Mandred saw the Grand Master directing what he thought was a subtle signal to his knights. The prince watched as two of the warriors edged their horses closer to his own. Glancing at the rising portcullis, Mandred dug his spurs into the flanks of his warhorse.
‘Let it never be said the Prince of Middenheim asked his subjects to do something he was afraid to do himself!’ he shouted as his horse bolted forwards. Crouching his body low against the animal’s neck, he was just able to clear the spikes jutting from the underside of the rising gate.
Grand Master Arno gawped after him in astonishment, then roared at his knights. ‘You heard his grace!’ Arno bellowed. ‘Follow him to hell or victory!’ Spurring his own horse onwards, the Grand Master copied Mandred’s example, clearing the gate as it was still being raised. Behind him he could hear the thunder of hooves as the rest of the knights started after him.
The broadness of the eastern causeway gave the knights room to form ranks as they charged out from the gate. Above them, from the walls, the clarions sounded once more, singing out into the night, announcing the wrath of man to his inhuman enemies.
The beastmen had reached the hovels of Warrenburg, rampaging through the confused huddle of shacks with feral bloodlust. If they heard the trumpets sound, the brutes were too lost in their animalistic rage to care. The primordial hatred of beastkin for man burned in their savage hearts, feeding the fires of their fury. Not content to simply kill their victims, the raging beastmen mauled their victims, ripping them to shreds with tooth and claw. In their fury, they glutted themselves in an orgy of destruction.
Into this vision of atrocity, the warriors of Middenheim charged. The tents and hovels of Warrenburg crumpled beneath the pounding hooves of their steeds, parting before them like wheat before a scythe. Refugees scattered before the knights, but the blood-mad beastkin stood transfixed, their savage brains flung into confusion by the sudden appearance of the warriors.
Warhammers came smashing down into horned heads, great axes clove through furred flesh, iron-shod hooves crushed bestial bodies. The name of Ulric rose in a fierce war cry as the White Wolves brought the vengeance of man to the marauding forest beasts.
Mandred was in the thick of the battle, spurring his huge destrier into the heart of the shantytown. His sword slashed across the face of a fawn-faced beastling as it gorged upon the body of a slaughtered woman. The creature clapped furry claws to its mangled eyes, bleating in agony. Another sweep of the prince’s sword opened the monster’s throat and sent it crashing into the snow.
A second beastman rushed at Mandred, a wiry thing with ox-horns and an almost human visage. It brandished a dismembered human leg, wielding the macabre trophy like a club. Mandred waited for the thing to come close, then put spurs to his warhorse, urging the destrier to rear up, to lash out with its front hooves. The flailing legs struck the charging beastman, hurling it back and snapping its ribs.
A braying war cry was Mandred’s first warning that a third beastman was running towards him. It was a huge goat-headed monster, a rusted broadaxe clenched in its paws. The brute was charging towards him from the flank, at an angle where the prince wouldn’t be able to reach it with his blade. He tried to wheel his horse around to meet the monster’s rush, but even as he did so, he knew it would be too late.
Suddenly another rider appeared, crashing through the wall of a shack. The beastman was caught beneath the warhorse’s pounding hooves, smashed to the ground and crushed underfoot. Mandred could hear its bones snap as the horse charged over it. He opened his mouth to thank his rescuer, then laughed in disbelief as he recognised the rider.
‘Franz!’ the prince exclaimed. ‘What are you doing here? You should be in bed tending your wounds!’
‘I don’t need to stand to ride a horse, your grace,’ the bodyguard answered. He rubbed his hand over his bald scalp. ‘It was wrong to leave me behind,’ the knight said.
‘I was afraid you might tell my father,’ Mandred said.
Franz smiled and shook his head. ‘The Graf will learn about this foolishness soon enough.’ He looked away, peering through the nest of shacks and tents. ‘It seems they’re running, your grace. We’ll have to hurry if we want to claim a respectable contribution to the battle.’
Mandred grinned and brought his horse around. ‘Let’s make them wish they’d stayed in the Drakwald.’
The battle was a short but bloody affair. Fully a quarter of the shantytown was trampled by the time the beastkin broke and fled. At least a hundred of the brutes had fallen before the charge, but behind them they left scores of dead and dying refugees.
The herd had been broken, however. Grand Master Arno didn’t think they’d be back. It would take them a long time to lick their wounds and build up their courage. By then, perhaps, the threat of the Black Plague would be diminished enough for the Graf to allow the refugees inside Middenheim.
Jubilation at their victory was tempered by the knowledge that it was a pyrrhic victory. Everywhere in the shantytown the marks of plague were in evidence. Dead bodies swollen with buboes, living wretches with black treacle oozing from their pores. Contagion was everywhere, the stink of disease omnipresent.
The knights knew that through their bold charge they had exposed themselves to the plague. Somewhere in the squalor of Warrenburg, the source of the disease lurked. None of the warriors could say for certain that its deathly touch had not reached out for him. None of them knew if he carried the seed of the Black Plague in his body.
Mandred looked up the causeway, staring at the grim edifice of the bastion. That would be their home now, locked away behind those grim grey walls. There they would await the judgement of the gods, wait to see if the justice of their cause was enough to guard them against the clutch of the plague.
A sombre silence gripped the knights as they slowly rode towards the bastion. Each of them wondered if he would ever leave the place alive.
Mandred struggled to find some words of reassurance to bolster their flagging spirits, but nothing seemed profound enough to honour their sacrifice. It was a sacrifice he was proud to share with such men.
The sound of a horn cause Mandred to turn his gaze away from the bastion. For a moment the fear that the beastmen had regrouped flashed through his mind. Then he recognised the notes of his father’s hunting horn. Raising his gaze to the East Gate, he was shocked to see a company of cavalry slowly trotting their way onto the causeway.
At their head, resplendent in his blue cloak and gilded armour, rode Graf Gunthar.
Talabecland
Vorhexen, 1111
Reiksmarshal Everhardt Johannes Boeckenfoerde rose from his chair as his three visitors were bowed into the general’s tent. His adjutant, Nehring, offered to take the heavy cloaks from the visitors, but they declined his overtures with a brusque shrug.
‘We have come from Altdorf,’ the foremost of the men announced.
The Reiksmarshal gave Nehring a warning look. ‘It must have been a long and unpleasant ride,’ he said. ‘Perhaps not as unpleasant as moving an army under these conditions…’
‘You have been implicated in a plot against His Imperial Majesty Emperor Boris,’ the cloaked man continued. The three men began to fan out across the tent. ‘His Imperial Majesty offers you a choice. You can return to Altdorf, stand trial and be executed. Or you can remain here and fall on your own sword.’ A cruel smile flickered on the man’s face. ‘If you choose execution, Commander Kreyssig asks you to remember the traitor von Schomberg.’
The cruelty in Boeckenfoerde’s smile matched that of the Kaiserjaeger officer. ‘I have heard about the Grand Master. A shameful business. Only an animal would take pride in such work.’