Suq of Zuwarah, Araby, Sigmarstag 9. Nachthexen
The children that milled around James Andrea Corradi were clad only in long shirts and either barefooted or using sandals. The urchins were still not suffering despite the season. The harbor and city of Zuwarrah was so close to the equator that the temperatures were quite balmy, this went double for the close confines of the Suq. Inside the city the alleys and passageways were already so small that it was more like a huge building in which some corridors had no roof, but the Suq was hell for any claustrophobe. The covered market was chock-full of stands selling everything from anywhere. The smell of spices, exotic foods, leather and hundreds of badly washed humans could be overwhelming.
Children learn languages with frightening speed and the ones that made a danced all around the legionary were no exception. Their Reiksspiel was understandable enough, even if the many sales pitches shouted at the same time could be confusing.
"Hey Oberfeldwebel, why do you still have a Cordura pistol holster when you could have a hand-tooled leather one?"
"Herr Oberfeldwebel, when you go into the desert you need a fine scarf-I can show you.."
"I can show you the best jewelry Sir, makes you big boss with the ladies."
James made doubly sure that his sidearm was still secure and that his valuables were indeed in places that would be hard to reach. He also no longer tried to correct the kids who knew fully well that he was Feldwebel-Sergeant, not Oberfeldwebel-Staff Sergeant but automatically promoted every soldier one rank.
"Sarge-I have a beautiful sister who is interested in such a valiant soldier as you.."
Children learn language with great speed. Here they also learned things that according the legionary should currently beyond their reach.
He went to a dealer he had already used a couple of times-the field rations issued to the Foreign legion were quite uninspired when it came to spices-which reduced the amount of haggling necessary. The owner of the stall offered a huge cushion and a glass of sweetened peppermint tea for his customer while an apprentice packed the NCO´s purchases.
"I would be honored to share a glass of tea with you, valiant soldier."
"I would be honored to do that. Peace be upon you.."
"Abdul Asass at you service Sergeant Corradi and peace be upon you."
Both men raise the tiny glasses, drank the scalding liquid.
"I have seen that the Allemany have sent new soldiers to guard their enclave valiant soldier?"
"Then you have seen right honored Asass. May I inquire about your station?"
"I am but a traveler and trader honored Corradi. Yet I see and hear many things and sometimes I do not trade stories and things that others heard and might find useful."
"It pains to say that I can only divulge what I am allowed trader."
"It is the wise man who knows when to speak and when to remain silent. And yet-what is that change?"
"The garrison was taken over by the 13th demi-brigade of the Foreign Legion. The Legion recruits soldiers who are not Germans and who will serve abroad for longer times."
"So you are mercenaries?"
"We only work for one employer-so no. We are Germany`s soldiers, just not German citizens-yet."
"Ah, I see. Now of course I am just a poor trader and do not have such interesting experiences to regale you, but I hear tales of a caravan that travels around our fair city, but never enters. Of riders who never make camp at night with others and who never buy food or drink."
"That is an interesting tale. Where would a curious person find such a caravan?"
Oh, from what rumors I hear they make their ways mostly north of your great harbor and your ..what do you call it Fort?"
"Fort Zinderneuf, yes. Now that were an interesting tale for a curious person. Which my Captain might well be."
"Then your Captain is surely a wise leader."
"I surely hope so honored Asass."
There was some small talk to follow before both men went their ways.
"Abdul Asass" watched the legionary make his way through the Suq. Usually he went by the then name Rachid al Habbas, assistant to the Wesir. The Sultan of Zuwarrah, peace be upon him, came from an impressive lineage of wise men and valiant soldiers, but alas the Sultan was not like them. More interested in fast horses and comely wenches he had no interest to look into what might be potential threats to his realm. That the Germans virtually guaranteed the safety of the Emirate as long as they could keep their harbor and the few miles of desert they so expensively rented made this a folly that the Sultans relatives were willing to let slide. Yet this was not wise to ignore such a possible threat and if one could use the Germans to take care of it so much the better.
University of Technology of Compigne, 5. January, 2015
The room was small, fully of scruffy furniture and had no windows, so it was no surprise the university has assigned this room as the meeting room for the lowly "doctorantes". Two other budding scientists were inside with Yvette and were looking at her with interest.
