The Bone Shaker

by Edward Cox

  THE BONE SHAKER

  Edward Cox

  NewCon Press

  England

  NewCon Press Novellas

  Set 1: Science Fiction (Cover art by Chris Moore)

  The Iron Tactician – Alastair Reynolds

  At the Speed of Light – Simon Morden

  The Enclave – Anne Charnock

  The Memoirist – Neil Williamson

  Set 2: Dark Thrillers (Cover art by Vincent Sammy)

  Sherlock Holmes: Case of the Bedevilled Poet – Simon Clark

  Cottingley – Alison Littlewood

  The Body in the Woods – Sarah Lotz

  The Wind – Jay Caselberg

  Set 3: The Martian Quartet (Cover art by Jim Burns)

  The Martian Job – Jaine Fenn

  Sherlock Holmes: The Martian Simulacra – Eric Brown

  Phosphorous: A Winterstrike Story – Liz Williams

  The Greatest Story Ever Told – Una McCormack

  Set 4: Strange Tales (Cover art by Ben Baldwin)

  Ghost Frequencies – Gary Gibson

  The Lake Boy – Adam Roberts

  Matryoshka – Ricardo Pinto

  The Land of Somewhere Safe – Hal Duncan

  Set 5: The Alien Among Us (Cover art by Peter Hollinghurst)

  Nomads – Dave Hutchinson

  Morpho – Philip Palmer

  The Man Who Would be Kling – Adam Roberts

  Macsen Against the Jugger – Simon Morden

  Set 6: Blood and Blade (Cover art by Duncan Kay)

  The Bone Shaker – Edward Cox

  A Hazardous Engagement – Gaie Sebold

  Serpent Rose – Kari Sperring

  Chivalry – Gavin Smith

  First published in the UK by NewCon Press

  41 Wheatsheaf Road, Alconbury Weston, Cambs, PE28 4LF

  June 2019

  The Bone Shaker copyright © 2019 by Edward Cox

  Artwork copyright © 2019 by Duncan Kay

  All rights reserved, including the right to produce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  ISBN:

  978-1-912950-21-8 (hardback)

  978-1-912950-22-5 (softback)

  Cover art and internal illustration by Duncan Kay

  Cover layout by Ian Whates

  Minor Editorial meddling by Ian Whates

  Book layout by Storm Constantine

  One

  Strange Company

  Deep inside the Great Forest, night had cast its shroud.

  The air was rife with the damp and earthy scent of leaf-mould. Thin tendrils of mist crept over twisting roots, weaving between skeletal trees like lost ghosts searching for a place to haunt. A new moon hung in a clear sky, its blue-grey light casting long shadows in the forest. It was a chill night, not long from winter’s passing, and the first flowers of spring had started to bloom. Cold and colourless in moonlight, they served as a teasing promise of warmth from a summer yet to come.

  Sir Vladisal of Boska stood atop a ridge, her silver armour dulled by dirt and moss. The forest floor sloped away from her, down into a moon-bathed clearing where mist hung as a thin veil a foot or so above the ground. Behind Vladisal, her women stood shoulder-to-shoulder along the ridgeline: some eighteen knights and five archers in all. Loyal and brave, their collective breaths rose in cold, spiralling plumes.

  With a gauntleted hand, Vladisal pushed back dark and lank hair from her face. Her eyes trained on the small figure a little further down the slope. Statue-still, Abildan the assassin stood with her back to the knights, watching the clearing below with limitless patience that irritated Vladisal.

  She looked back at her company. Each knight was as grime-smeared as their captain; each of them stripped of House colours, wearing no helm, carrying no shield. In the depths of the Great Forest, these brave knights of Boska were far from home.

  Üban, the oldest among them, stepped forward. Thickset and gruff, the veteran knight was clearly in ill temper as she wiped moisture from her face.

  “Damned fool!” she growled, indicating to Abildan. “What’s she waiting for?”

  “I am unsure,” Vladisal said. “Perhaps she senses the approach of our reinforcements.” Though, in truth, this statement was made more from hope than any genuine expectation.

