As the Gossamer Shark’s warriors disembarked to wait in reserve on the water line, Kheda saw a few men prod with their swords at ragged panels of woven palm ripped from huts. Others gathered together in uncertain knots, glancing at their captains for guidance.
Every man as tense as a jungle matia out to kill a cornered snake, confident in its sharp white teeth and thick brindled fur but with no wish to risk a bite all the same. And if you had a matia’s striped tail, you’d be lashing it, wizard.
‘There’s no one to fight,’ said Dev with disgust.
‘There’s something amiss.’ Kheda moved to the ladder, his feet feeling sweaty, cramped and clumsy in his armoured leggings. ‘I’m going ashore. Tell them to shoot anything that looks like a threat.’ Kheda gestured to the archers now clustered along the Brittle Crab’s decks and on the fast trireme’s stern platform, searching the threadbare cover of the trees and bushes in vain for any target.
‘My lord.’ Mezai didn’t dare openly disapprove of Kheda’s decision but his feelings were obvious. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any immediate danger.’ Dev was peering intently at the scene on shore.
As he spoke, one of the Gossamer Shark’s sword captains moved up the beach to a heap of debris and levered a fallen palm panel aside. He recoiled sharply and swords rose on either side of him in a snarl of bright steel.
‘Let’s see what’s what, my lord.’ Dev’s voice was tight with frustration.
Kheda nodded, seeing faces turning towards the poised ships, a few of the swordsmen pushing up the visor plates of their helmets, visibly bemused. ‘Whatever it is looks to be more of a puzzle than a threat.’ Dev was already sliding down the heavy trireme’s stern ladder with alacrity. Kheda hurried after him, the crystal water of the shallows dragging at his thighs. An unmistakable, loathsome scent tainted the lazy breeze as they reached the shore. Sickly sweetness with an underlying rankness twisted Kheda’s stomach and he saw dark smears in the furrowed sand half-concealed by the trampling feet of the swordsmen. So it’s not such a hardship after all to have some leather between your feet and whatever slaughter went on here.
The armoured men parted to let the warlord and his supposed slave pass, seriousness on every face, coloured by confusion.
‘What have you found?’ Kheda demanded of the battle captains.
‘Dead meat,’ said the senior man from the Dancing Snake helplessly.
Kheda frowned. ‘Let me see.’
‘And keep a watch while we do,’ snapped Dev, shooting sharp glances in all directions.
The other captains shouted orders, sending their men to line the forest edge and bar any attack from the paltry trees. The Dancing Snake’s man led Kheda to the pile of rotting palm panels and the scent of decay strengthened.
‘There’s a body?’ Kheda looked from the Dancing Snake’s sword captain to the Gossamer Shark’s Arao, demanding an explanation. ‘Ours or theirs?’
‘Hard to say.’ Arao hooked the corner of the topmost panel with his sword and hauled it aside. Blue-backed flies buzzed with displeasure, scattering to circle around the men’s heads before returning to their enticing discovery. It wasn’t a body—at least, not all of one. There was just a foot, not even with the stump of its ankle attached. Half-buried in the dark, stained sand beside it was most of an aim, raggedly severed half-way between shoulder and elbow.
Kheda sank to his knees to study the remains more closely, trying not to breathe in the putrid smell. In death the skin was a greyish muddy colour, bruised and swollen. In life, it could have been any of the vibrant brown hues that characterised the Chazen people.
Or the dark skin that the invaders hide beneath their paint and mud.
‘I’ve seen shark kills washed up in pieces like that,’ Arao said dubiously.
‘I’ve heard tell of fishermen losing feet to beaked turtles. Could it have just washed up here?’ The Dancing Snake’s man looked at Kheda with more hope than conviction.
‘This hasn’t been in the water,’ Kheda said firmly.
‘How long’s it been here?’ asked Dev.
‘A couple of days.’ Kheda noted the tiny yellowish maggots clustered along the raw surface of the severed foot, fighting blindly to squirm beneath the skin and gorge on the bounty beneath. Flies aren’t fussy feeders. Pearl oysters, human flesh, it’s all the same to them.
Arao swallowed hard and looked down the beach. ‘We’d better find out what else is here.’
‘Yes,’ said Dev absently. He was staring across the beach towards the trees, his eyes distant.
You’re fidgeting as if you’ve got maggots under your toenails. And from the look in your eyes, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you ‘d been pickling your wits with your cursed barbarian liquor.
‘Dev, come with me,’ Kheda said sharply.
‘What?’ Dev looked at the warlord, slow to collect himself.
‘Arao, I want every piece of wreckage or driftwood turned over. I want every stain on this beach dug up. I want every one of those torn apart and anything inside laid bare!’ Kheda was already walking across the sand, pointing this way and that at the derelict huts. Arao reinforced his orders with terse shouts and the warlord turned to Dev as the barbarian caught him up. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Nothing,’ snapped the wizard.
Almost immediately, shouts came from several directions. A man prodding a stain in the sand had found something, as had a group scattering a heap of tide-washed detritus with their swords. One held up a second severed foot on the point of his blade.
‘Do you think we’ve got a pair?’ Dev chuckled, dark eyes shining oddly.
Kheda caught a look of contempt from Arao as the other swordsman overheard.
I know just what you’re thinking: he’s still an ignorant, star-crossed barbarian, even if he does wield Aldabreshin steel in the service of your warlord.
‘What’s over there?’ Kheda looked towards two men investigating the space beneath the raised platform of the mined sailer granary. Whatever they had found was enough to drop one to his knees, vomiting noisily.
‘Let’s see.’ Dev hurried towards them. Scowling, Arao took up the body slave’s station at the warlord’s side.
Kheda had to stop and take a determined swallow to settle his own stomach when he saw that two Shearsword men had dragged the head and shoulders of a man out from beneath the splintered wood. The corpse still had both his arms but that was all. Shattered ribs were ground into a gory mess of torn flesh along with the broken remnants of his shoulder blades. All that remained below that was a short tail of vertebrae clotted with blood and sinew.
‘At least he’s not one of ours, one of Chazen,’ the swordsman who’d managed to retain his breakfast said through clenched teeth.
The dead man was unmistakably an invader. His coarse, wiry hair was caked in coloured mud with small bones and black feathers tipped with scarlet woven into it. Handprints in a thick white paint made a pattern of sorts down each arm.
‘Their leaders decorate themselves like this.’ Kheda used his own sword point to turn one of the broken corpse’s hands. The fingers were torn and scored, vicious wooden splinters sticking out of the dead flesh. ‘But no wizard, I would say.’ He risked a brief questioning glance at Dev.
The barbarian shook his head, bending to peer into the empty gloom beneath the buckled and splintered floorboards of the granary. ‘I’m more interested in what killed him. That’s cursed drastic damage to do with stone knives and wooden clubs.’
‘I can’t see anything like a clean cut.’ Kheda stood up and considered the torn margins of the severed chest. No Archipelagan blade did this.’
‘There’s one of those stone knives over there, my lord,’ the Shearsword man with the stronger stomach volunteered.