“I’ll die much easier with an audience,” he said grimly.
Cold, unblinking eyes watched as the ragged survivors of the Cobra of Khemri gathered what supplies they could carry and began to march into the jungle. None of the warm-things so much as glanced in the direction of the chameleon skinks, little guessing that the killers of Ethril and the sentries were so near at hand.
The shifting hues of their scales allowed the skinks to creep right up to the edge of the camp. They listened to the curious chirps and squawks the warm-things uttered, cocking their scaly heads in curiosity as they watched the robed magic-thing mutter sounds over several barrels of sea water. If the skinks had been like men they might have laughed as the smell of brine left the water. It was not the paltry display of magic that interested the skinks, but rather the grave solemnity with which the warm-thing worked his spell. They had seen their own priests accomplish similar feats, but with far more practicality.
The sentinels watched as the warm-things made a strange little platform of flat wood and fitted a long length of rope to one end. Upon this they set the barrels and before it, they placed the two biggest members of their tribe. When they set out, the big ones dragged the little platform behind them. The skinks watched the operation in fascination, wondering why the warm-things expended so much effort. Did they not know they could just lick water from the leaves each morning when the rains came?
If the skinks had been like men, they might have questioned the reasons they had been dispatched by mighty Lord Tlaco to herd these strange creatures into the jungle and see that they followed the trail the slann had made for them. But the skinks were not men and the thought of questioning a mage-priest was as alien to them as their jungle world was to the humans.
So they sat and watched and waited, enjoying the sun that warmed their scaly bodies. The skinks kept their blowguns ready in their strange mitten-like hands. If the warm-things came back, they would make another totem to encourage them to follow Lord Tlaco’s path.
They found the path much easier than on their first excursion into the jungle. Van Sommerhaus said it was because they had already chopped a path through the tangle of bushes and hanging vines. Even the jungles of Lustria, the patroon argued, were not so fecund as to efface a trail over the course of a single night.
Adalwolf was not so sure. There was something wrong. Nothing he could put into words, just a cold feeling at the back of his neck. He wondered what Ethril, with his elven wisdom, might have sensed. The jungle didn’t feel right, not like a natural place. It was almost like sneaking through someone’s house while they were away.
No, that wasn’t quite right. Something knew they were here. He could feel it watching them, watching them with a calculating regard that was chilling in its indifference. Even the bloodlust of headhunters would have been preferable to that cold emotionless scrutiny. At least that would have been something Adalwolf could understand.
It was much as before, the path through the jungle, like a great tunnel bored through the trees. Not a vine, not a bush or blade of grass disturbed the path. Upon the ground was only the barren earth, overhead the trees and vines formed an archway fifty feet above their heads, not so much as a leaf dangling beneath that point. To even think for a moment that any natural artifice could have created such a path was absurd. Considering the enormity of the magic that must have been involved made Adalwolf think not in terms of wizards, but of gods.
“We made excellent time,” van Sommerhaus declared, breaking the awed silence that had fallen over them all. He puffed himself up, nodding as he studied the terrain. “I told you we would have no problem finding it again.”
Adalwolf repressed a shudder. “We didn’t find it,” he corrected the patroon. “It found us.”
“Not that mystic mumbo-jumbo of the elf again,” scoffed van Sommerhaus. He gestured impatiently at the broad path before them. “The path is here. It’s as real as I am. This is no phantom of a feverish imagination! We made good time, that’s why you think it’s closer than before.”
The sailors looked uncertain, their superstitious dread rising to the fore again. Marjus tried to bring the men back in line, striking those who dared speak their fears.
Adalwolf pointed at the path ahead and made an observation that sent pure terror flooding through the crew. “If this is the same path, where are Joost’s bones?”
Van Sommerhaus bristled at the question. He stared at the ground for a moment, then shrugged. “Maybe those lizards ate him right down to the marrow,” he suggested. “Or maybe a jaguar came along and carried off whatever the lizards left. Yes, that sounds possible enough.”
