Von Carstein 2 - Inheritance by Warhammer

Author:Warhammer [Warhammer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

93

“Every little bit helps. So, honest opinion: when’s this all going to go down?”

“Reckon you boys got here in the nick of time. The natives are restless. They’re

gathering all around us, have been for the last few nights. They fall into some sort of

daze during the day, but like I said, come sunset you can hear them and there are lots

of them. The noise has been getting louder every night, as more of them gather. It’s

creepy as hell, let me tell you. I heard them feeding last night. It isn’t a sound I

particularly want to hear again. It’s like pigs at the trough, but, well, they aren’t pigs

are they. They’re just like you or me. Or they were. Once. Anyway, sundown

tomorrow would be my guess, unless they are waiting for something special.”

“I assume Schliffen will be thinking the same way.”

“I’ve long since stopped trying to second-guess the general but I certainly hope

so. Morr’s balls, I’ve got no desire to end up shuffling around with strips of rotten

flesh hanging off me. That isn’t a way I want to go.”

Baumann patted the outrider on the back and rejoined his own men, filling them

in on the situation. He painted a bleak picture.

“So we’ve become the bait in the trap?”

“That’s about the sum of it.”

“Nice,” Fischer said ironically.

The men ate in silence, watching the sun dwindle and finally disappear beneath

the horizon.

A cold wind blew through the camp. Baumann busied himself by sharpening his

sword on a whetstone. The regular scheeeel scheeeel scheeeel of his stropping

motion rang out into the darkness. It was met by the ululating cries of the undead as

they crowded in around the camp. Fischer caught glimpses of them in the darkness,

bone-white flashes picked out by the moon, darker shapes shambling inside the

shadows. In the most basic of ways they reminded him of wild animals playing with

their food. They weren’t trying to hide. They wanted to be seen. Being seen inspired

fear in the minds and hearts of the soldiers.

By nature men who dealt in death were a superstitious lot. They believed they

would hear an owl call their name the night before their own deaths and insisted on

having their sword in their hand as they died as though the blade itself would prove

to Morr’s attendants that they were warriors, and always when they went into battle

they would carry two silver coins to pay their passage into Morr’s halls should they

fall. Burdened with these superstitions it was hardly surprising that the men saw the

shuffling corpses as a promise of the fate that awaited them on the battlefield. Today

those putrefied zombies were their enemy, but tomorrow they would be their sword

brothers.

More and more as the night lengthened they heard the low keening echo around

them. The enemy were moving and they were blind to it. Bernholz had them prepare

firebrands to fight off any of the creatures who stumbled too close to the camp but he

wouldn’t allow his men to light them for fear that the fire would attract the zombies,

wraiths and wights like moths.

Fischer thought the man was an idiot.

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