"By Terra's tits, I'm hungry!"
Scurge pulled open the flap of his back-sack again, and peered hopefully inside.
There was still nothing in there apart from the half crushed bags of smoked whitestep. The stuff was a delicacy in the Provinces, and Scurge had thought he'd struck it lucky when they'd come across the farmhouse, stuck up in its arse-crack valley in the hills above the jungle. Spending the five days since then eating little else but the fragrant fungus had soon changed his mind. It was fine for the good knights and ladies of the Orders to eat, sliced thin on a wafer of bread, but eating vast chunks of it had soon bunged up his insides, and the thought of eating any more of the stuff made his stomach twist violently.
From where he hung in the tree across the fire from Scurge, Kreelipu grinned, his too large teeth catching the orange flame-light.
"Stillgotmolusmeat."
"We killed that molus a week ago, you fart brained scrounger!"
Scurge closed his back-sack with a grunt of disgust. Kreelipu scratched at the filthy fur on the back of his ear, his face folded in a look of stupid concentration.
"Youthinkweshouldleaveitanotherweek?"
"No, I don't think we should leave it another week you shit wit! If you keep it any longer the maggoty stuff will crawl away on its own!"
A loud tutting came from the other end of the fire pit.
Scurge turned away from Kreelipu's stupid expression to look at the third member of their group. Peemish was writing. The scrawny little clerk had his hand-ledger on his knees, angled towards the fire so that he could see as he scribbled with his chamber pen. His hand-light had died two days before, its valve, when it was turned, doing nothing more than making the liquid behind its lens ripple sluggishly.
Scurge continued to glare at Peemish in silence, though in truth there was no silence. There never was in the jungle. The sound of things clicking and buzzing and screeching in the damply dense vegetation that surrounded them was a constant reminder that he was a long way from the civilised city of his birth. As he watched the clerk, Scurge let his fiercest expression fall over his face, because pretty soon Peemish would realise he was being watched and would look up, and Scurge wanted to make sure that he would have the arse vomit scared out of him when he did.
Peemish didn't notice, and continued writing.
Scurge felt his mask of promised violence twitch, and he reached down and pulled his axe out of the ground. He ran his thumb along its edge and found that it was becoming blunt from chopping too much damp firewood. He scowled in annoyance, but it didn't really matter. His axe didn't have to be sharp for what he had in mind. He stood and walked behind the clerk, who remained oblivious to his presence. From his position in the tree, Kreelipu grinned.
"Always scribbling, aren't you, clerk." At the sound of his savage voice, Peemish stopped writing. "Scribbling and tutting." Scurge rested his axe on his shoulder. "Scribbling and tutting." Peemish remained frozen, his chamber-pen poised at the end of the last neat line he had written. "It's like our company's not good enough for you or something," Scurge went on.
"Your company causes me no discord," said Peemish, still not moving. "I have been in much worse."
"But what's with all this scribbling then? You ain't stopped since we set out from Balboa."
"I am chronicling our journey. It is how we preserve events."
"Seems like a waste of time to me."
Scurge nudged the clerk's elbow with his foot, and the chamber-pen skittered across the page.
"Scurge..."
"What you gonna do, clerk? Tell his lordship?"
Scurge nodded to where Sir Burgess knelt; a dim shape at the limits of the firelight. The edges of the knight's armour caught the orange glow, but the black material of his tabard absorbed it. The knight never took his armour off now. He fought in it, travelled in it, and slept in it, and as a result the man stank worse than Kreelipu's breath.
Though the truth was that, after two turns of the Taqi moon trekking through the suffocating heat of the Cusp Jungle, they all stank. All except for Peemish, who would bathe in any stream or pool that they came across. The man should have known better after what had happened to Sir Burgess's squire.
Scurge saw Peemish glance over at Sir Burgess, but the kneeling knight remained immobile, his head bent in prayer. The man was always praying. Scurge slung his axe from his shoulder and placed its blunt blade at the clerk's neck.
