[Florin & Lorenzo 01] - The Burning Shore
Page 26
The first-spawned, his crest mottling into a violent orange, ducked down beneath the surface of the water to find this ravenous foe. But it was no good. The silt blinded him just as surely as the frenzied death throes of his brethren deafened him.
He popped his head back up above the surface in time to see a high explosion of water as another victim leapt up out of the river. Its ruined body moved sickeningly, the remains of its skin alive with a covering of small, red-backed fish. They were tiny things, scarcely bigger than an outstretched claw, and for a moment the first-spawned guessed that they were no more than carrion eaters, scrounging on flesh that had been torn by another.
But then one of the tiny assailants fell loose, its jaws gnashing open and shut, and he realized that these fish were no mere scroungers. Far from it. These little predators were the thousand-toothed scourge.
Piranhas.
The first-spawned spent another split second watching the decimation behind him, his heart beating with an unaccustomed heat as the water was chopped up into red ridges by his dying brethren. From his first breath of this world’s air he had been one with them, a part of a great body in which they were all a part. Abandoning them would be harder than severing one of his own limbs.
Much harder.
And yet the first-spawned existed to serve his race. The weakling mammal was his target, and already it was slithering up onto the far bank. With one last fleeting glance at his dying brothers, the skink turned and swam towards the bank, ignoring the sudden nip of pain that cut into his tail. Another followed it, and another and, as the skink reached the shallows and got to his feet, something else bit into his ankle. He raced out of the water, his claws sliding in the mud, and turned to destroy the vicious attackers.
It was easily done. Their small bodies, delicate constructs of tiny bones and razored teeth, crunched easily beneath his claws, their blood mingling with his own as he prised them from his muscles. Then, without a single glance back, he turned to follow the mammal.
But the mammal was standing right in front of him. The first-spawned smelled the torn skin and matted fur that covered it at the same time as he saw the boulder that it held above his head.
It was the last thing the first-spawned saw. The great lump of water-smoothed rock plunged down onto his skull, the crunch of it sparking a blinding flash of light.
Florin stood over the lizard’s twitching body, his breath sawing painfully in and out as he watched the last traces of life flicker from it. He held onto his makeshift weapon until the last of his pursuers vanished into the depths of the river, nothing left of them but a fading stream of bloody water. A dozen heart beats later and even that was gone.
Florin dropped the stone, his breath slowing as he recovered from his escape. Then, to his own surprise, he felt a wide grin spread across his face. It pinched his cheeks and bared his teeth with a savage joy as he lifted the first-spawned’s corpse and flung it back into the water.
“Gotcha, you bastards,” he said and, with a shard of jittery laughter, he turned to make his way back into the jungle.
It was the boars that showed him the way. He’d barely gone half a mile into the jungle, his joy at escape long gone beneath the realisation of how completely lost he was, when the herd found him following their tracks.
Snuffling the air suspiciously for any trace of the skinks they let him approach, their shaggy bodies still within the hiding place of their thickets. Only when they were sure that this strange creature was alone did their leader, a battle-scarred old tusker whose world was a simple place driven by the quest for mates and food, squeal his challenge.
This time Florin didn’t hesitate. As the boars came crashing through the bush in crude ambush he leapt for the nearest tree, scrabbling up the wiry ivy that bound it like a rat up a rope. Ignoring the pain in his bruised toes and shaking fingers, he climbed ever higher, unsure of how high the boars’ voracious appetites could inspire them to leap.
He reached the first bough and the going became easier. No longer having to cling to the trunk he found that he could merely drag himself up from one branch to the next, almost as easily as climbing a ladder. Below him the boars milled about in their frustration. Some reared up onto their hind legs to bare the yellow chisels of their teeth at him and to squeal their outrage at being cheated of his flesh. Others turned on their fellows in sudden, violent scuffles that jewelled the mulch beneath them with droplets of blood.
