Hope was just daring to rear its cruel head in our hearts when a wail rose up behind us. We turned to see close to one hundred forms suddenly rise out of the rocky ground at our backs.
They looked like burnt corpses that were far more active than they had any right to be. Black skin as thin as cray paper was stretched over rail-thin bodies, its holes and gaps showing gleaming white bone. The stench of decay from them was almost overwhelming and each of us had to fight to keep from retching.
The dwarves formed a meagre line of defense of heavy armor between us and the howling creatures. Elvin bows sang and dwarven pikes shredded undead bodies. My own pistol was in my hand and rang out, three of the creatures dropping to the ground and skidding to a halt. Many went down but far more continued their charge.
Our swords came out and, a split second later, they were on us. Blackened fingers as strong as steel clawed at us. Those fingers shrieked against the metal of the dwarf armor and carved deep grooves into the elvin wood lamellar. In moments we were encircled, the dwarves doing their best to stay between them and the rest of us.
They were unnaturally fast. Most charged blindly into dwarven armor, but a few lept the dwarven line to get to our soft center. The lightning fast elves could keep up with them but I was hard pressed to dodge their deathly grip. If it wasn’t for Tallus’ intensive training, I’d have died within seconds.
Metal glinted in the meager light as we fought desperately to keep the creatures at bay. One elf went down, four deep gashes across his face. Lanisa stepped to his place and cut down both that blackened creature and the one next to it. He screamed from the ground clutching at the shredded skin on his face as we tightened the circle around him.
“I’m starting to develop a sense of desperation!” shouted Tallus to no one in particular. His lightning fast thrusts dropped three more creatures.
“Do you think it’s too late to negotiate?” I barked in reply as my own blade was buried in a blackened neck. I wasn’t sure if it was a chuckle or growl I heard in Tallus’ grunt as he chopped down one of the blackened creatures.
A pair of creatures forced their way through the dwarf lines, one taking a dwarven axe to its hip on the way by. It fell screeching to the ground, but managed to drive its steel-like fingers into a chink at the back Sheildwall’s armored knee. She screamed in agony and drove the spike on the haft of her axe into the creature’s squirming back.
The second flew at me with such blinding speed that I couldn’t possibly react quickly enough. I barely had the chance to register a blackened form flying toward me before a lithe physique knocked it away. Kiinna’s radiant scarlet main streamed behind her as she used her own body to slam the creature away.
“Thanks, Red!” I called, but she was already several yards away fighting a pair of the beasts away from a fallen Ranger.
They were close to overwhelming our lines when a mournful horn sounded. The creatures hissed and suddenly started backing away, snarling their obvious displeasure at breaking off their attack. Two figures rode hard from the direction of the ruined castle. One of those riders blew again into the horn he still carried in his hand. The others in our party who’d been facing away chanced only a momentary glance toward the sound. The blackened creatures hissed their frustration at us once more before melting back into the stony ground.
“Thanks for the assist…” I started to shout to the riders, but any more words died in my throat as a sudden shock of deep winter cold fell over me. The closer the pair of riders came, the colder it got.
My jaw dropped like a rock when I caught sight of their horses. They were so black their coats seemed to absorb the light and scarlet flames burned in empty eye sockets. What should have been flowing mains and tails were instead flowing flames as red as that in their eyes. The revolting smell of damp, putrefied flesh wafted in with them.
Of the two riders, one matched the horses completely. His armor, like the coats of their mounts, was deepest of enveloping black. The darkness was so abyssal and void-like that I had the unsettling sensation that I actually fall into them. When the black rider raised the visor of his helmet, a shadowy skull glared at us from underneath.
While the black rider fit with the reputation of the Deadlands, the second rider baffled me. He was a simple human man, most likely a high-ranking officer in some military from his armor. He had salt and pepper hair, a barrel chest, and deep scowl while staring at us. If he hadn’t been so comfortable on that unnatural horse, I would have thought he was just as out of place in the deadlands as we were.
“Elves, dwarves, and a human, all working together,” the man said in derision as they pair pulled up before us. “Never in all eternity did I think I would see this. Are you a scouting party for a unified force?”
“No, sir,” I said. “We’re a diplomatic party representing the elves. We were hoping to engage in negotiations with your… ah… people.”
“We should kill them now and raise them as our own,” the black knight said.
“If the council wanted them dead, we could have left them for the Draugr,” the human looking man said to the knight. Then he turned his attention back to us. “Negotiations?” the man said with a smirk. “What exactly do you wish to negotiate for?”
“An alliance against the human empires,” Tallus said. It was one of the few times I’ve ever seen him without his customary smile. “They appear to be making more and more aggressive forays into both elf and dwarf lands. My father believes it’s only a matter of time before they declare an all-out war.”
“Father…” the man said, his brow furrowed a moment in thought before a smile spread across his face. “Prince Tallus Finegold. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” He gave a flourishing bow from atop that disgusting horse of his.
“Lies!” the black knight hissed in its gravely echoing voice. “We should destroy them now!” Its hand grasped the hilt of its sword.