"I don't know why we have to bother keeping you alive if all you do is scribble."
"Manknowswherewegoing," said Kreelipu.
"Only because he's got the map. Maybe we should relieve him of the burden, and that clever little leading device of his with it."
"And are you capable of interpreting the map and reading the device, Scurge?"
The grin left Scurge's face as he raised his head to peer across the clearing. Sir Burgess stood, the edges of his ungreased armour issuing a pitched scraping. When the man turned, his eyes glinted in the firelight; twin sparks in the harrowed shadows of their sockets. His hair was lank and fell down over his worn features, and the mark of Fortak emblazoned on his tabard was similarly dulled, from bright orange to mud brown.
The man was a wreck, and Scurge wasn't about to show any signs of being intimidated.
"Reckon I could read this here map," he said. "And it don't take a genius to work out which way is west. This skinny streak of piss don't have to come back alive for us to get the reward."
"I believe that his mistress would see things differently. Besides, it is not the reward I am interested in."
Sir Burgess stepped forward into the firelight, and Scurge straightened up, removing his axe from Peemish's neck to rest it on his own shoulder again.
"No. It ain't, is it?"
"MorefoolyouKreelipuwantssparklies."
The knight glanced at Kreelipu with undisguised distaste.
"My desire in the purpose of this mission goes beyond the acquisition of wealth."
Scurge went to the log he had been sitting on, and swung his axe to thud back into the ground beside it. Then he glared at Sir Burgess. The man was a self-righteous git; typical of the pious idiots who made up the holy Orders of knighthood. His kind had served their purpose well enough two hundred years or so before, when the Predation had come out of the west with their war-engines and their demons, but now he was just a relic.
The Orders had done their job, defeated the Predation, and then retired to their fortresses to guard the borders of what was left of the Provinces, but not all of them were content to sit around on their arses doing nothing. Knights like Sir Burgess could always be found around the lands that the wars had turned to shit, looking for evil to smite and rights to wrong and all that dross. Scurge spat on the ground, and slumped back down onto the damp log.
"What do you care about more, Sir Berk?" he said. "Rescuing the girl or killing the demon?"
"Both goals are of equal importance to me."
"Don't reckon it's a demon anyways. There's no one alive no more that's ever seen one. The thing we're hunting's probably just some shit eating swamp sponge."
Peemish had started writing again, but he stopped briefly to chuckle to himself.
"Something funny, clerk?"
"It was that last statement of yours that was the cause of my amusement."
"Which one?"
"I was referring to your assertion that no one alive has ever seen a demon."
"What's so funny about that?"
"Well, you see, if any living person had ever seen a demon, then they would doubtless not remain in a state of being alive for very long, so your logic of the lack of demonic sightings being proof that there are no demons left in the world is wholly flawed."
"HahegotyouthereScurge."
"Shut it, arse face!"
"Enough!"
Sir Burgess had been standing close to the fire, seemingly oblivious to the stinging smoke that twisted from its damp wood, but he suddenly turned his hollow gaze on Scurge.
"I have heard enough of your language this night! We will reach our goal tomorrow, and sleep is needed if we wish to have success. Both of you; go to your rest." Scurge met the knight's gaze, and then spat into the fire. Peemish wrote a few more words before closing his hand-ledger. "Kreelipu will take first watch."
Sir Burgess turned and went back to the blanket he had laid on the ground, his helmet and his sword lying beside it.
"KreelipuwilltakefirstwatchKreelipuwilltakefirstwatchKreelipualwaystakesfirstwatch."
Still muttering to himself, Kreelipu swung from his perch in the tree and clambered upwards, until his green tinged fur disappeared into the canopy above. Peemish lay down on the far side of the fire and bundled himself up in his blanket.
Scurge grunted, pulled his axe from the ground again and lay down beside the log, cradling the weapon in his arms. His stomach was still bloated from hunger and whitestep. The sooner this business was done, and he was out of the company of these knob-wads, the better. He grimaced as he watched the filthy fire. Maybe he should wait for his watch to come around, then slit all their throats and take the map for himself. More reward for him then.
