Touched by the Gods

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “What about Mother?”

  Zolous hesitated, then looked sadly at his sister. “I'm afraid we don't have time to do anything with her now. The living must take priority over the dead. But when this is over, Dari, I promise she'll have the finest funeral in history.”

  “If there's anyone left to hold it,” Darisei muttered – but the others, already discussing strategy, did not hear her.

  Chapter Sixty

  The nightwalker did not even turn around. Malledd knew it must have heard him, yet it gave no sign; it marched on, seeming almost as lifeless as the corpse it should have been.

  This particular walking corpse wore tattered, faded rags that had once been a sumptuous green and gold Matuan funerary robe; though he could see nothing in the moonless night except a vague outline, Malledd had glimpsed the colors briefly when the nightwalker passed a lighted farmhouse window some ways back. Its flesh was dried and shrunken, stretched tight over the bones beneath; it had obviously been dead for a long time. Its left arm had been cut to pieces, and its left leg was deeply gouged in back, ruining the knee and causing a bad limp.

  That probably explained why it was the very last of all the thousands of nightwalkers marching westward on the Gogror Highway – but Malledd didn't much care about that. One of them had to be last.

  He swung his sword as hard as he could, and took the nightwalker's head off with a single blow.

  The corpse dropped like a marionette with its strings cut; the head rolled off to one side and stopped face-down, shriveled nose in the dirt.

  Malledd wasted no time admiring his handiwork, or cleaning up after himself; instead he took three long, fast steps and swung the sword back the other way, decapitating a second undead monster. He almost stumbled over the second corpse as he attacked a third.

  Still, none of them resisted; all that still had heads simply kept marching briskly westward.

  And, he asked himself bitterly, why shouldn't they? They were already dead, and didn't mind dying again; their loathsome spirits weren't destroyed, merely freed into the night air, to fly on ahead and be collected anew in the black end of the wizard's staff. His efforts seemed so futile against such a horde; he had taken out three nightwalkers...

  Out of several thousand. He didn't know the exact number, but it was definitely thousands. They filled the highway completely for as far ahead as he could see by starlight, so far that he could no longer detect any hint of the red glow from Rebiri Nazakri's magical crystals.

  But he would have to do what he could; every nightwalker he removed here was one fewer who would threaten the defenders of Seidabar, whoever those defenders might be.

  He ran after the nightwalkers, sword raised for another blow.

  No ordinary man could have sustained such an effort for more than an hour or two, at most – and that was without considering how long it had been since Malledd had eaten, slept, or rested. He carried a waterskin and had paused in a deserted village to refill it, so thirst was no problem, but hunger was beginning to eat away at him, and as he struggled onward, hacking off head after head, even he, gifted as he was, began to feel his muscles aching with the strain, his head swimming with fatigue.

  He kept at it, though.

  He lost count quickly, but as time passed he knew he had cut off dozens, scores, even hundreds of heads, leaving a gruesome trail along the highway, through empty villages and past abandoned inns. Malledd, in a delirium of mounting exhaustion and sleep deprivation, wondered what the returning local inhabitants would think of these morbid trophies when the sun finally rose again. Would they understand what they found?

  Would they return at all? He saw no signs of life anywhere, save the endless shadowy column of marching nightwalkers. Anyone who had still lived along the Gogror Highway must have fled – if not because of the interminable darkness, then when the wizard and the nightwalkers arrived. Malledd's own companions had all dropped away long before.

  At one point, without knowing why, he glanced eastward and saw a dim circle hanging in the sky, a golden-brown ember like one of the dullest moons at full – but it was no moon Malledd recognized, and he knew that it shouldn't be full when all the other moons were dark.

  Then he realized what he saw – this was the sun, or at least the cooling remnant of the sun. It still rose, though Ba'el had put out its fire.

  Malledd shuddered, and for the first time he wondered whether Vedal would be able to rekindle the sun when Ba'el's power passed away. Would it ever burn brightly again, lighting all the world, restoring color to the land and sky?

  He had to assume that it would. Anything else would mean yielding to despair and weariness, and that, at the very least, would mean allowing the wizard and the nightwalkers to destroy Seidabar, slaughter the Empress, and plunge the world into centuries of chaos and death.

  That was the best possible outcome if the sun was not quickly restored, as it assumed the world would survive this long night!

  He had to trust in the gods, he told himself – the other gods, not Ba'el or those he led.

  He turned his attention westward again and saw that he had let the nightwalkers gain a dozen yards on him; with a croak of rage he charged forward and returned to his chopping.

  Still the nightwalkers marched on, making no attempt to deter him, to stop the carnage.

  To do so, they would have had to slow their march toward Seidabar.

  #

  “People of Seidabar!” Graubris bellowed from the balcony. “The Empress, my mother, is dead!” He leaned over the railing, looking down at the people below. Behind him Lord Shoule smiled broadly.

  A shocked hush fell over the crowd in the plaza.

  “The skies themselves mourn her passing!” Graubris shouted.

  A new murmur arose.

  “There are traitors among us, who have chosen this, the Empire's darkest hour, to strike,” Graubris continued. “Members of the Imperial Council have betrayed us all to the Olnamian wizard, Rebiri Nazakri! Even now, he and his nightwalkers are approaching the city.”

  The murmur grew louder.

