01 - The Burning Shore (43 page)

The edges of the pages were scorched and stained, and the front cover hung
from a thread, but it was still legible. Florin flicked through the damp pages
as the last of the company marched into the path the Tileans had cleared.

“Why not?” Florin muttered in sudden decision and shoved the book beneath the
strap of his satchel.

The sound of marching feet became more ragged as they marched on, the litter
of abandoned treasure thicker. Kereveld’s book slipped and chafed against
Florin’s skin, and he cursed himself for ever having picked it up. And yet the
farther he carried it the more difficult it was to throw away.

He was trying to decide whether or not to finally abandon it when he walked
straight into the back of one of his men.

“Sorry,” he said apologetically, and then remembered that he was an officer.
“Why have you stopped? We don’t have time to waste.”

The mercenary shook his head.

“Don’t know, boss. Have to ask the Tileans. They’re blocking the path ahead.”

“Let’s see what they’re up to,” Florin said and worked his way past the man
and up the line. Soon, by squeezing past the men and tearing his clothes on the
brambles which hemmed them in on all sides he drew level with Orbrant just as
Captain Castavelli came back down the column.

“What is it?” Florin asked him. “Why have we stopped?”

“We can’t go this way,” the Tilean whispered, sweeping his hat off his head
and wringing it between his hands.

“We have to,” Orbrant told him, but the man just looked back over his
shoulder fearfully.

“We can’t. They are waiting for us up ahead.”

“Damn,” Florin swore.

“How many?” Orbrant asked. “What kind?”

But before Castavelli could reply a shout of warning cut through the jungle,
followed by the crack of a pistol shot. Some of the Tileans pushed backwards
against them, wide-eyed with fear and confusion. One of them tried to barge
passed Orbrant, who shoved back with an angry curse.

“We’re going to have to fight through ’em,” Florin shouted above the
cacophony of raised voices. “We’ve got nowhere to fall back to.”

A distant scream sent another ripple of panic through the claustrophobic
masses of their packed ranks, and this time it took a crack from Orbrant’s fist
to quell the rush of frightened bodies.

“Castavelli,” Florin said, gripping the Tilean by the shoulder and looking
into his frightened eyes. “You have to give the order to advance.”

“Yes,” Castavelli agreed unhappily. “Yes, all right.”

So saying he crammed his hat back onto his head, and took a long, steadying
breath. It pushed out his chest and lifted his head so that, with the battered
plumage of his head gear he looked as glorious as any farmyard cockerel. Only
then did he bellow out the order to advance.

His men shifted and looked back uncertainly. They saw Orbrant.

They advanced.

Thorgrimm and his dwarfs formed a solid phalanx; a square block of muscle and
steel. They had left the ruins and the bloodied remains of their own camp behind
them now. There was no point in hiding. Their doom was upon them, and they
wanted to die well.

Shoulder to shoulder, with their axes buried deep in their enemies’ flesh and
the corpses of the fallen heaped around them.

On every side but one saurus warriors stood, their own lines disciplined into
the same merciless geometries of the dwarfs’ formation. Yet, despite their
numbers, the reptiles made no move to attack.

Thorgrimm, feet planted firmly in the centre of the front rank, eyed them
contemptuously and hefted his axe.

“What are you waiting for?” he roared a challenge. “Come, and test your hides
against dwarfish steel.”

There was no response from the waiting saurus, save for a single thrash of
one of their leader’s tails.

Thorgrimm laughed mockingly.

“Come,” he commanded them. “Let us see if you taste as good as your kin.”

Still the watching ranks remained silent and unmoving, showing neither fear
nor aggression. Thorgrimm felt a certain respect for their discipline, and was
glad of it. His life was valuable, he didn’t want it to be taken by the
unworthy.

A distant series of crashes interrupted his thoughts, the sounds growing
slowly louder. Thorgrimm listened and watched, his eyes scanning the patch of
jungle the saurus had left clear. With a determined glint in his eye he reached
up to stroke his beard, the feel of cold steel reminding him of his loss.

The light in his eyes became harder.

