CHAPTER EIGHT

 

 

Florin wasn’t the only one wondering why his company had been transferred to the Hippogriff. Lorenzo had assumed that it was to avoid further trouble with the Kislevites. Lundorf, with whose company the Bretonnians had been rotated, suggested that it was a sort of promotion.

Only van Delft really knew, of course. But the commander had remained as tight lipped as always about his reasons, and Florin, who was always happier away from the commander’s penetrating blue gaze, hadn’t pressed him.

He was beginning to wish that he had sought an answer though. The uncertainty was one of the thoughts that had kept him awake tonight, his hopes and fears for the future combining to drive him out of the claustrophobic confines of his cabin.

Now he stood on the deck, leaning over the warm wood of the guard-rail and peering out over a phosphorescent ocean. The shore lay in a black line along the distant horizon, the tangled mass of the jungle blurred by mist. Despite the late hour the heat remained constant, almost as if the pale light of the fattening moon, Mannslieb was somehow warming the night air.

Florin gazed at its pockmarked face, and then beyond into the stars that lay above it. They glittered unblinkingly in the black void of space, gazing hungrily down like predatory eyes.

The Bretonnian found himself scanning the heavens for the familiar constellations of his home. When he realised that there were none he was seized with a strange certainty that somewhere, beneath the northern skies where they still burned, there was another Florin d’Artaud.

This other Florin d’Artaud might be drinking ale, or playing cards, or rolling around a bed bought with either love or gold. He would be safe from the horrors that awaited in the darkness of the Lustrian shore.

A meteor hissed across the void above and the real Florin used the gods’ fire to wish his alter ego luck.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” a voice commented from the shadows, and he started with a thrill of superstitious fear. Then the speaker stepped out into the moonlight, his stooped form dispelling Florin’s unease.

“Yes,” he said as his pulse slowed back down. “Very beautiful. But very strange. I can’t see the Mill, or the Griffin. Or even the Lady’s Veil.”

“But you can see the Serpent. Look up there, see the bright star to the left of the pinnace?”

Florin followed the wizard’s finger and nodded.

“That’s the eye. Beneath it you can see the two fangs, those trails of smaller stars.”

“So you can,” Florin nodded happily as his imagination joined the dots. “And its body spirals over into the horizon.”

“Exactly.”

“I’m Florin d’Artaud, by the way,” he held out his hand and the wizard took it, his grip cool and dry.

“Yes, van Delft mentioned you. And I’m Bartolomi Kereveld.”

The two men shook hands, and Florin found himself studying the creases and wrinkles that lined the old man’s face. He was searching for a trace of the evil Orbrant had spoken of. All he found were the beginnings of a wry smile.

“Don’t worry,” Kereveld said, his voice gently mocking. “You won’t see any horns.”

Florin snorted, embarrassed that he had been so transparent.

“I never thanked you for driving away that daemon,” he rapidly changed the subject.

“Daemon?”

“Yes, the sea monster.”

“Oh that,” Kereveld’s voice quavered with the effort of appearing modest. “It was nothing. Just a simple meteor storm. Any one of my brethren could have cast a similar version.”

“Yet it seemed to impress the daemon.”

“Pshaw,” the wizard waved away the compliment. “It was no daemon. Just a serpentia megalothon. Quite a natural creature, I assure you. Although it was a prize specimen.”

“Yes,” Florin remarked dryly and cast his gaze back to the shore. It seemed to be waiting for them, brooding with the menace of a beast hidden in ambush. “I bet we’ll find plenty of prize specimens in there, too, of one sort or another.”

“Let’s hope so,” Kereveld nodded humourlessly. “Let’s hope so.”

Florin couldn’t help hoping for quite the opposite. Although in that, as in many things, he was destined to be disappointed.

 

“Are you sure I can’t persuade you?” van Delft asked, although he was already sure that he knew what the answer would be.

“Dead sure,” Captain-Owner Gorth said, and spat towards the distant mouth of the river. It was massive, a great hungry maw that opened up out of the green mass of the jungle to vomit its muddy waters far, far out to sea. Even with his ships anchored here, half a mile off that treacherous coast, Gorth couldn’t see anything through the silt-laden water.

“I’m damned if I’ll risk my girls in that puddle.”

Van Delft had a sudden, fleeting image of his own two girls. Women, really, but no less sweet to him for that. They’d be sitting in the morning room of their house in Marienburg now, sewing or gossiping while they waited for him to bring back their dowries.

Quite why he should have to risk life and limb so that he could bribe worthless young men to marry them he didn’t quite know. But then, he’d never tried to understand the elegant world which they seemed to so much enjoy.

“All right,” he sighed, his attention snapping back to the task in hand. “We agreed that you’d wait for us at sea. No reason why you should change your mind now.”