In the darkness of the jungle beyond the firelight, something screamed. It was the scream of something dying, and doing it in brutal agony by the sounds of it.
Then again, thought Scurge, maybe killing his companions could wait until after they had rescued the girl and got out of this shit stinking jungle. After that... Well, after that was another matter.
He closed his eyes.
Despite the constant screeching and skittering in the surrounding darkness, it didn't take him long to fall asleep.
* * * * *
The mist thickened the already rank air at the bottom of the slope. Sir Burgess was standing still, ignoring the grey tendrils that covered the ground and the surrounding jungle. The man had his helmet on, so it was impossible for Scurge to tell what he was thinking. He could have been asleep for all he knew.
He took a few steps backwards, away from the decrepit knight, and peered up the slope again.
"Where've those pair of turds got to?" Sir Burgess made no reply. "We should have all gone."
"Our comrades will make better speed."
Scurge scowled. He knew the real reason the knight had sent Kreelipu and Peemish on alone. His festering knee was probably playing up again, and he didn't want the trouble of climbing the slope if it was going to be another dead way.
"That sodding clerk had better be right this time."
"Have patience with the man. The map you stole is not the best."
Scurge's hand tightened on the handle of the knife at his belt.
"That's the thanks I get for risking my cocking neck!"
"I would hardly call sneaking into the bedroom of a drunken acolyte as taking a risk."
Scurge glared at Sir Burgess' back, and imagined the pleasure he would feel when he finally got the chance to bury his axe between the pious sod's shoulder blades.
"The clerk's mistress had better live up to her side of the deal, that's all I can say."
"Be assured that she will. Peemish claims that she cares greatly for her daughter's safety."
"Not enough to stop her husband selling her to the Brotherhood in the first place."
"I assume it was an event that she could not prevent."
Scurge grimaced, and glanced back up the slope.
"The girl's probably been eaten by now."
"The Sladin moon has not completed its passage. We still have time."
A branch cracked somewhere in the veiling mist. Scurge reached for his axe, but it was Peemish who emerged out of the greyness.
"I have found it!" he whispered, his excitement barely contained as he pointed back up the slope.
"Where is Kreelipu?" asked Sir Burgess.
"He is back up there. Keeping watch."
"And the girl?"
"She is there! She still lives!"
"Let us go then."
The knight began to climb the slope, his armour grating and his movements stiff as he negotiated the jungle's low branches and entwining vines. Scurge scowled at the noise, and then followed, consoling himself with the knowledge that he would soon be out of the pompous git's stinking company.
* * * * *
Scurge noticed the change in the jungle as they pushed their way through the final slick wall of leaves and prickling vegetation. The screeching, whirring and sighing that pervaded the surrounding damp undergrowth must have been fading while they climbed the slope, but once they stood together on the basin's edge the silence before them was absolute.
He had never been one for poetic observations, but for once the scene before him caused his brain to work hard to make sense of it. It was as though a vast round space had been hollowed out of the jungle's foliage. Its bottom was flattened by layers of half rotten leaves, but the surrounding jungle curved upwards and over, held back by arching metal ribs, interlaced with twisted angular struts. The metal was dark and mossy, wrapped in vines and crawling plants, and sunlight pierced through the structure in misty shafts that lit the jungle floor.
"There she is!" whispered Peemish, pointing to the basin's far side.
The girl was hanging with her head drooping to her chest, her arms stretched above her and her wrists tightly bound. The rope that secured them was tied to a piece of dark metal that protruded from the curved wall. Hand-lights had been strapped to stakes in a circle about her, and their rippling light was pale in the vaporous shafts of sunlight. The light played over the girl's arms, and on her naked legs where they showed beneath the rag she had been clothed in, making them seem pallid and ashen.
Scurge unslung his axe and peered around the basin's space.
