Stranger of Tempest: Book One of The God Fragments (45 page)

They passed great stepped slopes that led both up and down, prompting Toil to explain that these residential parts could be on a dozen levels or more. She took them up one level after just a few minutes of walking, in case there were Charnelers pursuing them directly, but then they continued on for more than an hour without seeing anything else alive. Their path was mostly clear, occasional rock falls proving no great obstacle when most chambers had several exits and had been laid out in a relatively regular fashion.

By the time they stopped, Ashis was looking pale and weak. Kas removed her mangled boot to reveal a nasty wound that made Ashis moan with fear as much as pain. Lynx had seen all sorts of injuries over the years and knew Ashis wasn’t going much further on that, but before the young woman could start to beg her comrades Anatin cut her off.

‘We’re not leaving you here,’ he said flatly, ‘even if we have to drag you by the hair.’

Lynx wasn’t the only one to turn to Toil to see her reaction, but if the woman was angry she made no sign of it.

‘I don’t want to leave anyone behind,’ she said simply. ‘Just want to be clear you don’t always get a choice down here.’

‘Sure,’ Anatin drawled, ‘it’s clear. I know us professional soldiers often need lessons in the hard realities of life.’

‘She’s your soldier, your charge.’

‘And my choice, not yours,’ Anatin warned. ‘Just so we really are clear.’

Toil shook her head. ‘No threats here. I’m walking that way,’ she said, pointing. ‘I ain’t stopping for anyone who can’t keep up, but I’m not cutting any throats either. What do you take me for, some sort of assassin?’

‘Aye,’ Anatin said, ignoring her attempt at humour. ‘You’re a killer; I’ve met agents like you before. Hells, I’ve been glad to stand beside one for years,’ he added, clapping a comradely hand on Teshen’s shoulder, ‘so I know exactly what you’re capable of. Sitain, time to earn a Jester’s pay again, then, Kas, you bind it tight. Better the foot’s never the same again than she falls behind out here.’

The pair set to work as everyone else settled down for another mouthful of water and hardtack. Lynx’s stomach growled long and loud at the lack of a proper meal, but if anything the sound cheered the rest up in the face of dry, near tasteless food. By unspoken agreement they had stopped in the centre of a cavern where there was a broad crossroad offering a view of all four directions. Many of the others were tightly packed with free-standing stone shells in the centre, but they all realised the security of stone walls was a false one.

With the shocking power of their spark- and fire-bolts, they needed to see danger at a distance. For Lynx’s part, he was doubly glad of that – their strange lanterns gave the darkness a meagre tint but it was enough for shape and size. Anything that reminded him the walls were a dozen yards away made the experience a little more bearable when the darkness was a palpable and oppressive thing.

After no more than ten minutes Toil pushed herself upright. ‘All rested?’ she asked, shouldering her gun.

‘Already?’ Kas groaned. ‘What happened to resting?’

‘We got outnumbered and a whole lot of grenades went off.’ Toil extended a hand and the other woman reluctantly took it and allowed herself to be pulled upright. ‘We want to be at the other rift before the Charnelers. We
really
want to get there first – as much as we want to get as far as we can from where those grenades went off.’

‘Please don’t tell me something nasty will’ve been attracted by the noise.’

‘Okay, I won’t.’

Kas hesitated. ‘Shattered gods, you’re joking right? More?’

‘Let’s move out,’ Toil said, no trace of humour in her voice. ‘Another few hours travel and I’ll feel a lot calmer.’

‘Another few hours? How big is this damned corpse of a city anyway?’

‘Big – and you never make best time underground. Walk slow and walk soft. The hurrying man hurries straight to his death, so my first employer said.’

‘And who was this wise old mentor?’

Toil’s face darkened. ‘Just some old drunk who fell screaming into the black on the first day. Probably couldn’t call him a mentor, really. And the one who took over was a Knights-Charnel irregular who double-crossed us and left us for dead, so I don’t feel much in the way of affection for him either.’

‘Does that make us veterans then, given we’ve survived longer than most o’ those who’ve gone underground with you?’

‘It makes you lucky you’ve got me leading, that’s all.’

