01 - The Burning Shore (14 page)

“This place is wonderful.” Florin roared, waving his mug as though it were a
marshal’s baton and the thatched wall’s tapestries. “It’s fantastic. By
Shallya’s belly I’d forgotten how wonderful dry land felt!”

“Reminds me of Bordeleaux,” Lundorf remarked, provoking an explosion of
drunken laughter from his friend.

Lorenzo took a sip of the fermented sugarcane that passed for brandy in this
hovel of a tavern, then spat it out onto the damp earth of the floor. He was
beginning to wish that he’d gone with Orbrant to search for supplies.

Although, had he done so, he had no doubt that Florin would have led his
brother officer into some lethal excess or other. And Swamptown, despite the
brothels and bars that formed its decadent core, was no place for excess.

They’d found the squalid settlement the previous day, just as the pack of
pirate sloops that called the miserable haven home had found them. The verminous
ships had closed in around Gorth’s flotilla as it tacked its way towards
harbour, but a well-timed parade of the ship’s mercenary cargo had been enough
to keep them at bay.

One look at the disciplined ranks of mercenaries, bristling with lethal
combinations of steel and firearms, had put paid to the brigands’ dreams of loot. They had slunk off disappointedly, slipping over
the horizon in search of easier prey.

Which had been lucky. Moments after the flotilla had tied up to Swamptown’s
rickety bamboo pier the mercenary army had ceased to exist. In its place was a
stampeding mob, an untameable rabble that had swept away into the grubby embrace
of the malarial town and left their ships almost completely unguarded.

Colonel van Delft had wisely waited until the first and most violent of his
men’s needs had been met before shepherding them to the billets he hastily
arranged. Then, and only then, did he give his officers leave, and the freedom
of Swamptown.

Swamptown. In naming the place the inhabitants had shown a surprising
honesty. Their crudely built huts and hovels were riddled with termites and
slimed with mould; even the newest stank of decay as they rotted slowly back
into the ground from which they had sprung. They stank as they decomposed, each
of them filled with the rank odour of rotten vegetation and other, more
revolting things.

But if the air inside was dank, the air outside was even worse. After the
dean sea breezes of the voyage the humidity here was choking, an asthmatic fog
that droned with the constant hum of countless biting flies. Lorenzo’s battered
hide had proved too tough for the insects, so they had feasted upon his
companions. After just two hours ashore they’d covered them with an agonising
itch of bites and incisions.

Swamptown. Even the streets oozed. Mud and shit sucked hungrily at their feet
with every cloying step, insinuating itself into the damp leather of their boots
and spilling over the cuffs.

“Wench,” Florin cried out, leaning back on the half barrel that served as a
chair and banging his own filthy heels onto the table. “More drink for me and my
friend!”

The tavern keeper’s wife, a scrawny woman whose grey hair Florin had already
loudly compared to a rat’s nest, swapped a surly look with her husband before
filling two more pots.

“You pay now,” she told them, banging the vessels down hard enough to slop a
draught over the side.

“Of course we’ll pay now,” Florin crowed. “Although you can trust us. We’ll
soon be rich!”

“To glory and gold!” Lundorf roared, snatching up his drink.

“Glory and gold!”

The woman wiped her hands contemptuously on her apron and swapped another
glance with the tavern keeper. This time he winked.

“Yes,” she began, and with an obvious effort twisted her hatchet face into
what could have been a smile. “I can see that you two lads are destined for
riches indeed. Gold’s just waiting in the jungle for anyone with the courage to
go and pick it up.”

“So we hear,” Lundorf nodded sagely. “And, by Sigmar’s left ball, we’re the
men with the courage!”

“You certainly look like it,” she said. “Anyway, that’ll be a gold crown.”

Lorenzo choked on his drink.

“Certainly, my good woman,” Lundorf said, reaching for his purse.

“Each.” Her eyes barely flickered as she doubled the price.

“That’s too much,” Lorenzo managed to cough out, but she just turned on him,
this time with a genuine smile on her face.

“And that’s too late.”

Lundorf rolled the coins into the mess of mud and spilt beer that slicked the
table, and Lorenzo sighed.

“Another drink, lads?” The woman said, pocketing the coins.

