The Wine of Dreams (13 page)

Godrich immediately reined in the horses and looked from side to side in
search of a thick stand of trees. The slope they were negotiating was not overly
steep, but they had been caught on an upgrade and the ground to either side of
the track was horribly uneven. They were in a wood of sorts, but the trees were
scrawny and widely spaced and the terrain was dominated by a thick undergrowth
of ferns and grasses.

Sigurd and Vaedecker had already run up to stand abreast of the steward’s
driving-seat. “Forward!” the sergeant said. “We must hope to find better ground
ahead.”

“You’re right,” said Godrich, quickly. We need to find a place where we can
safely shelter—but we ought to raise the canopy while we roll, if we can.”

“We can,” Sigurd said, having already ducked under the wagon to unfasten
the iron bands that would serve as supports for the awning. As Godrich moved the
horses forward again the giant began to bend the bars across, one by one.

The first two flexed readily enough, but the third had become brittle with
rust and it splintered as soon as Sigurd threw his weight upon it. The end that
he had bedded in its slot whipped back like a spring and hurtled away from the
wagon, leaving the astonished giant holding the other end like a ludicrously
bent broadsword. Sigurd cursed and dropped the useless piece that he still held.

“We must still get the canopy up if we can,” Reinmar said, having already
unearthed the cloth from its lodging in the box beneath Godrich’s seat.

“There’s a better wood ahead,” Godrich told them. “Let’s hope there’s a covert
where I can roll off the road safely.” The wagon had crested the ridge, sliding
slightly to one side as the ground beneath its wheels was slickened by the rain.
“I think we can reach it if we don’t get bogged down,” the steward added.

Becoming bogged down was a real danger, Reinmar realised, for the rain had
thickened so much in less than a minute that it was pouring from the sky as if
from a bucket.

Ulick pulled the cloak that had served Marcilla as a blanket over her head,
and told her to draw herself into a huddle, which she did. Then the boy drew his
own arms about his head, while Reinmar and Vaedecker wrestled with the
canopy-cloth.

The wind had grown stronger, but it was not yet strong enough to drag the
sheet from their hands, and they contrived to get it over the pair of half-hoops
that Sigurd had managed to erect. It sagged badly at the back, but they pinned
it down with casks of wine in order to prevent it billowing up like a sail and
catching the wayward wind. The sound of the rain on the stretched cloth was
thunderous—and was soon joined by actual thunder after the dimly-lit interior
of the wagon was briefly illuminated by a distant lightning-flash.

Sigurd had joined them by now, so the space was very cramped, but Marcilla
was able to peep out from beneath the cloak now that the awning was in place, and she was able to move her legs to
make a little more room.

The cart moved steadily forward, although the rain blurred visibility to the
point at which Reinmar could not make out the wood that Godrich had spotted—nor, for that matter, could he see the road that would take them there if all
went well.

“I think it’s all right,” Godrich called back. “There’s a gap in the trees
into which the cart will probably fit, and the ground looks tolerable. We’ll
lurch a bit, but… curse you, what’s the matter?”

It took Reinmar a second or two to work out that this last remark was
addressed to the horses, which were whinnying, and trying to pull themselves up.

“Not now, you fools!” Godrich protested. “That’s shelter—for you as much as
for—oh no! In Sigmar’s name,
no!”

The terror in the steward’s voice made Reinmar sit bolt upright, and caused
Matthias Vaedecker to go scrambling for his weapons.

Reinmar was wearing his own sword but Sigurd had stowed his staff and he too
had to go grubbing around in the cargo, his huge shoulders lifting the
badly-secured awning. Even Ulick reached down reflexively to snatch up the
broken end of the iron strut that Sigurd had dropped at his feet, which he took
in hand as if it were a dagger.

Reinmar contrived to get far enough forward to look over the back of
Godrich’s driving-seat, but it was difficult to see anything at all through the
driving rain, except for the backs of the horses. The animals, normally so
placid and willing, were rearing up on their hind legs, struggling against the
collars and harnesses that bound them to the struts of the cart.

