01 - The Burning Shore (32 page)

Swallowing hard against the sudden wave of nausea Florin tore his gaze away,
and peered into the gloom beyond. The ruins of Bertrand’s body lay there,
scattered about like the bloody chaff of a terrible harvest. His ribcage shone
white, the vertebrae picked as clean as piano keys. Beside it his shattered
pelvis had been driven into the ground like some grisly tent peg.

More bones were in the claws of reptiles that had gathered around. A new
breed, these. Grotesque, hulking versions of the skinks that were even now carrying Florin past the nightmare scene. Great
slabs of muscle bulged beneath the monsters’ blood red scales, an animal
strength which matched the animal cunning gleaming in their small, piggy eyes.
Bloodshot and glittering, these orbs were protected by the wide plates of
thickened scale that tapered back across their heads like great helmets.

These were the first idle lizardmen that Florin had ever seen, if the gnawing
and sucking of Bertrand’s bones could be called idleness. As the Bretonnian
watched, one of them effortlessly snapped a femur into two jagged pieces.
Pausing to sniff at the still warm marrow inside, it thrust the slimy length of
its forked tongue into the hollow of the bone, its eyes narrowing with pleasure
as it slurped out the rich nutrients.

A moment later the skinks rounded a corner, sparing Florin the sight of any
more such details. But it was already too late. He knew that Bertrand would be
waiting for him the next time he fell asleep, if he were to live that long.

Well then, he thought grimly as the skinks dragged him past a phalanx of more
red-scaled carnivores, I’d better bring him some heads of my own.

He studied his captors as they hurried along, fear held back by the sudden
desire for revenge. Clinging to the courage it gave him he imagined strangling
them, if he could get his hands free, or hurling them from the heights above, if
he could lure them there.

Most of all, he thought about his company’s gunners, and the damage they’d
caused to the foul things upon their first encounter. It was a good memory, and
he savoured it despite the pang of loneliness it brought. ;

After another quarter of an hour the party slowed to a walk, then to a halt.
Curious, Florin rolled his head back to see why they had stopped and his courage
faded, drowned beneath a sudden slick of cold sweat.

Loping forward to receive him from the skinks was another pack of the giant
carnivores. Unlike their brethren, who had been busy sating their appetites on
another’s flesh, these looked hungry.

There was a keenness about them, an alertness that made the heavy bronze
cleavers they bore seem light in their claws. They were armoured too, as if
ready to fight for their meat. As well as torques, objects identical to those
the expedition had recovered, these creatures wore smoothly rounded headpieces,
the thick bone of their construction gleaming like ivory as the wearers
approached.

Florin tested his bonds for the thousandth time and, despite the steaming
humidity through which his tormentors had emerged, shivered as their shadows
fell over him.

The skinks, on some silent command, set him down and scurried to one side,
allowing the first of the great reptilian warriors to draw nearer. As well as
the bone helmet, this one had a great burst of feathers haloing its sharp head,
the bright colours of the exotic plumage startlingly bright against the murky
green of the jungle beyond. The head-dress bobbed as the creature reached down
and, grabbing Florin by his collar, lifted him effortlessly up to study him.

The Bretonnian made himself return this appraisal with a defiance he couldn’t
quite feel. Swallowing nervously, he straightened his dangling spine and glared
into the icy depths of the reptile’s eyes.

“I’m going to cut your balls off,” he told it, his voice creaking after two
days of silence.

Ignoring the challenge it turned him this way and that, the scales that
covered its nostrils flaring back to reveal the soft pinkness of the membrane
beneath. It snuffled at its captive for several long moments, the sharp tips of
its forked tongue flitting out to taste the air around this bizarre mammal.

“What’s the matter?” Florin asked it, coughing to clear his throat. “Too
stringy for you?”

The lizard turned its head to one side, perhaps an expression of surprise.

“Go on then,” Florin snapped at it. “Get it over with.”

His captor paused for a moment, as if to consider the proposal. Then it
turned on its heel and marched away, dragging Florin along in its wake. The rest
of its pack stood back as their leader passed, then fell into two neat columns
behind him.

