01 - The Burning Shore (29 page)

“What’s wrong with them?”

“Seems that Menheer Kereveld’s fireworks weren’t as appreciated as they might
have been,” Florin told him, wringing out the cloth he’d draped across his
servant’s brow.

“What?”

“Kereveld’s spell. It killed seven people. Their friends aren’t too happy
about it.”

“Oh,” Lorenzo rubbed his eyes and took the flask of water Florin handed to
him. “Aren’t you supposed to be protecting him?”

Florin barked with laughter.

“Your bang on the head seems to have knocked something loose. As far as I’m
concerned the silly old fool’s on his own. He’d have been strung up already, by
the way, if it hadn’t been for van Delft and Orbrant. They’ve got him safely in
the temple while the row dies down.”

“If it dies down,” Lorenzo muttered, and took a drink. Somebody seemed to be
talking to the mob but, whatever the voice was saying, it clearly wasn’t
popular. One of the crowd replied, and his words were met with a roar of savage
approval.

“Where’s Lundorf?” asked Lorenzo.

“With his wounded. One of those damn things came up right beneath their
bivouacs. What a mess. I’ve never seen him so angry.”

Florin took the flask back from Lorenzo and popped the cork back into it.

“He helped me drag you out of the mud, by the way. You’re damned lucky to
have made it to that ditch in time. Good thinking.”

“Yes.” Lorenzo, who’d been desperately trying to claw his way out of the ditch
when the sky had fallen in, took the compliment anyway. “I never was just a
pretty face.”

Florin grunted, his smile betrayed by the concern that furrowed his brow.

“Are you sure you’re all right? Apart from losing your good looks?”

“Yes, I think so,” Lorenzo nodded cautiously and drew his knees up to his
chest. “I’m better off than Kereveld, anyway. Ranald’s balls, imagine if he
hadn’t stopped the damned spell when he did.”

“He didn’t,” Florin said. “Orbrant did.”

“Orbrant?”

“I didn’t believe it either, but it’s true. Some sort of Sigmarite charm.”

Lorenzo snorted.

“Now that is a contradiction in terms.”

The two men laughed as they turned to watch the lynch mob that surged around
the temple’s entrance. It parted for a moment to reveal van Delft and, standing
beside him, Orbrant. He stood silhouetted against the tunnel beyond, his
warhammer held before him, an immovable object against the tide of angry men.

Florin sighed.

“If you’re sure you’re all right, I suppose I’d better go and give our
sergeant a hand,” he decided, getting back to his feet.

“I’d leave Orbrant to it,” Lorenzo said, and spat out a mouthful of dirt and
blood. “He can handle himself, I’ll warrant.”

“No,” Florin shook his head reluctantly. “He’s certainly saved our hides
often enough. I owe it to him.”

“You’re starting to sound like your empty headed mate,” Lorenzo said with
disgust.

“Lundorf’s not empty headed.”

“Then how did you know who I was talking about?”

Florin opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again. Lorenzo lay back down
with a smug expression on his face.

“Well,” his master rallied at last. “It’s a good job he was empty headed
enough to pull you out of the mud.”

“Right you are, boss,” Lorenzo said airily, and Florin decided to quit while
he was ahead. Loosening his sword in its sheath he made his way over to the
hubbub, stepping out of the way of a Marienburger that came pelting around the
corner. Florin hung back as the man flung himself at the crowd, willing him to
clear a path through the tightly packed bodies.

“Message for the Colonel,” the Marienburger cried out imperiously, using his
elbows to clear a path through his comrades’ mutinous ranks. They cursed at him
as he ploughed his way through them, and more than one elbow struck back. The
messenger had been well chosen, though. He ignored the blows just as stubbornly
as he ignored the complaints, and fought his way through the bruising scrum as
if his life depended on it.

Florin, following in his wake, was thankful for it.

“Message for the Colonel.”

“What is it?” van Delft, welcoming the distraction, called out to him.

“We’ve found it, sir. Captain Lundorf says to come quick.”

“Found what?”

“The loot, sir. The abandoned treasure.”

“Rubbish,” a voice cried from the back of the crowd. “We’re not falling for
that one again!”

But already, in a hundred hearts, feelings of vengeance were melting away
beneath thoughts of wealth. Dozens of muttered conversations faded beneath the
movement of scores of feet which turned, before Florin’s very eyes, to a
stampede. All of a sudden he found himself surrounded by a tide of rushing men.

“Hey, wait,” the messenger cried, seeing what was happening. “It’s ours. We
found it!”

Florin found himself standing alone in front of the Colonel.

“Come back!” the messenger wailed, following the hurrying crowd. “That was a
message for the Colonel, not you.”

Van Delft watched him disappear back around the corner, then strolled over
towards Florin.

“I thought you were keeping an eye on Kereveld for me.”

“Well, sir…”

“Captain d’Artaud assigned that duty to me, sir,” Orbrant cut in smoothly,
his features hidden by the shadows of the approaching night.

The two officers looked at him, identical expressions of disbelief on their
faces.

“Sergeant Orbrant,” van Delft said after a long, uncomfortable silence.
“You’re an extraordinary man.”

“Thank you, sir.”

A chorus of joyful yells burst out from the darkness on the temple’s far
side, followed by a chorus of wild curses and angry threats.

Van Delft sighed.

Damn mercenaries. They’d be the death of him.

“Two statuettes, ugly. Six pounds in total,” Lundorf said, taking them off
the scales and passing them to Thorgrimm. The dwarf studied them briefly, nodded
his head in agreement, and placed them into the empty powder chest.

Behind them Castavelli’s pen scratched across the parchment, recording the
find for posterity.

“One breastplate, round. Three pounds two ounces in total,” Lundorf intoned
as the scales balanced.