“Thunderers, ready your weapons. The beast returns. Let us see if our bullets
can find the path through its eyes to its brain.”

There was a click as the Thunderers drew their hammers back, and levelled
their weapons at the jungle beyond.

The noise of the beast’s approach drew nearer, the devastation of its passage
sending flocks of birds screeching upwards out of its path. As Thorgrimm
listened to it he began to feel it too, the pounding of its tread drumming a
rhythm deep into the bones of the earth.

Then the towering trees ahead began to shake, and bend, and snap like rotten
teeth before a fist as the monster burst eagerly through them.

It wasn’t the monster he had expected. That thing had been heavy, yes, and
ferocious in the charge. It would have made an excellent enemy. But the thing
which now came striding out of the jungle’s dark heart was a thousand times more
terrible.

It stood on two legs, its powerful haunches as big as cart horses beneath the
smoothly scaled surface of its skin. Its forelegs were tiny by comparison, held
up uselessly beneath the sharp ridge of its chest and the vast, permanent snarl
of its maw.

“Don’t fire,” Thorgrimm told his gunners. It wasn’t as if their bullets would
have done any good against the perfection of the thing’s scale and bone, and
sharp, gleaming intelligence.

The monster lowered its head slightly at the command, tiny eyes blinking as
it turned its head to one side and sniffed at the air. It was almost a delicate
movement, as was the slow step it took forward. Its three taloned toes opened
and closed on the soil as though it was eager to seize a firm, predatory hold on
the earth.

Then, bending its head even lower it opened its mouth wide, revealing the
forest of blades which lined its jaws. Thorgrimm could hear the hiss of its
indrawn breath, see the swelling of its vast chest.

He waited for the challenge to come. When it did, the roar shaking the earth
and shimmering through the air in a heat haze of pure aggression, Thorgrimm felt
an answering roar bellowing from his own throat. Fumbling at the straps of his
helmet with a sudden, mad inspiration, he tore it from his head and hurled it at
the monster.

The last thing he remembered before a berserk madness sent him charging
forwards was the laughter that echoed in his brothers’ throats, and their
prayers of thanks to the ancestors that had sent a worthy enemy upon which to
annihilate their beardless shame.

Miles distant, another, smaller combat was drawing to its bloody conclusion.
It had been swift and violent and, thanks to Orbrant’s sudden appearance,
one-sided. The last of the skinks lay scattered about the entrance way to the
overgrown canal in which they had been waiting. There had only been nine or ten
of them, a spying party rather than an ambush group.

“Not many of ’em.” Florin, who’d fought his way to the front of the congested
column of men just in time to miss the fight, said, and kicked one over onto its
back. The mouth fell open in a lifeless snarl and he kicked it again.

“At least two escaped,” sighed Orbrant, who was busily cleaning gore from the
gromril of his warhammer. “I wonder if we should go after them.”

“No,” Florin decided, peering into the tangled undergrowth into which the
survivors had vanished.

Captain Castavelli agreed. “We will run on to the boats,” he decided, and led
the column off himself. Florin followed him and, remembering the urgency with
which Castavelli had wanted to flee from the handful of skinks, a dozen
hilarious jibes sprang to mind. He kept them to himself, though. He quite liked
the Tilean, for one thing. And for another, they had enough problems without
bickering.

“Well, captain,” he said, stepping up to walk beside him as they entered the
long, cavernous hollow which followed the ruined canal. “Looks like we finished
off the last of them. Let’s press on anyway, though. Just in case.”

“Good idea,” the Tilean agreed fervently and, shouldering his clinking
knapsack, led the way into the gloom of the verdant tunnel beyond.

The bones still lined the slimed depths of the canal, and the sour smell of
decay hung heavily in the air. A detritus of leaves and bones and twigs crunched
underfoot as the column of men tramped along, as it had the first time they’d
been here.

Up ahead, cutting through the darkness like a flare, a slanting column of
sunlight marked the exit from this oppressive underworld. Castavelli hung back
as Florin stepped forward, slashing the edges of the gap back with his machete
and stomping back out into the jungle path. The column followed him as he picked
up his pace, marching with anxious speed that soon brought them to their first
base camp.

