01 - The Burning Shore (12 page)

“I suppose that he’d have been a knight, being a Bretonnian aristocrat and
all.”

“Yes, he was,” Florin agreed.

“Funny people, knights,” the commander mused. “Funny ideas about war. All
that chivalry. Give me a clear shot and a cannon any day. We have one of those
by the way.”

“Yes sir, Lundorf mentioned it.”

“Can’t see a knight using a youngster as bait while he hid behind a
barricade.”

“It was an ambush, sir.”

“Sure he was a knight?”

“Yes. I mean…”

“And those orcs. Completely disorganised, you said. No leaders.”

“They might have had some leaders,” Florin shrugged. “It was so long ago.”

“How long ago?”

“Three years. Or was it five?”

“I’m a colonel, not an auctioneer,” van Delft snapped. He let the silence
become uncomfortable before turning to his subordinate.

“Mad or not, your sergeant’s a gift from Sigmar, your men seem to respect you
and you’re not as stupid as you look.”

“Thank you, si—”

“But if you ever lie to me again I will throw you off the pay roll. Which
would leave you with quite a long walk home, wouldn’t you say?”

Florin, his bluff called, nodded meekly and looked out to sea.

“Yes, it would be. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” van Delft waved away the thanks. “And for Sigmar’s sake
don’t go telling anybody else about this little chat. I doubt if they’d be quite
so… forgiving.”

“No, sir.”

“Right then, that’s sorted. I hope you won’t take offence, but I want to get
to the
Beaujelois
before the Tileans start serving up dinner. Gods know
how they do it, but their lads seem to be able to make anything taste good.”

The four morsels drifted through the cathedral heights of the warm, upper
reaches of its domain.

Adjusting to the unfamiliar light, the black orbs of its eyes changed from
onyx to ivory. Gradually they adjusted to the blinding brightness of the long
forgotten sun, and it bathed in the new sensations of light and darkness.

By the time it reached the first corpse it could make out every ripple of the
sodden cloth which bound it, and every silver movement of the tiny fish which
nibbled at its bloated flesh.

Although this prey was obviously long dead, still it attacked. The impact of
its first bite tore the body in half, and filled the water with a mahogany cloud
of blood. Swallowing the man’s torso it turned, an incredibly agile loop for
such a huge creature, and returned for the remains.

There was no taste, not really. Just a sudden burst of ecstasy as the torn
meat pulsed down into its stomach.

Spurred on, it lunged for the next body, and the next. By the time it had
taken the fourth the sensation of fresh meat had set its appetite on fire.
Arcing through the bright heights, its own blood pounding with a hideous
excitement, it scented the currents for more human flesh.

As the second full moon rolled over the
Destrier
the long, sweltering
heat grew heavier. Sometimes, beneath the blue furnace of the tropical skies, it
became almost unbearable. Combined with the shrinking rations and the void of
the endless ocean, it had conspired to drive more than one man into an insanity
of despair, or violence. So far the
Destrier
had been lucky. The
maddening heat hadn’t ignited the explosive tensions that had covered the deck
of the
Hippogriff
with blood, nor had it boiled anyone’s brains enough
to send them diving into the vastness of the ocean.

Lorenzo had actually seen the victim of the heat; he had watched him throw
himself from the
Beaujelois
gunwale only to be hauled sobbing back out of
the water by his comrades. At the time the sight had united Bretonnian and
Kislevite both in uneasy laughter, but mock the Tileans as they might, most of
them had already felt an inkling of his desperation.

There was already a rumour afoot that they’d missed Lustria. The storm, some
said, had pushed them so far to the south that they’d rounded the cape and were
now heading away into the endless oceans beyond. Others spoke of empty water
casks, and the chaos that was to come when the last few drops were gone.

Thoughts such as these had led Lorenzo to today’s plan. It wasn’t much of a
plan, more a way of driving such nightmares from his mind, really. Away of
passing one more endless day without straining his eyes on mirages of distant
coastlines, or seagulls that turned out to be sunspots.