Gorth nodded, satisfied, and thrust his thumbs into the rope belt that disappeared beneath the bulge of his stomach. He’d become rich from knowing when to take chances, and when not to. And risking the hulls of his ships in unknown shallows was definitely an example of when not to.

Still, there was no point being mean-spirited. Apart from anything else he quite liked van Delft. Even though he did stink of aristo, there was no pretension about him, and he had an honest ruthlessness that reminded Gorth of himself.

“Tell you what, though, Colonel…”

“Commander.”

“Aye, commander, I’ll lend you some of my lads to see your boats to the shore. Wouldn’t want to lose any more of you whilst your still in my care, so to speak.”

“Very decent of you,” van Delft thanked him. “Perhaps you could ask them to help us get them into the water the right way up?”

Gorth sniggered happily. Like every other sailor in the flotilla he’d been enjoying watching the mercenaries struggle and curse with their long boats. One of them had already slipped its ropes and upended itself in the water. It bobbed up and down as it rode the gentle swell out to sea like a great wooden tortoise.

“Manolis!” Gorth bellowed, making his bosun jump. “Don’t just sit there. Get those damned boats into the water the right way up.”

“Aye, captain.” Manolis saluted and began to chivvy his men into action. Some of them took charge of lowering the long boats into the sea, whilst others stripped off and dived into the water. A pair of them swam off to round up the escapee, their long, powerful strokes chopping into the sea like axe strokes. Others, laughing with pleasure at the coolness of the water after the scorching heat of the sun, were treading water and waiting to climb into the descending long boats.

Further down the deck Florin let the sailors take over the task with relief. Lorenzo stood sweating beside him, his palms stinging from a rope that had slipped through his hands.

“Well, boss,” he said, rubbing his palms together and looking past the heaving backs of the sailors and into the greenery beyond. “Looks like things are going to get interesting.”

“Looks that way,” Florin said doubtfully. Now that they were close enough to see the jungle in detail he was beginning to realise how wrong his ideas about it had been.

Even during their stay at Swamptown he’d continued to think of it as more or less a forest. He knew that there would be bigger trees though, and that the heat would be stifling. He also knew that there would be strange plants and animals lurking in this new world, perhaps reptilian brothers of the bears and wolves that inhabited the forests of Bretonnia.

In short he had expected the jungle to be recognisable.

It wasn’t.

There was nothing at all recognisable about the impenetrable green mass that now lay waiting for them upon that alien shore. No mere collection of trees and wildlife this, no shaded domain of bear and boar. Instead its huge form towered above the waves like the bulk of a single monstrous animal. The hollows between its limbs were choked with vines and darkness, the air above it misted with its hot breath.

And, although it seemed poised with the breathless anticipation of a predator in ambush, it was far from silent, this great beast. The whisper of humid winds in the undergrowth, the cries of hunters and the screams of the hunted, the low, constant throb of countless insects; these and a thousand other sounds combined to whisper an entreaty, or perhaps a terrible threat, to the men who would soon be offering themselves to its hungry heart.

“Monsieur d’Artaud,” a voice called behind him, and Florin turned to see Kereveld struggling through the ranks of the dwarfs who were waiting on the other end of the deck. The wizard towered above their steel-helmed heads, the great blunt cone of his hat making him seen even more of a giant as he rudely elbowed his way forward. He remained oblivious to their angry stares, as he bumbled along with no more than an occasional, “Excuse me.”

Following in his wake came his servant, sweating and wheezing beneath a great haversack and a dangling collection of water bottles and map cases.

“Good day to you, Menheer Kereveld,” Florin greeted him. “Let me introduce you to my manservant Lorenzo.”

“A pleasure,” the wizard waved away his hand and turned back to Florin. “The Colonel tells me that I’m to travel with you down the river. You’re quite the warrior, by all accounts.”

“Just as you say,” Florin decided, his chest swelling at the flattery. “In fact it will be an honour.”

A miserable sigh wracked Lorenzo upon hearing that dirty word.

“I do have a few more bits and pieces to take with us, though. I wonder if your man would be so good as to help Theobold here?”

Florin looked at Lorenzo, who nodded and followed the exhausted Theobold back through the milling throng of the crowd.

“Come on then,” an impatient voice called from over the side. “Let’s be having you. Who’s first?”

“That will be us,” Kereveld decided, despite Thorgrimm’s raised hand, and led the way to the waiting sailor. With barely a pause he hiked up the hem of his robe and clambered awkwardly over the gunwale, the pale sticks of his calves flashing in the sunlight.

“First squad,” Florin called out to his men as he followed this spindly charge. “Follow me.”

He checked his pack, and vaulted over ship’s side, climbing down the cargo net that drooped into the dangerously rocking long boat. Below him the coxswain waited, holding the boat close to the high wooden wall of the ship’s side.

“Make your way along to the prow, sir,” he said, pointing to the narrow ledge upon which Kereveld was already shifting uncomfortably. “Right then, who’s next? Come on, come on.”

