Stranger of Tempest: Book One of The God Fragments (32 page)

‘What exactly are we riding into?’ he called to Toil, unable to hold out any longer.

‘Don’t you know?’

‘A Duegar ruin, I get that much, but I’ve never seen one. It was a city? There are streets and buildings?’

‘Ah – not like you’ve ever seen. Well, there are, but mostly underground. They didn’t build on one level but followed the course of the ground and the minerals they mined. Folk call it Shadows Deep after the rifts, two of them. One’s open to the air, the second is deeper but you’ll only find it underground.’

‘There are bridges?’

‘Dozens!’ She laughed. ‘But it’s been a while since there were Duegar stone mages to maintain them. Lots will have fallen, many more you wouldn’t want to cross.’

‘So we have a plan here?’

Toil glanced back at him. ‘Getting anxious there, Lynx?’

‘Course not, what’s there to be worried about? Walking into the unknown where most folk are too sensible to go? Where the nicest bits are the wilds where elementals rule?’

‘Oh, take me home,’ Toil sang out, ‘where the elementals roam!’

‘That knock to your head worse than we thought, Toil?’

‘Pah, you people all fear the wilds and you’ve never really seen them. Duegar ruins are sights to beat any human city. Sure there’s danger, but there’s beauty too and you’ve got to realise the rules you live by don’t mean so much in there. Fear this place and it’ll eat you alive, embrace it and it’ll live inside you all your years to come.’

There was a pause.

‘Like some sort of grub?’ Anatin asked finally. ‘Flies laying eggs in a wound?’

‘You just wait,’ was all Toil would say in response, refusing to rise to the bait.

After their first rest the ground started to break up more. Great boulders the size of houses, then palaces, jutting up out of the landscape, sharp gullies where streams flowed and the horses could barely negotiate their way. The sound of birds and cicadas grew more distant, though eagles circled high above and Lynx saw beetles gleaming red and blue as they buzzed through the air or scrambled through the grass around the horses’ hooves.

The haze on the horizon remained, however – a bank of grey that could have been cloud but for its jagged profile. To the south of that, three mismatched peaks too slender to be mountains, too large to be any sort of towers Lynx had ever seen. It was the underground that Lynx feared, though, the thought of scrambling through narrow cracks in the rock and the horrors that might lurk in the deepest black beyond.

I do know one thing about Shadows Deep
, Lynx reminded himself.
Those great rifts and the lowest mines of the Duegar. Didn’t I meet a man in some town who’d been an adventurer? A relic hunter? One leg and seven fingers left, that bit stuck in my memory – that and the fact his mind was cracked.

He had a maspid tooth on a cord round his neck, a trophy of the one that’d almost got him. Didn’t mind telling that story, did he, but then he got to the great rift. Someone asked how deep it went, what you could see there, and he went from laughing to crazed drunk in a heartbeat. Whatever he saw in that fissure, it broke his mind.

A hiss from Toil brought him back from his reverie and at a gesture the company slowed. She raised a hand to ward off the inevitable questions and the mercenaries readied their guns. For a while there was nothing, but then Lynx heard a tremble run through the ground. It came and went, slowly growing in intensity, before the rise ahead of them began to shudder and distort.

‘Everyone stay calm,’ Toil said without looking back. ‘No need for guns, so put them away again.’

No one obeyed until she turned, the anger clear on her face, whereupon Reft slung his gun back over his shoulder and the rest followed suit.

‘Good. Guns wouldn’t be a clever idea.’ She nodded towards Kas. ‘That bow, on the other hand, might be useful.’

The rumbling from the rise continued and as Kas nocked an arrow, not really knowing what she was going to be aiming at, the rise itself distended and a stretch of earth heaved up. Almost as one, the horses shied away and it took a while to get the startled beasts under control. As they fought with the reins of their own mounts and spares, a pair of grouse flew up from the undergrowth in a flash of white and red and the musky scent of earth filled the air. The earth continued to shudder from some great pressure rising deep under the ground and Lynx’s horse stumbled, the party grinding to a halt as the shaking became too great to safely walk through.

