[Florin & Lorenzo 01] - The Burning Shore

by Robert Earl - (ebook by Undead)

  “Hey, wait,” the messenger cried, seeing what was happening. “It’s ours. We found it!”

  Florin found himself standing alone in front of the Colonel.

  “Come back!” the messenger wailed, following the hurrying crowd. “That was a message for the Colonel, not you.”

  Van Delft watched him disappear back around the corner, then strolled over towards Florin.

  “I thought you were keeping an eye on Kereveld for me.”

  “Well, sir…”

  “Captain d’Artaud assigned that duty to me, sir,” Orbrant cut in smoothly, his features hidden by the shadows of the approaching night.

  The two officers looked at him, identical expressions of disbelief on their faces.

  “Sergeant Orbrant,” van Delft said after a long, uncomfortable silence. “You’re an extraordinary man.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  A chorus of joyful yells burst out from the darkness on the temple’s far side, followed by a chorus of wild curses and angry threats.

  Van Delft sighed.

  Damn mercenaries. They’d be the death of him.

  “Two statuettes, ugly. Six pounds in total,” Lundorf said, taking them off the scales and passing them to Thorgrimm. The dwarf studied them briefly, nodded his head in agreement, and placed them into the empty powder chest.

  Behind them Castavelli’s pen scratched across the parchment, recording the find for posterity.

  “One breastplate, round. Three pounds two ounces in total,” Lundorf intoned as the scales balanced.

  “Nice workmanship,” Thorgrimm decided, turning the piece of armour over to study the pattern that had been chased underneath. Dozens of pairs of eyes, each as suspicious as the next, watched him hold their treasure up to the light.

  Castavelli looked up.

  “Nice workmanship.” He chewed the end of his quill thoughtfully. “Should I write that?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Lundorf said, picking the next object from the pile beside him.

  “One…” He paused and scratched the back of his head. “One objet d’art, lots of frogs. Seven pounds four ounces in total.”

  “Aye,” Thorgrimm agreed, examining the carved forms that swarmed around the thing. Strange human/lizard hybrids swarmed together in tight, interlocking patterns that seemed to squirm beneath Morrslieb’s sickly light. The fell moon sat above them now, its wan light reflected in the eyes of the mercenaries. It made them gleam like the eyes of wolves.

  Thorgrimm cautiously placed the piece of gold into the box.

  “Knife, useless. Twelve ounces.”

  And the count went on. The stained, sulphurous interior of the powder chest disappeared beneath the hoard, a glittering dream made real by an accident of Kereveld’s sorcery. It had been the holocaust wrought by his magics that had uncovered the treasure trove, mixing the gold with mud, blood, corpses and shattered remains.

  It was as well for the wizard that it had. Rich men, after all, had more reason to fear the noose.

  “Armband, snapped. Ten ounces exactly.”

  The gathering watched the armband clink into place. They watched Castavelli mark it down. There should have been joy on their faces, and on some there was. But on most there was merely a sober calculation, the deaths of their comrades still weighing heavily on them.

  A bloody price indeed for the uncovering of this treasure trove.

  Of course, there had been six other planets. Planets whose boreholes had driven through nothing but wilderness, the debris of their passing still lay unseen and ungleaned amongst shattered trees and steaming mud. Even now, with the company’s cache being weighed out, there were absences in its ranks. These were the men who had realised the possibility that, a few hundred yards away, great fortunes lay strewn across the jungle floor.

  A pair of Bretonnians.

  A handful of Kislevites.

  A single Marienburger, the sole survivor of his section.

  And as for Tileans… well, who knew how many of them had slipped away? Castavelli had things other than his men to count.

  As Morrslieb slunk across the black velvet of the tropical sky more men dripped away from the expedition like blood from a wound. Inspired by greed and, although they didn’t know it, by Morrslieb herself, they snuck away between tree trunks as red as picked bones and into the darkness beyond.

