[Florin & Lorenzo 01] - The Burning Shore

by Robert Earl - (ebook by Undead)

  “Speak,” the mage said lazily.

  “The humans are employing magic, my liege,” it said. “Scar-Leader Xutzpa begs that you come to bear witness.”

  For a second Xinthua froze, his calculations whirling into a fresh set of combinations. He had begun to suppose that human sorcery had been either a figment of his captive’s deranged thought processes, or perhaps the subject of some anomaly. It wouldn’t be the first time that the power of the ancients had momentarily manifested itself through one of the lesser races, much as the power of the skies sometimes struck skinks with bolts of lightning.

  It seemed not, though. It seemed that these primitive mammals did have some small understanding of their own.

  Fascinating.

  “Messenger, lead my entourage to the field of battle. I want to see this sorcery for myself. Oh, and send another runner to Scar-Leader Scythera. Tell him that it’s time to commit the final element of the attack. We will now end the battle.”

  Despite the men that he’d thrown into the Bretonnian line van Delft knew that it was doomed. The ferocious lizard hordes were chewing through his forces like rats through leather, making a bright red carpet of their corpses. The Colonel could almost smell the animal instinct to flee rising off his surviving forces and, loosening his sword in its sheath, prepared to stiffen their resolve with his presence. Better to face death together than alone.

  He was about to hand the last shreds of his command to Thorgrimm, a final act of responsibility before he rushed through the doors of the enemy’s fangs and into the paradise that lay beyond, when something stopped him.

  Most men wouldn’t have noticed it. Between the clash of battle that roared without and the fearful pounding of their own hearts within, most men would have been incapable of noticing such a small thing. But van Delft, whose long and violent life had taught him the art of constant awareness, did.

  It was his shadow that caught his eye. At first it seemed normal enough, the distorted shade having the right amount of limbs and heads. The only thing wrong was that it wasn’t the only one.

  His forehead furrowed in puzzlement as he watched the second shadow flicker and grow, prowling around him as if he were a sundial in a speeded up world.

  Then he heard the sound, the constant hiss of boiling moisture. Looking up in sudden alarm, half expecting to see a rain of snakes, the Colonel squinted at the star that was tumbling down from the skies above. The eye-wateringly bright mass of it was followed by a white trail of steam, the condensation marking its path across the blue sky like a snail’s trail.

  “Kereveld,” the Colonel told himself, and glanced across at the wizard. His eyes were still half closed, his hands and lips still moving in incantation. The Colonel resisted the temptation to ask him what was going on. Instead he turned back to watch the comet tumbling downwards, feeling a gambler’s rush of adrenaline as it fell screaming towards the combat below.

  As it dropped through the last few hundred feet the back ranks of both sides paused, craning their necks to stare up at the white hot inferno as it yawed towards first one side and then another.

  A second later it impacted onto the earth. With a blinding flare of magical energy the comet punched into the ground, crushing a great swathe of figures beneath the holocaust of its own destruction and flinging their shattered bodies high into the air to rain down in a gory hail.

  Xinthua Tzeqal was quite impressed. To summon a comet was a simple enough spell, true. It was also as easy to dispel as it was to pop a mudfish’s bladder. This one had been well controlled, though, landing almost entirely on the saurus warriors that beset the mammals.

  Xinthua spent a moment contemplating the shattered remains of those that it had caught, unconcerned by their fate. There were still more than enough of their brethren to do the job in hand, and replacements were easily spawned.

  He looked up then, the complex symmetries of his great golden eyes readjusting to peer at the tiny group of humans that stood atop the pyramid. One of them had a glow about him, an aura that identified him as a magic user.

  For a moment Xinthua considered having the animal captured alive. It would be interesting to unravel the strange twists of its tiny mind, to see what scraps of anomalous knowledge lay trapped within.

  But no. He had a duty to preserve his forces, and already he could feel the beginnings of another comet overhead. Leaning back in his chair he changed his focus, letting the physical world dissolve into a blur of murky colours whilst, high overhead, the winds of magic became clear and sharply defined.

