01 - The Burning Shore (21 page)

“Right then, I think we know where we’re going. We’ll wake at dawn, eat, and
push on up this path of d’Artaud’s. Whatever these things are it seems that they
don’t like the sight of their own blood.”

“Unlike us,” Lorenzo muttered from the shadows. Van Delft pretended not to
hear him.

“Any questions?”

“What will our marching order be?”

“Bretonnians first, dwarfs last. If that’s all right with you, Captain
Thorgrimm? I want a solid rearguard.”

Which was to say, he wanted a rearguard that wasn’t going to run at the first
sign of trouble, Florin thought. To judge from the look of contented pride on
the dwarf leader’s face, he guessed the same.

“That is all right with me,” Thorgrimm said. “But we’ll need a couple of the
mules for the gun.”

“Hungry already?” Lorenzo called out, but this time he wasn’t ignored.
Thorgrimm leapt to his feet, half drawing the axe from his belt, and glowered
into the suddenly silent gloom that hid the Bretonnian.

“Did somebody speak?” he asked, his voice deceptively smooth. Florin crossed
his fingers and silently willed Lorenzo to bite his tongue.

For once the manservant did just that.

“Only two mules?” van Delft asked, as if there had been no interruption.

“Aye, for the barrel of the cannon. The rest we’ll carry.”

“We’ll help with that if you like,” Florin offered, eager to make amends for
his servant’s tongue. “We can take the shot or something.”

“Thank you,” the dwarf said, meeting his eyes and bowing slightly. “But we can
manage.”

“Are you sure? It’s damn heavy going out there.”

“I said we can manage.”

“Good,” van Delft clapped his hands together. “Well, then gentlemen, I’ll see
you in the morning.”

He waited until his officers were safely back in front of their own fires
before squatting down beside Kereveld. He had some questions of his own.

Not least about what the wizard had meant by “lesser forms”.

Dawn stole over the inert forms of the sleeping men. Occasionally one of them
shifted restlessly beneath his blanket, or cried out against some nightmare. But
for the most part they lay as still as corpses upon the damp grass mounds of
their beds, the only signs of life being the snores that rose up to compete with
the cries of the things that prowled around their flimsy stockade.

Even the sentries were half asleep. Their eyes blinked as the flat grey
shades of dawn replaced the flickering orange firelight of the night watch. They
were leaning on halberds or axes, studying the undergrowth suspiciously.

Van Delft, who, as always, had risen just before dawn, paced around them.
Occasionally he’d stop to exchange a quiet word with one or check the weapon of
another. He was glad to see the way they stiffened their backs as he approached,
holding their weapons a little straighter.

They were good lads, these, he decided. Good enough, anyway. As he’d hoped
the oppressive gloom of the jungle had succeeded in pushing them closer
together, curing them of the plague of bickering the sea voyage had created.

“Morning, Captain d’Artaud, Sergeant Orbrant,” the commander said as Florin
came yawning towards him. Dragging a comb through the tangled knots of his hair, the flimsy shirt he wore already damp
with sweat and humidity, the Bretonnian hardly looked the part of the officer.

Never mind, van Delft told himself. Nothing you can do about that now.

“Morning sir.” Florin straightened and pulled off a clumsy salute.

“Sir,” Orbrant snapped to perfect attention.

“At ease, sergeant, at ease. I see you took your trophy last night. Good
idea. Those things are always worth the weight.”

“Sir?” Orbrant raised his eyebrows and looked at Florin, who was trying to
bite back a yawn.

“The, ah, the… how do you call it? Ah yes, the skink. I see the body’s gone.
I expect you’ll be boiling the meat off the skull.”

Florin and his sergeant exchanged a glance.

“I’m sorry, sir, but we left the skink in your charge. Not that we wanted it
back, of course,” he added hastily as his commander scowled.

“Then who took it?”

The question hung in the air between them, heavier than the warm steam of the
morning mist.

“Perhaps it was Lorenzo,” Orbrant suggested, disapprovingly.

“No reason why he shouldn’t have, I suppose,” Florin made the excuse without
a blink. “But then, there was no reason why he should, either.”

