The Outland Legion

by J.Logan

There is a mercenary company roaming the land. An entire legion of sellswords, but they don't ask for coin, typically. No, they ask for knowledge of events, even if only in the form of rumours, they ask for raw materials, and they ask for use of facilities with which to work those materials. In that order of preference. They are armed. They are professional. They are... lizardmen?

17. The Other Side - Forest Hell

The Other Side - Forest Hell

---

Marktag Vorgeheim 21st, Drakwald Forest

Yesterday, our landsknecht reached the outer edge of the Drakwald Forest and set camp for the night. After months of marching, of chasing after the necromancer, this marks the closest we have gotten to finally catching up to this menace. With luck, we will find the necromancer, kill him and leave the forest before the beastmen notice our presence.

For the past two weeks, there have been rumours going around the landsknecht that there are skirmishes starting just north of where we now rest. Supposedly, there is a Chaos warband that has managed to get this far south of the coast. I don't believe it, but the mere whisper of Chaos is enough to cause all manner of ill feelings. The Great Enemy is not something any who is sane of mind would dare to joke about.

What we know for a fact however is that shortly before we arrived at Middenheim there was a battle involving a free company against some little known of count. Captain von Eisling told us that this free company had also had engagements with the same undead that we are hunting, that they'd tracked the source of a number of the risen to that county. Unfortunately, it appears that the necromancer was not at the count's keep at the time it was attacked. According to the courtier that the captain spoke to in Middenheim, the keep was levelled.

Survivors of the county of Efror have been flocking to Middenland over the past month. All tell the same story: their homes have burnt at the hands of the undead.

We have been told to keep an eye out, that we have other problems besides the undead. But Brother Kakovlev has told us that our priority remains the walking dead, such is the way of working under a Black Knight of Morr. Let the Middenland state army worry about the other threats that seem to plague them.

I plan to catch an early night. I feel I shall need it, for on the morrow, we shall be entering into one of the most hostile forests in the Empire.

-Journal of an unknown soldier

---

Three nights. Sergeant Gerwin of the Efror Guard—it mattered little that the county was now gone, that the combination of undead and Chaos had left none remaining of the small county, for those who remained would carry the name and colours in remembrance of their origin—had spent three days and three nights traipsing around the Drakwald Forest. Their captain had decreed that, since Efror's problems had started with the undead, the undead would be the focus of the Efror's Guard's attentions.

When the home of the count of Efror had fallen, the keep taken and then levelled, Captain Sigismund had been given a name by Count Feyerabend. Unfortunately, the name meant little on its own. It wasn't a usual name, one would think it so distinctive that it would be easy to track down, but then again, information was hardly an easily accessible resource, especially since there was a very high chance that the Efror Guard would be considered enemies of the Empire with how their count had been beguiled by a sorcerer. If news got out, the best that the guard could hope for amongst the provinces would be open suspicion. Even if news hadn't gotten out, the guard would be treated with disdain, being the personal militia to the successor of a count who had once upon a time tried to secede from the Empire, only unlike Marienburg, it wasn't through money but instead force and madness.

Surely the fact that the count had been enthralled by a sorcerer would make one think that the name given for their unknown enemy would be Chaos aligned. But Sigismund had had a valid point that the undead had been coming from Efror. While Gerwin would not put it past a Chaos warlord to make use of necromancy, the general rule was that Chaos disliked the walking dead.

Last they'd heard of the undead, the horde had travelled into the forested hell that was the Drakwald. And as such, it was the guard's duty to follow them into that misery and try to track them down and destroy them. And possibly beat information regarding the name Pugna Textrix from the necromancer responsible for the walking corpses blighting the land.

The problem was that the Drakwald was a large place to search. It was vast enough that... well, it had once upon a time been a province of its own, even if the territory had since been split between Nordland and Middenland. So, it was large, and it was full of more threats than just the undead they sought. At some point, Gerwin and a small number of guardsmen and archers had separated from the bulk of the guard. As a smaller group, they'd hopefully be able to avoid notice, whilst moving quicker in their search. Meanwhile, the majority of the guard had fortified a space within the forest, turned a glade into a well defended camp with the numbers to deter any testing of that defence.

Considering there hadn't been any sign that the camp was destroyed while Gerwin's men and women stalked the forest, maybe it was working. But thus far they hadn't yet found any trace of the undead they sought.

A shrill whistling had the group pause, shields lifted and blades at the ready, while bows were pointed at the trees around them with arrows nocked.

That was the other problem with this damnable forest. The sounds were unnerving at the best of times, and with their minds already filled with a tense anxiety, any stress caused by the alien noises was ratcheted up to such levels that it felt as though Gerwin's heart were about to burst from his chest.

Allison, one of the archers, kept her eyes locked on the branches of a particularly twisted and gnarled looking tree. She narrowed her left eye.

Allison—no family name given, and it wasn't asked for—was previously a widowed farmer from the outskirts of Dryad's Fell. Her skin was worn and creased with the toils of age and a lifetime of working in the sun, while her raven hair had streaks of grey. Despite looking to be in the midst of her fourth decade, she didn't move like she was getting on in years, had a strength to her that wasn't just physical, her eyes dared any to question her abilities. She was one of the conscripts from Dryad's Fell, hadn't even entertained the idea of fleeing, and was now probably the best archer they had.

'There was something up there.' She gave the report in a bland tone. 'But it vanished after a moment.'

'You sure you saw something? Not just your mind playing tricks?' Burke, another archer, asked the question, and despite the wording sounded earnest rather than sarcastic.

Burke was the ranking archer. A fellow sergeant, and an experienced huntsman. Fair of skin, light of hair, almost had a boyish look to him that made him look barely like a man but a boy instead, up until he opened his mouth and spoke with a deep and gruff voice, a result of an old injury, the scar of which was hidden beneath his collar.

If Allison was the best archer in the guard now, Burke was a close second, but made up for that by being a better tracker. But also knew not to let the knowledge of his skill as a tracker interfere with his ability to work with others. He hadn't seen whatever Allison thought she had, but he wasn't dismissing the idea that she had seen it. Clearly knew to keep any ego in check. At least while working—Gerwin counted Burke as a friend, but he wasn't in the business of lying about his friend's shortcomings.

Allison shook her head. 'No, definitely saw something.'

Gerwin lifted his gaze to the tops of the trees, had previously focused exclusively on the ground level as a sword and shield were hardly helpful from elevated threats, that was what the archers were for.

'What did it look like?' he quickly asked.

'Nothing like I've ever seen. Don't think it was a beastman though,' Allison answered swiftly.

'Never heard of the beastmen climbing trees,' Burke said.

'Anybody here actually have any experience with the breyherds?' Gerwin retorted, but genuinely curious despite his tone.

Burke tilted his head in silent acknowledgement. None of them were experienced with the vaguely man-shaped monsters. If any of the Efror Guard had been, they'd have been tasked with joining this group.

'You'd think we'd have noticed or been attacked by something by now,' Uther—one of the swordsmen—commented. 'Beast or undead. This quiet is more worrying than any attack.'

Gerwin opened his mouth to say something in response, but movement had him crane his head sharply to one side. At his doing so, all ten archers shifted their bows to point in the direction he had turned to face. If there had been any doubt about Allison's seeing something, it was gone now, because Gerwin had now experienced the same thing, spotting something alien against the foliage which then vanished even as he watched. He was certain he hadn't blinked his eyes, but it was gone in a heartbeat as though he had.

'I hate this place,' he grumbled softly.

Allison snorted softly, twirling the arrow in her hand about her fingers like an entertainer with their baton, her attention now lowered to the ground.

'I think I see tracks.'

When Burke grunted an affirmation, Gerwin didn't question despite his not seeing any sign of tracks himself. He wasn't a hunter, wasn't a tracker; that was what those two were for. If they both said they saw something, he wasn't about to question.

A clicking sound echoed through the trees. It was a recurring sound, one that constantly set Gerwin on edge, even as it was explained to him that it was the sound woodpeckers made. It was a perfectly natural a sound to be heard. That didn't make it any less unsettling. Especially with how random it seemed to come about. With a grunt, Gerwin tightened his grip on his sword and followed close behind the archers.

#

Despite a full day of tracking, they didn't catch up to anything, living or dead. The latter Gerwin was of mixed opinions regarding, where on the one hand it meant that the undead were still free and unseen, on the other it was a moment of reprieve, of not having to worry about fighting for his life while in a smaller group meant for hunting rather than a straight fight. The former on the other hand was a definite concern.