“And afterwards the cat came back with an Imperial steam tank and dragged away the tree,” Adalwolf’s voice was as thin as a knife. He saw the confusion on the patroon’s face. To emphasise his point, he swept his hand across the trail they had cut the previous day. “Where’s the tree? You remember, that last tree that came crashing down and nearly killed Ethril?”
The patroon tried to sputter some sort of answer, but even his inventive mind could not think of anything to explain away the undeniable fact that the tree was gone.
This last proof of sorcery was too much for the crew. Even the threats of Schachter and Marjus couldn’t hold them now. They turned, intent on retreating back to the beach. In the face of this evidence that the jungle’s magic wasn’t ancient and placid but active and aware, the promise of gold lost its lure. They were afraid of the headhunters, but they were terrified of the jungle.
Quickly, they had new reason to fear.
The foremost of the retreating sailors had not gone far when he made a sinister discovery. The trail they had cut the previous day was overgrown again, overgrown with great bloated green plants with fleshy yellow flowers. They were ghastly looking things and the impossibility of their existence sent every man’s skin crawling. Yet such was their determination to escape the jungle that the sailors soon overcame their trepidation. Boldly they stalked towards the growth, intent upon cutting it down with their axes and swords.
As the first sailor raised his arm to strike one of the plants, ropy vines shot out from the fleshy stalk, coiling about him like the arms of a kraken. The man shrieked as the tendrils pulled him towards the main body of the plant. Now the true nature of the yellow flowers was revealed. They folded inwards upon themselves, each petal as hard and unyielding as a fang. The flower snapped open and closed, like a hungry dog licking its chops.
Adalwolf rushed forwards to help the men trying to free the trapped sailor. Other tendrils shot towards them, wrapping around arms and legs, trying to drag the men back towards the plants further back along the trail. Adalwolf had known a Tilean who had kept a pet python—the strength of the tendrils put that powerful serpent to shame. He could swear he felt his very bones being rubbed raw as the vine about his leg tightened and tried to pull him off his feet. Desperately he brought the edge of his sword chopping down into the tendril. It bit halfway through the ropey plant fibre but no farther, forcing him to saw his sword free by working the blade back and forth.
When his leg was free again, Adalwolf limped over to help a sailor with vines coiled about both of his arms. Those seamen who had not been caught by the plants rushed to help their trapped crewmen. Captain Schachter tried to fend off the tendrils with a marlin pike, the only long weapon they had among them, while Marjus used his great strength to drag freed sailors from where the plants could reach them. Even Hiltrude and Diethelm lent their aid to the cause, chopping sailors free with the knives they carried. Adalwolf glanced once to where van Sommerhaus stood upon the path, frozen with horror.
New screams told the fate of the sailor who had first fallen into the clutches of the plants. Unable to get near enough to free him, they could only watch as he was pulled remorselessly towards the snapping flowers. One closed upon his outstretched arm and an agonised wail erupted from the seaman. Bubbling foam oozed from the folds of the flower. The man struggled furiously for seve
ral minutes, then managed to pull away from the flower. His shrieks became even more frantic when he stared at his arm. There was nothing left beyond the elbow; it had been dissolved in the maw of the plant. No simple weeds, these, but carnivorous monsters of the jungle!
Freed from the first flower by his efforts, the tendrils wrapped about the man began to pull at him again, dragging him to a second snapping maw.
Tears were in Captain Schachter’s eyes as he pulled one of the pistols he carried and aimed it at his man. When the hammer fell, however, no shot came. The damp of the jungle had fouled the powder. Marjus Pfaff rounded on van Sommerhaus, ripping one of the engraved duelling pistols he carried from his belt.
The patroon started to protest, more from reflex than thought. The mate’s fist smashed into his face and spilled van Sommerhaus on the ground.
Grimly, Marjus took aim and fired. Preserved by the jewelled holster of the patroon, the pistol discharged with a burst of smoke and flame. The screaming man in the coils of the carnivorous plant fell silent just before a flower snapped closed about his hip.
