01 - The Burning Shore (5 page)

Florin’s pulse beat a painful rhythm inside his head. His stomach rolled on
waves on nausea, each one stronger than the last. Florin pulled a pillow over
his head and tried to go back to sleep, when a second jarring crash rang out
through the room.

“For Shallya’s sake!” he growled, sitting up and looking blearily around. The
light hurt his eyes as he squinted across the chamber.

Lorenzo looked briefly up from the bundle of clothing that he was wrestling
into his master’s carriage trunk and said, “About time. Come on, help me to
pack. We’re going.”

“Going? Going where?” Florin snapped irritably. “I’m not going anywhere. Wake
me up after lunch and we’ll go see Bastien then. Or maybe,” he collapsed back
onto his pillows with a groan, “we’ll go tomorrow.”

“No we won’t,” Lorenzo said, grim-faced as he stamped the last of his
master’s jackets flat and banged the lid shut.

“Well then, whenever. And will you stop making that noise? In fact, I order
you to be quiet.”

“Bastien sailed for Araby last night,” Lorenzo told him, and started to beat
the dust off Florin’s saddlebags, the battered souvenirs of his long pawned
horse.

“What?”

“We’re going to Lustria.”

“What!”

“Unless you want to explain to Mordicio why you can’t pay him.”

The shock of this news did wonders for Florin’s hangover. He crawled out of
bed and staggered over to the bucket of water Lorenzo provided for his morning
wash. He dunked his head into it, letting the icy water clear his mind.

“You’re telling me Bastien’s not here anymore?” he asked, blinking in
confusion and dripping water over the floorboards. “No. No, he would have told
me.”

“He probably would if you’d accepted his last dinner invitation. Or the one
before that. But you were too busy.”

“I was,” Florin shrugged and slumped down onto the couch. He vaguely hoped
that the sunlight that streamed through the window would stop his shivering as
he tried to get to grips with the situation.

Lorenzo looked sceptically at his master. Sometimes he almost seemed to want
to get himself into trouble. Still, the old retainer decided, he had only
himself to blame. He should have made him visit his brother.

“Araby, you say?”

“Yes, boss, Araby. Now, we’re done. Here’s your trunk, and your saddlebags.
And here’s a wheat sack for anything else you want. Do you want to take that
bedding?”

“We’re going to Lustria, you say?” Florin asked, comprehension dawning.

“Yes. If we can get to your friend’s ship in time.”

“Damn it.”

As if rebelling at the news, Florin’s stomach rippled queasily and the urge
to vomit became overwhelming. He staggered over to the window and leaned out
over the street before loudly and copiously throwing up.

From below voices rose in protest.

“Hey, isn’t that the fellow from Mordicio’s house?” Florin asked weakly,
wiping his mouth with his sleeve and pointing to the street below.

Lorenzo was beside him in an instant. He watched as the shaven-headed thug,
supposedly the money-lender’s secretary, led his squad of cut-throats through
the crowd below. Although their uniform consisted of nothing more than their
bald pates, the five men might have been brothers: their broad shoulders and
sour expressions were almost identical.

“Damn.”

“The roof, I think,” Florin said. He was already feeling better, cured by the
need to take charge of the situation. “What’s in here?” he asked, slinging the
saddlebags over his shoulder.

“Everything you need.”

“And my cloak?”

“Here,” Lorenzo held it up. “And your sword.”

“Right then, just bar that door on the way out, would you?” Florin asked and,
with a deep breath, pulled himself out of the window.

The rotten tiles of the roof crumbled underfoot as he scrambled up to the
dizzying heights of the ridge. Bordeleaux was spread out below him in all its
glory: from the hard marble gaze of the Lady to the sprawl of workshops and
slums that led down to the harbour.

Florin cast a quick glance in that direction, and counted the forest of masts
that bobbed above a sea as flat and silver as a coin. Whether one of them was
Lundorf’s he had no idea. All he could do now was hope.

After a moment, Lorenzo joined him and they started the long, scrabbling
journey across the high desert of sloping roofs and battered chimneystacks.
Although it wasn’t the first time they’d taken this route the two men felt their
hearts beating briskly at the thought of the drop that lay below. The fingers
with which they gripped the handholds and ridges soon became dangerously slick
with sweat.