Marie Dupond, blonde, chubby and cute looked at Yvette with a smile-both had known each other for years now and had shared an apartment for a while. Pierre Leboef balanced his chair precariously while resting his back against a wall below a faded "Je suis Charlie" poster. Slender, clad in nondescript clothing he sported a pasty skin that told a story of too many hours spent in labs. Yvette had invited both with a rather cryptic message which was really unlike her.
"Ca va belle?" Pierre was nice and definitively clever-yet his come-ons could stand some polishing. Ignoring it as usual the doctorante placed a heavy metal container on the table between them and unscrewed it.
"Thanks for coming. You probably ask yourself what I did with all the crude oil I required the last months and why I have asked you to come and keep mum about what I am to show you. Fact is that I am not sure myself what I have found and if we keep this close to our chests for a while we can either avoid a lot of embracement or share an incredible discovery."
"You like to keep up the suspense dear, don`t you?"
"Give me a sec Marie."
Yvette pulled a glass tube from the container that was normally used to store radioactive materials. It contained a small spec of something green-something glowing green.
"Last year I found a bit of this inside an Erlenmeyer that I should have cleaned off earlier. It could only come from the bunker fuel we had been analyzing then, so I looked whether this stuff is in the crude we get from the wasteland or if this was just a fluke. So I started to break down a lot of oil and found that this stuff in indeed in all the crude we extract from our new lands, actually about 0.89 microgram per kilogram. But I am totally at a loss at what this might be and what it does, this is where you two come in.
Pierre, can you use your lab to have a look at this without much publicity?"
"Certainly, I can have a go at it next weekend or the one after that. But couldn`t it be bioluminescence?"
"Nope, no cell structure I could see and the spectrometer ruled out the usual suspects. Actually it gave off some very funny numbers, but that is beside the point."
"TCPO maybe?"
"Non Marie-I checked for that too and a couple of other substances-no dice."
"You checked for radiation?"
"Yes I did-nothing my lab can detect. Fun part is-when you irritate the little sucker it will radiate more light and consumes itself-but I do not find enough ashes to make up for the lost mass and certainly not enough radiated energy to explain the loss-at least none that I would be able to detect."
"What?"
de Cruzieres, France, 11. January 2016
The moon was bright enough to provide enough light for work, so the group of men who dug at the barely-recognizable ruins of an old mill had no need to use lamps which would just draw attention to them, something they wanted to avoid. The moon illuminated the fields and wooded hills between them and the small town that occupied the valley.
The men all wore dark clothing and despite working hard there was none of the small talk or curses that one would expect from such activities. While working quickly the men did their best to be rather careful about it. They had exposed a part of the old mills foundation and two of them held a tarpaulin above the small hole they had made. Inside two other finally used a flashlight to illuminate the stones in front of them. The foundation consisted of granite stones of all sizes which had probably been dug from the fields around them in centuries past. All were quite ordinary except for one which revealed a small cross when the loam on it was brushed away. The two men looked at each other and grinned went for their crowbars.
It took them 20 minutes, a lot of sweat and a bloody knuckle before that stone could be worried from its place, the next ones were far easier. They exposed a cavity inside the foundation that held several wooden boxes of obvious age. All of them were carefully extracted an brought to a nearly Citroen van. Both it and another one for most of the men drove away without any lights, only switching them on when they arrived at the next road.
Inside the first van Alan Crowlair looked lovingly at the chests. All of them bore a cross pateè, two of them also a coat of arms with two crosses and two stripes. The coat of arms of Jacques de Molais, the last Templar Grand Master.
30 Kilometers from Zuwarah, Araby, Angertag, 15. Nachthexen
Many people think that a desert is endless dunes of sand shifting as the Winds dictate. That is not so-many deserts are made up from barren rock or stony plains, often marred by dry riverbeds, so called wadi. James Corradi was on the lid of one of them and watched a watcher.
A group of camel riders had made their camp in the shadows of a cliff. They were covered from head to toe in beige and off-white clothes, leaving only a slit for the eyes. This protected from the ever-present sun as well as keeping them from sweating too much. The camels they used bore nothing that looked like trade goods but their riders an assortment of well-used melee weapons and some bows. Desert Raiders by the look of them, the kind that usually preyed on caravans.
Two of their number were sitting cross-legged at a cliffs edge and surveyed the landscape before them. There was quite a lot to see-the old city and harbor of Zuwarah, the new oil terminal, the construction site that would become an Liquid Natural Gas Terminal, the German enclave and on top the renamed Fort Zinderneuf.