“We were sent to bring them to the castle, Strod, and that’s what we’re going to do,” the man said. “If you have any ideas other than following your orders, I’ll make sure you lose your head one last and final time!”
A low growl issued from the depths of the black knight before he closed his visor. With the visor down I couldn’t see its face, but I could still feel its hateful stare on me.
“I am Captain Stormcloak of the Wild Hunt,” the man said with another flourishing bow. “Diplomatic tradition insists that we accompany you to the Fallen Palace as an honor.” He smiled and waved a hand toward the crumbling castle.
“Stormcloak?” Tallus asked. “Any relation to Lord Stormcloak?”
“That hasn’t been my title since…” the man’s voice trailed off, as he tapped his chin in thought. “Well, several centuries at least.”
As we fell into step behind the two rider, I turned to Lanisa. “Centuries?” I whispered in shock.
“He’s one of the Wild Hunt,” she whispered.
“And?” I said. I’d heard references to the ancient myth in the past, but I had no idea what the story behind it was.
Lanisa glanced at our two escorts before continuing. “Undead don’t reproduce. The only way for them to increase their numbers to go out and hunt for more bodies.”
The sense of foreboding at my core grew until my stomach started to roil. “So, those that see them…”
“Are rarely heard from again,” Lanisa finished as we marched toward the ancient castle. Each of us cast one last glance toward the distant Weald that none of us ever expected to see again.
The Ruins of Withermoor
“How long do you think they’ll keep us here?” I asked as I tossed the four dice. We were in a massively spacious room, full of ancient but well-kept luxuries. Silk tapestries hung from the walls, a bronze basin for bathing rested in the corner, and sixteen four-poster beds were placed evenly along two walls.
“Until they decide what kind of abominations they wish to make us,” Tallus said. I couldn’t tell if he was joking or seriou
s. I hoped he was joking.
Our two undead escorts had led us to the undamaged portion of the castle ruins the evening before and took all our weapons. After using magic to heal our wounded, they’d left us alone in our plush prison, locking the door from the outside. Other than a new human-looking man who’d delivered dinner, we’d not seen anyone since.
He hadn’t looked happy about waiting on us, and refused to speak at all. He just pushed a cart of food in, put the food on a table, and left. Forty seconds flat each time. The rest of our time was spent talking and keeping watch for our gracious hosts.
In spite there being a surprisingly comfortable bed for each of us, we got almost no sleep. Inside a ruined castle at the heart of a land where the dead rule, sleep tends to be somewhat elusive. We instead lit both fireplaces to ward off the probably unnatural chill, then talked throughout the night.
I first asked about the black knight called Strod. He’s known as a Dullahan, a headless type of undead that’s somewhat similar to the ghost from Sleepy Hollow. Except this one couldn’t become insubstantial like a ghost, and its head was more detachable than permanently separated.
Dullahan have a physical form but were immune to most kinds of weapons. Acid, fire, cold forged iron, magic, and pure silver are really the only ways to damage one. They feel no pain, and their slightest touch begins to syphon heat out of the living. You could always tell when they’re around as it suddenly becomes very cold.
They’re malevolent, hateful juggernauts that thrive on exterminating any and all living beings they come across. The more my team explained the Dullahan’s anti-living attitude, which they couldn’t stress enough, the more I realized just how lucky we were that Stormcloak had been in command of Strod.
Next came what little was known of the Wild Hunt. Mostly it was stories and fables, but there were enough confirmed reports to scare the hell out of me. Known as harbingers of doom, they seemed to appear and disappear at will. Their numbers varied, anything between thirty and one thousand riders could appear, but each time the end result was the same. Almost all who saw them would vanish, never to be seen again.
As one of the stories went, a few hundred years ago there was a village on the outskirts of one of the human empires. Almost fifty lumberjacks, farmers, and fisher-folk, worked long days to provide for their families. One night, at the height of the harvest season, a thick fog rolled in. Strange howls carried in on the winds, and the superstitious villagers hid inside their homes.
Peeking out between cracks in the shudders, a young girl and her two sisters saw several score of riders on night-black horses with flaming eyes ride into the town from deep in the fog. Fear squeezed her heart when the hard eyes of the riders fell upon the houses of the village. Fearing for his children, her father hid her and her sisters as well as he could. The eldest sister of fifteen was hidden in a closet. The middle sister of twelve was hidden under the bed. And young girl of only seven was pressed into her father’s lucky chest at the foot of his bed.
The father bade them not to come out until he came to get them, no matter what they heard. And so the seven year old girl waited, hidden and hoping for a miracle. Her little heart raged in her ears as terror tightened the walls of the trunk around her.
But as the young girl waited for her father to come get her and tell her the world was safe again, she started to notice something she hadn’t expected. Silence. She didn’t know how long she hid in that dark and smelly old trunk, fear her only companion. Even after countless hours of silence, confusion, and terror she refused to open the trunk.
