CHAPTER THREE

 

 

Florin’s pulse beat a painful rhythm inside his head. His stomach rolled on waves on nausea, each one stronger than the last. Florin pulled a pillow over his head and tried to go back to sleep, when a second jarring crash rang out through the room.

“For Shallya’s sake!” he growled, sitting up and looking blearily around. The light hurt his eyes as he squinted across the chamber.

Lorenzo looked briefly up from the bundle of clothing that he was wrestling into his master’s carriage trunk and said, “About time. Come on, help me to pack. We’re going.”

“Going? Going where?” Florin snapped irritably. “I’m not going anywhere. Wake me up after lunch and we’ll go see Bastien then. Or maybe,” he collapsed back onto his pillows with a groan, “we’ll go tomorrow.”

“No we won’t,” Lorenzo said, grim-faced as he stamped the last of his master’s jackets flat and banged the lid shut.

“Well then, whenever. And will you stop making that noise? In fact, I order you to be quiet.”

“Bastien sailed for Araby last night,” Lorenzo told him, and started to beat the dust off Florin’s saddlebags, the battered souvenirs of his long pawned horse.

“What?”

“We’re going to Lustria.”

“What!”

“Unless you want to explain to Mordicio why you can’t pay him.”

The shock of this news did wonders for Florin’s hangover. He crawled out of bed and staggered over to the bucket of water Lorenzo provided for his morning wash. He dunked his head into it, letting the icy water clear his mind.

“You’re telling me Bastien’s not here anymore?” he asked, blinking in confusion and dripping water over the floorboards. “No. No, he would have told me.”

“He probably would if you’d accepted his last dinner invitation. Or the one before that. But you were too busy.”

“I was,” Florin shrugged and slumped down onto the couch. He vaguely hoped that the sunlight that streamed through the window would stop his shivering as he tried to get to grips with the situation.

Lorenzo looked sceptically at his master. Sometimes he almost seemed to want to get himself into trouble. Still, the old retainer decided, he had only himself to blame. He should have made him visit his brother.

“Araby, you say?”

“Yes, boss, Araby. Now, we’re done. Here’s your trunk, and your saddlebags. And here’s a wheat sack for anything else you want. Do you want to take that bedding?”

“We’re going to Lustria, you say?” Florin asked, comprehension dawning.

“Yes. If we can get to your friend’s ship in time.”

“Damn it.”

As if rebelling at the news, Florin’s stomach rippled queasily and the urge to vomit became overwhelming. He staggered over to the window and leaned out over the street before loudly and copiously throwing up.

From below voices rose in protest.

“Hey, isn’t that the fellow from Mordicio’s house?” Florin asked weakly, wiping his mouth with his sleeve and pointing to the street below.

Lorenzo was beside him in an instant. He watched as the shaven-headed thug, supposedly the money-lender’s secretary, led his squad of cut-throats through the crowd below. Although their uniform consisted of nothing more than their bald pates, the five men might have been brothers: their broad shoulders and sour expressions were almost identical.

“Damn.”

“The roof, I think,” Florin said. He was already feeling better, cured by the need to take charge of the situation. “What’s in here?” he asked, slinging the saddlebags over his shoulder.

“Everything you need.”

“And my cloak?”

“Here,” Lorenzo held it up. “And your sword.”

“Right then, just bar that door on the way out, would you?” Florin asked and, with a deep breath, pulled himself out of the window.

The rotten tiles of the roof crumbled underfoot as he scrambled up to the dizzying heights of the ridge. Bordeleaux was spread out below him in all its glory: from the hard marble gaze of the Lady to the sprawl of workshops and slums that led down to the harbour.

Florin cast a quick glance in that direction, and counted the forest of masts that bobbed above a sea as flat and silver as a coin. Whether one of them was Lundorf’s he had no idea. All he could do now was hope.

After a moment, Lorenzo joined him and they started the long, scrabbling journey across the high desert of sloping roofs and battered chimneystacks. Although it wasn’t the first time they’d taken this route the two men felt their hearts beating briskly at the thought of the drop that lay below. The fingers with which they gripped the handholds and ridges soon became dangerously slick with sweat.

Occasionally one of them would slip as a tile gave way. Both men tried very hard not to listen to the falling stone as it bounced the long, long way down to the street below.

