“Why not?” Florin muttered in sudden decision and shoved the book beneath the strap of his satchel.
The sound of marching feet became more ragged as they marched on, the litter of abandoned treasure thicker. Kereveld’s book slipped and chafed against Florin’s skin, and he cursed himself for ever having picked it up. And yet the farther he carried it the more difficult it was to throw away.
He was trying to decide whether or not to finally abandon it when he walked straight into the back of one of his men.
“Sorry,” he said apologetically, and then remembered that he was an officer. “Why have you stopped? We don’t have time to waste.”
The mercenary shook his head.
“Don’t know, boss. Have to ask the Tileans. They’re blocking the path ahead.”
“Let’s see what they’re up to,” Florin said and worked his way past the man and up the line. Soon, by squeezing past the men and tearing his clothes on the brambles which hemmed them in on all sides he drew level with Orbrant just as Captain Castavelli came back down the column.
“What is it?” Florin asked him. “Why have we stopped?”
“We can’t go this way,” the Tilean whispered, sweeping his hat off his head and wringing it between his hands.
“We have to,” Orbrant told him, but the man just looked back over his shoulder fearfully.
“We can’t. They are waiting for us up ahead.”
“Damn,” Florin swore.
“How many?” Orbrant asked. “What kind?”
But before Castavelli could reply a shout of warning cut through the jungle, followed by the crack of a pistol shot. Some of the Tileans pushed backwards against them, wide-eyed with fear and confusion. One of them tried to barge passed Orbrant, who shoved back with an angry curse.
“We’re going to have to fight through ’em,” Florin shouted above the cacophony of raised voices. “We’ve got nowhere to fall back to.”
A distant scream sent another ripple of panic through the claustrophobic masses of their packed ranks, and this time it took a crack from Orbrant’s fist to quell the rush of frightened bodies.
“Castavelli,” Florin said, gripping the Tilean by the shoulder and looking into his frightened eyes. “You have to give the order to advance.”
“Yes,” Castavelli agreed unhappily. “Yes, all right.”
So saying he crammed his hat back onto his head, and took a long, steadying breath. It pushed out his chest and lifted his head so that, with the battered plumage of his head gear he looked as glorious as any farmyard cockerel. Only then did he bellow out the order to advance.
His men shifted and looked back uncertainly. They saw Orbrant.
They advanced.
Thorgrimm and his dwarfs formed a solid phalanx; a square block of muscle and steel. They had left the ruins and the bloodied remains of their own camp behind them now. There was no point in hiding. Their doom was upon them, and they wanted to die well.
Shoulder to shoulder, with their axes buried deep in their enemies’ flesh and the corpses of the fallen heaped around them.
On every side but one saurus warriors stood, their own lines disciplined into the same merciless geometries of the dwarfs’ formation. Yet, despite their numbers, the reptiles made no move to attack.
Thorgrimm, feet planted firmly in the centre of the front rank, eyed them contemptuously and hefted his axe.
“What are you waiting for?” he roared a challenge. “Come, and test your hides against dwarfish steel.”
There was no response from the waiting saurus, save for a single thrash of one of their leader’s tails.
Thorgrimm laughed mockingly.
“Come,” he commanded them. “Let us see if you taste as good as your kin.”
Still the watching ranks remained silent and unmoving, showing neither fear nor aggression. Thorgrimm felt a certain respect for their discipline, and was glad of it. His life was valuable, he didn’t want it to be taken by the unworthy.
A distant series of crashes interrupted his thoughts, the sounds growing slowly louder. Thorgrimm listened and watched, his eyes scanning the patch of jungle the saurus had left clear. With a determined glint in his eye he reached up to stroke his beard, the feel of cold steel reminding him of his loss.
The light in his eyes became harder.
“Thunderers, ready your weapons. The beast returns. Let us see if our bullets can find the path through its eyes to its brain.”
There was a click as the Thunderers drew their hammers back, and levelled their weapons at the jungle beyond.