There were straight-boled trees thirty or forty paces away, whose high crowns
vanished into the low-lying cloud, but it was difficult to discern exactly what
it was that was moving between the boles.

The shadows looked almost human—but not quite human enough. Reinmar
remembered all too clearly what Ulick had said about “beastmen of a wolfish
stripe”.

Vaedecker cursed as he took up a position parallel to Reinmar, resting his
crossbow on the wooden ridge of the seat to steady his aim. “Sit still!” he
muttered, to Godrich, as he placed the dart and made ready to fire. He took
careful aim before doing so, and that interval gave Reinmar the chance to peer a little
more intently at the faces of the figures emerging from the wood—the faces
that should have been human had they been fitted to the general gait of the
creatures, but were instead hairy and elongated and full of bestial cruelty.

Forewarned by Ulick, Reinmar was able to put a name to what he saw, and the
name was “Beastmen!”

Then Vaedecker released the string of his crossbow, the bolt flew true to its
target—and all hell broke loose.

The beastmen came forward in a group, although it was impossible for Reinmar
to tell exactly how many there were—at least seven, he thought, and perhaps as
many as ten. Some came to the left of the horses and some to the right but one
actually leapt up between them, pausing for balance on the yoke that connected
their collars before using their rain-slicked backs as stepping-stones to launch
itself at Godrich.

The steward had dropped the reins, but he had not had time to release the
string tying his sword into its scabbard, and the beastman was upon him while
the weapon was still undrawn. He tumbled over the back of the driving-seat, his
head catching the top of the iron arch which Sigurd had set in place to support
the awning. All of a sudden, the beastman was in the wagon with them, and there
could be no further doubt as to its monstrous nature.

The creature’s arms, though very hairy, were fundamentally humanoid, and its
shaggy legs too, although its huge feet were massively clawed. Its head was not
quite the head of a wolf, although it was certainly as furry; it had the fangs
and the slavering jaws, but its eyes were set further forward than a wolfs and
its ears were more like a cat’s. Its snout was more like a pig’s and it had two vestigial horns set atop its furrowed brow.

Had it only had claws and teeth for weapons the beastman would have been a
formidable opponent, but it also had an artificial weapon in each hand—a
thick-bladed knife in the right and a club in the left. Perhaps that was not
entirely to its advantage, though, because as Godrich sprawled, knocked silly by
the blow to his head, there might have been time enough to rip his throat out
with those awful teeth—but instead of doing so, the creature raised its knife
ready for a disembowelling blow.

That was all the interval Sigurd needed.

The beastmen had not made a sound, but Sigurd let loose a howl far longer and
far louder than any mere animal could have contrived, and his hand shot out to
seize the beastman that had invaded the wagon by its hairy throat. As he took
the creature’s neck in his grip Sigurd straightened his body, standing upright.

The canopy burst as the giant’s huge head and shoulders went through it, the
jagged rip spreading back and forth along the taut cloth to rend it in two—and
there was sufficient elasticity in the release to send both halves whipping
outwards into the faces of the beastmen who had run to either side of the wagon.

The beastman Sigurd held was as big as Reinmar, and more sturdily built, but
the giant lifted it off its feet with contemptuous ease, and crushed its throat
with his fingers. By the time his arm had straightened above his head he was
holding a mere trophy aloft, displaying it to the rain-filled sky and to the
beastmen which had recoiled from the whiplashing fragments of the canopy.

It was a truly awesome sight, but Reinmar could not help thinking that its
dignity was more than slightly ruined by the fact that the slain beastman’s
slackened bowels released a cargo of stinking shit, which showered Matthias
Vaedecker’s back as well as a dozen rattling casks. Vaedecker did not respond as
Reinmar would have; he was too busy taking aim with the second bolt that he had
fitted to his crossbow.

