“This way!” Thanquol snarled as Boneripper came limping over to him. A last glance at Xiuhcoatl showed the skink priest waving a claw frantically in Thanquol’s direction and a large number of lizardmen loping off in pursuit.
“Quick-quick!” Thanquol shrieked, half-pulling the stunned rat ogre after him into the darkness of the tunnel. Thanquol was instantly struck by the similarity it bore to the corridor the skaven had used to enter the pyramid.
The glyphs! A thrill of terror rushed through him as Thanquol thought of the wards that had protected the first tunnel. Only the thought of dying on Xiuhcoatl’s altar kept the grey seer moving. A new, desperate purpose guided him. They had to follow the man-thing’s scent and find him so he could clear away any wards they found! And they had to do it before the lizardmen found them first!
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Breeder’s Scent
Schachter wiped the cold sweat from his brow, dearly wishing he had a good bottle of Estalian brandy to drive away the trembling he felt in his bones. He stared into the long stretch of darkness that lay between himself and the sputtering torch further down the corridor. It seemed an impossibly long way away. He felt his stomach churn at the very thought of running through it. That primitive, primal part of the human brain that told him to fear the night, to fear the dark, was like a thunder inside his head. Stay, it seemed to say stay in the light where you are safe.
Hiltrude tugged at him, trying to pull free from his grip. The action made him round on her irritably. A cruel twist of the cloth tether he’d tied about her wrists brought the courtesan to her knees, whimpering in pain.
“Stupid wench!” Schachter snarled down at her, his fear turning to anger now that he had an excuse to vent. He slapped her head, the crack of his palm echoing in the stone corridor. He glanced up in alarm at the loudness of the sound, but the stone lizards and snakes carved into the walls continued to stare down at him with the same icy indifference as before.
Hiltrude tried to pull away again, but Schachter pulled her arms back at such an angle she was forced up to her feet.
“What do you think’s back there?” Schachter asked. “Whichever pack of monsters won that fight, Adalwolf’s dead!”
The woman glared defiantly at Schachter, shaking her head furiously, tears streaming down her face. She wouldn’t listen to his words. She wouldn’t believe them. Adalwolf wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be.
It was strange, Hiltrude thought. It wasn’t until she’d lost him that she appreciated her feelings for the hardened warrior. Gruff, crude, arrogant even, yet she felt there was more nobility about Adalwolf than all the refined burghers and aristocrats she had entertained over the years. She wondered about the wife he’d left behind in Marienburg and the children she’d borne him. Perhaps, if things had been different, that woman might have been her.
She’d never know what had become of her husband. She’d never know how he’d fallen trying to save a perfumed harlot from the clutches of gruesome monsters far from the lands of men. She’d never know that Adalwolf had not abandoned her.
If it had been me, Hiltrude told herself, I would know. At least she wanted to believe that.
“Come on,” Schachter told her. This time the captain’s voice wasn’t so gruff and he relaxed his hold on the tether so it didn’t bite into her skin. “We can’t stay here. We have to find a way out before they find us.”
Hiltrude didn’t know which “they” Schachter meant. She supposed it didn’t matter. The lizardmen had no more reason to look kindly on them than Thanquol and his brood. She wasn’t sure which fate she dreaded more. She had seen the hideous sacrifices of the lizardmen and their red-clawed priest. Somehow the cold, passionless way the reptiles had butchered their captives made her more afraid than whatever horrible revenge Thanquol might think of.
Schachter pushed her ahead of him into the darkness between the sputtering torches. She could feel the sea captain trembling as he followed her. Hiltrude found some comfort in the fact. If she could stay calm, if she could keep her wits about her, she might escape her captor. While Schachter was busy jumping at shadows, she’d have her chance to get away.
What she would do then, she had no idea. The pragmatic side of her told her to stay with Schachter, that he was her best hope of getting out of the pyramid alive. Hiltrude felt sick at the thought. She’d listened to her pragmatic side far too much in her life, let it lead her to places and do things that…
No, she wouldn’t be pragmatic now. She would wait for her chance and she would take it. She would go back to the temple and she would find out what had happened to Adalwolf. After that, she didn’t care what became of her.
