by William King
Frater Jonas stroked his beard and said, “Such records as I have seen date the Triturids’ occupation of these coasts back to deep within the Age of Darkness. More than ten thousand years ago.”
Zamara frowned. “Those elves told you that their mistress, this Great Tree God of theirs gave shelter to them. Does that mean she remembers all the way back in time?”
Kormak remembered his encounter with ghost of Mayasha. “Yes,” he said. “They are as old as the forests and they remember everything, just not in the way we do.”
“Then this place must predate the Kingdoms of the Sun by at least five thousand years,” the captain said.
“At least,” said Frater Jonas. “Perhaps by a lot more. They say the Old Ones walked these lands for tens of thousands of years before the coming of men, and many of them were accompanied by their children.”
“They ruled the world once, didn’t they? Before the coming of the Holy Sun.” Zamara said.
“They did,” said the priest, clearly uncomfortable with the way this conversation was drifting.
The captain glanced at the great pyramid, then at the ruins, then at Kormak. “What were they?”
“No one knows,” Kormak said.
“You have met them though, haven’t you? You’ve fought with them, talked with them? What are they like?”
All around there was silence. Every man within earshot was listening. Even Father Jonas looked expectant. Kormak thought of the scores of Old Ones he had encountered in his life, the still living and the now dead, the hostile and the almost friendly and the totally alien. What could he say about so many and so varied creatures?
“They did not tell me their secrets,” he said.
His tone put an end to the questioning.
Kormak strode up the ramp onto the roof of one of the buildings. A sunken pool lay before him. The place was dry save for puddles of stagnant rainwater now. In the centre a shaft dropped. He clambered down and looked in. Far below, dark water rippled.
He could see other buildings, mostly of the same height and uniform construction. Pools of water glittered on some of their roofs, evidence perhaps that their ancient hydraulic systems still worked.
Even from this low elevation, the hexagonal nature of the islands was evident. The pattern was the same as on the map they had found in the Kraken’s cabin.
A light glittered on the side of the great ziggurat, as if a weapon or a shield or a polished mirror caught the sunlight.
He headed back to ground level. Zamara looked at him. “All done?” he asked.
“I think we’ll find what we’re looking for at the central ziggurat,” Kormak said. “I don’t think we’re alone in the city.”
“Tell me something I didn’t know,” said the nobleman.
They picked their way along the canals, making for the great central ziggurat. The priest stared at one of the frog-mask faces as they passed.
“The Triturids were ugly devils,” he said.
“They would probably have said the same about us,” Kormak said.
“The Old Ones looked at things differently from us, didn’t they?”
“Not all of them,” Kormak said.
“The most powerful ones from the Age of Darkness certainly did. And now we walk in one of their strongholds. It is a rather frightening thought.”
“You seem nervous, Frater.”
“Unlike you, Sir Kormak, I have not spent most of my life in such places slaying monsters.”
“And yet you are here. Why? You could have stayed with the ship.”
“I am curious. There must be much knowledge to be gained here. I have never been in such a place before and the Light willing I will never be in such a place again but while I am here I would like to look upon it. How many opportunities like this does a man like myself get in one lifetime?” He sounded sincere but Kormak wondered if he had another motive.
A man ahead shrieked. Kormak raced to his side. “What is it?” he asked.
The marine looked pale. “I saw something.”
“What?”
“A monster. A green-skinned monster.” The captain had joined them. “What did it look like?”
“Like a monstrous lizard, but not like a lizard, like a man, and not like a man, like an insect...”
The soldier’s voice broke. Zamara slapped his face with a cold precision. The man started, then clenched his fists. He straightened his back and pulled in his stomach. When he spoke again it was in the dispassionate tone of a warrior making a report to a superior. “It was green-skinned, somewhat man-like, sir. It had six limbs and it was moving on four of them. Its face was like that of a toad with a great crest that started on its head and seemed to run down its back. I caught sight of it from the corner of my eye and then it vanished into the canal.”
The captain looked at Kormak and then the priest.
“It sounds like a Triturid,” Jonas said.
“An Old One, sir?” the soldier asked.
“One of their spawn,” Kormak said.
“It was watching us, sir. I think it left those prints we saw awhile back. Its feet were webbed and it sort of glistened, sir...”
“Glistened?”
“Like its skin was slick or slimy, like a fish’s.”
“Where did it go?”
“The canal, sir. At least I think so.”
Jonas nodded. “That explains how they follow us without being seen. They’re under the water.”
“We’re surrounded by canals,” Zamara said. He looked worried.
“The Triturids use them like we use streets.”
A soldier nearby gave a small shriek. Kormak turned to see him pointing at something. “Eyes, sir, eyes in the water.”
Kormak turned and saw what the man was pointing at. Two huge orbs gazed up at him from the water. Before they might have been mistaken for a ripple, or just overlooked entirely but now that he knew what he was looking for, he saw them clearly. The eyes submerged and vanished.
“Well,” said Zamara. “We definitely know we’re not alone.”