The contrast between the old-style Arabian city and the modern sites built through the last years in an Manhattan-Project-level effort was striking. Whitewashed clay and stone against steel and concrete, alleyways barely perceptible from here against four-lane blacktops, slender towers and colorful ornamentation against industrial functionality and government ugly.
The potential raiders were probably interested in the defenses of both and the contrasts were at least as pronounced in that regard. High walls, slender towers and huge gates looked far more imposing than barbed wire and low-slung bunkers. From what the legionary could see the camel riders watched the German installations, not the Araby town. If these were not a scouting party then neither the Arabs nor the Germans had much to fear. Maybe they were scouting for caravans to rob. If so they would not like the experience as the Legion escorted all Caravans to the first oasis with armed trucks. This had increased the already considerable trade volume handled by Zuwarah considerably.
As the raiders did only watch and those not observing did their best to rest observing them was a rather boring exercise. James squad rotated in position while not very much happened. When night came with all the suddenness of the tropics the NCO crawled forward together with private Leif Holgerson. The former Norscan had the hardest time to adjust to the desert climate and so James had chosen him for the first night shift. The private lifted a NVD mounted on a small tripod to the rim of the wadi and pointed it at the camel riders.
James was surprised when the private signaled him to come and watch himself. As any sound would have carried very well it took him a while to make sense of Leif`s excitement. The Night Vision Device worked on starlight and infrared. The camels and the rocks that had warmed in the sun -it were just the camel riders themselves that had the same temperature than the desert air.
"Capitol" Cafe-Restaurant, Lüneburg, Germany
Evening was falling over Lüneburg with Günter Koch drowning his sorrow in hot cocoa, both white and dark. He never drank much alcohol anyway, but for sorcerers the rules were more strict. Only Chaos sorcerers contemplated drinking alcohol when frustrated or down.
The excursion had begun so well. Magical education in Germany was still based mostly on and given by Empire Orders. There had been some influx of German ideas in the last 4 years, which the Imperials had incorporated into their own studies, but generally the German pupils were schooled like Empire mages. Among these first batches of German sorcerers, some were trained for teaching others, but it would still be some years in the future, before the first German mages could really teach.
So some parts of the curriculum were slightly anachronistic, but still a fixed part of the training. One such part was learning to call on a mount for fleeing, transport or attack. In Germany with all the methods of travel, this was rather useless, but in foreign lands this ability could be worthy of gold. In the Empire this training was done in the wilderness, to prevent already trained horses from answering the call.
Since the only true wilderness in Germany were the new territories in the East and West, like most of Pommern or Neupreußen, first the exercise was planed for there, but in the end, another version was used due to the mostly lacjing infrastructure.
One kind of immigration Germany could not really stop. Those of Flora and Fauna. While some species of Earth origin spread out into the Old World, mostly there was immigration of Warhammer species into Germany. Among all those animals, numerous wild horse groups had made home in Germany, especially in the North-German Lowlands.
So Lüneburg, which had given the Lüneburg Heath it´s name, was chosen for this excursion. A group of twenty scholars in the special training program for the most talented pupils set out deep into the Heath. Then the to be sorcerers had to call for a riding animal and travel with them to a set point, where the magisters were waiting.
Unsurprisingly, the Jade and Amber Mages had no problem to call forth horses, both half-tamed and wild, for themselves. The Grey Mages conjured their shadow horses and even the other Orders had few problems calling a steed, even if some had to travel by donkey. Finally only one sorcerer remained, Günter Koch. He had tried every spell he knew to call a riding animal to him, but not a single one headed his call. He tried again, the others already on the way for over ten minutes, but once again nothing.
Günter was frustrated. He had one of the greatest talents for magic in the whole world, could heal or kill with just a touch, was a decorated war veteran, could go into his study and simply create a filly, which would grow into a loyal, great steed over time, but no grown horse out here in the Heath did answer his call. In the end, Günter tried again, strengthening his call. Then to his relief, he heard an arriving horse. And was rightly surprised at what he saw.
Wang Chan Beach, Southlands, 9. Sigmarstag Nachthexen
Phoung-An was wearing her best clothes, like all others in the group of ten waiting at the beach. She looked at the edges of her vision, to the citizen´s militia and tribe warriors hidden in the woods and behind rocks. she sincerly hoped that this security measure would stay just that, a precaution.