In the next moment brown streaks flashed away off to the south, three then four rabbits fleeing their burrows and risking the open ground. As the shaking subsided Kas let fly but missed and they were gone, then more followed. Kas fired again at a second pair just before they reached the cover of bushes. She hit the larger of the two and the arrow slammed it backwards, feet hammering frantically for another few moments before falling still.

‘Earth elemental,’ Toil said in a low voice. ‘Don’t think it’ll break the surface. I’ve never seen one.’

The knots of long grass on the rise waved and shook as though a strong wind was moving slowly over the length of it. The earth rose again then fell back and split open as a crater appeared in one flank of the rise. Then it moved on towards a copse of trees that had grown up just downwind and Lynx heard the creak and snap of wood as they writhed amid its passage. One tree seemed to snag the monster and the roots were ripped out from under it as the entire tree lurched and almost fell. The ground gave another shudder of movement then all was still again, the distant shaking Lynx could feel through his horse swiftly falling away to nothing.

The tang of cold, damp earth was all that lingered and soon Toil motioned for them to move on. Lynx found himself wanting to ask her questions, but his eyes were drawn to the wrecked tree that had been almost entirely uprooted without much apparent effort. The sight alone was enough to keep him quiet for a while longer and when they next rested, Anatin took Toil aside to converse quietly.

Lynx dropped down on a hump of ground and cut himself a few slices of cured sausage while he gave his aching thighs a chance to rest. Before long Kas arrived beside him and squatted down on the ground, nodding towards the meat.

‘Cut me a piece?’

Lynx did so and handed over a finger-joint-sized chunk, the meat stained red and speckled with fat. They chewed in thoughtful silence, the dried meat slowly succumbing and releasing such a rich flavour that Lynx found his aches and worries fading away for one brief, wonderful moment.

‘What do you think of her?’ Kas asked, nudging his boot to bring Lynx back to reality.

‘Who? Toil?’

‘Aye.’

Lynx shrugged. ‘Don’t know yet.’

Kas smiled. ‘No thoughts at all?’

‘Sounds like you have.’

‘No more’n the rest of us. She’s beautiful an’ she knows it.’

‘Don’t you?’

Kas made a dismissive sound. ‘That woman wields beauty like a weapon. My guess is, there’s a sharp edge there too. I suggest you be careful.’

‘Me?’

‘All o’ you men. Ain’t hard to see the effect she’s had. I’m not telling you anything specific, just saying to be careful.’

‘Nothing specific?’ Lynx frowned at her. ‘You sure about that?’

‘Pfft. I don’t share men – I don’t own ’em, neither. That detail’s all your concern, but she’s not a Card; she’s some prince-elect’s agent. And just like a Charneler, she’s got a mission she believes in.’

He nodded. ‘Whatever gets the job done? Believe it or not, I’ve met the type before.’

‘Did you make puppy eyes at those others too?’ Kas said with a smile. ‘Ah, I’m only messing, don’t look so hurt. You’re a big boy, if I thought she was going to lead you by the nose all the way across Shadows Deep, I’d not be risking my own oh-so-perfect hide.’

She looked around at the rest of the group. ‘It’s still worth saying, mind. Anatin’s a suspicious old sod who’s misused his own charm more often than he can count, I’d guess. Teshen’s got no soul and Reft ain’t interested. Out o’ the rest of us, she’ll likely not waste her efforts on the girls so that leaves just you an’ Varain.’

She winked at Lynx. ‘Him, you’re prettier than,’ she said, nodding towards the battered and drink-scarred veteran currently shaking a stone from his boot then sniffing at it. ‘But mebbe that’s just me.’

‘Prettier than Varain,’ Lynx mused. ‘Guess that’s something.’

‘Hey, you’re happier’n Himbel too.’

‘Whoa, any more and you might turn my head.’

Kas grinned and rose, leaving Lynx alone with his thoughts. He watched the rest of the group for a while, but most were tired and just sat without talking, so after a while he groaned and stood, searching around for the Charneler scouts who’d been following them. There was still no sign of them, he was glad to see, but the party’s trail was obvious, straight through the russet grasses that reached past Lynx’s knee. There was simply no way of hiding the passage of almost a score of horses.

So Shadows Deep really is our best chance
, he thought glumly.
Let’s hope Toil knows what she’s doing.

