Death's Chosen (First Cohort Book 3)

by M. R. Anthony

  “East or north would make sense,” I said. “We need to get Craddock down here to see which way he thinks is best.”

  “Are you sure these paths lead somewhere?” asked Ploster. “It could leave us in a difficult position if we all gathered here and found there was no way out.”

  He was right, of course. I’d have looked like a fool if the whole of the Cohort had taken it in turns to descend, only to find that the catacombs ended half a mile along each of the tunnels. On the other hand, I’d felt a constant breeze from all three of the corridors, which led me to think that the catacombs were either huge or led on to the surface somewhere away from the tower. I wavered in a moment of unexpected indecision. In the end, the choice was forced upon me.

  We heard a crackling, splintering sound from the entrance shaft. A man fell into view and crashed to the ground, bringing with him a shower of splinters and many larger wooden chunks. I reached him first – it was Tinker. He grimaced at the damage his left leg had suffered in the fall. White bone protruded through the skin of his upper leg. The end was sharp but the break looked clean. He swore.

  “The Flesh Shaper’s got through the wards, Captain,” he said, his duty to his fellows foremost in his mind. “He’s knocking on the door as we speak.”

  It was my turn to swear. “How much of the ladder did you bring down with you?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “One of the rungs burst like it was hollow in the middle. I grabbed the next one and that snapped too.”

  Sinnar looked at the pieces of wood, picking them up and examining their cross-sections. “It’s rotten right through. We must have got lucky coming down. And likely weakened it for Tinker.”

  “How much is gone?” I asked him.

  “I’d guess twenty rungs,” he said. “Or more. The bottom few aren’t broken – we could reach the shaft, I reckon.”

  I thought quickly. There was no easy way up and no easy way down. We could have possibly inched our way back up by placing our backs on one side of the shaft and pushing upwards with our feet. It would be dangerous, slow and we’d have to leave our armour behind. We’d already left our shields in the tower, since they’d have been an impediment when climbing down. There was definitely no way that the rest of the Cohort could get down to us, with or without the Flesh Shaper attacking them. Craddock was an excellent commander of men and I had to view this dispassionately – he was six men down and that was that.

  “Let’s straighten Tinker’s leg and we’ll find our way out,” I said.

  We didn’t feel much pain, which was fortunate since the method we used on Tinker was brutal. We dragged him away from the shaft and laid him on his back. We wore half-cuisse armour on our upper leg that protected the front and left the back exposed. I helped him unbuckle it and put it to one side. He knew what was coming. I held onto the soldier’s arms, whilst Sinnar took a firm hold of his boot. Without warning, Sinnar pulled hard on the leg. Tinker grunted and slid a couple of feet across the floor, in spite of my efforts to hold him in place. His leg bone had vanished back into his leg.

  You can’t become a veteran without picking up one or two ways to treat a wounded man. None of us had much skill or finesse, but it was Sinnar who completed the work, by pushing and kneading Tinker’s muscle so that it would force the broken bone into place.

  “Tell me when you can feel it grating,” he said to Tinker with surprising gentleness. He turned the man’s foot and made him flex his knee.

  “I think it’s in place now, Lieutenant,” said Tinker. He looked only slightly pale. I couldn’t remember if he’d broken many bones in the past – most of us had suffered at least a handful of breakages.

  Whilst Sinnar worked, Beamer took off his shirt by half-pulling and half-ripping it out from under his breastplate. He threw it helpfully onto Tinker’s face.

  “My old mother knitted that for me. I hope you’re grateful,” he said.

  “It stinks,” said Tinker. “And I thought you were born to a goat and a dog.”

  Sinnar laughed whilst he tied the cloth as tightly as he dared around Tinker’s thigh. There’d be no blood supply to choke, but old habits died hard. Afterwards, he fastened the half-cuisse into place and made sure it was tight. He reached out a hand and pulled Tinker to his feet without any apparent effort.

