01 - The Burning Shore (6 page)

Carters cursed and swore as they pushed their way forward, huge casks of
fresh water balanced precariously upon their vehicles. Merchants dragged or
carried sacks of vegetables, or nets of fruit, or skins of wines unfit for any
tavern.

Amongst all this desperate, last minute commerce, mercenaries from a dozen
races and in a hundred stages of drunkenness swaggered their way back to their
ships. They shoved their way arrogantly through the merchants; the whores that
remained perched on the arms of some of them cackling as loudly as the seagulls that circled greedily
overhead.

“Quite a little army your Colonel’s got here,” Florin raised his voice as the
three of them elbowed their way through the crowd.

“Yes, and all to fit into three ships,” Lundorf laughed. “Not that they’re
bad old tubs really. Of course the Colonel bagged the best one, the
Hippogriff.
It used to be a spice freighter, apparently, so it’s relatively
dry. I was damned lucky to get my lads on it.”

Then there’s the
Beaujelois
here, the Tileans’ transport,” Lundorf
continued, gesturing towards the fat bottomed cog that they were shoving their
way past. “By Sigmar, you should see the stuff they eat. I’ve never smelt such a
foul combination. You there, get away!”

An old woman, who was hunched over the basket of lemons she was carrying, had
thrown herself in their path to thrust some of her wares towards them.

“A penny apiece,” she shrieked. “Cheapest in the city.”

“Begone, crone,” Lundorf pushed past her, but Florin put a hand on his arm.

“Let’s buy some,” Florin decided. “My father said they ward off the sea
weakness.”

“Sea weakness?”

“Yes. Something to do with being out of sight of land.”

“Well, if you say so. How much for the basket, crone?”

“For you, your lordship, five gold crowns,” she bared a mouthful of rotten
teeth and shrinking gums in what was supposed to be a winning smile. “And you
can take the basket, too.”

“Five gold crowns?” Lorenzo asked, aghast, but Lundorf had already paid. The
old woman dropped the coin into the front of her ragged bodice and narrowing her
eyes suddenly with the caution of a millionaire in a poorhouse, she slipped away
into the crowd.

“Here you go,” Lundorf said, turning to present the basket to the manservant.
“Just look after those, would you?”

Before Lorenzo could argue Lundorf was once more ploughing ahead into the
crowd.

“And there’s your boat,” Lundorf told them, five minutes later. The
Destrier.
Don’t worry, she’s not as bad as she looks.”

“No?” Florin said dubiously. He pushed his way past a knot of street children
to study the bobbing wooden box that would be his home for the next three
months.

The
Destrier
was a cog, a thickly built barrel of a ship designed to
withstand the towering seas of the north. The elegant lines of the Tilean vessels that lay at anchor beyond had no parallels in her bulky frame.
She wallowed in the sea as gracelessly, and as comfortably, as a pig in its sty.

She was also a lot smaller than most of the other vessels. Against the
backdrop of Bordeleaux’s distant heights, even against the backdrop of the other
merchantmen, the
Destrier
looked tiny. In fact, apart from its towering
central mast, the only thing that was big about the ship was the smell of brine
and unwashed bodies that wafted from her open holds.

“I’m not surprised that my predecessor jumped ship,” Florin guessed, but
Lundorf shook his head.

“Oh no, it was nothing like that. There was just some, ah, unpleasantness
with the witch hunters at the last port. Bad business.”

“I bet it was,” Florin barked with laughter. Then he frowned as he watched
the stream of men and goods disappearing into the
Destrier
’s dank
interior. It seemed that, even as he watched, more bodies and bundles had
disappeared into the ship’s entrails than was possible. It was as though the
ship were no more than a trapdoor to some other place.

“Nice looking fellows,” Lorenzo muttered sarcastically as a dozen drunken
mercenaries staggered over the boarding planks. Their accents were harsh, and
despite the warmth of the Bretonnian sun their flushed faces were wrapped in
shapeless fur hoods. One of their number was being dragged unceremoniously
behind them, his heels cutting deep ruts through the filth of the pier.