  Üban cursed under her breath. “I don’t like it, Vlad. Nor do the women. These woodlands feel dead.”

  She was right. For four days Abildan had been leading the company through the Great Forest, and they had not heard the sound of a single living thing since breaking camp two mornings past. Vladisal could see the trepidation in the eyes of her knights. Not for the first time since leaving Boska, she questioned her own judgement. They were all beginning to understand that their guide enjoyed her little games and secrets.

  “Stay with the women,” she told Üban before carefully making her way down the slope to Abildan.

  The stillness was unnerving, as if the forest itself held its breath. Only the occasional clank of armour broke the silence like nervous twitching in an uncomfortable moment. Aware of the sound her footfalls made upon dead leaves and needles, Vladisal came alongside Abildan and stared at her expectantly. Instead of speaking, the assassin raised a curt hand, demanding continued silence.

  Vladisal bit back an angry retort. It would not do well for her knights to see her so easily ordered. She glared, gripping the pommel of her sword.

  A clear head shorter than most women, Abildan’s body was slender and lithe. She wore no armour, only a loose fitting shirt and hose of a dark green cloth. She wore a black leather waistcoat, which also served as a baldric for slim crossbow bolts. A short, curved sabre was sheathed upon her back; at her waist hung a small crossbow. No boots covered her bare feet. She did not seem to feel the cold as normal women - but then, the assassin was no normal woman.

  Abildan had no hair as such, only a short, pale fur that covered her head and face, her hands and feet, and most likely the rest of her body. Her facial features were gaunt and angular; ears elongated to points. And her eyes that remained so focussed on the clearing below were yellow, almost luminous in the moonlight. They were the eyes of a cat.

  Abildan blinked, once, slowly. “Someone is coming.” She sniffed the air. “A child.” Her feline face amused, she gave Vladisal a sardonic smile. “He’s running for his life, but I don’t think he’s going to make it.”

  With a shiver, Vladisal studied the tree line on the opposite side of the clearing. She saw and heard nothing at first, and wondered if Abildan was mistaken. But then a low moan drifted through the forest. It came again, a little louder this time, followed by the sounds of something thrashing through the undergrowth.

  The knights lining the ridge clearly heard it too. Many of them prepared to draw weapons.

  “Keep your women at bay, Sir Vladisal,” Abildan warned. “Their lives may depend on it.”

  Vladisal sliced her hand through the air. “Hold!” she ordered, and the knights obeyed.

  Üban’s face was pensive, and Vladisal knew what the old knight was thinking. The vague hope of reinforcements arriving had diminished to nothing, as insubstantial now as the ghostly mist that hung above the clearing floor.

  The sound of thrashing grew louder, closer. A figure stumbled into the open. As Abildan had predicted, it was a child, a young boy, and in the moonlight his youthful face was creased with terror.

  The boy clutched at his throat. Dark blood ran between his fingers and soaked his jerkin. He took a few more faltering steps, gave a sob, and collapsed to the clearing floor with a swirl of mist. Unconscious or dead, he lay face down, unmoving.

  Vladisal prepared to rush to the boy’s aid, but Abildan gripped her arm and held her back with surprising strength.

  “A poi
ntless act,” she stated. “The child is already dead.”

  “How can you know that?” Vladisal snapped.

  “Tactics.” The cat-like assassin resumed scanning the tree line. “That child is a trap, sent ahead to entice you out of hiding. Perhaps, for now, it might be wiser to wait and see what he was running from, yes?”

  The forest moaned.

  A second figure emerged from the shadows and entered the clearing. A woman. She shuffled towards the boy, no urgency in her movements whatsoever. In the pale moonlight, her face was that of a corpse’s: ashen, drawn, mottled with rot. Her hair was matted with dirt and leaves, as were her peasant’s clothing. Her eyes shone with an eerie blue luminescence. She released another moan, but it was choked off as two tentacles slithered from her mouth and lashed at the air.

  “By the Mother,” Vladisal whispered. “What is this?”

  “One of your enemy’s tree-demons,” Abildan said, matter-of-factly. “The dead have been merged with the forest, just as I warned you.”