The three men began to stroll, almost casually, towards the dying embers of
the fire where the skink had been left. There was still a print in the soft mud
where its body had lain, and a sprinkling of the ichors that had served it as
blood. Beyond that the ground was a confusion of boot prints and tracks. Almost
all of them were recognisably human.

Each took a different point of the compass, Florin, Orbrant and van Delft
turned to peer into the immensity of the jungle. Faceless and brooding it peered
back at them.

Despite the heat Florin shivered.

“Tell you what,” van Delft decided carefully. “Let’s just assume that
somebody took it upon themselves to bury the damned thing, shall we?”

“Yes,” Florin nodded. “That’s obviously what’s happened.”

“Very well, sir,” Orbrant nodded, his face blank. “And perhaps we can double
the sentries from now on?”

“Makes sense,” van Delft nodded, glancing down at a pair of shallow prints
that led to the fire. Claw marks sprouted from the edges, clear to anybody who
wanted to see them.

With barely a second’s hesitation he strolled across them, grinding them
beneath his heels as he watched his two subordinates.

“Right then,” he said when no trace of the prints remained. “Let’s get
everybody up. No time to lose.”

That day the going was a lot easier. The path they’d cut served well enough
and, apart from the odd snarl of fibrous tendrils, and the ground that had
disintegrated into a black, evil smelling slime, the going was easy.

They reached the great highway of the ruined canal before noon, scrambling
through the gateway they had hewn into the undergrowth the previous day into the
vast, overarching tunnel through which it cut. The expedition threaded through:
the hundred and twenty or so members moving in cautious single file as it snaked
into the eerie calm of the place.

Most of them fell silent, weighed down by the dismal feel of the place. Not
Kereveld, though. His excited shouts could be heard from Florin’s position at
the front of the column to Thorgrimm’s at the rear. Although they didn’t know
it, man and dwarf scowled at exactly the same moment.

They pressed on. With barely a pause they emerged back into the overgrown
chaos which ended the canal, and found themselves drawing up to the river.

It wasn’t until they’d reached the spot where they’d fired their first volley
that Florin called a halt.

“Right then, men. Lorenzo and I are going to have a quick look at the river.”

“What!”

“I’m sure there’ll be nothing there. Those, those things…”

“Skinks,” said Bertrand helpfully.

“Yes, they’ll be long gone by now. I just want to make sure. Sergeant, take
over, would you?”

“Sir.”

“Come on, Lorenzo.”

Florin turned on his heel and marched forward, his heart hammering beneath
his ribs. He knew there’d be nothing waiting for him down by the stream. He knew
it. No matter how bizarre the creatures had been the formation of their caravan
was familiar.

They’d be long gone by now.

Yes, long…

“What’s that you’re saying, boss?” Lorenzo asked.

Florin, who realised that he’d been talking out loud, smiled sheepishly.
“Just cracking up,” he said quietly as the two of them slowed their pace.

Lorenzo snorted. “Think we’re long past that.”

“Sometimes,” his master said, his voice low but haughty. “I think you need to
remember your place.”

“But saving your skin takes me to so many places.”

“I just can’t seem to find any good servants anymore,” Florin whispered, and
tiptoed around the corner before Lorenzo could reply.

Everything remained the same. The occasional silver flash of the rippling
stream in the dingy confines of the little clearing. The hacked stalks of the
plants they’d been busy cutting back, the damaged boughs, yellow as shattered
bone. Everything was just as it had been.

Except, thank the Lady, for the skinks. Of them there was no sign.

Florin let out a relieved sigh.

“Right then, let’s bring our lot up, and send word back to the commander that
we’re here. You never know, he might rotate us.”

Lorenzo leered obscenely.

“You know what I mean,” Florin snorted.

But van Delft, when he finally came barging up the path, seemed in no mood
for favours. The cloud of mosquitoes that followed him did little to improve his
temper.

“Why have we stopped?”

“This is where we came across the skinks yesterday, sir,” Florin told him.

“Yes, well they seem to be gone now.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We can’t afford delays, d’Artaud. The men are tired, I know, but I want to
press on until it’s time to make camp. Got that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Kereveld reckons there’s higher ground ahead. Apart from anything else I
want to get away from these damn flies.”