Florin was content to leave the loading of the boat to the coxswain. Barefoot and clothed in nothing but a red bandanna and a pair of filthy breeches, the sailor was the only man who seemed happy on the dangerously pitching deck. He chivvied the mercenaries into their places, encouraging them with a constant stream of profanities and orders as they stowed their kit and unlimbered the oars.

Lorenzo and Theobold were the last on board, following the great mass of Kereveld’s equipment. The men swore nervously as the two servants clambered over them. The boat was now so low in the water that each sudden movement threatened to tip it over.

“What have you got in all those cases?” Florin asked Kereveld as Lorenzo squeezed in by his side.

“Oh, bits and bobs. You know, tools of the trade.”

“Right then,” the coxswain interrupted them. “When I say ‘one’ lift your oars and swing the blades back. When I say ‘two’ cut ’em into the water. And when I say ‘three’, pull. Got that?”

A chorus of jibes and curses greeted his instruction, but the sailor just smiled.

“Good. Right then, one!”

“Two!”

The oars splashed into the water in a ragged volley.

“Three!”

And the boat lurched forward.

“Not bad for choir boys,” the coxswain joked. “Now let’s try again shall we? One!”

Slowly, but with increasing speed, the boat began to make its way towards the mouth of the river. By now other boats had left the flotilla, some of them full of men, others low with luggage. The heads and shoulders of the expedition’s six mules peered calmly over the gunwale of one, whilst another was slewing this way and that beneath the weight of the dwarfs and their cannon.

Florin’s own men were boisterous with nerves, good tinder for the arguments which flared up as one man splashed his fellows with a missed oar stroke, or when another slipped and rocked the boat.

Then the sluggish breeze changed and they caught the first ripe whiff of the jungle. It was enough to silence them. Like cattle that have smelled a wolf they quietened, their eyes wide and alert as they searched the looming coastline.

Before long they had drawn level with the first of the overhanging boughs, its fingers reaching out for them from the banks of the river. Long ropy tendrils trailed down from them into the muddy water, still in the sultry, unmoving air.

A mosquito landed on Florin’s knuckle and began to drink.

“I wish we hadn’t come,” Lorenzo murmured. Florin just grunted as he flicked the mosquito away. Three more took its place.

They drew to a halt, the coxswain slowing the beat of their oars so that they held their position against the current. Gradually the rest of the long boats, all of which had now been launched from the distant trio of the ships, caught up with them.

Florin saw the familiar gleam of Orbrant’s shaved head in the last boat, and the white flash of van Delft’s moustaches in the one preceding it. The commander was lying back against the stern of his boat, lounging as low and as comfortably as if he were a passenger in a Marienburg gondola.

“Right,” the coxswain said firmly as the twelve boats drew into a neat line, bobbing up and down on the muddy river like so many ugly ducklings “Let’s get on with it. One!”

“Two!”

“Three!”

“I wonder how we’ll know where these ruins are?” Florin pondered as the boat went forward. “Will they be right on the river, do you think?”

“Ruins!” Lorenzo spat as though the word were a profanity. “Who cares if we find them or not? How many ruins do you know that have treasure in them?”

“They were abandoned,” Florin told him, doubtfully. “The inhabitants wouldn’t have had time to take their treasure.”

“Everybody has time to take treasure.”

Although the thought had occurred to Florin, he didn’t think it wise to admit as much in front of the lads.

“It’s a bit late to be worrying about that now,” he said, conscious of the effect his friend’s complaints might have on the men. It didn’t help that there was a lot of truth in what he said. After all, what kind of men would just run off and leave their treasure behind?

One of the mercenaries, a short, barrel-chested northerner called Bertrand, seemed to share his concerns.

“Perhaps there’ll be no gold,” he told Lorenzo with a shrug. “But if you can’t take a joke you shouldn’t have joined up.”

To Florin’s relief a murmur of agreement rippled through the men.

“A joke I can take,” Lorenzo lied. “But I wonder how funny it will seem when we return with empty pockets. There’s not a man on this world who’d abandon his treasure. His children, perhaps. His wife, certainly. But his purse? Never!”

Kereveld, who had been rummaging carefully through a wide leather satchel, pulled out a small, mildewed book and waved it at Lorenzo, as if to admonish him.

“You’re right about that,” he told him, carefully opening the book. “But you don’t have to worry. The things that built this city weren’t men. They were the ancients. Great and terrible beings of unimaginable power. To them gold was just the same as stone, or lead. And when their doom came upon them, they no longer had use for either.”

The boat fell silent as the men thought about that. Amidst the narrowing banks of the river and the cacophony of screeches and calls that followed their progress, the wizard’s words hadn’t been as comforting as he’d wished.

Sensing this Kereveld looked up.

“So, there will be gold for you. Take my word on it.”