  “Thanks, Lieutenant,” he said, limping a few paces across the floor. “I’m going to be useless for a week or two, aren’t I?”

  “You’ve got five days, then I want to see you keeping up with Sprinter,” Sinnar told him.

  “Beamer, give him your shoulder,” I instructed. “We’re going to the north. Corporal Ploster, we’ll need your light when our torches fail.” He nodded briefly in response. His light spell drained him if he maintained it for too long. He could give us hours, but I didn’t want him to use it while we still had other means of lighting our way. I took one last look up the shaft – there was no sign of movement from above. I made a decision regarding the swords we’d found in the coffin. I gave one to Sinnar and I took the other for myself. They were the Cohort’s swords, not mine and not Sinnar’s. Nevertheless, we were the best two to carry them in the circumstances.

  We entered the northern passage and it wasn’t long until we’d gone further than I’d explored when I came this way earlier. I wasn’t sure how fast Tinker would be able to travel at first. With Beamer’s assistance, he managed well and I was pleased that we were able to maintain a fast walk. When I’d first entered the room behind, I’d sensed that my presence had been noted. This feeling didn’t subside, though I was no closer to concluding if there was any hostility towards us. I wasn’t alarmed by it – what I felt could have been partly a figment of my imagination, magnified by the age of the place.

  I estimated we’d travelled almost a mile when the first of our torches died. It simply faded to a glowing ember, which Weevil dropped onto the floor. We came to another chamber, reminiscent of the first. There was no coffin, though the walls contained many long and deep alcoves where a body could have been laid. They were empty. Three additional exits led away, each an identical-looking corridor.

  “This place must be huge,” whispered Ploster. “I would love the opportunity to explore.”

  “I feel as if we are being watched,” I said.

  He looked at me closely, his details faint in the dimming light. “I sense the presence of old magic,” he told me. “It is strange and different to what I know. Even the death sorcerers’ magic is familiar to me in its way – much more powerful than my own, but I can still read it and understand it. Here it’s not the same at all.”

  I hesitated. “What I feel is that the magic here has no link to the tapestry or the threads that you sorcerers pull. Like the warps and wefts themselves lie atop another layer of detail that I can’t see but which I know is there.”

  “That would be a revelation indeed,” he said. We’d spoken at length on the matter of my sensitivity to magic. I could tell that his first instinct was scepticism, yet he knew me well enough to be certain that I wouldn’t venture such an opinion without reason.

  The last two torches faded to bright orange glows within moments of each other. In the darkness, I heard Ploster sigh and then he produced a light of his own. It was brighter than the three torches combined and created a larger sphere. We were all relieved to see it. There’s something unutterably gloomy about torchlight, even when there are dozens of them in a small place.

  “North again,” I said. Then, “How’s the leg, Tinker?”

  “Not too bad, Captain. I reckon the Lieutenant’s done a pretty good job of joining the two halves together.”

  “Teacher turned soldier turned surgeon,” I said to Sinnar.

  “I hope you’re not thinking of making it a permanent duty,” he said with a chuckle.

  He wasn’t looking for an answer and we left the chamber. We hadn’t dallied long, since we were aware that the rest of the Cohort was likely fighting hard for survival somewhere above us. I d
idn’t know quite what I hoped to achieve – the start point was to escape; the end point was to join up with Craddock. It was the parts in between that I couldn’t guess at. Would we six have to find our way to the surface and go back to the tower, or would Craddock have led the men elsewhere? There were many possibilities and I realised that it was pointless to dwell on them.

  “If there’s any one amongst us apart from you that could get the men out of that tower, it’d be James,” said Sinnar, recognizing my worry and seeking to reassure me.

  “I know,” I replied. “The knowing doesn’t make me feel any better.”

  “Sometimes you have to wait. I can’t say I ever learned to accept it either.”

  Before I could reply, Weevil called out to us quietly. He was at the rear and I turned to see him looking over his own shoulder. “Thought I heard something, Captain,” he said.

