[Florin & Lorenzo 01] - The Burning Shore

by Robert Earl - (ebook by Undead)

  Within minutes there was nothing left of the patrol. Nothing that the jungle would remember for very long, anyway: a few useless weapons, soon to disintegrate beneath the mulch; a few decimated carcasses wrapped in the shreds of their clothing, soon to be consumed by maggots and beetles. Had they had the time, the skinks would have scoured them clean there and then. But the mage priest had made his orders clear. There was to be no delay, no hesitation.

  Today the scourge of humanity would be cleansed from their world.

  With barely a single hungry backward glance, the skinks scurried off to their appointed positions. There would be plenty of meat soon enough.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  It was the gunshot that saved them. The gunshot and the fact that van Delft was high enough above the camp to hear it. Following his usual habit he had climbed to the top tier of the central pyramid, a suitable eyrie from which to watch his little army working upon their fortifications.

  And working they were. The rumours which had raced around the camp after Florin’s return, each more bloodcurdling than the last, had motivated the mercenaries in a way that no officer ever could have. Most of the men were already stripped to the waist as they toiled, their backs damp with sweat even before the last of the mist had cleared. Toiling away to the shouted instructions of their sergeants they built up sliding ramparts, or lashed together the bundles of stakes that teethed these primitive earthworks, or sharpened the points on their spikes.

  Thorgrimm, beard thrust out with the dignity of his new authority, strode from one quarter to the next, telling the captains what to do. His dwarf warriors marched behind him in two neat files, and occasionally he would dispatch a pair of them to work alongside their human comrades. Their very presence seemed enough to bolster the humans’ efforts, the relative chaos of their techniques resolving itself into a clockwork precision as the dwarfs took charge.

  Not for the first time, van Delft congratulated himself for having had the foresight to hire Thorgrimm’s company. Time and again they had proven their worth, even though they’d driven a harder bargain than anybody else. Van Delft turned to look at the cannon they had positioned up here, the metalwork around the muzzle a gargoyle’s head of bronze. He was staring at it unseeingly, his mind playing with the idea of becoming an agent for Thorgrimm’s band of mercenaries after he’d retired, when he heard the gunshot.

  It was very faint. In fact, it was so muffled by undergrowth and distance that if it had not been for a chance gust of wind, van Delft wouldn’t have heard it at all. But carry the sound the warm breeze did, and van Delft turned in the direction from which it had come. He was squinting through the last rising tendrils of mist, wondering if he’d been mistaken, when Sigmar sent a sign.

  It came as an eruption of tiny coloured shapes, dozens of them bursting up from the canopy like fireworks on Walpurgisnacht. The flock’s distant plumage was startling against the dull vegetation from which they’d sprung, the fiery colours unique in a world of green.

  Van Delft watched them fluttering skywards, the beat of their wings so panicked that the whole jungle might have become one huge predator. Every instinct in his scarred old body screamed to him that this was the warning he had been expecting, and he cursed himself for a fool. Why had he listened to Thorgrimm and Kereveld? He had known, deep down, that they’d been wrong, that yesterday had been the time to go.

  “May the gods curse money-grubbing mercenaries,” he muttered to himself, then, for once careless of his dignity, he made a funnel of his hands and began to bellow the call to battle stations.

  “What’s he shouting about?” Lorenzo asked sourly, looking up from digging towards the gesticulating shape of van Delft above them.

  “I’m not sure. Can’t quite make it out,” Florin frowned. Although still pale and sickly-looking from his week of “gallivanting”, as Lorenzo had called it, he was already feeling strong. Apart from the discomforting way in which his bowels seemed to have turned to water, and the discomfort of the tapestry of cuts and bruises that purpled almost every inch of him, he felt as good as new.

  That was what he had told Orbrant, anyway. The sergeant had tried to protest when Florin had left his pallet to come and take charge of his quarter’s defences, but Florin had overruled him. After the lonely desperation of his escape he wanted to be amongst others, wanted to see them and hear them. He’d even taken some pleasure from smelling them, although the reassuring qualities of the soldiers’ stale sweat was already losing its novelty.

