That is the answer to the problem, Lord Tlaco decided, shifting one of its flabby fingers, using it to manipulate the patterns of the Great Math.
The equation is solved, the slann thought. The new unknown was why.
Adalwolf watched in disbelief as his bullet exploded the top of Xiuhcoatl’s skull. The skink prophet didn’t even cry out as the impact of the shot lifted him off his feet. The body flew over the side of the pyramid, clattering down the shallow stairway in a tangle of feathered talismans and golden charms.
The other skink priests were as shocked by the sudden and violent death of Xiuhcoatl as Adalwolf. The lizardmen blinked about them in confusion, their mouths gaping in stunned silence.
He didn’t know how long he could expect the lizardmen to be overcome by the death of their leader. Shifting his grip on the pistol so that he might use its heavy butt like a bludgeon, Adalwolf took to the stairs, rushing up them at a frenzied pace, heedless of the lethal fall waiting for him if he stumbled in his mad rush up the face of the pyramid. The danger that threatened him was little compared to the revenge the lizardmen were sure to take upon Hiltrude when they recovered. The vision of her dripping heart being ripped from her body by the reptilian priests spurred him on. He ignored the flare of pain that shot through him with every step as the bones of his shattered arm ground against each other. He was oblivious to the hot, stinging breath that rasped through his lungs. All that mattered to him was reaching the girl in time.
Adalwolf cleared the last few steps in a bounding leap, landing upon the roof of the pyramid in a pantherish crouch. The skink priests blinked, their pupils widening in surprise as they found this wild man kneeling beside the altar. One of the priests started to lift his feathered staff. The mercenary sprang at him, smashing the pistol against the top of his skull. The skink staggered under the first blow, then slumped lifelessly against the altar as Adalwolf pressed his attack.
A sharp hiss warned Adalwolf that a second skink was rushing at him from behind. He spun, hurling the bloody pistol at the skink’s face. Fangs cracked as the weapon smashed into the lizardman’s mouth, causing him to veer away from the mercenary and clutch at his bleeding face.
There was no time to pursue the wounded priest, for already the third of its fellows was rushing at Adalwolf, the sharp tip of its staff aimed at him like a spear. He braced himself, waiting for the moment he wanted. As the skink rushed at him, he shifted and grabbed at the staff. Much as he had when fighting Thanquol, he caught the staff in a grip of iron and used his greater strength and size to swing his foe around. The lean skink was even less of a burden than the horned skaven and Adalwolf’s spin flung the reptile far out over the side of the roof. The lizardman uttered a chirp of fright as it plummeted to the plaza below.
The last of the skink priests glared at Adalwolf with cold, unblinking eyes. Slithering noises whispered through its teeth and an awful light began to gather about its scaly claws. The mercenary understood the reason for the bold attacks of the other priests. They had been meant to distract him to give this last priest time to work its magic. Adalwolf threw the feathered staff he held at the skink, but the hurled weapon seemed to lose momentum before it even came near the skink, clattering harmlessly on the stones in front of the priest’s feet.
Gleaming teeth shone in the skink’s face as the priest raised one of his glowing claws. Adalwolf looked for someplace he might take cover. The only hiding place was the altar and to take advantage of it would be to expose Hiltrude to whatever magic the reptile was evoking.
Adalwolf stood where he was and glared defiantly at the lizardman. “I hope you choke on those words,” he spat.
The skink abruptly stopped his incantation, the glow fading from his claws. It cocked his head to the side, staring at Adalwolf with a look of surprise and confusion that was even greater than his shock at Xiuhcoatl’s death. Calmly, the priest set its staff down on the ground, then sat down beside it, folding his legs and tail beneath his body.
Adalwolf stared suspiciously at the skink, wondering what trick it was playing at. He watched the creature carefully, circling around it to reach the altar. The skink gave no further notice of the man, but kept its eyes staring at the palms of its own hands.
Hiltrude sobbed when she saw Adalwolf’s face appear above her, tears of relief rolling down her cheeks. The mercenary gave her a reassuring smile, then fumbled at the thongs the lizardmen had used to bind her to the altar. Whatever knots the skinks had used, they were complex enough to baffle even a seafaring man. Adalwolf soon abandoned any hope of untying her and looked for something to cut her free instead.