Lorenzo, who never trusted anybody’s word on anything, opened his mouth to speak, then snapped it shut as Florin kicked him.

“What’s that book you’ve got there?”

“An old logbook. The sole survivor of another expedition sold it to a merchant in Swamptown, who sold it to a captain, who was wise enough to sell it to the college,” Kereveld told him. “It was a real find. There’s even a map in it for us to follow. We’re not the first humans to make this trip, you see. That’s how I know there’ll be loot for your men.”

“What happened to the first expedition?”

“The book doesn’t really say. I suppose they were all killed off, one way or another.”

Once more silence descended upon the boat, broken only by the riffling of parchment pages and the thoughtful splash of the oars.

“Well,” Lorenzo decided at length, “that’s a great comfort.” The men’s nervous laughter drifted through the mist that covered the water. It floated up to the distant canopy, and disappeared into the choking undergrowth of the shore. And there, amongst the darkness of matted vines and rotting trees, it reached the ears of the creatures that had been following the boats since the river mouth. They froze at the sound of laughter, these things, their faces void of any emotion as they listened to the alien sound of the invaders. Only after the last of the boats had passed did they twitch back into life, chameleonic skins rippling as they scurried away to carry their strange tidings to their masters.

 

Hours passed, punctuated only by the splashing of the oars and the cries and shrieks of the jungle’s invisible denizens.

The sun reached its glorious zenith, its burning light stronger here than on any other place in the world. It scorched away the last curtains of mist that had clouded the expedition’s path.

Perhaps the new brightness was why Kereveld sounded so certain, his voice full of confidence as he directed the coxswain out of the main river and into a smaller tributary.

The wizard’s eyes constantly flickered between the mildewed logbook and the serpentine twists of the river. From time to time he’d pull a large, brass-bound compass from his pocket and gaze at it with the concentration of a fortune-teller with a crystal ball.

Whatever he saw there, apart from the swinging pointer, he kept to himself. But it set him muttering distractedly, and gnawing the tips of his moustaches with an uncertainty that Lorenzo didn’t like one little bit.

He struggled with the urge to complain as the banks of the tributary closed in around them, and the claustrophobic heat of the air grew heavier. They were making their way deeper into the jungle’s heart.

The day wore on, and the sun disappeared from the narrow strip of sky above. From behind them a cry rang out from the tail end of their straggling fleet, growing louder as it echoed its way up the line from one coxswain’s throat to the next.

“Sir,” their own coxswain said, passing the message on to Kereveld. “The commander says we’re to stop and prepare to camp for the night.”

“Yes, yes,” Kereveld muttered, glancing up from a series of scrawled sketches and glancing worriedly at his compass. “Anywhere you like.”

The sailor looked at the impenetrable thicket that grew up out of the water on either side. Then he looked at Florin.

“We’ll give it another half an hour,” he declared. “If it’s still like this we’ll have to just tie up and sleep in the boats.”

But, far from thinning out, the jungle seemed to grow thicker. By the time the boats finally glided to a halt there wasn’t even a glimpse of soil, just an endless pincushion of bamboo stalks that grew straight up from the sludge of the river bottom.

Night closed in, and with it, swarms of flies midges and plump, greedy mosquitoes. Florin passed around the pot of the lotion they’d bought in Swamptown, but it did little good. The insects, made devious by hunger, avoided the toxic-tasting skin of their arms and faces and delved up into cuffs, or down into collars, or just waited until the sweat of the hot tropical night washed away the repellent.

They certainly ate better than their prey, who had nothing to munch their way through but hard bread and small beer.

Florin, scratched and shifted, his back already cramped with pain. He knew that he would never be able to sleep tonight. He wondered if he should organise a watch, and was still wondering when the rocking of the boat and the quiet drone of his comrades’ voices lulled him into a deep sleep.

The next day they lost their first man.

 

He was called Moritzio Benetti, and he’d been one of Castavelli’s men for a dozen of his twenty-eight years. Florin had been awoken by the cries of his captain in the warm fog of dawn.

“What is it?” he asked Lorenzo, blinking and stretching painfully.

“The Tileans have lost a man,” Lorenzo told him, his voice low and unhappy.

“Lost him? How do you mean, lost him? Where could he have gone?”

“That seems to be the question.”

The sound of the Tileans’ calls drifted through the mist with a new intensity.

“I don’t see where he can have gone. There’s nothing to. stand on, for a start. Unless he swam away…” Florin let the sentence trail off, knowing how ridiculous that suggestion was.

There was a lull in the Tileans’ calls for their lost comrade, and for a moment Florin thought that he could hear a man weeping.

Beside him Kereveld grunted into wakefulness, and crammed his hat down onto the tangled mess of his hair.

“Lost a man, hey?” he asked after a moment. “Well, it’s only to be expected. Let’s get on.”

Fourteen pairs of eyes turned on him coldly, but the wizard, unmoved, had already returned to the study of his book.

