[Florin & Lorenzo 01] - The Burning Shore

by Robert Earl - (ebook by Undead)

  Occasionally one of them would slip as a tile gave way. Both men tried very hard not to listen to the falling stone as it bounced the long, long way down to the street below.

  Soon they came to the end of their roof and halted abruptly. The deep moat of a crossroads cut across their path, and a sheer precipice of brickwork fell away to the shadowed street below. In its depths tiny and foreshortened citizens went about their business, oblivious to the two men perched above them.

  Florin glanced across the street to the next block. Its walls were studded with balconies that reached out over the divide like fungus rings on the trunk of a tree.

  “Right then, where’s the ladder?” he asked, peering around.

  “Gone,” Lorenzo sighed and backed away from the edge. “Look, you can see the marks where we left it.”

  “Damn it all,” Florin cursed viciously and kicked a lump of lichen. “People will steal anything. Now how are we supposed to get across?”

  From behind them the distant crash of splintering wood sent a flock of pigeons wheeling up into the sky.

  “We’ll have to stand and fight, then.”

  “Bugger that,” Lorenzo said, horrified at the enthusiasm in his master’s voice. “We can jump.”

  “Jump! We’d never make it. It must be twenty feet across at least.”

  “It’s nowhere near twenty feet,” Lorenzo scoffed. “Watch this.”

  Hawking up a lump of phlegm he drew back his head and spat it across the divide.

  “It’s as easy as that.”

  “Charming,” Florin said. “But hardly proof.”

  The not too distant tinkle of breaking glass floated out across the rooftops.

  “You’d think nothing of jumping the distance if it was on the ground. Look, it can’t be more than ten feet to that balcony, and it’s a bit lower than us.”

  “No,” Florin said, standing up on the balls of his feet and stretching his back. “No, give me my sword. We’ll stand and fight.”

  Lorenzo watched his master roll his shoulders and flex his fingers, like an athlete about to hurl a javelin.

  “My sword please,” he asked, his eyes sparkling.

  With a shrug Lorenzo turned and walked back along the ridge of the roof, the scabbarded sword in his hand.

  “Let me show you,” he said, and, before Florin could react, he’d sprinted to the edge of the roof and hurled himself into space.

  For a moment he seemed to hang suspended in the air, arms and legs windmilling like some plump spider hanging on an invisible thread. The blur of movement that wrapped itself around him seemed to come from a world that was intent on rushing past. The brickwork, the lichen, the confused kaleidoscope of the street below and the simple wooden handrail of the balcony all hurtled past Lorenzo’s ungainly form as he plummeted downwards.

  Florin watched open-mouthed as his servant flew through the air. Then, before he’d even had time to feel the first stab of alarm, Lorenzo had landed, his feet and palms slapping safely onto the tiled floor of the balcony in scant applause.

  “There you go, boss,” he called back with a cheeky grin. “Easy as you like.”

  “Yes. I see you took my sword with you. Just throw it back, would you?”

  “It’d never reach,” Lorenzo shook his head regretfully. “You’d better just jump.”

  Florin hesitated. Behind him the hulking shapes of Mordicio’s henchman had clambered up onto the roof. As the first of them crabbed cautiously forward and caught sight of Florin, he called something to his companions, and drew a short, fat-bladed cutlass.

  Florin ground his teeth. If he’d been a merchant he’d already have fled. If he’d been a knight he’d be preparing to meet his pursuers with his belt knife. As it was he just swore, hurled his saddlebags over to Lorenzo, and prepared to jump.

  “Come on, boss!” Lorenzo bellowed as though he were at a horse race. “You can do it!”

  Florin rolled his neck, took a final look behind him, and jumped.

  “Orcs, hey? So, tell me about the campaign,” Colonel van Delft said, leaning back in the cabin’s only chair and twirling the iron-grey tip of his moustache into a dangerous point. The shadow it cast onto the dank wooden wall behind him moved up and down, keeping time with the rocking of the ship and the swinging of the oil lamp.