  “What was it?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. It sounded like something whispering. Not nice whispering though – nasty whispering. Like children. That’s it, like children being naughty.”

  I wondered how much of his assessment was his brain piecing together something only half-heard and how much was his imagination filling in the gaps. Whatever it was, I was not going to dismiss what he’d said. None of my men were prone to exaggeration – at least not where business was concerned.

  “Come,” I said to Ploster. I was at the front and squeezed past him and then past Beamer, Tinker and Weevil. I ran back along the corridor for fifteen or twenty paces, with my new sword in front of me. I heard Ploster behind me as he struggled to keep up with my unexpected action. If there was anything behind us, I failed to catch it unawares and there was nothing to be seen in the passage. Ploster caught up, bringing his light with him. I thought about trying another run, but realised we’d risk leaving the other men in darkness. It was always best to stick together when you could.

  “I’m sure I heard something, Captain,” said Weevil when we re-joined the group.

  “Keep listening,” I whispered quietly to him. “And keep looking.” He nodded. I always took my soldiers seriously when they reported something unusual. Even if it turned into a false warning, it was better to be safe.

  We came to a third of the square rooms. There was no coffin here either and I wondered if the creature interred in the first chamber had been a noble amongst its kind. There were more alcoves – perhaps fifteen of them around the perimeter of the room, some of them stacked two high. They were empty, though I spotted what looked to be a leg bone in one of them. I called a halt.

  “Draw your swords,” I said, preferring that we be on guard.

  I went to the alcove and picked up the bone. I wasn’t a surgeon and rarely paid much attention to the bones of the dead, so wasn’t sure that this definitely came from a leg. One thing which did strike me as certain was that the presence of this single bone suggested that there had once been other bones.

  “Reckon all these alcoves once had bodies in them?” I asked.

  “If they did, something’s taken them,” said Sinnar.

  “I don’t like the word something when it pertains to possible enemies, Lieutenant. It means I don’t know who or what we face.”

  “Whatever it was, it is surely long gone. These halls look like they’ve been deserted for an eternity,” said Ploster. I could see that he was doing a poor job of convincing even himself.

  “I don’t like it,” I said. “We’ve all seen things that might have lived for many times longer than we have. If such creatures lurk here, I do not wish to meet them if we can avoid it. Let us make haste. I already crave the feeling of snow and mud beneath my boots.” Sinnar chuckled at that – my dislike of fighting in mud and snow was well-known amongst the men.

  There was no northern exit from this third chamber, so I took us to the east. Like all of the corridors, the walls and ceiling were uniformly built from slabs of featureless grey stone, pressed tightly together and with no visible means of support. The floor was made from smaller squares of stone. I’d seen similar tiling in many castles and keeps before. Often when stone flooring has been in place for a long time it will develop a sheen where footsteps have worn the surface. Here, there was no sign of polish. I supposed that a place of burial wouldn’t likely be visited without good cause.

  We hurried for another mile or two. We crossed over another of the large chambers without pausing and entered another, smaller room without any features at all. There seemed no reason for it to be there. Perhaps the passing of time had caused its furnishings to decay into dust.

  “Look, another shaft,” said Beamer, having spotted something that had escaped my eye. I crossed over to the place he’d indicated and saw that there was an opening in the ceiling, made almost invisible through a trick of the light. I stared up. There was no ladder, though I saw a number of rust-stained holes in the wall which suggested there’d once been one here.

  “No chance,” I said. “The ladder’s completely gone from the looks of it.”

  This time I heard it. There was the faintest of whispers, brought to me on the gentle breeze. It lasted for only the briefest of times, but I thought I heard a voice overlaid by wicked laughter.

  “I heard it,” said Sinnar, cocking his head. “Couldn’t tell which direction it was coming from. Front or back, I have no idea.”