  With an effort the mage tore himself away from the contemplation of their beauty and began to search for the comet.

  Ah, there it was. Just blossoming in the troposphere.

  The mage let the second comet grow into full life and begin to descend before he reached out to take it. Gently he exerted his will on the incantation, wresting the fireball from the human’s grasp with barely a struggle.

  * * *

  Scar-Leader Scythera had wanted to send in Hotza at the very beginning of the battle. He had seen enough of the puny foe they faced to rest assured in his contempt for them. The first one he’d experienced had disintegrated beneath his claws as he’d torn it apart the better to sample its soft flesh. A single charge from Hotza would, he was sure, have broken open their formation as neatly as he’d broken open their bones to reveal the succulent marrow inside.

  Yes, he had wanted to send in Hotza, but then Mage Priest Xinthua Tzequal had told him to wait and the wanting had stopped. Until, that was, the skink runner had brought mage’s latest order. The order that now was the time to unleash the wild strength that he had spent so long in disciplining.

  Scythera’s blood began to race as he strode over to Hotza, letting the warm steam of her breath condense upon his scales. He felt it trickling down between them like morning dew as he bent to remove a tick from one of her legs. Only then did he look up to the skink handlers that waited perched on top of her and give them their orders.

  With an excited chittering the lesser brethren scrambled to their positions and, with a dozen carefully placed prods, set Hotza lumbering forward. The ground trembled beneath her feet as, with slow, steady deliberation she started off.

  The scar-leader and his guard followed in her wake, their going made easy by the creature’s passage. With never a pause, she smashed a path through thickets of small trees and overarching vines, trampling the undergrowth beneath the great crushing pads of her feet into a scratch built road.

  Such effortless destruction, Scythera thought, and felt his mouth water with pleasure. Such careless power.

  His blood pounded with anticipation as he considered what would happen when they reached the humans. With an impatient bark, he bid the skinks to move her along faster. Once more they wielded their long, sharpened poles, and this time, with a low rumble of protest, Hotza broke into a heavy, lumbering run that set the earth trembling.

  The warriors had to run to keep up with her. Leaping over the smashed detritus of her passage and dodging the splintered trunks she left behind they raced along, their breathing becoming deep and heavy. They were gasping for air, when, with a final cacophony of smashed wood, Hotza broke into the clearing.

  She paused as she saw the ruins, and the bloodstained ground around them. Lifting the great beak of her nose she snuffled uncertainly at the coppery tang of blood and the rich smell of scorched flesh that hung in the humid air. The scar-leader, panting after the sprint through the jungle, came to stand beside her.

  He too sniffed the air, letting the glorious smells of battle soak through his sinuses as he watched the confusion of violence which was unfolding before him.

  They had emerged on the eastern side of the clearing, as arranged. The nearest group of humans was hidden from them by a swarm of bloodied and battered skinks. Meanwhile, to the right of the minor temple which marked the end of that flank, he could see his brother saurus grinding forward in a single great phalanx, its ranks snaking away t
owards a distant tree-line.

  It was a glorious sight, despite the fact that so many of them had been torn into steaming corpses by some foul magic.

  The scar-leader, every synapse humming with the pleasure of instinct satisfied, prepared to hurl Hotza into the battle. He’d use her unstoppable strength to smash through the eastern side of the humans’ pitiful defences and then, cutting up like a knife beneath a ribcage, he’d throw her into the back of the remainder who were still struggling with his brethren.

  Hotza shifted uneasily beside him, and it was easy for the scar-leader to confuse her unease with anticipation. It goaded him into action and, with a last admiring glance at her huge, armoured bulk, he stood back and gave her skink riders the order to charge.

  At first she seemed hesitant, but the skinks had trained her well. With a series of carefully timed jabs and pokes with their herding sticks they squared her up to the battle line and, with a final jab at her rear, sent her rumbling forward. The ground shaking beneath her feet she lowered the three great horns that sprouted from the armoured plate of her head and bellowed miserably.