 

After an hour’s rowing they came to another fork in the river. After some hesitation, Kereveld directed them first to the left before changing his mind and choosing the right.

“Lorenzo,” Florin said, his voice level with a careful insouciance he’d perfected over a thousand card tables in happier times. “Let’s keep an eye on the route we take. When we return we can try and give old Kereveld here a break.”

Lorenzo’s face wrinkled up into a smile, and for a moment he seemed on the verge of patting his master on the head as though he was a usually stupid child who has just had a bright idea.

“Good idea, boss. In fact, I’ve been doing just that since we set off.”

“Good man,” Florin told him, and settled back to watch a troop of tiny monkeys that were following the boats curiously.

“Must ask Graznikov if they’re any relation,” he mused, earning a dutiful chuckle from his men.

“That’s funny,” said Kereveld, to nobody in particular. “I could have sworn we should be going east now.”

“What does it matter, as long as we’re all happy?” Lorenzo asked him sarcastically.

“Yes, you’re right,” the wizard sighed as he gazed upwards at the first glint of the sun above the canopy. “Sometimes I feel like the great Heiermat himself.”

He must be putting it on, Florin thought.

He must be.

 

“It’s there. I don’t believe it? It’s really there!”

The boat rocked wildly as Kereveld leapt to his feet, the bony digit of his forefinger outstretched as he pointed excitedly into the jungle.

“What is?” Florin asked, following the wizard’s gaze anxiously. The last time the old man had waved his hands in this way the sky had been split asunder with a meteor shower.

This time, though, there was no such spectacular denouement.

This time, there appeared to be nothing.

“Look, can’t you see it?” Kereveld turned on him, impatience edging his excitement.

Florin, shielding his eyes against the glare of sunlight on the water, peered forward into the wide lake that had opened up before them. Its surface lay as still as glass apart from the ripples the expedition’s oars made, a great horseshoe of brackish water perhaps a quarter of a mile across.

Here and there lilies floated upon its surface, the sunlight so bright on the great leaves that they glowed emerald green. Florin had been busy watching the frogs and dragonflies chasing each other across the archipelagoes they made when the wizard had started yelling and windmilling his arms around.

“I can’t see anything,” Florin grumbled, his eyes now flitting over the walls of the surrounding jungle. If ever there was such a thing as uniform chaos it was here. Every mile of it was the same green, insect-riven tangle, and yet every foot contained combinations of life that were as unique as any snowflake.

The wizard, his face flushed with the heat and the relief, glared down at the mercenary.

“Look straight ahead. Can’t you see that rock? The one that’s shaped like an eagle’s head? That’s what we’ve been looking for.”

Now that it had been pointed out Florin realised that he could see what the wizard had described. Although it was as tall as one of the Lady’s cathedral spires the great fang of rock was dwarfed by the great snarl of trees that stood behind it.

The great stone had also been humbled by undergrowth. Although grey patches still showed here and there, countless strains of moss and lichen and climbing vines had coloured it the same thousand shades of green as its surroundings.

At the very top of it a stand of palms waved, like a battle flag planted on the enemy’s ramparts.

“You think that looks like an eagle’s head?” Florin asked doubtfully, but Kereveld waved the question away with a grunt.

“It looks more like a crested griffon’s head, which is what I was looking for.”

“Then why didn’t you say so?”

“Because you fellows are too ignorant to know what a crested griffon looks like. But anyway, come on coxswain. Head towards the rock.”

“Aye, sir,” the boatman said, and called out a new tune for the oarsmen to follow. As the boat slowly turned and glided towards their destination Kereveld smiled to himself, then took off his hat to wipe the sweat from his brow.

“Thank Sigmar for that,” he confided in Florin, who was still trying not to be offended by being called ignorant. “I was sure that we were lost.”

“Really?” the Bretonnian replied. “And what would we have done then?”

“The gods alone know,” Kereveld said happily, settling back as the other boats in their flotilla arrowed towards the rock. “To be honest I was never really sure that this logbook was genuine until now.”

“Didn’t you know?”

“No, of course not. One never knows with these old grimoires. And by then, of course, it’s usually too late.”

Florin looked at Lorenzo who gave him a “told you so” look.

“This was your idea,” he reminded him, thinking back to their flight from Mordicio’s henchmen.

“Oh, so you knew,” Kereveld said, surprise lilting his voice. “I didn’t think that van Delft wanted anybody to know. He said you’d all be too superstitious to sign up to an expedition organised by my college.”

“Your college,” Florin repeated flatly, more of a statement than a question.

“Yes, the college of the heavens. Oh, I admit we’ve had a few disasters in the past, but still. That’s wasn’t going to stop me.”

“Everyone needs gold, I suppose,” Florin said carefully, aware that the hum of conversation had died amongst his listening men as they plied their oars.