'Every story about this cursed hell has the beasts stalking travellers and hunting them like it's a sport,' Uther was saying. 'Yet not a show of hide nor hair.'

Burke nodded lowly. 'It worries me. I think they might be hunting us while we hunt the walkers.'

Gerwin groaned softly, wiping at his forehead, his helmet and coif removed for the moment while they rested up. His hand came away from his skin slick with an uncomfortable amount of sweat, the padded cap worn beneath the coif long since overburdened and unable to absorb any more moisture. The summer heat seemed to triple within this forest while the humidity only made it worse than it should have been.

'Is there anything we can do if they are hunting us?' he finally asked.

Allison and Burke shared looks with each other, and Burke answered after a silent conversation told through eyes alone.

'We've already been doing what we can, but no offence to you or the other swordsmen, you aren't trained as trackers and there's only so much we can do to help the fact that the very way you walk is leading any beasts right to us.'

Allison continued with a rueful tone. 'Best we can hope is that the beasts aren't as naturally adept at hunting as actual animals.'

Uther raised an eyebrow. 'If we warriors are a burden, why did you not tell the captain that you wanted us not to be involved?'

Allison was quick to shake her head. 'Because we aren't arrogant enough to assume that nothing could go wrong, and better to have capable fighters to help fight back against such an attack.' She shrugged then motioned to herself. 'I can't speak for Burke or the others, but I haven't the training or talent with a sword to hope of surviving if a threat gets close.'

Burke gave a wry grin and looked pointedly at Uther's shield. 'I'm trained with a blade, but I still don't rate my chances of survival. I can try to fend off a single attacker, but my training and experience has always emphasised the bow, with the expectation that we'll have front liners with proper armour and a good shield to hide behind.'

Another archer, this one Gerwin didn't know by name murmured in agreement. 'We have our role, you have yours.'

Gerwin shrugged, understood their point easily enough. It was the same with most trained militias and armies of the world: everyone had their role and was trained accordingly. Archers in an ideal world would never be close enough to the enemy to need to know to defend themselves, though they were still taught the basics of swordsmanship because realistically, what enemy wouldn't try to take out the ranged support if they saw the opportunity?

A shrill whistle echoed through the air. Gerwin managed to avoid starting in surprise, though he had yet to become numb to the recurring sound. It wasn't as frequent as the unsettling clicking of "woodpeckers", but still common enough that he'd had to force himself not to react each time else his heart would soon give out from the stress.

What was a less frequent sound was the loud boom of black powder igniting. That one had everybody on their feet, weapons readied, the swordsmen circling the archers in a protective barrier with their shields up and swords braced. Ten seconds later, there was another gunshot.

'If that's a Drakwald Patrol, I'm going to kill them myself.' Gerwin snarled the words, his heart beating a war rhythm against his ribs.

'If it's a patrol, you'll have to get in line, they'll draw any nearby beastmen right to us with that noise.' Burke was clearly not happy either, and the expression on his face made it clear that he was not joking.

Another minute passed, there were no more gunshots. Gradually, Gerwin's chest stopped hurting from the force of his heart's pounding. He absently scanned the ground for his dropped headwear, but while he could see his coif, half buried as it was, the cap and his helmet had vanished, no doubt unintentionally kicked aside. With a slight eye roll, he resigned himself to going without head protection, unwilling to put up with his hair getting caught and tangled in the links of his coif.

'We going to check it out?' Uther asked with a hushed tone. 'Might be somebody needs our help.'

Gerwin nodded. 'Yeah. Shields in front, archers behind us. Move slow and keep your eyes open. We don't know who was shooting or at what.'

Order given, the group organised itself and started to carefully march in the direction that it sounded as though the gunshots had come from. There was a possibility they were slightly off, that the echo of the gunshot made it difficult to be certain of the exact direction. There was a startling difference to the air following those twin gunshots. Where before there were constant sounds, not just the unsettling whistles and clicks or calls from wild animals, but even those that weren't so chilling to Gerwin's mind, small ambient sounds that barely registered, and were only really noticeable now by their absence. Like the rustling of leaves, now gone as though the night breeze was watching with bated breath.

'Oh...' the sound was uttered by the swordsman Otwin, for he was the first to round a particularly large tree, even by the standards of the Drakwald, and spotted what lay on its other side. Gerwin hastened his pace to come to his side and fought away the chill that wanted to overcome his blood.

It was a small clearing. Might have even looked like a nice patch of paradise hidden within this forested avernus. Wildflowers grew freely and there was a pond with water that looked rather clear. That illusion was stripped away by the mangled carcass of a creature that Gerwin had never before seen the like of.

The body was twofold larger than a man, and even more broadness than that—in life it had clearly been graced with an impressive physique. Light brown fur coated its body, and its head had a definite likeness to a bull, including a pair of long horns that look sharp enough to impale without any true effort. Nearby the body laid a pair of large axes that were half rusted, the blades chipped and yet would clearly not be any less lethal for all the imperfections that could be seen. Upon the creature's chest was a large bloody hole, while its lower jaw was missing from its person, instead spread about the clearing in small blood-coated shards.

'Is that a beastman?' Uther asked quietly.

'What else could it be?' Allison answered derisively.

'A daemon?' Uther said in turn, though he clearly didn't believe it even as he uttered the suggestion.

Otwin stepped closer to the body, poking it with the tip of his sword, not showing any particular care that he poked hard enough to stab through the flesh.

'Well.' Gerwin hummed out the word. 'That's the target, now where is the one who did the shooting?'

Allison started in shock with raised eyes. Her hand pulled back at the string of her bow, an arrow nestled between her fingers and braced against that same string. The arrow was released, shot through the air with a whistle. Gerwin followed the arrow's path, and his eyes widened in shock as he made out a lithe form leap from the branches of one tree to another, avoiding the arrow. It was moving quickly, which coupled with its colouring matching the tree's leaves, made it difficult for Gerwin to make out any details, but it looked to be smaller than a human by only a head or two. Before Allison, or any of the other archers could take another shot at it, the creature moved and vanished into the leaves, left no sign of its existence.

'What was that?' Burke asked, eyes narrowed and shifting from one treetop to the next in an effort to not be taken by surprise.

'I don't know, I didn't get a good look at it,' Allison said.

Gerwin shook his head in agreement. 'Colouring blended too well to get a good look while it was moving.'

'Was it the shooter?' Burke asked.

'Don't know, didn't get a good look.' Gerwin stressed the words to emphasise the point.

'Do you think it might have been one of those lizards that Sigismund encountered a while back?' Uther decided to join in asking questions that Gerwin couldn't answer.

'I don't know.' Now Gerwin was growling the words. 'I've not seen them myself. But my understanding is that they wear red, so I'm going to go out on a limb here and say likely not.'

Finally, the point seemed to get across, and questions that couldn't be answered stopped being brandied about. Gerwin returned his attention to the carcass, nose wrinkling as the smell finally registered to his senses. He gagged in disgust.

'Smells like it's already been dead for a week.'

Allison, finally lowering her bow, stepped close to the body and gave it a look for herself, her expression no doubt mirroring Gerwin's open revulsion. She used an arrow to prod at the body near the open wound upon its chest. Gerwin gagged as a handful of maggots crawled from the opening.

'Euch...' He quickly swallowed down the bile that wanted to rise up. 'Maybe this wasn't what was shot at?'

'Aren't the beasts Chaos worshippers? Maybe this one just happened to be Nurglish in devotion?'

'Have the beasts been reported as ever worshipping individual powers?' Burke asked, looking very green.

There was a near unanimous shrugging in answer to that question. None of them could say they knew enough about the beasts to know for certain whether they were prone to worshipping the Chaos gods independently, or if they were simply aligned to Chaos as a whole. It was simply one of those details that fell into the "don't need to know, just know that they're evil blights that need to be wiped from the face of the world" category.

There wasn't much else to be done. While the clearing might have made a convenient spot to set camp for the night, the carcass ruined any such notion. And with an unknown figure somewhere about, one aware of the clearing, even if the carcass hadn't fouled it, Gerwin would have made the decision to leave it regardless.

Unfortunately, the knowledge of something out in the wilderness had ratcheted his nerves, shot them skyward. Now he could barely focus on the ground level where he could actually assist in a fight, instead focused constantly upon the tree branches as if expecting to see that figure again.