  “I was in charge of the horse,” Florin said, with poker-faced sincerity. “We had a dozen light cavalrymen with lances and a mix of pistols and crossbows. We acted as scouts for the main column, and…”

  “How do you find pistols?” van Delft interrupted.

  Florin scratched his chin as he tried to remember what Lundorf had told him.

  “They’re slow, and don’t have a very good range. My uncle said they were worse than a bow or a sword…”

  “Sensible man. And he was Count d’Artaud, you say?”

  Florin nodded.

  “Never heard of him. But stick to the point, lad. What happened in the first engagement?”

  “We’d spotted the orc settlement the evening before. It was a crude encampment: just a ring of sharpened stakes driven into the ground around some rotten animal skin tents. The flies were everywhere, and the smell…” Florin wrinkled his nose expressively. Van Delft nodded and leaned forward eagerly.

  “Numbers?”

  “Maybe a hundred,” Florin replied, trying not to make it sound like a guess. “Anyway, we didn’t attack them there. Instead we waited until morning, when the count prepared an ambush.”

  “What kind?” van Delft demanded.

  “What kind? I don’t know.”

  The Colonel raised his eyebrows.

  “I mean, the count just hid most of his men in one end of a ravine, with the rest sat up on the top with boulders and bows.”

  “Aaaah,” the Colonel nodded approvingly. “I see. And you were the bait?”

  “Exactly. We rode up to the orcs’ hovels the next day, fired a volley at them, and retreated. They all followed in a ragged sort of mob.”

  “Really?” van Delft asked, thoughtfully running his hands through the white lion’s mane of his hair.

  “Yes, pretty much. So we led them into the ravine, and the count’s waiting men. They held the orcs in the ravine while the men above stoned them.”

  Van Delft seemed a little distracted as he gazed at the young man in front of him.

  “It was a great victory,” Florin added, and wished that he had something else to say. He almost looked at Lundorf for reassurance, and only the experience he’d gained at so many card tables stopped him from doing so.

  He didn’t know why, but he could sense that, here and now, his bluff was as near to being called as it would ever be.

  Van Delft leant back and studied him.

  “When you say that these orcs came at you in a disorganised mob, were they completely disorganised?”

  “Well,” Florin hedged, “they were by our standards.”

  “Hmm,” van Delft tapped his fingers onto his chair for a moment before reaching his decision. “All right then, Monsieur d’Artaud, I’m willing to take a risk on you. Sigmar knows the Bretonnians need an officer, and you’ll be hard-pressed to do worse than the last one.”

  “Sir?”

  “Ask Lundorf. He seems willing enough to fill you in on things. In fact, Lundorf,” the Colonel turned to regard the officer who, despite the bilious rolling of the ship, was standing to rigid attention beside him. “I’m holding you responsible for this young man. Any problem with that?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good. And by the way, you’re a junior officer so your share of the loot is ten shares, no more, no less. Understand?”

  Florin bit back on the instinct to immediately demand fifteen. Something about the Colonel’s manner suggested that he was not a man used to negotiation. Instead he just nodded his assent.

  “Now then, gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me I have things to do.”

  “Sir,” Lundorf snapped off a salute, the bang of his heels hitti
ng the deck in perfect time with the raised fist of his salute.

  For a second Florin considered trying to copy it, but contented himself with a low bow instead.

  “I’m in your debt, my lord,” he said, sweeping his arm around. “And I’m sure that if you ever have reason to…”

  “Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear?” the Colonel growled. “You’re dismissed.”

  Van Delft watched the two friends march hurriedly out of the cabin, then leaned back and twirled the tips of his moustaches pensively.

  Florin was hardly the man he’d have chosen as a brother officer. His military career seemed both scant and exaggerated; his manners effete even for a southerner. But then, in a long career that had taken him from Imperial cadet to mercenary commander, van Delft had long since learned to make do with the materials at hand. He’d also learned to trust the judgment of officers like Lundorf.

  Well, up to a point.

  And anyway, after the Bretonnians’ last officer a trained chimp would be an improvement.