Soon they came to the end of their roof and halted abruptly. The deep moat of a crossroads cut across their path, and a sheer precipice of brickwork fell away to the shadowed street below. In its depths tiny and foreshortened citizens went about their business, oblivious to the two men perched above them.

Florin glanced across the street to the next block. Its walls were studded with balconies that reached out over the divide like fungus rings on the trunk of a tree.

“Right then, where’s the ladder?” he asked, peering around.

“Gone,” Lorenzo sighed and backed away from the edge. “Look, you can see the marks where we left it.”

“Damn it all,” Florin cursed viciously and kicked a lump of lichen. “People will steal anything. Now how are we supposed to get across?”

From behind them the distant crash of splintering wood sent a flock of pigeons wheeling up into the sky.

“We’ll have to stand and fight, then.”

“Bugger that,” Lorenzo said, horrified at the enthusiasm in his master’s voice. “We can jump.”

“Jump! We’d never make it. It must be twenty feet across at least.”

“It’s nowhere near twenty feet,” Lorenzo scoffed. “Watch this.”

Hawking up a lump of phlegm he drew back his head and spat it across the divide.

“It’s as easy as that.”

“Charming,” Florin said. “But hardly proof.”

The not too distant tinkle of breaking glass floated out across the rooftops.

“You’d think nothing of jumping the distance if it was on the ground. Look, it can’t be more than ten feet to that balcony, and it’s a bit lower than us.”

“No,” Florin said, standing up on the balls of his feet and stretching his back. “No, give me my sword. We’ll stand and fight.”

Lorenzo watched his master roll his shoulders and flex his fingers, like an athlete about to hurl a javelin.

“My sword please,” he asked, his eyes sparkling.

With a shrug Lorenzo turned and walked back along the ridge of the roof, the scabbarded sword in his hand.

“Let me show you,” he said, and, before Florin could react, he’d sprinted to the edge of the roof and hurled himself into space.

For a moment he seemed to hang suspended in the air, arms and legs windmilling like some plump spider hanging on an invisible thread. The blur of movement that wrapped itself around him seemed to come from a world that was intent on rushing past. The brickwork, the lichen, the confused kaleidoscope of the street below and the simple wooden handrail of the balcony all hurtled past Lorenzo’s ungainly form as he plummeted downwards.

Florin watched open-mouthed as his servant flew through the air. Then, before he’d even had time to feel the first stab of alarm, Lorenzo had landed, his feet and palms slapping safely onto the tiled floor of the balcony in scant applause.

“There you go, boss,” he called back with a cheeky grin. “Easy as you like.”

“Yes. I see you took my sword with you. Just throw it back, would you?”

“It’d never reach,” Lorenzo shook his head regretfully. “You’d better just jump.”

Florin hesitated. Behind him the hulking shapes of Mordicio’s henchman had clambered up onto the roof. As the first of them crabbed cautiously forward and caught sight of Florin, he called something to his companions, and drew a short, fat-bladed cutlass.

Florin ground his teeth. If he’d been a merchant he’d already have fled. If he’d been a knight he’d be preparing to meet his pursuers with his belt knife. As it was he just swore, hurled his saddlebags over to Lorenzo, and prepared to jump.

“Come on, boss!” Lorenzo bellowed as though he were at a horse race. “You can do it!”

Florin rolled his neck, took a final look behind him, and jumped.

 

“Orcs, hey? So, tell me about the campaign,” Colonel van Delft said, leaning back in the cabin’s only chair and twirling the iron-grey tip of his moustache into a dangerous point. The shadow it cast onto the dank wooden wall behind him moved up and down, keeping time with the rocking of the ship and the swinging of the oil lamp.

“I was in charge of the horse,” Florin said, with poker-faced sincerity. “We had a dozen light cavalrymen with lances and a mix of pistols and crossbows. We acted as scouts for the main column, and…”

“How do you find pistols?” van Delft interrupted.

Florin scratched his chin as he tried to remember what Lundorf had told him.

“They’re slow, and don’t have a very good range. My uncle said they were worse than a bow or a sword…”

“Sensible man. And he was Count d’Artaud, you say?”

Florin nodded.

“Never heard of him. But stick to the point, lad. What happened in the first engagement?”

“We’d spotted the orc settlement the evening before. It was a crude encampment: just a ring of sharpened stakes driven into the ground around some rotten animal skin tents. The flies were everywhere, and the smell…” Florin wrinkled his nose expressively. Van Delft nodded and leaned forward eagerly.