“Their captain,” Lundorf explained, with a shrug. “It’s a shame. Those
Kislevites can be real daemons if they’re properly led. You needn’t worry about
that, though. You’re only responsible for your fellow countrymen. There’s about
a score of them, I think. Anyway, I’ll introduce you to the captain of the ship,
and then I must be off to see how my lot are doing.”

Then, for the first time since he’d fled from his chambers, Florin paused.
What was he doing here? He’d never been in a battle, never commanded so much as
a squad. How had he bluffed his way into command of a hardened mercenary
company?

He felt a sudden vertiginous sense of doubt, like a sleepwalker who awakes to
find himself about to step over a high precipice, and for a moment he stood
balanced on the very brink of turning back.

The roar of the world around him grew silent and, in some deep part of his
soul, a dice began to spin. Each of its faces held a vision of a different route. He held his breath as it revolved, revealing different
paths to take.

Now Mordicio’s mercy.

Now a passage to Araby.

“Are you all right, old man?” Lundorf asked, slapping him on the back.

And the dice was cast.

“Yes,” Florin said, drawing himself up with a sudden certainty. “Yes, I’m
ready. Let’s see my new command.”

“Good man,” Lundorf said approvingly, and led him into the organised chaos of
the
Destrier
’s foredeck.

The shoals around Bordeleaux were numerous, and sharp toothed. Some of them
still held the ships they’d wrecked up above the waterline: rotting trophies to
warn the unwary. Others, infinitely more dangerous, lurked unseen below the
waterline. Their granite fangs thrust up from the depths like stone gutting
knives, accidental predators that were as dangerous as anything else in the vast
ocean beyond.

Despite the aid of Bordeleaux’s hired pilots, Captain-Owner Gorth hadn’t
wanted a gaggle of drunken mercenaries getting under his men’s feet whilst they
coaxed their vessels past these guardians. So, with all the thoughtfulness of a
natural despot he’d had them sealed in their cabins, and left them to curse and
squabble as the flotilla cautiously nosed its way through the grey chill of the
morning mist.

Now, however, with the coastline sinking under the far horizon, the hatches
had been thrown open. The mercenaries clambered up from their confinement and
blinked in the dazzling sunlight as they staggered and slid across the rolling
deck.

Florin stood perched on the height of the stern deck, the ragged score of
Bretonnians that comprised his command gathered on the deck below him. The few
Kislevites who had so far recovered from the previous day’s drinking stood
blearily around the gunwales, watching their foreign comrades like hungover bears. Their captain was still
nowhere to be seen, and Florin took some scant comfort from this failing in his
brother officer.

But for now, he was content to ignore both these northern savages and the
sailors that swung overhead like clothed monkeys. For now all he was worried
about were his own men.

Whether by accident or design they looked every inch the dogs of war, these
Bretonnians. They wore their scars with as much unconscious pride as they did
their weapons, and although many of them were as unshaven and dirty as peasants,
their boots and their armour gleamed with professional care.

Not for the first time Florin wished that he’d taken the time to pick up some
armour. He felt like an actor without a costume, and he wondered how much his
fine town clothes had added to the mercenaries’ obvious resentment of him. It
showed in every scowling face and muttered word, the atmosphere as tense as the
ropes which hummed and sang above their heads.

He drew himself up in unconscious defiance of their hostility and spoke.

“I,” Florin began, meeting and holding each man’s eye in turn, “am Captain
Florin d’Artaud. I am your new leader.”

The men greeted this news with a uniform expression of distaste. Quelling the
urge to glower back at them, he pressed on.

“I don’t know you, or what you can do. For all I know you might be cowards,
or traitors, or fools.”

A growl of resentment rippled through the men, and Lorenzo, who stood behind
them, made a desperate chopping gesture at his throat.