And then the noises of the wild began again, just after he had finally gotten used to the stagnant silence.

Ulric damn it... I'm going to be dead by stress alone at this rate.

#

Another day and more scouting, more tracking what Burke and Allison both claimed to be humanoid tracks. They were quick to stress that by that they meant tracks with human styled feet, boot clad or no. The beastmen had distinctive tracks, on those rare moments that they were seen. Cloven hooves made for an easy time identifying them by footprint, go figure.

There was a light rain today, which meant that those with expertise in tracking were being quicker, but less methodical about their efforts to try and catch up to the source before the rain washed away all hope of following those tracks. It was... stressful. And while the previous day they had regular short rests as the hunters did their work, now it was a constant motion with no reprieve.

Click. Click. Click.

That clicking sound echoed the forests yet again. But after the previous night, it felt different. It wasn't anything that Gerwin could explain, but where before he had believed the explanation of woodpeckers, now there was something off, a sense that they weren't as random as they had been.

A whistle. Allison stopped abruptly, her head tilted. Had she been a cat, Gerwin reckoned that her eyes would have perked up.

'That was a different sound from normal.' She reported after a few seconds of hesitation, wherein everybody else stared at her expectantly.

'Are you certain?' Burke asked, brow creased.

Allison nodded. 'Before, it was a long continuous sound. That one was two whistles, there was a slight pause about halfway through. And it was a different... voice?'

'Pitch?' Uther offered.

Allison tilted her head, one eyebrow raised. 'What's "pitch"?'

It seemed to be a question on most of the group's tongues, Gerwin noted. Uther seemed to realise that, and rather than explain in words that might not be understood, he instead gave a low whistle, paused, then a second whistle at a higher pitch. Allison seemed to recognise what he meant by his example and gave a single nod.

'Different pitch from all the others we've been hearing.' She nodded in conclusion.

'Is that important?' Otwin asked.

It was Burke who explained. 'Means either the reason for the whistle is different, or the whistle was from something different.' He paused a moment, eyes narrowed in thought. 'If it were a human whistling, it could be the difference between wordless signals of "all clear" versus a signal of "intruder spotted".

Nice of him to explain in such a way, Gerwin thought to himself. While he'd worked that out himself without the comparison, Otwin only nodded his understanding after it had been broken down for why it was important in that manner.

And then the reality of that explanation settled itself into a weight in Gerwin's gut. There had never been a reasonable explanation for what was giving the whistling sound this entire time. The clicking was explained as woodpeckers, which even with the strange sense of it being different now, was still a rational explanation. But the whistle had been an unknown, something they couldn't work out possible reasons for being, and was now being directly compared to wordless communications.

For all that Gerwin knew, that was how beastmen communicated with each other.

It seemed that everybody else had tensed, had been stricken by the same idea and were now watching the surroundings with an almost paranoid thoroughness.

Burke drew his bow, string pulled taught and aimed upward. He didn't loose the arrow however, and when Gerwin followed his gaze there was nothing to be seen. But, after that last night, that wasn't as reassuring as it once was.

The wind rustled the leaves, the light drizzling—probably actually a heavy rainfall that was only barely able to bypass the thick forest canopy—pattered down, light enough so as to not feel oppressive, but fine enough that it was soaking them through regardless. Still Burke kept his bow drawn, even as his arm visibly began to shake from the strain of keeping it taut. Allison's face contorted into confused concern.

And then Gerwin spotted it. A small space on one branch where the light rain was hitting... nothing. Droplets of water seemed to just float in the air, sliding down against a surface that wasn't there. Then, now that he had an idea of where to pay attention, other details started to emerge. Like how the green of the leaves just below the space of nothing that the rain patted on was the wrong shade, and too uniform... it was cloth.

'Burke,' Gerwin murmured the words as quietly as he could while still hopefully being just loud enough for the archer to hear. 'To your right, three paces.'

Burke didn't outwardly react. For a moment Gerwin thought that he hadn't heard him, but then Burke slowly rolled his eyes sideward, followed the direction given and side-eyed the space that Gerwin had directed him. The moment he recognised what Gerwin had seen was obvious, there was a squaring of the shoulders, the slightest of twitches in his foot and his mouth tugged down in a grimace.

Then he twisted around and released his grip on the arrow, which soared through the air. The target however, moved, lunged to one side and where there had previously been an empty void that rain still touched as though there were something solid, now there was actually something to be seen. An alien looking face with large bulging eyes and flesh the shade of peaches. The creature hissed, clearly startled at the near miss, and moved, springing itself forward, darted along the tree's thick branch, barely escaped getting hit by another barrage of arrows. It then stopped, twisted around and lifted from behind it a...

'Handgun!' Gerwin called out in warning, lunging toward Burke with his shield raised.

The bullet shattered the shield, sent a storm of splinters raining upon Gerwin and Burke, but thankfully neither Gerwin nor Burke was hit by the bullet. The force still had Gerwin reel back and fall to the ground, arm arching. With a curse, he hurriedly un-strapped the ruined shield from his arm and discarded it.

The creature continued moving. Now that it had fired off its handgun, it had no way of attacking without staying still long enough to be an easy target for the archers. It didn't take long for it to vanish, circled a tree, and when the archers circled that same tree found no sign of it.

'Ok... it didn't look like the others Sigismund described, but that was a lizard.' Gerwin grunted with all the irritability he could muster.

'Has it been watching us all this time, do you think?' Allison asked, with a small amount of concern.

'Possibly.' The answer was blunt, and honest. They'd been seeing movement in the trees since they'd entered the Drakwald, it wasn't unlikely that they'd been spied upon this whole time. Gerwin wasn't about to lie to himself.

'Shit. Why haven't they attacked us before now?' Uther wondered aloud.

It took a moment but Burke, rubbing at his arm, which was very clearly still shaking from fatigue, answered. 'It defended itself. That was the first time it was actually spotted and caught off-guard. Probably won't get caught like that again.' He paused for a heartbeat and then nodded his head at Gerwin with a look of respect. 'Good spot, sir.'

'I got lucky.' Gerwin admitted it easily enough, it was the truth. If it hadn't been drizzling with rain, he would never have spotted it even if he'd known to look. 'What tipped you off?'

'It must have been its clothes rubbing against the bark of the tree. I thought I heard a tearing of cloth, but... I don't know.' Burke shrugged. 'After the talk about the whistle, I was already tensed, just... stopped and didn't want to take "my imagination running amok" as the answer.'

Gerwin huffed out a single laugh. 'Yeah, well, good instinct either way.'

Uther opened his mouth, lips twisted upward, but anything he might have had to say was interrupted. The low blaring of a horn had the entire group straighten with blood chilled. The sound was different from those of hunting horns used within certain circles of the Empire, more ominous, more akin to a promise of pain.

'I think the natives just heard us.' It was spoken with an ironic tone, Gerwin trying his best not to let just how scared he was come to the fore. 'Form up!'

It wasn't until the swordsmen had all formed on either side of Gerwin that it dawned that his shield was gone, destroyed and unsalvageable. He wouldn't even trust the remains as an improvised buckler. With a soft curse, he adjusted his stance. Unlike Sigismund's new sword, Gerwin's blade, being the same design of arming sword as the rest of the Efror Guard, hadn't the size of hilt for him to adopt a proper two-handed grip. It left him taking up a stance he wasn't nearly so comfortable with, made him feel like he was trying to fence with the wrong type of blade.

From around the nearby trees, the beastmen came. They were smaller than the body they'd found in the clearing the previous night, closer to a human in height, though still broader and with more bulk to their frames. Each of them hefted large two-handed axes that looked to be in about the same condition as those of the clearing's carcass, chipped and rusted but no less dangerous to get hit by. There was only one that didn't seem to carry such an axe, instead favouring a spiked maul in one hand while the other lifted up a standard. Gerwin felt sicked when he realised that the standard wasn't made from any form of fabric, but instead flayed flesh, likely human. The skulls that hung from the top of the standard were likewise not recreations made in that image, but actual human skulls, one of which still had flecks of flesh still clinging to the bone.

There were twenty of them. And the moment the first laid eyes upon the humans, it let out a loud guttural call, and as one, they charged.