Florin, his swollen feet scrabbling over the sharp detritus of the rough
path, noticed the discipline of their march. Unlike the scuttling mobs of
skinks, these larger cousins stamped a perfect drum roll into the ground with
their taloned feet. The beat of their progress reverberated through the earth in
a relentless rhythm, their weapons were shouldered at an identical angle, their
faces were as stony as royal guards on a parade ground.

Even to Florin, who was hardly a soldier, this discipline was even more
alarming than the reptiles’ appearance. They had been frightening enough when
gathered together in a mob, but now, marching along in the lock step of a
trained regiment, they were terrifying.

For the first time he began to wonder what might have happened to the rest of
the expedition since he had been taken. Could it be that he was the last
surviving human in this horrible place?

He shivered and tried not to think about it.

The trees on either side disappeared into two neat files as the column
reached another clearing and, on exactly the same step, halted. Florin tried to
stand up, but his captor lifted him off of his feet and threw him onto the
hard-packed earth with savage relish.

The stars were still clearing from his eyes when a human voice, warm beneath
a thick Estalian accent, cut through his pain.

“Good morning,” it said. “Welcome to the green hell. And may I say, I hope
that your stay will be a pleasant one.”

And with that the pleasant tones shattered into a high pitched braying that
might have been either sobbing or laughter.

Florin struggled up to his feet and studied the Estalian as the man shook
beneath his fit of hysteria. Rocking back and forth on the dais upon which he
sat, well muscled arms clasped around his bony knees, he had crammed his
knuckles into his mouth and was giggling as he wept.

Although he seemed to be a lunatic, in other respects he seemed fit and hale.
The lithe muscles that moved beneath his tan were as strong as Florin’s own, and
the teeth which ground against his fist were strong and white. The line of pale
scars that ran down the man’s arm were pale in the gloom—square hieroglyphs
neatly burned into his tanned skin.

As to his age, it was impossible to even guess. Beneath the shock of pure
white hair that covered his head he might have been forty or he might have been
a hundred. It stuck out at wild angles from the crown of his head and line of
his chin, his beard the most tangled thing in this strangely ordered jungle.

“I’m pleased to meet you,” Florin told the man as he stopped rocking and
climbed off of the dais with a clink of chains. Florin glanced down and saw the
thick chains and wide cuffs that bound him to the carved wood. Even in the
perpetual twilight of these tree smothered depths his bonds gleamed with the
rich butter glow of gold. Enough gold, in fact, to have made their prisoner a
rich man in any city of the Old World.

“Pleased to meet you,” the poor wretch said, coming to the end of his chains
and stopping. Now that his fit of giggles had passed a look of wonder had come
into his eyes. With a nervous caution he reached out a trembling hand towards Florin, as if he wanted to make sure he
was real.

“Shake my hand?” he asked, with such a tone of pitiful hopefulness that
Florin damned the vines that bit into his own flesh and hopped towards the man:
The prisoner waited until he was a hand’s shake away then lunged forward with a
sudden speed, grasping his arms with sharp-nailed fingers.

“You’re really alive,” he gasped, squeezing the Bretonnian’s arms as fiercely
as a goodwife selecting a ham. “By Shallya, you’re really alive.”

And with that he flung his arms around the Bretonnian and hugged him to his
chest.

The feeling of the man’s tangled whiskers pressed against his neck was hardly
any more pleasant than the snivelling of his tearful gratitude. But, lunatic or
not, Florin didn’t quite have the heart to shake off the unwelcome embrace. The
gods alone knew how many years the man had spent chained up in his green hell.
It had obviously been too many.

“There, there,” Florin said awkwardly, and wished that he had his hands free
to pat the prisoner on the back. “It’s all right. Could be worse, couldn’t it?”

“It soon will be,” the prisoner said, pulling back and wiping his nose across
the back of his hand. “Sorry. I’m sorry. It’s just that I don’t see many people,
and when I do…”

The sentence trailed off in a shudder and, for the second time, Florin wished
that he had a hand free to clap around the wretch’s shoulders. Then the Estalian
caught sight of something over Florin’s shoulder and his eyes widened. A second
later he’d fallen to his knees in a single, well practiced movement and bowed
his head.