Like whipped dogs, the rest of the crew retreated from the deadly plants. Brother Diethelm commended the soul of the dead sailor to the keeping of Manann and Morr while the rest of them watched the flowers take their grisly share of the man’s flesh.
“Make torches,” Schachter growled vengefully. “We’ll burn that filth into ash!”
Hiltrude caught at the captain’s arm. “We can’t do that!” she said, her eyes wide with a different kind of fear. “If you set fire to them, what’s to keep the flames from coming back and getting us!”
The woman’s fears had a sobering effect on the captain. “Belay that order!” he snapped. A string of vivid curses shot from his mouth as he glared at the plants.
“It wouldn’t do any good,” Diethelm told him as he finished his prayers. “There is some infernal power in those things, something even fire might not be able to purify.”
While he spoke, the priest indicated one of the ghastly flowers. An ugly blue seed the size of a man’s thumb dropped from the flower. Upon striking the ground, it instantly took root, as though some invisible hand were pushing it into the earth. In a matter of moments, a green shoot sprouted. A few minutes, and the plant was already half the size of its sire.
“We can’t fight that,” Adalwolf growled.
“Then what are we supposed to do?” demanded Schachter.
Adalwolf didn’t answer the captain, instead staring at the trail ahead. Schachter cursed lividly. The trail ahead was likewise alive with the hideous plants.
The mercenary turned and pointed at the eerie pathway through the jungle. “Something wants us to go this way,” he told Schachter. “And it won’t take no for an answer.”
Schachter fingered the grip of his useless pistol. “Where do you think it goes?” he whispered.
“Maybe to van Sommerhaus’ city of gold,” Adalwolf answered, glancing at the patroon as Hiltrude helped him off the ground. He quickly looked away.
“Somehow I doubt it,” Schachter said.
The foetid atmosphere of the jungle was a damp heat that oppressed the lungs of the small band of intruders. Whatever power had set them upon the strange path had cleared the way for them but seemed oblivious to the inhospitable nature of the heat and humidity. Perhaps these were things beyond its power, or perhaps it was in such an atmosphere that these unseen powers thrived.
Adalwolf could not be certain, he only knew that the strange tunnel through the trees had been laid out for a purpose. What that purpose was, he could not begin to guess.
Animals seemed to shun the strange path for the most part. At first this was counted as a blessing, the memory of the cannibal lizards and Joost’s terrible death still fresh in their minds. However, it quickly became obvious they would need to supplement the stores they had salvaged from the ship with fresh meat and whatever fruit they could find. To do so meant leaving the path and each of these excursions into the jungle bordering it was fraught with peril. Quicksand nearly sucked down an entire hunting party while a second came back short two men after encountering something they could only describe as a beaked bat-snake. The most hideous event of all happened to a grizzled sailor named Dirck who investigated a curious wailing sound emanating from beside the path. He discovered a little group of tiny red frogs with mottled markings. Thinking their legs would make good eating, he caught one. As soon as the frog was in his hand, however, it gave voice to another terrified wailing sound. Its slimy body began to excrete a vile brown mucus that sizzled as it touched the sailor’s skin. By the time he threw the frog away, the acidic mucus had eaten clean through his hand, finger bones standing exposed in the corroded flesh. Infection, sickness and delirium had been his fate after that. When he did finally die, it seemed almost a blessing to his comrades.
Lustria. Well had those who dared its jungles named it the Green Hell.
Adalwolf scowled at a scaly, monkey-like thing perched in one of the fern-like trees. The lizard simply stared back at him, sometimes closing one eye, then the other, as though to make sure both were seeing the same thing.
The column came to a halt. Men with flagons in their hands came jogging back to the water barrels, filling their mugs. Most of the men slumped to the earth beside the sledge, greedily drinking their fill. A few jogged back to the head of the column, where they handed their cups to van Sommerhaus, who in turn pressed a few coins into their outstretched palms. Even in their current circumstances, the fading wealth of the patroon commanded respect.