"Brotherhood's probably long gone. Too shit scared to be around here once the moon rises."
Sir Burgess was once more standing unmoving, and his manner might have seemed calm if it wasn't for the laboured breathing that Scurge could hear echoing inside his helm.
"Where's shit breath?" Scurge asked.
Peemish pointed upwards to the curving foliage above the girl, but Scurge could see no sign of Kreelipu. He wasn't surprised. Hiding was the thing the piss poor critter did best. He had better be ready with his knives. That's all Scurge was bothered about.
"So what's the plan, Sir Berk?" The knight did not move, but his breathing had slowed. "You think the big bad beastie might be away?"
"There is only one way we can find that out."
The knight drew his sword and stepped down into the silent basin. Scurge grinned and watched him go. Peemish was still standing beside him, studying the girl on the basin's far side.
"You'd better stay here, clerk. Out of our sodding way. Watch carefully now, see how a real man earns his pay, and try not to crap yourself."
Scurge followed Sir Burgess down into the basin, smiling at the sound of Peemish's tutted objection. The ground beneath his feet felt spongy with accumulated humus, but nothing grew in its pungent depths, and the way down was easy. Ahead of him, Sir Burgess was making his way cautiously towards the girl, who didn't stir, despite the noise the fool's armour was making. Scurge hung back and kept quiet. If there was a demon here, it would be sure to attack the knight first. It's what they did. Or so he had heard.
He gripped his axe and looked around at the jungle's strange curving walls. The shape of the leafy chamber wasn't perfect. Now that he'd moved down the slope, he could see that one vast section of the domed roof was disfigured. The curving girders were twisted or missing, and the jungle had pushed and tangled its way inside so that the space was not completely round. It was shaped more like a cooking pot with one side caved in by a spiked mace. The tumble of intruding vegetation cast a dark cave of shadow beneath it.
Scurge grinned and began to edge around the clearing towards the cave's unruly mouth. Not too close, though. If there was something lurking in the darkness, he didn't want to disturb the beast. Leave that to Sir Burgess. Once the creature was out of its hiding, he could bury his axe in the back of its head. That was always the best way of doing things. He crept back up the slope a little way and crouched down in a triangle of darkness, cast by one of the jungle chamber's curved girders, and waited.
In the basin below, Sir Burgess had almost reached the girl. From where he crouched, Scurge could not tell if she still breathed, but as the knight stopped in front of her, she stirred and raised her head. Even from the other side of the clearing he could see that her eyes were red and puffy from crying. Typical woman!
"Are you harmed, my lady?"
The knight's voice cut through the silence and the mist. The girl's reply was weak, and Scurge had to strain to hear it.
"Are you...? Are you here to rescue me?"
"I am, my lady. Hold fast, I will cut you down."
Sir Burgess reached up to the rope that bound her wrists, and lifted his sword.
"Wait!" sighed the girl, her voice still barely audible. "Wait! It's here!"
Scurge stood and tightened his grip on his axe.
"What is it, my lady?" said Sir Burgess.
"There!"
The girl's eyes were wide as she looked over the knight's armoured shoulder. He lowered his sword and turned.
"Where?"
"Everywhere!" moaned the girl.
The ground exploded.
Half rotted leaves and damp soil burst upwards in lines that criss-crossed the basin's floor. Dirty brown tentacles, barbed and supple, whipped about, sending filth into the air. Sir Burgess' legs were smashed from under him, and the knight went down with an ugly clatter.
"Fortak's balls!" Scurge hissed, and charged.
Deadly sinuous limbs slashed towards him. He caught one with his axe and it split apart, spraying thick orange pus.
"Kreelipu!" he screamed. "Kreelipu, where are you, you shit stinking..."
Something lashed upwards. Pain punched his chest and sent him sprawling on his back. He raised his head and saw another tentacle striking towards him, low over the ground so that its grim barbs ploughed through the damp leaves, scattering dark soil. He rolled and leapt, striking down with his axe as the thing passed beneath him, but his blade missed and thumped into the ground. As he got to his knees and strained to tug it free, banded muscle wrapped his legs, and he was lifted into the air, his sweaty palms pulled from their grip on the axe's haft.