The noise of the beast’s approach drew nearer, the devastation of its passage sending flocks of birds screeching upwards out of its path. As Thorgrimm listened to it he began to feel it too, the pounding of its tread drumming a rhythm deep into the bones of the earth.
Then the towering trees ahead began to shake, and bend, and snap like rotten teeth before a fist as the monster burst eagerly through them.
It wasn’t the monster he had expected. That thing had been heavy, yes, and ferocious in the charge. It would have made an excellent enemy. But the thing which now came striding out of the jungle’s dark heart was a thousand times more terrible.
It stood on two legs, its powerful haunches as big as cart horses beneath the smoothly scaled surface of its skin. Its forelegs were tiny by comparison, held up uselessly beneath the sharp ridge of its chest and the vast, permanent snarl of its maw.
“Don’t fire,” Thorgrimm told his gunners. It wasn’t as if their bullets would have done any good against the perfection of the thing’s scale and bone, and sharp, gleaming intelligence.
The monster lowered its head slightly at the command, tiny eyes blinking as it turned its head to one side and sniffed at the air. It was almost a delicate movement, as was the slow step it took forward. Its three taloned toes opened and closed on the soil as though it was eager to seize a firm, predatory hold on the earth.
Then, bending its head even lower it opened its mouth wide, revealing the forest of blades which lined its jaws. Thorgrimm could hear the hiss of its indrawn breath, see the swelling of its vast chest.
He waited for the challenge to come. When it did, the roar shaking the earth and shimmering through the air in a heat haze of pure aggression, Thorgrimm felt an answering roar bellowing from his own throat. Fumbling at the straps of his helmet with a sudden, mad inspiration, he tore it from his head and hurled it at the monster.
The last thing he remembered before a berserk madness sent him charging forwards was the laughter that echoed in his brothers’ throats, and their prayers of thanks to the ancestors that had sent a worthy enemy upon which to annihilate their beardless shame.
Miles distant, another, smaller combat was drawing to its bloody conclusion. It had been swift and violent and, thanks to Orbrant’s sudden appearance, one-sided. The last of the skinks lay scattered about the entrance way to the overgrown canal in which they had been waiting. There had only been nine or ten of them, a spying party rather than an ambush group.
“Not many of ’em.” Florin, who’d fought his way to the front of the congested column of men just in time to miss the fight, said, and kicked one over onto its back. The mouth fell open in a lifeless snarl and he kicked it again.
“At least two escaped,” sighed Orbrant, who was busily cleaning gore from the gromril of his warhammer. “I wonder if we should go after them.”
“No,” Florin decided, peering into the tangled undergrowth into which the survivors had vanished.
Captain Castavelli agreed. “We will run on to the boats,” he decided, and led the column off himself. Florin followed him and, remembering the urgency with which Castavelli had wanted to flee from the handful of skinks, a dozen hilarious jibes sprang to mind. He kept them to himself, though. He quite liked the Tilean, for one thing. And for another, they had enough problems without bickering.
“Well, captain,” he said, stepping up to walk beside him as they entered the long, cavern
ous hollow which followed the ruined canal. “Looks like we finished off the last of them. Let’s press on anyway, though. Just in case.”
“Good idea,” the Tilean agreed fervently and, shouldering his clinking knapsack, led the way into the gloom of the verdant tunnel beyond.
The bones still lined the slimed depths of the canal, and the sour smell of decay hung heavily in the air. A detritus of leaves and bones and twigs crunched underfoot as the column of men tramped along, as it had the first time they’d been here.
Up ahead, cutting through the darkness like a flare, a slanting column of sunlight marked the exit from this oppressive underworld. Castavelli hung back as Florin stepped forward, slashing the edges of the gap back with his machete and stomping back out into the jungle path. The column followed him as he picked up his pace, marching with anxious speed that soon brought them to their first base camp.
And, more importantly, to their boats.
