Arberus was also quick to establish a daily routine, having the companies roused shortly after dawn and attempting to educate them in basic drill before breakfast. There were several former soldiers in their ranks who found themselves quickly elevated to sergeants charged with forming the companies into a semblance of military order. Morning drill was followed by a short breakfast after which camp would be broken and the day’s march commenced. Arberus insisted on organising the army into a column and ordered the sergeants to ensure no soldier wandered more than two yards from the line of march. He also set a punishing pace, marching them for two hours at a time before permitting a half-hour’s rest. Inevitably, the sudden introduction of discipline produced an upsurge in grumbling and some outright dissent, though most of it died down after Varkash beat one man unconscious for throwing a handful of dung at Arberus’s horse. Those not inclined to open disobedience, but also finding the strictures of military life not much to their liking, had taken the opportunity to desert during the second night, though not as many as Lizanne would have expected.
“Forty-four failed to answer the morning roster,” Arberus reported at the Electress’s nightly conclave.
“Send me after them,” Anatol said to her with a murderous grimace. “Forty-four severed heads would be quite the lesson.”
The Electress shook her head, puffing on one of the increasingly scarce cigarillos to be found. “What lesson? That I’m just as bad as the constables? No, Annie, old love, let them go. The Emperor’s soldiers will find them soon enough.”
“And learn our destination in the process,” Lizanne pointed out.
“Can’t be helped. There’s too many to track down in any case, and we don’t have time to be pissing about.” She took a final draw on her cigarillo, wincing in regret as she inspected the smoking fragment before stubbing it out. “What else, General?” she asked Arberus, employing a title Lizanne noticed many were now using to address the major, and not all with the same ironic lilt.
“The supply situation is still worrying,” he said. “Rationing has reduced wastage, but we’ll need a great deal more if we’re to make it to Vorstek.”
“Yes, I’ve been thinking about that. Those buggers we killed back at Scorazin, the light-horsey wotsits.”
“The Thirty-eighth Imperial Light Horse,” Arberus supplied.
“Right. They must have had a base, I assume?”
“They were stationed at Hervus, a small garrison town to the south.”
“Small, eh?” The Electress smiled. “Which means it’ll now be mostly empty since we killed nearly all those bastards. Am I right?”
“They may have been reinforced by now,” Arberus said, pausing for a moment’s calculation before adding, “Although it’s unlikely. Most of the Imperial troops in this prefecture are concentrated in the north to guard the approaches to Corvus.”
“How far to Hervus?” the Electress enquired.
“Two days’ march, if we push hard.”
“Then push away, General.” The Electress rose and stomped off towards her tent. “And let’s hope they have some fucking smokes there, I’m gasping.”
CHAPTER 36
Clay
Clay followed Kriz’s slender form, outlined in the bobbing glow of the lantern as she descended the stairs with a sure-footed swiftness. He suspected she was unwilling to let herself stop, as if the slightest pause would undo her determination to confront what lay below. It took several minutes to reach the bottom, Kriz striding through the narrow opening they found there with the same purposeful lack of hesitancy. Clay followed her then came to an unbidden stop at the sight that greeted him.
They were in a large chamber, most of it shrouded in darkness but he was able to gain an impression of its size as Kriz’s lantern beam swept around. He heard her stifle a choking gasp as the light caught a bulky shape near the centre of the chamber. She rushed towards it, the light revealing a curved form that stirred an instant note of recognition. Moving closer, he saw it was a large stone slab that possessed a vague resemblance to a segment of orange. Full recognition dawned when Sigoral followed Loriabeth into the chamber, his sailor’s lamp adding enough light to afford a fuller view of the chamber.
Not an orange, Clay thought, his gaze picking out the outline of an identical segment near by. An egg. It was the same as the huge segmented egg back in the structure where they had encountered Kriz. That one had been wet and, he now understood, recently opened. This one, however, was dry and covered in pale yellow dust.
“More over here,” Loriabeth said, tapping the toe of her boot to another slab several feet away. Clay scanned the chamber, seeing numerous slabs all lying in their dusty shrouds. He did a quick count and estimated there were enough segments to make a dozen eggs. But it was clear that whatever had been waiting to hatch had done so a very long time ago.
A soft keening drew him towards the centre of the chamber where he found Kriz on her knees, hands playing over the dust-covered surface of a different object. This one was smaller than the eggs, with a more jagged appearance. As Kriz smoothed some of the dust from its surface he saw how it caught a bright gleam from her lantern.
“Crystal,” he murmured, moving closer. It was much the same dimensions as the glowing rock from in the island structure, but this one lay dark and lifeless on the chamber floor.
A stream of words issued from Kriz’s mouth in a rapid jumble, too fast to follow but Clay was sure one of the words translated as “alone.”
“She lost her mind?” Loriabeth asked.
“I don’t think so,” Clay replied, then nodded at the surrounding shapes. “I think there was something here she hoped might still be around.”
“This is a tomb,” Sigoral said, rubbing dust between his gloved fingers. “All bodies will turn to dust with sufficient time.”
“I don’t think she was expecting to pay her respects to the dead.” His mind ransacked the evidence, coming up with an unpalatable but undeniable conclusion. The opened egg back at the island . . . “Ten thousand years . . .” “It was a storehouse,” he went on. “Or a barracks, depending on how you look at it.” His gaze tracked from the crystal to one of the sundered eggs. “She slept in one of these for a very long time, not knowing she’d be all alone when she woke up.”
“Slept?” Sigoral asked, clearly finding the notion absurd.
“We’ve seen a lot since we got ourselves trapped down here,” Clay replied. “Folk who could build this place, and everything else, ain’t too much of a stretch to imagine they could contrive a way for people to sleep for years at a time.”
Kriz let out a sob, so full of pain and loss he gave an involuntary shiver. The sense of being observed was strong here, as if the silent scrutiny of those gone-to-dust souls were pressing in from all sides.
“Guess something went wrong at some point,” he went on, moving to rest a hand on Kriz’s shoulder.
“Father . . .” Kriz’s voice was a whisper. She remained huddled on her knees, tears dripping from her face, but there was a sibilant anger to her tone that hadn’t been there before. “Father . . .” she repeated, forming the words with care, “went . . . wrong.” Without warning she threw her head back and screamed, “FATHER!”
The scream echoed through the chamber like thunder, full of rage and accusation, then slowly faded without reply.
“We, uh,” Loriabeth began after a short interval during which Kriz subsided back into herself, slender shoulders moving in gentle heaves. “We should go.”
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