Hammers of ulric, p.13
Hammers of Ulric, page 13
He saw Aric fall, gashed in the shoulder. Einholt and Lowenhertz leapt to block him, standing their ground as he pulled himself up again. Lowenhertz’s axe whistled in the cold air.
With wolf-fire in his blood, Ganz spun his borrowed hammer, used the haft to block a hard sword swing, and then slew his attacker with a sideways smash of the hammerhead.
‘For the Temple! For Ulric! White Company!’ he bellowed.
Across in the camp: pandemonium. Hammer held tight, Gruber tried to marshal the chaos.
‘Kaspen! Anspach! Get the Margrave and his people into cover by the wagons! The rest of you forward to fight!’
Screaming servants and crying children ran in every direction. Cook pots and fire hearths were upset and kicked over.
‘Damn it!’ Gruber cursed.
He saw Drakken limping into the centre of the camp as fast as he could manage. ‘My weapon! Any weapon!’ cried the young man hoarsely.
‘You’re more use to me here!’ Gruber shouted. ‘Get the children in a wagon. Keep their heads down!’
There was another scream, more piercing than before. Gruber wheeled and saw two dark warriors had burst into the encampment from the opposite direction to the main attack, a sneak pincer to get round the cordon. They charged in towards the wagons.
It was the Margrave’s wife who had screamed. She was in the open, trying to catch hold of her two terrified children. The nurse was by her side, trying to scoop the boys into her arms. The warriors bore down on them, swords raised.
Gruber raced forward, lashing out a one-handed hammer swing that shattered armour and knocked one of them to the earth. The other he met and blocked, glancing his hammer haft against the slashing blade once, twice, three times to ward off the deadly swings. By then, the first dark warrior was back on his feet.
Gruber dented the helm of the second one and sent him sprawling in time to meet the renewed attack of the first. He stared into the red-lit slits and met the furious assault, swinging a blow that smashed its shield. Then he stabbed hard with the butt of the haft, connecting with jaw. The foe went down and this time a well-placed blow ensured it would not rise again.
The second one was upright again now, intent on the Margrave’s wife once more.
With a roar, Gruber hurled his hammer. The great, spinning weapon swooshed across the clearing in flickering circles and broke the creature’s back.
Gruber crossed to the Margrave’s wife and helped her up. The nurse gathered up the children.
‘Get to the wagons!’ he hissed.
‘Th-thank you…’ she stammered.
‘They were hell-bent on getting to you,’ Gruber snarled, fixing her eyes with his. ‘What is it about you? Are you the jinx who brings this darkness down?’
‘No!’ she implored, horrified, ‘No!’
There was no time for debate. Gruber recovered his hammer and rejoined the fight.
‘They’re retreating!’ Anspach announced at last.
‘Thank the Wolf!’ murmured Ganz. The fight had been intense, and too close for comfort. Several of his men were wounded, and there were seven dark warriors twisted, skeletal and dead on the ground. The others, like the wraiths of fairy tales, melted away into the trees.
‘Regroup!’ Ganz told his men, ‘Let’s get inside the camp and build up the firewall. There’s a long time till dawn.’
‘Commander!’ Gruber was calling.
Ganz joined him. The warrior whose back Gruber had snapped was still alive, twitching and hissing like a reptile on the ground. The civilians stood round in a wide, fascinated horrified circle.
‘Clear these people aside!’ Ganz snapped to Dorff and Schiffer. He turned to Gruber. ‘I’m beginning to think Lowenhertz is right. We have something or someone these creatures want – that’s why they took the manor and now hound us.’
‘I agree. This was not a raid, this was a mission to retrieve. They were too direct, putting themselves at risk to get into the camp rather than harry us from a distance.’ Gruber took a deep breath. ‘I believe it’s part of the Margrave’s household, and I think I know what…’
‘You think it’s me,’ said a voice from behind them. It was the Margrave’s wife, clutching one of the sobbing children. ‘I don’t know what I’ve done to earn your mistrust, Sir Gruber. I can only imagine that you are threatened by me. All my life, my dark looks and lively manner have made men imagine me some she-devil, some brazen thing to be feared. Can I help my looks, or my appetite for life? Can I help the way I was made? I am no daemon. On my life – on the lives of my children, sirs! – I am not the root of this!’