The archers were quick to loose arrows at the charging beasts. But this wasn't a fight on an open plain, they were all within a thick forest, and the beasts had appeared uncomfortably close. Not as many were shot down as would have been ideal. Had this been an open plain, the swordsmen wouldn't have really been needed, not for twenty of these beasts. As it stood, only six were felled before they were upon the line of swordsmen. They were outnumbered, and as always seemed to be the way when it came to fighting the enemies of man, they were physically weaker.

But as also was typically the case when it came to man's enemies, the fighting men of the Empire had better training, had more skill than the barbarous hordes. Gerwin lunged, thrust his sword into the gut of one of the beasts as it came within reach and let the beast's own momentum carry it along the length of his sword. Used his empty hand to shove the filthy creature from his blade, and then swung the newly freed weapon into the forearm of another beast. Without his shield, he was forced to be more aggressive than he preferred, there was no hunkering behind a protective shell. Had to make sure that any who neared him felt the sting of his strike.

Didn't have to aim for lethal strikes in fact—that was impractical at that moment. But a strike at a wrist left the victim vulnerable to a follow-up, or a slice at the back of a leg, maybe even the ankle, left the target floored and in pain.

Had to be decisive, had to strike fast and with great effect. The moment he was seen as the weak link in the formation, he would be focused down, and Gerwin had no delusion about how talented he was with no shield in hand. He was almost tempted to call out for a second blade, but having never even contemplated such a style in the past he put that idea to rest swiftly. Nothing was more dangerous in a fight than trying to practice a style with no experience or training behind it.

Ran the blade through another beast then hurriedly lifted the sword to parry a maul aimed for his shoulder. Saved his shoulder, blade was wrenched from his grip though. The beastman responsible, the one carrying that disgusting standard, was undeterred from its failure and lunged forward, bowing its head. Gerwin hurriedly brought his hands up, caught the beast by its horns, and staggered backward as he hadn't the strength to hold the beast at bay, had to back-pedal frantically lest he be overpowered and gored by those same horns he now gripped.

The beast snorted, its dark eyes glowing with a bitter hatred to all things civilised, to all things good. It shook its head, freed itself from Gerwin's grasp, and then lifted its maul, eager to strike him down while he was unarmed. It made a bestial sound, its filthy, dark tongue uttering words that left him sickened. And then an arrow lodged itself into its flesh, deep into the neck, then another, this one just missing one of its eyes. The beast staggered then fell.

Panting, Gerwin looked about and then released a sigh of relief as he saw the last of the beasts fall to the ground, stabbed repeatedly by the swordsmen even as it gargled its death-rattle.

'Let's not do that again.' He uttered the words, tired despite how swiftly the fight had ended once it had begun. He turned, waved a hand toward the archers. 'Thank you, whoever it was that saved me.'

Allison raised a hand in silent acknowledgement then quickly lowered it so that her fingers hovered near her quiver, as if ready to pull another arrow free in a moment's notice. Her eyes wide with the adrenaline of one's first fight and victory over an enemy force.

A quick survey showed that everybody had come out of the skirmish unscathed, though Uther's tabard was sporting a long tear across his left shoulder, but the chainmail beneath was undamaged to Gerwin's eye. Otwin, his sword now sheathed, was rotating his hand in a circle with a grimace to his face. But nobody else showed any sign of injury.

'Was that it?' Burke asked after a pause.

'Please don't say that.' Uther groaned.

'I'm being serious. Every tale I've ever heard of the beastmen of Drakwald, they have numbers on their side. Not as bad as the vermin, but still.'

Allison snorted. 'We were outnumbered.'

'We're in their territory, they blew a horn, yet all we see is twenty of these mutants?' Burke rebutted.

Gerwin let out a deep breath. 'He's right. The Drakwald Patrols travel as full detachments at all times, and they constantly talk about being outnumbered. If they are regularly outnumbered, what exactly was this?'

He hated saying it, the moment the last syllable left his lips, he could feel morale plummet. But it also raised the question of where the rest of the beasts were. Why was this group all that immerged?

#

The rain got heavier over the next two days, soaking into Gerwin's tabard, which in turn tried to become a solid mass determined to stick to his body in the most awkward manner rather than the usual flowing fabric it was supposed to be. It was a curse that afflicted the other swordsmen. The archers on the other hand, their cloaks seemed to be doing a sufficient job in keeping them shielded from the worst of the downpour, hoods pulled up. The only disgruntlement that they seemed to have with the weather was annoyance at the rain washing away the tracks.

It might not have been quite so bad, Gerwin sighed, if it wasn't for the fact that the heat was still oppressively domineering. One would have hoped the rain would be cooling them down, a nice reprieve from the oppression of summer. Instead, it seemed that the rain was colluding with the summer heat with shared the goal of making those walking the planet as miserable as possible.

I hear Kislev is nice this time of year: a nice brisk chilliness and no blistering heat. Gerwin's lips rose as he allowed himself a moment to daydream of a Kislev summer.

And that daydream was interrupted by that infernal whistling, so loud that he honestly had to look to his sides to make certain that the source of it wasn't directing that sound directly into his ear. Alas, that wasn't the case.

'It's changed pitch again,' Burke said after a moment of consideration.

'No pause either.' Allison nodded in agreement.

Gerwin rubbed at his ears, fought against the ringing that the shrill sound had afflicted upon him. 'Was it closer to us?' he asked.

Burke shook his head. 'No.'

'And you know that for a fact?' Uther groaned.

Burke opened his mouth, but a new sound filled the air. This one wasn't a clicking, wasn't a whistle, or a gunshot, or any of the other sounds they'd been hearing non-stop since they'd set foot in this hell. The only likeness that Gerwin could compare it to was of a man screaming in fear, but it was no man that had made that sound.

Gerwin waited a moment, inhaled deeply and then slowly released his breath. 'Let's go.'

'Towards the screams of the damned?' Otwin asked with an incredulous expression.

'Where else?' Gerwin gave a very shaky smile. 'Isn't this why you enlisted in the guard?'

'I was conscripted,' Otwin complained, though he gave just enough of a huff to his tone that he made it clear that for his complaints, they weren't to be taken seriously. Notably, he still advanced with the other swordsmen, shield raised.

'Yeah, seven years ago, same day I was.' Uther managed to convey a rolling of the eyes with his tone alone. 'You could have retired two years ago, but like me, you chose to stay. You don't get to complain now.'

'Yes I do,' Otwin argued with a grin. 'I chose to stay because all we had to do was fight bandits and greenskins. Undead and beastmen were never in the agreement. I want to renegotiate the terms of my service.'

Letting out a small laugh, Gerwin cast Otwin a look. 'I shall take your opinions into consideration... and ignore them entirely. Do your job and do it with a smile.'

Otwin gave Gerwin a wide and very blatantly exaggeratedly false smile. 'I shall make the happiest looking corpse to ever be mutilated by beastmen.'

'Your job isn't to die for Efror or the Empire or anything else for that matter.' Gerwin snorted in amusement. 'Your job is to make the other side die for Efror or the Empire or Ulric.'

Uther clicked his tongue. 'That's what I've been doing wrong this whole time.'

Gerwin continued to silently laugh, but his mirth vanished quickly as they entered a new clearing. All good feelings he had had but moments prior was transfigured and twisted into the polar opposite, a weight made of the densest of lead settled into his gut.

This wasn't like the clearing they had found the large corpse days ago. This clearing was far larger, and there was nothing picturesque about this one—not unless the picture in question was a macabre work meant to invoke feelings of dread and disgust. Blood was everywhere, pooled into shallow lakes of crimson, with thick clumps of removed muscle or mulched organs forming a twisted parody of algae. Meanwhile, bodies littered the clearing, the source of all that blood. Not a single one of those corpses hadn't been horrifically mutilated in some way.

They weren't just in the clearing either, even a quick look around revealed that the bodies trailed into the tree line at the opposite side from where Gerwin and his group had entered. Some of those bodies were outright pinned to the trees, impaled upon branches, while others just littered the ground until they disappeared, hidden by the forest.

About the only plus that Gerwin could pull from the scene was the fact that every one of those bodies was a beastman. There were no human corpses that he could see. But then again, with how mutilated some of them were, there could have been humans that were simply no longer recognisable as such.

Also, interesting to note for Gerwin, was the lack of any insects or even the scent of rot. These bodies were not long dead.

'Oh... fuck.'