The mercenaries set off and soon found themselves on a frustrating diversion lasting an hour or more. Lynx felt chilled at the thought of trying to do this without a guide, as Toil apparently had on her first expedition. A whole section of caverns were ruined and impassable so they had to skirt around it and rely even more heavily on Toil’s compass to keep them in the right direction.

The Wisp warriors who’d guided them to the first rift had been very clear, according to Toil, of the direction they needed to keep to. Too far north would lead them directly under the spires and the greatest concentration of maspid dens, too far south and they would find that most paths just led deeper underground.

Exactly what had happened to the blocked caverns was anyone’s guess; even Toil had been unsure about it. The scale of damage, the fallen sheets of rock and shattered edges of stone, suggested a medium-scale battle where earthers had been fired, but none of the telltale signs were visible and it could have just as easily been warring elementals or something entirely unknown.

An hour after they got back on track, Toil gave a soft hiss and raised a hand to call a halt. The mercenaries hunkered down immediately, guns raised and hearts hammering as they expected grey shadows to suddenly storm towards them. For a while they all kept perfectly still until Teshen edged closer to Toil and whispered to her.

‘Think I see it too.’

‘Good,’ she grunted. ‘Was worried it was wishful thinking.’

‘What is it?’

‘Light of some sort, up ahead.’

Lynx squinted the way she was pointing, as did the rest of them. ‘Can’t see a thing.’

‘Me neither,’ Sitain pointed out, ‘and I can see better than all of you.’

‘Not your sort of light, love,’ Toil replied. ‘This is real light, not shadow-cast.’

‘The Charnelers got ahead of us?’

‘With luck it’s just another light-garden, but we’re taking no risks.’

They crept forward as stealthily as possible and the barely perceptible glow slowly grew. It was nothing they could see by, really, but even Lynx soon could tell the difference as the darkness became less absolute, returning to a paucity of light rather than the utter and consuming black shroud of underground.

They heard the gunshot not long after first noticing the light – a distant, single echo coming from the same direction as the light. It was clear they weren’t under attack themselves so the mercenaries continued forward and a quarter-hour later ended up crouched behind a ridge that overlooked a huge light-garden. From what Lynx had been able to glimpse there was a high roof studded with shining chunks of crystal, similar to the one they’d first encountered the Wisps in, but larger still.

More importantly, there were human sounds coming from somewhere not far beyond the ridge. With Reft and Ashis installed at a slight bottleneck to guard their rear, Toil took Kas and Teshen to scout the area briefly, but before long they returned and made it clear everyone should have their guns at the ready.

‘What now?’ Anatin whispered as the voices continued below.

‘We wait.’

‘Why?’

‘’Cos I saw a pair of maspids down that way,’ Toil said as softly as she could. ‘Those dumb bastards are in a whole world of trouble and we’re going to sit it out.’

They poked their heads over the ridge to get a better view of below, an overhang of rock keeping the ridge in enough shadow that Toil deemed it safe. Almost a hundred yards away, voices carrying well thanks to their agitation, was a party of twelve Charnelers – all cavalry troopers by what Lynx could see. They’d managed to shoot some sort of creature, he couldn’t tell what but something like a beaver by the size, and were in the process of skinning it while an argument continued over the building of a fire to cook it over.

The light-garden itself was a half-mile long, Lynx estimated, with a kidney-shaped lake visible in the furthest corner. Most of the rest was low foliage; waist-high clumps of reddish grass punctuating a meagre scrub that thickened and seemed to be more colourful the nearer it got to the water. The other principal large feature of the cavern was a huge, bifurcated stairway that rose up behind where the Charnelers were, as ornate as anything Lynx had seen up to now, while he could see five entrances to tunnels of varying sizes behind it.

As they watched, one of the Charnelers sat to relight one of the torches they’d discarded on the stairs, while several others started to wade through the undergrowth in search of fuel to burn.

‘Oh, don’t do that,’ whispered Toil as two headed for a dip in the ground edged in creeper. ‘Bye bye then, you’re all dead.’

Lynx found himself holding his breath as the troopers started kicking their way through the undergrowth. They made some initial headway before grinding to a halt and cursing loudly as their boots got tangled. One bent down to rip away the creepers snagging his boot then cried out and snatched his hand back.

‘What is it?’ breathed Sitain.

