[Florin & Lorenzo 01] - The Burning Shore

by Robert Earl - (ebook by Undead)

  “Let’s wait till we’re all here, shall we? I want everybody to hear everything.”

  Next came the dwarf, Thorgrimm. He nodded to Florin as he took his own seat and started to fill his pipe, as casually polite as if the human had just returned from a brief stroll. Nonetheless, when he thought that nobody was looking, he studied Florin through the thickening haze of blue smoke that his pipe emitted, his eyes gleaming with curiosity.

  Graznikov soon stumbled through the doorway. Although already flushed his face turned beetroot red beneath his fur cap when he saw the Bretonnian, and his only greeting was a scowl. It deepened when Lundorf barged passed him.

  “Sigmar’s blood, it’s true then!” Lundorf roared with the sheer pleasure of seeing his friend again, grabbing his hand to pump it as earnestly as if it were attached to a well. They were still shaking when Kereveld wandered into the mottled light of the little hut. As usual he was clutching his book to his chest, as though afraid that it was going to be suddenly snatched away. When he saw Florin he began to smile, then frowned.

  “Ah, there you are,” he said. “Good. I wanted to talk to you about one of your men.”

  “Which one?”

  “Never mind that now,” van Delft told them, settling back onto the edge of the bench. “I think that it’s time to hear what young d’Artaud’s been up to. Come on, let’s hear it. Where the hell have you been?”

  So, as the afternoon light waned into dusk, and the sliver of the dying moon grew brighter in the darkening sky, Florin told them. He told them of his capture and of the cage in which he had been hung like a plucked pheasant. He told them of the skinks and the saurus and what they had done with the corpses of his men. Then he told them about the great bloated monstrosity that had ruled over these horrors, and of the sorcery that had prised open his mind.

  That was too much for Kereveld. As Florin had unfolded his tale, the wizard’s excitement had become more and more obvious, and . now he leapt to his feet and ran a hand through the wild mess of his hair.

  “So!” he exclaimed, looking at Florin with an expression of hungry triumph. The Bretonnian, snapping back out of the world of memory, flinched back from the old man, wondering if he’d gone mad. “So! They do exist. By all the gods I’ve heard of these mages before, but I thought that they were all dead.”

  “Where did you hear of them?” Florin asked suspiciously, glancing down at the wizard’s tattered book. Seeing the direction of his gaze the old man clutched it closer to his bony chest, the gesture as unconscious as the way that Florin clenched his fists as he leaned forward. Not for the first time, the Bretonnian wondered what else the ever-jealous Kereveld might have kept hidden in that damned book of his.

  “Oh, the mage priests are mentioned in a hundred sources,” the wizard said, gesticulating with his free hand as he prowled over to the doorway. The first of the expedition’s fires flared into life beyond his stooped silhouette, and he craned his neck to gaze up at the first stars that glittered across the deep blue velvet of dusk. Then, as if drawing inspiration from the heavens, he turned back to face his fellow men.

  “Colonel van Delft,” he began, drawing himself up and addressing the commander with all the haughty grandeur of a duke addressing a footman. “Your mission is changed. It is now to locate this mage priest that your man has discovered so that I might communicate with it.”

  The mercenary commander’s face hardened and he drew in a deep breath of air, the better to curse this insolent civilian. But then he thought better of it, and his expression of anger mellowed to one of thoughtfulness. He had been hired to serve this insolent civilian, after all. Maybe he should check the contract before telling Kereveld where to shove his bloody lizard.

  Florin had no such qualms.

  “You can’t be serious?” he blurted out, aghast. “Capture the lizards’ wizard? You must be insane.”

  “Insane or not,” Kereveld pressed his advantage. “As the sole representative of the college which has funded this expedition, my orders are to capture it. Or perhaps we should try to make contact with it. A parley.” Kereveld stooped back down into his more familiar stance and scratched the back of his head as he considered this option.

  “Colonel?” Florin turned his attention to the commander, who was biting his lip thoughtfully. “You can’t be thinking of listening to him…?”

