01 - The Burning Shore (36 page)

“Lorenzo!” Florin bellowed, washing his mouthful of bread down with a deep,
gurgling swig of wine before getting up onto his thin legs.

“I hope you’re not expecting me to mend those breeches!” Despite the grin
that was tugging at his cheeks, the servant made himself frown disapprovingly.

In answer Florin flung a bony arm around his shoulders and gave him a playful
punch on the arm.

“Sometimes I think that you were never really cut out to be a servant,” he
said, and Lorenzo couldn’t keep the smile off his face any longer.

“Wondered if you’d make it back. Orbrant kept making us tramp about in the
jungle looking for you. And me with only one pair of boots.”

“Don’t listen to the old villain,” Orbrant interrupted. “He’s spent the last
week dragging patrols out after you. Sometimes I thought that he might even be
in danger of becoming a soldier.”

“Well, he still owes me six months’ pay,” Lorenzo excused himself with a
gap-toothed grin.

The mercenaries’ laughter floated across the camp. If the shades of their
comrades still haunted Florin’s dreams, these survivors seemed thankful enough
for his return. For the first time in weeks there was a joy in their faces that
was untainted by the greed and paranoia which had marred each discovery of gold.

And discoveries of gold there had been aplenty. As their captain finished his
meal, his shrunken stomach soon feeling painfully full and his cheeks already
burning with wine, his men told him of the riches that had been uncovered in his
absence. They told him of thumb-long cylinders, their surfaces covered in weird
hieroglyphs, of octagonal coins and round plates. Even a life-size statue of a
skink had been found, the metal-cast lizard green-eyed with emeralds.

Most of the gold had been ferreted out by Thorgrimm’s dwarfs, but that hardly
mattered. There was such a wealth of treasure that even the smallest share would
be enough to transform every ragged one of them into a wealthy man back in the
Old World.

“I’m glad to hear that we’ve found such riches,” Florin told them as they
competed to share the good news, “because we have to leave.”

A dozen men interrupted each other with their questions as van Delft strolled
up to the group.

“Ah, Captain d’Artaud. There you are. I wonder if you’d care to step over to
my hut for a little chat?”

A moment after, Florin was seated in the shade of van Delft’s hut, sipping
from a pot of boiled water, his fellow officers started to come in. The Tilean,
Castavelli, arrived first, sweeping off the sorry remains of his feathered hat
as he ducked through the door. When he saw the emaciated wretch lolling amongst
the gold, seated on the Colonel’s own chair, he blinked in surprise. Then his
face split open in a wide grin of recognition.

“Floreen!” he cried, seizing the Bretonnian and kissing him on both cheeks.
“It’s miraculoso, no? The gods have a spared you.”

“Good to see you, Castavelli,” Florin responded, resisting the urge to wipe
his cheeks.

“What a happened to you? Where you went?”

Before Florin could answer, van Delft, who had been poring over the map he’d
had made of their surroundings, cut in.

“Let’s wait till we’re all here, shall we? I want everybody to hear
everything.”

Next came the dwarf, Thorgrimm. He nodded to Florin as he took his own seat
and started to fill his pipe, as casually polite as if the human had just
returned from a brief stroll. Nonetheless, when he thought that nobody was
looking, he studied Florin through the thickening haze of blue smoke that his
pipe emitted, his eyes gleaming with curiosity.

Graznikov soon stumbled through the doorway. Although already flushed his
face turned beetroot red beneath his fur cap when he saw the Bretonnian, and his
only greeting was a scowl. It deepened when Lundorf barged passed him.

“Sigmar’s blood, it’s true then!” Lundorf roared with the sheer pleasure of
seeing his friend again, grabbing his hand to pump it as earnestly as if it were
attached to a well. They were still shaking when Kereveld wandered into the
mottled light of the little hut. As usual he was clutching his book to his
chest, as though afraid that it was going to be suddenly snatched away. When he
saw Florin he began to smile, then frowned.

“Ah, there you are,” he said. “Good. I wanted to talk to you about one of
your men.”

“Which one?”

“Never mind that now,” van Delft told them, settling back onto the edge of
the bench. “I think that it’s time to hear what young d’Artaud’s been up to.
Come on, let’s hear it. Where the hell have you been?”