  There was only one additional exit from this smaller chamber, so if the sound was ahead, we’d likely be finding out what it was soon. I felt uneasy at the thought of what it might be – there were many parts of the Empire that had hardly been explored. We of the Cohort had already come across creatures that had lain unseen for aeons. I didn’t want to face what might be a powerful foe on its own ground and with so few men to command.

  Off we went again. We were able to move quicker than we had at the beginning – I guessed that Tinker and Beamer had discovered how to work together, such that one broken leg between them didn’t slow them down too much. None of us heard the sound again for the next ten minutes. It may have been that the sounds of six armoured men were sufficient to drown out any repetition. I had no intention of trying to travel in silence.

  I was in the lead, with Sinnar at my side. The corridor had been uniformly ten feet wide and therefore provided ample space for us to travel two abreast. Sinnar and I saw it at the same time and we slowed to a halt. There was damage to the left-hand wall. Some of the slabs had been cracked and others had been pushed outward, so that they intruded into the corridor. There was a gap – almost wide enough for a man to have pushed his way through. There was only darkness on the other side. Ploster came closer and his light filtered unevenly through.

  “There’s something in there,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied.

  I pushed my head cautiously into the gap and looked. There was a tunnel on the other side. It wasn’t smooth and well-crafted like the corridors, rather it was rough-hewn and uneven. It was smaller in height and width than the place we were standing, but I could have made my way along it if I’d been able to fit through the gap in the slabs. I started to pull my head back when I saw something – there were two dull white specks which seemed to float in mid-air. It took me the briefest of times before I realised they were eyes. They stared at me brazenly and unblinking from a distance of twenty or thirty feet. I got a feeling of pure malice, washing from it in waves. I met the gaze of these eyes for a time so that it would know I wasn’t afraid and then I drew back my head.

  “I don’t like being pissed around with,” I said angrily. “Whatever it is that’s down here, it’s not going hurt us by hiding. When my enemy watches and waits, it only irritates me.”

  Sinnar laughed and stuck his own head into the hole. I heard something and saw a hint of movement. Sinnar pulled his head back much quicker than he’d put it in. He looked angry. “Something took a swipe at me,” he said.

  “Got you too, from the looks of it,” I told him, pointing my sword a
t the gap. Nothing came through and I saw nothing else. Sinnar pressed his land to his face – there were four slash marks down his cheek and over his jawbone.

  “Razor sharp,” he muttered. “More scars to add to the collection.”

  Whatever it was that had cut Sinnar, it didn’t come out to challenge us. It turned out that it didn’t need to. We heard more of the whispering noises – clearer and closer this time and coming from behind. I looked carefully – there were shapes visible, at the furthest extent of the light, as if they dared not come too close. Spots of dirty white appeared suddenly in great numbers, suggesting that there were many of them.

  “What are these bastards?” asked Beamer.

  “It’s all your brothers and sisters come to say hello,” said Tinker.

  “Do you want me to drop you?” asked Beamer. “Just say if you want me to.”

  At first, they remained indistinct – nothing more than waist or chest-high shapes in the darkness. Then, one of them became bolder and stepped close enough for us to make it out. It looked like a twelve-year-old child in size and shape, though there was nothing human about it. Its face and head were elongated and topped with wiry black hair. I saw its eyes more clearly now – there was something about them which suggested vast age – like they had seen forever and were bored beyond measure with existence. Its mouth was open and full of tiny, sharp teeth, dirty and yellow. The creature’s legs were in proportion, but the arms were far longer than they needed to be. Its fingers were overly long and ended in grubby nails which seemed to almost scrape against the floor. It spoke, or at least it tried to. It was difficult to make out what it said, since the creature clearly struggled to form the words.

  “What do you have?” it slurred. In the darkness beyond, the whispering increased in intensity, with a quality that was full of menace.

  I didn’t bother to answer – there seemed hardly any point in wasting my breath speaking to it. Instead, I spoke to my men. “Let’s keep going. Kill any that come close enough. Corporal Ploster, you’re ready to do what’s necessary?” I saw every man nod at me.