Gerwin started in surprise at the expletive escaping Burke's lips. He turned, saw that Burke had paled as he stared in a particular direction, and against his desires, he followed the huntsman's gaze. He quickly found himself agreeing with the sentiment, as did everybody else if the muttered curses and oaths to Ulric were any indication.

'Please, tell me... tell me that isn't what I think it is.' Gerwin wasn't ashamed to be begging.

'That's a herdstone.' Burke tore away what little hope Gerwin had able to retain.

It was a large, nay, a massive standing stone, its surface smooth, worn away by the elements over a great span of time. That in and of itself meant little, it could have just been a natural rock formation, a fluke of nature. What gave away that this rock was something more, something other, was the way that the beastmen had clearly made it a focal point. Offerings had been left, surrounding the rock. Offerings such as the decapitated heads of loyal Empire citizens and soldiers mounted on spikes, the expressions of those heads still recent enough to have their flesh forever twisted into terror and agony. Alongside that more morbid choice of offering, there were also many banners and standards stolen from regiments felled by the beasts, pieces of armour stolen from the beasts' victims, most still coated in the blood of their former owners, more than a few weapons lay scattered about the ground, time and lack of care from the beastmen having long since rusted them beyond the point of uselessness.

This was a sight few humans were privy to witness. It was a sight even fewer humans wanted to witness.

The sergeant nodded, once, twice. 'Well,' he said with feigned cheer. 'Let's leave before whatever massacred a breyherd at their stone... comes back looking for more.' Or more of the herd comes and thinks that we are the ones responsible. Gerwin couldn't quite work out in his mind which of those two fates would be the lesser evil.

They slowly backed up, eyes wide, constantly scanning for any indication that whatever was responsible for the butchery which had occurred. While the victims were the beastmen, there was nothing to suggest that the one responsible would be discriminating. And with the way the bodies were carved and torn apart, there was an innate sense that the responsible party was not of the Empire—maybe ogres that had been hired as mercenaries, but for all that the bodies were ripped apart, there was nothing to indicate that the meat was being devoured. Better to not test their odds of being spared, better to be away from even the remotest chance of being slaughtered like the beastmen had been.

There was another sound in the air. Multiple sounds. Clicking, a whistle, another scream.

Gerwin ground his teeth, head turned in the direction of that last sound. Inhaled, mustered his thoughts and gathered them together.

Click. Click. Click.

There was something noticeably different about that last set of clicks. Allison and Burke visibly started.

'That was close to us,' Allison explained, her teeth bared.

Burke nodded his agreement with her statement but turned his head in the direction of the screaming sound. 'But in the opposite direction of...' he trailed off.

Gerwin hummed in acknowledgement, turned his head back toward the clearing that they had left behind. He lightly nibbled at his lower lip while his brow furrowed in thought.

'Burke, take everybody and check the scream's source. Allison, you and me will go look into the clicking.'

There were some quiet complaints about the idea of him and Allison separating from everybody else, but Gerwin quickly put an end to any such dissent.

'I need Allison to guide me, and with just the two of us, we're better able to investigate without being noticed. If there even is anything to notice us. We'll catch up.'

A few more token complaints at the idea, but Burke quickly led most of the group in one direction, while Allison and Gerwin left in the other.

#

For as close as the clicking had apparently been, it was clear that the source had moved. But the tracks that Allison found were fresh. They had to be, they hadn't vanished beneath, been washed away by the downpour of rain. As they moved, new sounds made themselves heard. Gerwin almost regretted his decision to go with just Allison, his anxiety was rising, heart in his throat, almost sick form anticipation and dread.

It still took the pair an hour before Allison stilled abruptly, eyes wide then narrowed. She crouched low, motioned to a dense patch of vegetation. The silent message was clear, and even with Gerwin's lack of expertise in tracking he could hear something nearby, something that they might be able to see.

Both crouched low and moved slowly through the overgrown greenery. On the other side, it wasn't yet another clearing, but they found the source of the latest batch of sounds.

There were two of those lizards. Like the one they'd seen days prior, both were dressed in green rather than the red of those that Sigismund had described. One had flesh that was a sandy tan, the other a vibrant almost lime green. Their heads were shaped strangely, and the eyes were so alien as to be unsettling, the way they almost bulged out from their skulls and both eyes moved independently of each other and a way that sickened Gerwin.

One was gesturing at the other, but both creatures stilled as a faint whistle was heard. The way they froze was actually a relief to Gerwin, it suggested that he wasn't the only one unsettled by the sounds of the forest. After five seconds, the pair of lizards continued where they left off.

'Do we know what did it?' The tan one asked.

The green one shrugged one shoulder and rested a repeater-handgun on the opposite. 'Not a clue. Definitely weren't the humans though.'

'Which ones?' Tan asked with what sounded like a wry tone.

'Either of them.' Lime tilted its head and snorted with naked amusement when Tan said something that Gerwin couldn't make out. 'A bunch of angry men in kilts. Not seen their like running around before.'

Both of Tan's eyes momentarily rested upon Lime with what Gerwin could only assume to be a stern glare, which lasted for five seconds before the left eye resumed rotating around, rarely resting on any one direction for more than a second.

'A third party. Maybe the Middenheim court hired another free company.' Tan shrugged, and then adjusted the handgun rested in its arms.

Lime's humour appeared to fad and it rubbed at the underside of its jaw with its knuckles. 'Do we know where the thralls are?'

Tan nodded once and opened its mouth, but then paused when a singular click made itself known. After a solid four seconds of remaining still, the creature shook its head and continued. 'That group has started to move south. We've seen enough, I'm pulling us back.'

Lime looked concerned for a moment, it was the slump of the shoulders, the tilt of the head that allowed Gerwin to work that out, had to pay attention not to the facial expressions, which hadn't seemed to change at all the entire time, but instead to their body language.

'How bad is it?'

Tan paused for a moment then nodded. 'If they attack now… The Legion is outnumbered. If we weren't worrying about the Warhost…' Tan shook its head. 'We can't afford a war on two fronts. We need them to stay here, but…' It trailed off.

There must have been some unspoken signal, or they heard something that Gerwin couldn't. As one, both lizards turned and very pointedly looked at the foliage where Gerwin and Allison had been hidden. Allison cursed softly and pulled back on her bowstring, but Gerwin quickly pushed her bow downward, away from the lizards. She opened her mouth, prepared to say something, no doubt asking what was going through his mind, but then any complaint that she might have had was silenced.

Click. Click. Click.

These clicks were recognisable to Gerwin. The click of a handgun's hammer being pulled down, except it didn't stop at just the three. Gerwin looked up at the trees, heart beating a melody against his ribs as he tried to count the number of lizardmen rested upon the branches, all aiming their handguns directly at him and Allison. He stopped counting midway through twenty. Allison quickly registered the threat and stopped resisting Gerwin's effort to force her bow into a position of non-threat.

Tan crossed his arms. 'So, you can be sensible. Stand up and get out of there.'

Gerwin stood, stepped from the foliage despite all instincts telling him to flee. It wouldn't make a difference if he did, he already had at least twenty-four handguns pointed at him, and a bullet to the back wasn't on his list of ideal ways to perish. Allison, very obviously doing so grudgingly, followed his example.

Tan examined the pair, both eyes staring at them, left eye to Gerwin, right eye to Allison.

Tan spoke after a long pause. 'The rest of your group is moving into a dangerous situation. You're going to want to run.'

'Is that a threat?' Allison asked, her teeth grinding together in some mix of rage of disgust.

'Not at all, lass,' Lime answered. 'We're warning ye that yer group is about to stumble across what ye're lookin' for.'

Tan quickly added on. 'The breyherd are out for blood. Either your group walks into the undead, or they get attacked by angry beastmen.'

Gerwin looked at Tan, met his eye as best he could. 'Have the undead been killing a lot of beastmen?'

'Noticed the absence, have you?' Tan asked in an ironic tone. 'Yes. You've been getting lucky, but I regret to say that the luck is running out. When you catch up to your group, run east. That's your best chance of surviving.'

Gerwin wanted to say more, ask something, but both lizards turned away from him, their flesh shifting colours. Despite the fact their clothing didn't change, or the handguns they carried, it only took them three steps before they simply vanished, as if the clothing not changing was no issue at all. A glance upward revealed that the branches which had previously been covered with the lizardmen gunners were now barren. Maybe they were still there, aiming their handguns, but Gerwin doubted it. The downpour wasn't revealing any blank spaces where the rain refused to pass.

