01 - The Burning Shore (37 page)

Van Delft peered through the gathering gloom at the faces of his captains.
None of them looked exactly happy with the compromise, but that was all right.
None of them looked exactly mutinous either.

“Captain Thorgrimm,” he addressed the dwarf. “Tomorrow I would like you to
inspect each quarter’s defences and inform each captain as to what he has to
do.”

“As you wish, Colonel,” the dwarf muttered, glowering at Florin and banging
his pipe out on his palm. The Bretonnian had an idea that the dwarf wished that
it was his head he was banging, not his old briar.

So. Let him wish.

“Thank you,” van Delft nodded. “And d’Artaud, don’t look so damned worried.
Get drunk and fall asleep, and tomorrow everything will seem a whole lot
brighter. You’ve done a bloody good job to make it back to us, you know. Don’t
think we don’t appreciate it.”

Florin, his desire to rush back to the ships momentarily forgotten, sat up a
little straighter.

“Just doing my best, Colonel.”

“Then it’s damned lucky for us that your best was good enough. Right then, any
questions before we go and get our dinner? Kereveld?”

“It’s just that we can’t possibly leave in a week. To inscribe the
hieroglyphs from the inner temple alone will take a month at least. As the
college’s representative I must insist that…”

“Just a moment, Kereveld,” van Delft said, holding his hand up to stem the
tide of the wizard’s complaints. Turning to the assembled mercenaries: “Double
the sentries tonight if you would, gentlemen. Now, if there’s nothing else, you
can go and eat. I’ve an idea that me and Menheer Kereveld will be here for a
while yet.”

In fact the wizard started jabbering again even whilst the officers were
filing out, and van Delft smothered a yawn. By Sigmar, he thought as he began
the long, thankless task of talking some sense into the old fool, how I wish
that I’d stayed in the Emperor’s army.

Six men volunteered to go out on patrol. Why they had volunteered it was
difficult for them to say. They told themselves that it was for the chance to
get out of digging, or to have a look about for gold, or because they were
bored.

They told themselves that, but they were lying. The reason they stood yawning
and scratching in the rolling billows of the morning mist was that they were
soldiers, and this is what soldiers did.

Van Delft knew it, and was proud of them, proud of the small part he had
played in their training. In fact, he was so proud of them that as he approached
them a fluttering of guilt stirred within his chest, a dismal and unfamiliar
feeling that he tried to ignore.

After all, he told himself, it was quite possible that they wouldn’t meet any
of Florin’s lizards. It was possible that they would return as this grey dawn
grew into dusk, the six of them plodding back to break bread with their mates
with nothing more than a few scratches to grumble about.

But the Colonel didn’t think it likely. There was no doubt that the accursed
reptiles were the masters of this vast, devouring land. If they did fall upon
half a dozen straggling foot soldiers the outcome would be quick and bloody.

It didn’t matter. Their disappearance would tell him all he needed to know,
their deaths serving him as a canary’s death served the coal miners of the black
mountains.

Again, that fluttering of guilt. This time the Colonel hardened himself
against it.

This is war, he reminded himself. A cruel old business that would be even
cruder if he didn’t have the steel to play his part well. What was it that
Detlef Sierck had said? Something about the whole world being a stage, every man
an actor?

The Colonel sighed and prepared to play his role.

“Morning men,” he greeted his canaries, and returned their salute. “Just
wanted a quick word before you head out.”

They remained at attention as van Delft paused.

“Just remember,” he told them, “that you’re trying to find out if these damn
lizards are out there, and if so, how many there are. Thing is, though, this
jungle’s a pain to waltz around in. What that means is, if you do come across
any of the little pipsqueaks, don’t hang about unless you’re absolutely sure you
won’t be spotted. Understood?”

“Sir,” the patrol chorused, and he dismissed them with a final salute. They
about faced, and marched off into the morning mist. It closed in behind them,
blanketing them like a shroud as they broke formation and approached the
wilderness.

This close to, their encampment the jungle had a gnawed look about it. The
stumps and wood chippings that dozens of workgroups had left behind were damp
and dripping with moisture, as wet as if they’d been chewed—a broken blade
that had been left half buried in a tree trunk was already turning brown with
rust.

A hundred feet further on, all signs of habitation had disappeared. The trees
crowded closely to whisper dark rumours above the intruders’ heads. The thorns
grew tall and grasped eagerly at them as they pushed their way along a narrowing
track. Above them a flock of parrots fluttered and screeched uneasy warnings,
their calls louder even than the rasping of the men’s breath as they began to
climb a slope.

Half an hour later they stopped for a water break. Although the surrounding
bush was getting thicker, at least the air was clearing; the last of the mist
was burning away beneath the power of the waxing sun. The men watched one of its
beams moving through the funereal darkness of the jungle floor as they passed
around a canteen, the bright golden column like the searching gaze of some sky
god hungry for souls.

The last man took the canteen. He was no fool, and the thought of the baking
hours to come made him drink sparingly despite the sweat that already beaded his
forehead. He finished his drink with a sigh, wiped a grubby forearm across his
brow, and firmly pressed the cork back into the flask. The fat squeak of cork
twisting against metal seemed to stir something in the brush, and he looked up
in time to see the skinks’ onslaught.

They came from nowhere. One minute there was nothing but dripping green
leaves and tangled black creepers, the next the jungle was swarming with a
hurrying mass of the predators. Their crests sprang upwards as they burst from
cover, as orange as fire or as red as cockscombs against the green armour of
their scales, and even as they rushed their prey their jaws were opened in
slavering anticipation.

