Chapter Eleven

 

 

Gunter’s column of wounded men had covered barely five miles when dusk caught up with them. The forest gloom had deepened into an endless shadow that lay beneath the trees, a darkness that seemed almost a physical thing.

“Rifleman,” Gunter called out to the guide in front of them. “What is your name?”

“Franz,” the rifleman said without turning.

“It is time to call a halt for the night, Franz. The men are weak, and they need rest and to tend to their wounds.”

“We’re not stopping.” Franz, who had been leading the column, let his horse amble on even as he turned in the saddle. “The horses can find their footing in the darkness, and it is dangerous to lose mobility.”

“Most of the men don’t have horses,” Gunter told him. Speaking had reopened the claw-mark that sliced down his face, and blood started to flow again. He ignored it just as he ignored the constant pain from his broken arm and shattered ribs.

“That is their misfortune,” Franz said with a shrug. “In the forest, the weak must fend for themselves.”

“But in the eyes of Sigmar,” Gunter said, “all men are brothers in battle. And look, right here is where yonder stream has made a clearing. We will stop here for the night and continue in the morning.”

For a moment it seemed that the rifleman was going to argue, but all he did was shrug again.

“As you wish,” he said. Without a backwards glance he dismounted, and led his horse to the trickle of water to drink.

Slowly, limping on their own two feet or clinging to one of the few horses, the rest of Gunter’s shattered command entered the clearing. It was little more than a narrow strip of land that some flash-flood had cleared of undergrowth. A narrow strip of sky ran like a ribbon above the stream, and the men looked up at it with the same hopeless yearning with which they had looked out of the bars of the gaol. Already they had learned to hate the forest.

Gunter, his stern features as composed as always beneath the dark creases of his wounds and the bright tears of fresh blood they wept, moved amongst the men. For the first time he learned that two of them had not made it even this far, and had been left on the trail behind them.

They spent the last dying hour of daylight building up a store of firewood, and as the darkness between the trees grew complete, the men lit the first of their watch fires.

The riflemen were unhappy.

“That is not wise,” Franz told Gunter, who was now sitting patiently whilst one of his colleagues rebound his bandages. “You must tell your men to extinguish the fires. The smell of woodsmoke will carry even further than the sight of the flames.”

“The men are cold and exhausted,” Gunter argued. “And many of them need all the comfort and the warmth they can get. Anyway, with the light behind us we can fight whatever comes from the forest.”

“If you fight the things that this fire will bring,” the riflemen said, “you will be slaughtered.”

The man who was retying Gunter’s bandage let the knot slip through his fingers, and the fractured bone flared with a brittle agony.

“Then so be it,” Gunter snarled, his composure slipping in the moment of pain. “We are Sigmar’s sons, and if that is our destiny then so be it.”

Franz opened his mouth to reply, but his companion tapped his arm and shook his head.

“Then I can’t persuade you to extinguish those fires?” Franz asked.

“No,” Gunter replied, and swallowed his pain as the bandage was tied again.

 

When he awoke, Gunter had no idea what time it was. The fire had burned low, and even as he stumbled to his feet he muttered a prayer of contrition for having allowed himself to lapse into unconsciousness before posting a watch.

Still muttering, he went to the fire and fed it with dried brushwood that they had found on the banks of the stream. Soon it was crackling happily away. Gunter finished his prayer and looked around the camp. The flames lit the trees that loomed over them, as hard and unforgiving as the bones of some vast skeleton, and revealed the bats and moths that flitted between them.

The men all seemed to be sleeping, bundled in their bloodied and tattered clothes like so many rag dolls. Gunter stalked amongst them. Occasionally he would stoop to shake a man out of a nightmare or to examine the dressing of a wound, but for the most part he let them sleep.

It wasn’t until he went to check on the horses that he realised that their two guides had gone. The deserters had taken their mounts and their bedrolls with them and vanished as silently as mist before the dawn.