They had gone. And strangely, there was an unsettling feeling that was different from any previous he'd been suffering. Like a weight was lifted from him, but instead of being a comfort, it was like a security blanket had been yanked away from him. He had become used to the weight, to the point it was almost a comfort, because of that familiarity. The lack was unfamiliar, and now he felt naked without it.

Allison let out a harsh breath, and then hunched over, breathing heavily. It dawned on Gerwin as he looked at her that her ground teeth during the exchange hadn't been true anger or distaste at the non-humans that had caught them unaware, it had been her emotional shield, her way of keeping calm in the face of what could have very well been her demise. Now, with the threat passed, she was letting herself feel the anxiety and fear after the fact and processing it.

A small part of Gerwin wondered whether he should pat her back in silent consul, a gesture of reassurance. Had it been one of his fellow guardsmen, the ones he had trained with and served beside for over a decade, he would have done so. But Allison was a recent addition, hadn't the same experience as them, hadn't the chance to learn the habits and gestures that meant more than spoken words. It was possible she would take it the wrong way, as something condescending.

The choice was taken from him. She straightened her posture, breathed in deeply. Once her breath was allowed to leave her lungs again, she once again was the model of the calm and collected archer that had been with them from the moment that Gerwin's group had broken off from the rest of the guard for this search.

'Do you believe them?' Allison asked, jerking her head toward where the two lizards had been standing moments ago.

'Captain Sigismund said that the ones who attacked the keep were perfectly fine letting him be after they found the sorcerer who had been manipulating the count. They don't seem to be our enemies.'

He hesitated a moment as a new thought came to him. A moment of suspicion flashed across his nerves, and unbidden his eyes turned in the direction that the lizards had moved to disappear, eyebrows raised in consternation, despite his previous words. Still, his suspicions had no evidence to support them, so he simply clamped down on his thought process and shuffled them aside to worry about at a later time.

Allison hummed, craned her neck to look in a direction that vaguely represented where the rest of their group had gone. 'If they were telling the truth, we should move.'

Gerwin nodded, motioning for her to lead the way.

#

Burke had a bad feeling. He had found fresh tracks. Human, or humanoid. A lot of them. And mixed in with those tracks were the cloven prints of the beastmen. Prisoners? Collaborators? One group tracking another?

It was a very bad feeling that plagued him. The kind of feeling that one could almost attribute to having somebody walking over their grave, an idiom that had fallen out of favour in the Empire after the Vampire Wars. Nobody liked saying anything that could be construed as being a vampire, certain witch-hunters had needed less provocation than that in the past. But it was still the closest that Burke could get to describing the chill that rubbed against his spine with all the subtlety of a chisel and hammer.

Against his better judgement, Burke didn't have the group now temporarily under his command pause, but instead had them continue.

And yet, every step they made, every footfall that Burke advanced by, that chill in his spine grew, turned colder and colder, chisel and hammer replaced for a pike and warhammer.

The whistling and the clicking had stopped. In fact, other than the sounds made by the archers and the guardsmen as they walked, there was no sound. No ambient noise, no wildlife, even the rain's constant pattering, while still there, still existent, and still dimly registered on a subconscious level, it was now somehow silent.

'Anybody else feel like they're staring down a greater daemon?' Uther finally broke the silence, his voice hushed, barely above a whisper.

Burke swallowed down his heart, which had jumped into his throat at the sudden sound, even if that sound had just been words from a friend. Then the words themselves registered and Burke nodded, then, realising that nobody was actually looking at him, spoke up.

'Less like a daemon, more like I'm walking straight into Morr's embrace.'

There was an ever so slight huffing sound from Otwin, a snort of amusement blown through his nostrils, but cut abruptly short as if he realised that letting out any sound was ill advised.

A raven cawed, and the sound had everybody start in shock. Burke pressed a hand to his chest, as though it would calm his heart from its rapid-fire beating. Once his heart slowed, he directed a glare up at the top of the trees, focused upon the raven preening itself. The wretched bird didn't look repentant in the slightest. It paused in its preening to stare down at Burke, as if aware of his irritation. Its eye seemed to convey a sense of amusement, and it let out another caw before returning to preening the underside of its wing.

'I ought to shoot that thing,' one of the other bowmen hissed.

'Don't,' Burke said reluctantly. 'Bad luck to kill ravens.'

There was grudging understanding. It might only be superstition, but Burke wasn't willing to chance upsetting any entities that could take umbrage with the death of any ravens. He could think of at least a couple, and that was before remembering that the Northmen had associated ravens with one of the Ruinous Powers.

The Raven let out one last caw then took flight. Burke scowled, saw that it was flying in the direction that they themselves were headed. On the one hand, that could be a message from Morr, a confirmation that they were nearing the undead. On the other, it could just be a wild bird choosing to fly in the same direction that he was leading the group.

As a matter of fact, it turned out to be the former. Morr was apparently watching them.

Burke swallowed down a thick wad of bile that threatened to make its way up his gullet. There were undead, moving slowly in a set direction. Lots of undead, more than he could count, not just because they were moving through a dense forest, blocking large numbers at any given moment. There were no real formations, likely because of the terrain. It made counting difficult, he could never tell which he had already counted and which he was counting for the first time, while many of them seemed to blend together, making him prone to missing them.

Instead of numbers, Burke chose to focus on what he was seeing.

He had expected the zombies and the skeletons. His limited understanding from Gerwin's explanations—he had never envied the sergeant's time fighting in that particular campaign—was that skeletons and zombies seemed to be the easiest thing for a necromancer to raise up, could just take any old corpse and make it useful, even if only as chaff to add numbers. He also recognised the ones that Gerwin had said were likely graveguard, or at the very least an analogue of them; they were recognisable by the black and purple uniforms that were similar yet different from that of the Efror Guard.

It was the other things that had him pause, fighting a different kind of fear that threatened to envelop him.

Figures clad in dark armour with cloaks that looked black as night and hoods drawn moved among the undead. Even compared to the uncanny visage of the grave guard, these were unsettling to look upon. The grave guard had an unnatural air to them, but it was easy to point at why they were wrong to the senses, it was the fluidity and natural grace that came of a living entity being shown from armoured skeletons, a combination that chafed at the mind at how wrong the image was. Meanwhile, these hooded figures moved with a grace beyond even that, like they were not bound by the limitations of a physical form, despite very clearly being physical entities that pushed aside vines and low hanging branches that got in their path.

One of the hooded figures stopped and the head twisted around, and for a moment, Burke was able to see the inside of the hood. There was nothing within but a pair of glowing orbs that burned with an unnatural blue light.

Another figure, dressed in similar armour, though more elaborate in design, approached the stationary wraith. This one also had a drawn hood, but unlike the others this one didn't have the unnatural grace, and a fleshed jaw could be seen for but a moment. It wasn't much, but it was enough. This one was clearly not like the others and might even be an actual human.

Maybe he was even the necromancer himself?

Any thought Burke had of trying to take a shot at the human among the undead was delayed though, for there was more to this mass of marching death. More wraiths, some riding skeletal steeds, some ghoulish looking creatures.

And large hulking abominations; beastmen, but bigger even than the one that the group had found in that one clearing. And very clearly as undead as much of this fly covered and decomposing yet still walking army of the dead. Large, no, huge four-armed corpses, the heads of which were those of oxen, and they towered over all else within that mass.

Not that those were the only beastmen bodies that walked among the mass. There were many that matched the one found in the clearing, just as broad, just as dangerous looking. All with graced with clear signs of how they died. They were staggering along with the same jerking motions of the rest of the undead horde, but most unsettling of all was how their movements were so perfectly synced with each other, every footstep in time with those to their side, every rise of the knee in unison with each other, right down to how high they lifted their legs.

'I think we found where all the beastmen have gone,' Uther said. His tone was hushed, yet that did little to hide the combination of nervousness, fear and agitation.

Burke let out a breath. His eyes were starting to ache from how wide they were, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not narrow his lids, not so long as he stared at this swarm of undeath. It suddenly made sense why they had retreated into the Drakwald, had seemingly halted their raids on isolated villages.

'We need to go,' he finally uttered, though it felt more like a gulp than actual speech.

Even before those words had lift his lips, they had been slowly backing up. The four words spoken aloud were simply permission to actually turn around and flee. Burke twisted around, legs tensing in preparation for the swift retreat to come.

