Free 02 - Taint of Evil by Neil McIntosh - (ebook by Undead) Page A

him. “You’ll feel nothing of it by morning.”
    “What about our friend over there. Will he live?”
    “He’s a strong man. He’ll pull through.”
    “What about his companions?” he asked. “Did you learn any more from them?”
    “Not a lot. I got the feeling they were waiting to see whether I was going to
heal their comrade.” She lifted her hand clear, and inspected her work. “Or kill
him,” she said. “There. You’ll do. Now you need sleep, like Bruno here.”
    Stefan looked round. Bruno had curled himself under a blanket and was indeed
solidly asleep. Stefan had the sudden sense of time passing unnoticed. He made a
half-hearted attempt to calculate how long he must have been sitting with Bea,
but he was fast succumbing to a seductive drowsiness.
    Sleep. Suddenly sleep was very appealing. He began to slip into a soft,
blurred world where nothing but sleep was of any consequence. When he tried to
speak, his tongue felt thick and slow.
    “Bruno,” he murmured. Wasn’t there something he was going to mention about
Bruno? But Stefan lost his grip on whatever it might have been as he slipped
into a deep, dreamless sleep.
     
    He woke with the sun low in his eyes, and a biting wind blowing across the
open plain of the Ostermark. Stefan felt refreshed, wonderfully rested. As he
stripped away the covering blanket he put his hand, instinctively, to his cheek.
He probed the line of the wound where the mutant’s sword had cut through the
flesh. The incision was still there, but very faint, and all pain was gone. He
looked around, and saw Bea sitting close by, watching him carefully.
    “Keeping an eye on your patient?”
    Bruno appeared, walking in tandem with one of the soldiers. The wounded man
has made a good recovery. “Their captain would like to speak with us.”
    Stefan got up and brushed himself down. “Gladly,” he said. “I’m sure there’s
much we’d like to know about each other.”
    “I’ll wait here,” Bea offered. The soldier made a short, deferential bow. “If
you please,” he said, “the captain asked to speak with you in particular.”
    “In that case, lead on,” Bea replied, graciously. The three followed the
soldier through the remnants of the previous night’s battle: broken carcasses,
grotesque collages of twisted bones, cracked and blackened by the flames.
Red-dad soldiers moved amongst the debris, carefully moving the remains of any
mutants into pits to be burned. Wisps of smoke still trickled skywards where
fires had been kindled.
    The wounded man was sitting upright, supported by another soldier and a
second man that Stefan recognised as the captain. He saluted Stefan and his
comrades, and beckoned them across. He offered his hand to each of them in turn,
and smiled a broad welcome.
    “I must offer my gratitude to you first of all,” he said to Bea. “But for you
another of my men would not have seen this dawn.”
    “His constitution is strong,” Bea told him. “And his spirit wasn’t ready to
relinquish this life just yet. You have a powerful will to live,” she told the
wounded man.
    “Nonetheless.” The captain looked her up and down with clear grey eyes. “We
are in your debt.” He turned to Stefan and Bruno. “And to you, too, gentlemen.
Your intervention in our struggle was decisive.”
    “Our paths crossed, and we met with the same purpose,” Stefan replied.
“Between us we’ve wiped more foul creatures of Chaos from the face of this
world. For that we can all take credit.”
    The other man smiled, pleased by Stefan’s words. He held out his hand. “Hans
Baecker at your service.”
    “Stefan Kumansky. This is Bruno Hausmann, Beatrice de Lucht.”
    “Where are you headed?”
    “Ultimately, to Altdorf,” Stefan replied.
    “And immediately?” The steely eyes fixed Stefan with a quizzical stare.
    Stefan paused, thinking about his answer. “The honest answer,” he said eventually,
“we’re not sure. South, and west, I