Hiltrude watched as the circle of light drew nearer, like a beacon on a distant shore. Twenty paces, perhaps thirty, and they would be out of the darkness. Schachter would relax again once he was safe on that little island of light. That would be her chance.
Schachter moaned in terror behind her. “They’ve found us!” he gasped, thrusting Hiltrude ahead of him. She stumbled ahead as the captain forced her into a run. She was able to glance back only once. There was an impression of shapes rushing through the bit of illumination they had just left behind, but she couldn’t tell from so quick a look whether they were rats or reptiles.
“Run! Run!” Schachter’s frantic voice boomed in her ears. Hiltrude sprinted ahead of him, impelled by the captain’s terror, frightened that he would trample her underfoot if she fell. Twice she felt the sword in Schachter’s fist jab at her back. She wasn’t sure if it was a conscious threat or an unconscious motion, but she was certain she didn’t want to test the man’s intentions.
They reached the little circle of light. By now there was no mistaking the pad of clawed feet on the stone floor behind them. Schachter pushed her forward, intending to rush further down the corridor, light or no light, but Hiltrude staggered back into the light.
Blue-scaled creatures strode out from the darkness ahead of them, ugly little spears clutched in their clawed hands. They regarded the two humans with huge, unblinking eyes and their sharp little fangs seemed to glisten in the flickering light. The sight was too much for Schachter. With a howl, he brought his sword chopping down into one of the lizardmen.
The skink gave voice to a single sharp bark of pain, then closed its claws around the golden blade that had split it from shoulder to sternum. Schachter tried to rip the cleaver-like edge free, but the reptile’s tenacious grip was too strong. Dying, the lizardman had prevented Schachter from continuing the fight.
With Schachter’s sword trapped in the body of the skink, the other lizardmen lunged forward. By now the pursuers following from behind had closed the gap. Schachter and Hiltrude were dragged to the ground beneath a mass of clawing, clinging reptiles. The thick tails of the skinks battered them mercilessly, raising ugly welts wherever they struck. Sometimes the golden butt of a spear would crack against their skulls, rattling their senses as they tried to throw off their scaly antagonists.
Already bound by Schachter, Hiltrude was the first to collapse beneath the abuse of the lizardmen. As the skinks lashed her legs and arms together with heavy ropes, she could see them beating the fight out of Schachter so they could do the same to him. During the struggle, the captain’s boot kicked the corpse of the dead skink, his sword still embedded in its chest. She found it strange that the lizardmen didn’t try to kill Schachter for what he had done.
Then an icy chill swept through her, a sense of terrible power. Hiltrude twisted her head against the rough floor, raising her eyes as a robed skink emerged from the darkness. Her skin crawled as she felt reptilian eyes studying her, appraising her like a fishmonger appraising a catch. Xiuhcoatl’s crest flared into a brilliant comb of crimson, contrasting brilliantly with his blue scales and white robes.
Even though she knew there was death in Xiuhcoatl’s voice as the Prophet hissed commands to the other skinks and the two humans were lifted from the floor, Hiltrude knew there was no malice in the lizardm
an’s direction.
She and Schachter would die upon the altar, but their killers would take no delight from it. They were above, or perhaps beneath, such things as emotions and desires.
That part of her that she had come to hate found it all quite pragmatic.
Adalwolf cautiously rounded the bend in the corridor, holding his torch high to illuminate as much of the darkness as he could. He knew he risked discovery by carrying the light, but he also knew he needed to see if he was to defend himself. By now the lizardmen had finished off Thanquol’s vermin, but he doubted if they would stop there. Their temple had been violated, their living god slain, their kin killed. No, they would not stop with the slaughter of Thanquol and his ratmen. They would head into the tunnels to pursue the humans who had escaped. Perhaps, he realised with a feeling of sick dread, the reptiles didn’t even know the difference between man and ratman.
The thought was made all the more hideous when he remembered the awful ritual they had seen the skink priests performing atop the pyramid. Certainly they were no friends of the underfolk, but that didn’t mean they harboured any kindness towards mankind.