The air echoed from the blaring of a horn. Burke swore softly, craned his head to watch as a small group of beastmen appeared, bleating out their cries of war and charging into the mass of undeath. These ones yet lived, were as full of life and vigour as Burke himself, but that wouldn't be the norm for much longer. Even at a glance, Burke knew that the beastmen stood no chance, too few numbers against a foe that would just replace losses with the ones responsible for said losses.

Unfortunately, the beastmen had emerged near enough to where Burke and the others were, that he knew—the moment the undead beastly giant turned its head, Burke knew—that the undead swarm had also noticed the humans in their midst.

'Run!'

The group had been tasked with finding the undead and reporting their existence to the rest of the Efror Guard so that plans of attack could be made. Nowhere had Burke been tasked with fighting the entirety of the undead army with only a handful of warriors and half that in archers or huntsmen.

He hoped Gerwin was having a better time of it, following after a mysterious clicking that could very well just be a woodpecker hitting a rotten tree or something equally benign. No, Burke quickly corrected his thoughts, that wasn't likely, and with the way that their luck was going, almost an impossibility.

A second horn blurted out, almost directly in their path. As if summoned by that sound, a beastman rounded the tree and almost ran right into Otwin, would have run him down if the swordsman hadn't reacted instantly, slammed his shield into the beast's maw and then followed up with goring the mutant through the gut with his sword. The beast croaked pitifully and fell to the ground. Unfortunately, it was but the first, more emerged, appearing from the surrounding vegetation, snarling and shaking weapons and fists in clear fury.

The rock that slammed down from above, crushing one beastman and then bouncing forward and crashing into another, was regrettably not a divine favour from Ulric. A glance behind showed that one of the largest of the undead beastmen was already in the process of lifting up another rock, its glassy milked over gaze still able to focus on the humans and yet living beastmen with an intensity that pressed down on Burke's shoulders with solid leaden weights.

Fortunately, the attack by the oversized undead mutant attracted the ire of the living beastmen, who momentarily forgot about the humans and charged toward the swarm of undead. Burke wasn't about to question his blessings. He simply reiterated that everybody run. If his tone was slightly higher pitched than normal, well that was normal when faced with certain death.

Another horn blared out, but Burke wasn't holding much hope that the beastmen would be more than a minor inconvenience. A small part of his mind actually wished that the mutants would stop trying to attack the undead swarm, or as much as he relished in the notion of his enemies fighting his other enemies and weakening both from the clash, that didn't exactly work when the clear inevitable victor was able to use the bodies of the fallen to build up a stronger force.

A hurried look back showed that there were undead actively pursuing. Leading the charge were zombified beasts that had the legs and bodies of horses, while a more humanoid torso arose from where the horse's neck would begin. Undead or not, these parodies of horses still moved with a galloping speed that would have already caught up to the humans were it not for the thick forest preventing them from building up to a straight dash.

But their handicap wasn't enough to stop them from slowly gaining. And Burke honestly believed himself about to die as one of the mutant zombies managed to get close enough that the human torso started to ready the spear in its hand. Burke silently whispered a prayer to Ulric, was prepared for that inevitable moment he was run through...

The zombie fell, an arrow now lodged firmly into one leg, the force of the projectile enough to trip up the undead abomination, even if it were incapable of feeling the pain of the strike.

Gerwin appeared, waving an arm in a wordless order to rally on him, then a wave that directed them to run in a particular direction. At his side, Allison was already letting loose another arrow, was using her momentary distance to let loose a number of arrows, each aimed not for what would be fatal strikes on a living target, but instead for what was certain to inconvenience and trip up those chasing them. It was a short-lived opportunity, and Allison was soon running alongside everybody else.

'This way,' Gerwin was urging everybody.

Burke hadn't time to wonder if there was a reason that the sergeant had chosen that direction specifically, or if Gerwin had picked at random, but he seemed to be committed to having them flee in that particular direction, and in all honestly, Burke wasn't overly fussed, so long as they were moving away from the chasing swarm of undead.

It wasn't long before the undead beasts started to catch up to them again. A process that came even sooner than it otherwise would have due to the stream that obstructed their path. Gerwin's commitment to his chosen direction meant that he started to ford the water without any hesitation. With the choice being ford the stream or start running parallel to it, Burke and the others quickly followed Gerwin's example. But it was still enough to slow them down, and on the other side of the stream, they'd barely make any real distance before the undead beasts caught up to them.

Gerwin swiftly turned, ran his blade through the first of the undead beasts, almost took a spear through the shoulder as the equine-bodied zombie collapsed. Otwin and Uther quickly formed up, but they were outnumbered, still panting from their prolonged sprint. Burke shook his head, certain that this was the end, even as he readied his bow, arrow readied. If they were to fall, he would not go quietly.

'Ya-hah!'

Burke started in shock at the unfamiliar voice that projected a loud battle cry mixed in with triumphant laughter. Seemingly from nowhere, a horde of men appeared, large blades already swinging. Burke had to blink, uncertain that what he was seeing was actually real.

They were large, muscular men, with long wild hair and beards. They all had half their faces covered in a blue paint, and most bafflingly, they wore kilts. A small portion of Burke's mind wondered whether they were Northmen, wild and savage tribesmen, but he quickly took note that for all that they seemed to have a savage glee about them as they charged the undead abominations, they still spoke with an accent native to the provinces. Ostlandic, if the slight twinge more often associated with Kislev was any indication. They also were wearing armour more likely to come from the civilised lands of the Empire than the savage north—a chainmail shirt on that one, a typical empire breastplate on that one, and so on.

They just happened to be running into battle wearing kilts, of all things.

'Yer dead,' one of the kilt-wearing warriors crowed, having managed to cleave a particularly large monstrosity in twain with a single swing of his sword.

A closer look to the swords these warriors wielded had him note the size. Greatswords, but not the flamberges or zweihänders typical of the Empire, but instead an older style, like somebody had looked at a longsword and declared that it wasn't long enough. Gerwin, Uther or Sigismund would likely know the proper name for the swords in question.

From the same place that these greatsword carrying warriors had appeared, more conventionally armed and armoured men also made an appearance. Men of the Empire, carrying halberds and pikes, already positioned such that they had encircled the skirmish in its entirety and were now just slowly tightening that circle. The only way anybody could go to retreat was to ford the stream once more.

Fortune clearly had decided to favour them. This was only a small portion of the massive swarm of undead, had the entirety chosen to pursue, then even with the large number of reinforcements they would still have fallen. As it stood, maybe the beastmen attacking the swarm had been enough of a distraction, or else the one controlling the undead had elected to put what they saw as the minimum effort that would succeed into hunting down the humans and not counted on reinforcing troops. Either way, Burke let out a sigh of relief, they'd survived.

As the last of the undead finally fell to blade and pike, the strangers reorganised themselves, kept a cautious eye on the other side of the stream as though expecting more to emerge. Burke now took the time to examine the pikemen and halberdiers.

They weren't uniform in their colours, he noted quickly. That suggested that this wasn't a state regiment, likely a free company landsknecht then, though whether formed for a singular purpose or the personal army of a noble of wealth remained to be seen.

'Hail, friends.' Gerwin spoke up, raised a hand in greeting, still breathing heavily.

The strange warriors all stared at the small band of Efror Guardsmen. The kilt-clad warriors had an air of open caution to them, while the more conventionally garbed and armed men were expressing curiosity more than anything else. Then, they parted, allowed passage for somebody new.

He had a look to him that suggested that he was one of the kilted warriors even though he was wearing clothing better suited for the Empire—albeit a strange mix of good quality and still humble—and he lacked the vivid blue warpaint. It was the wild mane of hair and beard, and the way he carried himself. Instead of an oversized sword, he carried a warhammer, and his upon his breastplate was the image of the Twin-Tailed Comet.

It didn't take a learned man to recognise this individual's position in life.

The warrior-priest of Sigmar carried the air of experience about him like a second cloak. His dark eyes fixed themselves upon Gerwin's tabard, and raised an eyebrow as he noted the quartered black and purple colouring.

'Hail yourself, sons of Efror. And what exactly brings the militia of a defunct county to the Drakwald?'

Over the stream there was another distant horn bared out in advertisement that the living beastmen were still engaged with the undead. Gerwin momentarily glanced back, seemingly ignoring the mutterings of the kilt-clad warriors. After a moment, he visibly breathed in and turned to address the warrior-priest.

