Forged in Battle (7 page)

Neither of the beastmen moved for a moment, but all around
the circle the other beastmen began to snort and stamp their hooves, tense and
excited.

Blood would be shed tonight.

In the clearing the two combatants—black and white—were
locked together. The white shape thrust his horns in one more time, and the
black body slid slowly to the ground, to lie at his feet like a pool of
darkness.

There was silence. In the memory of all there, there had
never been such a fast and brutal fight. And none imagined that Uzrak the
Black’s thirty-year reign had ended on the horns of one of his son—this cursed
albino—that should have been smothered at birth.

Azgrak glared round the ring, sensing the disquiet, but no
others dared challenge him. They looked towards the shaman to ban this
abomination but the shaman shook the man-skull rattle and began the rites of
lordship; after what they’d seen, there was no doubt that the albino had been
blessed by the gods.

That afternoon Vostig’s men were drilling. Sigmund stood to
watch, making sure they were lined up close together.

“Prime the pan!” Vostig shouted. The men moved as one,
filling the pans with powder.

“Close the pan!” The men flipped the pans closed and blew
away any loose powder.

“Charge with powder.” The men poured a measure of blackpowder
down the barrels.

“Prime with shot!” A lead ball the size of a walnut was
dropped down the barrels. The bullet and charge were rammed home. Each gun had a
slow-burning fuse attached to the trigger. They blew on the fuse to make the end
glow and then when the order came to “Present handguns” the handgunners lifted
the butt to their shoulders.

“Prepare to fire!” Vostig shouted. The men flipped the pans
open.

“Give fire!” Vostig called. The men pulled on the triggers
and the fuse struck the powder in the pan, which belched and ignited the charge
within the barrel. The guns flared flame and smoke in a ragged fusillade.

As the smoke cleared Sigmund turned to look at the length of
cloth, a foot high and ten foot long, that had been pinned up along the back of
the barrack wall, at chest height. Twelve ragged holes showed where the lead
shots had ripped through. Three men had missed. There were new chips on the
brickwork, well over head height.

Vostig cursed. “Again!” he shouted, and the men scrambled to
remove the fuse from their guns and use the ram rod to clear any embers from the
barrels. “Damn your hides!” Vostig cursed. “I want fifteen holes each time! Now—prime the pan!”

Sigmund left the handgunners to their practice and walked
through the barracks to the sick room.

Elias did not look any better. His face was pale and sweaty.
As he inspected the young man, Sigmund smiled to hide his concern. Where was
that damned apothecary?

“How do you feel?”

“A little sore.” Elias seemed exhausted by the effort of
speaking. His ragged breaths filled the room. He looked suddenly frightened. “If
I die will you tell Guthrie that—”

“You’re not going to die,” Sigmund told him, quickly.

“Promise?”

“I promise,” Sigmund said, trying to hide his concern. Surely
no normal infection could have taken hold so quickly and so violently? And there
were no medicines for the supernatural.

As Sigmund sat with Elias, keeping him company, the sick room
door creaked open. The woodsman, Edmunt, stood uncertainly by the door, his lips
moving silently in a prayer to Taal.

Sigmund bowed his head. He knew why Edmunt had come. The
woodsman’s face was white. He stared at Elias and nodded.

“The same,” he said, and then turned to go.

* * *

Osric’s men looked up as Edmunt came out of the sick room and
walked past where they were polishing their halberds. Edmunt didn’t meet their
gazes but walked straight past, across the drill ground to the barrack gates.

Baltzer spat. “What’s up with him?”

“Give it a break,” Freidel said. To anyone who knew the
woodsman’s history, it was obvious.

The apothecary arrived at the barracks just before dinner.
There was a fine smell of lentil broth coming from the kitchens and the men were
standing around expectantly.

The apothecary nodded to them as he walked up to the door of
the sick room. He paused at the door before knocking and stepping inside.
Sigmund left the side of Elias’ bed to make way for him. The apothecary walked
over to the bed, where the young man was dozing listlessly. He leant over,
adjusted his spectacles, and pulled back the blanket to inspect Elias’ arm.