Ganz looked over at his second-in-command. The older, white-haired man dropped his gaze to the earth.
‘Seems both of us have jumped to conclusions today, old man. Both of us wrong.’
‘You too?’ Gruber asked.
Ganz nodded. ‘Milady, take the children to cover in the wagons. We will finish this. Lowenhertz!’
The noble knight arrived. His chest plate and shoulder armour had been badly damaged in the fight and so he was stripped to his woollen pourpoint now.
‘Commander?’
‘You have learning, Lowenhertz… or so you like to tell me. How do we get information from our guest here?’
Lowenhertz looked down at the crippled dark one and sank to his haunches. He listened for a moment and shuddered. ‘I can make little out from its rasping… the language… perhaps it is the tongue of far Araby. There is one word it repeats…’ Lowenhertz thickly repeated the word back to the creature with distaste. It stirred and hissed and yelped. The White Wolf then muttered the low, guttural word again.
Ganz turned. ‘We’re getting nowhere…’
Lowenhertz tried the sentence again until the creature replied at last with a guttural response of his own.
‘I don’t understand him. The words are too strange.’ Lowenhertz tried harder, repeating the word. It was no good.
Then the creature reached out and with a bony hand drew a curved symbol in the dust.
‘What is that?’ asked Ganz.
‘I wish I knew,’ said Lowenhertz. ‘I cannot understand him. That picture makes no sense. What is that? A harvest moon? A crescent?’
‘It’s a claw,’ said Drakken suddenly, from behind them. ‘And I know where it is.’
The old nurse, Maris, backed away against the wagon, terror in her eyes and her hands clutched tight to the throat of her dress.
‘No!’ she said. ‘No! You shan’t have it!’
Ganz looked round at Drakken and Lowenhertz at his side.
‘She’s just the wetnurse,’ he said.
‘She has the amulet, shaped like a claw. She blessed me with it,’ Drakken said.
‘If it is what these creatures of darkness seek, lady, you must give it up for all our sakes,’ Lowenhertz firmly said.
‘This trinket my old dam gave me?’ stammered the old woman. ‘It’s always brought me luck.’
Gruber joined them. ‘This makes sense of it. Those warriors I fought… I thought they were after the Lady and her children, but they were after the nurse.’
The Margrave and his wife approached.
‘Please, sir!’ the old woman cried. ‘Make them stop this nonsense.’
‘Dear Maris,’ the lady pleaded, ‘you have always been kind to my children, so I will defend you from harm, but this is too important. Let us prove this. Give me the charm.’
Wizened hands shaking, the old woman produced the claw talisman and handed it to the Margrave’s wife. She turned and marched across to the stricken foe. Ganz made to stop her, but Gruber held him back.
‘She knows what she’s doing, that one,’ he told his commander.
‘Lenya told me the nurse had only been with them for a while. Her predecessor had fallen ill and she was brought in from far away,’ said Drakken.
Lowenhertz nodded. ‘If this malign charm has been in her family for some time they may have known nothing of its power. But it has brought them after her every step of the way. They have caught her scent – or the scent of the thing she owns.’
‘But what is it?’ asked Aric.
‘The talon of some dark daemon they worship? The shed nail of a god?’ Lowenhertz shrugged. ‘Who knows? Who wants to know?’
‘A man of learning like you?’ Ganz asked.
Lowenhertz shook his head. ‘There are some things better left un-known, commander.’
The Margrave’s wife showed the charm to the broken creature and then jumped back as it reared up, snarling and mewling, clawing at her.
Gruber slew it with a quick, deft blow.
‘There’s our proof,’ he stated.
Everyone froze as a keening sounded through the forest around them. The grave-smell of spice and dry bone wafted around them again.
‘They have the scent again, fresher than ever,’ said Lowenhertz. ‘They’re coming back.’
‘To arms!’ Gruber cried, rallying the men.