He wasn’t the only one. Turning to see what had had this effect, Florin saw
that the floor was littered with the kneeling forms of his persecutors, their
bone covered heads held low and the meaty lengths of their tails pressed flat
into the ground.

“Kneel,” the Estalian hissed, scrabbling desperately at the back of Florin’s
tunic and dragging him painfully to his knees.

“Your head, too,” the prisoner whispered. “Forehead to the earth.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

The fear in his voice persuaded the Bretonnian, and he followed the example
of man and lizards both as he bowed his head.

For a long moment the clearing was still, the bodies that littered its
hard-packed earth as motionless as so many tombstones beneath a pair of
dragonflies that glided down from above. The insects’ translucent wings were as
big as sparrow’s and their mandibles as sharp as pincers. Florin watched them
flitting past nervously from beneath his lowered brow, aware of how helpless he
was tied up like this.

He was trying to decide what to do should one of the insects bite him when,
preceded by a shuddering sigh of adoration from amongst the grovelling reptiles,
their god was carried into their midst.

Xinthua Tzeqal’s glazed eyes were silent pools of equanimity as he regarded
the waiting saurus. As always in his presence they were kneeling, an instinctive
reaction he would one day try to break. Behind them, also kneeling in apish
imitation, were a pair of the filthy mammals that had brought him here.

One of them was clearly the property of Scythera, the scar-leader of this
outpost. A simple line of branded ownership symbols ran down the pallid flesh of
the animal’s spindly arm, and the shackles that bound it carried similar marks,
a simple script that spoke its owner’s name and rank.

The other mammal appeared to be wild. It looked weak, and the improvised
bonds that bound its limbs were rough and quickly made. It also had the sickly,
uncared for appearance of a creature unused to the rich luxuriance of Lustria.

Xinthua studied the creatures for a length of time, watching with interest as
moisture formed on their mottled skins like condensation on the cold surface of
an onyx blade.

But no, that was a bad comparison. These animals weren’t cold. In fact, even
from here, Xinthua could see that they were abnormally hot. With a quick blink,
thermal lenses nictated over his eyes, and the air around the two oddities
flared as white hot as the rats that were sometimes brought for his delectation.

Fascinating.

“Scar-leader Scythera,” he said at length. “Is there anything that presses
upon you?”

“No, my liege,” the warrior said without lifting his nose from the dirt.

“You and your underlings will stand.”

The score of saurus rose to their feet and, without a further command, stood
to an effortless attention that was so instinctive that neither they nor their
god noticed it.

“Scythera,” Xinthua asked. “Why is that animal changing colour?”

“It’s how they think, my liege,” the saunas said. “They change colour before
they flee.”

“And will it flee?”

“It cannot, my liege, not being strong enough to free itself.”

“Free it and see what it does.”

“Yes, my liege.”

Scythera turned his head and snapped a command to two subordinates. One
pounced upon the struggling human to hold him still whilst the other cut his
bonds. Then, obedient to their orders, they stood Florin on his feet and waited
for him to run.

“He isn’t fleeing, Scythera,” Xinthua observed after a moment.

“No, my liege. These are strange, weak creatures. Sometimes their bodies will
not obey their minds.”

“Their natural habitat must be a forgiving place.”

“I don’t know, my liege. Some of the skinks have been trying to teach the
other one to talk, as ordered by Our Lord Chuptzl Qo when he passed through ten
years ago. But its brain is too small to understand anything. All it can do is
point with its forelimbs at what it desires.”

Xinthua said nothing, the icy purity of his mind suddenly filled with a
thousand different reflections of Chuptzl Qo, and the implications of the
failure of his order to teach these animals to speak.

“I think that I will communicate with the wild one,” he decided, completely
unmoved by even a shred of competitive spirit. Competitive spirit, after all,
was only something that animals felt. “Hold it still. I want to examine it.”