“Then, the greenskins would have done it for him,” Gerhardt said. “Whether it
was orcs or goblins, any greenskins that came through here would have destroyed
anything they couldn’t take with them. I don’t know whether they eat wheat, but
if they don’t, they wouldn’t have left it behind for us to find it. After they’d
finished stealing everything they wanted, they’d set fire to the rest. It’s the
way they do things. What do you say, sergeant?”
All eyes turned to Sergeant Bohlen. The sergeant had been
uncharacteristically quiet throughout the discussion. Looking at him, Dieter saw
an unsettling degree of uncertainty in the sergeant’s eyes. It was there for
only a moment before Bohlen covered himself by turning to gaze thoughtfully at
the wheat field. He stared intently at the swaying crops as though considering
the matter at length.
Abruptly Dieter realised the sergeant was unsure of his ground. Usually, this
kind of decision-making was the task of the company commander. As a sergeant, it
was Bohlen’s job to make sure that his commanding officer’s orders were enacted;
he was not normally responsible for the fate of an entire regiment. In the
command void left in the wake of the army’s defeat by the orcs, Bohlen had been
forced into an unfamiliar position. Dieter could only hope he came to grips with
his new responsibilities as quickly as possible.
“Gerhardt is right,” Bohlen said, at last. “The situation is suspicious.
We’ll send scouts to check the edge of the forest all around the field to make
sure there are no greenskins lying in wait. We’ll only enter the field itself if
it turns out the surroundings are clear. Any questions?”
“It is a good plan, sergeant.” Rieger had been silent, but he suddenly spoke
and pointed towards the field. “But I don’t think we’ll have to send out scouts
to see if there are any greenskins around. Someone else has decided to do it the
easy way—by offering themselves as
bait.”
Following the direction of Rieger’s gesture, Dieter saw a party of men had
emerged from the forest and entered the field. There were about forty or fifty
of them. At first, seeing the ragged state of their clothing, he mistook them
for a group of flagellants. Looking more closely, he realised they were
soldiers, their uniforms much the worse for wear after weeks on the road.
Although they wore the red and green livery of Hochland, he did not recognise
their regiment. He could see them well enough, however, to spot the long barrels
of their weapons. They were handgunners. Apparently, they had been as captivated
at the presence of the wheat field, and its promise of an extended food supply,
as the Scarlets.
Hurrying deeper into the field, the handgunners began to forage among the
crops. Running their hands along the stalks of wheat, they started to pull away
grain in great handfuls, depositing the golden treasure in the dozens of
ammunition pouches that each man carried dangling from a bandolier across his
chest.
“Fools,” Gerhardt said. “They obviously haven’t scouted the area—otherwise,
they’d have found us here. Don’t they realise they could be wandering right into
an ambush?”
Even as Gerhardt spoke, a movement among the tall stalks of wheat indicated
he was not wrong in his fears. A few hundred paces away from the handgunners,
the wheat started moving violently, swaying in a direction at odds with the
breeze. Too late, one of the handgunners noticed the movement. He called out to
his fellows, even as a thin piercing note rose high on the wind.
It was some kind of signal. All around the handgunners, the wheat started
moving. Catching a glimpse of green skin and furred bodies among the sea of
wheat, Dieter realised the ambushers were goblin wolf riders.
The handgunners had started running, but the trap was already closing. Swift
shapes furrowed towards them through the wheat like sharks in a golden sea.
“We have to help them!” Bohlen shouted.
Confronted by a situation of imminent danger, he was back to the sergeant of
old. His voice rang out in clear commanding tones, bringing the rest of the
regiment running to his call.
“Forward!” Drawing his sword, Bohlen stepped out into the field with Dieter
and the others at his side. “Forward the 3rd! Forward the Scarlets!”
It was the first time Dieter had heard those words in many weeks. They
thrilled him. For a moment, it was as though all the fears and anxieties of the
last few weeks had fallen away. He was a soldier again. He was a Scarlet, not a
member of a broken regiment, nor a coward running for his life.