“Gold? Oh no, we’re not here for gold,” Kereveld’s interest in the conversation died as suddenly as it began. He was now busily holding the ancient logbook up against the tree-line and squinting first at the picture and then at the tower of rock.

Florin gently took a hold of his shoulder.

“So, if we’re not here for gold, what are we here for?”

“Heiermat’s last theorem,” Kereveld turned to him; his face clouded with confusion. “Do you mean to tell me that you didn’t know?”

 

God cursed moron, van Delft thought savagely as he strode around the perimeter. All he had had to do was to keep his mouth shut.

He paused as a gang of Kislevites threw some bushels of debris over what had once been a rampart. It had become so overgrown that it was now useless: nothing more than a demarcation point between the camp to be cleared and the towering heights of the jungle beyond.

The men returned to their work and the commander resumed his furious pacing, silently cursing that fool of a wizard as he ploughed around the circuit for a second time.

The only thing that had saved the expedition had been the fact that his damned book had been right. The eagle-headed rock had stood over the remains of a human campsite. Broken amphorae had been found, their wine-stained shards held stubbornly within knots of ground vines. There had been boats, too, their rotten hulls as dank and maggot-ridden as ship’s biscuits. They’d been left with the expedition’s own boats by the shore of the lake, a twilit place where mud and reeds gave way to fallen leaves and sharp-bladed elephant grass.

They had also found a scattering of gold coins. If it hadn’t been for them van Delft doubted that the men would still be here.

The rumours had spread from the wizard’s boat like some terrible plague. It had infected even the best of his men with pointless doubts and imagined fears. The gold had proved some small antidote, the odd hexagonal shapes of the coins and the bizarre patternings less important than their weight and their glitter.

Still, it had been a damn close run thing. Even some of the captains had looked ready to cut and run.

Well, Castavelli had, at least. And if he had gone that pig’s bladder Graznikov wouldn’t have been far behind.

Bloody politics, van Delft thought, and kicked at what looked like a giant cockroach. Why didn’t I stay with the Emperor’s army?

The bug turned on him and sank needle-sharp mandibles into the leather of his boot. He stamped on it, crushing it beneath his heel.

It made him feel better. And anyway, close run thing or not, there had been no mutiny. At least, not yet. The men were busy clearing the small stockade, every one clear in his duty of sentry or axe man or cook. The thick white smoke of their fires was already rising into the air; a dozen acrid pillars that van Delft hoped might serve to keep the mosquitoes at bay.

He wanted them to be as comfortable as possible, for tonight at least. Because it was tonight that would see the expedition succeed or fail. If he lost the hearts of his men now it was all over.

Bloody wizard, he thought again, but this time a little more distractedly. Then he went to order the unpacking of some of the expedition’s onions and dried meat for a decent stew.

Behind him the men sweated as they worked, and talked as they sweated. And within their talk rumours grew and took on a life of their own so that, by the time the perimeter had been hacked clear and the food cooked, nobody was quite sure why they were here in the first place.

By the time they’d eaten even their officers were beginning to wonder why. Van Delft, strolling around the smouldering campfires with a glowing cigar in his mouth, could feel their doubt as he rounded them up like errant sheep and led them back to his own campfire.

Kereveld was already sitting there, the flat pillar of his hat nodding up and down as he dozed away the day’s unaccustomed hardship. A contented smile had twisted the tips of his moustache upwards, and whenever the wizard’s eyes flickered open he glanced around the camp as fondly as if he were everybody’s favourite uncle, and this was a treat he’d arranged for them.

Van Delft had to admire his nerve.

“Right then,” he began, when they were all seated and plied with whatever alcohol they’d take. “What’s with all these stories?”

The five men stared either into the flames, or at the flickering shadows that sidled ceaselessly through the jungle beyond. Thorgrimm, the dwarfs’ leader, looked into the hissing bowl of his pipe.

“Captain d’Artaud,” van Delft selected a volunteer, his voice still soft with nothing more than mild interest. “I believe that some of the wilder stories came from your boat.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Florin murmured modestly, as if he were disparaging a compliment. “We just happened to hear our friend here telling us that his college had funded this jaunt, not the merchantmen we’d thought. And that we weren’t here for gold.”

He looked carefully into the fire as van Delft studied him.

“Actually,” he said. “We have been funded by a merchant, who is also a member of Kereveld’s college. And as to not being about gold… well, why are you here?”

Florin thought about telling the truth, but only for a split second.

“To seek my fortune.”

Van Delft nodded approvingly.

“And you, Captain Lundorf. How about you?”

“The same,” Lundorf said with a shrug.

“Captain Castavelli?”

“Si, for fortune. ‘Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi’, as the ancients used to say, and who are we to argue with some wisdom? Although fortune, she is like all women, she is…”

“Yes, yes, thank you,” van Delft hurried on. “And you, Captain Graznikov. Why are you here?”