Reinmar had no doubt that the shot would have been a second hit had all else
been equal, but the terrified horses had realised by now that the source of
their fear had moved from front to flank, and they were determined to take the opportunity thus
presented. No one was holding the reins, but it would have done no good had
Reinmar managed to snatch them up. It would have taken more than merely human
strength to stop the horses bolting.

Godrich had lined up the wagon with the gap in the trees into which he had
intended to move in search of shelter, but the steward had not had time to
ascertain whether the ground was flat enough to be safely traversed. It now
transpired that it was not.

As the horses fled and the wagon followed, the whole assembly lurched into a
hole and out again, bouncing the casks of wine so vigorously that the ropes
holding them in place creaked under the strain. Reinmar, Ulick and Marcilla
bounced too, far more freely and far more painfully.

Matthias Vaedecker’s shot went wild, and even Sigurd lost his balance. Had
the cart been unladen the giant might have recovered his balance with a single
adjustment of his stance, but both his feet were planted in narrow spaces, with
casks and boxes to one side and fallen bodies everywhere. He lurched, he
staggered, and in the end he accepted that he could not stay where he was.

Rather than fall where he stood, the huge man threw the corpse of the
beastman over one side of the wagon and made use of what leverage he had to move
to the other, leaping into the air. He obviously intended to clear the side of
the cart and land two-footed, but the wagon’s lurch had cost him too much
co-ordination. His foot caught the side of the vehicle as he jumped, tripping
him, and he went over flailing his arms, obviously knowing that he was bound to
fall.

The wagon continued its forward course, the wheels hitting more ridges and
potholes, and not in any kind of order. Reinmar knew that it would be a miracle
if none of them broke—but he saw that there was a more urgent danger as the
horses careered into the trees. With no one to steer and no native understanding
of side-margins and turning arcs, nor anyway of communicating that would have
allowed them to change course in unison, the panic-stricken animals dragged the
left side of the cart against the bole of a tree. The tree’s rough bark scraped
the wagon along its entire length, splintering several of the timbers and
tearing away the fragments of the canopy that had flopped to that side. Both of the remaining iron bands were dislodged
from their sockets.

The iron struts rebounded like springs, soaring away in the opposite
direction before the runaway horses contrived a second collision, more brutal
than the first, between the right-hand side of the wagon and another tree-trunk.

This second collision stopped the wagon dead, and the pins to which the
horses’ harnesses were secured were ripped out of their wooden beds,
disconnecting the animals from the cart. One of the wagon’s shafts fractured,
and the horses disappeared into the wood, separating as they went. The ragged
remnants of their harnesses were not strong enough to bind them together.

For a moment, Reinmar was relieved, not merely for his cargo—which was
still secure—but for the four bodies that would have been very badly battered
and bruised had the headlong ride continued.

Then he remembered the beastmen.

Temporarily left behind when the horses lurched forward, the beastmen were
less than thirty yards in arrears, and now they were coming after their prey.
Their first target was the fallen Sigurd, who still had not risen after his
heavy fall.

Reinmar heard Matthias Vaedecker curse again, but the sergeant did not
hesitate over what needed to be done. With Godrich also out of action, at least
for the moment, there was no way that three of them could hold off eight or nine
beastmen. To stand any chance at all they needed Sigurd—and that meant they
had to defend Sigurd while he was down, until he had time to raise his huge bulk
up again and start lashing out with those massive fists.

Vaedecker threw his crossbow aside, drew his sword, and leapt down from the
back of the wagon. Then he charged, without waiting to see if anyone was
following where he led. As he charged he let loose a fearsome battle-cry, which
would certainly have give pause to a human enemy but did not seem to impress the
beastmen at all.

“Come on,” said Reinmar to Ulick, as he leapt down behind the soldier and
followed him into the fight. Like Vaedecker, he did not wait to see whether
Ulick would obey his summons, but he saw from the corner of his eye that the boy
had indeed followed him, even though he was only armed with a twisted piece of
rusty metal.

It was touch and go whether the beastmen would reach Sigurd’s fallen body
before Vaedecker did, and both parties put all the effort they could into the
winning of the race, with the result that it was a virtual tie.