by William King
The place had once been an orchard. The inhabitants had been calm, orderly sort of people. Sardec could tell that from the way things were laid out. Even though the house was abandoned it gave the impression that the occupants had left the place in a measured way, without panic. The Barbarian had already pronounced the place empty. The Foragers had made camp within the building. Rena had gone to join them. She and Marcie were searching for food down in the cellars now.
There were berries on the hedges that Weasel picked for the children, filling his cap with the blue fruit, occasionally proffering a choice morsel to Marcie's youngest child, sometimes throwing them into the air and catching them in his mouth.
If he had not known differently, Sardec would never have suspected from the view that only a few leagues away, monsters walked the earth and the dead had risen from the graves. This place seemed peaceful and, for a moment, he felt that it was an oasis where they might remain unmolested if they so chose. He pushed the illusion aside. There was no safety in this world anymore. Plague and evil sorcery had seen to that.
Marcie's eldest boy approached with his hands outstretched. For a moment Sardec wondered why the boy was begging and then he realised that the child was offering him something. There were berries in his hands. Sardec almost refused but he saw the fear and embarrassment on the boy's face and realised that it had taken courage and a generous impulse for the lad to come forward under the circumstances. He helped himself to a berry and munched it down savouring the sweet taste. The boy watched him expectantly as he ate. He was waiting for Sardec to say something.
“Good,” said Sardec. “Very good. What is your name, lad?”
“Daved, sir,” said the boy, running his hand through his thick mop of curly black hair. There was something about his expression that irresistibly reminded Sardec of Sergeant Hef. It must have been the set of the features and the cast of the eye for the boy really did not resemble his father at all. He was already taller. He must have got his size from his mother.
“Do you think my father is still alive, sir? Do you think he got away like us?”
Of course, that was why the boy had summoned up the courage to approach him. A sudden pang of guilt stabbed him. This boy’s father was dead. Sardec had failed him as he had failed so many others. The boy’s intense gaze never left him and though he did not mean to accuse Sardec there was still accusation in it.
He did not know what to say. He had seen Sergeant Hef fall with his own eyes and he did not want to lie about it but there was something so pathetically hopeful about the boy’s look that he could not bring himself to speak the truth either. “I don’t know, lad.”
“He survived many a battle, my father, sir. He always told us that before he went into a fight. He also always told us that if anything happened to him I was to look after my mother and the other children and that’s what I intend to do, sir.”
There was a catch in the boy’s voice and he looked as if it was about to cry. Sardec was not sure why it moved him so much. The boy was only human after all, just like his father had been. It came to Sardec in that moment that he had relied on the father quite as much as this boy had and he just never realised that until this moment. “I’m sure your father will be proud of you.”
“Somebody needs to do it, sir. My mother tries her best but she can’t be everywhere at once and someone needs to keep an eye on Alan, Jana and Lorraine.”
“Is that what your brothers and sisters are called?”
“Yes, sir. Jana is ten. Alan is seven and Lorraine is five. I am the oldest.”
“How old are you, lad?”
“Eleven, sir.
Sardec noticed that he had not mentioned the other children, the ones who were missing and presumably dead. He had picked up that habit from the soldiers. It was only to be expected, he was a soldier’s child. “Do you think your brother and sisters might want some berries?”
“I am sure they do, sir, but I thought you should have first pick. You are a Terrarch and our leader.”
It was interesting the order he chose to put the words. Obviously respect for the Elder Race had been impressed on the boy. Sardec smiled and said, “I thank you. But now I have had my pick and I think you should share with your family.”
The boy nodded, bowed politely and scampered off. A hand fell on Sardec’s shoulder and he turned and saw Rena smiling down on him. “That was a good thing to do.”
He felt vaguely embarrassed that she had witnessed it, as he always did when he varied from the pattern of Terrarch behaviour that had been drummed into him when he was young. He was not sure his actions had been entirely seemly. He laughed out loud. The world was ending. The dead were rising and he was worried about whether his behaviour was appropriate.
“You should laugh more,” she said. “It suits you.”
“I would if I had more to laugh about,” he said.
“I am tired of walking,” said Tamara, staring at the approaching coach. Rick could not blame her for that. After a week of walking, and hiding from patrols and eluding the walking dead, he was tired too. He doubted that the coach driver would stop for them though, he was most likely scared. Aside from soldiers, they had seen very few people on the roads. Those people they had talked to had been frightened almost beyond measure. Rumours of what was happening in the capital and to the West had filled even the Sardean population with fear.
Rumours abounded and nothing was certain. There had been talk of a coup in Askander. After an attempt on the Prime Minister’s life, martial law had been declared and Xephan ruled directly in the name of the Empress. There had been tales that he had taken over the throne himself and that the Empress was imprisoned in the dungeons beneath the Palace. And other tales spoke of dark magic and sinister necromancy used to promote his power. Nobody seemed to know anything for certain.