The young girl was found by concerned members of a nearby town the next day. They’d searched every house in her village but found no sign of the people she’d known all her life. Every home was locked from the inside like hers had been, but there was no sign of the people who’d lived there. Of all her friends and family, of everyone she’d ever known, she was all that was left. Her entire world had vanished without a trace.
The story continued thirty years later, as the woman who was once that young girl gathered wild mushrooms in a forest with a handful of others. Still several hours before evening, a fell mist suddenly enveloped the forest. Worried by their superstitious beliefs, the gatherers started back toward the safety of their village.
But from that mist, horsemen riding night-black horses with flaming eyes suddenly appeared to surround them. They opened their mouths to scream but, as one of the horsemen waved a hand, the gatherers to fell into a daze. One by one, they were drawn upon those monstrous horses and draped before the riders.
All but the woman. As a hand seized her to pull her into place before one of the riders, she caught sight of the rider’s face. The shock snapped her out of her daze. It was the face of her father. The woman turned and ran back toward her village glancing back for one last look at the man who’d meant so much to her. He watched her flee mutely, a twinkle of sadness in his eyes as he watched his daughter disappear for the last time.
After the stories, my new friends mentioned other types of undead that might be found in the Deadlands, but they didn’t go into any detail and I didn’t ask. It probably would have been better to know, but I just couldn’t deal with it.
I’d needed a diversion and knew one of the elves had packed four cubes of dice and suggested a game. Soon our minds were occupied with gambling and the ale the dwarves always seemed to have.
I glowered at Tallus for his comment about us becoming abominations. Granted it was probably true, but the whole point of this was to divert our minds away from the current misery. I added up the numbers on the four dice I rolled. 18: a failure.
The point of the game is to get the four dice to add up to any of the seven prime numbers between 4 and 24. It sounded easy, but Kinsey had told me before I left it was harder than it seemed. I only had 33% chance apparently.
“I think if they wanted to turn us into one of them, they wouldn’t be going to all the trouble of making us comfortable,” Lanisa said. “The question is, what do they want from us?”
We tried to ignore the ominous implications as the dice game continued for another fifteen minutes before a knock on the door stole our attention. At first, we all just stared at each other. No one really wanted to answer. But a second and more insistent knock drew Tallus to his feet. He opened the door to Stormcloak.
“I’m afraid we’ve been amiss in our social graces,” the man said with a smile that did anything but impart a sense of warmth. “You know my name, but not the name of my master, nor that of our land. And it will be hard to announce you without knowing your names.”
I introduced myself, Lanisa, and Shieldwall. I included Tallus even though the man was already familiar with him. Stormcloak waved off the introduction to the other elvin Rangers and the dwarf Invincibles.
“I serve Landgrave Rasthamus Vale of the Eternals,” Stormcloak said. “If the four leaders in your diplomatic party would accompany me to my lord’s lounge, he would meet with you.”
“They’re not going anywhere without us,” growled one of the Invincibles. Her sentiment was accompanied by grunts of agreement from the other Invincibles and Rangers.
“They’re our responsibility.” Kiinna added as she stepped between me and Stormcloak.
“I respect your dedication to your superiors,” Stormcloak said quietly, “but these talks are restricted to the diplomats, not the help. These terms are non-negotiable.”
The Rangers and Invincibles tried to insist further at accompanying us, but we argued them down. If the undead decided to get froggy, a few more unarmed bodies wouldn’t make any difference.
While our room could have been considered warm and comforting, if you could forget the hordes of undead running around the lands outside, the rest of the castle could not. There was a dank, musty smell of mold everywhere outside our room and a few, hastily placed torches barely illuminated the bleak hallways. It was so cold outside our room that the slightest breath cause a gout of steam from our mouths.
“Where did they get all this amazing food?” I asked spooning a healthy amount of creamy mashed potatoes and butter onto a plate after pouring a steaming cup of tea.
“It’s for the revenants,” Tallus said as he spread jam over a thick chunk of bread. “After they’re raised, they’re alive just like us. Except that which made them who they were is gone. They’re darker after being risen. Evil. The undead use them as spies in the world of the living.”
A few seconds later, the sounds of footsteps echoed from a darkened hallway. A tall form emanated from the gloomy abyss of the hallway. His raven black hair matched his midnight black robes that seemed to emanate a darkness all their own. Those shadows that called his robes home writhed causing his robe to dance and billow with demonic life. He glided over, eyes of infinite blackness burning into us, his pale skin so foreign from all his other darkness that it almost seemed to glow. The man stopped in front of us, staring and with his chest as still as death. No rise and fall. No inhale or exhale. He stood, alive as us, yet without breathing.
“My name is Rasthamus Vale,” he said, his gravelly voice resonating from deep within him. “What brings the living to Withermoor?” Even though his eyes are of the purest onyx, no whites or irises, you can sense what he’s focused on. And they were focused on me.
“I… uh,” I stammered. Terror threatened to overwhelm me, and I had to take a second to focus on my breathing. Calm my mind. “We came to negotiate an alliance against the aggression of the human empires,” I said after a handful of seconds, my voice carrying a little more confidence.
A New World Page 12