  By the time morning came not, a single one of them had returned.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Success, a long dead commander had told a youthful van Delft, can be just as dangerous to a mercenary army as failure. Maybe even more so. With failure comes the forced discipline of desperation. With success comes… comes… Damn. What had the word been?

  Ah yes: dissolution.

  Still perched on top of one of the fallen blocks, van Delft watched Lundorf dismiss the parade assembled before him. There were perhaps a hundred mercenaries left to slope away, four-fifths of the total that had started out from Bordeleaux. And what a bedraggled four-fifths they were.

  The uniforms, even those of the Tileans, were now little better than peasant rags. The leather of their cross belts and boots had taken on a dark greenish sheen that no amount of scrubbing was able to remove. Even the score of dwarfs, standing to one side in a neat little block, were starting to look ragged and mildewed.

  It could have been worse, van Delft thought, but then again, it could have been better. It wasn’t as though they’d even been into battle; the seven bodies that lay freshly buried in the field beyond had nothing to do with any enemy. Perhaps that was why a dozen more of their comrades had deserted.

  If they had deserted.

  The commander tugged at the tips of his moustache and thought back to the other disappearances they’d suffered. The more he thought about them, and he thought about them a lot more than he’d let on, the less likely it seemed that they were the result of men running away. After all, where would they run away to?

  No. Twelve gone in one night was not something he could turn a blind eye to. Like it or not, he’d have to risk a patrol, see if he couldn’t get to the bottom of this. Not a big patrol, though. Just half a dozen men, led by captain…

  As he paused to consider a name, that rascal of a Bretonnian strode past as if chosen by Sigmar himself, a shovel slung over his shoulder.

  I’ll be damned, van Delft thought, shaking his head in disbelief. An officer with a shovel. Wonder what my old colonel would have made of that?

  Never mind. He’d save young d’Artaud from the indignity of getting mud beneath his fingernails.

  “Captain,” he called out, jumping down from the block. “Can I have a word?”

  “Well done, Bertrand,” Florin said, gingerly taking the fur cap that the trooper handed to him. Sodden with damp and grey with mildew the lump of bear skin looked ready for the midden.

  “Think it was dropped on purpose, boss?” Bertrand said as the stitching of the shapeless lump tore beneath Florin’s fingers.

  “No.” Florin shook his head regretfully and passed the thing back. “You know what those Kislevites are like. Ever seen one without his hat?”

  Bertrand shook his head and tossed the filthy cap back onto the clump of thorns where it had been found.

  The two other members of the patrol exchanged a glance, their eyes wide with anxiety and their skin grey in the gloom the jungle. One of them swallowed nervously and cleared his throat.

  “So, if they’ve been snatched,” he suggested, carefully optimistic, “we’d better go back, hadn’t we? Better let the commander know what’s going on.”

  “In a minute,” Florin muttered, peering through the floating tendrils of mist into the dank hollows beyond.

  So far they’d stuck to the path, more or less, following the track they’d already cut through the strangling darkness that guarded the ruins from the river. The oppressive mass of the jungle, the choking humidity of its breath loud with countless swarming insects, had closed around them eagerly as they stumbled back
into its embrace. Already the four men were slicked with sweat, their shins blue with a dozen stumbling impacts and their flesh studded with insect bites.

  And yet, although they now had the excuse to slog back out of here, Florin couldn’t quite bring himself to take it. He told himself that it was because of the gold that might lie beyond, and it was.

  At least, it was in part.

  But there was also van Delft. For some reason that he didn’t quite understand, Florin had fallen prey to the urge to impress the old man.

  “Damn it all,” he muttered to himself. “Let’s impress him then.”

  “What was that, boss?”

  “I said, let’s press on for another hour or so. See if we can’t find a body, hey?”

  “That is a good idea,” one of the men muttered sarcastically behind him as Florin led off, swishing a machete idly in front of him as he struggled up the slope.

  “Look out for tracks leading off to the sides,” he called back to his little patrol.