Asea stepped out into the middle of the road and gestured for the driver to stop. He never even slowed down but kept coming directly at her, obviously intending to ride her down if she did not get out of the way. Asea never flinched. She raised her hands and muttered a word of power. The horses reared and for a moment it looked like the coach would go out of control and topple off the road. Instead it came to a juddering halt and Rik, Karim and Tamara raced forward. The coachman and the other servants sitting on top of the vehicle were swiftly overcome. The passengers were hauled out unceremoniously and made to kneel in the dirt. They consisted of two very well-dressed Terrarchs and an extravagantly dressed servant.
“What have we here?” asked Tamara. “I do believe it’s Lord and Lady Inglis. You’re a long way from home.”
The male Terrarch looked up in surprise at the sound of her voice. “Is that you, Lady Tamara? Why are you dressed like a common ruffian? And why are you impeding our progress towards the capital?”
Tamara smiled her dazzling smile. “It’s a very long story, my Lord, and I don’t have time to tell it. Suffice to say that I have greater need of your vehicle then you do. And I am requisitioning it for military purposes.”
“You can’t do that, Lady Tamara,” said Lady Inglis. “We have been summoned to Court. All of the higher nobility have. On pain of death or being outlawed as a traitor like yourself.”
Tamara’s smile did not flicker. “I have been declared an outlaw?”
“A traitor, Lady Tamara,” said Lord Inglis.
“I’m sure it’s an unfortunate misunderstanding,” said his wife. “I’m sure no daughter of Lord Malkior could be a traitor to the realm.”
“May we rise, my dear,” said Lord Inglis. “It’s very uncomfortable here, on my knees in the dirt.”
“Who are these two Terrarchs with you?” said Lady Inglis. “I’m not sure I recognise them either. Are they in disguise like you?”
“Why have you been summoned to Askander?” Asea asked.
“I’m afraid that we are wanted as hostages. It seems the Prime Minister has found resurrecting that old custom necessary after the attempt on his life. An attem
pt that you have been implicated in, Lady Tamara, as I’m sure you’re aware.” Lord Inglis sounded a little hostile now.
“It sounds like there has been a coup,” said Asea.
“I’ve heard it said that our dear Prime Minister has designs upon the throne himself. He intends to marry the Empress and after that no doubt she will have an unfortunate accident, if she refuses to do what he asks. So my sister wrote me in her last letter. We haven’t heard from her since then. Maybe she’s disappeared into the dungeons like so many others.” Lady Inglis sounded outraged. Doubtless she thought that only the humans should disappear into dungeons not Terrarch noblewomen.
“What exactly do you need a coach for, Lady Tamara,” asked Lord Inglis. “What mission are you on? If I may be permitted to ask.”
“If you must know, I’m on my way to the capital to finish the job I started. I fear the Prime Minister has gone a little above himself and needs to be cut down to size.”
“You mean you intend to kill him. And I suppose you intend to kill us now.”
“I’m afraid so,” said Tamara.
“I don’t suppose it would be any good if I gave you my word to say nothing of this to anyone.”
Tamara shook her head. “You might encounter people on the road who were curious as to why you did not have a coach and they might ask you questions to which you might not be able to provide good answers. And they might ask you those questions in such a way that you would have little choice but to answer them.”
“Surely you can spare my wife and servants. They have done nothing to you.”
“Neither have you, Lord Inglis. It’s just one of those unfortunate things.”
She moved so suddenly that even Rik was taken by surprise and within a heartbeat the two Terrarchs lay headless in the dust. A few heartbeats later their servants joined them in death.
Tamara looked down on the corpses, shaking her head sadly. “I always liked Lord Inglis. He was very kind to me when I was a girl. Always gave me sweets.”
“Karim will drive us,” said Asea. “We have to go.”
"I don't think the children should see this, sir," said Weasel. He indicated the tumbled down remains of the village behind him with one large, knobbly knuckled hand. It was silent but there was nothing about it that looked particularly unusual when compared to all of the other ruined villages and homesteads they had passed through in the last few days. That combined with Weasel’s reaction to it made Sardec nervous.
The former poacher looked tired and he had a haunted look in his eyes. Things would have to be bad for Weasel to look like this. He was a man who had seen horrors enough in his life and it would take something very nasty to make him queasy. Sardec might have thought it was simply the cumulative effect of all they had witnessed but the Barbarian loomed behind Weasel, nodding his head in agreement. He looked a little sick which made Sardec think that he really did not want to look upon what they had seen.
Rena and the others looked at them nervously. Lorraine clung to her mother’s skirts. The boys looked nervous. Something of the two men’s mood communicated to the rest of the soldiers for they looked grim. Sardec nodded towards a clump of trees and the two scouts followed him there, out of hearing of the rest of their small party. "What is it? What did you find?"
"One of the buildings in the village was a Temple School," said Weasel. "It was probably a place where they took in orphan children. There were a lot of small corpses."
"Any of them walking?" Sardec asked.
Weasel shook his head. "None that I could see but I suspect a few of the pupils are missing."
"You think they could be waiting for us in the village?"
"They might be but I don't think so. I think we would have seen them or heard them by now."
"So where are they?"
"Where do they all go, sir?"