"You crap chewing, shit brained son of a whore born...!"
From where he hung upside down, he saw the ground beneath him suddenly split apart. Something reached towards him, its body like three intertwined blades wreathed in more tentacles, pink and writhing like so many lashing, pointed tongues. The body of the thing twisted apart as it reached for him, opening a red veined maw, surrounded by the three twisted blades, like the petals of Terra's ugliest flower.
Scurge stared down into the hungry orifice, his eyes wide.
For once, he was lost for an obscenity.
"Oh, mother!"
He reached for the knife at his belt.
"Die, Predation spawn!"
Sir Burgess' cry echoed around the verdant chamber.
Scurge looked down to see the knight attack. His sword sliced through pink writhing tentacles, then scraped along one of the creature's opened mouth blades. There was a piercing shriek, and the mouth screwed itself closed. Scurge stared, his eyes still wide, as the knight fought beneath him. All signs of diseased weakness seemed to have left him as he turned to the creature's counter.
Barbed, twisting limbs lashed at him. He severed one with a stroke, and sick looking pus sprayed across his dark tabard. Another whipped from behind him, and rather than avoid its strike, he turned and barged himself towards it, encircling it with his metal-sheathed arm. It pushed him along the basin's floor, his armoured feet gouging into the earth, but his strength held it and he brought his sword around again to split it apart. He released its severed end and it flopped away, scattering more orange vileness.
Before the knight could turn to the next attack, a whipping tentacle struck him. His armour was too strong for the barbs to pierce, but he was thrown forwards onto the creature's writhing body, and the pink tongues that cloaked it entwined his arm and pulled him close. He was held in the beast's embrace, his armour slicked with saliva and orange secretion as more wet and pointed tentacles reached for him.
'Time to piss off,' thought Scurge as he bent at the waist and plunged his knife into the flesh that wrapped his legs.
He twisted it, but the thing's grip only tightened. He looked over his shoulder and saw Sir Burgess fully entwined. The creature's tri-bladed mouth had twisted open again, and the knight was being hauled upwards, passed between the flicking tongues.
Scurge pulled the knife out, thrust it back in, and began to slice. The tentacle whipped him about. He lost his grip on his weapon as his body was snapped straight, and he was swung back and forth above the basin's floor. Then he was dangled once more over the red veined mouth, and he could see Sir Burgess below him, about to be delivered into that gaping maw.
'Hope the stinking fool chokes you!'
But that was not to be.
As the knight was passed towards the mouth's slick rim, his arm was released, and in it he still clasped his heavy broadsword.
"Fortak accept me!"
He plunged it over and down, and the sword sliced deep into the creature's mouth. Another shrill shriek was emitted, and the three twisted blades snapped shut on the sword's hilt. The knight was released and fell crashing backwards to the ground. The thing's body stood rigid, and then collapsed, the barbed tentacles falling limp around it.
Scurge dropped with them.
He rolled as he landed, then scrambled to his feet, kicked off the thing's unresisting hold, and looked around for his axe. He found it close by and tugged it from the ground.
"That went well!" he said as Sir Burgess pulled himself to his feet, his armour and tunic still slick with slime. He took the hilt of his sword in both hands and pulled, but it was held fast in the creature's dead grip.
"Give me your knife."
Scurge pulled his knife from where it was still stuck in the creature's flesh and then, stepping over severed and limp tentacles, he crossed the basin's floor and handed it to the knight.
"You'll have a job cutting it out of there."
Sir Burgess didn't reply. He turned his back on the dead demon and went to the girl, who still hung from her bound wrists.
Her eyes were wide as she watched him approach.
"You... You killed it!"
Sir Burgess wrapped an arm around her waist and then reached up to cut her bonds.