“Gold,” said the Kislevite simply, and the dwarf beside him nodded agreement.

Van Delft asked him anyway.

“And Captain Thorgrimm. What brought you here?”

“Treasure,” the dwarf said, his eyes flickering at the word like a letch at a lifted skirt. “Gold, silver. Maybe even gromril. But even if it’s only copper we’ll take our share.”

He looked at van Delft defiantly, much to the commander’s irritation. That glare was tantamount to an accusation of dishonesty. As if he’d steal copper!

Ach, to the hells with wounded pride, van Delft thought. We are mercenaries, after all.

“Well, then gentlemen, I think we’ve established why were all here. For gold. Our esteemed colleague Kereveld here has other interests, it’s true, but they won’t stop us from getting rich.”

The wizard started at the mention of his name before folding his hands over his paunch and drifting off once more.

Van Delft ignored him as he examined the black and orange fire light playing across his officer’s faces. His expression reminding Florin of a gambler studying his cards.

“Are we all agreed on that?”

The assembled men chorused their agreement doubtfully.

“Now, is there anything else that needs saying?”

In the ensuing silence Kereveld began to snore.

“Well, there is one thing,” Florin volunteered reluctantly.

“Yes?”

“If our friend here is paying the piper won’t he be calling the tune?”

“No. I’ll do any calling that needs to be done.”

“But he is your, I mean our, boss. Isn’t he?”

“A paymaster is different from a boss,” Castavelli interrupted, his pride obviously hurt. “We are gentlemen after all. If we don’t to agree with our sponsors we will resign our commissions.”

There was another chorus of agreement, which brought a proud grin to the Tilean’s swarthy features.

“Is correct,” Graznikov added. “Only an idiot would think men like us servants of men like him.”

He waved his bottle at Kereveld, who was beginning to drool into his beard, and glared at Florin.

Florin glared back.

“Yes, well, I hope that answers your question, captain,” van Delft told him.

“Now perhaps you would all be so kind as to go and mention this little chat to your men? They might sleep better knowing we’re in this swamp for a good reason. That we are not here to provide Kereveld here with sacrifices or whatever nonsense is going around. I mean honestly, look at him.”

They all turned to look at the wizard, who was twitching in his sleep like a lap dog dreaming of scraps.

“How much trouble could a silly old fool like that be to men like us? We’re warriors. Dogs of war. We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t the best.”

The men’s eyes gleamed in the firelight.

“Remind your men of that.”

“Sir,” Lundorf said, the response echoing in the throats of his fellows.

Van Delft smiled and nodded in dismissal. Taking the hint his officers scrambled to their feet, ready to take their newfound confidence back to their fellows like torchbearers with light.

“Captain d’Artaud,” van Delft called as he followed Lundorf into the night. “Just go and get a hold of Orbrant and come back here, will you?”

“Of course, sir,” Florin nodded unhappily, his heart sinking.

“And don’t look so worried. I won’t eat you.”

Florin worried anyway, not that it did him any good.

 

“It’s a great honour,” Florin told himself as he trudged along. In front of him two of the men, their sweat-sodden shirts buttoned to the collar against the swarms of flies, wielded machetes against the thick weave of undergrowth that blocked their path. One of them, a man seemingly as tough as he was short, had been working at the undergrowth all day.

His name was Bertrand, Florin remembered. Maybe he should have a word with Orbrant later on. His mates looked up to this little man, and he seemed to have a giant’s energy packed into his short frame. Anyway, a promotion might be good for morale.

Behind him the rest of his men waited. Those with guns held them primed and ready, the acrid whiff of their fuses lost beneath the stench of the jungle’s humid breath.

Those without guns stood around them. Their eyes were wide and restless, and they looked horribly aware that their job was that of picket fence to anything that might come bursting out of these towering vegetation.

Orbrant’s squad, who were waiting as a rearguard behind them, remained out of sight.

This is a great honour, Florin told himself again, and found that he was actually starting to believe it.

After all, Lundorf had looked jealous enough when van Delft had sent his company down this overgrown track, one of two that led from the abandoned compound. The dwarfs, leaving their cannon behind, had taken the other.

Yes, it had been a great honour. Even Graznikov had seemed a little put out, torn before fear and greed of what might lay at the end it. Of course Lorenzo would say…

Well, to hell with what Lorenzo would say. He’d left him with Orbrant just so that he wouldn’t have to hear it.

“Boss,” Bertrand called out, pausing in his work and squeezing the moisture from his flushed brow.

“What is it?” Florin stepped forward and looked over the man’s shoulder.

“Don’t know.”

He shrugged uncertainly and stepped back out of his captain’s way.

Taking the man’s machete, Florin hacked off a couple of vines and pushed past him into a passageway that had opened up into the awaiting gloom. After a few feet he turned and handed the machete back before carrying on, thorns and creepers snatching at him as he pushed through them.

