[Thanquol & Boneripper 02] - Temple of the Serpent

by C. L. Werner - (ebook by Undead)

  Ethril turned a withering look upon the patroon, making even the arrogant burgher wilt. “Do not swear by the gods of my people, human,” the elf snapped.

  “It looks like the Southlands beyond Araby,” Captain Schachter said after contemplating the jungle for a moment. There was uncertainty in his voice as he trawled the depths of memory for every sailor’s tale he’d every heard about those mysterious lands beyond the desert. He moved stiffly, favouring his left leg. Trying to keep the ship afloat had taxed the stamina of all her crew and her passengers. Only the patroon had had the nerve to hide in his cabin through such an ordeal.

  “That would be impossible,” Diethelm corrected the captain. The priest’s tone was dolorous, his expression drawn and haggard. “The storm blew us southwest. Araby would have been to our east.”

  “Maybe… maybe this is… Ulthuan?” Hiltrude at least presented a better appearance than Diethelm, even if her voice was more uncertain. Van Sommerhaus had provided her with a considerable wardrobe for the voyage. The last thing he wanted was a consort unequipped to hang off his arm at any social engagements they might encounter.

  The patroon was the only one who looked to Ethril with any real hope that the elf would confirm the woman’s feeble suggestion. Ethril shook his head with a humourless smile on his lips.

  “We don’t have jungles in Ulthuan,” the elf said. “This… this is the place you call Lustria.”

  A babble of excited conversation swept through the crew, seizing even the captain in its grip. No seaman, certainly no sailor out of Marienburg, had failed to hear stories of fabled Lustria, a land where there were entire cities built of gold, a place where untold treasures waited to be found. The men who had braved the Great Ocean and entered the jungles of Lustria returned richer than kings.

  “Lustria?” van Sommerhaus mused, rolling the word over on his tongue. “Yes, wasn’t that the place where Lord Melchin made his fortune?”

  “More than just Lord Melchin!” scar-faced Marjus Pfaff exclaimed. “Pirazzo came back so wealthy that Prince Borgio of Miragliano tried to seize his riches and assassinate him.”

  “Marco Columbo came back rich enough to make himself Prince of Trantio!” quipped one of the other sailors.

  “Aye!” agreed a third seaman. “They call Lustria the Land of Gold, the Jewelled Jungle, the…”

  “The only thing I’ve heard it called is Green Hell,” Adalwolf’s grim voice drowned out the avaricious exuberance of the crew. Sullen faces turned towards the mercenary. The warrior ignored their annoyance. “You talk about the men who came back rich. What about all the others? The ones who never came back.”

  The sailors grumbled and cursed among themselves, none of them willing to concede Adalwolf’s point, but none of them able to deny the ugly truth behind his words.

  Van Sommerhaus, as usual, was oblivious to the changing mood. “This is a fantastic opportunity!” he exclaimed. “I think you are overcautious, Graetz,” he told the mercenary. “Chance and the gods have favoured me with an opportunity greater even than establishing trade with Lothern! Why, I can return to Marienburg with a hold bursting with treasure, enough to make even the blinkered fools in the Empire forget their petty prejudices.”

  “What’ll you use for a ship?” Adalwolf growled back. He stamped his foot on the deck, setting it shaking. “Or have you forgotten our keel is broken?”

  The patroon waved his hand in annoyance at the mercenary. “Small details. We can just carve a new one,” the remark had some of the sailors rolling their eyes in disbelief. “The important thing is we find the gold.”

  “I suggest you leave mindless greed to the dwarfs,” Ethril’s melodious tones punctured the patroon’s posturing. “The swordman is quite right when he speaks of how dangerous this place is. My people have learned to leave it alone. You would be wise to do the same.”

  Van Sommerhaus stared hard at the elf, then grinned. “Are you warning me away because there is treasure?”

  “Oh, there is certainly treasure,” Ethril replied. “But don’t think it is unguarded. There are things in the jungle, powers even we have learned to respect. They are best not disturbed.”

  The patroon laughed at Ethril’s warning. “If they are so powerful, why do they hide themselves in a stinking jungle? No, my friend, you are just trying to keep me from making a fortune here instead of in Ulthuan.”

