts.

“There is nothing to be gained from the study of such abominable works.” Steckler shook his head. “They are damned, as are all those who touch them.”

The baron, who had been about to open one of the books, stopped himself. He drew a dagger instead and flipped open the front cover. There was a crude sketch of some monsters feasting upon human remains. The next page was covered in an indecipherable scrawl, blotted here and there with stains.

“Don’t look at that, my lord!” Ganamedes told him, panic edging his voice, but it was too late. The baron had already turned the next page.

Ganamedes and Steckler felt the air boil and catch in their throats. The oxygen in their lungs seemed to burn away and they were suddenly both gasping for air. Pressure crushed in on them, and their skin suddenly itched as though termites were burrowing beneath it.

Only the baron, who was looking at what the book revealed, wasn’t gasping. He was beyond that.

The blood had drained from his face to leave him as pale as a corpse, and his eyes bulged like those of some deep-sea fish which has been dragged to the surface. Tears spilled down his cheeks, and Ganamedes saw that they were already pink with blood.

“Close the book!” Ganamedes yelled at Steckler who was staring at the baron in horror. A low, animal whimper was escaping from the knotted sinews of the baron’s throat. It came from a place beyond physical pain.

“Steckler!” Ganamedes screamed despite the feeling that his lungs were about to burst. “Close the book!”

The provost marshal looked at him stupidly, then understanding dawned. He crossed the room, pushing through air that felt as heavy as treacle, and slapped the cover of the book closed with the back of his hand. It shut with a loud snap, and the baron fell back into Steckler’s arms.

“What have you done to him?” Steckler asked and staggered back beneath the baron’s weight.

“I told him not to look,” Ganamedes whined.

“That’s right,” the baron growled. He clapped a hand on Steckler’s shoulder and struggled to stand back up on his own two feet. “He warned me. Better late than never, Ganamedes.”

The baron attempted a smile, then wiped away the red flecks of blood on his moustache from where he had bitten his tongue.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Ganamedes told him miserably. “I didn’t see what you were doing.”

The baron wiped his face with a handkerchief. When he finished he cast a nervous look at the book. Then his expression hardened into one of defiance and he went to lean against the table upon which the cursed thing lay.

“Are you all right?” Ganamedes asked him, scarce able to believe it. “The thing inscribed on that page. It is a—”

“I know what it is,” the baron snapped. “No need to harp on about it. Instead, let’s assume that I don’t want to read any further. Why don’t you tell me what you have learned from these cursed things?”

So Ganamedes nodded, chewed on the dry meat of his tongue to get the saliva flowing, and told him.

 

If the wind hadn’t fallen then Erikson wouldn’t have heard the screams.

It had been blowing through Nalderstein for days, this wind, a dry, withering constant that chapped their skin and kept them squinting. It made their nerves itch and their thirst for the daily wine ration a virtual constant. The townspeople called it the harvest wind, and even as it leathered their skin they welcomed it. It meant that the wheat, golden in the fields beyond, would be dry enough to harvest at its prime.

But for once it had stopped, a brief pause as if it had been catching its breath, and in that moment Erikson heard the high-pitched cry for help that came from one of the barns that lay to the east of where they had been working on the stockade.

“Hear that?” he asked Gunter. The two of them were stripped to the waist, as were the half-dozen other men who were working on this section.

“No, captain.” Gunter shook his head as the wind howled back into life.

“It may be nothing,” Erikson admitted. “But let’s go take a look anyway. Men, to arms.”

There was a scurry as the men dropped timber and hemp and raced to snatch up their weapons. Erikson didn’t wait for them before setting off at a trot towards the direction of the cry, his own sword unsheathed and held ready.

“There it is again,” he said and came to a stop outside the first of the barns. Unlike the solid block of the granary, the doors on this building were loose-slatted and held together by no more than a twist of rope. Even that had been untied, and now the door rattled in the quickening wind.

“Could be the enemy,” Gunter said, and drifted to the other side of the door. Erikson licked his lips, took a quick glance behind him to make sure that the men were ready, then kicked open the door.

There was a shriek as he booted open the splintering timber and leapt into the gloom. Vast stacks of hay lay all around, and bars of sunlight streamed in through the slatted walls to light up clouds of swirling motes of dust. There was a moment’s silence, then a sudden cry and a rush of movement from the shadows that darkened one of the corners. Erikson turned on his heel, and the bright steel of his sword blurred back as he prepared to slash down onto the shape that hurtled towards him.

He recognised it for what it was a split second before it barrelled into him. Despite the animal desperation in its eyes and the wordless cries it was making, this was no monster. It was a young woman. That was obvious from the curves that were revealed by the ragged remains of her clothes.

“Are you all right?” Erikson asked as she froze in front of him, her expression an appalling mask of horror. For the first time Erikson saw the blood that had trickled down from her nostril and the dark bruise that covered one side of her face.

“Is it the enemy, child?” Gunter asked, and this time the girl sobbed and rushed to hide behind him. In the darkness from which the girl had fled there was movement.