Kormak thought of the hexagonal pools he had seen on the building roofs. He thought about the possibility of underwater entrances and connecting tunnels. It would be easy for them to be ambushed if the natives proved hostile. And he did not doubt for a moment that they would.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A SCREAM RANG out. A man fell clutching at his neck, his face already green. Froth bubbled from his mouth. Kormak pulled a stone dart from the marine’s neck. Traces of the poison paste smudged it. The man’s body heaved. The veins bulged on his neck. Stillness settled on him. The rest of the soldiers backed away as if death might prove contagious.
Jonas stretched out his hand for the stone weapon and took it with the tips of his fingers. He held it the way a man might grip a poisonous reptile. Sweat glistened on his brow. Dark circles stained the armpits of his robe. He brought the point up to eye level and inspected it then moved it just under his nostrils and sniffed.
“Swamp snake venom,” he said. “Kills in instants, stops the heart.”
Kormak cocked his head to one side. Now did not seem to be a good time to ask the priest how he had come by his knowledge of esoteric poisons. He tried to judge the direction from which the weapon had come. It must have been fired from the canal. From one particular spot circles rippled out, as if someone had lobbed a stone into the water, or a large object had just submerged.
“Anybody see anything?” Kormak asked. “The attack came from the water. Somebody must have noticed something.”
The soldiers’ shook their heads. Frater Jonas held the dart up between two fingers. “It’s very light and very sharp,” he said.
“Something still threw it and I doubt it was invisible,” Kormak said.
Frater Jonas shook his head, a movement as small as a leaf quivering under the weight of an insect.
“We can’t know that for sure,” said Zamara, voicing the priest’s silent fear. “We can’t know anything a
bout this accursed place.”
From the expression on his face, he was sorry they had ever come here.
The ripples vanished, the dead man stared at the sky with forlorn eyes. Kormak sensed something out there, watching him.
“We could go back,” said Zamara. He kept his voice low so that the soldiers would not hear. Most of them stood with their backs against the walls of the buildings while a few stood guard. One or two of their heads swivelled as if they heard their captain’s words.
“We could,” said Frater Jonas. “We could wait at the docks. The Kraken is not going anywhere without his ship.”
“The docks might already have been attacked,” said Kormak, voicing what nobody else seemed to want to. “The Kraken’s ship was. Ours might be as well. And we know by what now.”
“The Triturids,” said Jonas.
“We’ve only seen one,” said Zamara. “Hell, most of us have not even seen that.”
“A lot more than one attacked the Kraken’s ship judging by the number of spears sticking from its side,” said Kormak.
“He probably just left a skeleton crew,” said the nobleman. “We’ve left a lot more.”
“It still might not be enough.”
Zamara considered things for a moment and came to a decision. “We’re here to find the Kraken and take his head and by the Light of the Holy Sun that is what we will do.”
The priest nodded agreement. Both of them looked at Kormak. He shrugged. “If he’s here, we’d best find him. Let’s keep going to the central ziggurat.”
“All right, men,” the captain shouted. “On your feet. We’re going for a little stroll.”
Grumbling and nervous, the marines made ready to move off.
One moment they were marching along the canal side, the next a cloud of spears and darts descended on them.
Kormak’s blade flashed from its scabbard and swept through the air, deflecting the missiles aimed at him, sending them clattering to the ground at his feet.
“On the roof,” Zamara shouted. Crossbow men turned and fired. Kormak saw a row of green-skinned, six-limbed warriors arrayed against the skyline. They walked on their four rear limbs like beasts but in their front pair of arms, the ones protruding from their shoulders, they held stone spears and darts.
The Triturids raised long tubes to their lips. Their huge throats pulsed and their massive chests shrank, as if expelling every last breath of air in their lungs. A hail of missiles erupted from their blowpipes. A storm of darts rained down on the men. Kormak understood how they had struck from the river without being seen. Only the tube of the blowpipe broke the surface, hard to spot in the murky polluted water.
“Crossbowmen prepare to fire,” the captain shouted. “Steady, you dogs! Wait for me to give the word.”
Zamara stood tall, sword in hand, shouting orders, even as darts bearing terrible death clattered down all around him. A serrated edged spear pierced the chest of the man beside him and the captain did not break stride. He shouted, “Fire!”
A score of crossbow bolts scythed the air. A dozen of the Triturids fell. The rest ducked out of sight. A few corpses were visible with their webbed feet protruding over the edge. They slid from view, dragged by their companions.
Kormak scrambled up the corner of the building using the protruding statues, emerging onto the roof just in time to see the amphibians pulling their fallen companions into the pool. Trails of green blood and slime led all the way from the roof’s edge to the water. Crossbow bolts lay on the stone where they had fallen.
The last of the Triturids turned to look at him. Standing upright on its spindly hind limbs, the amphibian would have been a head taller than he. A webbed crest rose from its skull. Its mottled skin glistened green, moist and slimy. Two massive eyes situated on either side of the head regarded him. A long, pink tongue whipped out and then back. Huge nostrils flared and shrank. As Kormak stepped towards it, the creature’s chest inflated and its powerful limbs sent it hopping backwards into the pool. It splashed down and did not reappear.