  More tentacles burst from the woman’s body, tearing through her rotten clothes, whipping blood into the cold air. They coiled around her torso, as though forming protective armour.

  Merged with the forest… they were roots, not tentacles – wood that was as pliable as flesh.

  Aware that her knights were sharing her repulsion, Vladisal watched as the woman made it to the boy. She dropped to her knees, clumsily, like her legs were no longer strong enough to hold her weight. The roots lengthened from her mouth, probing the boy’s body. One slithered into the wound already on his neck; the other ripped away his sleeve and tore strips of wet flesh from his arm – strips of flesh that it drew back into the woman’s mouth.

  A monster feeding on a child.

  Vladisal’s stomach turned. She prepared to draw her sword.

  “Act now and you will lose the advantage, Sir Knight,” Abildan warned, her voice calm and icy. “Be assured that more tree-demons are coming. If we allow them to gather, to feast, then the boy becomes bait for a trap of our own.”

  “Are you sick?” Vladisal hissed.

  Abildan continued as if the knight hadn’t spoken at all. “When the time comes, it is important that we maintain the higher ground. These creatures are mindless and lumbering. They cannot move swiftly, yet they will be great in number. Better for them to come to us.”

  Vladisal thought she might strike the assassin’s feline face. As if sensing this, Abildan turned to her with a mocking expression as though deliberately challenging her authority.

  “Agree or not, without reinforcements, you know my tactics are sound.” She narrowed yellow eyes. The forest came alive with movement. “Perhaps you should ready your archers.”

  “Archers,” Vladisal said to Üban.

  Evidently sickened and angry, Üban signalled the order with snappish movements. The archers stepped forth between the knights, quivers full of arrows, bows strung and ready.

  “Here they come,” Abildan sighed.

  As the ghoulish woman continued feeding, hollow moaning accompanied the sound of movement in the forest. Small blue lights seemed to float through the trees. Eyes, Vladisal realised, the glowing eyes of tree-demons.

  Morbid forms lumbered into the clearing. Twisted by corruption, fleshy roots protruding from their bodies, coiling around them, snaking from their mouths, they came on unsteady feet but with ravenous intent. One after the other, creeping from the forest, they headed straight for the dead boy. Men and women, old and young. The reek of decay and gargled moans filled the air.

  “I cannot stand and watch,” Vladisal said.

  The first of the horde had reached the boy and were jostling with the woman for a taste of blood and meat.

  And still more emerged from the trees.

  “This is madness!”

  “Do not be so eager, Sir Knight. You will have vengeance for the boy soon enough.” Abildan unhooked the small crossbow from her belt, and drew back the string. Selecting a bolt from her baldric, she quite calmly slid it into place. “Remember - the magic that animates these monsters is like an infectious disease. When they come for you, sever their heads, do not let their mouth-roots sting you.”

  There had to be thirty abominations in the clearing now, with still more arriving, each hungering for the boy’s blood. They fought over the corpse with slaps and punches as weak as they were mindless. Fleshy roots flailed and clashed.

  Vladisal would allow this ungodliness to pass no longer.

  “Hold to your sick tactics if you wish, Abildan, but that is not the Boskan way.” With an angry noise, she drew her sword and turned to her women. “Bear arms!”

  All along the ridge, knights drew weapons - Üban most keenly of all.

  “For Boska!” Vladisal shouted, and she led the charge down the slope.

  Two

  Monsters

  Üban’s heart hammered as she followed her captain down the slope.

  Sword in hand, the old knight’s eagerness to cleave head from neck filled her ears with the rushing of blood. Behind her, the Knights of Boska echoed Vladisal’s battle cry, and the sound of the charge drowned out bestial moaning made by the unholy merging of corpses and forest life. Yet, as she neared the fray, Üban’s battle-lust became tinged with despair.

  Vladisal had gone too far ahead. She stormed the cluster of tree-demons as if she could best them all singlehandedly. She hacked and slashed, sending her foes scattering in all directions. By the time Üban and the rest of the women met their enemy, a line of monsters stood between them and their captain.