After the motorboat returned from the rendezvous with one of the unknown convoys sailing past Wang Chan, the relief in the city was gigantic. According to the team from the motorboat, their longtime belief that some convoys were German was right. Sixty seamiles from the city they had revealrf themselves to one of the regular convoys passing, as had been decided before in a coucil meeting.
The team had been naturally very nervous, because if their hope was wrong, a ghastly fate could await them. But in the end, when they set foot on the Frigate "Sachsen" it had ended well. The story the motorboat crew brought back with them led to consternation in Wang Chan at first, however.
That Wang Chan and Thailand-in-exile´s new home was a dangerous world, had been understood by anybody with a single functioning braincell. The last years had pushed that point home. But how high the price of failure could be, especially against Chaos or Dark Elf forces, was new to most.
The biggest, gravest point of discussion in the city was another problem. The question of staying or being tranported, moved to another part of the World, like Neu-Preußen or Pommern. While Germany fully understood that the Thais would not like giving up their home, the Commander of Sachsen explained to the motorboat crew that the distance to Germany was really great, roughly 15,000 kilometer direct line, so Wang Chan had to know that Germany could not react fast to sudden threats against the town.
On the other hand, Germany would like and appreciate a new anchorage point in Warhammer´s "Africa", but Wang Chan had to know that they would be mostly alone, except for regular ship and Zeppelin traffic. The German commander concluded that the citizens of Wang Chan had the right to decide their own fate and that they should think about it until the diplomatic team would visit the town.
Which was the case now, three weeks later. A shadow was darkening the beach of Wang Chan and Phoung recognised that several tribe warriors were nervous despite being told about the "Ship of the Sky". This once more confirmed Phoung´s and the vast majority of Wang chan´s population decision to stay. It had been forced on the Thais by fate, but this place and the tribes allied and living with them were now home. But the coming meeting was significant in that contact with civilisation as was known would be established. And if Wang Chan would become a stop for the convoys... The possibilites ad the future would look brighter, safer. If... but the that would be seen in the negotiations after the feast which had been prepared.
Above the waiting people on the ground, Captain Katrin Jennewein was amused by the fact that the Enterprise would bring down the diplomatic team and the presents for Wang chan. Like in the TV series or the movies. Being specifically made for exploration, LZ 133 was the natural choice to transport the German diplomatic team, even if newer Zeppelins, like for example the Melitta von Stauffenberg surpassed Enterprise in several disciplines already. But LZ 140´s superior speed, ceiling height, lift and endurance made her perfect for the circuit to Nippon and back. So Enterprise was chosen, certainly helped by the order to explore that region of the Southlands, while the diplomats negotiated. Katrin Jennewein looked forward to it.
Cathay, 100 kilometers from the Iron Mines, Angertag 15. Nachthexen
Igla Khan was seeing a mirage, a dream, something out of his dearest wishes. Normally he did see such things on the pile of fur he used for a bed and after drinking something interesting, now he saw it when on his own short legs looking over a ridgeline. The dream was a long row of wagons drawn by mules, protected only by spear-carrying infantry. It did not become much better than this. His clan had been sent, well-he had taken the mission upon himself-to slink by the garrison and cut them off their supplies. That this was best done by plundering everything in sight was accepted wisdom among the Hobgobblins and fitted his clan much better than laying Siege to the stubborn Cathay soldiers. When they started to starve they would give up readily enough. Yet-this landscape did not have much to plunder; the sunbaked plains about here did not support many farms or towns. So he had started to look for anything coming up the river or the road that lead from that stream to the iron mines.
And by the looks of it he had struck lucky as there were a great lot of wagon and there seemed to be a guard of maybe a tenth of his Clan-not to speak of the fact that they were lowly infantry. Ok, the guards were strange-they were not human at a closer look, maybe some sort of Elves and their spears looked off. No matter, he certainly had enough warriors to overcome any resistance.
He estimated the speed of the wagons again, saw when they would be closest to his line and signaled his lieutenants. He went to his huge Alfa Wolf, punched the animal on the snout again to remind him who was boss and climbed into the saddle. Lifting his tulwar far above his head he circled it there and gave the undulating warcry of the Wolf`s tail clan.