Then, as he joined the others in charging across the wheat field, he
remembered where he was. His regiment’s numbers were depleted. The last weeks
had taken their toll. They were exhausted men. Worse, they were facing an
unknown number of the enemy. For all they knew, there might be
thousands
of goblins hiding in the wheat field.
Somehow, it did not matter. From the instant he had heard the call to arms,
he was a Scarlet once more. Though he might well face death, he would do his
duty.
“Forward the 3rd!” he took up the cry with the other men of the regiment as
they charged across the wheat field’s golden expanse. “Forward for Hochland!
Forward the Scarlets!”
Perhaps the enemy’s blood was up, or the wolf riders miscalculated the number
of soldiers charging towards them. Either way, instead of fleeing, the goblins
continued pursuing the handgunners even after the Scarlets broke from cover.
Meanwhile, seeing the Scarlets appear from the forest to charge to their aid,
the handgunners began to angle their run toward their fellow Hochlanders and
safety. Here and there, a man paused to fire a snap shot toward the pursuing
wolf riders, but for the most part the handgunners sprinted through the field,
hoping to reach the Scarlets before the enemy caught up with them.
Some of the men did not make it. As the goblins closed on them, their wolfish
mounts pounced on fleeing men, snapping jaws hamstringing their prey and leaving
them open for the kill. Others were shot down in their tracks by goblin arrows.
By the time the Scarlets closed to melee range with the enemy, as many as a
third of the handgunners were already dead or wounded.
Outraged to see their fellow Hochlanders fall before they could get close
enough to save them, the Scarlets tore into the wolf riders with a savage
ferocity. Goblins were pulled from their saddles and cut to pieces, their wolves
brought down by dozens of flashing blades.
It was over quickly. Realising they were heavily outnumbered, the surviving
wolf riders turned and ran.
Some of the handgunners fired their weapons, bringing down their targets, but
the wolf riders quickly escaped while their enemies on foot could only curse
after them.
In the aftermath, the field seemed almost preternaturally quiet. The two
groups of soldiers regarded each other warily. Much of the crop around them had
either been torn from its roots or trampled to the ground by the brief intensity
of the fighting. In places, the ground and the golden wheat were stained red
with blood.
“Who’s in charge here?” Bohlen demanded, breaking the silence. He gazed back
and forth among the faces of the handgunners, waiting to see which of them
answered.
“I am.”
A tall, rangy figure strode forward. He was clad in the same uniform as the
rest of his fellows, but in place of a handgun he carried the greater length of
a Hochland long rifle. Staring at the newcomer, Dieter thought he had the look
of a huntsman about him. He had a hawkish nose that put Dieter in mind of a bird
of prey, but it was more than that. The man’s grey eyes had a fixed and distant
quality to them, as though he was accustomed to seeing the world from over the
sights of a gun.
“At least, I suppose I am,” the man shrugged, but from him it did not appear
a gesture which indicated any degree of weakness or uncertainty. “Our captain
and all our sergeants are dead. I guess most everyone is dead when you come to
it. I’m Markus Brucker. Marksman. I shoot things.”
He smiled in greeting, but Bohlen ignored it.
“What the hell did you think you were doing—entering the field without
scouting it first?” the sergeant asked angrily. “You walked right into the wolf
riders’ trap. You do realise, if it wasn’t for the fact we were here to save
you, all your men would be dead by now.”
“I realise it,” Brucker responded. “And I am grateful. We all are. As for
entering the field… I counselled caution, but the others were so hungry they
decided to go into the field and to hell with the consequences. As I say, I’m a
marksman. I shoot things. I’m not a sergeant. I don’t have what it takes to
command a group of men. It’s part of the reason I’m glad you’re here.”
“All right. We’ll leave it there, then. For now.”
As quickly as it began, the storm of Bohlen’s anger had abated. He looked at
the scene around them as though considering his options.
“Help them with their wounded,” Bohlen said, gesturing his men forward. “I
want us ready to get under way again as quickly as possible. All of us—that’s
handgunners and Scarlets. Anyone who’s not helping the wounded can take a couple
of minutes to gather up as much grain as they can. But, after that, we’re
leaving. We can’t afford to hang about gleaning food. The goblins that escaped
are bound to bring back reinforcements. I want us to be long gone from the area
by the time they get here.”
