Stranger of Tempest: Book One of The God Fragments (41 page)

Uvrel headed out and looked around the corner on to a clear stone floor that ended in a jagged tear. She barely noticed the ruined mess where a whole section of stone seemed to have been ripped away. Beyond it the world seemed to open up around her and Uvrel’s jaw dropped as she surveyed the steep, greenery-choked rift.

The chasm was enormous, running for several miles in either direction, plunging for hundreds of yards to a tree-covered floor below. Fifty yards to her left was a covered stone bridge, wrapped in coils of creeper as though it was being devoured by some great snake.

The far side was a steep, stepped slope at least half a mile high and almost entirely covered in dense foliage, most likely the same sort of overgrown galleries and enclosed gardens as she had seen on this side. The bones of stone outcrops and pillars jutted from the morass to punctuate the regular steps of huge balconies all the way up the cliff side.

Away to her right, one fifty-yard-wide section had been ripped away entirely, as though a giant had smashed its fist down on the cliff. The foliage was reclaiming the shattered section but only slowly, and Uvrel could see the trace of wide doorways and windows all the way to the rubble on the ground.

She had rarely seen a human-made weapon capable of such damage – it would take the largest bombardment spheres to achieve that. Perhaps it had been a shooting star or some agent of the gods, but Uvrel felt a flicker of fear as she imagined it as the work of something that lived amid these ruins.

Uvrel found herself frozen to the spot as she tried to put the thought from her mind and instead work out how they would find the mercenaries across such a great space.

‘Damn,’ the sharpshooter said quietly from beside her, ‘that’s a whole lot of cover.’

Uvrel ignored the low whistles of agreement that came from her dragoons and tried to clear her thoughts. She looked left and right, trying to map the path of the ridge they had been following. It was hard to estimate and she had no idea of how many tunnels there were in this city, but the rift was so enormous it was a reasonable assumption most would lead here.

‘Decent vantage for us too,’ the dragoon sergeant pointed out. ‘If we can get across this bridge we can cover both sides.’

‘Can you even see the bottom? A small group might walk the length of this without us seeing.’ The sharpshooter gestured up and down the rift. There were glimpses of movement everywhere, darting wings and long fronds drifting in the breeze, while a clamour of birdcalls and buzzing insect wings echoed out across the rift.

Uvrel cocked her head and looked at her soldiers. ‘The gods favour those who strive,’ she said thoughtfully. She went to the very edge of the broken balcony, testing the ground underfoot to ensure it was solid. Looking down at the slope continuing below, she nodded to herself and waved forward the young grenadier. Uvrel plucked the grenade from her hands and inspected it. A sphere the size of her fist, it had a thin outer skin of iron, ridged for grip, while at the top a mushroom-like disc protruded. A band of red paint made it clear this was a fire-bomb while a white line ran perpendicular to that all the way around the sphere. She twisted the detonator so the line on that matched up to the one on the grenade then hurled the grenade out into the rift.

The soldiers ran forward as one to watch it fall. For a moment Uvrel thought it had failed, the dark shape of the grenade disappearing from view before it reached the bottom. Then there was a shudder and a distant crack of noise. A flower of white light blossomed below them before a dome of orange fire hammered out and simply obliterated the foliage around it. The fire raced in all directions, flowing over stone and smashing apart anything alive.

From their high vantage the soldiers stared in fascination. Rarely did they have the luxury of seeing a fire-bomb’s effects and the view from almost directly above only increased the sense of wonder. The swift firestorm lashed tendrils of flame out beyond the clearing it had made and a great flock of birds erupted from the branches of nearby trees, wheeling and shrieking.

‘Reckon we can spare another,’ the grenadier commented. Before Uvrel could say anything the young woman slotted a second grenade into one end of her steel thrower and hurled it off to the right, as far clear of the first explosion as she could manage.

Uvrel felt her breath catch as she waited for the second to explode; again that anxious moment after it had disappeared, but the explosion’s roar followed a second later and this time she could see the trees shudder and bend from the impact. The grenade tore another section from the narrow strip of jungle below and soon its snaking flames were spreading and hungrily consuming more. Before long the flames of each grenade met and merged, driven by a steady breeze. The fire raged across the rift floor and between the two epicentres Uvrel could make out the skeletons of trees writhing as the fire consumed them.