Gunter ground his teeth in anger at their treachery. Taking comfort from the fact that rage is one of Sigmar’s greatest gifts, he returned to the fire to nurse it. He checked his weapons, and gazed into the flames. They danced hypnotically and he caught himself falling back to sleep.

He jerked awake, and suddenly saw the hungry glitter of eyes in the darkness amongst the trees.

“Who’s there?” he growled, rising to his feet and stepping towards them. The eyes vanished before he had taken half a dozen steps, blinking out as suddenly as they had appeared. But now that he was peering into the darkness Gunter could see that his sleeping company was being appraised by a whole constellation of glittering eyes. They glowed in the reflected firelight as they studied Gunter’s sleeping men.

Gunter regarded the men too. They were broken, bled out, exhausted. Of those who could still hold a weapon, there were few who would have the strength to wield it, especially against such beasts as they had fought today.

As if summoned by the thought, the stealthy calm of the forest was torn asunder by a sudden rush of crashing undergrowth and pounding hooves, and with a final crash of falling timber the ancient depths of the forest gave birth to a nightmare.

It bounded into the firelight, and Gunter’s first blasphemous thought was that it was magnificent.

It towered above the sleeping men, and in the firelight it seemed to glow with an almost holy aura of power. The muscles which writhed across its arms and chest were as perfectly defined as those of the stone statues that guarded the baron’s palace, and the horns which curled from the thick bone of its forehead thrust upwards with a terrible potency.

Like the beasts they had fought today, this one’s torso melted into the body of a quadruped, but it was like nothing Gunter had ever seen before. It glittered with the bright green scales of a poisonous serpent and stood upright on powerful hind legs. Its pose was perfectly balanced by taloned forelegs and a thick, meaty tail that tapered back into the darkness behind it.

And yet of all these details the one which froze Gunter was the expression on its malformed face. There was hunger there, yes, and the marking of a terrible rage. But there was also a sadness, a melancholy so deep that it showed even through the fury of bloodlust.

“Sigmar guide and protect us,” Gunter intoned as the men scrambled to their feet around him, their cries echoing through the claustrophobic confines of the clearing.

“Sigmar be our light in the darkness and our shade in the desert,” he continued, not letting the first guillotine sweep of the beast’s axe distract him. It caught two men in the same blow, splitting them open as easily as gutted fish. The beast roared, and the sound was so deep that Gunter could feel it vibrating through his bones.

“Sigmar be our strength and our courage,” Gunter continued, ignoring the rush of air as the beast’s tail whipped above him as it turned on fresh victims. These men had abandoned their weapons and were running for the forest. The muscles in the beast’s hind legs bulged and it leapt after them, ending their lives with the rip and tear of sundered flesh.

“Sigmar flow through us and over us.” Gunter felt the familiar bliss seize hold of him. The pain left him as it re-knit his injuries and washed away his exhaustion, and even as the beast fell upon another knot of men he was smiling.

His god was with him, and when his god was with him there was nothing to fear.

“Sigmar be our hope and our boast and our war cry,” he completed the catechism and, with an easy grace which belied the speed of his movements he cast off his sling, unsheathed his sword with an arm that was no longer broken and roared his challenge.

“Be gone from this place, abomination!” he roared, foam flying from his lips and his eyes bright with holy fire. “Begone or be cast down as was the foul Morkar before you.”

The beast turned and regarded him. It had deep, liquid eyes, as beautiful as a deer’s but conscious with a human understanding. It cocked its head to one side, and watched Gunter as he stepped forwards and lifted a brand out of the fire with his left hand. The beast regarded the fire and the steel, and with a roar that seemed almost mockery it launched itself at the man.

Gunter moved, feet blurring amongst the debris of the forest floor as he twisted away from the swing of the creature’s axe. Then he struck, and as he did so he called upon Sigmar, a single, guttural bark. Power flowed through him, a flood of energy which made his skin tingle and his hair stand on end.