His Wolf flexed his powerful legs and propelled him over the ridgeline like a bolt from a catapult. His Wolfriders followed in several long lines and accelerated downslope. The slope was covered in boulders and brushwork, the footing less than secure, yet Igla Khan knew he could trust his ride better than his own legs. Speed was of an essence if the enemy was to be kept from fleeing or mustering effective defense. When his ride accelerated to the charge the responsibilities of command the ever-present fear of treachery dropped away from him and left him with the thrill of the ride and the anticipation of the kill. The assessment of his lieutenants and units was replaced by a tunnel vision focused on his target, the unconscious movements to have his back protected all times by the warcries of his clan and the wolves yelps.
There was less than two kilometer to cross and his wolf felt so fast as if he were flying-and still he had to listen to shrill pipes of alarm and watch the wagons before him start a complicated maneuver he could not immediately place.
The Wagons closest to the assault shortened the distance to nearly nothing and the mules that pulled them put behind the next one. At the same time the wagon to the front and back of the column doubled back
Behind the other ones, probably to close some sort of laager. Not much of a problem, his clan had overcome such before. Some of the spearmen formed a line before the wagons and lifted their spears as if that would help them any at a distance of 800 meters. By the time his cavalry had reached them their arms would already tire and..and the "spears" sprouted small flames. By the time the cracking sound arrived at his ears the first riders and wolves had started to drop. He had never seen or heard such a thing. The humans sometimes used firesticks, but these never had the range or the rate of fire his archers could achieve from wolfback. Yet here he his clan was shot at a distance where an arrow would never reach, at least as often as his better archers might achieve when they were in range and from the results of great power. He had heard about some sort of disaster that had befallen other clans that had assaulted the Obsidian Gate-but this was ridiculous.
Still-this assault had to go through. He enemy was still trying to get into formation, the laager was still not completely established and he had the most troops. Standing up in his stirrups he brandished his Tulwar for all to see and screamed as loud as he could.
"Hell or Plunder Wolf Brothers."
It worked-they had not taken too many losses yet, they could see a lot of loot and not a lot of fighting and their temper was up. The wolves ran faster, the warrior`s yelps became louder and shriller and Igla`s view became ever more a tunnel that concentrated on his chosen target. Now that he was closer he could see the guards scramble from their firing line through the last gaps in the laager, see that boards were dropped from the wagon`s sides to the ground and more firesticks being visible above the sideboards.
Now things became much more dire. Even at the height of combat madness the Hobgoblin khan heard several projectiles zipping close by and saw several warriors of his retinue drop from their saddles. The worst were the wolves as those who were badly injured attacked everybody and anything around them. Still enough of his warriors made it close enough to throw grappling hooks at wagon`s drawbars and rode off to pull the laager apart.
They managed to rock the wagons a bit and move them a meter or so before chains between them drew taught and stopped the riders cold. Together with those warriors that had been stopped from storming the gaps that never developed a nasty cauldron of confusion developed in front of the laager. A couple of the wagons sported different firesticks now and these fired in long unbroken salvos that ripped through troops, dropping all the members in them-some in pieces.
Iglan Khan felt it in his bones-this assault would fail, so there was no sense in prolonging things. Standing up in his saddle again he screamed and gestured-and from how quickly the wolf riders retreated he could see his estimate was right. He and his warriors were experienced raiders, but this was like nothing they had ever seen. On the way back to the ridgeline the Hobgoblins nearly regretted the retreat. One of their favorite tactics was shooting behind their backs while galloping away from the enemy. Yet their did not have much effect and hese firesticks had a much longer range than they had expected now that the guards were alarmed. The raiders bleed bodies all the way to safety.
Igla Khan pulled his Wolf up behind the next hill, patted the animal down and clambered up the incline. He placed his head next to a bolder so not to silhouette himself too obviously and tried to get a picture. He did not like what he saw at all-a clutch of bodies close to the laager and a trail of them leading back to his present position. He winced when his mind refused to count the numbers-he had higher losses before but had something to show for it. Here he could not see that a single enemy had been slain.
From his elevated vantage point he could see the interior of the enemy camp better. It was hard to see at this distance, but it looked like most of the wagons were built for combat with thick wooden boards on one side and access to the guards from the other who then lay on top of whatever cargo the wagons held. There was also an orderly square of more guards in the middle, probably to guard against penetrations. Which gave him an idea-now that the enemy had stopped and prepared to defend himself from this place he had another trick to play. He just hoped it would work-he had lost so many that the intrigues and power plays to replace him would reach new heights. The skin on his back started to itch like a dagger was already pointed at it, which very well might be the case.