Only one of them was missing, washed away by the storm, perhaps. The others lay in a neat line in the grass, their hulls baked as white as clay by the sunlight. Chuckling with pure relief Florin knocked on the bottom of one as happily as if it were a tavern door, then turned it over to find the oars tied safely inside.
“Six men and three wounded to a boat,” he announced, his face split open in a wide grin that was reflected on every face. “Come on, lads, we’re not on a picnic. Get a damned move on. Think of all the meat and brandy that’s waiting on the ships.”
“Think of all the girls in Swamptown!” Another voice lent encouragement as they splashed their boats into knee-deep water and started ballasting them with bloodstained gold and bleeding comrades.
“Yes, think of her,” somebody else added. “Her and her tooth both.”
“Well, I want first go.”
“Nah, that’s the boss’ privilege. But don’t worry, you know what they say about officers…”
“Get that boat moving,” Orbrant snapped. The men rolled themselves into it and pushed away into the rippling expanse of the lily-covered lake. Dozens of streams and rivulets flowed from it, the entrances they cut through the surrounding jungle shrouded with steam.
Florin looked at them and frowned doubtfully. Then he looked at Lorenzo, who’d just finished loading a groaning man into their boat.
“Lorenzo…”
“Yes, I remember,” he said and, with a sucking splash rolled himself into the long boat with surprising expertise. Florin followed him, rocking the boat clumsily as they pushed off the shore.
“We’ll wait here for the rest of the expedition to get into their boats,” he said, watching the first of the Marienburgers stumble into the clearing. Lorenzo, who’d taken charge of the steering pole, grunted and pushed them safely off shore. Somehow, the very fact that they were on the water seemed to mark an ending to their ordeal, a cut off point as neat as the end of a play.
As the boat spiralled aimlessly in the gentle currents of the lake Florin leaned back, the sun bright even through his closed eyelids. Yes, a play. He would see a play when he got back home. He’d see a hundred. And he’d have velvet breeches and silk shirts, oysters in cream sauce with chilled champagne and girls whose corsets were big but not big enough.
A slow smile spread across his face as, to the relaxing chirruping of lily frogs, he drifted off into a world of pleasant daydreams.
Half an hour later the harsh singing of the Kislevites who’d crammed into the last boat brought him back to the reality.
“Right then, men,” he said, drawing himself up and waiting for them to ready their oars. “How did it go?”
“One,” said Lorenzo.
“Two,” a couple of the men joined in as they dipped their oars into the water.
“Three!”
The boat shot off, gliding slowly though the lake and towards the safety that lay beyond.
Behind them they left no sign. The ripples faded. The leaves of the lilies closed back in to cover all trace of their passage. The frogs and the dragonflies continued to hunt undisturbed. Apart from the fading patches of scorched earth where their fires had been, the humans might never have existed.
The first of the pursuing skinks stopped to sniff at the month-old embers before slipping effortlessly into the warm embrace of the water. A dozen of its brethren followed it into the lake, then two dozen more. They swam to the beginning of the tributary down which the current had swept their quarry’s boats before, at a signal from their leader, they dived down to continue the chase submerged and unseen.
Xinthua Tzequal studied the body that had been brought to him. It was shorter than the others he’d seen, and better built. Indeed, although no bigger than a skink, its bulging muscles had something of the saurian about them. Also, although its skin lacked even the most rudimentary scales, it was tougher than it at first seemed.
This must be one of their warriors, he decided, a type of human saurus to protect their workers. It was an elegant theory and one which had a pleasing symmetry about it. Odd, though, that one of the lesser races should have followed the same path that the Old Ones had set for the lizardmen. There had been nothing in the ancient texts about that. Could it have been a spontaneous development?
The intriguing possibility danced in the front of the mage’s mind, but he had the wisdom to realise that more research was needed. Perhaps it had been a mistake to kill the one surviving captive they’d had?
No matter. He’d have fresh specimens soon enough.
He sat back with a contented sigh, and barked an order to one of the skinks who was operating on the present specimen. With sure, expert moves it cut around the dwarf’s scalp, peeling back the skin as two of its fellows got ready with a saw.