‘That should serve,’ she said after a full awestruck minute of watching the fires rage. They had started to die back now, their ferocity consuming everything in that section so swiftly the fire hardly had time to move too far beyond it.

‘It won’t take the whole thing,’ the grenadier said, ‘too damp to burn long or spread too far.’

‘I’ll not waste all our grenades clearing the rest.’ She pointed at the grenadier and sharpshooter. ‘You two stay here; keep a lookout for anything we’ve flushed out. I’ll bring the rest of the troops so we can clear that bridge and set up shooting positions to wait for our mercenary friends. They can’t have passed this already so we will wait.’

‘And if they have?’ asked her sergeant.

‘They won’t have, Sergeant!’ she snapped. ‘Any damn fool who thinks they could have kept ahead of us on foot, however, is welcome to head straight into those tunnels. Am I clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Get your hide moving, then.’

‘So do you trust her?’

Lynx looked sideways at Kas, who’d dropped back to walk alongside him.

‘Toil?’ he asked, nodding towards the head of their small column. ‘I trust she wants to get through this place.’

‘That’s all?’

‘You got a point to make?’ Lynx growled, slowing slightly to give them a little more space from the rest.

Kas raised an eyebrow at his tone. ‘Think you’ve just made it for me.’

‘Balls I have. You think I trust Anatin either?’

‘Anatin’s loyal to his company. A prince-elect’s agent like her has a master and a mission, and that’s all that counts.’

‘Anatin’s loyal to you, mebbe,’ Lynx said with a shake of the head, ‘but not me. I’ve been around mercs enough to know loyalty to the new blood is thinner than water. You reckon he gives a shit about me? Experienced fighters he don’t call friend are useful enough at a pinch, but my use could be dying as well as living. I knew that back in Grasiel – “pin it on the bastard from So Han” is a game I’ve seen played a few times.’

‘We don’t work that way.’

‘You don’t, he does. Man’s got a cold heart – I ain’t condemning him for it. You’re a merc commander, that’s the only choice you get if you want to last long. As for Teshen and Reft, they’re a decent enough pair of sergeants, but the one who could be half Wisp is the more human of the two.’

‘Pretty harsh verdict on men I trust my life to.’

‘Pretty harsh world out there.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’ Kas snapped.

Lynx opened his mouth to reply then checked himself. ‘Aye,’ he admitted, ‘I know. Didn’t mean it to sound otherwise.’

There was a long moment of quiet as they both chewed over their words. Lynx felt the familiar knot of anxiety tighten at the back of his mind, the thinning of the air in his lungs even though the current tunnel was still larger than any he’d known at the prison mine.

‘Being down here really fucks with your head, eh?’ Kas said at last.

‘Aye.’

‘Well – my point was this. Look at all of us around you; ask yourself who’d think longest about leaving you down here.’

Lynx didn’t reply, but his eyes lifted towards Toil, leading the way.

‘Aye, and that woman knows full well the effect she has on men. You can bet she’s taken note of all the looks she’s had in the last few days. I’m just saying watch yourself, in case she reckons she needs someone to do something stupid.’

‘Been a long time since I needed help on that front,’ Lynx reflected. He glanced over to where Sitain lay in the travois, clutching Reft’s pack and gun while the huge man dragged her down the tunnel. Lynx had taken a turn earlier for an hour or two and was feeling the effects in his biceps now, but he could see Reft had appreciated the relief for all his size and strength.

‘Good reminder right there,’ Kas said. ‘You did something stupid ’cos it was the right thing to do and they backed you up. Teshen was the first in line and much as I like the man, I’m willing to admit he’s got a heart some way chillier than average.’

‘Reckon he’s not the greatest fan o’ Militant Orders either, but point taken.’

‘Good.’

‘Still doesn’t mean I’ll do whatever a pretty girl tells me to.’

Kas smiled. ‘Sure, you just keep thinking that.’

They lapsed into silence again, a short burst of effort diminishing the ground between them and the rest. For the tenth time Lynx tried to work out what the hour was, but the best he could guess was daytime. After another hour or two, at the next rest, Sitain announced she felt well enough to try walking. While the others sat and ate a morsel of their dwindling supplies, she tottered back and forth to try and regain her balance.