  “He hired me to raise an expeditionary force with which to protect him for twelve months,” van Delft shrugged. “But Kereveld, I advise you against wandering off into the jungle after this thing. We know how powerful it is. D’Artaud here only escaped through dumb luck.”

  Graznikov sniggered at what he assumed to be an insult. Florin glared at him threateningly and the Kislevite fell silent.

  “Of course there are risks,” Kereveld allowed, waving his hand as though countless reptilian warriors were as easy to dispel as a cloud of flies. “But think of the benefits. What price are a hundred or so ignorant soldiers compared to the chance of meeting such an ancient creature? Think of the knowledge that I… that is, that the college… could glean. Some even say that the mages of old knew how to step from one world to the next, as easily as we walk between houses. Imagine, the power to hurl yourself through the terrible voids between the planets with but a single step!”

  “You make a good argument,” van Delft said dryly, his sarcasm lost on the wizard. “But no. You’re too important to risk in this way. I am being paid to protect you, and that’s what I’ll do.”

  “You’re being paid to obey me,” Kereveld argued, tearing himself back away from the realm of future greatness to the more pressing business at hand.

  “Understand, Menheer Kereveld, that we aren’t going to go chasing after a wizard that can hurl us all into the void between the worlds.”

  For a moment the two men locked eyes. Under the intoxicating influence of his dreams it took Kereveld a surprisingly long time to look away.

  “I really must protest,” he said half-heartedly. “What an opportunity we’re missing.”

  “Think yourself lucky,” Florin told him, a sudden shiver wracking his bony frame as he thought back to his own encounter with the mage. “In fact, the sooner we get back to the boats the better. Colonel, I know it’s getting dark, but we should tell the men to start getting ready to move off. If we leave at first light we should be able to make it back to the boats, and then out to sea by tomorrow night.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Thorgrimm grumbled from the growing shadows. He pushed the last glowing embers of his pipe into the bottom of the bowl and inhaled deeply before elaborating. “We’ll not leave all this gold here.”

  “We can take it with us.”

  The dwarf barked with hard laughter, a cloud of smoke bursting from his nose.

  “No, we can’t take it with us yet. We have to dig it up first.”

  “From where?”

  “We don’t know yet. But there’s more gold here. I can smell it, almost taste it.” The dwarf’s eyes became wistful, and Florin looked at him incredulously. This was unbelievable. Between that moron Kereveld and this stunted little—

  No, stop thinking like that, he told himself. Getting angry with them won’t do you any good. Especially with the dwarf.

  “Menheer Thorgrimm,” Florin took a deep breath and tried again. “And Kereveld. I’m sorry that I didn’t make myself clear. These lizard warriors are huge, well armed, and well disciplined. And there are hundreds of them.”

  “You said there were dozens,” Thorgrimm pointed out stubbornly.

  “Dozens, hundreds, what in the name of Ranald’s left ball does it matter?” Florin snapped, clenching his fists as he tried to keep his temper. “With their magician and the skinks they’ll eat us alive. You haven’t seen them, I have. What’s the point of gold if you can’t spend it?”

  “Calm yourself, manling,” the dwarf said, folding his arms contentedly. “We will dig up the gold and then we will go.”

  “I don’t know,” Lundorf said, c
oming to his friend’s aid. “Whatever the exact numbers, these lizards outnumber us, and they know the terrain. Besides, we’re running low on rations. We can’t stay here much longer even if we wanted to.”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Thorgrimm, who’d discovered the delights of roast tree frog. The humans ignored him.

  “Captain Graznikov, what do you think?” van Delft asked the Kislevite, who shifted uncomfortably, greed and fear warring on his face. Then inspiration struck and he leered ingratiatingly.

  “Is simple,” he said. “My boys will take gold we found already to ships, buy supplies in Swamptown, then come back.”

  Van Delft nodded as Graznikov spoke, privately contemplating what the odds were of the Kislevite returning to the jungle once he was on a ship full of gold.

  “Captain Castavelli?” he turned to the Tilean, who had started chewing his thumbnail anxiously.

  “Is easy,” he said, spitting a piece of it out. “We must to go. I already lost a lot of my boys, and we have enough gold. Also, I want to get clean, and eat. Floreen is correct, we must to go.”