  Ethril spread his hands in a hopeless gesture. “Do as you like. Lustria never tires of finding new ways to kill fools.”

  Thick coils of vine dangled from the palms, choking the jungle like some mammoth cobweb. Filthy black mould carpeted the earth, boiling up from the decaying plant matter caked into the ground. Saw-edged grass sprouted wherever the mould had not found purchase, each blade of grass as sharp as the edge of a dagger. Dried husks crashed downwards from the towering palms, smashing through the tangled canopy with enough force to crush a man’s skull. Dead trees, their innards devoured by parasite growths and hungry insects, leaned sickly against their neighbours, only the clinging vines preventing them from hurtling to the jungle floor.

  Droning insects, chattering monkeys, growling jaguars and the thousand insane cries of unseen birds filled the air with a deafening din. Hot and foetid, the atmosphere of the jungle seeped through the trees like wet wool, stifling those who tried to draw breath from it.

  Adalwolf drove the meat cleaver into his hundredth vine, snapping the ropey growth in a spurt of rancid sap. The other men in the scouting party turned their faces upward, their ears perked to catch the first groan of a falling tree. Twice they had been surprised by dead trunks crashing down on them from the overgrown canopy above their heads. It had been simple luck that had prevented them from suffering casualties from either incident. Now they were better prepared, ready to scatter the instant they heard any kind of sound above them.

  The mercenary hesitated, listening just as hard as the others. He waited a moment, then gritted his teeth. If nothing had moved, then nothing was apt to. He hefted the meat cleaver again, shaking his head at its already notched blade. Chopping through the vines was harder than cutting through bone, it was like trying to hack through iron wrapped in wet leather. Much further and he’d have to use the cook’s cleaver as a saw. As slow as their progress was already proving, he was certain it wouldn’t improve when that time came. He would be damned, however, if he was going to take van Sommerhaus’ advice and ruin the edge of his sword on the cursed vines.

  “Can’t you go faster?” the question came from van Sommerhaus for what had to be the hundredth time. The patroon’s face was drenched in sweat, his fine clothes scratched and torn, the ostrich-plume fan in his gloved hand wilting in the humidity. Discomfort did not bring out the best in the man.

  Adalwolf paused in mid-stroke, the cleaver gleaming in his hand. “Maybe you should go back to the beach with the others,” he suggested.

  “Maybe you should remember who is directing this expedition,” van Sommerhaus growled back. He waved the dripping fan at Adalwolf. “While you’re indulging in the novelty of thinking, consider who’s paying you while you’re at it.”

  The cleaver crunched noisily into the vine, not quite chopping through it. Adalwolf clenched his fist around the handle of the hatchet, his breath an angry hiss scraping through his teeth. Need strangled pride even as it started to find purchase on his tongue. He had family back in Marienburg. There was a wife he hadn’t seen in four years, three children who barely knew his face. They were his obligation, even if the woman he had married wouldn’t let him share her life. She’d never agreed to his taking up the sword, but the gold his blade earned kept their children with a roof over their heads and clothes on their backs. They needed him, and because they did, Adalwolf held his tongue and took the patroon’s abuse.

  “I’m sorry, patroon,” Adalwolf said. “I forgot my place in my eagerness to find fresh water.”

  “Forgiven,” van Sommerhaus smiled in his most magnanimous fashion. “However, water is the leas
t of our concerns. Brother Diethelm has an entire ocean he can mumble prayers over and make clean for us to drink.”

  The dismissive way the patroon discussed the miracle the priest had performed early that morning shocked Adalwolf and the sailors. Even the men who had been ready to sacrifice Diethelm to Stromfels felt horror at van Sommerhaus’ words. Commoners would accept a lot of abuse from their social betters, but they expected even emperors to respect the gods and their powers.

  “I think you have your priest confused with a wizard,” Ethril told van Sommerhaus. “Graetz is right. You should be looking for fresh water. In case Diethelm’s god decides to stop listening to his prayers.”

  Van Sommerhaus screwed his face into a sour expression, dropping the damp fan. “I’m not such a fool as that,” he said. “I was just trying to reassure the men there was nothing to worry about if we don’t find water.”

  The elf favoured van Sommerhaus with a slight bow. “Then I apologise, patroon.” Ethril’s eyes were cold as Kislevite snow as he spoke. “I forgot my place.”