  “Damn,” Kereveld said, his voice low with disappointment. Van Delft, who was watching the mountainous beast that had just burst out of the jungle, admired his understatement.

  “Damn indeed,” he said, looking at the monster. Bigger than his town house back in Marienburg, and as well armoured as a steam tank, it came lumbering towards them with a series of bloodcurdling howls and roars that sounded incongruously fearful.

  What could such a beast have to fear? Certainly not them. The great armoured plate that covered its lowered skull bore three great tusks, each as sharp as a stake and as long as a man. It had a sharp-looking beak of a muzzle as well, a great jagged mantrap of bone that snapped threateningly open and closed as the beast drew nearer. It was more than a match for any man.

  Nay, van Delft corrected himself. Not any man. Any regiment.

  No wonder the skinks scattered at its approach, abandoning their attack to turn and flee despite the vengeful blades of the Marienburgers. No wonder either that the Marienburgers, when they saw the avalanche of armoured rage that was bearing down on them, fled in turn, dropping helmets and weapons in their panic.

  “Damn,” Kereveld said again as the monster crashed through the remnants of the eastern barricade. Van Delft, an anaesthetising wave of euphoria washing through him now that he knew that the end was drawing near, turned and looked at the wizard. He was sitting on the stonework of the pyramid, pale and shaking beneath a sheen of sweat, with his thumbs pressed into his temples.

  “Cheer up, old man,” van Delft told him with a wild grin. “Sigmar loves those who die against a mighty foe.”

  He waved towards the stampeding tonnage of the reptile below them. It staggered from side to side, trampling fleeing Marienburgers underfoot even as its handlers drove it towards the back of the Bretonnian line.

  But Kereveld wasn’t looking down. He was looking up.

  Van Delft followed his gaze as the comet filled the sky above.

  It was the last thing he saw. The white hot intensity of the falling star was enough to melt his irises, fusing flesh to bone in a smeared deathmask. Mercifully the heat boiled his brains as it tortured his flesh, blotting out any pain he might have felt before it annihilated him completely.

  Hotza was of a breed that disliked blood even more than it disliked noise. Or pain. Or anything, in fact apart from wallowing in cool mud and eating. The sharp beak of her mouth wasn’t designed to crunch bodies, it was designed to crunch through roots. Nor were the three curving horns that jutted from the thickness of her skull meant for anything more than protection.

  But what nature had created, the lizardmen had tried to perfect. Hotza had been trained from the egg to associate tasty fibres and roots with the scent of blood and the noise of war gongs. She’d also been trained to obey the goads of her skink masters, the tiny controllers that swarmed across her back like fleas on a boar.

  The training had been a terrible experience for a young stegadon, a nightmare of fire and pain and sudden, savage nips. The memory of it had sunk into her tiny mind like diamonds through mud so that now, when she felt the lightest prod from one of the skinks’ goads, she responded, drawn by the chains of conditioning that were stronger than iron.

  Yes, the lizardmen had spent long, patient years turning her into the great war beast that was now smashing through their enemy’s line. And every second of her training had been done with a single aim in mind—the subjugation of instinct to discipline.

  It had been an enormous effort.

  And, in one second of blinding light, it was gone, the countless hours of training vanished beneath a floodtide of terrified instinct. As the comet struck the top of the temple, blinding her and filling her nose with the scent of unnatural death, Hotza went berserk.

  The skinks clung to her as, bellowing in terror, she stampeded away from the sorcerous fire, charging through the scattering Bretonnians and into the tightly packed saurus warriors that now stood between her and the jungle.

  They stood in ranks, packed too tightly to flee or even to dodge as she trampled over them. Her pounding feet crushed their armoured skulls as easily as snail shells, splintered their bones, and pressed their broken bodies deep into the graves of her footprints.