Xinthua Tzeqal looked on as the sound of crunching bone filled the clearing and the top of the dwarf’s skull was removed. The dead brain inside was all very interesting, but Xinthua decided to wait until he had a live specimen before drawing any more inferences.
Somehow, the Kislevites had managed to get drunk. They passed around a shrinking wineskin as they rowed, the splash of their oars becoming increasingly uneven as the tide sucked, them towards the sea.
The song they were singing collapsed into a chaos of raised voices and harsh laughter, the sound bringing a disapproving frown to Lorenzo’s face.
“Lucky swine,” he muttered, and jabbed angrily down with the steering pole.
“Foolish swine,” Florin corrected him. “They could have brought more gold instead of that poison they brewed up. Did you ever taste any?”
Lorenzo nodded.
“Yes, it was revolting. And to think I swapped a treasure map for a measure of it.”
“A treasure map?”
“It’s a long story.”.
The Kislevites’, dispute resolved itself and another raucous chorus floated down the string of boats and towards the widening river beyond. In two hours the current had carried them the same distance downstream that it had taken them two days to row up. The muddy bottom of the watercourse had already deepened out of the reach of their steering poles, and its banks had drawn away from them just as eagerly.
The jungle, it seemed, was as keen to be rid of the men’s intrusion as they were to be rid of its cloying embrace.
Up ahead, the river curled around in a final oxbow bend and, as the boats were carried around it, a salty breeze picked up to brush across the sweat of their brows. After the constant humidity of the jungle it felt almost chill, a glorious freshness that encouraged the oarsmen to row harder. Their mates, meanwhile, leaned anxiously forward, eyes fixed on the slowly opening horizon as they sniffed at the sea breeze.
The banks of the river suddenly peeled away as the boats slipped forward bobbing up and down on the waves which marked the end of the river and the beginning of the ocean. It stretched away in front of him, as bright and fresh as a new dawn after the suffocating confines of the jungle. Sunlight danced and sparkled on top of the thundering rollers, and the breeze picked up as if in greet
ing.
Now even the oarsmen paused, joining the search for the ships that should have been waiting for them here. All movement stopped as the men scanned the vast expanse of the distant horizon or peered back towards the tangled shoreline, their oars held dripping out of the water as the current spat them farther out to sea.
“They’re not here,” Lorenzo said at last.
“Of course they are!” somebody shouted at him, his face flushed with sudden anger. “They’ll just be around the corner.”
“Yes, that’s what it is,” his mate agreed and a doubtful chorus of voices rose in hopeful support of the theory.
Lorenzo laughed bitterly.
“All right then, they are here. Look, right in front of you.”
A couple of the men, still unwilling to give up hope, looked towards the expanse of empty water that lay beyond. It stretched as far as the eye could see, the blueness of the ocean misting into that of the sky as it disappeared over the far horizon.
“No,” Lorenzo said. “They’ve left us. Left us for dead.”
This time there was no disagreement, just a series of vicious curses, and one low moan.
“All right then,” Florin said, shaking off the despair that threatened them all. “We’ll set up a camp on the shore for now. Light some signal fires, perhaps.”
He sighed and took a last look at the empty ocean. For all he knew there was nothing between him and Bordeleaux but two thousand miles of empty salt water.
Behind him another explosion of harsh Kislevite cries broke out, and he scowled irritably.
“Ranald’s teeth I wish those damned savages would… would…”
The sentence trailed off as he saw the cause of this latest uproar. This time there was more behind the Kislevites’ raised voices than vodka, dice and sibling rivalry.
This time their rage was directed at a real enemy.
The skinks had chosen this moment to strike. A moment before, the little flotilla had been alone in the muddy expanse of the delta’s mouth, with only the rolling waves and the seagulls that circled high above for company. But now, without even a ripple of warning, the sea was thronging with reptilian life.
[Florin & Lorenzo 01] - The Burning Shore Page 32