[Florin & Lorenzo 01] - The Burning Shore

by Robert Earl - (ebook by Undead)

  They had also found a scattering of gold coins. If it hadn’t been for them van Delft doubted that the men would still be here.

  The rumours had spread from the wizard’s boat like some terrible plague. It had infected even the best of his men with pointless doubts and imagined fears. The gold had proved some small antidote, the odd hexagonal shapes of the coins and the bizarre patternings less important than their weight and their glitter.

  Still, it had been a damn close run thing. Even some of the captains had looked ready to cut and run.

  Well, Castavelli had, at least. And if he had gone that pig’s bladder Graznikov wouldn’t have been far behind.

  Bloody politics, van Delft thought, and kicked at what looked like a giant cockroach. Why didn’t I stay with the Emperor’s army?

  The bug turned on him and sank needle-sharp mandibles into the leather of his boot. He stamped on it, crushing it beneath his heel.

  It made him feel better. And anyway, close run thing or not, there had been no mutiny. At least, not yet. The men were busy clearing the small stockade, every one clear in his duty of sentry or axe man or cook. The thick white smoke of their fires was already rising into the air; a dozen acrid pillars that van Delft hoped might serve to keep the mosquitoes at bay.

  He wanted them to be as comfortable as possible, for tonight at least. Because it was tonight that would see the expedition succeed or fail. If he lost the hearts of his men now it was all over.

  Bloody wizard, he thought again, but this time a little more distractedly. Then he went to order the unpacking of some of the expedition’s onions and dried meat for a decent stew.

  Behind him the men sweated as they worked, and talked as they sweated. And within their talk rumours grew and took on a life of their own so that, by the time the perimeter had been hacked clear and the food cooked, nobody was quite sure why they were here in the first place.

  By the time they’d eaten even their officers were beginning to wonder why. Van Delft, strolling around the smouldering campfires with a glowing cigar in his mouth, could feel their doubt as he rounded them up like errant sheep and led them back to his own campfire.

  Kereveld was already sitting there, the flat pillar of his hat nodding up and down as he dozed away the day’s unaccustomed hardship. A contented smile had twisted the tips of his moustache upwards, and whenever the wizard’s eyes flickered open he glanced around the camp as fondly as if he were everybody’s favourite uncle, and this was a treat he’d arranged for them.

  Van Delft had to admire his nerve.

  “Right then,” he began, when they were all seated and plied with whatever alcohol they’d take. “What’s with all these stories?”

  The five men stared either into the flames, or at the flickering shadows that sidled ceaselessly through the jungle beyond. Thorgrimm, the dwarfs’ leader, looked into the hissing bowl of his pipe.

  “Captain d’Artaud,” van Delft selected a volunteer, his voice still soft with nothing more than mild interest. “I believe that some of the wilder stories came from your boat.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Florin murmured modestly, as if he were disparaging a compliment. “We just happened to hear our friend here telling us that his college had funded this jaunt, not the merchantmen we’d thought. And that we weren’t here for gold.”

  He looked carefully into the fire as van Delft studied him.

  “Actually,” he said. “We have been funded by a merchant, who is also a member of Kereveld’s college. And as to not being about gold… well, why are you here?”

  Florin thought about telling the truth, but only for a split second.

  “To seek my fortune.”

  Van Delft nodded approvingly.

  “And you, Captain Lundorf. How about you?”

  “The same,” Lundorf said with a shrug.

  “Captain Castavelli?”

  “Si, for fortune. ‘Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi’, as the ancients used to say, and who are we to argue with some wisdom? Although fortune, she is like all women, she is…”

  “Yes, yes, thank you,” van Delft hurried on. “And you, Captain Graznikov. Why are you here?”

  “Gold,” said the Kislevite simply, and the dwarf beside him nodded agreement.

  Van Delft asked him anyway.

  “And Captain Thorgrimm. What brought you here?”