The sword he wielded had been taken from the dregs of the armoury and it was as plain as any other workman’s tool. The hilt was leather-bound wood, the crossbar was an unadorned strip of steel and the body of the blade was as shatteringly hard as the edge was bluntingly soft.

But now, in the darkness of this tangled battlefield, it glowed as if made from the finest Tilean steel. The tip punched through scales that were as hard as iron, and the length of it slid into the muscle beneath with a blood-slicked ease that took even Gunter by surprise.

The beast shrieked and leapt away, its bound carrying it high over the fire so that it landed on the other side.

“Stand your ground!” Gunter roared. “Stand, and face your doom!”

He stalked forwards, blood sizzling on the blade which still glowed with some internal fire. Gunter held the hilt with the same calm assurance of a child holding a parent’s hand, and as he advanced on the beast the steel glowed ever brighter.

“Surround it,” he called out. So far the rest of the men had been as useless as hens trapped in a coop with a fox, but at the sound of Gunter’s command some started to edge forwards.

It was to be their undoing. With a terrible ease the beast turned on them in a whirlwind of muscle and steel. Its axe scythed through some even as its tail whiplashed through others, snapping ribs and skulls alike. Some of its victims’ twice-broken bodies were flung onto the fire, and they screamed as they burned in the sudden darkness.

But in this moment of triumphant slaughter, the beast met its end.

Gunter had used the distraction to sprint towards it and now, as the fire suffocated beneath the thrashing men, he leapt forwards into the sudden darkness. Without the flames he was blinded by the strangling darkness of the forest, but that didn’t matter. The sword in his hand was alive with the power of his god, and it found the heart of the enemy as surely as a compass needle finds the north.

With a final cry Gunter thrust it forwards. The impact of steel against bone jarred through his arm so hard that he felt it snap again, but by then the steel was buried to the hilt in the beautifully muscled torso of the beast’s chest.

It died silently. The breath caught in its throat as it fell to the ground with a bone-jarring thump, the sword still deep in its chest. The only sounds were the cries of the survivors as they stumbled through the darkness, wounded and terrified and lacking the faith that had slain the beast.

Gunter ignored them as, with a final prayer of thanks, he kicked a heap of embers together and groped through the darkness to find fuel. Soon the fire was blazing again, and although the scene it lit was one of absolute carnage, Gunter exulted in it. He knew that, in the darkness of this place, he had built the flames of victory.

 

The stone was not much to look at. It stood hunched on a small hill, a blunt, moss-covered thing that thrust upwards like a solitary fang.

“How do we know that’s it?” Erikson asked as Horstein bustled happily amongst the barrels of blackpowder and lengths of fuse.

“This is where the baron said it would be,” Freimann said. “Anyway, look around you. Even the forest draws back from the power of the thing.”

Erikson looked, and realised that it was true. The trees cringed away from the stone, the few branches that groped towards it stunted and leafless. Despite the sunlight that poured through the gap this left in the canopy, there was little undergrowth around the stone. Just brown grass and dust and, now that he looked more closely, the dimpled remains of countless hoofmarks.

“Still,” he said, “it doesn’t look that dangerous.”

“Neither does a foxglove,” Freimann told him. “But try eating one.”

“Won’t take long to set this up,” Horstein said as he pushed past the leaders and led half a dozen men to the stone. They set down the barrels of blackpowder and Horstein, his spectacles flashing with sunlight and excitement, set them to digging.

“We’ll topple the stone,” he explained as Erikson wandered over. “Then pack the explosives around it and beneath it.”

“Can’t you just blow it up and have done with it?” Erikson asked.

A pained expression crossed Horstein’s face and he tutted impatiently.

“Of course not,” he said. That would dissipate the force of the explosion. “This way the stone will take as much of the force as possible, and KABOOM!”