  “After we’ve collected the gold,” Thorgrimm repeated, as though not a man of them had disagreed, “we’ll go. Until then, we stay.”

  “Why Captain Thorgrimm,” van Delft said pleasantly, “I didn’t realise that we had exchanged ranks. How embarrassing, that I didn’t realise. Tell me, exactly when were you appointed colonel?”

  The other captains chuckled uneasily as the dwarf flushed, his hand drifting down to rest upon his axe.

  “We have to go,” Florin told him, leaning forward. “Believe me. If the lizards come for us, we’re doomed.”

  “Doom is nothing to be feared,” Thorgrimm told him, straightening his back and lifting his chin so that his beard thrust out like the ram on a galley’s prow. “All that matters is how we face it.”

  “But our doom is to return to the Old World tonight, rich men one and all.”

  “Then go. My dwarfs will stay and complete the task for which we came.”

  “No,” van Delft decided. “We will either all go or all stay. Remember, Captain Thorgrimm, you are still bound by your oath to serve me and the company. Now listen. What I propose is that tomorrow we send out a patrol to see if d’Artaud’s lizards are anywhere near. At the same time we’ll stop all excavations and build up our defences. If the lizards are near, and in such force as might cause us alarm, we’ll go. If not, we’ll spend one more week gathering gold, then we’ll go anyway. As Lundorf says, we’re running low on rations and, as Castavelli says, we need to replace our equipment. Now, is that acceptable to everybody?”

  Van Delft peered through the gathering gloom at the faces of his captains. None of them looked exactly happy with the compromise, but that was all right. None of them looked exactly mutinous either.

  “Captain Thorgrimm,” he addressed the dwarf. “Tomorrow I would like you to inspect each quarter’s defences and inform each captain as to what he has to do.”

  “As you wish, Colonel,” the dwarf muttered, glowering at Florin and banging his pipe out on his palm. The Bretonnian had an idea that the dwarf wished that it was his head he was banging, not his old briar.

  So. Let him wish.

  “Thank you,” van Delft nodded. “And d’Artaud, don’t look so damned worried. Get drunk and fall asleep, and tomorrow everything will seem a whole lot brighter. You’ve done a bloody good job to make it back to us, you know. Don’t think we don’t appreciate it.”

  Florin, his desire to rush back to the ships momentarily forgotten, sat up a little straighter.

  “Just doing my best, Colonel.”

  “Then it’s damned lucky for us that your best was good enough. Right then, any questions before we go and get our dinner? Kereveld?”

  “It’s just that we can’t possibly leave in a week. To inscribe the hieroglyphs from the inner temple alone will take a month at least. As the college’s representative I must insist that…”

  “Just a moment, Kereveld,” van Delft said, holding his hand up to stem the tide of the wizard’s complaints. Turning to the assembled mercenaries: “Double the sentries tonight if you would, gentlemen. Now, if there’s nothing else, you can go and eat. I’ve an idea that me and Menheer Kereveld will be here for a while yet.”

  In fact the wizard started jabbering again even whilst the officers were filing out, and van Delft smothered a yawn. By Sigmar, he thought as he began the long, thankless task of talking some sense into the old fool, how I wish that I’d stayed in the Emperor’s army.

  Six men volunteered to go out on patrol. Why they had volunteered it was difficult for them to say. They told themselves that it was for the chance to get out of digging, or to have a look about for gold, or because they were bored.

  They told themselves that, but they were lying. The reason they stood yawning and scratching in the rolling billows of the morning mist was that they were soldiers, and this is what soldiers did.

  Van Delft knew it, and was proud of them, proud of the small part he had played in their training. In fact, he was so proud of them that as he approached them a fluttering of guilt stirred within his chest, a dismal and unfamiliar feeling that he tried to ignore.

  After all, he told himself, it was quite possible that they wouldn’t meet any of Florin’s lizards. It was possible that they would return as this grey dawn grew into dusk, the six of them plodding back to break bread with their mates with nothing more than a few scratches to grumble about.