Florin paused to catch his breath and to study the beasts gathered below. Almost as if in response to his own slowing pulse they calmed down, their squeals of hunger lapsing into the occasional grunt and their fights degenerating into a game of chase amongst the youngest.
Unfortunately, they didn’t seem in any particular hurry to move off. A horrible image flashed into Florin’s imagination, a grisly old woodcut that showed the skeleton of a cat laying outside a hole within which the skeleton of a mouse had been drawn. He couldn’t remember what uplifting religious point the illustrator had supposedly been trying to make, but the principle had been clear enough. He tried not to think about it as, with a deep, reverberating grunt of patience, the largest of the boars started to roll around in the soil in order to make himself a bed.
Florin swore long and loud, his language startling a flock of huge, velvet-winged moths into flight below him. Then, acting mainly to keep the image of the woodcut from his mind, he began to climb. Moving slowly now, with no particular danger to drive him on, and with the terminal drop to earth growing beneath him, the Bretonnian worked his way up the tree.
A couple of dozen feet further up the light began to become stronger and the leaves of the tree grew larger and more succulent in response to its opulence. Here and there beetles scuttled past, safe beneath their gorgeously armoured carapaces. A lizard, as frightened of Florin as he was by it, hurled itself into space to glide effortlessly into the darkness below.
Half an hour later, as green as a skink beneath his covering of grime and tree mould, Florin climbed into glorious, blinding sunlight. He swung himself up into the last safe branch and basked in the light, the heat soothing his tired frame as his eyes adjusted to the new world beyond.
A breeze picked up, ruffling his sodden hair, stroking through it like a lover’s fingers, and he closed his eyes dreamily as he listened to the whispering of the wind in the trees.
No, that won’t do, he told himself, snapping back into consciousness and looking down in an effort to frighten himself fully awake.
But there was no down. The leaves through which he had climbed had closed up after his passage, so that the entire, cathedral-high expanse of the canopy seemed as low and as safe as a Bretonnian field. Exhausted as he was, Florin smiled at the image and started to imagine what sort of sheep would graze across these lofty heights.
They would be soft. Slow moving. Cotton white. Gentle. Soooooo gentle.
The day slipped past the sleeping Bretonnian, his eyes flickering behind closed lids with a dozen relaxing dreams that ended when he woke himself up with a snore. Blinking the sleep from his eyes, he watched the sun sinking towards the west and realized that he had been asleep for quite some time. Somehow, though, the nap had just made him feel more tired.
Well, he wouldn’t take the chance of falling asleep up here again. Wincing as his cramped muscles twitched back into life, he pulled himself upright against the tree’s trunk, deciding to take one last breath of fresh air and one last sight of the sun before starting back down.
Despite the fatigue that still numbed him, he realized that, from here at least, the Lustrian jungle could be a beautiful place. It stretched out in a rolling green carpet into which nature had woven countless shades of green, the endless subtleties of its permutations glowing beneath the falling sun. Butterflies, some no bigger than wasps, others as large as bats, pursued each other across this sunlit realm, their wings painted in shocking swirls of blues and reds that stood out against the verdant backdrop like diamonds against black cloth.
Squinting against the dazzle of the light, Florin studied it through watering eyes. As the sun dipped below the far tree-line, the canopy was plunged into instant twilight, and the blinding flash of the distant stone resolved itself into a triangular tip of quartz. Its uncompromising edges formed a needle point that stabbed upwards towards the heavens, the aspirations of its builders as untamed as the wilderness which surrounded it.
Too shattered to feel more than a slight sense of joy, Florin sighed. He recognised that perfectly carved capstone well enough. It was the apex of the temple and, by the look of it, it was no more than two miles distant.
With a muttered prayer to Shallya that the boars would have gone, he double checked the bearing, rubbed his back and then started back down the tree.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Well?” van Delft asked. Sat upon the powder chest, surrounded by overflowing gold, he had thrust his jaw out and lowered his eyebrows in a scowl that would have done justice to a thunder god. It was an expression he had surreptitiously practised and polished over his years of command, so that now he could slip it on as easily as an actor slips on a mask.