  “Come on then,” Bertrand reluctantly decided as Florin disappeared into the mist. “Look lively. Let’s get it over with.”

  “Can’t we just kill him?”

  “Don’t even joke about it.”

  It was difficult to keep track of time in the depths of this world. The endless pillars of jostling trunks, and the suffocating mass of foliage and vines they supported, sealed the men off from the sky above. Only the occasional shaft of dazzling light that cut miraculously through the tons of tangled vegetation above gave them any indication of the sun’s progress.

  It was difficult to keep track of how far they’d walked, too, when every step was a battle against clinging mud or snatching creepers. After a mere fortnight, it seemed, the jungle was already surging back into the path the intruders had cut, choking it closed with jealous fingers of vines, thorns and heavy, trailing sheets of ivy.

  Florin, who’d made the mistake of touching one such obstacle, was already nursing a hand as swollen and red as a pound of sausages. Occasionally, he tried to squeeze it closed into a fist, which eased the itching for a few seconds by making his skin feel as though it would burst.

  He was about ready to damn van Delft and return to the relative comfort of his camp when the first hint of a breeze whispered across his brow. Soon the cloying humidity through which they had struggled lifted, shuffled away by the cool fingers of a freshening wind. Up ahead, as if in response, the gloom lifted.

  “Looks like we’ve reached the ridge,” Florin told his men, stumbling forward into a sun-washed clearing. As he looked back over the valley Florin realized that this was where they’d first seen the temples, all those weeks ago.

  Now, standing in the withering heat of the afternoon sun, the four men turned and stared back down at the city. The peaks of the ziggurats jutted up aggressively from the canopy, their heights dark and brooding despite the dazzling sunlight.

  “We’ll take a rest here and then head on back,” Florin decided. He uncorked his flask, taking a deep, gurgling swig, and then passed it on. “I think we’ve come far enough.”

  “I think we’d all agree with you on that one, boss.” Bertrand smiled, and wiped a rag across his flushed face.

  Florin grunted and turned his attention back to the endless green expanse that rolled away beneath them. Who knew what other cities might be buried beneath that vast expanse, their granite bones littered with treasures?

  Behind him there was a clunk and the gurgle of spilling water.

  “Careful with that,” one of the men said. “I haven’t had a drink yet.”

  True, Florin considered, we haven’t found enough gold to pay for our expedition yet. But it’s still early. We really need to send out parties to see what else Kereveld’s damned sorceries might have turned up.

  “Are you all right, Bertrand?” said a voice behind Florin, and he . turned to find the Bretonnian collapsed onto the tangled mat that covered the ground.

  “Must be the heat,” Florin said, joining the other two men as they bent over their comrade. “Let’s put him into the shade, shall we?”

  They grabbed hold of their comrade, but as soon as they’d done so a second man fell forward as bonelessly as if he’d been pole-axed.

  “Damn!” Florin exclaimed, and exchanged a glance with the last man standing. “We should have brought more water.”

  “I suppose you’re right, boss.”

  It was the last thing the mercenary said. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a puff of feathered cotton, no bigger than a man’s thumb, appeared in the side of his neck.

  “Damn,” Florin repeated, his pulse racing in sudden fright. He stood back and drew his sword, examining the surrounding shrub suspiciously. Something snapped behind him and he whipped around to see what it was.

  The movement came just in time to save him. The white feathered dart that had been aimed at his neck punched instead into the leather of his shoulder strap, the soft cloud of its tail close enough to tickle his chin.

  Florin plucked it free, snatched a glance at the splinter of blue bone jutting out from the burst of cotton, and bolted.

  He got four paces before, with a pinch as painless as a mosquito bite, a drop of venom sent him crashing insensibly to the ground.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Florin’s eyes fluttered open briefly, then squeezed tightly shut against the painful brightness.

  It didn’t help. As soon as his lids were closed a kaleidoscope of exploding stars replaced the ice pick of daylight, the wheeling confusion racking his trembling body with a sudden nausea.