"Get me that Shaman-quick quick"
The human stood half a head shorter than her, had no armor or weapon and had been a slave six months ago. Nearly dried blood covered half his right arm and he looked at some notes he had received a few seconds ago and was silently mouthing their contents.
"Nothing too bad Company Leader. One shoulder hit and one grazed arm, nothing we cannot take care of."
"Thank you Specialist Durant."
Areta Bane checked with the medics for the few wounded her Company had endured. The Wild Geese had been hit at an inopportune time-their Dragon was grounded with some stomach illness and so the Hobgoblins had been far too close when they had been detected. Still they had barely managed to form the laager in time and to stop the assault without serious losses. Not that the heavy weapons were set up properly Areta doubted that a second assault would pose any real danger. Still she wanted them to try, ever since Ulthuan the Wild Geese had acquired a serious hate for cavalry.
Her machine gun teams would take care of any soldier who thought he was a little tin god as he could go to war sitting down, be they on horses or wolves. She went back to the individual wagons to check on her soldiers, holding herself back just in time to address the noncoms and not the soldiers directly. That lesson had been easy to take-while she was used to checking directly on her soldiers from her noncom days Druchii society was all about status and who could address whom. So far all was fine-there was more than enough ammo and morale was good enough once the initial shock of the ambush had been overcome.
Getting back into the square that was the middle the laager she found it quite crowded. A hot sun shone on a lot of dust, animals, Druchii and Humans. There was an inner ring inside the wagons mostly consisting of the mules and their drivers, some space and then the reserve brigade and the command group that tried to keep up with developments. She got nervous all of a sudden without finding any reason for that. There was no new sound besides the mules` brays and the shouted commands, no new smells beside unwashed bodies and animal droppings and the vibrations. It took her some moments to feel them through the hard leather soles of her boots and they became stronger all the time. It reminded her of something she had heard in the briefings about Cathay, but the memory evaded her. It was when she saw the command group look about in alarm when it hit her and she started running towards them, screaming at the top of her lungs.
"Move it Move it-take cover there is a…"
The Druchii and Humans in the center looked at her as if she had sprouted a second head but still scrambled from her tone of command and urgency. Areta had no time to fear any embarrassment when the earth in the middle of the laager was thrust upwards into a small hill before breaking up and revealing what had come up from below. Three giant worms, their bodies the size of tree trunks and with three-cornered mouths that seemed to have the size of tunnels and were lined with unending rows off teeth reared upwards before bending down and scoping up victims.
Areta did not get to finish "a great maw" before one of them bent into her direction and extended itself forward. She had her rifle up and fired the first round into it by the time it was close, the round going deep into the monster. Still, it was stopped not her weapons fire or that of the others but simply as it was too short to reach her without leaving its tunnel completely. Instead it bathed her in an unending stream of foul breath and slimy salvia. It was a primeval picture of doom that got to her in ways that even more dangerous foes had not managed. She should have been able to walk backwards from the threat-she had drill often enough, but found herself with rubbery legs that nearly dropped her with every step. Her fingers which had reloaded her rifle so often still managed, but nearly dropped a round. She was looking death in the eye and it would not take no for an answer.
She barely heard the huge surge in firing behind her back when the soldiers inside the wagons reacted to a new Hobgoblin assault, she just cared about reloading and getting another shot in before she died. The huge maw surged forward and the earth stood still until the head retreated, swallowing a trooper whole.
That swallowing finally did it and she dropped her rifle, just to grab a grenade from her belt. As an officer she should no longer carry any, but nobody really cared. She ripped the cord through the handle and threw the smoking weapon directly into the approaching mouth while scrambling backwards again. The results were not pretty-she and her comrades were showered by bloody bits of maw, the other heads screamed in a tone not of this earth and when they retreated in pain leaving mingled body parts behind. But ugly or not-they were gone and by the sound of it so was the renewed assault from outside.
Darkness had fallen quite some time ago, but Igla Khan was watching the laager still. An uneasy truce had developed after the second assault. He and his clan had such hoped when they saw the huge worms tower over the puny wagons and had charged the enemy as if their firesticks were not even there-and then the fire had not slacked. Actually they had received an ugly lesson on how painful an assault could be when the guards were anticipating the attack and the maws had somehow be defeated. When his warriors retreated again he found the shaman with blood running from his ears, nose and eyes and the mind of a child.