  One of the skinks jabbed at her desperately, aiming for a pressure point beneath the plate of her helmet. It missed, piercing the wrong nerve ganglion with the needle point of its goad. Hotza screamed in agony and raced forward through the remainder of the saurus warriors, brushing their bodies aside like elephant grass and fleeing for the shaded sanctuary of the jungle.

  Xinthua Tzequal had enjoyed wresting the human’s incantation from his feeble grasp. It had been an act of simple artistry which he had found deeply satisfying, so much so that he was committing every detail to memory, closing his heavy eyelids to replay the event before it faded.

  It wasn’t until he opened them again that he realised that something was happening on the battlefield.

  At first he assumed that it was the final victory. It had been only a matter of time before the mammals’ frail defences had cracked like an eggshell between his teeth. Then he looked again, and all thoughts of elegant victory slipped from his mind. Even as he watched, the rampaging monstrosity of Scythera’s stegadon smashed its way through to the rear of the saurus warriors, rolling over them in an avalanche of scale and bone and sheer, unstoppable power.

  Xinthua blinked uneasily as the monster broke through the final rank of saurus. Trampling the last of them underfoot it let out a rumbling, bone-shaking roar and fled towards the tree-line.

  Towards Xinthua Tzequal himself.

  The mage priest calculated what the result of the maddened creature’s trajectory would be and blinked again.

  “Bearers,” he decided as Hotza’s approaching silhouette grew against the sky. “Run away.”

  They didn’t need to be told twice. Before the last syllable had left their master’s mouth they had turned and raced into the jungle, desperately weaving amongst the tree stumps as Hotza smashed into the undergrowth behind them.

  Xinthua Tzeqal’s messenger skinks fled too, scurrying off to every corner of the battlefield with their master’s last order.

  Within minutes, every lizardman that could had left the clearing. Not long after that the first of the vultures that had been circling overhead descended, ready to start their feast.

  As the mage priest had predicted, the battle had lasted for no more than an hour.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “Captain.”

  The voice rolled over Florin. He was sitting on the remains of the parapet, gazing sightlessly at the crushed bodies that lay beyond. One hand still gripped the hilt of his chipped and notched sword, the sticky blade already swarming with flies. The other lay trembling in his lap.

  “Captain,” Orbrant said again, his gentle persistence bringing a flicker of recognition to Florin’
s eyes.

  “Captain, we have to make provision for the wounded.”

  “Yes,” Florin said, blinking around him as if surprised by the carnage amongst which he sat. The bodies of his men littered the ground in a bloody harvest, their corpses twisted into grotesque poses. Clouds of fat bluebottles were already landing upon them, and, even as he watched, a vulture flapped slowly down. It danced around whilst it folded its wings, then stooped to pluck an eyeball from one of the fallen. There was a squelch as it swallowed the titbit. The small sound was enough to galvanize Florin.

  The ashes of his fighting rage stirred faintly and he lurched to his feet, flexing his sword arm and stalking towards the carrion eater. The vulture saw him coming and, with an alarmed squawk, began to unfold the complicated width of its wings.

  It was too late. With a single, backhanded sword stroke Florin sent its head spinning from its scrawny neck. He kicked its body for good measure, then straightened his back, brushed the bloody tangle of hair away from his forehead, and looked around him.

  Amongst the dead lay the wounded. They screamed or sobbed or called out, their accents mingling into a single, international cry of pain. Their companions stood by them, or at least by some of them. Others had been left to bleed or to die alone, their comrades lost in the same fog of exhausted shock from which Orbrant had pulled Florin.

  “Right then,” Florin croaked, waving his hands in a helpless gesture of encouragement. Nobody paid him any heed.

  Get it together, Florin told himself. Take control. You are their captain, their leader. Do your job.

  He took a deep, shuddering breath, held it for a moment, and then stabbed his battered sword down into the ground.

  “Right then,” he started again, this time his voice firm with a grim determination. “Sergeant Orbrant, take every man who isn’t wounded and pair him with one who is. From now until we get back to the ships, every one of the whole will be personally responsible for one of the injured.”