01 - The Burning Shore (38 page)

“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 locked 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.

Cold blood and hot mingled on the barricades, steel met onyx, razored teeth
met fire and lead. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, the skinks’ attack began to
falter. As the corpses of the strongest were trampled underfoot by their weaker
brethren, and as the dwarfs turned their cannon to rake across the rearguard,
the ferocity bled slowly out of their charge.