  Smiling at his own wit the Colonel dismissed the matter from his mind, and stalked out of the claustrophobic gloom of his cabin in search of his secretary.

  Lundorf led Florin and Lorenzo off the Colonel’s flagship and back onto the pier. Now, hours from the flotilla’s departure, its old timbers were groaning beneath the weight of the crowds which thronged it.

  Carters cursed and swore as they pushed their way forward, huge casks of fresh water balanced precariously upon their vehicles. Merchants dragged or carried sacks of vegetables, or nets of fruit, or skins of wines unfit for any tavern.

  Amongst all this desperate, last minute commerce, mercenaries from a dozen races and in a hundred stages of drunkenness swaggered their way back to their ships. They shoved their way arrogantly through the merchants; the whores that remained perched on the arms of some of them cackling as loudly as the seagulls that circled greedily overhead.

  “Quite a little army your Colonel’s got here,” Florin raised his voice as the three of them elbowed their way through the crowd.

  “Yes, and all to fit into three ships,” Lundorf laughed. “Not that they’re bad old tubs really. Of course the Colonel bagged the best one, the Hippogriff. It used to be a spice freighter, apparently, so it’s relatively dry. I was damned lucky to get my lads on it.”

  Then there’s the Beaujelois here, the Tileans’ transport,” Lundorf continued, gesturing towards the fat bottomed cog that they were shoving their way past. “By Sigmar, you should see the stuff they eat. I’ve never smelt such a foul combination. You there, get away!”

  An old woman, who was hunched over the basket of lemons she was carrying, had thrown herself in their path to thrust some of her wares towards them.

  “A penny apiece,” she shrieked. “Cheapest in the city.”

  “Begone, crone,” Lundorf pushed past her, but Florin put a hand on his arm.

  “Let’s buy some,” Florin decided. “My father said they ward off the sea weakness.”

  “Sea weakness?”

  “Yes. Something to do with being out of sight of land.”

  “Well, if you say so. How much for the basket, crone?”

  “For you, your lordship, five gold crowns,” she bared a mouthful of rotten teeth and shrinking gums in what was supposed to be a winning smile. “And you can take the basket, too.”

  “Five gold crowns?” Lorenzo asked, aghast, but Lundorf had already paid. The old woman dropped the coin into the front of her ragged bodice and narrowing her eyes suddenly with the caution of a millionaire in a poorhouse, she slipped away into the crowd.

  “Here you go,” Lundorf said, turning to present the basket to the manservant. “Just look after those, would you?”

  Before Lorenzo could argue Lundorf was once more ploughing ahead into the crowd.

  “And there’s your boat,” Lundorf told them, five minutes later. The Destrier. Don’t worry, she’s not as bad as she looks.”

  “No?” Florin said dubiously. He pushed his way past a knot of street children to study the bobbing wooden box that would be his home for the next three months.

  The Destrier was a cog, a thickly built barrel of a ship designed to withstand the towering seas of the north. The elegant lines of the Tilean vessels that lay at anchor beyond had no parallels in her bulky frame. She wallowed in the sea as gracelessly, and as comfortably, as a pig in its sty.

  She was also a lot smaller than most of the other vessels. Against the backdrop of Bordeleaux’s distant heights, even against the backdrop of the other merchantmen, the Destrier looked tiny. In fact, apart from its towering central mast, the only thing that was big about the ship was the smell of brine and unwashed bodies that wafted from her open holds.

  “I’m not surprised that my predecessor jumped ship,” Florin guessed, but Lundorf shook his head.

  “Oh no, it was nothing like that. There was just some, ah, unpleasantness with the witch hunters at the last port. Bad business.”

  “I bet it was,” Florin barked with laughter. Then he frowned as he watched the stream of men and goods disappearing into the Destrier’s dank interior. It seemed that, even as he watched, more bodies and bundles had disappeared into the ship’s entrails than was possible. It was as though the ship were no more than a trapdoor to some other place.

  “Nice looking fellows,” Lorenzo muttered sarcastically as a dozen drunken mercenaries staggered over the boarding planks. Their accents were harsh, and despite the warmth of the Bretonnian sun their flushed faces were wrapped in shapeless fur hoods. One of their number was being dragged unceremoniously behind them, his heels cutting deep ruts through the filth of the pier.