He watched her talking to Anatin, outlining their route, he guessed from their gestures. From where Lynx was there was no clear break in the hills to the east, no obvious destination for them. He suspected they didn’t have one, Toil couldn’t know the ground as well as that. More likely they were just making for difficult ground. The Charneler horses were likely to be better stock than most of theirs, able to travel faster for longer. But on foot and in less open terrain, the Charnelers would be unused to hard travel, wary of the new dangers and cautious. Close terrain meant bunching and ambush opportunities; the mercenaries had enough burners to wipe out a force far greater than their own should the right ground present itself.

He looked up at the sky. Cloud covered the Skyriver, a dull curtain of white through which the sun could only be guessed at. A dark speck turned far above, something large searching for prey. As he watched it, the bird seemed to edge closer, descend and move more directly over them. For a moment it seemed a reminder from the wilds they were in. Despite their mage-guns and blades, out here they weren’t the hunters. Not even the pursuing Charnelers were. This was a place that couldn’t be tamed. A place apart from civilisation, a place where humans – for all their weapons – couldn’t live quietly or safely.

And she knows this
, he reminded himself, looking at Toil once more.
But still she comes here. She knew this would be possible, so did her cause drive her out here, or something else?

Lieutenant Sauren watched the double column of Knights-Charnel appear on the road and put on an added burst of speed to reach her. She stood by her horse with just one other, the trooper named Gullin who’d ridden ahead with her. The cavalry led the way, Commander Quentes ahead of his two companies, each one with thirty-two troopers and NCOs riding two abreast. Behind them came the Exalted’s remaining two ten-man dragoon squads, then the sharpshooters of the light infantry looking rather less comfortable on horseback.

The cavalry wore tall polished boots and bore a lance device in one corner of their standard, black and white quartered uniform. The dragoons’ uniform was differentiated by their red collars and the Torquen’s pyramid temple device, while the light infantry wore green and black. A little way behind, as was standard order, came the grenadiers – a sloppy and evil-looking bunch whose uniforms were dirty and incomplete, a mish-mash of stolen property most likely, though they all were careful to sport the fractured disc symbol of their designation.

Grenadiers were close-assault troops and their eccentricities tolerated for the damage they could do. They and the dragoons were the only troops of the line permitted burners or sparkers and each grenadier also had a pair of small bags strapped to their hips, where their grenades were stored. Just one of those exploding amid the squad could kill the lot and most likely set off all the others too, hence the distance between them and the rest.

‘Commander, Exalted Uvrel presents her compliments.’

The commander was a whiskered man with near-black hair and a bull neck. ‘Does she now? Doesn’t sound like her. Orders?’

There was a heavy air of resignation about Quentes.
Career soldier
, Sauren guessed. He’d not like Torquen officers, who’d steal away his best men.
But he’s no fool and he’s under the Exalted’s command.

‘One company is to hold this ford, dig in and be ready for any possible assault. There’s a mercenary company of thirty-odd heading up the road, that way. We doubt they’ll double back or that our quarry can evade us on the plain, but we will take no chances.’

‘They’ve run for Shadows Deep?’

‘They have.’

Quentes nodded, a sour look on his face. ‘Lieutenant Mohrim.’

A young Surei officer rode smartly up. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘You’re to hold the ford. The second company will go with me.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Quentes gestured towards the ford. ‘Lieutant Sauren, please do lead the way.’

The sun broke through the clouds some hours into the afternoon. Lynx felt warmth on shoulders made damp by sweat and rain, shaking him loose from his thoughts, which had been lost in the past. He looked around and saw the gentle slope of the plain was giving way to hillocks and streams, studded with low hawthorn trees and vast solitary oaks. A sweetly resinous musk seemed to be awoken from the gorse-like shrubs that studded this higher ground. It wasn’t enough to hide the taste of ice and ashes that carried on the breeze from Shadows Deep, though.

As they crested a rise Lynx saw the ground up ahead was patchy and bare, great beds of rock protruding slightly from the undulating terrain. A sheer cliff of rock stretched away to their right, as though a hill had been ripped open and its guts exposed. Small pines skirted the jagged rock face, but they seemed insignificant beside the great cave opening that lay behind it.

‘Shadows Deep,’ Toil called, pointing towards the cave. ‘Or a tunnel to it, at least.’

‘We going down?’