The ceremonial knife Xiuhcoatl had thought to use on Hiltrude was resting on the ground beside the altar. Adalwolf leaned down and quickly grabbed it. As he did so, he saw the shivering mass lying sprawled at the foot of the altar. A grim smile appeared on his face as he saw Captain Schachter’s situation.
The treacherous sea captain could wait. Adalwolf stood and returned his attention to Hiltrude. With a last look at the skink to make sure he was still behaving, the mercenary began sawing at the ties that bound Hiltrude’s hands.
As soon as her arms were free, Hiltrude wrapped them around Adalwolf’s neck in a crushing embrace. She pulled herself off the altar and crushed her soft lips against his. It took more effort than he would have believed possible to free himself from her arms.
“I have to free your legs,” Adalwolf told her, gently pushing her away. A sudden thought came to him.
He would need to turn his back on the skink. “Keep your eyes on that monster. Warn me if he moves.”
“I prayed you would come,” Hiltrude told him as he sawed at the cords. “I didn’t dare to hope you’d come in time.”
Adalwolf slashed the last of the cords and helped Hiltrude lower herself from the altar. “You can thank that slinking coward Thanquol I found you in time,” Adalwolf said. “He promised he’d lead me to you if I helped him get out, though I’m sure he never intended to keep his word. Sometimes even liars get caught in their own lies.”
Hiltrude started to hug him again, then noticed the flare of pain that swept across his face when she touched his arm. A mixture of pity and concern filled her eyes as she noticed Adalwolf’s injury. She studied the crude binding he had made for himself from one of his pant legs. Shaking her head in disapproval, she started to rip at the tatters of her own dress to make a more secure bandage.
“No time for that,” Adalwolf scolded her. “There was an entire mob of reptiles chasing me when I escaped the pyramid and there’s an entire army of them moving to surround the city! We have to get out of here! Now!”
The mercenary grabbed Hiltrude’s hand and started to lead her towards the stairs when Schachter’s voice cried out.
“For the love of Shallya and the grace of Manann, don’t leave me!” the captain wailed.
Adalwolf stared coldly at the man, then his gaze shifted to the now empty altar. It was no better than the villain deserved. Hiltrude’s soft hand pressed against his chest as he turned away.
“You can’t leave him,” she said. “Not like this. Not with them.”
A stab of guilt made Adalwolf frown. Whatever Schachter had done, he was still human. Hiltrude was right; no man of conscience could abandon another to the mercies of inhuman monsters. Except for her, though, he realised that was exactly what he would have done.
The mercenary leaned over Schachter, sawing through the cords with a deft motion of the knife. The sea captain rubbed his bruised wrists and grinned at Adalwolf. “Don’t get the idea I did this for you,” the mercenary warned him. “I just don’t want your sorry face haunting me at night is all.”
“I won’t forget this,” Schachter assured him. “By Handrich and old Jack o’ the Sea, I won’t!” The captain stood and rubbed his legs, working circulation back into them. “What’s the plan now? You mean to go back inside and look for van Sommerhaus?”
Adalwolf turned away as Hiltrude looked at him hopefully.
After her own impossible rescue, she seemed to think he could do anything. In a way, he was almost sad he was too rational to think he could. If the patroon was still inside the pyramid, they’d never find him. He stared out across the ruins, watching as the army of lizardmen slowly surrounded it. Soon there would be no escape. But where would they escape to?
A smile spread across his face as he spotted a grey robed figure racing through the ruins. If anybody knew an escape route, it would be Thanquol!
The warrior pointed at the distant ratman. “We have to follow Thanquol!” he said. “He’ll know a way out of here and I’m sure he can be convinced the only way to save his skin is to save ours too.”
Hiltrude gasped in horror at the idea. “We escape the lizardmen only to run back into Thanquol’s paws!”
Adalwolf shook his head. “He’s lost all of his followers. It’s just him and us now.” He gazed out across the ruins, unpleasantly aware of the cordon the lizardmen were throwing around the city and the presence of the toad-creature at the edge of the jungle. “We have to hurry before we lose him.”
“I’ll be with you in a moment,” Schachter told the others. He picked up one of the feathered staves lying on the roof and strode towards the sitting skink.