  But the Colonel didn’t think it likely. There was no doubt that the accursed reptiles were the masters of this vast, devouring land. If they did fall upon half a dozen straggling foot soldiers the outcome would be quick and bloody.

  It didn’t matter. Their disappearance would tell him all he needed to know, their deaths serving him as a canary’s death served the coal miners of the black mountains.

  Again, that fluttering of guilt. This time the Colonel hardened himself against it.

  This is war, he reminded himself. A cruel old business that would be even cruder if he didn’t have the steel to play his part well. What was it that Detlef Sierck had said? Something about the whole world being a stage, every man an actor?

  The Colonel sighed and prepared to play his role.

  “Morning men,” he greeted his canaries, and returned their salute. “Just wanted a quick word before you head out.”

  They remained at attention as van Delft paused.

  “Just remember,” he told them, “that you’re trying to find out if these damn lizards are out there, and if so, how many there are. Thing is, though, this jungle’s a pain to waltz around in. What that means is, if you do come across any of the little pipsqueaks, don’t hang about unless you’re absolutely sure you won’t be spotted. Understood?”

  “Sir,” the patrol chorused, and he dismissed them with a final salute. They about faced, and marched off into the morning mist. It closed in behind them, blanketing them like a shroud as they broke formation and approached the wilderness.

  This close to, their encampment the jungle had a gnawed look about it. The stumps and wood chippings that dozens of workgroups had left behind were damp and dripping with moisture, as wet as if they’d been chewed—a broken blade that had been left half buried in a tree trunk was already turning brown with rust.

  A hundred feet further on, all signs of habitation had disappeared. The trees crowded closely to whisper dark rumours above the intruders’ heads. The thorns grew tall and grasped eagerly at them as they pushed their way along a narrowing track. Above them a flock of parrots fluttered and screeched uneasy warnings, their calls louder even than the rasping of the men’s breath as they began to climb a slope.

  Half an hour later they stopped for a water break. Although the surrounding bush was getting thicker, at least the air was clearing; the last of the mist was burning away beneath the power of the waxing sun. The men watched one of its beams moving through the funereal darkness of the jungle floor as they pa
ssed around a canteen, the bright golden column like the searching gaze of some sky god hungry for souls.

  The last man took the canteen. He was no fool, and the thought of the baking hours to come made him drink sparingly despite the sweat that already beaded his forehead. He finished his drink with a sigh, wiped a grubby forearm across his brow, and firmly pressed the cork back into the flask. The fat squeak of cork twisting against metal seemed to stir something in the brush, and he looked up in time to see the skinks’ onslaught.

  They came from nowhere. One minute there was nothing but dripping green leaves and tangled black creepers, the next the jungle was swarming with a hurrying mass of the predators. Their crests sprang upwards as they burst from cover, as orange as fire or as red as cockscombs against the green armour of their scales, and even as they rushed their prey their jaws were opened in slavering anticipation.

  One of the men, a gunner, managed to scrape a spark into the firing pan of his weapon as they fell upon him. Shot exploded from its muzzle, the lead felling only one of his countless assailants but stunning the rest into a sudden pause. For a moment it seemed that the shock of noise and fire and acrid smoke might be enough to halt the attack altogether.

  But only for a moment. Blinking through the black powder smoke, the reptiles drew back the onyx-tipped javelins they carried and hurled them at the men. At first glance the weapons appeared crude and flimsy, little more than toys with decorative points. Yet there were dozens of them, scores even. They filled the air with merciless hail, the weight of their stone heads driving their razor-sharp edges through cloth and skin and muscle. The men fell back, clutching at the little wooden poles that bristled from their stricken bodies, and the skinks leapt upon them.

  With the effortless elegance of long practice, the reptiles threw their weight behind the hafts of their spears, twisting them deeper into their victims. Some of them, their sinuses full of the scent of warm blood, couldn’t resist ripping mouthfuls of delicious flesh from the bodies of their screaming victims. Gulping the still-living meat down as hot blood spurted across their cold skins like liquid fire, they chirruped their delight, their exultant cries sending birds exploding up and away with alarm.