Lorenzo felt himself beginning to sweat beneath the Colonel’s fearsome scrutiny. The only explanation given to him by the squad of Tileans who had arrested and escorted him here was that the commander wanted a chat.
One of the escort, the purchaser of one of Lorenzo’s treasure maps, had glared at him menacingly during the march to the Colonel’s hut but, surrounded by his mates, hadn’t had a chance to mention their transaction.
Now, his brow damp despite the shade van Delft’s crudely thatched shelter provided, Lorenzo wished that he and the Tilean had found the opportunity to get their stories straight. It seemed that van Delft knew all about this little… this little… Damn, what should he call it?
Ah yes. That was it.
This little “side line” of his.
The Bretonnian licked his lips nervously and decided that honesty might be the best policy. To a certain extent, at least.
“I was just selling the lads maps,” he told the Colonel, shrugging his shoulders in a gesture of assumed innocence.
“Stolen from Kereveld’s book?”
“No, no, no,” Lorenzo hastily waved away the accusation. “No. Of course not. I’d never steal. Especially from a wizard.”
Van Delft tugged at the tip of his moustache thoughtfully. That last part, at least, had the ring of truth about it.
“I don’t think that I believe you,” he said, looking at the Tilean corporal who waited behind the Bretonnian. He looked almost as shifty as the Bretonnian himself, further proof that the rumours he’d heard had been at least partly true.
“Colonel,” Lorenzo said, all wide eyed sincerity. “I give you my word, on Shallya and the Lady, that I neither stole from Kereveld, nor sold anything of his.”
The Colonel watched the Tilean surreptitiously, noting the anger that flickered beneath his unease.
“Of course, if you give your word,” he said after another moment’s unblinking scrutiny, “It’s difficult for me to doubt it. After all, we’re all gentlemen of fortune here, and a man’s word is his bond.”
“Er, yes,” agreed Lorenzo doubtfully.
“And I’ve already checked with Kereveld. His book is under an enchantment. Any non-wizard who reads it is struck blind,” the Colonel informed them with the clipped sincerity of a truly skilled liar. “The problem is that others have given me their word that you’ve been trying to sell them treasure maps stolen from Kereveld’s book.”
“Oh, I see what’s happened.” Lorenzo smiled with a carefully manufactured sigh of relief. “This has all been a misunderstanding. I have sold a few treasure maps, made by myself and based upon my own observations. Somebody must have got the wrong end of the stick. You know, about their provenance.”
“A misunderstanding? My informant told me that you were trying to sell him a map specifically on the strength that it was stolen from Kereveld.”
“No, he was mistaken,” Lorenzo said, with a confidence that he didn’t quite feel. “I told all the lads to whom I sold maps that I made them myself. Based on my own calculations.”
The Colonel’s gaze remained locked on Lorenzo, his face unconvinced.
“But you don’t have to take my word for it, Colonel,” Lorenzo continued, shifting uncomfortably, “Just ask Caporell Villadeci here. He bought a map from me only ten days ago.”
Van Delft’s ice blue eyes fell upon Villadeci like a hawk falls upon a mouse.
“Is this true?” he asked the man, whose face reddened as he glared at Lorenzo.
“No… I mean, yes.”
“Which is it?”
“He no tell us that the map is stolen. He tell us that he made them.”
“Then why did… yes, what is it?” van Delft snapped irritably as a messenger burst into the hut with a ragged salute.
“Sergeant Orbrant begs that you come to see what he has found, sir,” the Marienburger gasped, his sides heaving.
“What’s he found?”
“Captain d’Artaud.”
“In that case, gentlemen, I think that we should adjourn our meeting for now.”
But Lorenzo was already gone, racing to see if the news was true.
Hollow-eyed and shivering with exhaustion, Florin lay slumped in the shade of one of the lesser temples. Beneath the grime and the dried blood that covered him, he was pale, almost anaemic-looking, and his bones stood out from his wasted frame.