But before any of them could reply, the thatched door of the hovel burst
open, the twigs of its construction snapping as a crowd of men stumbled into the
room.

“Aaaaaah, look who it is,” their leader sneered, lurching threateningly
towards Lorenzo. “The bringer of the daemon.”

“Graznikov,” Florin cried out, his voice lifting with the cheerful ferocity
of a hound that’s sighted its quarry. “Join us.”

Something in his voice cut through the Kislevite’s drunken belligerence,
stopping him in his tracks. He regarded his rival with a certain wariness and
tugged thoughtfully at his beard.

For a moment it seemed that perhaps, despite the drink and the euphoria of
shore leave, the wary peace that ship’s discipline had enforced might remain
between Graznikov and his rival. But as the Kislevite hesitated on the brink of
violence Lundorf pushed him over it.

“I see you’ve brought your men with you, captain,” he said. “What will you
lose for them this time? Their boots?”

“Or their breeches?” Florin asked.

The Kislevite’s flushed faced turned pale, the red that had suffused it
melting away apart for two spots of rage that burned a warning on his cheeks.

“We come for the wizard, Lorenzo,” he announced with quiet menace, and there
was a murmur of agreement from the men behind him. They sounded more excited than angry, more like men waiting for a
dog-fight to start than a serious lynch mob. Florin felt a flicker of relief,
and noticed that, so far, none of them showed any sign of drawing steel.

“What are you talking about, you fool?” he asked, shifting uneasily in his
seat as he counted Graznikov’s men. A couple of them had followed their leader
through the sagging arch of the doorway to stand beside him in a little knot.
Many more waited outside.

“You heard the commander’s orders,” Florin called out, more for their benefit
than Graznikov’s. “You saw what he did to that lunatic on the
Hippogriff.
Remember how long it took him to choke to death, and how he danced in the
breeze. Touch my man here and van Delft will have you dancing that same jig.
Don’t be an idiot.”

Graznikov scowled at the uneasy shuffling the reminder brought, and silently
cursed his men for their cowardice.

“Idiot,” Graznikov spat. “You idiot. You bring this wizard on board, and he
bring the daemon. The sea daemon.”

This time the murmur of agreement was muted, perhaps as each man’s thoughts
turned to the murderer’s corpse van Delft had left hanging to rot. It hadn’t
been pretty. Especially when the maggots had hatched beneath its skin.

“So,” Graznikov, changing tack, pressed on, “we won’t kill him. We just beat
him. A warning for next time.”

He pointed an accusing finger at Lorenzo as more Kislevites barged into the
room, eager for a better view. They jostled past their comrades who, as yet,
seemed in no hurry to move any closer to the wizard.

Florin and Lorenzo looked at each other and then, turning in perfect time,
looked back over their shoulders to the window that lay behind them.

“Ha!” Graznikov snapped with ersatz satisfaction. “You don’t deny it.”

“Deny the ramblings of a lunatic?” Florin snapped back. “Why waste my breath?
Lorenzo helped us to fight the beast while you were still cowering below.”

“Lies!” roared Graznikov, taking a step closer.

“On three?” Lorenzo muttered into his pot, and Florin nodded imperceptibly.
Lorenzo tapped his finger on the table once.

“Oh, I see,” Florin jeered at his foe. “So you did help us against the
monster?”

A second tap, the sound damp upon the sodden table.

“I no bring it,” Graznikov growled, eyes narrowing dangerously, “No. Your
Loren…”

But the third tap had already sent the two Bretonnians springing to their
feet. The tavern keeper howled in protest as his table flew forwards, a rain of
pots smashing onto the floor even as Lorenzo reached the window.

“Come on,” Florin shouted at Lundorf, grabbing his shoulder.

“I’m with you,” the warrior shouted back, and leapt at Graznikov.

Florin was halfway to the window by the time he realised that Lundorf hadn’t
quite understood. He turned on his heel in time to see Graznikov’s horrified
face disappear behind Lundorf’s attack, and to see the gang of Kislevites
closing in around the two men like the fingers of a fist.

“Damn,” he cursed, the obscenity a statement rather than a battle cry. Then
he flung himself into the melee.