“Schachter! Leave it alone!” Adalwolf cried, afraid the man would provoke the reptilian priest into unleashing whatever magic he had been conjuring.
The sea captain hesitated as he lifted the staff, but it wasn’t because of Adalwolf’s shout. Schachter studied the unmoving lizardman, staring at the curious white spots that were spreading across the skink’s scaly hide. It was like watching mould growing on bread. He backed away from the reptile, suddenly losing his interest in bashing its head in.
“Plague!” Schachter gasped, making the sign of Shallya as he spoke the ghastly word.
Adalwolf started towards the sitting priest to see for himself, but Hiltrude held him back. “You said we had to go. Let’s go,” she said, her voice quivering with terror much as it had when the sailors had proposed using fire to burn away the man-eating plants.
The mercenary relented. The skink could keep the secret of whatever weird doom had claimed it. Carefully, he made his way to the stairs, grateful that he had Hiltrude beside him to keep his balance. Descending was going to be harder than his mad rush to the top. For one thing, there was no way to avoid noticing how far it was to the bottom.
Halfway down they found the entrance way Thanquol and Adalwolf had used to escape the pyramid. The opening was littered with the bodies of lizardmen now, all of them sporting the most hideous wounds. Adalwolf felt all the warmth drain out of him when he saw the bodies. He knew what kind of creature was capable of wreaking such havoc. He kept silent, though. It wouldn’t do any good to tell the others that Thanquol might not be alone for long.
There were others though, lizardmen that hadn’t quite been finished off in the fight. None of them were in any condition to cause trouble, simply lying strewn about the ledge, their lifeblood seeping out of their mangled frames. The mouths of the skinks gaped as they tried to suck air into their bodies and their eyes were swollen and crusted over. The same ghastly white fungus Schachter had described was quickly spreading across their scaly skin, visibly expanding even as they watched.
Schachter stooped over one of the mutilated skinks and removed the golden sword clutched in its dead claw. He tested the balance of the unwieldy blade. Grinning, he turned back towards Adalwolf.
“Damn sight better than a knife,” Schachter told the mercenary. Hiltrude could feel Adalwolf’s body grow tense.
Schachter laughed and tossed the weapon to Adalwolf. “This one’s yours,” he said. “I’ll see about finding others for myself and the girl.”
“If we get back, these’ll be worth a few guilders,” Adalwolf commented as he studied the strange double-headed sword.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Schachter answered, a gleam in his eye.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Hunters and Prey
When he heard the pistol shot, Thanquol’s paws instantly flew to his chest. It took several minutes of poking and patting to assure himself that he hadn’t been shot. He gritted his teeth in a feral scowl. He knew it had been a mistake to give that simpering human a weapon! The villainous, unthankful wretch had tried to put a bullet in his back!
Thanquol muttered a quiet prayer of gratitude to the Horned Rat for spoiling the man-thing’s aim. However dire his circumstances, he should have known better than to arm an unpredictable animal. Humans couldn’t be trusted with all their insane ideas and irrational attachments. Any thinking creature would have been content to be led out of the pyramid, but not a human! Oh no, the fool-meat had to demand to be led to his breeder first!
The grey seer looked back at the pyramid as he leaped to the cracked stones of the plaza. He wondered if he dared send a spell searing into the human. As afraid as he was of drawing Xiuhcoatl’s attention, he was even more afraid that the great fat frog-thing he’d spotted in the jungle would notice. That creature had appeared to Thanquol’s senses less as a thing of flesh and blood but more as a bloated sack of raw magical energy. He’d seen warpstone deposits that were puny beside the power he sensed in the fat frog-thing. Seeing the frog-mage up close had risen rather prominently to the top of Thanquol’s phobias. Going back to Skavenblight and explaining his failure to the Nightlord wasn’t such a poor prospect by comparison.
Thanquol lashed his tail in annoyance. He wouldn’t get back to Skavenblight if the back-shooting man-thing put a bullet through his spine. Perhaps Xiuhcoatl and the frog-mage wouldn’t notice a small spell; one only big enough to scorch the human’s eyes out of his face.