  “Treasure,” the dwarf said, his eyes flickering at the word like a letch at a lifted skirt. “Gold, silver. Maybe even gromril. But even if it’s only copper we’ll take our share.”

  He looked at van Delft defiantly, much to the commander’s irritation. That glare was tantamount to an accusation of dishonesty. As if he’d steal copper!

  Ach, to the hells with wounded pride, van Delft thought. We are mercenaries, after all.

  “Well, then gentlemen, I think we’ve established why were all here. For gold. Our esteemed colleague Kereveld here has other interests, it’s true, but they won’t stop us from getting rich.”

  The wizard started at the mention of his name before folding his hands over his paunch and drifting off once more.

  Van Delft ignored him as he examined the black and orange fire light playing across his officer’s faces. His expression reminding Florin of a gambler studying his cards.

  “Are we all agreed on that?”

  The assembled men chorused their agreement doubtfully.

  “Now, is there anything else that needs saying?”

  In the ensuing silence Kereveld began to snore.

  “Well, there is one thing,” Florin volunteered reluctantly.

  “Yes?”

  “If our friend here is paying the piper won’t he be calling the tune?”

  “No. I’ll do any calling that needs to be done.”

  “But he is your, I mean our, boss. Isn’t he?”

  “A paymaster is different from a boss,” Castavelli interrupted, his pride obviously hurt. “We are gentlemen after all. If we don’t to agree with our sponsors we will resign our commissions.”

  There was another chorus of agreement, which brought a proud grin to the Tilean’s swarthy features.

  “Is correct,” Graznikov added. “Only an idiot would think men like us servants of men like him.”

  He waved his bottle at Kereveld, who was beginning to drool into his beard, and glared at Florin.

  Florin glared back.

  “Yes, well, I hope that answers your question, captain,” van Delft told him.

  “Now perhaps you would all be so kind as to go and mention this little chat to your men? They might sleep better knowing we’re in this swamp for a good reason. That we are not here to provide Kereveld here with sacrifices or whatever nonsense is going around. I mean honestly, look at him.”

  They all turned to look at the wizard, who was twitching in his sleep like a lap dog dreaming of scraps.

  “How much trouble could a silly old fool like that be to men like us? We’re warriors. Dogs of war. We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t the best.”

  The men’s eyes gleamed in the firelight.

  “Remind your men of that.”

  “Sir,” Lundorf said, the response echoing in the throats of his fellows.

  Van Delft smiled and nodded in dismissal. Taking the hint his officers scrambled to their feet, ready to take their newfound confidence back to their fellows like torchbearers with light.

  “Captain d’Artaud,” van Delft called as he followed Lundorf into the night. “Just go and get a hold of Orbrant and come back here, will you?”

  “Of course, sir,” Florin nodded unhappily, his heart sinking.

  “And don’t look so worried. I won’t eat you.”

  Florin worried anyway, not that it did him any good.

  “It’s a great honour,” Florin told himself as he trudged along. In front of him two of the men, their sweat-sodden shirts buttoned to the collar against the swarms of flies, wielded machetes against the thick weave of undergrowth that blocked their path. One of them, a
man seemingly as tough as he was short, had been working at the undergrowth all day.

  His name was Bertrand, Florin remembered. Maybe he should have a word with Orbrant later on. His mates looked up to this little man, and he seemed to have a giant’s energy packed into his short frame. Anyway, a promotion might be good for morale.

  Behind him the rest of his men waited. Those with guns held them primed and ready, the acrid whiff of their fuses lost beneath the stench of the jungle’s humid breath.

  Those without guns stood around them. Their eyes were wide and restless, and they looked horribly aware that their job was that of picket fence to anything that might come bursting out of these towering vegetation.

  Orbrant’s squad, who were waiting as a rearguard behind them, remained out of sight.

  This is a great honour, Florin told himself again, and found that he was actually starting to believe it.

  After all, Lundorf had looked jealous enough when van Delft had sent his company down this overgrown track, one of two that led from the abandoned compound. The dwarfs, leaving their cannon behind, had taken the other.