Occasionally one of them would slip as a tile gave way. Both men tried very
hard not to listen to the falling stone as it bounced the long, long way down to
the street below.

Soon they came to the end of their roof and halted abruptly. The deep moat of
a crossroads cut across their path, and a sheer precipice of brickwork fell away
to the shadowed street below. In its depths tiny and foreshortened citizens went
about their business, oblivious to the two men perched above them.

Florin glanced across the street to the next block. Its walls were studded
with balconies that reached out over the divide like fungus rings on the trunk
of a tree.

“Right then, where’s the ladder?” he asked, peering around.

“Gone,” Lorenzo sighed and backed away from the edge. “Look, you can see the
marks where we left it.”

“Damn it all,” Florin cursed viciously and kicked a lump of lichen. “People
will steal anything. Now how are we supposed to get across?”

From behind them the distant crash of splintering wood sent a flock of
pigeons wheeling up into the sky.

“We’ll have to stand and fight, then.”

“Bugger that,” Lorenzo said, horrified at the enthusiasm in his master’s
voice. “We can jump.”

“Jump! We’d never make it. It must be twenty feet across at least.”

“It’s nowhere near twenty feet,” Lorenzo scoffed. “Watch this.”

Hawking up a lump of phlegm he drew back his head and spat it across the
divide.

“It’s as easy as that.”

“Charming,” Florin said. “But hardly proof.”

The not too distant tinkle of breaking glass floated out across the rooftops.

“You’d think nothing of jumping the distance if it was on the ground. Look,
it can’t be more than ten feet to that balcony, and it’s a bit lower than us.”

“No,” Florin said, standing up on the balls of his feet and stretching his
back. “No, give me my sword. We’ll stand and fight.”

Lorenzo watched his master roll his shoulders and flex his fingers, like an
athlete about to hurl a javelin.

“My sword please,” he asked, his eyes sparkling.

With a shrug Lorenzo turned and walked back along the ridge of the roof, the
scabbarded sword in his hand.

“Let me show you,” he said, and, before Florin could react, he’d sprinted to
the edge of the roof and hurled himself into space.

For a moment he seemed to hang suspended in the air, arms and legs
windmilling like some plump spider hanging on an invisible thread. The blur of
movement that wrapped itself around him seemed to come from a world that was
intent on rushing past. The brickwork, the lichen, the confused kaleidoscope of
the street below and the simple wooden handrail of the balcony all hurtled past
Lorenzo’s ungainly form as he plummeted downwards.

Florin watched open-mouthed as his servant flew through the air. Then, before
he’d even had time to feel the first stab of alarm, Lorenzo had landed, his feet
and palms slapping safely onto the tiled floor of the balcony in scant applause.

“There you go, boss,” he called back with a cheeky grin. “Easy as you like.”

“Yes. I see you took my sword with you. Just throw it back, would you?”

“It’d never reach,” Lorenzo shook his head regretfully. “You’d better just
jump.”

Florin hesitated. Behind him the hulking shapes of Mordicio’s henchman had
clambered up onto the roof. As the first of them crabbed cautiously forward and
caught sight of Florin, he called something to his companions, and drew a short,
fat-bladed cutlass.

Florin ground his teeth. If he’d been a merchant he’d already have fled. If
he’d been a knight he’d be preparing to meet his pursuers with his belt knife.
As it was he just swore, hurled his saddlebags over to Lorenzo, and prepared to
jump.

“Come on, boss!” Lorenzo bellowed as though he were at a horse race. “You can
do it!”

Florin rolled his neck, took a final look behind him, and jumped.

“Orcs, hey? So, tell me about the campaign,” Colonel van Delft said, leaning
back in the cabin’s only chair and twirling the iron-grey tip of his moustache
into a dangerous point. The shadow it cast onto the dank wooden wall behind him
moved up and down, keeping time with the rocking of the ship and the swinging of
the oil lamp.

“I was in charge of the horse,” Florin said, with poker-faced sincerity. “We
had a dozen light cavalrymen with lances and a mix of pistols and crossbows. We
acted as scouts for the main column, and…”

“How do you find pistols?” van Delft interrupted.