His first target was one of the Kislevites’ sergeants. From the brown pelt of
his beard to the heavy gut, which even the voyage hadn’t been able to strip
away, he looked more bear than man. And although he was rounded with fat, there
was no mistaking the muscle that bulged in his thick forearms, or the aggression
that burned in his eyes.

Not that it was to do him any good. Before he’d even thrown his first punch
Florin’s thumb jabbed forward, finding the soft spot beneath the big man’s ear.
His world disintegrated into an explosion of pain and bright light as he
collapsed.

The next man turned in time to snap out a quick punch, the hard knuckles of
his fist crunching into the gristle of Florin’s nose. But even before the first
trickle of blood, the Bretonnian had ducked inside the man’s reach, close enough
to smell the stink of his sweat as he raised a knee in a vicious jab that
doubled him up with a howl of pain.

Ignoring the copper taste of blood and the sting of tears Florin fought on,
ducking a punch, taking another on his shoulder. A knee drove into his thigh
with a numbing thump that sent him staggering back into grappling hands.

With the wild energy of desperation pumping through his body he jabbed his
elbow back, connecting with what might have been either a joint or a skull. But
before he could strike again a fist stabbed into his stomach, ripping a terrible
cry from his throat.

Through the pain and the nausea he forced himself into the attack. For a
moment it seemed that he was alone, surrounded by a mob of Kislevites. But then, stamping on one man’s knee and jabbing the eye
of another, he suddenly found himself beside Lundorf.

Although his face was streaked with shockingly bright splashes of blood, the
Marienburger was fighting like a beast at bay, roaring with what might almost
have been joy as he cracked skulls and ribs.

Despite the crush of bodies, Florin felt a terrible grin starting to spread
across his face, the rush of adrenaline bunching his cheeks even as an elbow
thudded into his face, leaving an immediate bruise.

He was beyond pain now. Even as the mob of Kislevites battered and kicked him
from one side to the next he thought only of the next temple to crack, the next
knee to pop or finger to snap.

Vaguely, a thought of no more concern to him than the colour of the serving
girl’s hair came to him: he wondered if he’d die here, beaten to death by men
who were supposed to be his comrades.

At least they had almost gained the door by now. At least they could use it
as a pinchpoint, a funnel to stop their enemies surrounding them. At least…

Lundorf grunted with surprise and collapsed onto him like a felled tree. The
two men lurched to one side, the heel of someone’s palm flashing forward to
crush Florin’s nose as he caught his friend.

The Kislevites, seeing their advantage, surged forward. But a second later
they stopped and pulled back, tumbling out of the tavern.

Florin, half crazed with the rush of combat, jeered at them.

“What are you waiting for? Cowards! Women! Come here and I’ll break your
heads!”

But the only reply came from Lorenzo. “Come on, boss,” he said. “Give me a
hand with Lundorf.”

“Where the hell have you been?”

“Organising our escape. Smell it?”

Through the blood and snot of his crushed nose Florin couldn’t smell a thing.
He could feel it, though, hard on the back of his throat. Taste it once and
acrid smoke of burning thatch could never be mistaken for anything else.

A glance upwards revealed tendrils of white smoke weaving down from the
thatch, the heat of the fire gathering its strength for the holocaust to come.

“Let’s go,” he said and, dragging Lundorf between them, he and Lorenzo fled
from the fire that secured their retreat.

* * *

The reveille was not a happy affair. It was held in a loading area of
Swamptown’s harbour, a venue which had cost van Delft dear in bribes. And even
though he had mercifully called it for mid-morning, late enough for the men to
rest but early enough to avoid the burning heat of the midday sun, the assembled
soldiery looked as wretched as so many re-animated corpses.

Two of them, at least, had an excuse. The malarial smog and cheap rotgut of
Swamptown had succeeded where the voyage had failed. Their bodies lay neatly
bundled in sailcloth now, fat blue flies already clouding the air around them.

Van Delft, resplendent in the neat green and gold broadcloth of his dress
uniform, ignored the buzzing of the insects, much as he ignored the stifled
groans and the occasional bouts of vomiting which were the only signs of life
from his bedraggled army.

A day and a night were all it had taken to reduce them to this sorry state. A
day and a night. And that bloody wizard hadn’t even bothered to turn up.