“Well fuck,” Bianca observed. Torm turned to glare at her but didn’t bother to comment. The river which had sprung into existence overnight was more the sufficient. It gurgled along the valley bottom, brown and glutenous with red laterite and half decomposed leaf mould. Here and there the top of a tree waved above the flood, drawing little ripple lines that showed the speed of the current in long tear drops. Rain continued to fall like hail, dappling the waters in a shifting hiss. Torm was irritated that a river had managed to sneak up on them without the scouts noticing but Bianca felt this was a little unfair. The rain was the problem. Bianca had heard of the monsoon of course but neither she, nor anyone else in the company had properly appreciated what it meant for inches of rain to fall within hours. The upper fingers of the Fan had gathered almost unimaginable amounts of water and were channeling it, and the rich nutrients it carried, down towards the river deltas near the coast. Which was great for the crops, but not so great for mercenaries trying to cross the rapidly flooding landscape. It was particularly not good for Bianca and Torm, who had awoken this morning to find a mile wide river between them and the rest of the company with no way of getting back to their comrades save a long and uncertain march up into the hills in search of a ford.
“It looks to me like you are on the wrong side of the river,” a shapeless apparition observed. Torm had his sword half way out of its scabbard before he recognized the acid tone of Black Ryann. The wizard’s physical form was on the other side of the river, but apparently his mental one was somewhat more amphibious. He hung a foot or so above the ground, a shimmering distortion in the rain. It made Bianca slightly queasy, which was more or less the way the flesh and blood Black Ryann made her feel come to think of it.
“Well it looks to me like I have all the horses,” Torm replied, clearly in no mood for the wizard’s airs. That was true insofar as all the cavalry, both heavy and light, was with Torm and Bianca although the truth was that the rest of the company had scores of pack horses with them.
“The Captain wants to know if there is any chance you can cross the river upstream.” This was clearly directed at Bianca but the scout shook her head emphatically.
“Three days until maybe we could ford, and even then it would be risky,” she cautioned. Ryann was silent for a long beat, presumably while he conferred with the captain. Three days was a guess but a conservative one, if the rain continued, as it was reputed to do, they might find themselves racing a rising river all the way back to the head waters.
“We cannot wait for a week in this weather, you are to head east and try to find a boat to cross over, there will be something before you reach the delta,” he told them, then his shadowy form flickered and vanished. Bianca did not know much about magic but she knew that, like everything, it was more difficult in the rain.
By midmorning they had climbed onto a low ridge and pressed on through the downpour. At least up here, where the soil was thinner, there was less mud for the horses to slip in. Bianca began to worry that if they didn’t find somewhere dry soon they might have to start worrying about hoof rot. Mercifully the jungle was also thinner, seeming to tend more towards massive ferns and slumping banyan trees, rather than the thicker growth closer to the river bed. The scouts went out in a screen, three moving ahead, one on each flank and two in drag, though the possibility of attack in such weather seemed remote. Not that you could take that for granted of course, the company had once surprised an enemy force in a sandstorm and completely obliterated it before the enemy even knew they were under attack, no one had any desire to pay the karmic debt on that one. They were about to call a halt to make what miserable lunch they could when one of the scouts, a dour man named Smiley, came racing back along what passed for a trail.
“Trouble?” Torm demanded as the scout reined in his soaking mount.
“Maybe, some kind of stone structure ahead, there are people, maybe fighting,” he reported breathlessly. Torm and Bianca exchanged glances. Neither wanted to blunder into a fight, but getting out of the rain seemed a risk worth taking.
The structure appeared to be the ruins of a temple, or perhaps some kind of fortress. Large stone tigers flanked a crumbled wall that was overgrown with bougainvillea and passionfruit vines, the invasive roots slowly prising apart the dark river stones. Inside was a half collapsed pagoda which must have been magnificent in its day but was now overgrown, its formal gardens hardly distinguishable from the jungle outside save for an unusual regularity in the color of its flowers. A score of men were spread out around the gate. A were in finery of riotously colored silk, now sadly disheveled for being thoroughly soaked. They sat atop astride gorgeously caparisoned horses that seemed to drip with gold and bright jewels. The remainder were among the most muscular men Bianca had ever seen, huge and rippling with corded muscle. An oil or animal fat of some kind must have been smeared across their hairless physiques because the rain beaded on them. They wore only black trousers and white turbans that were probably much more impressive when they weren't soaking wet. They carried scimitars that looked like they weighed as much as Bianca did in a way that suggested they knew how to use them. Clearly the peacocks were in charge and the turbaned warriors were their muscle. Two of the thugs rushed forwards towards the gate, blades raised over their heads. One of the stone tigers seemed to ripple, then abruptly pounced on the two men, dust exploding from the plinth as it tore free. The first man was crushed out right and the second was batted into the air like a toy by the swipe of a stone paw, huge sprays of mud flying up where the tigers legs churned the muddy earth. The unfortunate warrior flew through the air and smashed into the wall with a crunch of bones that Bianca could hear even over the rain, his unnervingly limp body slithering slowly down the wall. As abruptly as it began the tiger froze in place, a new found snarl on its bestial face and one paw raised mind swat. It seemed to sink a few inches into the mud, as lifeless as any other statue. By some miracle or trick of fate the rain chose that moment to slacken.