  Florin had even made Thorgrimm welcome when he’d come to give his advice. Although even more dour than usual after last night’s argument, the dwarf had eventually shared some of Florin’s tobacco, mellowed by the alacrity with which his instructions had been carried out.

  They had been following these instructions, knee-deep in mud whilst cutting the sides of their defensive ditch into a steeper angle, when van Delft had started yelling.

  “Quiet, men,” Florin called out. “The Colonel’s saying something.”

  The scraping of improvised picks and wood-carved shovels came to a ragged halt, the men leaning on them and peering up curiously at their colonel.

  This time his words rang out as loud as a funeral bell.

  “What is it?” Lorenzo asked warily as he saw his master’s face pale.

  “They’re coming,” Florin muttered, running his fingers through his hair and chewing the inside of his cheek.

  “What?”

  Ignoring the question Florin swallowed against the sudden dryness in his mouth and turned to his men. Holding his posture and modulating his voice into the bluff confidence of a true poker player, he creased his eyes into a confident smile.

  “Right, men. Looks like this is it. Tools away, weapons out. Sergeant Orbrant,” raising his voice against the burst of sudden activity Florin singled out the warrior, keen to seek his advice. “A word, if you please. And Lorenzo, go and see the Colonel. Tell him you’re the company’s messenger. Tell him we’ll be ready in five minutes.”

  “Right you are, boss,” Lorenzo said, gratefully dropping his spade and vaulting out of the ditch. Behind him he could hear the cries of the company, the excited chatter and nervous laughter of the men interspersed with the harsh snap of commands as Florin and Orbrant bullied them into a line abreast their defences.

  Their voices faded as Lorenzo rattled up the scaffold that climbed the pyramid, the particular sounds of their preparations lost amongst all the other companies. The Kislevites, for some reason, seemed to be preparing themselves by bursting into song.

  Drunk again, lucky wretches, Lorenzo thought, and snapped off a salute to the Colonel.

  But the Colonel wasn’t watching. His eyes were focused on the tree-line, his mouth drawn into a hard line of determination as he waited for the enemy to come.

  The skinks that had devoured the patrol had taken the longest route. As swiftly as hares in a field, as silently as trout in a stream, they raced through the tangled depths of their domain, cutting through the jungle in a long, wide arc that took them around the human infested ruins and into position on the far side.

  Elsewhere other swarms were racing to their own positions, each pack of skinks sweeping a great stampede of fleeing prey animals before it. Savage boars smashed their way through the undergrowth, the thorns sliding harmlessly off their armoured hides. Golden-eyed pumas slunk through clearings or leapt from branch to branch. Poison-toothed komodos ran high-legged along the runs of their territories, or disappeared into deep, defendable burrows.

  And all the while birds leapt and fluttered nervously from tree to tree, flitting up and away when the skinks approached. The sloths and lemurs they left behind froze into near invisibility, their bodies moulded tightly to the bark of their trees.

  But the animals’ fears were, for once, misplaced. The lizardmen were hunting for only one type of prey today. They didn’t even pause to gather abandoned eggs, or to overwhelm the solitary sow whose desperate courage kept her standing
guard over her newborn boarlets.

  Soon, even as the commotion of their advance spread through the surrounding jungle, each of the skink swarms found its position. They waited then, the pink snapcases of their mouths opening like flytraps in the jungle gloom as they panted and waited.

  Noon approached. As the shadows shrank, the skinks’ breathing stilled, their pulses slowing as they waited in calm anticipation. There was none of the nervous energy that fizzed amongst the humans here, not a trace of any tension, just the unmoving silence of ambush, and the certainty that soon, very soon, their bellies would be full of sweet meat.

  “What a noise,” Florin snapped irritably, and wished that the guinea fowl were within range. They had hurtled out of the tree-line five minutes before, the commotion they’d made sending a thrill of alarm through the waiting men. One of them had even fired, braving Orbrant’s wrath with the waste of ammunition.