  The moment of tension was broken by the crack and roar of a falling tree. Adalwolf dived for cover, sheltering behind a scaly dwarf palm. The sailors scrambled in every direction, van Sommerhaus among them. Ethril simply glanced upward. As casually as a man navigating his own parlour, the elf took two steps. An instant later, the dead tree slammed into the ground beside him.

  “If you are done scampering through the forest,” Ethril’s withering voice snapped at the scattered men, “I suggest we get back to work. At some point the sun will set and we don’t want to be in the jungle when it does. Before then, it would be nice if we found game, water and some sort of hill I can see the coast from.”

  Adalwolf extracted himself from behind his refuge, brushing muck from his tunic. “You still hope to recognise the coastline?”

  The elf nodded his head. “There is an asur settlement at the tip of Lustria. If we can find a point high enough for me to see a good part of the coast, I should be able to determine how far from it we are.”

  “What about these treasure cities?” a black-bearded sailor named Joost asked eagerly. “You know where any of them are?”

  “I doubt I could find one for you before nightfall,” the elf told him, his tone dripping with scorn. Suddenly he pointed one of his long, slender fingers at the tree Adalwolf had taken shelter beneath. His finger indicated a clump of withered husks dangling from the palm fronds.

  “You see that,” Ethril said. “It might look like rotten fruit, but it isn’t. Those are blood-bats. They sleep now, but when the sun sets, they will take wing. They aren’t greedy though. They’ll just take a small bite, you won’t even feel it. Then they start lapping up the blood that fills the wound. Once their little bellies are filled, they fly off. If only a few land on you and you don’t get sick from their bites, you should live. If a whole flock decides to feed…”

  Ethril left the threat to the imagination of the sailor. He turned back to Adalwolf, motioning for the mercenary to continue hacking a path through the undergrowth.

  Adalwolf’s eyes went wide with shock as he turned. The cleaver fell from his numbed fingers. He took a staggering pace back, staring in disbelief. “That wasn’t there a minute ago,” he muttered. “That wasn’t there a minute ago!” he repeated, almost as though to assure himself of the fact.

  The green wall of the jungle was parted a small distance from where the mercenary stood, opened apart in a path as wide as an Altdorf boulevard, as regular as though bored through the jungle with a giant corkscrew. No beast, however colossal, had torn such a regular path through the jungle.

  Ethril stared in amazement at the pathway. The elf’s eyes were filled with an almost reverential awe, the sort of look an amateur carpenter might have when walking into a cathedral built by a master architect. Quickly the look passed and the elf’s cold demeanour returned. He backed away from the mysterious path with something akin to repugnance.

  “We need to go back now,” the elf said.

  “Why?” van Sommerhaus demanded. “The jungle is open ahead. We can make good time now.”

  Ethril stepped in front of van Sommerhaus, blocking him from the strange pathway. “Even you must sense something wrong here.”

  Van Sommerhaus laughed in the elf’s face. “The only thing wrong here is that we aren’t supposed to make use of a good thing when we find it.”

  “I rather think your ‘good thing’ found us,” Ethril said. “We didn’t find it. This whole thing feels of magic.” The elf turned his head, casting frightened eyes over the weird tunnel through the jungle.

  Marjus Pfaff pushed past Ethril. “An elf afraid of sorcery!” he scoffed, spitting into the underbrush.

  “Whatever did this has enough power that only a complete fool would not fear it,” Ethril warned. “There is a saying in Caledor. ‘Let sleeping dragons lie.’ I advise you use the same wisdom.”

  “The long-eared fey is trying to keep us from finding the treasure!” exclaimed Joost. The sailor brandished a fat-bladed cutlass in his hand. “Somebody cut that road through this mess, and I’ll bet my bottom teeth it goes someplace. Someplace with lots of gold and jewels just waiting to be scooped up!”

  Ethril shook his head, then stepped aside with a sigh. “If you are so eager for death, I will not stand in your way.”