Adalwolf was surprised when he saw Hiltrude turn away from the water barrels and walk in his direction instead of returning to the patroon’s side. She smiled at him and offered him the silver cup she was carrying. The mercenary studied the delicately engraved cup for a moment, then handed it back to the woman.
“I’m afraid taking a drink from that would leave a bad taste in my mouth,” he told her.
Hiltrude shrugged and took a sip of water. She glanced around, then smoothed her tattered dress before sitting down on a big grey rock at the edge of the path. She smiled sadly as she felt the ragged, torn shambles of her once fine clothes.
“Don’t worry, he’ll buy you a new one,” Adalwolf assured her.
Fire flashed in Hiltrude’s eyes. “He didn’t buy it. I bought it, if you must know.”
“I’ll bet he still paid for it,” the mercenary grumbled.
“And who paid for your armour and your sword?” Hiltrude snarled back. “If you think I’m a whore for taking his money, what does that make you?”
“It’s different for me,” Adalwolf said, uncomfortable with the turn the conversation had taken.
Hiltrude cocked an eyebrow at him. “Why? Because you’re a man? Because it’s right for a man to take money from someone he despises, but when a woman does, it makes her cheap and wanton?”
“I’m not selling my body to him!”
The courtesan snorted with bitter amusement. “Aren’t you? He pays you to fight his enemies and protect his ships. He expects you to get in the way of swords and axes—and ill-tempered plants! You’re right, that’s not selling your body. That’s selling your life!” She shook her head, an arrogant expression on her face. “Even I haven’t sunk that low.”
Adalwolf shifted uncomfortably. He hadn’t expected Hiltrude to defend her relationship with van Sommerhaus by challenging his own. “I have a family depending on me back in Marienburg. That’s why I do it,” he said in a quiet voice.
“I don’t have even that,” Hiltrude said. “My family died when I was almost too young to remember them. There was a pox in the neighbourhood and the plague doctors tried to burn down the infected houses. The fire got away from them. Three streets ended up burning to the ground.” She stared sadly at nothing, her cheeks trembling as she remembered the distant tragedy. “Ever since then, I’ve had to make my own way as best I can.”
Adalwolf stepped towards her. “Hiltrude…” he said in a soft vo
ice. Then the mercenary’s eyes became hard again. “Hiltrude… don’t move,” he ordered.
It was on the courtesan’s lips to object to being ordered around by the mercenary but the intensity of his expression and tone made her do as she was told. Carefully, she turned her head to follow the direction of the warrior’s gaze. A short gasp escaped through her lips as she saw the thing that had slithered onto the rock beside her, warming itself in the light. It was like a thin belt of scaly leather, banded from tip to end in alternating rings of crimson, yellow and black. A blue tongue darted from its little snub of a head, tasting the air with little trembles of its forked tip.
“Don’t move,” Adalwolf whispered again as Hiltrude leaned away from the jungle snake. He could see her shivering, every muscle in her body quivering with horror at the thing sitting beside her. Slowly, Adalwolf drew his sword.
The blade had not cleared its scabbard before a strong grip restrained his hand. Adalwolf found Brother Diethelm standing beside him, the priest’s hand closed around his own. “Not that way,” Diethelm advised. “Fast as you might be, the snake might be even faster. There is another way.”
Perplexed, Adalwolf watched as the priest knelt down before the snake. The reptile fixed its black eyes on him, watching his every move. Diethelm began to murmur softly into his beard, his body swaying slightly from side to side. The ophidian head followed his motion, slowly swinging from one side to another. Gradually, the priest began to crawl towards the snake, still swaying back and forth as he did so. The snake’s eyes never left Diethelm.
“Hiltrude,” the priest said softly. “Move away from our little friend. It is quite safe, so long as you do not touch him.”
The woman quickly leapt away from the stone, clinging to Adalwolf’s side. Together they watched as the priest closed the last few feet between himself and the snake. Casually, almost without apparent thought, Diethelm lifted his hand and tapped the snake’s head. “Go away,” he told it. To their amazement, instead of biting him, the serpent turned and slithered back into the jungle.
02 - Temple of the Serpent Page 11