  Not that Orbrant seemed to share the tension that permeated the defenders. He stood behind the battle line that he had drawn up against the palisade, his warhammer resting on his shoulder like a favourite pet. And where other men chewed lips or tugged earlobes or sweated and scratched Orbrant remained absolutely still, his features composed into a perfection of contentment.

  Florin watched him with reluctant admiration. He was beginning to realise that, unlike any other single individual here, Orbrant was actually looking forward to the coming battle.

  Somehow that didn’t surprise him.

  The guinea fowl wandered closer, filling the air with the rusty screech of their voices. The noise grated across Florin’s tightly strung nerves, and he glared at the birds viciously. As if in response to his disapproving stare they suddenly fell silent, as if themselves listening to some other animal.

  “Here they come, sir,” Orbrant smiled, and began to limber up his arm by swishing the warhammer back and forth.

  “How do you know?” Florin asked him irritably.

  “Watch those birds,” the Sigmarite said, nodding towards the silent guinea fowl.

  Florin watched. Right on cue the entire flock burst out of the elephant grass, stubby wings blurring as they dragged their plump bodies laboriously up into the sky. A moment later the waist-high grass that marched to the forest’s edge began to shift and stir, the seed-topped tufts of it shaking back and forth as if in a high wind.

  “Is that them?” Florin asked, although he already knew the answer. Careful as the skinks were, there were too many of them, moving too fast, to remain hidden. Occasionally their crests would bob into view, the orange triangles cutting through the elephant grass like sharks’ fins through water.

  One of the Bretonnians, the sweat pouring off him, fired. The noise of the shot brought an uncharacteristically gentle reprimand from Orbrant.

  “Reload,” he told the man, his voice calm. “And wait.”

  As the skinks drew closer Florin could hear cries of warning coming from the other quarters of their primitive stockade. The musical chatter of the Tileans’ voices mingled with the guttural snapping of the Marienburgers and, from the other side of the complex, the harsh sibilance of the Kislevites. Yet despite the differences in accent all the voices were united by a common emotion.

  Now the enemy were a hundred and twenty yards away, now a hundred. Florin fought with the temptation to give the order to fire. The skinks were already in range, barely, but he and Orbrant had agreed to wait until each of the companies’ dozen gunners could be sure of a kill. They would only have time for one volley, so it had better be made to count.

  Now the skinks were within eighty yards, the black, onyx tips of their spears glinting with an eerie white light as they bobbed above the trampled grass.

  A ragged volley of shots rang out behind Florin, then a series of shrill sounding commands. There was a sudden scream, the bloodcurdling sound drowned out a sudden, deafening roar as the dwarf cannon lent its voice to the argument.

  Now the skinks had drawn close enough for Florin to see the dark slashes of pupils that cut through the gold of their eyes. They had started to run with their heads up, abandoning any attempt at stealth as they closed in on their prey.

  Florin looked at Orbrant, who nodded.

  “Gunners,” Florin called, as he saw one of them blink. “Ready!”

  The dozen gunners sighted along the lengths of their barrels, eyes watering against the smouldering matches that hovered above the firing pans.

  “Aim!”

  Through the steel Vs of their sights the gunners selected their targets, watching them leap or snarl for the last time.

  “Fire!”

  The gunners fired. With the single deafening boom of a perfectly timed volley their bullets hissed through the elephant grass to smack into the cold bodies of the enemy. They died even before they smelled the blackpowder stench, their bodies thrown back to twitch brokenly beneath the rushing feet of their brethren’s advance.

  Taking the volley as their signal the bombardiers, five men chosen for the strength of their throwing arms, rushed to take the fire from the gunners’ fuses. Cradling their bombs they turned them this way and that, trying to ignore the pattering of the approaching horde as they coaxed the fuses into sparkling life.

  “Bombardiers,” Florin cried, dismayed that the gunners had done nothing to slow the onrushing horde. “Throw!”

  With a last anxious glance at the hissing fuses the men drew their arms back and lobbed the bombs forward.

  “Heads down!” Florin warned as the steel spheres tumbled into the grass beyond, their white fuses disintegrating into ash.