“Numbers?”

“Maybe a hundred,” Florin replied, trying not to make it sound like a guess. “Anyway, we didn’t attack them there. Instead we waited until morning, when the count prepared an ambush.”

“What kind?” van Delft demanded.

“What kind? I don’t know.”

The Colonel raised his eyebrows.

“I mean, the count just hid most of his men in one end of a ravine, with the rest sat up on the top with boulders and bows.”

“Aaaah,” the Colonel nodded approvingly. “I see. And you were the bait?”

“Exactly. We rode up to the orcs’ hovels the next day, fired a volley at them, and retreated. They all followed in a ragged sort of mob.”

“Really?” van Delft asked, thoughtfully running his hands through the white lion’s mane of his hair.

“Yes, pretty much. So we led them into the ravine, and the count’s waiting men. They held the orcs in the ravine while the men above stoned them.”

Van Delft seemed a little distracted as he gazed at the young man in front of him.

“It was a great victory,” Florin added, and wished that he had something else to say. He almost looked at Lundorf for reassurance, and only the experience he’d gained at so many card tables stopped him from doing so.

He didn’t know why, but he could sense that, here and now, his bluff was as near to being called as it would ever be.

Van Delft leant back and studied him.

“When you say that these orcs came at you in a disorganised mob, were they completely disorganised?”

“Well,” Florin hedged, “they were by our standards.”

“Hmm,” van Delft tapped his fingers onto his chair for a moment before reaching his decision. “All right then, Monsieur d’Artaud, I’m willing to take a risk on you. Sigmar knows the Bretonnians need an officer, and you’ll be hard-pressed to do worse than the last one.”

“Sir?”

“Ask Lundorf. He seems willing enough to fill you in on things. In fact, Lundorf,” the Colonel turned to regard the officer who, despite the bilious rolling of the ship, was standing to rigid attention beside him. “I’m holding you responsible for this young man. Any problem with that?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. And by the way, you’re a junior officer so your share of the loot is ten shares, no more, no less. Understand?”

Florin bit back on the instinct to immediately demand fifteen. Something about the Colonel’s manner suggested that he was not a man used to negotiation. Instead he just nodded his assent.

“Now then, gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me I have things to do.”

“Sir,” Lundorf snapped off a salute, the bang of his heels hitting the deck in perfect time with the raised fist of his salute.

For a second Florin considered trying to copy it, but contented himself with a low bow instead.

“I’m in your debt, my lord,” he said, sweeping his arm around. “And I’m sure that if you ever have reason to…”

“Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear?” the Colonel growled. “You’re dismissed.”

Van Delft watched the two friends march hurriedly out of the cabin, then leaned back and twirled the tips of his moustaches pensively.

Florin was hardly the man he’d have chosen as a brother officer. His military career seemed both scant and exaggerated; his manners effete even for a southerner. But then, in a long career that had taken him from Imperial cadet to mercenary commander, van Delft had long since learned to make do with the materials at hand. He’d also learned to trust the judgment of officers like Lundorf.

Well, up to a point.

And anyway, after the Bretonnians’ last officer a trained chimp would be an improvement.

Smiling at his own wit the Colonel dismissed the matter from his mind, and stalked out of the claustrophobic gloom of his cabin in search of his secretary.

 

Lundorf led Florin and Lorenzo off the Colonel’s flagship and back onto the pier. Now, hours from the flotilla’s departure, its old timbers were groaning beneath the weight of the crowds which thronged it.

Carters cursed and swore as they pushed their way forward, huge casks of fresh water balanced precariously upon their vehicles. Merchants dragged or carried sacks of vegetables, or nets of fruit, or skins of wines unfit for any tavern.

Amongst all this desperate, last minute commerce, mercenaries from a dozen races and in a hundred stages of drunkenness swaggered their way back to their ships. They shoved their way arrogantly through the merchants; the whores that remained perched on the arms of some of them cackling as loudly as the seagulls that circled greedily overhead.

“Quite a little army your Colonel’s got here,” Florin raised his voice as the three of them elbowed their way through the crowd.

“Yes, and all to fit into three ships,” Lundorf laughed. “Not that they’re bad old tubs really. Of course the Colonel bagged the best one, the Hippogriff. It used to be a spice freighter, apparently, so it’s relatively dry. I was damned lucky to get my lads on it.”