So, as the afternoon light waned into dusk, and the sliver of the dying moon
grew brighter in the darkening sky, Florin told them. He told them of his
capture and of the cage in which he had been hung like a plucked pheasant. He
told them of the skinks and the saurus and what they had done with the corpses
of his men. Then he told them about the great bloated monstrosity that had ruled
over these horrors, and of the sorcery that had prised open his mind.

That was too much for Kereveld. As Florin had unfolded his tale, the wizard’s
excitement had become more and more obvious, and . now he leapt to his feet and
ran a hand through the wild mess of his hair.

“So!” he exclaimed, looking at Florin with an expression of hungry triumph.
The Bretonnian, snapping back out of the world of memory, flinched back from the
old man, wondering if he’d gone mad. “So! They do exist. By all the gods I’ve
heard of these mages before, but I thought that they were all dead.”

“Where did you hear of them?” Florin asked suspiciously, glancing down at the
wizard’s tattered book. Seeing the direction of his gaze the old man clutched it
closer to his bony chest, the gesture as unconscious as the way that Florin
clenched his fists as he leaned forward. Not for the first time, the Bretonnian
wondered what else the ever-jealous Kereveld might have kept hidden in that
damned book of his.

“Oh, the mage priests are mentioned in a hundred sources,” the wizard said,
gesticulating with his free hand as he prowled over to the doorway. The first of
the expedition’s fires flared into life beyond his stooped silhouette, and he
craned his neck to gaze up at the first stars that glittered across the deep
blue velvet of dusk. Then, as if drawing inspiration from the heavens, he turned
back to face his fellow men.

“Colonel van Delft,” he began, drawing himself up and addressing the
commander with all the haughty grandeur of a duke addressing a footman. “Your
mission is changed. It is now to locate this mage priest that your man has
discovered so that I might communicate with it.”

The mercenary commander’s face hardened and he drew in a deep breath of air,
the better to curse this insolent civilian. But then he thought better of it, and his expression of anger mellowed to one of
thoughtfulness. He had been hired to serve this insolent civilian, after all.
Maybe he should check the contract before telling Kereveld where to shove his
bloody lizard.

Florin had no such qualms.

“You can’t be serious?” he blurted out, aghast. “Capture the lizards’ wizard?
You must be insane.”

“Insane or not,” Kereveld pressed his advantage. “As the sole representative
of the college which has funded this expedition, my orders are to capture it. Or
perhaps we should try to make contact with it. A parley.” Kereveld stooped back
down into his more familiar stance and scratched the back of his head as he
considered this option.

“Colonel?” Florin turned his attention to the commander, who was biting his
lip thoughtfully. “You can’t be thinking of listening to him…?”

“He hired me to raise an expeditionary force with which to protect him for
twelve months,” van Delft shrugged. “But Kereveld, I advise you against
wandering off into the jungle after this thing. We know how powerful it is.
D’Artaud here only escaped through dumb luck.”

Graznikov sniggered at what he assumed to be an insult. Florin glared at him
threateningly and the Kislevite fell silent.

“Of course there are risks,” Kereveld allowed, waving his hand as though
countless reptilian warriors were as easy to dispel as a cloud of flies. “But
think of the benefits. What price are a hundred or so ignorant soldiers compared
to the chance of meeting such an ancient creature? Think of the knowledge that
I… that is, that the college… could glean. Some even say that the mages of
old knew how to step from one world to the next, as easily as we walk between
houses. Imagine, the power to hurl yourself through the terrible voids between
the planets with but a single step!”

“You make a good argument,” van Delft said dryly, his sarcasm lost on the
wizard. “But no. You’re too important to risk in this way. I am being paid to
protect you, and that’s what I’ll do.”

“You’re being paid to obey me,” Kereveld argued, tearing himself back away
from the realm of future greatness to the more pressing business at hand.

“Understand, Menheer Kereveld, that we aren’t going to go chasing after a
wizard that can hurl us all into the void between the worlds.”

For a moment the two men locked eyes. Under the intoxicating influence of his
dreams it took Kereveld a surprisingly long time to look away.

“I really must protest,” he said half-heartedly. “What an opportunity we’re
missing.”