And yet, despite the fact that he looked more like a corpse than a living man, Florin’s face was animated, his spirits high. After the deprivations of his ordeal, the faces of his friends and the stale bread and sour wine which he was so busily cramming into his mouth seemed like a taste of heaven. He still couldn’t quite believe that he’d made it back. When he’d stumbled out of the darkness of the jungle and into the brightness of the clearing, the guards had hardly been able to believe it either. One of them had almost shot him.
But to hell with that, Florin thought. To hell with everything apart from the fact that I’m alive, and it feels good.
His head was thrown back in laughter, bread-crumbs flying from his mouth as he roared at some jest one of the men had made, when Lorenzo came pelting around the corner.
“Ah, there you are, boss,” Lorenzo said, forcing himself to slow to a casual walk as he elbowed his way through the crowd that had gathered around Florin. Bone-thin and covered in dirt, he would hardly have recognised the captain if it hadn’t been for that familiar braying laugh. By Shallya, he thought, it’s a great gift to hear that again.
“Lorenzo!” Florin bellowed, washing his mouthful of bread down with a deep, gurgling swig of wine before getting up onto his thin legs.
“I hope you’re not expecting me to mend those breeches!” Despite the grin that was tugging at his cheeks, the servant made himself frown disapprovingly.
In answer Florin flung a bony arm around his shoulders and gave him a playful punch on the arm.
“Sometimes I think that you were never really cut out to be a servant,” he said, and Lorenzo couldn’t keep the smile off his face any longer.
“Wondered if you’d make it back. Orbrant kept making us tramp about in the jungle looking for you. And me with only one pair of boots.”
“Don’t listen to the old villain,” Orbrant interrupted. “He’s spent the last week dragging patrols out after you. Sometimes I thought that he might even be in danger of becoming a soldier.”
“Well, he still owes me six months’ pay,” Lorenzo excused himself with a gap-toothed grin.
The mercenaries’ laughter floated across the camp. If the shades of their comrades still haunted Florin’s dreams, thes
e survivors seemed thankful enough for his return. For the first time in weeks there was a joy in their faces that was untainted by the greed and paranoia which had marred each discovery of gold.
And discoveries of gold there had been aplenty. As their captain finished his meal, his shrunken stomach soon feeling painfully full and his cheeks already burning with wine, his men told him of the riches that had been uncovered in his absence. They told him of thumb-long cylinders, their surfaces covered in weird hieroglyphs, of octagonal coins and round plates. Even a life-size statue of a skink had been found, the metal-cast lizard green-eyed with emeralds.
Most of the gold had been ferreted out by Thorgrimm’s dwarfs, but that hardly mattered. There was such a wealth of treasure that even the smallest share would be enough to transform every ragged one of them into a wealthy man back in the Old World.
“I’m glad to hear that we’ve found such riches,” Florin told them as they competed to share the good news, “because we have to leave.”
A dozen men interrupted each other with their questions as van Delft strolled up to the group.
“Ah, Captain d’Artaud. There you are. I wonder if you’d care to step over to my hut for a little chat?”
A moment after, Florin was seated in the shade of van Delft’s hut, sipping from a pot of boiled water, his fellow officers started to come in. The Tilean, Castavelli, arrived first, sweeping off the sorry remains of his feathered hat as he ducked through the door. When he saw the emaciated wretch lolling amongst the gold, seated on the Colonel’s own chair, he blinked in surprise. Then his face split open in a wide grin of recognition.
“Floreen!” he cried, seizing the Bretonnian and kissing him on both cheeks. “It’s miraculoso, no? The gods have a spared you.”
“Good to see you, Castavelli,” Florin responded, resisting the urge to wipe his cheeks.
“What a happened to you? Where you went?”
Before Florin could answer, van Delft, who had been poring over the map he’d had made of their surroundings, cut in.