He bellowed the last word loud enough to startle a covey of partridges that had been hiding in the nearby undergrowth. It was loud enough to startle Erikson, too. Over the last couple of days the men had fallen to speaking in hushed tones, as if reluctant to let the forest hear their voices.

“Keep that noise down,” he snapped, then turned to Freimann. “We should post sentries while he does this, and be ready to go as soon as he is finished.”

“My men are already in place,” Freimann said, and Erikson noticed that the other riflemen had indeed vanished into the undergrowth.

“Very well,” Erikson decided. “The rest of the men can…”

But before he got any further there was a chorus of yells from the men who had been assigned to dig beneath the stone.

“What is it?” Erikson asked, but nobody was listening. Instead they were scrabbling at the base of the stone with the enthusiasm of dogs at a rabbit hole.

Then, when the first man lifted his prize and the others saw the gleam of gold, there was a stampede. Porter, who had been safely out of the way of any manual labour, led it. Brandt was close behind him. Within minutes the turf around the stone was being torn up as the men fought for the treasure that lay beneath.

“Can’t you control your men?” Freimann asked.

“Never get between a dog and its bone,” Erikson replied. “And anyway, I promised them loot. Don’t worry, though,” he winked at Freimann, “we’ll divide it up afterwards, and you’ll get your share.”

“Not sure that I’ll want all of it,” the rifleman replied and gestured to some of the debris that had been uncovered. As well as coins and bracelets and jewellery there were human skulls, gnawed bones and an endless supply of teeth. They piled up amongst the clods of earth the men were throwing behind them.

Nobody realised the stone was falling until it was too late.

It moved with a sudden, predatory speed that took them all by surprise. One minute it stood as still and unmoving as it had for centuries, the next it was falling, the base tearing itself free in a gout of soil and debris and crushing down onto the men below.

Most of them saw the movement in time to spring clear but two, struggling with a bronze tore that had become entangled in a tree root, were not so lucky. The dead weight of the stone caught them with a sickening crunch that came so suddenly that they couldn’t even scream.

Three other men, who had not been quick enough to drag their legs clear, were a lot more vocal. They cried and yelled and whimpered, none of which had any effect on the stone which now bit down on their trapped limbs.

“You men, get clear,” Erikson called. “Stand back behind that branch. Move. Right, I want six volunteers. Yes. Yes, you six. The rest of you, give them your spades and stand there until I tell you to move. That means you too, Porter. Now, you six, come over here and dig your mates out from under the stone. Careful, now.”

As they dug Erikson studied the stone. Some of the moss had been scraped away from the top, and the lower third of it was as bare as the root of a pulled tooth. He bent over to study the patterns that seemed to have been carved into the stone. As he examined them they started to move, wriggling around like worms, and he took a step back.

“Hurry up, there,” he told the men as they dug their comrades out. “And keep a hand on the stone to make sure it doesn’t roll. No, don’t touch it there, just on the mossy part.”

Soon the last man was freed. Erikson took a last fearful glance at the carvings that squirmed through the stone. There was something mesmerising about the way they moved. Something as mesmerising as the shriek of prey, or the destruction of buildings, or the sweet, sweet taste of hot blood spurting from a mouthful of living flesh.

Erikson blinked and tore his gaze away.

“Right, get on with it, Horstein,” he told the engineer, knuckling at his eyes as he stomped away.

“But I need to dig down to put a couple of barrels beneath,” the engineer complained.

“No. Set your fuses and we’ll go. That thing… it isn’t right.”

“You don’t mind disturbing your men’s grave?” Freimann asked him.

“Lying beneath that thing is no grave,” Erikson told him grimly, and as Horstein set the explosives he gathered the gold they had found, packed it into an empty grain sack and handed it to Sergeant Alter.

“Look after it,” he said and watched Horstein, who was humming a cheerful tune, finish tying off the fuses. After giving them a last, critical look, he produced a tin of sulphur-tipped matches.