‘Tanglethorn,’ Toil replied. ‘Nasty stuff. When they fall the maspids will use the distraction. Won’t pass up an opportunity like that.’

As she spoke, the man who’d cut himself on the thorny creeper began to thrash around, anger making his movements more pronounced, and in moments he tripped. Then he started to howl and writhe, but the spread of tanglethorn seemed to only contract and tighten around him. His shouts became screams and his friend tried to go to his aid only to trip himself. Then there were two of them vanished but shrieking as the thorns tore at their skin and half the remaining Charnelers ran to help them.

‘Damn stuff just tightens around you,’ Toil said, ‘cuts everything it can and ties you up good. It’ll end up a coffin of leaves if you keep fighting, closes around your chest and starts to bleed you as it puts a poison in your veins. They say you won’t even notice as it starts to digest your skin, but I’d prefer a burner still.’

The shouts of panic were ringing out around the cavern now. Lynx was still watching the quickest would-be rescuer tug at the creeper trails when the first maspid came into view. It was a dark shape that moved with breathtaking speed, no less terrifying for being more visible now. Racing low over the ground, the maspid had a long grey body as thick as a pony’s, but with a broad, fan-like tail behind.

The rapid clicks of maspid calls echoed around the cavern as it went, causing some of the soldiers to look in the other direction. It kept its wedge-shaped head low as it used its large forelegs to negotiate the uneven ground. The Charnelers didn’t even notice its arrival until it exploded forward at the man lighting the torch, bowling him over with the force of impact. The man screamed as the maspid buried its mandibles into his neck, but two more were already leading the charge.

The officer managed to half-turn before one snagged his arm and wrestled him to the ground. The third maspid surged up under the gun of another trooper, cutting his shriek off as it bit into his face. Just as the remaining troopers scrambled for their guns another charged in from the other direction and bowled one soldier over as he swiped at another. One of their guns went off wildly, a white icer trail smashing into the rock ceiling, while another trooper pulled a pistol and shot the newest attacker in the side.

The wounded maspid reeled from the impact as the trooper drew his sabre and slashed wildly at it. His blows were glancing and in seconds one of the others abandoned its kill and snatched his left leg up in a lightning grab. The soldier howled and chopped at its flank as he was hauled around, the sabre biting deep and lodging in one of its legs. The maspid pulled him off his feet and buried its mandibles in his side, turning his shout into a scream before the first pounced and silenced him.

A gunshot echoed across the room. Lynx followed the icer’s white path to where it punched clean through the body of the wounded maspid. Its legs collapsed underneath it, going still almost immediately while its forelimbs thrashed furiously at the corpse beneath it. The remaining pair turned towards the source of the shot, where a trooper was calmly backing off and sliding another shot into their gun.

‘Poor bastard’s only got icers,’ Varain muttered from Lynx’s right. ‘He’s not making it far.’

The soldier continued to back away as the other maspids went for him, his next shot bursting through the nearest’s head and felling it. The other one charged into him and smashed him from his feet with one swipe, but then stopped dead. It darted sideways then retreated again as the soldier struggled back to his feet, one arm hanging limp and tanglethorn creepers already snagging his legs. The maspid tried to reach for him but the soldier flinched back out of reach and tumbled to the ground, disappearing amid the dark narrow leaves and only then bellowing in panic.

The remaining soldiers were unarmed and seemed frozen in fear. They turned and fled across the cavern and towards the mercenaries. The uninjured maspid darted after the soldiers with deceptive speed, three pairs of legs driving it forward with a lazy grace. Like a hunting hound it caught the first soldier and hooked her ankle with a practised snatch. It barely broke stride as she tumbled, screaming, and it half-clambered over her to continue its pursuit, plucking the other soldier from the air mid-stride and biting down into his neck to finish him.

Lynx nudged Toil’s elbow. ‘Now what?’ he whispered.

In the cavern the cries had tailed off and the only sound was the maspid dragging the corpses of the two soldiers who’d fled back to the remains of its pack. Of those, the one shot twice had slowed to feeble twitches, its head drooping as its life ran out. Despite the sabre caught in its leg, the other injured maspid moved relatively well still and picked over the bodies to check they were all in fact dead before gathering one up to carry back to its nest.