So saying he slapped himself across the jaw, smearing a mosquito across his
flushed skin.

“Right you are, sir. Sergeant, round up half a dozen volunteers for machete
duty, would you?”

“Sir,” Orbrant snapped off a salute.

“And if you’ll excuse us, commander, we’ll see if we can find where this
track crosses the stream.”

“Yes, yes, good man,” van Delft said distractedly and rubbed his itching
hands together. “Carry on.”

He was still scratching as the Bretonnians splashed across the stream and
began hunting through the thickets on the other side for some trace of the
previous expedition’s path.

Bloody mosquitoes, van Delft thought. Damned things even seem to bite through
a man’s moustache.

Above him eyes as cold as stone gazed down. They watched the leader of these
strange pallid apes tearing at himself, and wondered why. .

But although they wondered, they didn’t care. Their job was merely to watch,
and to report. Even as the first of the intruders stumbled across the remains of
a primitive path beyond, one of them slipped away with the news, moving through
the treetops as stealthily as the sultry breeze.

“Kereveld! What are you doing here?”

“Don’t mind me,” the wizard wheezed, leaning against the bole of a tree and
gasping for breath. His robes hung about his spindly form in a dank mass,
slicked with sweat and dirt, and his hands and face were covered in a polka-dot
rash of insect bites and poor circulation.

“Come to help us with the machetes?” Lorenzo asked sarcastically.

“Well done,” Orbrant said, clapping a hand on Lorenzo’s bony shoulders.

“I didn’t say…”

“Go and take over from Louis over there,” the sergeant ignored him and
pointed to the front of the column. “Louis! Give your machete to Lorenzo here.”

Florin watched him trudge off to replace the smiling Louis, then turned back
to Kereveld.

“What are you doing here?”

“Nothing, really,” he managed to say before a fit of coughing seized him.

“Orbrant, give him some water, would you?”

The sergeant hesitated before unslinging his canteen and handing it over with
a scowl of disapproval. The old man took it with trembling hands, drank deeply,
and then wiped the back of his hand across his forehead.

“Thanks,” he said, handing the canteen back. Orbrant took it suspiciously, and
pointedly wiped the rim with the hem of his tunic.

Kereveld was oblivious to the slight. Even though he was now turning a deep
puce beneath his mosquito bites he was already struggling to stand up straight
again. Behind him, struggling on the mud slicked slope they’d been climbing for
the past two hours, a mule brayed. The sound was followed by a string of curses
from Kereveld’s servant.

“You probably think I’m foolish, joining you all in your monkey work,” the
wizard said between laboured breaths. “But we’re almost there, I’m sure of it.
This slope must be the one mentioned in the book. It probably hasn’t occurred to
you, but we’ve come a long way up.”

Florin winked at Orbrant, but the sergeant was too busy glaring at Kereveld
to notice. Seeing the expression on the bald man’s face Florin felt his
amusement melting away, to be replaced by a calculation of whether or not he’d
be able to stop the warrior if he chose to attack the old buffoon.

“Yes,” Kereveld repeated. “We’re high up here. This must be the plateau
Pizzaro spoke of.”

“Who?”

“Oh, nobody, nobody.” Kereveld waved away the question. “Well, I feel better
now. Perhaps you’d be good enough to tell your men to get a move on? The day’s
wasting.”

Florin had a sudden, mischievous impulse to tell Kereveld to go and tell them
himself, but before he could, Lorenzo cried out from the front, his voice tinged
with surprise.

“Wait here,” Florin told Orbrant and raced up the slope to where the lead
party had hacked a path through the jungle. Two great trees stood on either side
of them like the pillars of a gateway; the distant boughs of their heads huddled
together in a conspiratorial arc high, high above.

Lorenzo cried out again, this time his voice cracking with excitement. The
other troopers had ceased their assault on the jungle, and huddled around him.

Florin pushed his way through them and followed their gaze.

“Shallya’s blood,” he whispered, eyes widening as he saw what had stopped
them.

“Shallya’s blood.”

They stood together, an unmoving little tableau, until Kereveld stumbled into
them.

When he. saw it he fell to his knees, lifted his hands to the heavens, and
whooped, a thin and eerie cry of joy.