The thought that anything would actually come of it never even occurred to
him. After all, when he’d tried it as a boy he’d had gossamer thin tendon
traces, and the finely carved bone hooks that he’d stolen from his uncle. He’d
known the waters too, choosing only the deepest pools in the river that ran
through his village.

Today, by contrast, all he’d been able to find was a rope, a twist of wire,
and the sharpened hook of a long departed crossbowman.

Embarrassed to be seen playing the fool with such a string of rubbish he’d
smuggled it on the stern deck before tying it together.

He was glad to see that the old skill of knotting and binding remained in his
fingers, and by the time he’d finished he even went so far as to waste his
ration of maggot-riddled dried fish on the end of the line.

Then, wrapping the rope around the railing of the stern, he’d thrown the
uselessly baited hook over the side and started to think about eating the mouldy
handful of ship’s biscuit that was all that remained of today’s ration.

Somehow, despite the example of the rest of the ship’s company, he’d never
been able to crunch down the weevils that wriggled within the stale dough. He
couldn’t even do it in the dark, when night would have spared him the sight of
half eaten things moving about within the crust.

Instead he spent miserable mealtimes crumbling up his daily bread and sorting
out the writhing maggots from the crumbs before eating them.

But today he was to be spared that ordeal. For no sooner had he broken off
the first piece of the dough than the rope hummed with a sudden tightness.

Lorenzo looked at it disbelievingly as it began to drag itself along the
rail. Jumping to his feet, heart racing with a sudden, disbelieving excitement,
he tugged experimentally at the rope.

Something tugged back.

With a whoop of joy he braced his feet against the side and started to heave
against whatever it was that he’d caught.

It was strong, whatever it was. By the time he had recovered just a few feet
of the rope his muscles were burning, his skin glistening with a wash of sweat.

“What are you doing?” a voice asked. Lorenzo rolled his eyes back to find
Jacques standing above him.

“Catching fish,” Lorenzo told him. “Want to lend a hand?”

“Anything for a comrade,” Jacques grinned disbelievingly and, wrapping the
rope around his wrist, added his own gangling strength to Lorenzo’s.

Gradually, inch-by-inch, they hauled the dripping rope out of the sea. The
tension in the hemp squeezed so much water out that soon the two fishermen found
their feet slipping and sliding across the oak.

“Hey! You have caught one!” Jacques cried out, eyes alight with a sudden
excitement.

There was a sudden, heart stopping slackness in the rope followed by a loud
splash. The two men froze, hearts sore with disappointment, until an excited
shout floated down from the bird’s nest.

“Go on! You got him!” the sailor yelled. Moving with a rush of renewed
excitement the two men hauled in the slack rope and felt, once more, the fish
struggling on the end of the line.

Lorenzo thought about how old the rope had been, and how casually he’d tied
the knots.

“What’s that you’re saying?” Jacques asked him, but Lorenzo just grunted with
embarrassment.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d prayed.

Again the rope went slack, but this time, instead of a splash, the two men
heard, even felt, a thud. A second later the weight on the end of the rope grew
so great that it started to rasp through their hands.

“What the hell was that?”

“I think it’s clear of the water,” Lorenzo, tears of exertion streaming down
the beaten leather of his face, groaned with the pain that burned in his arms.
His scrawny muscles felt as though they’d snap at any moment, like so much old
rope.

Jacques, his own hands starting to bleed where the rope had scratched away
the skin of his palms, looked up at the men who had joined them.

“Come on then,” he snapped at them, his voice strained beneath the cords
which now stood out on his neck. “Grab the rope. Help us pull the bastard in.”

Two men grabbed the rope, then two more. Now it began to slide up and over
the rail, hissing against the wood as it came faster and faster.

Lorenzo let the others take the strain, his biceps singing with the joy of
relief. Then he peered over the side of the rail, and his heart almost stopped.

It was huge, almost the size of a man. Its flanks flashed in the sunlight,
shifting from silvered blue to metallic green as it fought. But although its
body shone with the living colours of the ocean, rippling like living mother of
pearl, the long sword of its mouth was as black and sharp as a thorn.

