01 - The Burning Shore (19 page)

Ach, to the hells with wounded pride, van Delft thought. We are mercenaries,
after all.

“Well, then gentlemen, I think we’ve established why were all here. For gold.
Our esteemed colleague Kereveld here has other interests, it’s true, but they
won’t stop us from getting rich.”

The wizard started at the mention of his name before folding his hands over
his paunch and drifting off once more.

Van Delft ignored him as he examined the black and orange fire light playing
across his officer’s faces. His expression reminding Florin of a gambler
studying his cards.

“Are we all agreed on that?”

The assembled men chorused their agreement doubtfully.

“Now, is there anything else that needs saying?”

In the ensuing silence Kereveld began to snore.

“Well, there is one thing,” Florin volunteered reluctantly.

“Yes?”

“If our friend here is paying the piper won’t he be calling the tune?”

“No. I’ll do any calling that needs to be done.”

“But he is your, I mean our, boss. Isn’t he?”

“A paymaster is different from a boss,” Castavelli interrupted, his pride
obviously hurt. “We are gentlemen after all. If we don’t to agree with
our sponsors we will resign our commissions.”

There was another chorus of agreement, which brought a proud grin to the
Tilean’s swarthy features.

“Is correct,” Graznikov added. “Only an idiot would think men like us
servants of men like him.”

He waved his bottle at Kereveld, who was beginning to drool into his beard,
and glared at Florin.

Florin glared back.

“Yes, well, I hope that answers your question, captain,” van Delft told him.

“Now perhaps you would all be so kind as to go and mention this little chat to
your men? They might sleep better knowing we’re in this swamp for a good reason.
That we are not here to provide Kereveld here with sacrifices or whatever
nonsense is going around. I mean honestly, look at him.”

They all turned to look at the wizard, who was twitching in his sleep like a
lap dog dreaming of scraps.

“How much trouble could a silly old fool like that be to men like us? We’re
warriors. Dogs of war. We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t the best.”

The men’s eyes gleamed in the firelight.

“Remind your men of that.”

“Sir,” Lundorf said, the response echoing in the throats of his fellows.

Van Delft smiled and nodded in dismissal. Taking the hint his officers
scrambled to their feet, ready to take their newfound confidence back to their
fellows like torchbearers with light.

“Captain d’Artaud,” van Delft called as he followed Lundorf into the night.
“Just go and get a hold of Orbrant and come back here, will you?”

“Of course, sir,” Florin nodded unhappily, his heart sinking.

“And don’t look so worried. I won’t eat you.”

Florin worried anyway, not that it did him any good.

“It’s a great honour,” Florin told himself as he trudged along. In front of
him two of the men, their sweat-sodden shirts buttoned to the collar against the
swarms of flies, wielded machetes against the thick weave of undergrowth that
blocked their path. One of them, a man seemingly as tough as he was short, had
been working at the undergrowth all day.

His name was Bertrand, Florin remembered. Maybe he should have a word with
Orbrant later on. His mates looked up to this little man, and he seemed to have a
giant’s energy packed into his short frame. Anyway, a promotion might be good
for morale.

Behind him the rest of his men waited. Those with guns held them primed and
ready, the acrid whiff of their fuses lost beneath the stench of the jungle’s
humid breath.

Those without guns stood around them. Their eyes were wide and restless, and
they looked horribly aware that their job was that of picket fence to anything that might come bursting out of these towering
vegetation.

Orbrant’s squad, who were waiting as a rearguard behind them, remained out of
sight.

This is a great honour, Florin told himself again, and found that he was
actually starting to believe it.

After all, Lundorf had looked jealous enough when van Delft had sent his
company down this overgrown track, one of two that led from the abandoned
compound. The dwarfs, leaving their cannon behind, had taken the other.

Yes, it had been a great honour. Even Graznikov had seemed a little put out,
torn before fear and greed of what might lay at the end it. Of course Lorenzo
would say…

Well, to hell with what Lorenzo would say. He’d left him with Orbrant just so
that he wouldn’t have to hear it.

“Boss,” Bertrand called out, pausing in his work and squeezing the moisture
from his flushed brow.

“What is it?” Florin stepped forward and looked over the man’s shoulder.

“Don’t know.”

He shrugged uncertainly and stepped back out of his captain’s way.

Taking the man’s machete, Florin hacked off a couple of vines and pushed past
him into a passageway that had opened up into the awaiting gloom. After a few
feet he turned and handed the machete back before carrying on, thorns and
creepers snatching at him as he pushed through them.

Bertrand weighed it in his hand for a moment, the thick bushels of his
eyebrows furrowed in thought. Then he sighed, looked back up, and followed his
captain into the undergrowth.

“I don’t understand,” Florin muttered as the tight squeeze of what he had
taken to be a pig run opened up into a vast expanse of claustrophobic darkness.

Suddenly, despite the crushing mass of plant life that grew all around,
Florin had the dizzy sensation that he had somehow stumbled underground.

He hadn’t, of course, yet the perception that he’d entered some subterranean
realm persisted. It was like being in a long, narrow cavern, more of a tunnel
really, that ran ruler straight as far as the eye could see.

The trees that spanned its towering walls reached upwards like temple
pillars, arching over to lock fingers high overhead. Their great boughs were clothed with vines and leaves and creepers, the countless
shades of green sweeping up in combinations of light and darkness that were
complex enough to shame any tapestry.

It was also as silent as a cathedral within this vast hall. After the
cacophony of life that filled the jungle it was incredibly quiet, only the
occasional muted cry disturbing the deathly silence.