“If you would all stand back a hundred yards or so,” he told the men, “I will light the fuse.”

“You heard him,” Erikson told his men. “Start back down the way we came and wait a hundred yards or so away. Sergeant Alter, you lead off.”

“Yes, sir,” Alter said and, swinging the bag of gold over his shoulder, marched off. Erikson watched them go, then turned back to Horstein, who was fiddling excitedly with his tin of matches.

“Are they clear?” the engineer asked. “I don’t want the same trouble as last time.”

“What happened last time?” Erikson asked him.

“Oh… nothing,” Horstein said. “Right then. Get ready to run.”

So saying, he struck a thick sulphur match and lit the frayed end of the spider’s web of fuses that he had wrapped around the barrels. They faltered into life, hissing and crackling with chemical fire, and with a last, loving look at his handiwork Horstein turned and sprinted back down the forest path.

He moved with a surprising speed for a man of his shape and size, and Erikson found that he was struggling to keep up with him.

“How long until it explodes?” he shouted as he followed the engineer back into the gloom of the surrounding forest.

“Four seconds,” the reply came back as Horstein darted from the path and disappeared into the woods as swiftly as a rabbit into its burrow.

“What?” Erikson cried, and turned back to look at the barrels that were packed around the stone.

“Four seconds,” Horstein said as he hunkered down behind a tree.

Erikson swore, caught a last, fleeting glimpse of the burning fuses and rolled himself into cover behind a boulder.

Four seconds passed. Then four more.

A minute later Horstein clambered back to his feet, squinted through the thick lenses of his spectacles and swore.

“Sorry about this,” he said, and looked shamefacedly at Erikson. “The fuses must have been damp.”

So saying he scurried forwards eagerly, a bag of tools in his hand. Erikson was watching him leaning down over a fuse that appeared to be extinguished when, with an explosion so loud that it vanished into silence, the blackpowder detonated.

Erikson felt something whizz past his head, and ducked back. Meanwhile the world around him disintegrated into a hailstorm of splintered wood, steaming mud and shattered stone. Even as the world shuddered beneath him some of the debris, red-hot with the force of the blast, started smouldering amongst the detritus of the forest floor.

Erikson struggled to his feet as Freimann appeared. His mouth was opening and closing, although Erikson had no idea of what he was trying to say. The buzz that rang in his ears had turned into a high-pitched hum, and for the first time he began to worry that he might have been deafened. Then he saw where Freimann was pointing, and he suddenly had other concerns.

The first of the fires had already broken out, a yellow blaze that was burning merrily within a brown mass of withered ferns. Following Freimann’s lead, Erikson pulled off his tunic and rushed over to beat the flames back, but they had already climbed up a ladder of ivy into the desiccated leaves of the canopy. They blossomed into an orange blaze, the heat of which was strong enough to send Erikson stumbling back.

His hearing came back with a pop, just in time for him to hear the excited voices of the men and the hungry crackle of another fire which was burning behind him. As he watched, it too spread to the canopy, and the forest became an arc of flames that flickered between him and the crater where the stone had been.

“Retreat!” he cried, staggering back from the heat. “Retreat!”

“No, don’t,” Freimann shouted, his skin already blistering with the heat of the fire he was fighting. “The forest is too dry. We’ll never outrun this.”

But it was too late. The men were already blundering back down into the forest, running from the smoke and the heat with the same dumb panic of the other animals that were now fleeing from the flames.

“Come on,” Erikson told Freimann, then turned and sprinted after his men.

Behind him the first tree collapsed in an explosion of sparks which drifted up on a slight breeze, twinkling merrily as they floated towards whatever tinder-dry thickets awaited them.

They had gone barely a hundred yards before Erikson skidded to a halt, narrowly avoiding stepping over the body that had been left on the path. Despite the warmth on the back of his neck and the sting in his eyes he rolled the body over and swore when he recognised that it was Sergeant Alter. The man was still breathing but his eyes were closed and blood seeped from the wound on the back of his head. When he noticed that the bag of loot Alter had been carrying had vanished, Erikson swore again.

