Paul Kemp - The Hammer and the Blade

Presently a shout sounded from the right, Jyme's voice. "Here! Over here!"

Heads turned. Egil and Nix, seated on the road to rest, rose. The other guards did the same.

"Found his balls, maybe?" Nix said to Egil.

"Those are as lost as Abn Thuset's tomb," Egil said.

"What is it?" Baras called.

"Come over and see for yourself," Jyme said.

He stood twenty paces off the road, on a low rise, amid a tumble of oddly shaped rocks, wind-stripped scrub, and a few large boulders. He was looking at something on the ground, the wind whipping his cloak and hair. He didn't have his blade drawn, so Nix figured whatever he saw couldn't be too dangerous.

Baras and the other guards hurried over. Egil and Nix shared a glance, shrugged, and headed over, too.

"What is it?" Rakon called, leaning out of the carriage.

"I'm… unsure, my lord," Baras called back over his shoulder.

When they reached the top of the rise, they found Jyme standing at the edge of a deep hole. The coarse ground around it, littered with queerly shaped stones and sticks, crunched underfoot. The wind blew dust everywhere.

The hole was circular, about two paces in diameter, and it fell away into the earth at a steep angle. The dying light of the setting sun did not reach down it very far.

"You called out for this?" Baras said, frowning. "It's just a hole."

"No it's not. Smell that." Jyme leaned over the hole and sniffed. "It smells like a bunghole down there."

"Familiar with that smell, are you?" Nix said, eliciting chuckles from two of the other guards.

Jyme ignored him and pointed. "There are more holes just like this one over there and there. I came over to piss and noticed them. One might be natural, like a cave, right? But lots of them? That ain't natural. Something dug them."

Baras rubbed the back of his neck, eyeing the hole. Two of the younger guards coughed in the blowing dust. The setting sun stretched their shadows over the ground.

Egil reached into his beltpouch, removed his dice, and rattled them in his right hand. Nix pulled his cloak over his mouth and nose and walked the area around the first hole, found the others that Jyme had mentioned. He counted five, all of them perfectly circular, all of them descending away into darkness under the Wastes, all of them stinking like a latrine.

"I count five more," he said, upon returning. "And as much as it irks me, I agree with Jyme. Something dug them somehow. I don't see any tracks so I don't think they've been used in a long while."

"Used?" Baras asked. "Used by what?"

Nix shrugged, though his mind turned to the flock of creatures they'd seen earlier.

The wind gusted and whistled over the holes, which keened eerily. One of the guards looped finger and thumb in the protective gesture of Orella.

Egil edged closer, crouched at the edge of the hole, and looked down. "It's like a bug hole or a worm's boring. Looks to go deep."

"No such thing as bugs or worms that big," Baras said.

"Shouldn't be any such thing as the Demon Wastes, either," Egil said. "Yet here we stand."

The other guards shifted uncomfortable on their feet, passed worried glances.

Nix imagined a honeycombed earth under his boots, crawling with horrors. There were many stories about the Wastes.

"What could be down there?" one of the young guards said.

"Go see," another of the guards said, and gave him a fake shove, creating a shortlived panic in the first, and laughter or a smile from everyone else except Baras.

"Bunghole!" the first said. "I piss in your soup for that."

"Enough," Baras said. "They're just holes in the ground. Dug or natural doesn't matter. There's nothing down there." He looked at the darkening sky, the setting sun. "Lord Norristru wants to press on into the declivity before nightfall. We've got another half-hour or more of light. Let's get into that cut and find a likely spot. Leg it, men."

Sighs and groans answered Baras's command, but everyone turned to go. As they did, Nix spotted a thin cylindrical stone sticking out of the scree at an odd angle. He stepped over to it, nudged it with his boot to free it, and saw it for what it was: not a stone, but a bone. He glanced around at the ground under his feet and realization dawned.

"Wait," he said, and the guards and Egil turned back.

Nix fell to all fours and scraped the soil all around the hole with his punch dagger. His work made the dust worse, and loose dirt, caught by the gusting wind, stung eyes and drew curses.

"What are you doing, man?" Baras asked, shielding his mouth with his cloak.

Nix stopped in his work long enough to toss the bone at him. "That's a bone." His digging revealed another, another. As he found them, he tossed them toward Egil and Baras, one after another.

"It's all bones," Nix said, looked up at them. "This whole hill. Bones and dirt."

The young guards cursed nervously. They all looked under their feet, wide-eyed, as if fearful the hill of remains would soon vomit up an army of animated dead.

Egil picked up the bone and examined it. Jyme and Baras looked over his shoulder.

"Are they… human?" Jyme asked.

Egil shrugged. "Could be, but I can't say for certain. Any skulls, Nix?"

"Gods," Baras said. "You talk of this as if they were melons at market."

Egil shrugged again, handed the bone to Baras. "We're tomb robbers. The dead hold no fear for either of us."

Nix worried at the heap a bit longer, looking for a skull, darkening the sky with powdered death. He found shards of bone with every dug furrow, but no skulls.

"Maybe it's a burial mound of some kind," Baras said.

"Not likely," Egil said to Baras. He took the bone from Baras and pointed at various features. "See that? Cracked open for marrow. And those grooves there, those are from teeth."

"Gods," one of the guards said.

All of them made the protective gesture of Orella, even Jyme.

"Maybe we should just leave them be," said Jyme, his voice quaking. "Show some respect for the dead."

Nix left off his digging and stood, his clothes and face coated in the dust of the dead. "The dead need respect no more than they need air or food. Didn't have you as the superstitious sort, Jyme."

"I should be back in Dur Follin in my damned bed," Jyme said.

"Shouldn't we all," Nix said, and wiped his face with his gloved hand. He glanced around. "Bodies, carcasses, whatever these are, they must have been stacked here waist deep. This was the scene of a slaughter."

All eyes went to the hole. The wind gusted, whistled over the opening, the sound like a prolonged scream.

"I ain't camping near this hole," one of the young guards said.

Nods around.

"We could still go back to Dur Follin," said another.

Baras cleared his throat. "No, we can't. And what happened here happened long ago. There's nothing to fear. Let's move, men. Nix, we go. Egil. Now."

When they returned to the caravan, they found Rakon standing near the carriage, looking up at the sky, muttering as if he could speak to wind. When he saw them approach, he made a sharp, dismissive gesture with one hand and turned to face them, hands on his hips.

"What was it?" he asked.

"Holes, my lord," Baras answered.

"Holes?"

The guards around Egil and Nix muttered.

"Unusual holes," Egil said. "Dug by something. With the bones of many old kills near them."

Rakon stared at them, his thin face unreadable. He checked the sky a final time, looked to the west, at the fading light. "We press on a bit more today. Into the cut so we're out of the wind."

With that, he vanished into the carriage.

As the wagon and carriage started to move, Egil sidled up to Nix.

"I'm disquieted by those bones."

"First 'dilatory' and now 'disquieted'? My priest has been replaced by a scholar."