“What is it?” Bertrand whispered, forgetting that his captain had asked him
that same question only a minute before.

But Florin had an answer.

“Maybe it was a road,” he said, walking carefully out into the middle of the
jungle formed cavern. There, jutting up above the detritus that covered the
floor was a stone lip beyond which lay a deep, paved furrow.

Stretching in both directions it was a dozen feet across, a hollow stone
spine for this organic cavity. Here and there pools of brown water glimmered
sluggishly in its depths, and its walls were slimed with clinging green algae.

It stank as spectacularly, no doubt because of the rotten animal corpses that
were strewn like grizzly confetti along the trough’s floor.

“That’s no road,” Bertrand disagreed, wrinkling his nose. “It’s a canal.”

“A canal. Yes, I think you’re right. But who would build a canal in a place
like this? And why hasn’t the jungle covered it?”

The two men exchanged a quick glance, then looked warily around.

They already knew the answer: Kereveld’s monsters.

“It looks abandoned anyway,” said Florin. Part of him, a big part, wanted to
get out of this eerily quiet place. There was something disturbing about the
heavy, oppressive silence that rolled through it; and there was something
unsettling about the fact that, in the midst of a world bursting with life,
there was nothing here but death.

There was something even more unsettling about the uneasy, itchy sense that
they were being watched, examined like bugs by hostile eyes. But that was
ridiculous. After all, the canal was abandoned. It was empty, and looked as
though it had been for quite some time.

“Hey boss, notice something weird?”

Florin snorted.

“Anything in particular?”

“There’s no flies here.”

Florin listened and looked and found that the other man was right. There were
no flies here. No mosquito whine, or black fly buzz, or constant pins and
needles of their bites.

He knew that, if anything, this should make him more cautious, yet as he
stood there absent-mindedly scratching, he found that it helped him to make up
his mind.

“I don’t know what we’re waiting for,” he announced. “Let’s get the men in
here and push on, shall we?”

“Yes, sir,” Bertrand said, and pushed back up through the narrow pinch point
to gather the rest of the company.

“Now then,” Florin asked himself as they filed gaping into the tunnel. “Which
way, which way?”

There was no way of knowing whether the first expedition had gone east or
west. Their path to this point had been easy to follow: it was lined with felled
trees and quick-growing elephant grass. There had even been the occasional
crumbling brown machete blade abandoned by the side of it.

Here, though, they hadn’t left a single sign.

“Which way, boss?” Bertrand asked and Florin, with the same easy bravado with
which he had used to cast dice, said, “To the west, Bertrand, always to the
west.”

So it was that after hours of marching through the threatening depths of this
jungle underworld, they found the landslide that marked the end of the tunnel.
Better still was the discovery of ancient barrels cached there, like clues in
some tropical drag hunt. The contents were long gone of course; it wasn’t even
possible to tell if the mouldy sludge inside the barrels had been water or wine.

Florin was pleased to hear the respect in his men’s voices as they waited for
the rear guard to catch up. It occurred to him that they weren’t used to
officers who relied on pure guesswork for their decisions.

Or perhaps they just weren’t used to officers who guessed right.

Not that it really mattered. Even Orbrant looked impressed as he led his
squad out of the shadows.

The two men gazed outwards at the ragged explosion of blue sky above them. To
eyes adjusted to the gloom of the canal path it was painfully bright, despite
the fact that the sun was already sinking.

“Straight ahead?” Orbrant asked.

“I’ll lead off,” Florin nodded. “But we’d better not go too far. That canal’s
enough to show that this is the right track, and I want to make it back by
nightfall. Before nightfall, in fact.”

“Right you are, sir.”

The men struggled out of the neat avenue of the canal and back to the chaos
of the jungle beyond. Soon they had sunk back into their own personal hells of
sweat and thirst, and of mosquitoes that seemed even thirstier than them.

So it was that, heads bowed with exhaustion, they blundered towards the
jungle’s guardians like cattle to the slaughterhouse.

The stream cut across their path, a thin garrotte of gurgling water. Florin
smiled when he saw it glimmering through the last few strands of elephant grass.
It was the perfect point to stop, turn, and go back with news of the day’s
exploration. He had a feeling that Kereveld would be very pleased with their
news. And if Kereveld was pleased, van Delft would be pleased, which was good
enough for him.

“Looks like a river, boss,” Bertrand said, lowering his machete and peering
ahead.

“Yes. Time to go back, I think.”

“Mind if we wash some of the sweat off first?”

Florin hesitated, and glanced upwards. The overarching canopy hid the sun,
but he could tell by the length of the shadows that shifted all around them that
it was well past noon.

“Very well,” he decided, in spite of this. “But make it quick. In fact, let’s
clear a bit of an area just here by the bank, shall we? Let everyone have a go.”

“Right you are, boss,” said Bertrand, and he and his partner set to it with a
will. While they worked, Florin motioned the rest of the column to a halt and
stepped forward to wait by the stream.

The water was almost clear. Not that he’d be fool enough to drink from it:
the gods alone knew what diseases lurked amongst the swirling chaff of algal
clumps and rotting vegetation.

Easing himself down he sat on his haunches and watched the dim jungle light
play across the rippling surface. As he studied the patterns he felt his mind
become still; the concerns of his predicament disappeared like an unclenched
fist.

He listened to the chop of machetes on elephant grass, to the whine and hum
of insects, to the breathing of the trees and the howling of distant apes. He
felt sweat trickling down his skin, flies settling hungrily on. the furrows it
cut through the repellent. He breathed in, and out. In and out, in and…