Their crawling progress slowed even further as the two guards, practically blind in the dense gloom, edged their way forward. ‘This is absurd,’ he whispered to the lieutenant. ‘Let me go ahead. I’m the only one who can see.’
‘Can’t have you wandering off.’
‘So you do care …’
The tall woman glared down at him. ‘Yusen would have my head.’
‘And this Yusen … ex-Sixth Army?’
She gestured impatiently ahead. ‘Stay focused.’
They had arrived at the base of a particularly ancient tree. As broad as any peasant’s hut, its fat trunk supported its own forest of hanging creepers. Here Murk sensed something and he raised a hand for a pause. Then he cursed, realizing no one could see. ‘Wait,’ he murmured to Burastan. The woman gave a low whistle and the guards all stilled. ‘Spread out,’ he mouthed low. Another whistle and the patrol shifted to establish a perimeter.
Murk eased his awareness just the merest touch into Shadow. He began to search among the shapes cast recently. Fat drops pummelled him here beneath this giant tree, slapping his shoulders and head. After a time he found something; or rather, something flitted past him so fast he almost missed it. A strange Shadow. Humanoid, it was. Yet as he watched it move it bent down, hunched, then leaped, springing, to fly away in a great bound, clearly outlined as an immense cat.
Murk grunted his dread as if punched. Bad news. A kind of Soletaken or D’ivers. Just like Trake, Rikkter or Ryllandaras. Call it what you will. Way out of our class.
‘Murk,’ Burastan whispered from nearby.
Normally, enmeshed as he was within his Warren, he would have ignored such an interruption, but there was something in the woman’s voice. Something he’d never heard before. Blinking, he opened his eyes on to the jungle and hissed impatiently, ‘What?’
The lieutenant appeared to have lost some of her colour and she raised a hand to indicate his shoulder. He glanced and grunted once again. The fat drops that had been punishing him here amid the thick vines were not rainwater. He slowly raised his gaze and it took him a moment to understand what he was seeing. Above him, upside down and gutted like butcher’s carcasses, their arms slowly swinging, dripping blood from their fingertips, hung the missing patrol.
Murk lowered his stunned gaze to Burastan. She now had her blade out though he’d not heard her draw it. Carved glyphs ran down its length and red enamel or paint gleamed in the delicate script. Red, Murk realized. She’d been of the Seven Cities Red Swords.
‘Locals?’ the woman breathed, peering about, her eyes bright.
Murk swallowed to talk past the acid choking his throat. ‘You could say that.’
That morning Yusen ended all patrols. He kept everyone except the scouts close to the column. Murk kept a wary eye on his partner after the man’s claim that he could sense the locals. They all knew they were there — question was, how close and how many.
He noticed the crab-legged fellow peering about at the jungle far more anxiously than before. He was pulling repeatedly on his helmet and rubbing his dirty hands on his flapping trousers, all the while sneaking sidelong glances into the leaves. Murk sidled closer to murmur, ‘Who is it?’
‘Our friends. All around us now.’
‘All around? Then why haven’t you-’ At that moment the order came back for a halt. Troopers waved the pair forward.
They arrived to find Yusen in the cover of a copse of trees. ‘Reception committee ahead,’ he told them. ‘You’re with me.’
‘They’re all around,’ Sour warned.
The captain grimaced his displeasure. ‘Yeah. Our scouts and theirs been playing tag all day. Let’s see if we can come to an understanding before someone gets hurt.’
Murk emphatically agreed, as it was his thinking that that someone would most likely be them.
Yusen started forward through the dense hanging leaves. A short march later Sweetly emerged from cover to join them. The man’s twig stood straight out from his lips: neutral, or undecided. Murk took this as an encouraging sign.
It seemed to Murk that the four men waiting ahead amid the tree trunks appeared as if by their own brand of magery. But he knew this for an illusion. They had merely been standing so still and so calm that his eye could not separate them from their surroundings. No magic, no animism or Elder sorcery. Still, it made him profoundly uneasy the way they just seemed to flicker in and out of the jungle background like that. They wore loincloths only, with bands of leather, or fibre ropes, tied round their arms and legs. Some sort of jewellery flashed at ears and noses, and hung from necks and arms. Looking at them carefully now he realized that half their camouflage was swirls of tattooing that splashed across upper thighs, stomachs, arms, necks, and even half-obscured faces.
They were a wary lot. Two held spears ready while the other two had arrows nocked. The bows were slim but as tall as they. The arrow points were tiny — better suited to bringing down birds, but they gleamed darkly and he realized with a jolt that they were poisoned. His stomach clenched even tighter at the discovery and his hand strayed to the knife at his side.
The two with the bows straightened taller, the gut strings of the bows creaking.
Sour suddenly threw his hands out wide, pulling all eyes to him. The squat fellow made an exaggerated pantomime show of untying his weapon-belt and dropping it to the ground. Murk knew this as an empty gesture as the sword was rusted in its sheath. But their friends knew no better.
The two with the spears eased them up a touch. Murk followed along by throwing down his knife. The spears straightened upright even more. Murk murmured aside to Yusen, ‘Drop your sword.’
A hissed breath communicated their commander’s unease.
‘Has to be done …’
The man swore under his breath but unbuckled the belt and let it fall.
Murk glanced sideways to Sweetly. The scout’s twig now rested downward. ‘Slowly and sweetly now …’ he whispered. The man’s slit gaze remained bland but the twig edged straight down. He slowly reached behind his back to draw out two oiled gleaming long-knives that he let fall.
The two bowmen relaxed their gut strings and lowered the bows to point downward. Murk eased out his clenched breath. Sour started forward with his bandy-legged awkward stride then thumped down, sitting halfway between the two parties. Grumbling inwardly, Murk followed.
One of the spearmen, perhaps the eldest of the party, handed his weapon to the other and came forward. Closer now, Murk could see that he was quite sun-darkened, and very lean. His hair was straight and black, touched very slightly with grey. Bands of bluish tattooing encircled most of his muscular legs and arms, and his neck. He sat smoothly and Murk was again impressed by the man’s strength — life here in the jungle was obviously very demanding. The man’s dark eyes moved between him and Sour. They were guarded and wary, but also touched by curiosity.
Murk pointed to himself. ‘Murk.’
‘Sour.’
The leader inclined his lean aristocratic head then nodded to himself. ‘Oroth-en.’
Murk frowned at an eerie suspicion. ‘You understand Talian?’
‘Tal-ian? Is this the speech of the demons? A few of us Elders remember it, and them, too well.’
A sudden dread took hold of Murk. ‘Demons? We know of no demons. We are lost. We want to find a city. A city? You know city?’ He held his arms out wide. ‘Many people.’
Unease clouded the man’s features and his brows drew down. ‘You seek the Ritual Centres? Why seek them? There is nothing there. Only death.’
Murk struggled to make sense of what he was hearing. ‘So … no people?’