Shadow Born

by Martin Frowd

  The fourth cat, at the rear of the charge, had perhaps a second longer than its pride-mates to react to the invisible blast, and managed to twist and jump in mid-air, taking the brunt of the spell on one rear paw only. The shattering of every bone in that paw brought it crashing down on the other three paws, and the howl that erupted from its throat added to the cacophony on the slope, but it was not eliminated as a threat yet. The lion-Druid behind it roared, and the screaming cat began to hop-leap further up the slope with a lopsided gait, its eyes maddened with pain and fury, clearly more willing to take its chances against the necromancer’s magic than fail the Druid.

  Glaraz’s rupturing magic had bought him a brief respite only, and the necromancer knew he could not afford to squander it. He could see the last cat gaining ground, and behind it came the true enemy, the transformed Druid in his formidable lion form. Still further down, the necromancer saw a handful of the primitive hunters regaining their feet, still armed with spears and beginning to ascend the slope on foot. Albeit much slower foes than the feline ones he faced, Glaraz recognised that they could still be a nuisance. The necromancer scowled; his death magic should have been strong enough to fell the primitives where they stood, leaving no survivors. Perhaps some of the wretched savages had survived because their ugly little ponies had blocked his spell and died for it in their stead, or perhaps the Druid had warded some of them with enhanced resistance to magic before ever the fight began.

  Glaraz abruptly felt the extra speed and strength he had stolen earlier leave him as his spectral shield expired. Immediately the rigours of the day’s travelling and fighting began to catch up with him. The necromancer grimaced. All the more reason to end this as swiftly as he could, so that he could recover the boy Zarynn and make his escape. There was a second Druid down in the null zone with the boy, or so the undead spirit Glaraz had interrogated had said – and believed, for it could not lie to a master necromancer – but Glaraz refused to dwell overmuch on that for now. One problem at a time. One Druid at a time. At least they were not coming at him together.

  Glaraz still had his earthbone ward, and so discounted the spears of the primitives and the claws and fangs of the felines, but he recalled all too well that the ward would give him no protection against grappling should the men get too close, nor sheer weight, which the cat and, worse, the lion had in great measure. If too many of his enemies lived long enough to close the gap between them, he would be disadvantaged, outnumbered as he was.

  Outnumbered? He was standing on a burial mound. Time to even the odds. He marshalled his will and spoke words of magic.

  “Bu'shuzim, huu!”

  Immediately the ground began to ripple and shake. Even as the last cat, the lion, and the hunters scrambled further up the slope toward Glaraz, the surface of the mound began to split as bony hands scrabbled clear of the soil. Skeletal arms, their flesh long since rotted away, erupted from the mound. Skulls, spines and ribcages gleamed bone-white in the silvery moonlight as a trio, then a dozen, and at last a score of skeletons pulled themselves free of the dirt. Skulls turned on bone necks and empty eye sockets looked to Glaraz for orders. The necromancer pointed toward the hunters, who had stopped their ascent to gape wide-jawed at the tide of the living dead spilling from the earth.

  “Bu’shuzim, shur!”

  Moving as one, the skeletons charged downslope toward the stunned, gaping hunters. Bones clicked against one another and scuffed against the hard dirt underfoot, where the mound had not yet been entirely disrupted, as the newly raised undead advanced on their targets. The skeletons moved more swiftly and as a more cohesive group than zombies, striding rather than shambling along aimlessly. Glaraz caught sight of more than one elongated, fanged, almost canine skull among the group. As he had suspected, not all the bodies interred in this ancient mound were human; a few were clearly of goblin stock, from wars that the primitives had long since forgotten, learning only what the Druids taught.

  The lion roared. The sheer ferocity of the sound sent the nearest pair of skeletons reeling, stumbling and falling. The huge beast gave them no chance to regain their footing before it was on them, paws slapping and rending. Its jaws closed around the fanged goblin skull of a third skeleton and almost effortlessly tore it from its skeletal body. The reanimated bones collapsed, twitching for a moment, then lay inert. At the same time, the lion’s paws crushed the first two skeletons into the dirt, the force of the impact shattering bones to powder.