Then there’s the Beaujelois here, the Tileans’ transport,” Lundorf continued, gesturing towards the fat bottomed cog that they were shoving their way past. “By Sigmar, you should see the stuff they eat. I’ve never smelt such a foul combination. You there, get away!”

An old woman, who was hunched over the basket of lemons she was carrying, had thrown herself in their path to thrust some of her wares towards them.

“A penny apiece,” she shrieked. “Cheapest in the city.”

“Begone, crone,” Lundorf pushed past her, but Florin put a hand on his arm.

“Let’s buy some,” Florin decided. “My father said they ward off the sea weakness.”

“Sea weakness?”

“Yes. Something to do with being out of sight of land.”

“Well, if you say so. How much for the basket, crone?”

“For you, your lordship, five gold crowns,” she bared a mouthful of rotten teeth and shrinking gums in what was supposed to be a winning smile. “And you can take the basket, too.”

“Five gold crowns?” Lorenzo asked, aghast, but Lundorf had already paid. The old woman dropped the coin into the front of her ragged bodice and narrowing her eyes suddenly with the caution of a millionaire in a poorhouse, she slipped away into the crowd.

“Here you go,” Lundorf said, turning to present the basket to the manservant. “Just look after those, would you?”

Before Lorenzo could argue Lundorf was once more ploughing ahead into the crowd.

“And there’s your boat,” Lundorf told them, five minutes later. The Destrier. Don’t worry, she’s not as bad as she looks.”

“No?” Florin said dubiously. He pushed his way past a knot of street children to study the bobbing wooden box that would be his home for the next three months.

The Destrier was a cog, a thickly built barrel of a ship designed to withstand the towering seas of the north. The elegant lines of the Tilean vessels that lay at anchor beyond had no parallels in her bulky frame. She wallowed in the sea as gracelessly, and as comfortably, as a pig in its sty.

She was also a lot smaller than most of the other vessels. Against the backdrop of Bordeleaux’s distant heights, even against the backdrop of the other merchantmen, the Destrier looked tiny. In fact, apart from its towering central mast, the only thing that was big about the ship was the smell of brine and unwashed bodies that wafted from her open holds.

“I’m not surprised that my predecessor jumped ship,” Florin guessed, but Lundorf shook his head.

“Oh no, it was nothing like that. There was just some, ah, unpleasantness with the witch hunters at the last port. Bad business.”

“I bet it was,” Florin barked with laughter. Then he frowned as he watched the stream of men and goods disappearing into the Destrier’s dank interior. It seemed that, even as he watched, more bodies and bundles had disappeared into the ship’s entrails than was possible. It was as though the ship were no more than a trapdoor to some other place.

“Nice looking fellows,” Lorenzo muttered sarcastically as a dozen drunken mercenaries staggered over the boarding planks. Their accents were harsh, and despite the warmth of the Bretonnian sun their flushed faces were wrapped in shapeless fur hoods. One of their number was being dragged unceremoniously behind them, his heels cutting deep ruts through the filth of the pier.

“Their captain,” Lundorf explained, with a shrug. “It’s a shame. Those Kislevites can be real daemons if they’re properly led. You needn’t worry about that, though. You’re only responsible for your fellow countrymen. There’s about a score of them, I think. Anyway, I’ll introduce you to the captain of the ship, and then I must be off to see how my lot are doing.”

Then, for the first time since he’d fled from his chambers, Florin paused. What was he doing here? He’d never been in a battle, never commanded so much as a squad. How had he bluffed his way into command of a hardened mercenary company?

He felt a sudden vertiginous sense of doubt, like a sleepwalker who awakes to find himself about to step over a high precipice, and for a moment he stood balanced on the very brink of turning back.

The roar of the world around him grew silent and, in some deep part of his soul, a dice began to spin. Each of its faces held a vision of a different route. He held his breath as it revolved, revealing different paths to take.

Now Mordicio’s mercy.

Now a passage to Araby.

“Are you all right, old man?” Lundorf asked, slapping him on the back.

And the dice was cast.

“Yes,” Florin said, drawing himself up with a sudden certainty. “Yes, I’m ready. Let’s see my new command.”

“Good man,” Lundorf said approvingly, and led him into the organised chaos of the Destrier’s foredeck.