As Lorenzo watched it bite down upon the impossibly thin length of rope upon
which it was suspended. The hemp hummed and groaned with the strain, thistles of
snapped fibres sticking up at odd angles as the fish lunged desperately from
side to side.

Lorenzo found himself beginning to pray again. He didn’t know what else to do
as the fish was dragged even higher above the safety of the sea below.

Then he saw the gills flaring. His mind blank of everything but the image
offish soup, he lunged over the rail and grabbed the great flare of skin.

The marlin lurched wildly at the agony of his touch, dragging him farther
over the rail. Below him there was nothing but the foamed surface of the sea,
the wake of the ship rolling hungrily beneath him.

Again the fish swung back out, and Lorenzo felt his hip slide over the
gunwale so that, for a moment, man and fish hung there, each as captured as the
other.

But by now more men had come to see what the commotion was. Without waiting
for orders they threw themselves into the battle, Bretonnian and Kislevites
both. From then on the struggle was short and one-sided. Fight as he might, the great fish was dragged upwards, and
then heaved over the rail and onto the deck of the ship.

He thrashed around in the suffocation of this terrible new world, the rapier
of his beak sending his captors scurrying back. It was Lorenzo, still too alive
with adrenaline to feel the sprain in his fingers, who grabbed a hold of his
dorsal and ended his pain with a dagger blow.

For a few more seconds the great fish continued to dance and skitter across
the deck, his gushing blood painting grotesque arabesques upon the seasoned oak.
Lorenzo waited until the final spasm had died away to a mere shiver before
nipping forward to cut the hook from the side of its mouth.

“Let’s get this down to the cook,” He left half a dozen of his comrades to
haul the fish down to the galley.

“And bring some more dried fish,” he called after them. “Seems that it is fit
for animals after all.”

Jacques, his hair slicked with sweat and salt water, laughed with wild
abandon.

“You’ll do anything to avoid those damn biscuits,” he roared at his own
humour and slapped Lorenzo on the back. Still grinning he left his comrade
slumped exhaustedly on the deck and went to peer over the rail.

“There must be more fish down there,” he called back. “Do you think they swim
in shoals?”

“The gods alone know.” Lorenzo shrugged and flexed his bruised hand. “The
only thing I caught before were trout.”

“Trout!” Jacques scoffed, leaning over the gunwale. “That thing would need a
hundred a day to… hey, what’s that?”

“What?”

“That shadow below us.” The mercenary glanced upwards, but the sky remained
empty of even a trace of cloud.

“What shadow?” Lorenzo asked, watching the excitement at the other end of the
ship as the cook hoisted his catch up on a block and tackle.

“Look here. Beneath the ship. It’s getting bigger. Maybe we’re running over
some shallows.”

“Can’t be,” Lorenzo turned his attention to the frayed and bloodied fishing
line. The rope, at least would need to be replaced, he decided. It was miracle
it had held the first time.

“Then perhaps… Oh no.”

Lorenzo looked up, surprised by his friend’s tone. He saw Jacques try to pull
himself back over the rail. He was a second too late.

With a thunderclap the ocean behind the
Destrier
erupted into a
dazzling column of water. It blitzed upwards from the surface, a liquid
thunderbolt born of the deeps, with such violence that the plume of it rose as
high as the
Destrier
’s mast.

It wasn’t this explosion that tore the scream from Lorenzo’s throat though.
It was the thing that the sea had vomited up with it.

It tore itself from its sheath of water so quickly that it revealed hardly
any detail. It was just a confusion of terrible parts, a nightmare made flesh.

It took Jacques without a pause, snuffing him out in a sudden spray of blood
before crashing back into the sea as suddenly as it had come.

Despite the wash of salt water that swamped the
Destrier
’s stern, and
the screams of the crew, and even the final image of terrible jaws closing over
Jacques’ body, Lorenzo couldn’t believe what he had just seen.

Shock, as soft and lethal as a shroud, wrapped him in its embrace.

“What, by the gods, was that?”

Lorenzo turned, like a man in a dream, as Florin rushed across to him.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Lorenzo said vaguely. Florin grabbed him by the shoulder, stared into
his eyes.