“I must have been mad to recruit these villains,” he said and, with a grunt of effort, he hoisted Alter up and swung him over his shoulders. The man was heavier than he looked; in the weeks since he and his fellow prisoners had been freed from gaol they had eaten better than many of them had eaten for years, and the training had sheathed them all with fresh muscle.

Erikson took no comfort from the condition of the man as, hunched beneath his weight, he barrelled forwards. By now the smoke was everywhere, and he blinked back tears as he zigzagged along the path and tried to avoid falling over roots.

But although he ran fast, the fire was faster.

 

Hofstadter hadn’t planned on deserting. Not after he had seen what that bastard Erikson had done to Minsk. And especially not after he had seen what he’d done to Traudl, leaving him out in the stocks like that. How he’d screamed!

The problem was, Hofstadter considered as he ran sweating through the forest, although he hadn’t planned on deserting he never really planned not to either. That was why, when he’d seen his chance, he’d leapt at it with a mindless instinct born of a lifetime of thievery.

He had seen the panic. He had seen Alter struggling beneath the weight of the loot. And he had acted. A blow to the back of the head, a quick grab of a wonderfully heavy bag and away he’d been, a bag of loot on his back and freedom in front of him.

It had taken mere seconds for him to realise what a mistake he had made, but by that time it was far, far too late. He was already lost in the forest as he sprinted away from his former comrades, and the acrid stink of smoke seemed to grow stronger by the moment. With a quick glance behind him he paused, wiped the sweat from his forehead and took stock.

This far from the path the undergrowth had closed in around him like some sort of vast, endless snare. Yet although its thickets and thorns were now tangling every step he took, they did nothing to slow the fire which seemed to be pursuing him. Far from it. Even as he struggled to catch his breath in the thickening smoke he could see the first flames lapping eagerly up a not-too-distant tree trunk.

“What have I done?” he moaned, and looked back towards the path. At least, he thought that he was looking back towards the path. He suddenly wasn’t so sure.

The crash of a falling branch brought a scream to his lips and he was running again, blood seeping through the tears in his breeches as he crashed through the forest. The smoke and exertion started to burn his lungs, but he ignored the pain and pressed on until, suddenly, he was falling.

The edge of the ravine had been hidden by the undergrowth. Hofstadter dropped the bag, which burst open with a heartbreaking clink of lost treasure, and clawed at the sheer mud of the slope. It came away in his hands, great clumps of it, but he carried on scrabbling until he finally hit the ground with a bone-jarring thud.

It was cool down here, and darkly shadowed. A stream gurgled beside him, and no doubt it was responsible for this deep, trench-like ravine.

Hofstadter got to his feet, and his heart quickened as he saw the gold scattered amongst the pebbles. He was already scrabbling around after it when it hit him that he could go back to the company. At least if he could find it.

He didn’t think that anybody had seen him. Alter certainly hadn’t. He had made damn sure that the sergeant had been looking the other way before he’d whacked him. If he left the gold, he could find his comrades again. Perhaps he could even escape from the burning hell of this forest.

Slowly, scarcely able to believe that he was doing it, he dropped the coins and the chains he had been collecting. Even in the shadows they gleamed, but Hofstadter just turned away and started following the river towards what he hoped was the east.

Then he paused and turned back. Surely one little keepsake wouldn’t cause any harm. Would it?

As if in answer to the thought, he saw a flash of silver in the stream. He stooped to pick it up, and found that it was a fine silver chain which held a pendant of some green stone. He wasn’t sure what the stone was. It was too opaque to be an emerald, but too hard to be jade. It looked… fascinating.

The sudden realisation that he had no time to waste struck him and, with hardly a thought, Hofstadter looped the pendant around his neck and raced off in search of his comrades.