Ever since then the Hobgoblins had kept the distance and the convoy had not moved. While the raiders could not storm the camp neither the enemy could resume his march as they would be vulnerable then. So now it was a contest of who could outwait whom and at least Igla Khan could claim that he was still blocking the supplies.
He had sent his guards into a loose circle of 20 meters or so, that way he could be sure any footsteps approaching close were trying to kill him. After two failed assaults like todays and losses like his clan had not weathered for many years he could be sure that there was a lot of talk about replacement around the fires and that the likely contenders were marshalling their followers. He was thinking about whom to kill in a quick way when the fires and the screaming started.
At the right side of the camp a couple of tents were covered with a yellowish clinging flame and between them some unlucky warriors were running around screaming in pain when the fire that burned them could not being extinguished. Some sharp cracks and brief flashes of light were less spectacular but large circles of onlookers dropped around them.
Igla Khan looked at none of that, he searched the plain beyond the camp. Hobgoblins have huge eyes capable to see with the least bit of light. And there he spotted what he was looking for-the receding backs of some raiders who thought they could assault his clan and then slip away into the darkness-not with the Hobgoblins, no they would not.
"Ride with me my brothers, let us kill these cowards. Double loot for everyone who brings me one alive."
The cheers and yelps around him were satisfying and he hope the spectacle he could make of any captive would appease his clan to the point where he would survive next week. His wolf was never far away from him, so in seconds he was at the front of a huge mob determined to catch these cowardly raiders. Once the few lights from the camp were removed from the Khan`s vision improved again when his eyes started to use every available bit of it. Now he could see the enemy clearly as they desperately tried to distance themselves from their impending doom. And while they ran prettily they could never outrun the Hobgoblins wolves.
He laughed when he saw the closest one drop on his belly-he must have slipped-and stopped laughing immediately when he saw they had all dropped, many of them into some sort of cover. He was still trying to make heads or tails of it and a warning formed itself when his world ended with a flash.
Ivil Bloodcrest lifted his head above his folded arms again, they had barely been good enough to protect his eye from the almighty flashes produced by the magnesium bombs provided by the mercenaries. Imagining how bad they would hurt a Hobgoblin with wide open eyes adapted to night vision made the Druchii smile, but this did not keep him from watching the glowing lines of tracer walk into the nasty pile-up that had resulted from the flashes and some well-placed mines. On both sides of him the frantic cracks of Druchii rifles indicated where more hurt for the Hobgoblins was coming from.
The Wild Geese were not using the assassin in the way he had expected them to, but given him a totally different task. It felt strange not to be using a weapon himself, but he was here for coordination, others would do the killing. Others like this Richter guy who spoke seemingly into the thin air-and just seconds thereafter deeper booms and ugly flashes showed that he had managed to guide the mercenaries mortars to the cavalry.
The flashes and his own night vision revealed the disaster which had befallen the greenskins. Having crashed into a front rank stopped by blindness and mines the Hobgoblins had caught themselves in a clusterfuck. Everybody was pushing to get out of there, tempers were up and it was easily possible that they did more damage to themselves than the mercenaries did. That the injured wolves often got crazed to the point where they attacked everything in range did not help any, as was fact that their leaders dropped one by one.
In the end, it could not last. Some of the Hobgoblins that had taken the charge late were flanking the mass in front of them and were dangerous at this short distance. Pulling his whistle from his tunic he blew the sequence that would get his people retreating. Scrambling backwards a hundred meters or so brought him to the second line that halted everybody. It was blind luck that the Druchii were able to open fire again when the Hobgoblins hit the mines left behind. There would not be any pursuit of the mercenaries.
Going back to the laager Ivil mused again that Wolfgang Böhler had certainly not used him as he had expected. He had resented that at first, but the gear the mercenaries provided almost made up for that. Almost, as training a company of the Wild Geese for infiltration and sabotage missions had been a pain in the ass. By the assassins standards most mercs were rather clumsy, loud and would not have survived a week at Khaine`s temple. Yet bit by bit they had come around and were good enough to be quite invisible in the field and at night. The Night Shift company of the Wild Geese had just conducted their first operation and Ivil was quite happy with the results.