  The first of the skinks had already thrown itself across the ditch, its claws scrabbling at the sliding earth of the palisade, as the iron cases of the bombs blossomed into sudden, horrific violence.

  One explosion followed the next, a fire-cracker peal of terrible destruction which choked the air with billowing smoke and splattering blood. Hail storms of iron shredded through the stunned ranks of the enemy, the Shockwaves tossing their leaders high into the air to spin around like gory Catherine wheels.

  Despite the ringing in his ears, and despite the fog of acrid black-powder smoke which burned in his nose, Florin felt a roar of savage joy burst from his lips. One of his men, who had been too slow to duck, staggered past him, his face a mask of blood from the iron splinter which had buried itself in his scalp, but Florin was deaf to his screams.

  His fear had gone. His restraint had gone. Now at last he had the chance to pay back the cruelties which these filthy lizards had inflicted upon him, and upon the vengeful ghosts who had haunted his dreams. He hefted his machete impatiently, and a dangerous, maniacal grin split his features as the first of the enemy struggled over the parapet.

  It didn’t stand a chance. With a single, backhanded stroke Florin sent its head spinning back into the mud of the ditch. On either side of him halberdiers chopped down into targets of their own, their heavy blades biting hungrily into scale and bone.

  But for every one they killed two more came surging up, squeezing between the gaps in the stakes that lined the palisade. Despite the ferocity of the defenders the skinks pushed forward, trampling their dead in their eagerness to be upon the foe.

  A few of the gunners had managed to reload, scrabbling wild handfuls of powder and shot into their steaming matchlocks. As some of their comrades stumbled and fell beneath the weight of the assault, they aimed into the mass of reptilian bodies before them and fired.

  The shock of the volley punched the assault back and, as the explosion of one of the guns sent another man screaming to the ground, his mates charged forward with a ragged cheer. Swinging the intricately crafted weapons with savage cries they fell upon the skinks, hacking into them with a desperate ferocity.

  Florin shared their bloodthirsty enthusiasm. The madness of battle sang in his veins as he slashed at the enemy, swearing with frustration when he missed, jeering when he drew blood.

  Gradually the battle reached an uneasy equilibrium, both sides loc
ked in a brutal close quarter brawl that staggered back and forth over the top of the palisade. In an attempt to break this grinding deadlock, the skink first-spawned sent parties of his brethren clambering over the ruins which marked the flanks of the humans’ stockade. They swarmed upwards eagerly, their webbed feet gripping the cyclopean stonework as effortlessly as chameleons on an outhouse wall.

  It was Orbrant who saw the outflanking manoeuvre. Some instinct whispered a warning in his ear and he looked up in time to see the first of the flanking parties cresting the stonework. Bellowing above the sound of the battle he raced down the line, pulling half a dozen gunners from the fight and roared at them to reload their bloodstained and splintered firearms. He watched them fill and prime their weapons and then, using his hammer to direct their fire as a conductor uses his baton to conduct an orchestra, he sent their fire into the interlopers.

  The Sigmarite watched the first of the skinks slapped off the stonework before turning and throwing himself back into the struggling mass atop the palisade. By now the first wild exhilaration of battle had left the men, leaving in its place nothing but a numbness, a single-minded drive to slaughter the enemy before the enemy could slaughter them. Blood and sweat slicked the men’s skin, as, with joyless determination they fought on.

  And gradually, one by one, the Bretonnians were being slaughtered like draft horses, falling beneath the relentless onslaught of the skinks’ attack.

  But the skinks were faring even worse. Funnelled by Thorgrimm’s sturdy engineering into a narrow battlefront, their advance became stuck upon the sharpened stakes of the palisade like butterflies upon pins, where they were easy prey for the steel of the humans.

  Yet still they charged forward, their assault aided by the countless corpses that filled the ditch and blunted the palisade. More of them scaled around the sides, scuttling up the sheer stone surfaces of the outer temples. Most of these were plucked from their perches by gunfire, the rest threw themselves down with a mindless courage to die from crushed bones or vengeful blades.