“But then, for all you know, so might I be.” Florin grinned wide enough to
show his molars. To his immense relief some of the men smiled back. “So I think
that the sooner we find out about each other, the better.”

One of the mercenaries, a tall gangling figure, none of whose clothes seemed
to really fit, barked with laughter.

“And how will we do that?” he asked. “Should we sail back to Madam Gourmelon’s
and ask your mother?”

The tension erupted into a wave of raucous laughter as all eyes turned to see
if their new captain would react to the insult.

Florin reacted.

Before even he knew what he was going to do he’d leapt from his perch and
onto the deck, his boots thumping onto the
Destrier’s

deck like a great fist. A couple of steps and he was standing close enough to
the mercenary to count the broken veins on his nose. Up this close the man’s
height was apparent, but any regrets Florin might have felt about this
confrontation were lost beneath the glow of rage that burned in his chest.

“What did you say?” he hissed, following the mercenary as he took a step
back.

The man swallowed, and pulled nervously at his chin, horribly aware of his
friends’ avid observation and of Florin’s rage.

“I asked you what you said,” Florin repeated, edging closer. Once more the
man stepped back, but now, beneath his comrades’ scrutiny, defiance had replaced
anxiety in his eyes.

“I say what I like,” he boasted, a little uncertainly. “You can’t do anything
about it.”

“Yes,” Florin grinned mirthlessly, “I can. Tomorrow, when the sun rises full
over the horizon, you and I will fight. We’ll fight here, and until death or
mercy. Lorenzo!” Florin bellowed for his manservant who appeared from behind the
tall mercenary’s back. “You’ll be my second. Ask this gentleman what weapons he
chooses.”

“What weapons do you choose?” Lorenzo asked unhappily.

“You can’t challenge me to a duel,” the mercenary began uncertainly.
“Regulations say that…”

A chorus of jeers drowned out the rest of his sentence. He looked around, his
eyes darting from one mocking face to the next. Like a rat caught in a trap he
realised that this was not how things had been supposed to go.

“Go on, Jacques,” one of the friends called out, “you started this. Can’t
back away now.”

The gathered men roared their agreement and Jacques, bowing to the
inevitable, shrugged miserably.

“So, what weapons do you choose?” Lorenzo repeated.

The mercenary glanced down at the rapier Florin wore and pursed his lips. For
all he knew this milky-skinned young fop, although obviously never battle
hardened, had practiced every day of his life with the sword.

No matter, he thought, with rising confidence.

“Very well, then,” he said, “the weapons I choose are gutting knives.”

“That’s hardly usual,” Lorenzo complained, but Jacques wouldn’t be moved.

“Oh, well, if you want to call the whole thing off…”

“Not at all,” Florin interjected smoothly. “Gutting knives it is. Well then,
gentlemen. I can’t see any point in wasting any more of each other’s time for
the moment. You’re dismissed.”

And with that Florin turned on his heel and stalked up to the forecastle. A
forbidden area to all but officers and seamen, it was now deserted. Florin
gathered his thoughts as the cold wind mockingly. The occasional flecks of sea
foam that splashed into his face feeling as cold as chips of ice. Behind him his
men’s voices were raised in heated discussion, and he frowned with concentration
as he tried to hear what they were saying.

“Well, boss,” said Lorenzo, coming up behind him, “that could have gone
better.”

“I suppose it could.”

“Do you think he knows that you carry a knife in your boot?” Lorenzo asked
innocently.

“I doubt it.”

“Well, I don’t suppose he needs to know.”

Florin just grunted, and turned his face to meet a fresh blast of wind.

“He’s a big fellow though.”

“So he’ll make a big example.”

“Let’s hope so,” Lorenzo muttered. “Let’s hope so.”

The two men fell into companionable silence as the
Destrier
pushed
onwards, eagerly pursuing the setting sun. Behind them Jacques’ comrades were
busy arguing about which knife he would use to remove their new officer, and the
sound of whetstones on steel began to whisper throughout the ship.