  Yes, it had been a great honour. Even Graznikov had seemed a little put out, torn before fear and greed of what might lay at the end it. Of course Lorenzo would say…

  Well, to hell with what Lorenzo would say. He’d left him with Orbrant just so that he wouldn’t have to hear it.

  “Boss,” Bertrand called out, pausing in his work and squeezing the moisture from his flushed brow.

  “What is it?” Florin stepped forward and looked over the man’s shoulder.

  “Don’t know.”

  He shrugged uncertainly and stepped back out of his captain’s way.

  Taking the man’s machete, Florin hacked off a couple of vines and pushed past him into a passageway that had opened up into the awaiting gloom. After a few feet he turned and handed the machete back before carrying on, thorns and creepers snatching at him as he pushed through them.

  Bertrand weighed it in his hand for a moment, the thick bushels of his eyebrows furrowed in thought. Then he sighed, looked back up, and followed his captain into the undergrowth.

  “I don’t understand,” Florin muttered as the tight squeeze of what he had taken to be a pig run opened up into a vast expanse of claustrophobic darkness.

  Suddenly, despite the crushing mass of plant life that grew all around, Florin had the dizzy sensation that he had somehow stumbled underground.

  He hadn’t, of course, yet the perception that he’d entered some subterranean realm persisted. It was like being in a long, narrow cavern, more of a tunnel really, that ran ruler straight as far as the eye could see.

  The trees that spanned its towering walls reached upwards like temple pillars, arching over to lock fingers high overhead. Their great boughs were clothed with vines and leaves and creepers, the countless shades of green sweeping up in combinations of light and darkness that were complex enough to shame any tapestry.

  It was also as silent as a cathedral within this vast hall. After the cacophony of life that filled the jungle it was incredibly quiet, only the occasional muted cry disturbing the deathly silence.

  “What is it?” Bertrand whispered, forgetting that his captain had asked him that same question only a minute before.

  But Florin had an answer.

  “Maybe it was a road,” he said, walking carefully out into the middle of the jungle formed cavern. There, jutting up above the detritus that covered the floor was a stone lip beyond which lay a deep, paved furrow.

  Stretching in both directions it was a dozen feet across, a hollow stone spine for this organic cavity. Here and there pools of brown water glimmered sluggishly in its depths, and its walls were slimed with clinging green algae.

  It stank as spectacularly, no doubt because of the rotten animal corpses that were strewn like grizzly confetti along the trough’s floor.

  “That’s no road,” Bertrand disagreed, wrinkling his nose. “It’s a canal.”

  “A canal. Yes, I think you’re right. But who would build a canal in a place like this? And why hasn’t the jungle covered it?”

  The two men exchanged a quick glance, then looked warily around.

  They already knew the answer: Kereveld’s monsters.

  “It looks abandoned anyway,” said Florin. Part of him, a big part, wanted to get out of this eerily quiet place. There was something disturbing about the heavy, oppressive silence that rolled through it; and there was something unsettling about the fact that, in the midst of a world bursting with life, there was nothing here but death.

  There was something even more unsettling about the uneasy, itchy sense that they were being watched, examined like bugs by hostile eyes. But that was ridiculous. After all, the canal was abandoned. It was empty, and looked as though it had been for quite some time.

  “Hey boss, notice something weird?”

  Florin snorted.

  “Anything in particular?”

  “There’s no flies here.”

  Florin listened and looked and found that the other man was right. There were no flies here. No mosquito whine, or black fly buzz, or constant pins and needles of their bites.

  He knew that, if anything, this should make him more cautious, yet as he stood there absent-mindedly scratching, he found that it helped him to make up his mind.

  “I don’t know what we’re waiting for,” he announced. “Let’s get the men in here and push on, shall we?”

  “Yes, sir,” Bertrand said, and pushed back up through the narrow pinch point to gather the rest of the company.