His beady red eyes blinked in confusion as Thanquol stared up at the pyramid. The human wasn’t even looking at him, he was dashing up the stairs as fast as he could, making for the roof of the dreadful temple. He was just thinking that terror of the grey seer’s powers had sent the man-thing running when Thanquol noticed the greasy tang of reptile blood in the air. He shifted his gaze in the direction of the smell and was shocked to see a scaly blue body tumbling down the steps of the pyramid.
The faint smell of gunpowder rising from the lizardman told Thanquol how he had met his end. The white robe and feathered ornaments made him realise that the victim of Adalwolf’s bullet had been Xiuhcoatl.
Thanquol clapped his paws together and leaped off the ground, squeaking in delight.
The clever, bold little slave-thing! He knew there was a reason he had conquered his own petty fears and doubts and given the human those pistols. Lesser skaven would have thought only of their own skins, unable to think past getting a bullet in their back. Not he! His was the sort of genius that might exhibit itself once in a generation. He had foreseen the possibilities of a human with a pistol. For the good of the quest, he had dismissed his own fears and put the man-thing in the position to kill Xiuhcoatl!
Actually, the more he thought about it, the story would probably sound even more heroic if he avoided any mention of the human at all. Thanquol wondered if he should say he’d shot the cursed Prophet of Sotek or if it would be even more awe-inspiring to say he’d slaughtered the lizardman with one of his spells.
The problem was still vexing the grey seer when he saw a pack of excited skinks erupt from the tunnel he and the human had escaped through. Thanquol glared at the lizardmen, thumbed a piece of warpstone from his pocket and started to imagine the spell he would evoke. Then he remembered the frog-mage out in the jungle.
Magic probably wasn’t a good idea just now, Thanquol decided as he turned tail and scurried away from the Temple of the Serpent. The very last thing he wanted was to draw that thing’s attention. It might even draw the awful conclusion that it had been he and not the human who had killed Xiuhcoatl.
Thanquol wasn’t sure if frog-things could get angry, but he was sure he didn’t want to find out.
Adalwolf winced as Hiltrude tightened the binding around his broken arm. Stari
ng down at the mouldy corpses of the lizardmen, the mercenary was certain the maimed limb was infected with the same putrescence. He wondered how quickly the disease would overwhelm him and how much it would hurt. Somehow, he didn’t take the skink priest’s quiet acceptance of the sickness as a good example of how it felt to have white mould erupting from your skin.
He looked longingly down the side of the pyramid. A quick fall and it would be all over, Adalwolf thought. But that would leave Hiltrude alone with Schachter again. The mercenary shook his head. He couldn’t abandon her to the villain. If it came to it, he cut Schachter’s throat before his own.
The sea captain almost seemed to sense Adalwolf’s thoughts. He backed away from the sprawled bodies of the lizardmen. Three gold swords and two clubs were stuffed beneath his belt and he had tied the arms of his coat together to make a bag to carry still more loot he’d pulled off the bodies. Schachter’s face flushed with embarrassment when he saw Hiltrude and Adalwolf staring at him.
“If we get out of here, you’ll be glad I brought this along,” Schachter told them, hefting the heavy sack onto his shoulder. “There’s enough here to set the three of us up pretty good if we get back.”
“You sure about that?” Hiltrude challenged. “I mean, about splitting it?”
Schachter couldn’t look in her eyes, instead staring at his feet. “You want me to leave it then?”
“It might remove certain temptations,” the courtesan shot back.
Adalwolf shook his head. “Bring the bag, Schachter,” he said. “We’ve wasted enough time on it. Thanquol’s probably out of the city by now.”
“Not the way he’s leaking,” Schachter smiled, nodding his head at the trail of black blood staining the steps of the pyramid. “You must have cut him pretty good in your scuffle.”
Adalwolf thought about that. Thanquol hadn’t looked hurt when he scurried off. He glanced again at the mangled lizardmen and shuddered as he considered what the black blood was more likely to belong to. Still, even if he was wrong in his assumption, Schachter’s advice was sound. If it was Boneripper’s blood, then the rat ogre could only be following Thanquol’s scent. That meant if they followed the blood, they would still find Thanquol.
[Thanquol & Boneripper 02] - Temple of the Serpent Page 24
