Spoils of War (Tales of the Apt Book 1) Adrian Tchaikovsky (good books to read for teens TXT) 📖

have been there. They wanted the big haul, worth absconding from the army for. Harsh words were spoken, a free and frank exchange of views, until Merric got free and frank enough to shoot at Fael. His sting went wide, from poor light and Fael throwing himself flat, but it knocked a chunk out of that wall, a chunk the size of your hand.

I won’t swear something moved, past that gap, but Skessi was shouting that it had, and then a great deal was moving all at once because the tunnel saw fit to collapse.

Not all of it, and not all at once, but Fael just pitched forwards into what was suddenly quite a big hole, too many stones and stuff in the air to use his wings. I felt the earth beneath me shift and I scrabbled back and back, Art-clinging from stone to stone and feeling each one move as I trusted it. One of the lanterns smashed and the other one went out, and it was all suddenly very black and everyone was shouting.

We got to a stage when the only noise was us, though, and all the stone that was going anywhere had gone. Roven had somehow shielded his dead lantern with his body to save the glass, and now he coaxed a little light from it. The place had undergone severe redecoration. We counted the two Wasps and me, and Skessi had got clear of course because his kind always do.

“Fael?” I called. I had no idea what shape the plan was in, just then. The plan needed Fael, for starters.

“Here,” came a weak voice, and then, “Down here, quick!” with extreme urgency.

I started forwards and Roven came with me, lantern out. The first thing we saw was that the place was crawling with critters. There were little centipedes, finger-length, and worms and slugs and some kind of palm-wide albino cricket that just looked bad to touch. The tunnel we were in had just gone, a few feet ahead, but it had gone into a lower level that none of us had guessed at. Roven tried to get some light down there, and the first thing we saw were the bodies.

I hadn’t thought Fael was telling the truth, perhaps he hadn’t either. There hadn’t been bodies in the other place, just a little loot and the writing that put us onto this one. There were bodies here though. Before the stones had fallen on them they had been standing up in armour, and one of them was still on its feet, propped up in an alcove with its bony hands about a sword-hilt. The rest were in pieces, and the dried skulls seemed to leer and scream out at us when the lantern-light hit them. There was plenty else to catch the light, though, and it was mostly gold. Fael was lying there surrounded by a Monarch’s ransom. The armour the corpses had been wearing was all precious metals and enamel and gems, and there were other pieces: jewellery, masks, inscribed tablets, and all of it enough for any two of us to live on till the end of our days. No coins, of course, because even these days the Commonweal runs off barter and goodwill, but there were lots of these little ingots of gold, all the same, that I’d never seen before. There were weapons, too, fine ones, and some pieces of gilded armour that were big enough for one of the giant Mole Cricket-kinden to wear, and were surely just for show. There were spread quivers of white-shafted arrows with elegant, pearl-hafted bows and dragon-swords with inscribed blades.

“Start passing it up,” Roven snapped, a barbarian at heart, and he signalled for Merric to go down to help. Merric was having none of it, though. He was staying well back from the edge. Something had spooked him. I thought it was just the danger of another collapse, at the time.

“I don’t think I can fly, not with any weight,” Fael said. He was sitting up, and I couldn’t see any obvious hurt. I got it: this was part of the plan.

“I’ll go down and help,” I said, but Roven pushed me back, grabbing Skessi by the collar before the fly could scoot away.

“Starting shifting it up here,” he said, virtually throwing the Fly down the pit. Fael was already kneeling by then, gathering stuff up into a sack. The Fly ended up hovering above the room’s centre, and in a rasping voice asking, “What’s through there?”

There was an archway, you see. The pit Fael had fallen into wasn’t just on its own. It must connect to some other set of tunnels. The archway was big, ten feet at the keystone. The whole chamber was big for that matter. It dwarfed the dead guardsmen someone had set down there.

“Forget through there,” Roven snapped. “Just bring up the treasure.”

Skessi grabbed the first sack, and very nearly couldn’t get it airborne. With a supreme flurry of wings he lifted it to where Roven could snag it, and then Roven would have tilted head-forwards into the pit if Merric hadn’t grabbed him. By that time Fael had a second sack of loot just about ready, but he was doing a lot of looking about and twitching, and I took that as plan two, part two.

“Did you hear that?” he called out abruptly. Skessi dropped the sack he’d just been passed and vaulted into the air again.

“There was nothing!” Roven bawled. “Bring the loot up you little pin-sucking bastard!”

“I heard it!” Skessi squeaked. “Something’s coming.” He was fumbling for the sack.

“Nothing’s coming!” Roven shouted back. I thought he was shouting so loud to block out anything that he might hear. Merric had retreated a good ten feet back down the tunnel, eyes wide. He’d have run, I think, if the lantern hadn’t still been by Roven’s feet.

Skessi got airborne again, straining furiously to lift the sack up to us. Behind him, Fael gave out a dreadful shriek.

“Avaris!” he