Sardec thought about it. Weasel was not being insolent. Sardec knew what he meant. Something was summoning the plague victims, drawing them to the Sardean armies, swelling of the regiments of the dead. Most of the towns and villages they had passed through had been empty. There were corpses left rotting in the streets but always less than there should have been for places of that size. It sometimes seemed to Sardec that soon the walking dead would outnumber the living.
An image danced in his mind of a world full of cities populated by the dead, and roads filled with walking corpses, of dead nobles and farms where the living were raised as recruits for the armies of the dead. He pushed it to one side and studied the soldiers' faces. A question occurred to him. “Why do some of the dead rise, and others not?”
“If I knew the answer to that, sir, I would be a wizard not a soldier,” Weasel replied.
“Let’s get out of here,” Sardec said. “We’ll circle around the village.”
Morbid curiosity filled his mind. "What did you see in there that horrified you so?"
"Lots of the children's corpses had been half eaten," said Weasel. "Some of their eyes had been scooped out like grapes taken for dessert."
Sardec tried not to think about that.
Rik heard Karim shouting at the horses and flicking his whip to urge their stolen coach on over the muddy road. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the glass window of the coach. Something alien gleamed in his eyes, something sinister and hungry.
He studied the two women with him and wondered how it was possible that they could be so composed. Asea seemed pensive. She had withdrawn into herself as if seeking answers that could only be found in her own consciousness. Tamara noticed him looking at her and smiled, as gaily as a girl going on a picnic. She gave no sign that they were travelling through a land in which she was a wanted traitor. Perhaps their success in getting so far had made her overconfident.
Throughout the entire last stage of their journey, no one had questioned them which surprised him, although he supposed it should not. They were Terrarchs garbed as Terrarchs and the humans of the East had long ago had all desire to question their betters whipped and knouted out of them. They had met a few military couriers on the road, and occasionally seen the carriages of nobles far off and withdrawn from the roads.
The land altered, became flatter, and split by many broad rivers. Here and there huge dark forests loomed against the horizon. The sky seemed lower and wider to Rik although he could not say exactly why. Perhaps it was the grey clouds that filled it, hanging lower than any he had ever seen.
“It’s like the far North,” said Asea. “The islands there have skies like this, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen anything like this in the south.”
“You think the weather patterns are changing,” Tamara asked. “Or do you think this is the product of some sorcery of Xephan’s?”
“Using the power of a Gate can alter the weather patterns,” said Asea. “Some say it’s because the Gate affects the geomancy of the land, others that some Gates suck air in, or breathe cold air out.”
“What do you think?” Rik asked.
“It’s some combination of all of three. The flow of magical energies has many surprising side-effects. It can seed clouds making them rain, or cause lightning storms and tornadoes and worse things. And I’ve seen Gates that connected lowlands and mountain heights and when they were opened they always breathed condensation and caused stiff breezes to blow around them.”
“You think the Gate is being opened then?” She nodded.
“I think it’s being tapped to raise the Army of the Dead. It’s the only thing I can think of, other than mass sacrifice that could do that, and there’s no evidence of mass sacrifice unless the plague is that.”
“So you are saying that if the Gate is not closed things will get much worse.”
“I believe so, but I think we need to get close enough to find out.”
Rik was not sure he liked the idea of getting that close to such a dangerous thing, but he saw no way around it if he was going to accompany Asea and Tamara.
“You really think you will be able
to close the Gate if it’s been opened?” Tamara asked.
“I think that I am going to have to try. The alternative is to simply have a portal through which the Princes of Shadow can come and go at will.”
“I think you are missing the point,” said Rik. “Someone already seems to have mastered that trick.”
After that they travelled in silence for the rest of the day.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Foragers paused for a moment by a roadside shrine. It was small, built from dry stone and the altar was merely some pieces of slate with sacred runes carved on them. Sardec recognised a few Elder Signs.
They had been marching along an old drover's path through the hills for a few days now. The landscape around them was barren. Every now and again they would see an occasional goat and Weasel's long rifle would roar and shoot sparks and the animal would fall and they would have some more food for the pot. The stringy beasts were not enough to feed the whole party well but they supplemented their meagre rations.
All of them looked hungry now and much thinner than they had when they set out. Sardec would not have believed that possible a few days ago but he did now. Weasel looked like a walking skeleton. He had been giving his rations to Lorraine and the other children. That too had come as a surprise to Sardec, for he'd always thought of Weasel as a very selfish man.
He could tell that a small party were getting more and more tired. Several of them coughed and many of them had blotchy skins that hinted at the onset of plague.
Despair struck at Sardec. If the plague was really among them, there was nothing he could do. He knew no healing magic and he had no knowledge of medicine. Not that that had proved of any avail. Rena was one of those who had begun to show symptoms. Sardec did not know what he would do if anything happened to her. Two of the children, Alan and Lorraine were also sick. The Barbarian carried the boy on his shoulders and Marcie carried the girl on her back. A couple of the soldiers had begun to lag behind, enfeebled by their incipient illness.