Florin scratched his chin as he tried to remember what Lundorf had told him.

“They’re slow, and don’t have a very good range. My uncle said they were worse
than a bow or a sword…”

“Sensible man. And he was Count d’Artaud, you say?”

Florin nodded.

“Never heard of him. But stick to the point, lad. What happened in the first
engagement?”

“We’d spotted the orc settlement the evening before. It was a crude
encampment: just a ring of sharpened stakes driven into the ground around some
rotten animal skin tents. The flies were everywhere, and the smell…” Florin
wrinkled his nose expressively. Van Delft nodded and leaned forward eagerly.

“Numbers?”

“Maybe a hundred,” Florin replied, trying not to make it sound like a guess.
“Anyway, we didn’t attack them there. Instead we waited until morning, when the
count prepared an ambush.”

“What kind?” van Delft demanded.

“What kind? I don’t know.”

The Colonel raised his eyebrows.

“I mean, the count just hid most of his men in one end of a ravine, with the
rest sat up on the top with boulders and bows.”

“Aaaah,” the Colonel nodded approvingly. “I see. And you were the bait?”

“Exactly. We rode up to the orcs’ hovels the next day, fired a volley at
them, and retreated. They all followed in a ragged sort of mob.”

“Really?” van Delft asked, thoughtfully running his hands through the white
lion’s mane of his hair.

“Yes, pretty much. So we led them into the ravine, and the count’s waiting
men. They held the orcs in the ravine while the men above stoned them.”

Van Delft seemed a little distracted as he gazed at the young man in front of
him.

“It was a great victory,” Florin added, and wished that he had something else
to say. He almost looked at Lundorf for reassurance, and only the experience
he’d gained at so many card tables stopped him from doing so.

He didn’t know why, but he could sense that, here and now, his bluff was as
near to being called as it would ever be.

Van Delft leant back and studied him.

“When you say that these orcs came at you in a disorganised mob, were they
completely disorganised?”

“Well,” Florin hedged, “they were by our standards.”

“Hmm,” van Delft tapped his fingers onto his chair for a moment before
reaching his decision. “All right then, Monsieur d’Artaud, I’m willing to take a
risk on you. Sigmar knows the Bretonnians need an officer, and you’ll be
hard-pressed to do worse than the last one.”

“Sir?”

“Ask Lundorf. He seems willing enough to fill you in on things. In fact,
Lundorf,” the Colonel turned to regard the officer who, despite the bilious
rolling of the ship, was standing to rigid attention beside him. “I’m holding you
responsible for this young man. Any problem with that?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. And by the way, you’re a junior officer so your share of the loot is
ten shares, no more, no less. Understand?”

Florin bit back on the instinct to immediately demand fifteen. Something
about the Colonel’s manner suggested that he was not a man used to negotiation.
Instead he just nodded his assent.

“Now then, gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me I have things to do.”

“Sir,” Lundorf snapped off a salute, the bang of his heels hitting the deck
in perfect time with the raised fist of his salute.

For a second Florin considered trying to copy it, but contented himself with
a low bow instead.

“I’m in your debt, my lord,” he said, sweeping his arm around. “And I’m sure
that if you ever have reason to…”

“Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear?” the Colonel growled. “You’re
dismissed.”

Van Delft watched the two friends march hurriedly out of the cabin, then
leaned back and twirled the tips of his moustaches pensively.

Florin was hardly the man he’d have chosen as a brother officer. His military
career seemed both scant and exaggerated; his manners effete even for a
southerner. But then, in a long career that had taken him from Imperial cadet to
mercenary commander, van Delft had long since learned to make do with the
materials at hand. He’d also learned to trust the judgment of officers like
Lundorf.

Well, up to a point.

And anyway, after the Bretonnians’ last officer a trained chimp would be an
improvement.

Smiling at his own wit the Colonel dismissed the matter from his mind, and
stalked out of the claustrophobic gloom of his cabin in search of his
secretary.

Lundorf led Florin and Lorenzo off the Colonel’s flagship and back onto the
pier. Now, hours from the flotilla’s departure, its old timbers were groaning
beneath the weight of the crowds which thronged it.