  The last surviving hunting cat, still favouring three paws only, gave vent to a screaming snarl as it intercepted another pair of skeletons. It reared up on its hindquarters and its two uninjured front paws were a blur of motion, claws raking and tearing. What it lacked in sheer size and power, compared to the lion, it made up in speed and dexterity, and its pain lent it a fierce berserker fury. The next pair of skeletons toppled into the dirt, shredded and torn.

  Glaraz’s two-legged opponents were easier prey for the walking ancient dead. The necromancer saw the primitives recovering their composure and starting to level their spears, but their hesitation had cost them precious time and the rest of the skeletons were upon them. The dead had evidently been interred without weapons of their own but were well able to pull down the savages by brute force and numbers, trampling them beneath bony feet. Spears clattered against bone, and another pair of skeletons collapsed, but still more than a dozen remained standing, and more were still emerging out of the soil that had covered the burial mound. In places, the dirt covering had entirely collapsed, revealing hollow chambers within the artificial hill where the dead had lain.

  More of the savages stumbled and fell beneath the inexorable tide of bony wrath. Fleshless hands closed around the hafts of spears, discarded by their newly slain opponents. Now armed, the skeletons became more formidable foes still, jabbing at their living prey. Glaraz witnessed a few more of the primitives fall, impaled on their own spears by the undead, their last sight that of white skulls with empty eye sockets. The skeletons had the clear weight of numbers now, compared to the living primitives who still struggled to fight them on the slope, but the hunting cat and the lion were proving to be more formidable foes, Glaraz saw. The skeletons had given him a momentary respite and blocked the real enemy – the Druid in his lion form – from reaching him too quickly, but the necromancer knew he needed to take a more direct part in the fight while his new minions were still able to screen him.

  “Vish’te’calba!” Glaraz enunciated the mystical words, concentrating his will and indicating his foe. A single bolt of shadow erupted from his pointing finger, blasting through the night air toward the transformed Druid.

  The lion raised one massive front paw and batted away the shimmering bolt of seething deep grey magic as if it were a skeleton’s spear, deflecting the blast into the ground where it was harmlessly absorbed by the earth.

  The necromancer grimaced as the lion roared at him and, almost as an afterthought, crushed another pair of skeletons into the ground with its enormous paws. Obviously, the Druid had invoked some protections of his own before taking on his leonine form to do battle. As Glaraz rapidly considered his next offensive move, the lion smashed another pair of skeletons before him, and as they began to clamber to their feet, the smaller but no less aggressive hunting cat hit them from the side, shredding them with its claws.

  Its claws.

  “Graa’orth’ghri. Graa’orth’ghri,” Glaraz rapidly intoned, flicking his fingers at the next two skeletons engaging the hunting cat, granting them the protection of the earthbone ward just as the enraged cat’s claws raked at them. The claws scraped ineffectually over hardened bone, and the cat snarled ferociously as its attack came to nothing. The newly-warded skeletons made not a sound as their spears punched through the already injured animal’s body, sinking into the earth and pinning it in place. The cat gave a hideous scream and thrashed in its death throes as it bled out.

  One down.

  The last three surviving primitives had regrouped
next to the lion-Druid, Glaraz saw. The skeletons now outnumbered them substantially, and several wielded spears taken from the embattled hunters’ fallen comrades. The living men put up as good a fight as could be expected under the circumstances, but it fell far short of good enough against odds such as these. One by one, they fell to emotionless, relentless skeletons wielding their own dead kinsmen’s spears. The last man tried to give voice to a final defiant shout, but a spear clean through the throat turned his last yell to a bloody, frothing gurgle. Now only the lion-Druid still lived and faced Glaraz on the slope.

  The necromancer gestured toward the lion, and the skeletons, in thrall to his command, moved as one toward the huge beast. Those who had spears levelled them as they bore down on the creature. Lacking the capacity for fear, more than a dozen skeletons advanced relentlessly. Their empty gazes were locked on the lion which was their only remaining target.