“He has been wounded by a poisoned blade,” Sigmund said and
the apothecary nodded. Slowly and carefully, he unwrapped the bandages which
were sticky with fluids. The wound was swollen and putrid, and a green pus oozed
out.

The stench made both men’s eyes water. The apothecary took a
pomander from his robes and held it close to his nose.

“Can you fetch me a bucket?” the apothecary asked. Sigmund
hurried out to the kitchens and came out with one of their buckets, which the
apothecary signalled he should put by Elias’ bed.

The apothecary lifted his case onto the bed next to Elias’
and took out a copper mixing bowl. In it he mixed red Tilean wine vinegar, mixed
with salt, and used the mixture to clean out the wound. The procedure must have
been painful, but Elias hardly seemed to notice what was happening. When the pus
had been cleaned out the apothecary took a short knife from his case and bent
over the wounded man. Sigmund watched with a morbid curiosity as he pared away
the infected flesh and dropped it into the bucket. When true red blood began to
flow freely the apothecary knew he’d hit living tissue and he washed the wound
again with a fresh mix of salt and vinegar.

Sigmund watched the apothecary mix medicinal herbs and more
vinegar. He made a thick paste to spread over the wound—binding it tight with
fresh bandages, then he let out a long sigh.

“There,” he said, but his voice did not sound hopeful. “That
is the best I can do.”

The apothecary had been in the sick room for nearly an hour
when Osric and Baltzer came out of the kitchen, their bowls full of steaming
stew.

Richel was just coming back from sentry duty and his stomach
was screaming for food.

“Richel!” Osric said. “Good to see you.”

Richel smiled nervously. “I don’t want any trouble,” he said.

Osric marched straight up to the handgunner. “I’ll give you
trouble!” he said, pushing Richel roughly against the wall, then putting his
hand on the handgunner’s chest. “Now,” Osric said, “who’s a scruffy bloody
bastard?”

Richel could barely breath with the weight on his chest.

“Who?”

“Me!” Richel said.

“Who?”

“Me!”

“I can’t hear you.”

“Me!”

“Me what?”

“I’m a scruffy bastard!”

Osric took his foot off and gave Richel a kick. “Remember
that—damned gun-boy!”

Edmunt took his bowl of stew round the back of the barrack
building, to the short jetty. He’d grown up with his parents high up in the
hills, on the edge of the high moors. To think he needed real quiet and
solitude: and here, staring out over the grey water was about as quiet as it
got.

He shovelled a spoonful of broth into his mouth, and took a
bite of bread. It tasted stale, as always. He chewed it anyway, and took another
spoonful of broth to wash away the taste.

When he was a boy his mother had been attacked by beastmen.
Somehow she survived, but the wound had eaten her alive, in much the same way
that it was eating Elias. The smell was the same: fetid and bitter, like the
stench of the red stinkball in the forests. In the end the sickness had driven
her mad. Her skin bubbled with boils and her tongue swelled up to fill her
mouth.

It had taken Edmunt and his father a whole morning to dig her
grave at the back of their cabin. They wrapped her body in her favourite shawl:
a red-dyed woollen one, with fancy embroidery around the hem.

Years ago, when he’d first enlisted in the halberdiers,
Edmunt had been wandering through the market one morning when he found a trader
selling embroidered shawls.

“Two for ten pennies,” the trader had told him, but Edmunt
had just wanted one. “Seven for one,” the trader had argued.

There was nothing Edmunt disliked more than a Reiklander with
attitude—but it was the shawl he was concerned with. He paid the seven pennies
and took it. The trader had assumed it was a gift for some trollop at Madam
Jolie’s, but when he joked Edmunt’s glare had silenced him.

Only seven pennies, he thought. After his mother had died his
father never spoke much. His wife’s death had taken the purpose from his life.
He hadn’t spoken much when she was alive. After she was gone he had barely
spoken at all. Four years after they’d buried his mother, Edmunt had had to dig
a pit for his father as well. Woodcutting was a hard life. He’d buried his
father next to his mother, raised a cairn over him and said the prayer of Taal
over his grave. And that afternoon he’d carried on cutting.