“Nice workmanship,” Thorgrimm decided, turning the piece of armour over to
study the pattern that had been chased underneath. Dozens of pairs of eyes, each
as suspicious as the next, watched him hold their treasure up to the light.

Castavelli looked up.

“Nice workmanship.” He chewed the end of his quill thoughtfully. “Should I
write that?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Lundorf said, picking the next object from the pile
beside him.

“One…” He paused and scratched the back of his head. “One
objet d’art,
lots of frogs. Seven pounds four ounces in total.”

“Aye,” Thorgrimm agreed, examining the carved forms that swarmed around the
thing. Strange human/lizard hybrids swarmed together in tight, interlocking
patterns that seemed to squirm beneath Morrslieb’s sickly light. The fell moon
sat above them now, its wan light reflected in the eyes of the mercenaries. It
made them gleam like the eyes of wolves.

Thorgrimm cautiously placed the piece of gold into the box.

“Knife, useless. Twelve ounces.”

And the count went on. The stained, sulphurous interior of the powder chest
disappeared beneath the hoard, a glittering dream made real by an accident of
Kereveld’s sorcery. It had been the holocaust wrought by his magics that had
uncovered the treasure trove, mixing the gold with mud, blood, corpses and
shattered remains.

It was as well for the wizard that it had. Rich men, after all, had more
reason to fear the noose.

“Armband, snapped. Ten ounces exactly.”

The gathering watched the armband clink into place. They watched Castavelli
mark it down. There should have been joy on their faces, and on some there was.
But on most there was merely a sober calculation, the deaths of their comrades
still weighing heavily on them.

A bloody price indeed for the uncovering of this treasure trove.

Of course, there had been six other planets. Planets whose boreholes had
driven through nothing but wilderness, the debris of their passing still lay
unseen and ungleaned amongst shattered trees and steaming mud. Even now, with
the company’s cache being weighed out, there were absences in its ranks. These
were the men who had realised the possibility that, a few hundred yards away,
great fortunes lay strewn across the jungle floor.

A pair of Bretonnians.

A handful of Kislevites.

A single Marienburger, the sole survivor of his section.

And as for Tileans… well, who knew how many of them had slipped away?
Castavelli had things other than his men to count.

As Morrslieb slunk across the black velvet of the tropical sky more men
dripped away from the expedition like blood from a wound. Inspired by greed and,
although they didn’t know it, by Morrslieb herself, they snuck away between tree trunks as red as picked bones
and into the darkness beyond.

By the time morning came not, a single one of them had returned.

Success, a long dead commander had told a youthful van Delft, can be just as
dangerous to a mercenary army as failure. Maybe even more so. With failure comes
the forced discipline of desperation. With success comes… comes… Damn. What
had the word been?

Ah yes: dissolution.

Still perched on top of one of the fallen blocks, van Delft watched Lundorf
dismiss the parade assembled before him. There were perhaps a hundred
mercenaries left to slope away, four-fifths of the total that had started out
from Bordeleaux. And what a bedraggled four-fifths they were.

The uniforms, even those of the Tileans, were now little better than peasant
rags. The leather of their cross belts and boots had taken on a dark greenish
sheen that no amount of scrubbing was able to remove. Even the score of dwarfs,
standing to one side in a neat little block, were starting to look ragged and
mildewed.

It could have been worse, van Delft thought, but then again, it could have
been better. It wasn’t as though they’d even been into battle; the seven bodies
that lay freshly buried in the field beyond had nothing to do with any enemy.
Perhaps that was why a dozen more of their comrades had deserted.

If they
had
deserted.

The commander tugged at the tips of his moustache and thought back to the
other disappearances they’d suffered. The more he thought about them, and he
thought about them a lot more than he’d let on, the less likely it seemed that
they were the result of men running away. After all, where would they run away
to?

No. Twelve gone in one night was not something he could turn a blind eye to.
Like it or not, he’d have to risk a patrol, see if he couldn’t get to the bottom
of this. Not a big patrol, though. Just half a dozen men, led by captain…

As he paused to consider a name, that rascal of a Bretonnian strode past as
if chosen by Sigmar himself, a shovel slung over his shoulder.

I’ll be damned, van Delft thought, shaking his head in disbelief. An officer
with a shovel. Wonder what my old colonel would have made of that?

Never mind. He’d save young d’Artaud from the indignity of getting mud
beneath his fingernails.

“Captain,” he called out, jumping down from the block. “Can I have a word?”

“Well done, Bertrand,” Florin said, gingerly taking the fur cap that the
trooper handed to him. Sodden with damp and grey with mildew the lump of bear
skin looked ready for the midden.

“Think it was dropped on purpose, boss?” Bertrand said as the stitching of the
shapeless lump tore beneath Florin’s fingers.

“No.” Florin shook his head regretfully and passed the thing back. “You know
what those Kislevites are like. Ever seen one without his hat?”

Bertrand shook his head and tossed the filthy cap back onto the clump of
thorns where it had been found.

The two other members of the patrol exchanged a glance, their eyes wide with
anxiety and their skin grey in the gloom the jungle. One of them swallowed
nervously and cleared his throat.

“So, if they’ve been snatched,” he suggested, carefully optimistic, “we’d
better go back, hadn’t we? Better let the commander know what’s going on.”

“In a minute,” Florin muttered, peering through the floating tendrils of mist
into the dank hollows beyond.

So far they’d stuck to the path, more or less, following the track they’d
already cut through the strangling darkness that guarded the ruins from the
river. The oppressive mass of the jungle, the choking humidity of its breath loud with countless swarming insects, had closed
around them eagerly as they stumbled back into its embrace. Already the four men
were slicked with sweat, their shins blue with a dozen stumbling impacts and
their flesh studded with insect bites.