“Hold there,” Erikson snarled, suddenly guessing what had been going on. “And come out. Slowly.”

After a moment’s hesitation a figure appeared. Erikson recognised him as one of Minsk’s followers, a freckle-faced man with a Reikland accent. He tried to smile. Seeing that nobody smiled back, he saluted.

“What is your name, soldier?” Erikson asked.

“Traudl, sir.” The man tried to smile again, but this time it came out as a leer.

“Why are your breeches undone?” Erikson asked him, his voice chill despite the sweltering heat of the barn.

“Sorry, captain,” the man said as he tugged at the fastenings. “This wench jumped on me and, well, you know how it is.”

He winked, and glanced past Erikson to the men who stood behind him. One of them sniggered.

Erikson swung around. “Who thinks this is funny?” he asked, gesturing to the girl who was cringing behind Gunter. This time, nobody did.

“Look, captain, I’m sorry. Maybe I was a bit rough…” Traudl stepped forwards, hands outstretched, and the girl wailed with terror and clutched at Gunter, who looked to Erikson.

“What does your order say about those who defile the innocent?” he asked mildly.

“Castration and burning at the stake,” Gunter replied with the cold certainty of a man who had read that particular part of the holy text with a thorough interest.

There was another cry of anguish, but this time it was from the man who fell to his knees.

“It’s not my fault, captain,” he wailed. “I’m a soldier. She led me on, she—”

“Stop making that noise,” Erikson told him. “Nobody is getting castrated or burned. Not in my company.”

“Thank you, captain,” the man beamed. “You won’t regret it.”

“Don’t mention it,” Erikson said with a magnanimous wave. “After all, you were one of the Gentleman’s Free Company of Hergig. Gunter, take this girl to her family and tell them what’s happening. You two men, bind this man’s hands. And you, go and tell Alter to assemble the company in the parade ground.”

“Why?” Traudl said, bewilderment writ large on his broad face.

“Silence from the prisoner,” Erikson snapped as the condemned man’s hands were bound behind his back with a twist of baling twine.

“Come on,” Erikson said. “Get him on his feet. Let’s get this over with.”

“But why have you tied my hands?” Traudl asked as he was hauled along behind his captain. “I am one of you. I’m your comrade.”

“Not anymore,” Erikson told him, and led the little party into the square of hard-packed earth that served as the company’s parade ground. The free company was already assembling, eager for any excuse to leave the blistering labour they were carrying out on the stockade. Sergeant Alter hurried them into ranks and files as Erikson waited, his prisoner behind him.

Behind the soldiers the population of Nalderstein assembled. He waited until the sobbing girl, her face still wet with tears even as she stood within the safe knot of her family, appeared from one of the narrow streets that led to the square.

“This man,” Erikson addressed them, “has abused the hospitality of the people of Nalderstein. For this crime he will spend three days and three nights in the stocks, after which he will be dismissed from the company The next man to commit such a crime will be hanged. Any questions?”

“What did he do, captain?” Porter asked, his voice rich with morbid curiosity.

“Abused the hospitality of the people of Nalderstein,” Erikson told him.

“I meant what did he do precisely?”

Erikson repressed a sigh. At times like this he regretted making Porter quartermaster. The man could never leave well enough alone.

“What he did precisely was inconvenience a young lady.”

“Inconvenience!” the roar echoed around the yard and one of the civilians, his voice bellowing like a bull’s and his face as red as the rag which had enraged it, pushed through his fellows. “He did a lot more than inconvenience her. She’s my little girl, and she hasn’t even seen her fourteenth summer.”

An angry murmur rose up from the townspeople. It reminded Erikson of the noise of a hornets’ nest.

“I am well aware of that, sir,” Erikson addressed him. “And as the girl’s father your rage does you credit. But he will be punished.”

By now the red-faced man was standing in front of Erikson. He was shorter than the captain, but he was stocky. Thirty years of toil-hardened muscle bulged beneath his shirt, and his eyes had a dangerous sheen to them.

“No,” the man said. “Not punished enough. Three days in the stocks. What’s that?”

This time the growl of agreement from the crowd was louder. More purposeful. Nalderstein was small enough for everybody to know everybody else, and the sobs of the girl as she was ushered away were proving even more incendiary than the rage of her father.

Erikson looked at his men. He knew that he couldn’t show weakness. Couldn’t back down in front of this peasant. If he did, his authority would evaporate. It was a lesson he had learnt the hard way a dozen wars ago.

“Hang him!” a voice from the crowd called out, and there was a storm of agreement. The father crossed his arms and stood in front of Erikson, daring him to defy the will of the town.

“The Gentleman’s Free Company of Hergig,” he said grandly, “regulates itself. As I said, this man will spend three nights in the stocks.”

There was a chorus of boos and Erikson saw, to his horror, that a couple of youths were reaching for stones.

“But before that happens,” he continued, raising his voice above the hubbub, “we will need a smith and a good carpenter.”

The girl’s father regarded him shrewdly.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because the stocks are to be built at the edge of the forest. This man acted like a beast. It is only fitting that the beasts are given the chance to return the favour.”