His meal eaten, Edmunt tossed a stone into the broad, fast
waters. There was a brief splash and ripples, before the current of the river
swept them downstream. From here the Stir became the Upper Reik and then the
Reik, and then it flowed into the sea at Marienburg. All his father had wanted
him to be was a woodsman, but his mother had been more ambitious for her son,
proudly imagining him in a smart uniform: feathered hat, puffed sleeves of silk
and felt, an outrageous codpiece of striped cloth. He imagined her eyes filling
with joyful tears as she put her hand over her mouth to laugh at her son dressed
so well—then he threw another stone and stood up and turned to go back towards
the barracks.

The barracks were quiet as the men sat on their beds and ate.

Freidel took a bite of his bread and cursed. “Can’t we get
something that’s not full of pissing weevils?”

“When you stop being an ugly bastard we’ll give you
weevil-free bread!” Gunter told him and the men laughed and dipped the bread in
the stew.

After dinner Sigmund and Vostig sat at the gate of the
barracks, which was set on the crossroads that led towards Altdorf Street. It
was always busy at this time of day as people hurried home before dark. There
were women with baskets of shopping; a ploughman, leading two shire horses in
for shoeing; two old men, deep in conversation.

“Does it ever make you sad?” Vostig asked. “Watching all
these people in their ordinary lives?”

“No. It makes me glad to be a soldier!” he laughed.

Vostig let out a sigh. “I left the army six years ago. Didn’t
know that, did you? I couldn’t face it: normal, life that is. I’ve been a
soldier so long I don’t know what to do unless someone tells me to eat, shit,
sleep and shoot.”

Over the sounds of the town, they could hear a marching tune.
Sigmund turned to see if Baltzer was anywhere near, but the drill yard was
empty.

“Do you hear that?”

Vostig nodded.

The sound got louder and louder, and the two men stood up to
see better. Down Altdorf Street marched a column of men. Their striped uniforms
were clean and neat; they carried large round shields with red and blue
quarters; on their shoulders rested seven-foot spears, the leaf-blades alone a
foot in length.

Sigmund stood up as the men marched up towards him. Their
sergeant was a tall thin man with a pencil moustache. He raised his spear and
then gave the order, “Company! Halt!” He stepped forward. “Hanz Spurig of the
Vorrsheim Spears. We are to join the command of Captain Jorge,” the man said in
a thick mid-Talabecland accent.

Sigmund grinned. “Captain Sigmund Jorg of the Helmstrumburg
Halberdiers! Welcome!”

The man glanced at Sigmund, trying to hide his surprise at
the captain’s shabby appearance. “My apologies!” he said. “I did not recognise
the uniform.”

“It’s a long story…” Sigmund said.

Hanz smiled, but he seemed bewildered.

“Head straight in,” Sigmund clapped him on the back. “And
welcome to Helmstrumburg!”

That evening, the halberdiers sat outside the barracks, their
equipment piled up in front of them. Gaston was polishing his steel cap, while
Edmunt was diligently buffing the brass fittings to a shine. Osric had his
whetstone out and was grinding an even blade onto his sword—but the cheap
blade was bent slightly out of shape and he gave up. “Why don’t they give us
something decent to fight with!” he cursed, tossing it on the ground.

At least the halberd blades were good Reikland steel. Freidel
smiled as he saw his own dim reflection in the black polished surface of the
cuirboili breastplate. Layers of stitched leather, stiffened with wax, the
cuirboili breastplates wouldn’t stop a handgun shot, but they would stop all but
the heaviest blows, and more than that they were a quarter of the weight of a
steel breastplate. When he could see his own reflection Freidel put the
breastpiece aside and picked up his braces and began to work, but then he heard
the sound of marching feet and looked up and saw a company start to march across
the drill ground.

“Ho! Look at this lot!” he laughed.

The halberdiers of both units put down their whetstones and
oil clothes and gathered to gawp at the newcomers. The spearmen looked as if
they’d just walked out of a tailor’s shop. Their uniforms matched, and instead
of plain jackets and trews, their clothes were slashed and lined with fine
striped cloth.

Osric shook his head and laughed to see such finely dressed
soldiers. “Do you think they can fight?” he asked.

“I want to see them after Captain Jorg has taken them out
into the hills,” Osric said and stood up to his full height. “They’ll not look
so fine after that!”