Ganz held up his hand. ‘We’d never take them. They have superior numbers and the night on their side. We barely drove them back before. There is only one way.’
The White Company and their civilian charges drew into a huddle at the centre of the firelight. Beyond the ring of flame, they saw the dark riders approach and heard their hooves. Dozens of red eyes glowed against the blackness, like infernal stars.
Ganz counted the dark shapes out beyond the fire. Once again, there were twenty, despite the number the Wolves had killed. He swore softly. ‘They will always return at full strength,’ he whispered to Gruber. ‘We will never wear them down. We cannot fight because they will overwhelm us. We cannot run because they will outstrip us. They are driven beings of the dark who will not stop until they have what they want.’
The foe stood beyond the flames, a ring of evil forms that circled the camp entirely. The sweet ashen smell was wretched.
‘Then what do we do? Fight to the last? Die in the name of Ulric?’ Gruber whispered.
‘That… or deny them,’ said Ganz. ‘Perhaps this is the only chance for survival we have…’
He took the charm and stepped forward so that the dark riders could surely see him. Then, before they could react, he set it on a rock, and swung Lowenhertz’s warhammer up and round in a powerful over-shoulder swing.
The riders screamed in horror with a single voice. The hammerhead crushed the talisman. There was a burst of light and a flash of green, eldritch flame. The blast knocked Ganz backwards and vaporised the head of the hammer.
The talisman was gone.
Red lightning, like electric blood, speared around the clearing horizontally, and there was a fierce hot wind. The wraith-like creatures shrieked as one, twisting, swirling in the air like flapping black rags until they were at last whisked up into the darkness of the night and were gone.
Four days’ gruelling drive brought them back to Middenheim. White Company escorted the Margrave’s party right to the Graf’s palace where they were to be cared for and tended. There were many partings now. As the Margrave effusively thanked Ganz time and again, Ganz found his eyes wandering the courtyard. He saw Drakken, sheepish and clumsy, kiss the feisty servant girl, Lenya, goodbye. Not for the last time, Ganz was sure. He saw Morgenstern and Anspach horseplaying with the children, and Aric consoling the frightened old woman Maris. And Gruber stood with the Lady Margrave.
‘Forgive me, lady,’ Gruber was saying softly. ‘I mistrusted you, and that is my shame.’
‘You saved my life, Sir Gruber. I’d say we’re even.’ She smiled and his heart winced again.
‘If only you were younger and I was free,’ she murmured, saying what he was thinking. Their eyes met, fierce for a second, then they both laughed aloud and said farewell.
In the great darkness of the Temple, the Wolf Choirs were singing low, heartfelt hymns of thanks. The voices hung in the still, cool air.
Lowenhertz was knelt in prayer in front of the main altar. He looked up as he heard the footsteps come up behind him.
Ganz looked down at him. In his hands, he held an object wrapped in an old wolf pelt.
‘The Panthers will be most aggrieved we stole their thunder,’ Lowenhertz said as he rose.
Ganz nodded. ‘They’ll live. And to think we thought we were going to miss the action.’
There was a long pause. Ganz fixed him with a gaze. ‘I suppose you’ll be transferring again now.’
Lowenhertz shrugged. ‘Not if you’ll let me stay, commander. I have looked for my place for a long time. Perhaps it is here in this company of Wolves.’
‘Then welcome to White Company, warrior,’ Ganz said. ‘I will be proud to have you in my command.’
‘I must see the priest-armourers,’ Lowenhertz said. ‘I need a new hammer consecrated.’
Ganz held out the pelt bundle. ‘No need. Ar-Ulric himself allowed me to take this from the Temple reliquary.’
The old warhammer in the pelt was magnificent and covered in a patina of age and use. ‘It belonged to a Wolf called von Glick. One of the bravest, a fellow and a friend, sorely missed. It would please him for his hammer to be carried by a Wolf again, rather than tarnish in an old relic chest.’
Lowenhertz took the venerable weapon and tested its weight and balance. ‘It will be an honour,’ he said.