“Your sorcery will not avail you heretic!” one of the silk clad men called in a language close enough to that of the South that Bianca could follow it, though she suspected that the word she translated as ‘heretic’ was closer to ‘most unclean and polluted apostate’ or some such.
“How long can you keep it up?” the sodden nobleman demanded. As if in answer a bolt of lightning struck from the sky and blasted a crater in the mud ten paces from the fellow, causing his horse to shy and throwing him to the dirt. Enough men turned to see what had become of their commander that they caught sight of the approaching mercenaries through the drizzle.
“Ware!” one of them screamed and ran forward with a blade raised. Bianca raised her empty palms as she and Torm reigned in.
“Whoa, we have no quarrel with you,” she shouted back in her best Southern. The approaching thugs slowed, though probably more due to the fact that they saw they were facing more than a score of mounted soldiers than to Bianca’s words.
“Identify yourself!” the nobleman squealed as he pulled himself from the mud and drew a scimitar so encrusted with gold and jewels it must have been a struggle to lift. He looked vaguely ridiculous and clearly knew it, his face controrting with rage made hotter by his humiliation.
“We are mercenaries, from the Company of the Silver Sword,” Torm called as the thugs flowed towards them to create a loose front.
“Mercenaries?” the pompous noble asked. He was clearly very unhappy to find an unexpected variable in what was clearly already an unstable situation. Bianca gripped her reigns tight as her horse nickered in response to the tension and the smell of humans prepped for violence.
“Mercenaries?” another voice demanded. A woman with dark curly hair and an alabaster complexion way out of place in the South had popped up from behind the wall, standing atop a portion of a ruined gate house. She was beautiful even wrapped in saris that had been ruined by rain and dirt.
“I’ll pay you a thousand pai in emeralds if you exterminate these cretins,” she declared cheerfully. There was a world of difference between hiring a professional mercenary company and paying off a handful of street toughs. There were contracts to sign, rates of pay and length of service clauses, victory bonuses, compensation for casualties, logistical agreements, and a hundred other particulars to be worked out. Unfortunately the noble either didn't understand this or was too scared or angry to care.
“Kill the heretic’s lap dogs!” he yelled, waving his sword at Torm’s troops. The bare chested thugs charged without a second thought.
“Gods below!’ Bianca shouted and pulled her pistol from her saddle. Torm’s men were lowering their lances but there wasn’t space enough to charge. Bianca’s pistol clicked wetly as she pulled the trigger, being as thoroughly soaked as everything else. Howling with frustration she pitched the weapon into the face of the onrushing thug. He batted it away with an arm and staggered a step towards Torm. Lykurgus kicked out, his mighty hoof connecting with the thug’s neck with a wet crunch. The man stumbled away and collapsed to the ground, blood bubbling around a crushed aorta. The rain surged into downpour again as the thugs hit the line of horsemen. The knights thrust out with their lances, using them as simple spears. Two or three of their attackers went down screaming. A javelin flew at Bianca, scraping a bloody gash down its flank. The horse reared and she was suddenly tumbling, slamming on her back in the wet ground. A thug hacked down at her but she rolled aside, passing beneath Lykurgus. The thug followed but caught a cut across the eyes from Torm’s now unsheathed sword. He went down screaming. Bianca’s hand scrabbled for a discarded lance as she came up. One of the mounted nobles was charging, deep and entirely justifiable reservations on his face. Bianca set the butt of the lance in the mud a moment before the horse impacted it. There was a metal on meat sound as the horse spitted itself so forcefully that the lance bent and shattered, showering Bianca with splinters as she rolled away. For a few seconds the trail was a chaos of screaming men, horses, mud, and blood and then, as abruptly as it had begun, it was over. Not one of the turbaned men was left alive though several of the mounted nobles were fleeing off down towards the river. The pompous man was backing away, terror written clearly on his face.
“You don’t understand this woman is a …” the boganvillea vines snapped out like bullwhips, wrapping around the fellow at wrists and waist. Three inch thorns drove into his body and he was yanked from his feet, howling in agony as blood spurted from the constricting tangles. He vanished into the mass of purplish flowers which continued to thrash and convulse. The screaming went on for a long minute as blood ran from the base of the wall to mingle with the mud. The woman, looking haggard but extremely pleased with herself, jumped down from the wall. She removed a necklace of emeralds from around her neck and tossed them at a bemused Torm, who caught the glittering prize without apparent effort.
“Well that went well.”
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