  Ignoring the splash of the water in which he’d been slumped, Florin lurched forward, his stomach clenching as the acid rush of vomit burst from his throat.

  I’ll never drink again, he promised himself desperately. Not even socially.

  Heaving up the last contents of his stomach, Florin tried to roll away from the mess, tried to curl up into a ball and slip once more into unconsciousness. But he couldn’t.

  Reluctantly, he felt himself becoming fully awake. It wasn’t very pleasant. Apart from the spike that felt as if it had been driven into his head, and the rolling nausea, there were other discomforts.

  The burning pain in his hands and wrists, for example.

  Squinting as hard he tipped his head back and examined the knotted vine that bound his wrists together. They had been tied above him, clasped tight together above an iron-hard length of bamboo from which he dangled, like a slaughtered pig ready to be gutted.

  Suddenly, Florin found himself wondering if this was just a hangover. However, even as he wondered, an image flashed through his fuddled thoughts, an image of a tiny dart and an unconscious man.

  He pulled tentatively against his bonds, and a thousand shards of pain burst into life beneath the swollen flesh of his hands, pins and needles.

  With another queasy lurch of his stomach Florin pushed the image away and looked around him blearily He realized that the bamboo pole upon which he had been hung was one of many—a tight grid which chequered the sky above.

  The realisation that he was in some sort of cage hit him and he groaned with fresh misery.

  What made it even worse was that this was like no kind of cage he had seen before. There wasn’t a single piece of iron in its construction, nor of stone, nor of planed wood. Instead there was a vast, complicatedly woven mass of bamboo stalks and braided creepers, their lengths studded with thorns as sharp as a serpent’s teeth. These materials, still green with life, had been woven around him in something akin to a vast basket, the lower half of which disappeared into the torpid depths of a river pool.

  Florin blinked away the last of the crusted tears that had blurred his vision and looked down at the tepid water that flowed sluggishly past his chest. It occurred to him that being strung up like this had probably saved his life. One drunken lungful of this filthy river would have put an end to him as surely as a sword’s edge.

  That was not much comfort, of course.
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br />   “Give me water.”

  Florin started at the voice and turned, blinking into the patchwork of sunlight and shadow beside him. A gaunt face looked back at him, as hollow-eyed and pale as a skull beneath the sodden mat of its straggling hair.

  “Bertrand,” Florin croaked, and tried to smile. “You’re looking well this morning.”

  “Water,” he repeated feebly, and Florin noticed how wide his pupils were, massive with either dope or delirium.

  “Don’t worry, mate,” Florin told him, with forced good cheer. “There’s water enough for both of us.”

  Bertrand rolled his head to one side, a flicker of recognition touched his face.

  “Costas?” he said. “Hey Costas! Give me the flask. I don’t feel so… so good.”

  Florin chewed his lip thoughtfully and looked down at the surface of the river. It was clouded with the rotten detritus of an entire jungle. Even boiled and strained it would be a risky way of quenching a thirst, but to drink it in this state a man would have to be desperate indeed.

  “Bertrand,” Florin decided, trying to ignore how swollen his own tongue suddenly felt. “Look down. There’s water everywhere.”

  Bertrand looked at him blankly.

  “Look down,” Florin repeated patiently, gesturing with his head.

  This time his companion understood. He nodded and dropped his face towards the rippling surface of the river like a cow bending down to drink at a trough.

  But even as he opened his mouth to drink he was brought up short. Hanging there, the knots of his spine pale beneath his grimy flesh, Bertrand flicked the dry leather of his tongue towards the water.

  It was no use. Whether by accident or design he had been suspended a fraction of an inch too high to be able to drink. Florin tried himself, thrusting his head down so far that his shoulder blades touched and his throat tightened. He pushed out his own tongue, making a clown’s mask in the murky reflection he saw in the fetid liquid, but to no avail.

  “Swine,” he swore vaguely, pulling his head back up. Now that he knew that the water was out of reach, his thirst began to burn as brightly as his anger.