He stalked to the edge of the pool. He saw nothing but his own reflection in the dark water and stepped back lest he become a target. His suspicions had proved correct. The pools and canals connected, providing a highway for the city’s inhabitants. He stalked towards to the edge of the roof shouting, “Don’t shoot! It’s me, Kormak! I am coming down!”
Below him crossbowmen looked nervous but none of them pulled the trigger. Kormak sprang down.
“What did you find?” Jonas asked.
“Nothing,” Kormak said. “They were all gone.”
“Vanished into thin air?” The priest looked disbelieving.
“Into dark water,” Kormak said and explained about the connecting pools.
“It’s not going to get any easier,” Zamara said.
The running battle became more intense the closer they got to the central ziggurat.
“They’re fighting like elves,” Kormak said, looking at the dead body of the Triturid at his feet. Splayed out, it was almost half as long again as a man. Its long thin limbs twitched. Even in death it seemed unable to keep still.
“Bastards,” Zamara wiped the slimy green from his shirt and inspected his soldiers. Almost half of them were dead. Sometimes a man survived a poisoned dart, perhaps because of some natural immunity to the toxin or because of a diluted dosage. Mostly though, they died.
“They won’t stand and fight. They attack and then they dive into their pools or canals and swim away. It is not honourable.”
Frater Jonas’s laughter was bitter. “But it is clever. They reduce their casualties and they increase ours. They slow our movement and they cost us precious time.”
“You think they are in league with the Kraken?” Zamara asked.
Jonas shook his head. “I think they are protecting what is theirs. If I were a gambling man I would bet they were trying to prevent us going closer to the citadel. They only attack us on paths that turn towards it. Maybe they are sending a message.”
“They could have just written us a letter,” said Zamara. He laughed at his own joke. None of the others did. They were too tired or too afraid. It was nerve-wracking, waiting for a poison dart from an ambush, moving through a city filled with inhuman monsters.
Kormak counted the dead amphibians. There were less than half a dozen of them, most killed by crossbow bolts. The rest had hopped back into the water as the humans closed.
“They did not attack us at the dock,” Kormak said. “They did attack the Kraken’s ship.”
“Maybe they followed him away,” said Zamara.
“Or maybe they attacked his ship because they had reason to,” said the priest.
“The Quan,” said Kormak.
“The terrible thing here is we might be on the same side as these green-skinned bastards,” said Zamara. “But we have no way of communicating that to them. How do you parlay with a bunch of giant six-limbed newts?”
“Just be grateful there are not more of them, or we would not be going anywhere except the funeral pyre,” said Jonas.
Kormak studied the amphibian’s corpse. In death its eyes were still open. Its tongue hung out. Its chest no longer pulsed and its limbs had stopped twitching. After the priest’s words a twinge of sympathy entered his mind. The amphibians might be the savage, Shadow-tainted remnants of a once proud people but this was their home.
“Let’s go,” Zamara said. “The Holy Sun is not going to keep looking down on us forever.”
The central ziggurat loomed ever larger, a six-sided mountain of damp greenish stone rising over the relative flatness of the city. Huge carved faces with bulging eyes and distended jaws spat fountains of water down its algae-covered sides. The steps of the pyramid jutted twice the height of a man, but ramps went up the side of the structure. Their curved sides were smooth. Going up them felt like crawling up a grain chute in a warehouse.
Kormak led the way. Behind him the men pulled themselves up the side of the ziggurat
. He risked a glance back at the city.
The canals formed moats around blocks of buildings and flowed into large pools dominated by central hexagonal islands. The structures seemed the tips of gigantic towers emerging from an infinitely deep pool of semi-stagnant water.
The water shimmered black and vast. Sinister ripples moved across it, as if an enormous beast displaced it as it rose to the surface. He half-expected to see a massive head emerge.
After the sun’s light died, a faint phosphorescent glow appeared on the surface of the water, giving the whole city a ghostly appearance.
He clambered on, knowing they did not have time now to return to the ship. They were going to have to make camp on top of the great six-sided pyramid. He wondered if they would survive the night.
CHAPTER EIGHT
PHOSPHORESCENT INSECTS SWARMED over the canals. Greenish balls of light drifted over the pools of murky water. Tendrils of mist rose like steam from a boiling pot, strange vapours produced by hidden things in the depths. The shadows of the buildings loomed out of the gloom. In the shimmer of moonlight and the stagnant waters’ glow, Triturek had an eerie, inhuman beauty.
Kormak clambered over the lip of the chute and out onto the summit. He stood on a vast flat area of interlocked stone blocks. In the centre, the dark maw of a great pit loomed. The ashy remains of cooking fires spread across the flagstones.
The soldiers muttered and groaned as they emerged behind him. One of them helped Frater Jonas up. The priest breathed like a beached whale. Sweat soaked his robes.
Kormak walked over to the remains of another campfire. A broken grog bottle lay near it.
Zamara glanced at Jonas with something like contempt. He strode over to Kormak, looked down at the blackened stonework, knelt, stirred the ashes with a finger.