"You have nothing to fear now, my lady. You are safe."
The rope parted, and the girl fell into his arms. He lay her on the ground, and cut away the rest of the rope that still bound her wrists.
"Thank you!" the girl sighed. "I have never seen such skill."
"It was nothing, my lady. Rescuing you was my duty."
Scurge stepped up behind him, his axe in his hands.
"Least now we get some cocking pay!" he said, then he frowned and glanced up at the curving canopy above him.
The girl placed her hand against Sir Burgess' mired black tabard.
"Good sir knight. Will you allow me to see the face of my rescuer?"
Sir Burgess reached up and pulled his helmet from his flattened, greasy hair.
"Of course, my lady."
The girl smiled, and reached up to touch his lined face.
"You have been so brave."
Scurge glanced around the clearing again, his face still creased in a frown. Where the cock was Kreelipu? Then he looked back down at the kneeling knight and the rescued girl.
"Shit! The bitch has got a..."
But his warning came too late.
Sir Burgess seemed to sigh as the knife in the girl's hand slit his throat. His blood soaked the dark fabric of his tabard, turning the faded sign of Fortak a deeper orange, then he slumped down and was still.
The girl looked up as Scurge stepped towards her, his axe raised.
"Why in the name of shit did you do that!"
The girl smiled at him.
"It's what I do."
"Well not to me!"
Scurge took another step forward, but then pain sliced his body. He looked down to see the bloodied blade of Sir Burgess' sword protruding from his chest.
"Oh, crap!" he said, before he coughed once and vomited blood down his front.
He rolled his eyes upwards, to see the girl still smiling sweetly at him.
"Bitch!" he spat between his bloodied teeth, and then he died.
* * * * *
The girl wiped the blood from her knife on the cleanest part of Sir Burgess' tunic she could find, and stood up.
"I swear by the Predation that this one smells worse than all the others combined."
Peemish grunted with effort as he put his foot on Scurge's back and pulled the knight's sword free.
"I must admit, my lady, that his companions were a particularly obnoxious bunch of miscreants."
The clerk looked at the bloody sword, then dropped it on the ground. The girl slid her knife back into its hiding place beneath her ragged dress, then she looked over Peemish's shoulder, and an expression of pity fell over her face.
"Poor Skriptik!" She crossed the clearing, tiptoeing carefully over Scurge's body and his fallen axe. As she passed, a dirty brown tentacle rose up from the floor and caressed her cheek. "I know," said the girl, running her hand gently over one of the tentacle's barbs. "Did the horrible man hurt you?"
The creature's body had raised itself from the floor, and its bladed mouth hung open, orange fluid dripping from the wound the knight had given it. The girl climbed carefully up its side, enfolded and welcomed by the tentacles that wreathed it.
"You will recover," she said when she was level with the mouth, and ran her hand gently over the wound before leaning down to kiss it, leaving an orange stain on her lips. "And now we have a feast to give you your strength back. Isn't that right, Peemish?"
Peemish left Scurge's body where it had fallen, and climbed the basin's side.
"Absolutely right, my lady." He crouched down and reached with both hands under a tangle of undergrowth, and with another grunt of effort, pulled Kreelipu's body from beneath it. The stinking creature's too large teeth were displayed in an expression of fearful surprise. A fist sized hole had been punched in his chest, and his black blood was soaking into his green tinged fur. "Though I myself would not fancy eating this one."
"Skriptik can have it. He is partial to a little vileness."
Peemish sat down at the top of the slope beside Kreelipu's body. He pulled his back-sack over to him, before rummaging around inside for something.
"So who is next, Peemish?" called the girl from where she still perched in Skriptik's embrace.
Peemish took his hand-ledger from his pack, and opened it at a page marked by a piece of tanned material. He ran his finger down the list of names that he found there. Then he took out his chamber pen and neatly crossed one of them out.
"There are plenty left to choose from, Lady Diofrasse," he smiled across at the girl. "Take your pick."