Bertrand weighed it in his hand for a moment, the thick bushels of his eyebrows furrowed in thought. Then he sighed, looked back up, and followed his captain into the undergrowth.

“I don’t understand,” Florin muttered as the tight squeeze of what he had taken to be a pig run opened up into a vast expanse of claustrophobic darkness.

Suddenly, despite the crushing mass of plant life that grew all around, Florin had the dizzy sensation that he had somehow stumbled underground.

He hadn’t, of course, yet the perception that he’d entered some subterranean realm persisted. It was like being in a long, narrow cavern, more of a tunnel really, that ran ruler straight as far as the eye could see.

The trees that spanned its towering walls reached upwards like temple pillars, arching over to lock fingers high overhead. Their great boughs were clothed with vines and leaves and creepers, the countless shades of green sweeping up in combinations of light and darkness that were complex enough to shame any tapestry.

It was also as silent as a cathedral within this vast hall. After the cacophony of life that filled the jungle it was incredibly quiet, only the occasional muted cry disturbing the deathly silence.

“What is it?” Bertrand whispered, forgetting that his captain had asked him that same question only a minute before.

But Florin had an answer.

“Maybe it was a road,” he said, walking carefully out into the middle of the jungle formed cavern. There, jutting up above the detritus that covered the floor was a stone lip beyond which lay a deep, paved furrow.

Stretching in both directions it was a dozen feet across, a hollow stone spine for this organic cavity. Here and there pools of brown water glimmered sluggishly in its depths, and its walls were slimed with clinging green algae.

It stank as spectacularly, no doubt because of the rotten animal corpses that were strewn like grizzly confetti along the trough’s floor.

“That’s no road,” Bertrand disagreed, wrinkling his nose. “It’s a canal.”

“A canal. Yes, I think you’re right. But who would build a canal in a place like this? And why hasn’t the jungle covered it?”

The two men exchanged a quick glance, then looked warily around.

They already knew the answer: Kereveld’s monsters.

“It looks abandoned anyway,” said Florin. Part of him, a big part, wanted to get out of this eerily quiet place. There was something disturbing about the heavy, oppressive silence that rolled through it; and there was something unsettling about the fact that, in the midst of a world bursting with life, there was nothing here but death.

There was something even more unsettling about the uneasy, itchy sense that they were being watched, examined like bugs by hostile eyes. But that was ridiculous. After all, the canal was abandoned. It was empty, and looked as though it had been for quite some time.

“Hey boss, notice something weird?”

Florin snorted.

“Anything in particular?”

“There’s no flies here.”

Florin listened and looked and found that the other man was right. There were no flies here. No mosquito whine, or black fly buzz, or constant pins and needles of their bites.

He knew that, if anything, this should make him more cautious, yet as he stood there absent-mindedly scratching, he found that it helped him to make up his mind.

“I don’t know what we’re waiting for,” he announced. “Let’s get the men in here and push on, shall we?”

“Yes, sir,” Bertrand said, and pushed back up through the narrow pinch point to gather the rest of the company.

“Now then,” Florin asked himself as they filed gaping into the tunnel. “Which way, which way?”

There was no way of knowing whether the first expedition had gone east or west. Their path to this point had been easy to follow: it was lined with felled trees and quick-growing elephant grass. There had even been the occasional crumbling brown machete blade abandoned by the side of it.

Here, though, they hadn’t left a single sign.

“Which way, boss?” Bertrand asked and Florin, with the same easy bravado with which he had used to cast dice, said, “To the west, Bertrand, always to the west.”

So it was that after hours of marching through the threatening depths of this jungle underworld, they found the landslide that marked the end of the tunnel. Better still was the discovery of ancient barrels cached there, like clues in some tropical drag hunt. The contents were long gone of course; it wasn’t even possible to tell if the mouldy sludge inside the barrels had been water or wine.

Florin was pleased to hear the respect in his men’s voices as they waited for the rear guard to catch up. It occurred to him that they weren’t used to officers who relied on pure guesswork for their decisions.

Or perhaps they just weren’t used to officers who guessed right.

Not that it really mattered. Even Orbrant looked impressed as he led his squad out of the shadows.

The two men gazed outwards at the ragged explosion of blue sky above them. To eyes adjusted to the gloom of the canal path it was painfully bright, despite the fact that the sun was already sinking.

“Straight ahead?” Orbrant asked.

“I’ll lead off,” Florin nodded. “But we’d better not go too far. That canal’s enough to show that this is the right track, and I want to make it back by nightfall. Before nightfall, in fact.”

“Right you are, sir.”

The men struggled out of the neat avenue of the canal and back to the chaos of the jungle beyond. Soon they had sunk back into their own personal hells of sweat and thirst, and of mosquitoes that seemed even thirstier than them.

So it was that, heads bowed with exhaustion, they blundered towards the jungle’s guardians like cattle to the slaughterhouse.