  “Now then,” Florin asked himself as they filed gaping into the tunnel. “Which way, which way?”

  There was no way of knowing whether the first expedition had gone east or west. Their path to this point had been easy to follow: it was lined with felled trees and quick-growing elephant grass. There had even been the occasional crumbling brown machete blade abandoned by the side of it.

  Here, though, they hadn’t left a single sign.

  “Which way, boss?” Bertrand asked and Florin, with the same easy bravado with which he had used to cast dice, said, “To the west, Bertrand, always to the west.”

  So it was that after hours of marching through the threatening depths of this jungle underworld, they found the landslide that marked the end of the tunnel. Better still was the discovery of ancient barrels cached there, like clues in some tropical drag hunt. The contents were long gone of course; it wasn’t even possible to tell if the mouldy sludge inside the barrels had been water or wine.

  Florin was pleased to hear the respect in his men’s voices as they waited for the rear guard to catch up. It occurred to him that they weren’t used to officers who relied on pure guesswork for their decisions.

  Or perhaps they just weren’t used to officers who guessed right.

  Not that it really mattered. Even Orbrant looked impressed as he led his squad out of the shadows.

  The two men gazed outwards at the ragged explosion of blue sky above them. To eyes adjusted to the gloom of the canal path it was painfully bright, despite the fact that the sun was already sinking.

  “Straight ahead?” Orbrant asked.

  “I’ll lead off,” Florin nodded. “But we’d better not go too far. That canal’s enough to show that this is the right track, and I want to make it back by nightfall. Before nightfall, in fact.”

  “Right you are, sir.”

  The men struggled out of the neat avenue of the canal and back to the chaos of the jungle beyond. Soon they had sunk back into their own personal hells of sweat and thirst, and of mosquitoes that seemed even thirstier than them.

  So it was that, heads bowed with exhaustion, they blundered towards the jungle’s guardians like cattle to the slaughterhouse.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The stream cut across their path, a thin garrotte of gurgling water. Florin smiled when he saw it glimmering through the last few strands of elephant grass. It was the perfect point to sto
p, turn, and go back with news of the day’s exploration. He had a feeling that Kereveld would be very pleased with their news. And if Kereveld was pleased, van Delft would be pleased, which was good enough for him.

  “Looks like a river, boss,” Bertrand said, lowering his machete and peering ahead.

  “Yes. Time to go back, I think.”

  “Mind if we wash some of the sweat off first?”

  Florin hesitated, and glanced upwards. The overarching canopy hid the sun, but he could tell by the length of the shadows that shifted all around them that it was well past noon.

  “Very well,” he decided, in spite of this. “But make it quick. In fact, let’s clear a bit of an area just here by the bank, shall we? Let everyone have a go.”

  “Right you are, boss,” said Bertrand, and he and his partner set to it with a will. While they worked, Florin motioned the rest of the column to a halt and stepped forward to wait by the stream.

  The water was almost clear. Not that he’d be fool enough to drink from it: the gods alone knew what diseases lurked amongst the swirling chaff of algal clumps and rotting vegetation.

  Easing himself down he sat on his haunches and watched the dim jungle light play across the rippling surface. As he studied the patterns he felt his mind become still; the concerns of his predicament disappeared like an unclenched fist.

  He listened to the chop of machetes on elephant grass, to the whine and hum of insects, to the breathing of the trees and the howling of distant apes. He felt sweat trickling down his skin, flies settling hungrily on. the furrows it cut through the repellent. He breathed in, and out. In and out, in and…

  Something twanged across his senses, shattering this sense of peace as swiftly as the bite of a trip wire.

  Rising smoothly to his feet Florin instinctively looked down the running path of the stream.

  And the daemons looked back.

  It was difficult to see how many of them there were. Their scales were a perfect match for the surrounding vegetation, and for each other. They held their bodies frozen and stiff, the unmoving silhouettes blurring into the chaotic patchwork of the undergrowth behind them.