One of the men, a gunner, managed to scrape a spark into the firing pan of
his weapon as they fell upon him. Shot exploded from its muzzle, the lead
felling only one of his countless assailants but stunning the rest into a sudden
pause. For a moment it seemed that the shock of noise and fire and acrid smoke
might be enough to halt the attack altogether.

But only for a moment. Blinking through the black powder smoke, the reptiles
drew back the onyx-tipped javelins they carried and hurled them at the men. At
first glance the weapons appeared crude and flimsy, little more than toys with
decorative points. Yet there were dozens of them, scores even. They filled the
air with merciless hail, the weight of their stone heads driving their
razor-sharp edges through cloth and skin and muscle. The men fell back, clutching at the little wooden poles that bristled from their stricken
bodies, and the skinks leapt upon them.

With the effortless elegance of long practice, the reptiles threw their
weight behind the hafts of their spears, twisting them deeper into their
victims. Some of them, their sinuses full of the scent of warm blood, couldn’t
resist ripping mouthfuls of delicious flesh from the bodies of their screaming
victims. Gulping the still-living meat down as hot blood spurted across their
cold skins like liquid fire, they chirruped their delight, their exultant cries
sending birds exploding up and away with alarm.

Within minutes there was nothing left of the patrol. Nothing that the jungle
would remember for very long, anyway: a few useless weapons, soon to
disintegrate beneath the mulch; a few decimated carcasses wrapped in the shreds
of their clothing, soon to be consumed by maggots and beetles. Had they had the
time, the skinks would have scoured them clean there and then. But the mage
priest had made his orders clear. There was to be no delay, no hesitation.

Today the scourge of humanity would be cleansed from their world.

With barely a single hungry backward glance, the skinks scurried off to their
appointed positions. There would be plenty of meat soon enough.

It was the gunshot that saved them. The gunshot and the fact that van Delft
was high enough above the camp to hear it. Following his usual habit he had
climbed to the top tier of the central pyramid, a suitable eyrie from which to
watch his little army working upon their fortifications.

And working they were. The rumours which had raced around the camp after
Florin’s return, each more bloodcurdling than the last, had motivated the
mercenaries in a way that no officer ever could have. Most of the men were
already stripped to the waist as they toiled, their backs damp with sweat even
before the last of the mist had cleared. Toiling away to the shouted
instructions of their sergeants they built up sliding ramparts, or lashed
together the bundles of stakes that teethed these primitive earthworks, or
sharpened the points on their spikes.

Thorgrimm, beard thrust out with the dignity of his new authority, strode
from one quarter to the next, telling the captains what to do. His dwarf
warriors marched behind him in two neat files, and occasionally he would
dispatch a pair of them to work alongside their human comrades. Their very
presence seemed enough to bolster the humans’ efforts, the relative chaos of
their techniques resolving itself into a clockwork precision as the dwarfs took
charge.

Not for the first time, van Delft congratulated himself for having had the
foresight to hire Thorgrimm’s company. Time and again they had proven their
worth, even though they’d driven a harder bargain than anybody else. Van Delft
turned to look at the cannon they had positioned up here, the metalwork around
the muzzle a gargoyle’s head of bronze. He was staring at it unseeingly, his
mind playing with the idea of becoming an agent for Thorgrimm’s band of
mercenaries after he’d retired, when he heard the gunshot.

It was very faint. In fact, it was so muffled by undergrowth and distance
that if it had not been for a chance gust of wind, van Delft wouldn’t have heard
it at all. But carry the sound the warm breeze did, and van Delft turned in the
direction from which it had come. He was squinting through the last rising
tendrils of mist, wondering if he’d been mistaken, when Sigmar sent a sign.

It came as an eruption of tiny coloured shapes, dozens of them bursting up
from the canopy like fireworks on Walpurgisnacht. The flock’s distant plumage
was startling against the dull vegetation from which they’d sprung, the fiery
colours unique in a world of green.

Van Delft watched them fluttering skywards, the beat of their wings so
panicked that the whole jungle might have become one huge predator. Every
instinct in his scarred old body screamed to him that this was the warning he
had been expecting, and he cursed himself for a fool. Why had he listened to
Thorgrimm and Kereveld? He had known, deep down, that they’d been wrong, that
yesterday had been the time to go.

“May the gods curse money-grubbing mercenaries,” he muttered to himself,
then, for once careless of his dignity, he made a funnel of his hands and began
to bellow the call to battle stations.

“What’s he shouting about?” Lorenzo asked sourly, looking up from digging
towards the gesticulating shape of van Delft above them.

“I’m not sure. Can’t quite make it out,” Florin frowned. Although still pale
and sickly-looking from his week of “gallivanting”, as Lorenzo had called it, he
was already feeling strong. Apart from the discomforting way in which his bowels
seemed to have turned to water, and the discomfort of the tapestry of cuts and
bruises that purpled almost every inch of him, he felt as good as new.

That was what he had told Orbrant, anyway. The sergeant had tried to protest
when Florin had left his pallet to come and take charge of his quarter’s defences, but Florin had overruled him. After the
lonely desperation of his escape he wanted to be amongst others, wanted to see
them and hear them. He’d even taken some pleasure from smelling them, although
the reassuring qualities of the soldiers’ stale sweat was already losing its
novelty.

Florin had even made Thorgrimm welcome when he’d come to give his advice.
Although even more dour than usual after last night’s argument, the dwarf had
eventually shared some of Florin’s tobacco, mellowed by the alacrity with which
his instructions had been carried out.

They had been following these instructions, knee-deep in mud whilst cutting
the sides of their defensive ditch into a steeper angle, when van Delft had
started yelling.