#

Sigismund wasn't prone to worry. He might get concerned, might wonder if he had made a right call or not, but worrying was energy that could be better spent correcting any causes for such worry to begin with.

He had sent out a number of small groups, each tasked with tracking down the undead while the far larger majority of the Guard fortified their position and kept the attention of the beastmen instead upon them rather than the trackers. Of the four groups, three had returned, one unharmed and with little to report, the other two with injuries and two deaths. Gerwin's group had yet to return. Enough days had passed by that Sigismund was beginning to grow concerned that they had perished within the deepest, darkest depths of the forest.

Click. Click. Click.

And those infernal sounds were grating at the nerves. They sounded uncomfortably akin to the hammers of handguns pulling locked back. He kept expecting somebody to fire at him after those clicks disturbed the air.

With a dower glare up at the sky, or rather at the thick covering of leaves and branches that acted as a ceiling obstructing the view of the sky above. Not that this ceiling was any use in stopping the rainfall from pouring down and drenching any with the misfortune of being out and about. Snorting, exhaling as though it would expel his less than stellar mood, the captain turned and started to move further into the encampment, if just to get a few minutes of his time spent under the canvas cover of his tent, free of the rain.

His movement was aborted shortly after he rounded a thick tree that didn't seem to match any type of tree typical elsewhere in the Empire, certainly wasn't oak. The reason for his pause was the awareness that hit him. Awareness of the keen edge of a blade hovering uncomfortably close to his throat. He wagered that a simple gulp of air would be enough to nick the skin.

The owner of the blade took a step closer to him, not that Sigismund could see them, as they were behind him. He wasn't even able to hear the movement, the only reason he could fathom his awareness of the movement was just a simple case of hyper-awareness of the presence behind him, now so close he could feel their breath tickling at the back of his neck, disturbing the strands of his hair.

'You wished to speak-talk?'

At the voice, Sigismund relaxed infinitesimally. He wasn't safe, he wouldn't make that delusion anytime soon, but this was a danger he had some familiarity with, some idea of how to navigate.

'I wanted to hire you again.' He spoke in a carefully bland tone.

'After you killed-massacred Snitun Deadfinger and his warclaw? What makes you man-thing think we can trust-believe you?'

It took Sigismund a moment to place the words, and he risked a derisive snort.

'That so-called warlord broke the terms of our contract. I wanted nobody harmed, just the boy found. He took it upon himself to kidnap more than just the boy. I did you vermin a favour. I imagine that was by design.'

There was a moment of silence, then a soft, chittering laugh, and the individual behind him moved even closer, the arm not holding a knife to Sigismund's throat now draping itself across Sigismund's shoulder and chest in a mockery of an embrace. Their mouth was now close enough to tickle at Sigismund's ear.

'True-true. You did a big-huge favour. Culled the weak for us. It's why we left you alone-unharmed. Very well, man-thing. What is new contract-job?'

'Information only. We have a name, we want more.'

There was a sigh of apparent disappointment. 'Is that all?' The voice had a distinct whine to it, but then a sigh brushed at Sigismund's ear. 'Very well. Must be interesting-special if a name is enough to find-seek. What is this name?'

'Pugna Textrix.'

For a brief moment, the arm that was wrapped about him loosened, then tightened itself again.

'Old language... you man-things call classical, yes-yes?'

'I wouldn't know.' Sigismund admitted. 'You speak it?'

The chittering laugh repeated, still so soft that nobody else in the camp heard, still nobody had noticed Sigismund and his position as technical hostage.

'No-no. A knife-blade does not speak-talk old speech. But...' there was a pause, and Sigismund reckoned that the head of the one holding him was tilted in thought. 'Name is unique... I find-seek. I tell you. You pay. Yes-yes?'

'Yes-yes.' Sigismund repeated as an answer.

'Good-good.' The voice paused a moment, and Sigismund believed he heard a sniffing sound. 'Why you in evil forest? Things lurking-prowling... dangerous, even for the cow-things.'

'Hunting undead,' Sigismund said in answer. He could have lied, but with this individual, the question could have been a test, and so far, he had never quite mustered the nerve to see what happens if he fails such a test. His current position was hardly the first time, it was a reoccurring position where this individual was concerned, ever since they'd first met, and Sigismund had made a panicked barter to not find himself breathing out of a new hole.

That this individual had become somewhat beneficial to Sigismund was a double-edged blade, on the one hand, it had become quite useful having such a contact, even before he'd joined the Efror Guard, when he'd been a lowly soldier fighting up north. On the other hand, he was still waiting for the moment that the scales tipped and revealed what the price was, the price that had nothing to do with gold.

The individual chuckled again, and Sigismund felt something cold press itself into his ear. He pointedly did not flinch.

'And why would you man-things do that?'

'There might be a connection with the name I just gave you. Even if there isn't, they still played a role in destroying my home.'

'Hmm, so you hunt dead-things instead of fight Chaos-things.'

'Everybody else is looking at the Chaos Warhost. Somebody has to chase off the undead.'

One last chittering laugh was heard and then the arm and the blade seemed to vanish. When Sigismund turned around, there was no sign of the one who had held him at knife's edge. Finally, he let out the breath he'd been holding in, relief flooding his nerves with all the potency of the most powerful of opium.

Every single time he "met" that individual, he felt a keen sense for his mortality. In a straight fight, Sigismund had a feeling that he would be able to best the other, but he'd never been witness to that individual being any position other than behind him with a blade to his neck. It just seemed to be to his good fortune that the individual seemed to feel some twisted fondness for him.

'Movement, north-side!'

Sigismund moved briskly to the northern edge of the camp, followed by a large number of archers. The archers readied their arrows, though didn't yet pull back on their strings, not without knowing what they were about to loose arrows against. Could just be Gerwin making his delayed return.

'Peace,' a voice shouted out. It wasn't a voice Sigismund had ever before heard, but it was speaking in Reikspiel with an authentic enough accent that he lifted his hand in silent order for the archers to relax their stances.

And into the clearing appeared a collection of humans, a most relaxing change from the almost daily clash with hunting bands of beastmen. Sigismund's eyes were instantly drawn to Gerwin and his men, ruffled, dirty and baring clear signs of having at some point gotten into a fight, but alive and well.

Once certain that his assessment had been correct, the captain's eyes drifted to one of the strangers, and his eyes widened in surprise. He wore obsidian armour that was mostly hidden beneath a dark hooded robe, the hood drawn so that all that could be seen of his head was a bleached which skull mask. Rested against this figure's shoulder was a scythe, and affixed to his back were wings, identical in design to those worn by the winged hussars of Kislev.

'A Knight of Morr,' one of the archers whispered in shocked awe.

Sigismund nodded dumbly, taken off-guard by the presence of the Black Guard. The other figure in comparison was hardly of note, she was a woman clad in the standard uniform of the Empire's armies, though a second and more thorough look at her crimson uniform and the small personal touches to it that were functional while still reflecting her status, rectified that previous assessment quickly.

Behind the group, it became clear that there were more. Lots more. Though it appeared that the infantry—for that was clearly what they were, regiments of pikemen all dressed in the vibrant flamboyance that was the Empire's go-to fashion and uniform of choice, they were obviously the infantry to the command element that was now approaching with Sigismund's men—were staying back.

The group approached, reached the edge of what was the actual encampment. It was the woman in crimson and black who spoke first.

'Captain Sigismund?'

'Aye, that's me.' Sigismund stepped forward. 'And to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking to.'

The woman and the Knight of Morr exchanged looks, a tilt of the head from the Black Guard had her turn to look Sigismund in the eye.

'This is Brother Kakovlev, and I am Captain Tanya von Eisling. We're the commanders of a landsknecht formed by Grand Count Haupt-Anderssen with the purpose of tracking down and eliminating an undead threat that attacked Stirland a couple of months ago. The same undead that you hunt now.'

The Black Guard spoke up then, his voice a whisper that still carried enough volume to be heard. That he was speaking at all was indication that either he had never taken the Vow of Silence that most Knights of Morr swore to, or his position as a leader gave him exemption so to better communicate with others.

'We were approached with news of this undead threat and tasked with eradicating the affront to Morr from the land. We've followed them here.' Despite the skull visage blocking his features, Sigismund felt the full force of the Morr's brother's stare. 'Aside from returning your lost lambs to you, we're here to propose that we consolidate our efforts and join together.'

-TBC