“You didn’t tell me what your regiment is called?” Bohlen turned back to
Brucker as the men around them hurried to their tasks.
“The Hergig Long Gunners,” Brucker replied. He glanced at the men around him.
In all, perhaps twenty of the handgunners had survived. “Not much of a regiment
anymore, of course. And, in case you’re wondering, we’re short of lead balls
and black powder, not to mention food and water. We’re short of pretty much
everything it takes to survive.”
“Then, it’s a good thing we found you. For
you,
I mean. We may not
have lead balls, but we’ve got the other kind—the kind it really takes to
survive when everything is against you.”
Bohlen fixed the man with a steely gaze.
“Welcome, Markus Brucker, marksman. Welcome to the Scarlets.”
“Join the Count’s army and you are set for life,” Hoist said, making no
effort to hide his foul humour. “That’s what the recruiting sergeant told me,
all those years ago when he came to our town. Join the Count’s army and freeze
to death would be more like it. Join the army and eat a meal of raw wheat. Sleep
under the stars without a blanket or camp fire. Wait for the greenskins to come
and kill you. You can bet the recruiting sergeant forgot to mention any of those
things in his speech.”
“And, no doubt, you are planning your vengeance?” Rieger asked sarcastically.
“Any minute now, you’ll tell us you remember the man’s face. If you ever see him
again, you’ll kick his arse from here to Hergig and back again, stopping only to
have lunch at a favoured hostelry while you leave him tied to a hitching post,
out in the rain. That’s the way you usually end it when you, launch into one of
your diatribes on the Count’s recruiters and their lack of truthfulness.”
“Hmm, maybe; it depends,” Hoist said doubtfully. “What’s a diatribe?”
“A long, bitter speech criticising something or someone.”
“Really? So that’s what this is, then? Ah, the value of an education. The
next time you’re in Hergig, you should remember to thank whichever brothel
keeper taught you that one.”
“It wasn’t a brothel keeper,” Rieger told him. “It was a priest. Although,
frankly, given the old man’s morals, it was difficult to tell the difference at
times.”
“Shut up the pair of you,” Gerhardt interrupted. “Or at least quieten it
down. Some of us are trying to sleep.”
They were lying out beneath the stars. In the summers of his childhood, when
the weather had been hot and humid, Dieter had sometimes climbed to the roof of
the mill where he lived with Helmut Schau and his family, to sleep there and
escape the heat.
There had been no such imperative operating on this night. In common with the
rest of the men in the regiment, whether they complained of it or not, Dieter
was cold. He was shivering. In an effort to conserve warmth, he rolled his body
into a ball under his cloak and tried to wriggle himself into a comfortable
position on the cold, hard ground. It made very little difference.
Two nights had passed since their encounter with the handgunners at the wheat
field. Markus Brucker and his men had joined the Scarlets in their journey
southwards, but their presence did not account for the fact the last two nights
had been the most miserable Dieter had ever known. At least, not directly.
Having been unable to stop most of the wolf riders from escaping after the
skirmish in the wheat field, the Scarlets and their handgunner allies had been
forced into an even more desperate situation than they had been before.
Wary of attracting the attention of any new scouts the greenskins might have
sent out to hunt them down, they could no longer risk lighting a fire at night
to either cook their food or warm their bodies. In its place, on each of the
last two nights, the soldiers had been forced to bed down in the forest after a
meal of uncooked grain. Without blankets or tents to shield them from the cold
it had been a miserable experience.
If there was one bright spot in the otherwise gloomy situation, it was that
it was not yet winter. The autumn nights might be chilly, but Dieter would not
have liked to camp out later in the year. The winters in Hochland could be
notoriously harsh, the northern winds bringing down heavy snows from Kislev and
the Middle Mountains.
All in all, he supposed things could have been worse. Still, he knew better
than to try and share that particular insight with his comrades. If his time
among the Scarlets had taught him nothing else, it was that all foot soldiers
were inveterate complainers. Granted, given recent events, they had plenty of
reasons for a sour disposition, but Dieter suspected some among his fellow
soldiers would have complained even if they had a roof over their heads and warm
food in their bellies.