William King - The Serpent Tower

“What happened to the bloody dancing girls, Halfbreed?” Toadface whispered, gazing out of the thick undergrowth into the surrounding trees. Rik raised a finger to his lips. If the ugly, bulging-eyed little man did not shut up he might get both their throats cut. There could be enemies twenty yards away. These woods were dense enough to hide a regiment.

Rik understood why Toadface was pissed off. This scouting mission should have been unnecessary. There was not supposed to be any fighting at this point. The Talorean army had expected to be met by friendly forces when they crossed the border into Kharadrea. This province was supposedly devoted to Queen Kathea, their ally. Its overlord was her most loyal Lieutenant and uncle, the Prince Ilmarec.

On the march through Broken Tooth Pass there had been much discussion about the welcome they would receive. Dancing girls and wine had been the talk of the entire army. Instead they had been met with ambushes and cavalry raids since they had entered the lowlands on this side of the border. The villages had all been abandoned and the flocks driven away.

It seemed things were a little different than they had been led to believe, which was why Rik now found himself lying under this bush, waiting for Weasel and the Barbarian to return with news of what they had found up ahead. He did not expect the tidings to be good. He never did. He had been in the army too long. On the plus side, at least the rain had stopped. There had been rather too much of it for his liking recently. Some summer, he thought.

“It was supposed to be simple,” muttered Toadface. He licked his lips with his extraordinarily long tongue. His pockmarked face looked downright sinister, like some crossbreed of a decadent Elder race and a depraved human. Legend had enough of those living in these woods. Before the coming of the Terrarchs, they had been home to the legendary Serpent Men. Their ghosts were said to haunt this forest.

Rik drew his finger across his throat hoping that this time his companion would get the message. Toadface gave him a disgusted look but kept his mouth shut.

All around him, the Foragers were strung out in a long line through the woods. Their green tunics blended in. Aside from the odd murmured complaint they were silent. If he had not known better Rik would never have guessed that there were nearly forty men and a Terrarch nearby.

Even their inhuman commanding officer, Lieutenant Sardec, seemed to have learned something. He had shucked his scarlet officer’s tunic for a green shirt that blended in well with the early summer leaves. Adaana knew no one would have any difficulty recognising him or his voice. Sardec was a Terrarch, one of the world’s masters. He was tall and eldritchly thin with pointed ears and almond shaped eyes. His hair was fine as spun silver. In place of the hand he had lost in combat with the demon god Uran Ultar, he now sported a vicious hook. Combined with his recent scars, it made him look quite menacing.

Rik looked at him with mixed feelings. Sardec had persecuted Rik for being a half-breed, a thing that Sardec appeared to think was an insult to him and all his dragon-riding ancestors. Rik had hated him in return. Rik still loathed Sardec but the officer seemed to have been changed, Rik was not sure what by. For some reason, the petty harassment had stopped.

Perhaps it was the loss of his hand. Perhaps it was their encounter with the demons beneath the mountain two months ago. Perhaps it was something else entirely. Recently Sardec’s behaviour had been restrained as a Terrarch’s ever got towards humans. He had won the respect of the men in the hellish tunnels of the lost city of Achenar, and perhaps it was that respect that had changed him. The company expected him to behave like a leader, and now he did.

The urge to say something about this to Leon passed through Rik’s mind, and he almost spoke, until he remembered that Leon was two months dead, killed by an Elder World demon in the same battle in which Sardec had lost his hand. Even after all this time, Rik was still not used to the loss.

He had known Leon for as long as he could remember, since they had fled the vast draughty halls of the Temple orphanage in Sorrow to become thieves together. They had joined the Queen’s Army together and fought all the way through the Clockmaker’s rebellion side by side. It did not seem possible that Leon was gone, aged only eighteen, the victim of a monster from the old darkness that Rik himself had helped set free.

Guilt stabbed him. He would never see Leon’s wizened urchin features again, never watch him chew on his battered clay pipe or put his lucky feather in his cap. There was no one left to watch his back, and these days Rik felt the need for that more than ever. Things had become more dangerous since Lord Azaar had taken command and the army had crossed the border from Talorea.

Weasel and the Barbarian appeared. They seemed to have materialised as if summoned by sorcery. Rik was not surprised by Weasel’s stealth. The former poacher was the best hunter in the company, and this company was made up of men who were very good at woodcraft. Weasel was tall and skinny and balding with a long neck, a large Adam’s apple, a jutting blade of a nose and starved, cunning looking features. His uniform hung loose and ragged on his body. He clutched his rifle in one bony hand, and a roasted chicken in the other.

The Barbarian was something different. It was unnatural that anyone so large could move so quietly. He was half again taller than Rik, and far heavier. A waterfall of thick blonde hair fringed his bald crown. A massive walrus moustache covered the lower part of his face. He was a trifle more gaunt than he had been, but that was the only after-effect of the wound he had taken beneath Achenar that showed. The Magister’s healing spells had been very effective, but that was no surprise.

Such spells relied in part on the patient’s own vitality, and that was something the Barbarian had to spare. He radiated raw strength like a prize bull. Perhaps there really was something to his boasting about the hardihood of his people. The Barbarian was an exile from the snowbound lands of the far north, a place never conquered by the Terrarchs, a fact of which he was inordinately proud even when Weasel pointed out that there was nothing up there the Terrarchs could possibly want.

The two of them stood before Sardec. They had found his hiding place without apparent effort.

“Well?” Sardec asked. His voice was quiet but it carried. There was no mistaking it for a human voice either. It had a sweet metallic tone and the accents of the Terrarch ruling class.

“There are men up ahead, sir,” said Weasel. He could not avoid giving the impression of insolence even when he was trying not to. There was something insinuating about his face. “They had a couple of our horse troopers tied to a tree and were doing unfriendly things with hot knives.”

“You are sure these were our men?”

“One was Sergeant Kalmek of the 17 ^ ^th Hussars, sir. I took money from him at shuffle only two nights ago. He still owes me.”

“You’re gambling debts are of no concern,” said Sardec. He winced slightly, as he always did at allusions to gambling debts. No doubt they reminded him of Mama Horne’s parlour back in Redtower where he and his officer friends used to slum it up. Rik fought unsuccessfully with his bitterness. Mama Horne’s was where Sardec had picked up Rena. It was where Rik had picked her up too. He tried to tell himself he was not jealous and failed.

Weasel looked away from the officer. His expression was plainly visible to Rik and seemed to say, the debts are important to me.