  The lion blurred and shifted, its muscular bulk collapsing in on itself. In an instant, a man in the hooded robe of a Brown Druid stood where the lion had, his arms outstretched to the night sky as he performed some ritual gesture. Unlike much of the necromancer’s magic, the Druid spoke no words of power, but the effects were swift and decisive.

  Thunder boomed, close overhead, deafening Glaraz for a moment and causing the necromancer to falter in the arcane words of his next spell. Absent the proper mystical phrase to actualise his intent, his magic failed, and the spell that would have snapped the Druid’s bones to splinters did nothing. While Glaraz recovered his composure and shook his head angrily to clear the ringing in his ears, a powerful gust of wind blew up around the skeletons, sending a few of them sprawling away from the Druid. Rain began to fall, swiftly becoming a fierce torrent, drenching the area and turning the loose soil underfoot to mud. With a brilliant flash, a bolt of crackling lightning split the sky and arced to the ground, slamming into a knot of skeletons. The force of the bolt flash-fried four of their number instantly, reducing them to splintered smoking bone fragments littering the ground. The smell of charred bone wafted through the air.

  As the remaining skeletons attempted to regain their feet and regroup, a task made all the more difficult by the morass the torrential rain had swiftly made of the ground, the Druid blurred and shifted again. Once more, the man gave way to the lion. Even as a second bolt of lightning from the sky struck the ground and obliterated another trio of skeletons, the lion was moving, slapping at two more of the animated minions with its enormous paws. The skeletons, now beset by wind and rain as well as several hundred pounds of enraged beast, fell before its fury and were squashed into the mud. In mere moments, the Druid had eliminated nine of the undead, significantly lessening the odds against him. Although more skeletons were still emerging from the burial chambers lower down in the mound, the Druid’s combination of magic and muscle was making swift inroads into their numbers.

  Glaraz struggled to keep his footing in the face of the suddenly hostile weather conditions. His robes were plastered to his body by the heavy rain and threatened to upset his balance on the treacherous mud that had supplanted the formerly dry ground underfoot. The small silver moon had disappeared behind dark clouds, and the only light now came from the flashes of jagged lightning that split the sky. The lion, he saw, clearly had no difficulties with its footing, moving as nimbly as if the ground were still dry earth, its paws batting aside another pair of skeletons.

  In the flash of another lightning strike, Glaraz spied a discarded spear by his foot, its last owner – whether living man or undead skeleton – clearly no longer needing it. The necromancer bent and grabbed it to use as a makeshift walking staff to help his balance in the stormy weather. Straightening, he rapidly considered his remaining magical reserves and ran through the spells still within his reach. Glaraz knew he had to end this fight swiftly so that he could pursue the boy Zarynn. Most of his magics would avail him little in the null zone where the primitives had taken the boy, he grimly acknowledged, and such silent magics as he still possessed must be hoarded for that later fight. That left him a limited array of useful capabilities. They would have to suffice.

  “Bu’shuz’muarim, huu!” Glaraz intoned. His voice was almost entirely drowned out by the thunder and the downpour, but it mattered not if anyone heard his words, only that they focused his will. “Bu’shuz’muarim, shur!”

  Every dead hunter slain by the skeletons struggled to his feet. Raised by Glaraz’s magic and bound to his command, the zombies shambled toward the enormous lion. Only a double handful in number, they would surely not last long, the necromancer realised, but if they, and the newest wave of skeletons emerging from the burial mound, together served to keep the lion from reaching him for just long enough, victory would be his.

  As for those skeletons, Glaraz had further plans for them.

  “Orthim’na’zakim,” Glaraz enunciated his next magical endeavour clearly but swiftly.

  “Orthim’na’zakim,” he repeated. Each time, he made sure to flick his fingers at one of the two skeletons already covered by his earthbone ward, his mystical senses picking them out from among the throng, although the ward was not visible to mundane sight. The skeletons stiffened for a moment as his magic washed over each of the pair in turn, and their bony arms glowed for a few seconds. When the magic had finished sinking in and the glow faded, razor sharp ridges had formed along the length of both skeletons’ arms. Both undead minions redoubled their pace toward the lion, arms swinging as they charged. The beast roared as it lashed out at its nearest foes with paws larger than Glaraz’s head, claws extended to rake. Another pair of skeletons fell under the savage onslaught.