  “Volley!” Üban bellowed.

  From up on the ridgeline, archers loosed arrows. Barbed heads hissed into the clearing, thudding into rotten limbs and wooden shells of the ghoulish horde. But the monsters paid no mind to their injuries, and they shambled headlong into the charge, seeking only the taste of blood.

  “Aim for the heads!”

  The next volley found more success. Three monsters collapsed to the ground, skulls punctured, roots thrashing in death throes. One, a young woman, had the shaft of a crossbow bolt protruding from her eye.

  Üban felt a fresh surge of anger and frustration as she joined the fight and took the head from an elderly man’s shoulders. She had not given the second order; it had come from Abildan, and Üban again wondered why Vladisal tolerated her presence. The assassin was a feliwyrd, a sorcerous merging of human and mountain cat, and such creatures were not to be trusted.

  A third volley downed four more monsters, but the army of tree-demons was so great in number now that it hardly made a difference. The Boskans were a band of five archers and less than twenty knights facing a horde that just kept growing.

  Üban roared. Another foe fell.

  The roots wrapped around the torsos of the tree-demons were strong and hard, but those that lashed from their mouths like the tongues of serpents were pulpy and rotten as their exposed flesh. Üban chopped the roots from the mouth of a monster so vile and emaciated that age or gender were impossible to tell, but two more appendages slithered from the rotten maw to replace them. With a grunt, Üban lopped the monster’s head from its shoulders.

  All about, the Knights of Boska slew their enemy with little resistance. Body after body fell in an endless wave of slaughter, but only a killing blow to the head could deaden their roots and hunger, and extinguish the lights in their eyes. The noise of the battlefield was not that of usual combat; only the thuds of metal on flesh and wood filled the clearing. Üban redoubled her efforts, cleaving a path towards Vladisal.

  To her right, mighty Dief crushed skulls and cracked bones with her huge hammer, her teeth gritted, her strength tireless. To Üban’s left, graceful Luca sliced flesh with a sabre in one hand, and split wood with a hatchet in the other.

  “There must be three-score of them at least!” Luca shouted, decapitating the grim vision of an old woman. “And still more arrive!”

  For every monstrosity they slew, the forest spat out a replacemen
t.

  “At this rate we’ll be fighting till dawn.”

  “Let them come,” Dief grunted, swinging her hammer. “All the more to send back to the hells.”

  But it wasn’t that simple.

  Whatever curse had merged their dead bodies with the forest, these monsters had once been simple village folk. They were innocent victims compelled from the grave by a dark magic.

  Üban stepped back as Dief swung a murderous blow with her hammer. The head of a peasant man disappeared into a wet mist.

  A small girl, no more than a babe, came at Üban. Her eyes luminescent, she reached out as if searching for safe arms to nestle in. She made a choking, gurgling sound. Roots thrashed in her mouth like trapped snakes fighting to be free. With a silent plea to the Mother God, Üban thrust her blade into the girl’s mouth, and twisted. The top of her head flipped open like a bloody hatchway, and she fell, roots coiling in her remains.

  A scream split the night air.

  The sheer volume of monsters prevented Üban reaching Vladisal, and she began to panic.

  “Flanks!” she commanded. “Draw out the centre!” And her blade passed through yet another decayed neck. “We must fight through to Vlad,” she told Dief and Luca.

  “I see her,” Dief replied. “She’s surrounded.”

  “Wait,” said Luca. “No!”

  Üban felt a knot in her gut. At the clearing’s centre, Vladisal had fallen, and the tree-demons were upon her.

  “To Vladisal!”

  The call blazed through the Knights of Boska like frenzied fire.

  In her heart, Vladisal had known the boy was dead before she reached him. But she stood astride him nonetheless, protecting his bloodied ruins with all the rage she could muster. Anger blinded her, deafened her to the sound of knights fighting.

  Just as Abildan had warned, the enemy showed no remorse and were many in number. It was as if death had twisted them into a corrupted mockery of life that acted only on some basic, ravenous instinct.