She was far from ready to run by the time Anatin decided it was time to leave, but the young woman managed to keep to the slower pace being set for an hour or so before being persuaded back into the travois again.

‘I’m fine,’ Sitain insisted as Lynx guided her back down.

‘But you’re weak still. No point exhausting yourself. Short bursts to start.’

‘You can’t drag me all the way across this city.’

‘We’re not far from the rift,’ Toil announced, coming to join them. ‘Save your strength for then, it’s an open stretch of ground. Might be we need to run there.’

‘She can’t run, not yet.’

Toil shrugged. ‘If we get ambushed, the slowest target’s not going to have the best of days.’

‘You think they’re waiting for us?’

‘Would make sense. We’ll find somewhere to hole up and rest when we get there, assuming it’s safe.’

‘You don’t want to get straight across?’

‘Not in daylight. Besides, we’ve been underground a good while now. A few hours rest will do us good, a few hours of light too.’

Lynx scowled. ‘Yeah, I could do with seeing the sun again. How is it this doesn’t bother you?’

‘I’m used to it,’ she said with a shrug. ‘But I can see you getting scratchier the more time we spend underground. Some folk go that way, the darkness gnaws at you and it’s bad to ignore. Isn’t a sign of weakness, just one the deep dark’s not the place for you.’

‘But you love it?’

Toil shrugged. ‘Some of us learn to embrace the dark,’ she said. ‘Your friend Teshen’s born to it, I reckon, but I had to learn.’

The all turned instinctively to look at where the long-haired Knight of Tempest lay, head propped up by his pack and eyes closed.

‘Born to it,’ Lynx said, nodding. ‘Well, that’s not worrying at all.’

‘Hey, there are only three types of relic hunter in this world,’ Toil said. ‘Those who’re born to the dark and those who learn to love it.’

‘And the third?’

Her smile was cruel. ‘Those who get lost to it. Doesn’t matter how much you warn them, they’ll wander off and get lost.’

‘And which one am I?’ Lynx asked.

‘Only you can know that.’

With that, Toil sat down and pulled her necklace out from under her tunic. Lynx frowned at it through the twilight for a while before realising it was some sort of tooth or claw. Again he remembered the man he’d met years ago, the one who’d claimed to have travelled this way and wore a maspid tooth around his neck. A man whose mind had cracked after what he’d seen in the dark. Toil turned it in her fingers for a while, frowning as she did so, then tucked it away again.

‘Souvenir from some past trip underground?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘A memento. Reminder of getting lost.’

All too soon for Lynx’s weary body, they were off again. It turned out to be a short trip, but one he still felt his feet to start to drag on. Tunnels became more like oversized corridors, the stonework better preserved or more carefully done. The script of the Duegar appeared more often; images of animals and plants too, but never themselves, Lynx noticed. They ascended stairways and crossed great conical-roofed halls. Empty rooms and large chambers adjoined their path, while the sound of water and life began to echo from different directions, startling the mercenaries after a day or two of near-silence underground.

And then it happened. A faint awareness of light that had Lynx squinting in muzzy confusion before they turned two corners and the world seemed to fill with the blaze of returning life. Shafts of crisp white light seared through mote-filled air while the brilliant green glow of leaves seemed to envelop them all. The rich, sharp smell of damp earth filled Lynx’s nose like the flavours of a feast, the bright pinpricks of red and yellow flowers as warm as a fire on his skin.

For a moment he could only stop and stare as true colour returned to his world, rocking back on his heels as the light and scent filled his being. It was hard to look at but impossible to turn away as the dragging weight of darkness lessened with every breath and he felt he could at last stand straight again.

A punch to the shoulder drove him back to his senses, the beatific sense of wonder evaporating like morning mist as Teshen’s face appeared right up against his.

‘Stop fucking gawping and get your gun out.’

Lynx blinked in confusion even as his body obeyed and pulled his mage-gun from his back. He looked around and saw the others do the same as the Wisps held back, keeping to the shadows.

They don’t like the sun
, he reminded himself.
This part we’ll have to scout ourselves.