Fear flared through Adalwolf’s heart. He had to find Hiltrude before the lizardmen did. To think of her alone with that scoundrel Schachter, a host of cold-blooded monsters hunting them…
The warrior scarcely stopped to consider that his own situation was worse. Schachter at least had a weapon to defend them. Adalwolf had only the torch he’d plucked from the wall of the corridor. The same menace hunted him that hunted them, only his own flight from the temple had been much later than theirs. Whatever pursuit the skink prophet had sent to scour the tunnels, they would be much closer to him than them.
Still, Adalwolf could not get the courtesan’s plight out of his mind. However sorry his own situation, he knew he had to make the effort to rescue her. He felt that more than merely his life rested on trying. He’d forsake whatever dignity years of working for creatures like van Sommerhaus had left him if he abandoned her now. His honour hung upon getting her safely from the pyramid and he was not so rotten with the mercenary creed that he did not still value honour.
Something stirred in the darkness ahead. The musky stink of reptilian flesh struck Adalwolf’s nose as a short, wiry Lizardman scurried into the light of his torch. It paused when it saw him, shifting its grip on the short spear it carried. Adalwolf did not give the skink a chance to decide what it was going to do. Swiftly, he brought his torch slamming down into the reptile’s head, knocking it against the floor. He kicked the spear away from its grasping claws.
Hisses rasped through the shadows and Adalwolf saw more lizardmen emerging from the blackness. They were of the same wiry breed as the one he had knocked down and their claws held the same little spears as their prone comrade. The mercenary tried to read some emotion on their scaly faces and in their gaping eyes, but they might have been carved from stone for all the expression he could find.
“Stay back! I don’t want to hurt you!” Adalwolf warned, waving the flaming torch before him. The skinks didn’t seem especially impressed by his display of bravado, but they did hang back a bit. Adalwolf began to think he might be able to bluff his way past the timid reptiles when he saw the reason for their timidity lumber out of the shadows. His blood became ice as he saw one of the huge ogre-like lizardmen from the spawning pool march between the parted ranks of its smaller fellows.
The kroxigor carried an immense axe seemingly crafted from solid gold in its over-sized claws, the blade already clotted with bits of fur and black blood. Adalwolf could smell the carrion reek of the monster’s breath as a rumbling bellow pulsed up its throat and through its giant fangs. Suddenly the torch in his hand felt even punier than it had a moment before. Dragonfire might not be weapon enough to faze such a brute!
Adalwolf retreated before the kroxigor’s approach. Battle-hardened reflexes made him turn about before he had taken more than a few steps. He caught the shaft of a spear one of the skinks behind him was stabbing at his back just before it struck. He wrenched the weapon from the surprised reptile’s hands then drove the burning end of his torch into the creature’s face. The skink barked in pain and collapsed in a writhing mass of flailing limbs, its agonies effectively blocking the advance of its fellows.
The kroxigor bellowed again, charging for Adalwolf. The mercenary ducked beneath the sweep of its axe. Stone shards sprayed from the wall as the axe smacked into stone instead of flesh. Before the huge brute could recover, Adalwolf stabbed his stolen spear into its belly. The flimsy javelin failed to penetrate the thick scales and the knotted muscle beneath, buckling like a nail upon an anvil.
Adalwolf hurled the useless weapon into the kroxigor’s face, pleased to see the lizardman blink in surprise. Before he could exploit the distraction, however, he felt scaly arms grabbing at him from behind. A sinewy arm wrapped around his throat, trying to pull him down to the floor.
The mercenary gave scant attention to the skinks grappling him. His eyes were locked on the immense lizardman in front of him. The kroxigor hefted its axe again, raising it for an overhead blow that would split Adalwolf’s body like a fencepost.
Adalwolf squeezed his eyes shut to keep from seeing the death blow. After a few moments, he opened them again. His first surprise was that he was alive. His second was to see a shape fully as big as the kroxigor wrestling with the reptile, ripping at it with massive claws and smashing it against the walls at every turn. He almost laughed when he realised he knew his rescuer. It was Boneripper, the giant ratman who had been Thanquol’s bodyguard.