  Then the two enhanced skeletons reached the melee. Their bladed arms rose and fell like swords, hacking and slashing at the lion. Blood flew, mingling with the mud. The beast roared with rage and pain. Its mighty claws raked at its latest pair of attackers but skittered harmlessly off their warded bones. It slapped at them with its huge paws, but their bladed ridges parried the blows, biting deep each time into the lion’s flesh. While the pair of magically enhanced skeletons held the lion’s attention, more of the undead stabbed at its flanks and rear with their spears. The lion’s hide was scored with multiple bloody trails, and the beast roared again, its fury almost as loud as the thunder above.

  Lightning stabbed down from the sky again in a circle around the lion. Zombies and skeletons alike were pulverised by the blasts, charred to piles of ash that rapidly dissolved in the torrential rain and mixed into the mud. Blinking against the bright flashes, barely maintaining his footing with the aid of his repurposed spear, Glaraz saw that the zombies had been obliterated, but six skeletons yet stood, and two of those were the pair bearing the earthbone wards and bladed arms. The skeletons continued to hack and stab at the lion, and the great beast was now bleeding freely from many wounds.

  “Sang’ne’shul,” Glaraz pronounced the words of the Tongue Arcane with care, though they were almost swallowed by the noise of the thunder above and the roaring lion downslope. The lion’s roars redoubled in volume as its wounds bled more freely still, streaming into the mud. Such was the power of the spell of clotlessness. The skeletons hacked and stabbed again at the lion, and each new wound opened on its hide streamed with blood, turning the mud around it to a red quagmire. The skeletons stumbled and slid in the slippery muck, but their spears remained embedded in the lion, piercing it deeply from multiple sides. The lion’s footing, formerly flawless, began to falter in the face of its many wounds, and it slipped and rolled over on the nearest pair of animated undead, crushing them beneath its bulk. The remaining skeletons scrambled backward, slipping and floundering, to escape being flattened into the swampy mess as the lion thrashed from side to side, blood gushing almost as swiftly from its many wounds as the rain poured from the dark sky. Regaining their footing, the undead closed in from all sides for the kill.

  The thrashing lion blurred and shimmered and gave way once more to the form of the man. The Druid regained his feet,
his brown robes now beslimed with blood and mud, but not a single wound marred his body. As the skeletons closed in from all around him, the Druid made an intricate gesture with one hand. The mud rose up in a ring taller than a man, engulfing his undead attackers, hiding them entirely from view. At a second gesture from the Druid, the mud collapsed again, taking almost all of his assailants with it. Twin pairs of bladed bone arms sliced through the wave of mud, one magic warring with another, and the two skeletons enhanced by Glaraz’s necromantic powers escaped from the muddy fate of their fellows. The rest of their number vanished into the churning ground without a trace.

  “Vish’te’calba!” Glaraz chanced another bolt of shadow, just in case the Druid’s protections against shadow magic had only endured while he remained in his leonine form. But the Druid raised a hand, and the shimmering grey blast that erupted from the necromancer’s pointing hand turned aside before it could strike its target, dissipating harmlessly into the mud.

  “NeOrthom!” the necromancer tried next, but the rupturing magic that had been so swift and decisive against the hunting cats was similarly halted by one raised hand, and the spell failed. Glaraz grimaced as the Druid countered the most potent remaining direct magical attack that he could hurl from a distance.

  Framed by the continuing lightning flashes, the Druid made another wordless gesture. To Glaraz’s keen observational skills, it appeared to be a repeat of the magic which had stirred up the mud to engulf the skeletons. Indeed, the mud was churning around the necromancer’s feet, and beginning to rise up his legs.

  “NeGraa!” Glaraz snapped, needing to nullify the threat to himself before he could finish the Druid. At his word of command, the mud churning around his ankles transformed into water and ran away into the now marshy ground. The necromancer took a step back, reassuring himself that he had successfully freed himself from the mud trap, and went on the offensive again with another spell of transformation.