The father’s face worked horribly, then, to Erikson’s surprise, he laughed.

“You’re not such a fool as you look,” he confided to the captain before turning back to the gathered throng. “Narlson. Hackmeier. You heard the officer. Let’s get this thing set up in time for tonight. We wouldn’t want to keep our guest waiting.”

He snarled at Traudl, who cringed like a beaten dog.

“Captain,” he pleaded, clawing at Erikson. “Don’t do this to me. You can’t leave me trapped out there. The enemy… You saw what they’re like.”

Erikson regarded him with a mixture of pity and contempt. He didn’t let either emotion show on his face, though. His gaze was as steady as his hands as he unplucked Traudl’s fingers from his clothing.

“There is nothing I can do,” he told the man. “Wartime justice is always harsh.”

The man was sobbing as the villagers set about uprooting the stocks from the side of the square and carrying the pieces out of the gate. There was something almost festive about them as they worked. The same could not be said for the soldiers. After Erikson dismissed them they went back to their labours, stooped beneath a thoughtful silence.

 

* * *

 

Even now, with dusk bruising the sky above, Traudl couldn’t quite believe that this was happening.

He had been in stocks before, of course, bent double in timber-and-iron constructs that made him a victim to any passing sadist. He was a professional thief, and over the years his shackled form had graced many a town square. Sometimes he’d been pelted with mud, sometimes with rotten food, sometimes even with the odd stone.

Now, as darkness closed in around him, he thought back to those days with something approaching nostalgia. What wouldn’t he give to be surrounded by a baying mob now? What wouldn’t he give to see human faces, even if distorted with vindictive pleasure, or to hear human voices, even if they were shrill with cruel excitement?

Instead he was alone. Absolutely alone. The only company he had was the brooding silence of the forest. It loomed less than a bowshot away, the spaces between the trees as black as the decay between a jawful of rotten teeth.

Traudl bit back on a whimper and tore his eyes away from the wilderness. Risking a sprained neck he turned to gaze at the town. It lay a mile away, although it might as well have been a hundred. No matter what happened to him, there would be no help from there. Not tonight.

It had all been the fault of that silly bitch. Why hadn’t she just shut up and got on with it? He would have paid her. He usually did, if they didn’t struggle too much.

A sudden shriek from the forest ripped through Traudl’s nerves. He almost shrieked back, but even as the warmth of his own urine trickled down his leg he recognised the cry of an owl. There was the suggestion of a ghostly movement above, an indistinct predatory blur chasing the bats that were beginning to circle overhead.

Traudl immediately regretted his loss of control. It wasn’t just the humiliation, or even the discomfort. No, it was what the smell might bring from the shadows that were even now pooling out of the forest to swallow him up.

His eyes rolled, white in the darkness, and he stared blindly into the void. The last purple remains of the day were vanishing from the sky and the stars glittered down at him, cold and predatory and merciless.

It wasn’t until the owl screeched again that his nerve snapped. Seized with the unquenchable panic of a wild thing caught in a trap he twisted and writhed, trying to drag his hands through the iron-bound boards that held them and to pull his head free. Muscles bunched. Sweat mixed with blood, greasing his body even as the skin was peeled from his neck and his wrists. But it was to no avail. The men who had built these stocks had built them to hold.

Eventually pain and exhaustion wore away at Traudl’s panic. He grew still and let his body hang from the woodwork. By now the night had swallowed up the whole of the world. The only lights were the orange blinks of the torches on the distant stockade. They seemed as far away as the stars above. Traudl began to sob quietly.

He didn’t stop until he heard the first snap of undergrowth breaking from amongst the trees. He turned, but the darkness was so complete that all he could see were the dots that danced across his vision. He stilled his breathing, holding his breath as every sense strained to detect what was emerging from the undergrowth. It might be a rabbit, he told himself, or a hare. Or a pony.

Then the smell hit him, the same foetid musk that had clung to the beasts they had killed in Nalderstein, and he exploded into a fresh paroxysm of panic. This time, with a crunch of gristle and a flash of pain, he managed to tear one hand free. He scrabbled at the lock which held the stocks closed, but the broken bones in his hand made it impossible to get a proper grip. A low, miserable moan emerged from his throat as the smell grew stronger suddenly. It grew louder as two burning eyes flared in the darkness.

The shriek died in Traudl’s throat. As he gazed into the inferno of the beast’s eyes his mouth fell open and he began to drool. He could feel it in his head, gnawing at his memories with the brutal disinterest of a wolf cleaning a bone. It plucked from his mind the number of men now in Nalderstein, the number of civilians, the weak points in the old stockade and the half-finished repairs that covered them.

When it had learnt everything there was from the terrified confusion of Traudl’s memories it turned and stalked back into the forest.

Traudl, still alive, began to laugh. Then he laughed some more. Soon the broken sound of his hysteria was echoing through the trees and carrying into the darkness beyond. He was still laughing hours later when a herd of boars found him and, squeaking with pleasure at such an easy meal, began to feast.