From the darkness there was a flash of flame and a crack like thunder. One of the skinks grappling Adalwolf chirped in pain and rolled away across the floor clutching at a bleeding hip. A second flash and a second skink was quivering beside the first one, its chest a ruined mess of gore.
The mercenary was as shocked as the lizardmen when a crazed figure cloaked in grey came rushing out from the shadows. Thanquol’s staff split the skull of one skink, his sword opened the belly of another. The grey seer was almost frothing at the mouth, his eyes wide with terror as he ruthlessly flung himself into the fray. Skinks crumpled at every turn, unable to match the crazed fury of the ratman.
Adalwolf threw off the last of the lizardmen holding him. He smashed the head of one into the wall, hearing its skull crack. The others seemed to lose their taste for fighting the human after that, releasing him and scurrying back into the darkness.
Or perhaps they had simply seen what Adalwolf now saw. Boneripper stood over a dripping, mangled thing that had lately been the kroxigor. The huge lizardman’s neck was broken, its head spun completely around so that its lifeless eyes stared straight down the length of its spine. The rat ogre shook the dead bulk of his foe, making its head roll along its shoulders in a particularly nauseating fashion.
Grey Seer Thanquol leaned against his staff, a tangle of dead skinks scattered all around him. The ratman’s teeth were chattering, his chest heaving with such a frantic effort to draw breath into his lungs that Adalwolf thought the creature’s entire body was going to burst. Finally, Thanquol’s shivering hand fell to one of the pouches lashed to the belt of his robe. He drew what looked like a pinch of black dirt from the bag and quickly pressed his paw against his nose. He could hear the ratman inhale deeply, then quiver as a fit of furious sneezing wracked his body.
When Thanquol was recovered from the fit, his teeth had stopped chattering and his eyes were no longer the bulging pools of pure terror they had been during the fight. Indeed, the ratman’s entire figure seemed to swell, to bristle with power and when the grey seer stared at Adalwolf his eyes were almost glowing with hellish energies.
“Man-thing owe-give life-skin to Grey Seer Thanquol!” he snapped, lashing his tail against the pile of dead skinks. “Man-thing serve-do true-true what Thanquol squeak-say!”
Grey Seer Thanquol bared his teeth, displaying his rat-like fangs. “Or I eat-take man-thing’s spleen!”
Lukas van Sommerhaus leaned against the cold stone of the corridor and fought to stifle the wracking sob that threatened to shudder past his lips. The patroon was tempted to grind his torch against the floor to blot out the hideous sight of the crawling carvings that covered the walls. He knew to do so was madness, to abandon himself to the darkness of the tunnels. He would be as helpless as a fish thrown from the water if he did so, as vulnerable as a bird knocked from the sky.
Darkness offered no safety from the things that hunted him. He only suspected that they needed light to see. He had only to remember his ghastly ordeal as the captive of the underfolk to know that there were creatures for which sight was not the chiefest of their senses. Perhaps the scaly monsters were sniffing him out even now with their flickering tongues, stalking him even as the mammoth serpent had in that awful temple!
Van Sommerhaus fingered the golden guilder in his pocket, rubbing the edge of the coin with his thumb as he invoked the name of Handrich. The patroon had always been contemptuous of the god of merchants and trade: Handrich had seemed to take a perverse delight in refusing his prayers. But now, in his agony of terror, he beseeched Handrich for succour. Rubbing a coin was said to arouse the god’s interest.
They had followed him into the tunnels, van Sommerhaus was sure of that. He’d heard them, their hissing speech echoing from the stones, their claws scratching on the floor, their scaly tails slapping against the walls. He could smell their reptilian musk fouling the air, warning him of their pursuit. His skin crawled, expecting at any instant to feel the prick of an arrow. That was a horror he could not bear, to know that even the slightest scratch would kill him, would send the poison of the lizardmen rushing through his veins. It was the ignominy of such a death that terrified him. It offended his patroon blood to die like some trapped vermin, murdered by some nameless monster!
[Thanquol & Boneripper 02] - Temple of the Serpent Page 21