shrank away from him, even the Barbarian. Rik fought to stop himself from flinching. He would be the most likely butt of the Lieutenant’s anger.
“No wizard,” he said, giving the guide a glare. “No Zarahel — just a bunch of stinking tribesmen.”
“He was here, master,” said Vosh. “They both were.”
“You swore they would be here,” said the Lieutenant.
“Maybe they are nearby. Maybe they are in the mine.”
“The mine? Where is it?”
“The shaft in the hillside. The sorcerer had it dug. God only knows why. The place is haunted.”
“Maybe that was why they were interested in it,” said Sardec. “Why did you not mention they could be there before?”
“Why should I have? They were here. They were always here at night.”
“Well, they quite plainly are not now. Maybe they got wind of our coming. How far to this mine?”
“It’s on the hillside above us. I will take you there in the morning.”
“Our friends could be leagues away by then.”
“Aye, master, they could, but in that case tracking them will be easier by daylight.”
Sardec looked as if he might strike the man for a moment, but then took a deep breath and spoke, “Sergeant! Begin clearing these corpses from the house. May as well give the wyrms something to eat. You!” he pointed directly at Rik. “See that they are fed.”
No one complained. It would be easier work than building a pyre.
Rik watched snowflakes fall onto the lake. Nearby the wyrms waited. He wondered whether it was just his imagination or whether they had oddly replete expressions on their faces. The other Foragers were inside wrapped in their blankets against the cold. The Lieutenant was upstairs. He had summoned Weasel to interrogate the prisoners, a task for which the poacher had a talent and which he performed with no particular gentleness.
The screams had made sleep difficult to come by for some time. Rik wondered what Sardec had found out. Doubtless the Lieutenant would choose to share his discoveries in his own sweet time. And if he would not, Weasel would, if he had not figured out some way to profit from the situation.
The groans of the wounded were not conducive to rest. Casualties had been light but still there were some. There always were. And at the moment the dazed looking Master Severin seemed in no condition to heal them.
Some of the few surviving hill-men were wounded too but they either shut up or were put out of their misery. The Foragers did not have a lot of sympathy for the hill tribes. They’d heard too many of the stories of what the mountain men did to soldiers they captured. Woe to the vanquished indeed, thought Rik.
He had volunteered to swap Pigeon this watch because he wanted time to think. He needed less sleep than normal men anyway, and it was a favour Pigeon would owe him.
What he thought about mostly were the Crimson Shadows. It was the first time he had witnessed such a wholesale use of devastating magical power from so close a range.
It showed him how the Terrarchs could dominate a civilisation where men outnumbered them a hundred to one. He thought about the corpses of those who died from the Shadows’ attack, their skins stained a strange red, blood running from their noses and the corners of their mouth. The Shadows were a lesson to those who opposed the Terrarchs as well as a weapon.
What would it be like to wield such power, he wondered? He would most likely never know. The Old Witch had told that such sorceries drove most men mad or warped them physically to the point of death. Human beings were not meant to wield such potent magic. But then, he was only half human. If he tried, which side of his nature would win out? It would be the ultimate test of what he was.
He did not like to dwell on what the results of that test might show, so he tried to shift his thoughts to something else, to their mission.
They had been sent pretty much across the border to find some wizard who was supposed to be holed up here along with a tribal religious leader. They had come armed and equipped to take on much more than they had encountered. They had brought a wizard and enough wyrms to rout a troop of hussars. Clearly someone somewhere thought this was important.
And what had they found? Not a thing so far. Just a ruined city, a bunch of scared hill-men and talk of a haunted mine.
It was stranger yet, he thought. They were along the border with Kharadrea, and more and more Royal troops were being sent to Redtower. There could only be one reason for that. The Kharadreans would not be mad enough to invade the Realm, particularly not while fighting a murderous civil war against each other. Talorea planned some form of intervention, a thing specifically prohibited to both it and the Dark Empire by the Treaty of Oslande. It would mean war, and not just with the Kharadreans if Realm troops marched through Broken Tooth Pass; war on a scale that had not been seen in over a century.
Rik was not sure how he felt about the prospect of war in the East. It would mean plenty of plunder, and that was something of which every soldier dreamed, but it might also mean facing the massive slave armies of the Dark Empire. Those Terrarchs were not kind to humans who dared oppose them. During the schism, they had crucified regiments of men they had defeated, as a lesson to those who thought to resist them.
All manner of tales were told of the vile sorceries of the East. Rik had read about the previous wars. That had been bad enough. This one could only be worse. Alchemy and gunnery had progressed a great deal since then, and who knew what the mad wizards of Askander could do now? There were whispered tales about the necromancy and vampirism practised by the Terrarchs of the forbidden land. All he knew was that the Exalted loathed their estranged kin with a hatred religious in its intensity. What was it drove them to that, he wondered?
He shook his head and stared at the lake once more. Its surface was grey and dappled. He had let his thoughts stray a long way. He flinched. Somewhere on the far side, he thought he saw a light. It flickered and vanished, and he waited for a minute or two to see if it would reappear. When it did not, he decided he had better report the matter.
Sergeant Hef was not best pleased with being dragged from his bed to come and look for a light that was no longer there, but he was a good enough soldier to know that it might be important. He woke Pigeon and sent him off to get Vosh and find out where the mine was. The guide appeared and confirmed that it lay in the general direction in which Rik had seen the light. Unfortunately his presence brought the Lieutenant.
Sardec stared into the lightening gloom through his telescope, trusting to his Terrarch night vision to let him see what the others had not. He found no satisfaction in it though and turned his glance back gloomily towards the men of his command. He glared at Rik.
“Apparently you saw nothing,” he said. There was accusation in his tone and Rik saw another punishment detail coming.
“Perhaps he did, sir, but it’s gone now…” said Sergeant Hef. “Better to be woken by an alert sentry than have our throats slit because he was asleep.”
Not even Sardec could disagree with that. “I will feel happier when we have investigated this mine, Sergeant,” Sardec said.
“Yes, sir.”
“And happier yet when we find this wizard. There is a stink of sorcery about all this that I dislike.”
That was the first thing Rik had heard Sardec say in a long time with which he could unequivocally agree.
“And speaking of wizards, find out if Master Severin has fully recovered yet. We might need his skills before all of this is over.”
“Very good, sir.”
The Sergeant sent Pigeon on his way and followed the Lieutenant back inside. Rik returned to his sentry duties, his greatcoat buttoned tight against the cold. He really wished now that he had time to loot some of those corpses of clothing. Some of it might well have fitted him, and even if it had not, another layer would not have gone amiss in this chill.