“Think yourself lucky,” Florin told him, a sudden shiver wracking his bony
frame as he thought back to his own encounter with the mage. “In fact, the
sooner we get back to the boats the better. Colonel, I know it’s getting dark,
but we should tell the men to start getting ready to move off. If we leave at
first light we should be able to make it back to the boats, and then out to sea
by tomorrow night.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Thorgrimm grumbled from the growing shadows. He pushed the
last glowing embers of his pipe into the bottom of the bowl and inhaled deeply
before elaborating. “We’ll not leave all this gold here.”

“We can take it with us.”

The dwarf barked with hard laughter, a cloud of smoke bursting from his nose.

“No, we can’t take it with us yet. We have to dig it up first.”

“From where?”

“We don’t know yet. But there’s more gold here. I can smell it, almost taste
it.” The dwarf’s eyes became wistful, and Florin looked at him incredulously.
This was unbelievable. Between that moron Kereveld and this stunted little—

No, stop thinking like that, he told himself. Getting angry with them won’t do you
any good. Especially with the dwarf.

“Menheer Thorgrimm,” Florin took a deep breath and tried again. “And
Kereveld. I’m sorry that I didn’t make myself clear. These lizard warriors are
huge, well armed, and well disciplined. And there are hundreds of them.”

“You said there were dozens,” Thorgrimm pointed out stubbornly.

“Dozens, hundreds, what in the name of Ranald’s left ball does it matter?”
Florin snapped, clenching his fists as he tried to keep his temper. “With their
magician and the skinks they’ll eat us alive. You haven’t seen them, I have.
What’s the point of gold if you can’t spend it?”

“Calm yourself, manling,” the dwarf said, folding his arms contentedly. “We
will dig up the gold and then we will go.”

“I don’t know,” Lundorf said, coming to his friend’s aid. “Whatever the exact
numbers, these lizards outnumber us, and they know the terrain. Besides, we’re
running low on rations. We can’t stay here much longer even if we wanted to.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Thorgrimm, who’d discovered the delights of roast
tree frog. The humans ignored him.

“Captain Graznikov, what do you think?” van Delft asked the Kislevite, who
shifted uncomfortably, greed and fear warring on his face. Then inspiration
struck and he leered ingratiatingly.

“Is simple,” he said. “My boys will take gold we found already to ships, buy
supplies in Swamptown, then come back.”

Van Delft nodded as Graznikov spoke, privately contemplating what the odds
were of the Kislevite returning to the jungle once he was on a ship full of
gold.

“Captain Castavelli?” he turned to the Tilean, who had started chewing his
thumbnail anxiously.

“Is easy,” he said, spitting a piece of it out. “We must to go. I already
lost a lot of my boys, and we have enough gold. Also, I want to get clean, and
eat. Floreen is correct, we must to go.”

“After we’ve collected the gold,” Thorgrimm repeated, as though not a man of
them had disagreed, “we’ll go. Until then, we stay.”

“Why Captain Thorgrimm,” van Delft said pleasantly, “I didn’t realise that we
had exchanged ranks. How embarrassing, that I didn’t realise. Tell me, exactly
when were you appointed colonel?”

The other captains chuckled uneasily as the dwarf flushed, his hand drifting
down to rest upon his axe.

“We have to go,” Florin told him, leaning forward. “Believe me. If the
lizards come for us, we’re doomed.”

“Doom is nothing to be feared,” Thorgrimm told him, straightening his back
and lifting his chin so that his beard thrust out like the ram on a galley’s
prow. “All that matters is how we face it.”

“But our doom is to return to the Old World tonight, rich men one and all.”

“Then go. My dwarfs will stay and complete the task for which we came.”

“No,” van Delft decided. “We will either all go or all stay. Remember,
Captain Thorgrimm, you are still bound by your oath to serve me and the company.
Now listen. What I propose is that tomorrow we send out a patrol to see if
d’Artaud’s lizards are anywhere near. At the same time we’ll stop all
excavations and build up our defences. If the lizards are near, and in such
force as might cause us alarm, we’ll go. If not, we’ll spend one more week
gathering gold, then we’ll go anyway. As Lundorf says, we’re running low on
rations and, as Castavelli says, we need to replace our equipment. Now, is that
acceptable to everybody?”