CHAPTER THIRTEEN

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.

And yet, although they now had the excuse to slog back out of here, Florin couldn’t quite bring himself to take it. He told himself that it was because of the gold that might lie beyond, and it was.

At least, it was in part.

But there was also van Delft. For some reason that he didn’t quite understand, Florin had fallen prey to the urge to impress the old man.

“Damn it all,” he muttered to himself. “Let’s impress him then.”

“What was that, boss?”

“I said, let’s press on for another hour or so. See if we can’t find a body, hey?”

“That is a good idea,” one of the men muttered sarcastically behind him as Florin led off, swishing a machete idly in front of him as he struggled up the slope.

“Look out for tracks leading off to the sides,” he called back to his little patrol.

“Come on then,” Bertrand reluctantly decided as Florin disappeared into the mist. “Look lively. Let’s get it over with.”

“Can’t we just kill him?”

“Don’t even joke about it.”

It was difficult to keep track of time in the depths of this world. The endless pillars of jostling trunks, and the suffocating mass of foliage and vines they supported, sealed the men off from the sky above. Only the occasional shaft of dazzling light that cut miraculously through the tons of tangled vegetation above gave them any indication of the sun’s progress.

It was difficult to keep track of how far they’d walked, too, when every step was a battle against clinging mud or snatching creepers. After a mere fortnight, it seemed, the jungle was already surging back into the path the intruders had cut, choking it closed with jealous fingers of vines, thorns and heavy, trailing sheets of ivy.

Florin, who’d made the mistake of touching one such obstacle, was already nursing a hand as swollen and red as a pound of sausages. Occasionally, he tried to squeeze it closed into a fist, which eased the itching for a few seconds by making his skin feel as though it would burst.

He was about ready to damn van Delft and return to the relative comfort of his camp when the first hint of a breeze whispered across his brow. Soon the cloying humidity through which they had struggled lifted, shuffled away by the cool fingers of a freshening wind. Up ahead, as if in response, the gloom lifted.

“Looks like we’ve reached the ridge,” Florin told his men, stumbling forward into a sun-washed clearing. As he looked back over the valley Florin realized that this was where they’d first seen the temples, all those weeks ago.

Now, standing in the withering heat of the afternoon sun, the four men turned and stared back down at the city. The peaks of the ziggurats jutted up aggressively from the canopy, their heights dark and brooding despite the dazzling sunlight.

“We’ll take a rest here and then head on back,” Florin decided. He uncorked his flask, taking a deep, gurgling swig, and then passed it on. “I think we’ve come far enough.”

“I think we’d all agree with you on that one, boss.” Bertrand smiled, and wiped a rag across his flushed face.

Florin grunted and turned his attention back to the endless green expanse that rolled away beneath them. Who knew what other cities might be buried beneath that vast expanse, their granite bones littered with treasures?

Behind him there was a clunk and the gurgle of spilling water.

“Careful with that,” one of the men said. “I haven’t had a drink yet.”

True, Florin considered, we haven’t found enough gold to pay for our expedition yet. But it’s still early. We really need to send out parties to see what else Kereveld’s damned sorceries might have turned up.

“Are you all right, Bertrand?” said a voice behind Florin, and he . turned to find the Bretonnian collapsed onto the tangled mat that covered the ground.

“Must be the heat,” Florin said, joining the other two men as they bent over their comrade. “Let’s put him into the shade, shall we?”

They grabbed hold of their comrade, but as soon as they’d done so a second man fell forward as bonelessly as if he’d been pole-axed.

“Damn!” Florin exclaimed, and exchanged a glance with the last man standing. “We should have brought more water.”

“I suppose you’re right, boss.”

It was the last thing the mercenary said. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a puff of feathered cotton, no bigger than a man’s thumb, appeared in the side of his neck.

“Damn,” Florin repeated, his pulse racing in sudden fright. He stood back and drew his sword, examining the surrounding shrub suspiciously. Something snapped behind him and he whipped around to see what it was.

The movement came just in time to save him. The white feathered dart that had been aimed at his neck punched instead into the leather of his shoulder strap, the soft cloud of its tail close enough to tickle his chin.

Florin plucked it free, snatched a glance at the splinter of blue bone jutting out from the burst of cotton, and bolted.

He got four paces before, with a pinch as painless as a mosquito bite, a drop of venom sent him crashing insensibly to the ground.