  “Their captain,” Lundorf explained, with a shrug. “It’s a shame. Those Kislevites can be real daemons if they’re properly led. You needn’t worry about that, though. You’re only responsible for your fellow countrymen. There’s about a score of them, I think. Anyway, I’ll introduce you to the captain of the ship, and then I must be off to see how my lot are doing.”

  Then, for the first time since he’d fled from his chambers, Florin paused. What was he doing here? He’d never been in a battle, never commanded so much as a squad. How had he bluffed his way into command of a hardened mercenary company?

  He felt a sudden vertiginous sense of doubt, like a sleepwalker who awakes to find himself about to step over a high precipice, and for a moment he stood balanced on the very brink of turning back.

  The roar of the world around him grew silent and, in some deep part of his soul, a dice began to spin. Each of its faces held a vision of a different route. He held his breath as it revolved, revealing different paths to take.

  Now Mordicio’s mercy.

  Now a passage to Araby.

  “Are you all right, old man?” Lundorf asked, slapping him on the back.

  And the dice was cast.

  “Yes,” Florin said, drawing himself up with a sudden certainty. “Yes, I’m ready. Let’s see my new command.”

  “Good man,” Lundorf said approvingly, and led him into the organised chaos of the Destrier’s foredeck.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The shoals around Bordeleaux were numerous, and sharp toothed. Some of them still held the ships they’d wrecked up above the waterline: rotting trophies to warn the unwary. Others, infinitely more dangerous, lurked unseen below the waterline. Their granite fangs thrust up from the depths like stone gutting knives, accidental predators that were as dangerous as anything else in the vast ocean beyond.

  Despite the aid of Bordeleaux’s hired pilots, Captain-Owner Gorth hadn’t wanted a gaggle of drunken mercenaries getting under his men’s feet whilst they coaxed their vessels past these guardians. So, with all the thoughtfulness of a natural despot he’d had them sealed in their cabins, and left them to curse and squabble as the flotilla cautiously nosed its way through the grey chill of the morning mist.

  Now, however, with the coastline sinking under the far horizon, the hatches had been thrown
open. The mercenaries clambered up from their confinement and blinked in the dazzling sunlight as they staggered and slid across the rolling deck.

  Florin stood perched on the height of the stern deck, the ragged score of Bretonnians that comprised his command gathered on the deck below him. The few Kislevites who had so far recovered from the previous day’s drinking stood blearily around the gunwales, watching their foreign comrades like hungover bears. Their captain was still nowhere to be seen, and Florin took some scant comfort from this failing in his brother officer.

  But for now, he was content to ignore both these northern savages and the sailors that swung overhead like clothed monkeys. For now all he was worried about were his own men.

  Whether by accident or design they looked every inch the dogs of war, these Bretonnians. They wore their scars with as much unconscious pride as they did their weapons, and although many of them were as unshaven and dirty as peasants, their boots and their armour gleamed with professional care.

  Not for the first time Florin wished that he’d taken the time to pick up some armour. He felt like an actor without a costume, and he wondered how much his fine town clothes had added to the mercenaries’ obvious resentment of him. It showed in every scowling face and muttered word, the atmosphere as tense as the ropes which hummed and sang above their heads.

  He drew himself up in unconscious defiance of their hostility and spoke.

  “I,” Florin began, meeting and holding each man’s eye in turn, “am Captain Florin d’Artaud. I am your new leader.”

  The men greeted this news with a uniform expression of distaste. Quelling the urge to glower back at them, he pressed on.

  “I don’t know you, or what you can do. For all I know you might be cowards, or traitors, or fools.”

  A growl of resentment rippled through the men, and Lorenzo, who stood behind them, made a desperate chopping gesture at his throat.

  “But then, for all you know, so might I be.” Florin grinned wide enough to show his molars. To his immense relief some of the men smiled back. “So I think that the sooner we find out about each other, the better.”