And, more importantly, to their boats.

Only one of them was missing, washed away by the storm, perhaps. The others
lay in a neat line in the grass, their hulls baked as white as clay by the
sunlight. Chuckling with pure relief Florin knocked on the bottom of one as
happily as if it were a tavern door, then turned it over to find the oars tied
safely inside.

“Six men and three wounded to a boat,” he announced, his face split open in a
wide grin that was reflected on every face. “Come on, lads, we’re not on a
picnic. Get a damned move on. Think of all the meat and brandy that’s waiting on
the ships.”

“Think of all the girls in Swamptown!” Another voice lent encouragement as
they splashed their boats into knee-deep water and started ballasting them with
bloodstained gold and bleeding comrades.

“Yes, think of her,” somebody else added. “Her and her tooth both.”

“Well, I want first go.”

“Nah, that’s the boss’ privilege. But don’t worry, you know what they say
about officers…”

“Get that boat moving,” Orbrant snapped. The men rolled themselves into it
and pushed away into the rippling expanse of the lily-covered lake. Dozens of
streams and rivulets flowed from it, the entrances they cut through the
surrounding jungle shrouded with steam.

Florin looked at them and frowned doubtfully. Then he looked at Lorenzo,
who’d just finished loading a groaning man into their boat.

“Lorenzo…”

“Yes, I remember,” he said and, with a sucking splash rolled himself into the
long boat with surprising expertise. Florin followed him, rocking the boat
clumsily as they pushed off the shore.

“We’ll wait here for the rest of the expedition to get into their boats,” he
said, watching the first of the Marienburgers stumble into the clearing.
Lorenzo, who’d taken charge of the steering pole, grunted and pushed them safely
off shore. Somehow, the very fact that they were on the water seemed to mark an
ending to their ordeal, a cut off point as neat as the end of a play.

As the boat spiralled aimlessly in the gentle currents of the lake Florin
leaned back, the sun bright even through his closed eyelids. Yes, a play. He
would see a play when he got back home. He’d see a hundred. And he’d have velvet
breeches and silk shirts, oysters in cream sauce with chilled champagne and
girls whose corsets were big but not big enough.

A slow smile spread across his face as, to the relaxing chirruping of lily
frogs, he drifted off into a world of pleasant daydreams.

Half an hour later the harsh singing of the Kislevites who’d crammed into the
last boat brought him back to the reality.

“Right then, men,” he said, drawing himself up and waiting for them to ready
their oars. “How did it go?”

“One,” said Lorenzo.

“Two,” a couple of the men joined in as they dipped their oars into the water.

“Three!”

The boat shot off, gliding slowly though the lake and towards the safety that
lay beyond.

Behind them they left no sign. The ripples faded. The leaves of the lilies
closed back in to cover all trace of their passage. The frogs and the
dragonflies continued to hunt undisturbed. Apart from the fading patches of scorched earth where their fires had been, the humans might
never have existed.

The first of the pursuing skinks stopped to sniff at the month-old embers
before slipping effortlessly into the warm embrace of the water. A dozen of its
brethren followed it into the lake, then two dozen more. They swam to the
beginning of the tributary down which the current had swept their quarry’s boats
before, at a signal from their leader, they dived down to continue the chase
submerged and unseen.

Xinthua Tzequal studied the body that had been brought to him. It was shorter
than the others he’d seen, and better built. Indeed, although no bigger than a
skink, its bulging muscles had something of the saurian about them. Also,
although its skin lacked even the most rudimentary scales, it was tougher than
it at first seemed.

This must be one of their warriors, he decided, a type of human saurus to
protect their workers. It was an elegant theory and one which had a pleasing
symmetry about it. Odd, though, that one of the lesser races should have
followed the same path that the Old Ones had set for the lizardmen. There had
been nothing in the ancient texts about that. Could it have been a spontaneous
development?

The intriguing possibility danced in the front of the mage’s mind, but he had
the wisdom to realise that more research was needed. Perhaps it had been a
mistake to kill the one surviving captive they’d had?