  Joost stared suspiciously at the elf as he passed him. An avaricious gleam was in the sailor’s eyes as he stepped onto the strange pathway. The other sailors watched him proceed a few steps down the trail. Adalwolf turned his attention instead to Ethril. It was hard to read the expression on the elf’s masklike face, but what he saw there suggested a deep-set fear, fear far greater than would be occasioned simply by the prospect of losing a trade contract with van Sommerhaus.

  “Joost!” Adalwolf called out, hurrying after the man. “Wait! Don’t go! Let’s think this through first!”

  Coming near the sailor, Adalwolf was forced back by a desultory sweep of Joost’s cutlass. “I’ve waited all my life for a chance like this!” Joost snarled. “Keep out of my way, because you aren’t stopping me!”

  Adalwolf’s hand dropped to the sword at his side. Sadly, he shook his head. There weren’t many of Schachter’s crew he was friendly with. It was fate’s sick humour that Joost was one of them. Grimly, he let his fingers slip away from the sword and tightened his hold on the cleaver in his other hand.

  “Joost, there’s something wrong here!” Adalwolf pleaded. He gestured back at Marjus and the other sailors. None of them had made the first move to enter the pathway. They were watching and waiting. “They can feel it,” Adalwolf said, pointing back to their comrades. “Something’s wrong here.”

  The sailor glared at the mercenary. He swept his cutlass through the empty air between them, warning Adalwolf back. “Let me be! I don’t want to hurt you!”

  “Nor I you,” Adalwolf said. With a swift lunge, he dived beneath the sweep of the sailor’s cutlass. His fist cracked against Joost’s jaw, staggering the seaman. The flat of the cleaver cracked against Joost’s shoulder, numbing the arm that held the cutlass.

  “Let me be, damn you!” Joost shouted. The sailor drove his knee into Adalwolf’s gut, knocking the wind out of him. Joost lifted the cutlass with his numbed hand, making a sloppy strike at the mercenary’s ribs.

  Adalwolf brought the flat of the cleaver cracking against Joost’s hand, knocking the cutlass from his grip. Furious, the sailor charged at him, his face twisted with rage. The mercenary kicked Joost in the leg, knocking him off balance. The sailor hurtled past Adalwolf, crashing into the ferns at the edge of the path.

  Adalwolf turned to help the sailor back to his feet, but a piercing scream froze him in his steps. He watched in horror as Joost leaped from the green tangle of vegetation, blood streaming from his face. A pair of ghastly creatures clung to his beard, lean grey things with splotches of black along their scaly backs. They were lizards of some breed Adalwolf had never seen, reptiles as long as
a man’s forefinger and only slightly broader.

  More hideous than their appearance, however, was what the lizards were doing to the screaming sailor. From where they clung to his beard, the blunt-faced reptiles darted their heads at Joost’s face, sinking their fangs into his flesh, ripping little slivers of meat away with writhing jerks of their bodies. Joost shrieked again, trying to tear the lizards from his beard. Adalwolf started to rush to his aid when the frenzied shaking of the ferns behind the sailor froze him in his steps.

  The entire cluster of plants was shaking and trembling. From every branch, a scrawny grey shape crawled, an entire swarm of the ghastly lizards. Purple tongues licked scaly lips as the reptiles converged upon the screaming man, leaping at his body, scrambling up his legs. At first they were drawn to his face, but soon they gathered wherever a bit of skin was exposed by the sailor’s tattered garments.

  In less time than it took for Adalwolf to draw a breath, Joost had vanished beneath a living mantle of snapping, biting death. When his agonised body crashed to the ground, the lizards scattered from it, retreating in all directions. The gory spectacle that reached blindly towards Adalwolf was barely recognisable as human. Quickly, the lizards returned and Joost was lost once more beneath a carpet of hungry grey scales.

  Horrified, the men could only watch in mute fascination as the reptiles made short work of the mariner.

  “Cannibal lizards,” Ethril’s sombre voice told Adalwolf. “Once they set upon prey, nothing can be done. They will gorge themselves until only bones are left.” He turned and faced the other sailors. “Maybe you still want to follow the path?”

  Van Sommerhaus, his eyes locked on the hideous sight, tried to answer Ethril, but instead doubled over and was noisily sick.

  “We’re going back,” Adalwolf said, marching away from the gruesome spectacle. “We’ll try again tomorrow,” he decided. “Only next time we do everything Ethril says we do.”