Around them, the song of the Wolf Choir rose up and soared, out of the great temple and beyond into the skies above Middenheim like smoke.
THE BRETONNIAN CONNECTION
It was one of the workmen who told us, running over from the charred shell of the Temple of Morr where he had been working. The news must have been all over Middenheim by the time we heard it, retold from marketplace to coffee house, from inn to slum, shouted from window to window high above the twisted streets and steep alleys. It would be on everyone’s lips by now. We stopped digging, rested on our spades and pickaxes, and stood in the half-finished grave as we contemplated what we had learned. It was the start of a spring day in the City of the White Wolf, and death was in the air.
Spring comes late to Middenheim. The ground in Morrspark stays frozen for months. Digging graves is hard and we welcomed the rest, although there would be more work soon. Countess Sophia of Altdorf, courtier and Imperial Plenipotentate to the Graf of Middenheim, former wife of the Dauphin of Bretonnia, beauty, socialite, diplomat, patroness of orphans and the diseased, had been murdered in her bed. We felt more than sorrow at the death. We were priests of Morr, God of Death. This would be a busy week for us.
We looked at each other, placed our tools on the ground and walked through the gravestones towards the Temple of Morr where it stood at the centre of the park, swathed in scaffolding as if wrapped in bandages and splints. There were people crossing the park, hundreds of them in ones and twos, heading towards it as well. Some of them were crying.
The recent fire had burned the temple almost to the ground, but the underground Factorum and the catacombs, where the wealthy dead rested, were intact and in use. All of Morr’s priests in Middenheim – four of us, plus one from the Temple of Shallya assisting while the priests who had died in the fire were replaced – gathered in the darkness of the Factorum, the ritual room where the dead are prepared for burial, cremation or the long drop off the Cliff of Sighs to the rocks far below. Corpses lay on two of the granite slabs and the doorway to the burial vaults stood, black and forbidding, like the mouth of the underworld. The room was filled with the smells of death, embalming oils and tension.
Father Ralf came slowly down the steps into the Factorum, clearing his throat noisily. The High Priest’s chain of office hung heavily around his neck, and he fingered it as he looked at us. Approaching sixty and with bad arthritis, he had never expected to rise as high as this job and didn’t particularly welcome it, but there had been nobody else. All the other priests were too young, too inexperienced, or me. He didn’t like me. That was fine: nobody liked me. Many days, I didn’t like myself either.
‘I’ll keep this short,’ he started. ‘I’m sure we’re all shocked by the death of Countess Sophia. But the job of the Temple is to provide moral and spiritual reassurance at a time like this. We must be strong, and be seen to be strong.’ He broke off for a fit of coughing, then resumed: ‘I myself will see to the late Countess’s funeral arrangements. Pieter, Wolmar and Olaf, you stay in the temple. There will be many mourners, and they will need your presence and counsel. The rest of you will attend to normal business.’
‘The rest of us,’ I said, ‘is two of us.’ I gestured at myself and Brother Jakob. ‘And the Countess’s murder won’t stop ordinary people from dying.’
Father Ralf glowered at me with his rheumy eyes. ‘These are exceptional times, brother. If you had not burned down the temple, then perhaps your workload would be lighter.’
I thought about reminding him that I’d burnt it down partly to save his life, but it wasn’t a good idea. Not today, not with this mood in the air. Ralf might be inexperienced at running things, but he was keen to make his authority felt, and prone to over-react. Best to let it go. ‘So,’ I asked, ‘should Brother Jakob and I return to grave-digging, or is there more pressing business for us?’
‘Jakob will finish the grave. As for you, a flophouse in the Altquartier, Sargant’s, has sent word that a drunk beggar has died there. You seem to have a fondness for such people: deal with the body. And brother, don’t make a mountain out of it. We have more important things to worry about.’
I waited while the others left, filing up the stairs into the daylight and the crowd of mourners outside. Jakob hung back as well. I felt sorry for him. He’d only been at the temple a few months, and the upheavals which had followed the death of Father Zimmerman had unnerved him. Now there was something really big happening, and instead of being allowed to help he had been sent to dig graves.