  “I, your new Emperor, will see you safe – but we must give up this place, and flee to Rishna Gabidéll until a way can be found to destroy the Olnamians!”

  Several stories up Zolous leaned out the tower window, listening.

  “Shouldn't we stop him?” he asked.

  “Evacuating most of the civilians from Seidabar is not necessarily a bad idea, your Majesty,” Sulibai pointed out. “If the enemy is coming, they would be of little help in the event of a siege, and that many more mouths to feed.”

  “He's calling himself Emperor, though.”

  Granzer said quietly, “Who out there knows which of you he is? If you'll forgive me for mentioning it, your Majesty, the resemblance between your brother and yourself is quite striking, and that balcony quite dark. There will be time to straighten it all out later; to say anything now would merely cause further unnecessary confusion. Let him leave the city; if we rule Seidabar, we rule the Empire.”

  “But can we hold Seidabar? Do we know whether the rebels are coming?” Zolous asked, turning to face the others.

  Just then light blazed upward from somewhere across the plaza; Zolous whirled in time to see three glowing figures soaring into the sky and swooping eastward, like immense golden fireflies.

  “Lady Luzla's messengers,” Graush said. “Good for her!”

  “At least now we should have word soon as to just what's happening,” Granzer agreed.

  #

  “I know it's still dark,” Lord Kadan roared. “I don't care. We march. Day or night, the men have had plenty of time to rest. This darkness may be the gods' doing, or it may be the wizard's, or it may be something else entirely, and the cause doesn't matter. We came to fight the Nazakri, and we'll do it, and the Nazakri is east of here. We march!”

  “The men are frightened,” Colonel Tsigisha protested.

  “If they're scared now, what are they going to do when we fig
ht the nightwalkers?” Kadan demanded. “We...” He paused as someone burst uninvited into the headquarters tent. The man wore the white robe of a priest.

  “What is it?” Kadan asked.

  The priest struggled to catch his breath, then gasped out, “Nightwalkers. Coming.”

  “What?” Several voices spoke at once.

  The priest held up a hand for silence as he gulped air and composed himself. Then he said, “We have a message from the temple in Drievabor. Rebiri Nazakri has crossed the Grebiguata. General Balinus is dead. All the vanguard's magician priests are dead. All the New Magicians are powerless. Lord Duzon sent a messenger to Drievabor to send this warning – the nightwalkers are marching toward Seidabar. Thousands of them.”

  “By what route?” Kadan demanded.

  The priest shook his head. “I don't know,” he said. “The crossing was made fifteen or twenty miles north of Drievabor, over an improvised bridge.”

  “We need to block their path,” Kadan said. “If we form a sentry line north to south, covering perhaps thirty miles...”

  He was interrupted again, by another intruder.

  This time it was three men who entered – one in black and gold, and two in the red and gold of Imperial uniforms.

  They were not the uniforms of ordinary soldiers, though, but the more ornate dress of the Imperial Guard, while Kadan recognized the black-and-gold as the livery of Lord Shoule's staff.

  “What do you want here?” he said angrily.

  “Lord Kadan of Amildri?” the man in black said. “I have a warrant for your arrest, signed by his Imperial Majesty Graubris IV, on charges of high treason.” He signaled to the two guards, who stepped forward to stand one on either side of Kadan. “Will you come peacefully?”

  For a moment a stunned silence fell over everyone in the tent; then chaos erupted.

  “The Empress is dead?”

  “Kadan a traitor?”

  “What's going on?”

  “Is this true?”

  Colonel Tsigisha managed to shout loudly enough to be heard over the others. “You, messenger! What of the army?”

  The crowd quieted abruptly as they waited for the reply.

  The man in Shoule's livery shrugged. “I have no orders about that,” he said. “I am to remove Lord Kadan from command; after that, you're not my responsibility.”

  Tsigisha and the other staff officers looked at one another.

  “These men have no authority here,” Kadan bellowed. “I swore an oath to the Empire and the Empress, not to Lord Shoule's errand boy – ”

  One of the guards slapped Kadan across the mouth.

  “The Emperor Graubris has named Lord Shoule President of the Imperial Council,” he said. He grabbed Kadan's arm. “Come on, you,” he growled.

  The guards dragged Kadan from the tent.

  The generals and colonels milled about indecisively; finally Tsigisha said, “Adikan, you're second in command – what do we do now?”

  General Adikan frowned uneasily. “I suppose we await the Emperor's orders,” he said.

  “But the nightwalkers are coming!” the priest protested.

  Adikan shrugged. “If they come we will fight them, of course,” he said. “But until we know what the Emperor wants of us, we will remain right here.”

  “A wise decision, I'm sure,” Shoule's messenger said. He saluted. “May the gods favor you all!”

  Then he bowed and left the tent.

  Chapter Sixty- One

  The sentry squinted into the darkness, trying to make out just what he had seen moving, out there on the far side of the wheatfield. “Who's there?” he called, drawing his sword.

  Prince Bagar stopped dead at the sentry's challenge.

  “It's just me,” he called back.

  “Who?” the sentry repeated, stepping forward, pushing aside the wheat.

  Bagar hesitated. He was a prince, the grandson of the Empress – but he was also a deserter, alone and wearing badly-worn clothes, with no one to attest to his identity, and no knowledge of how he would be received were it known. He hadn't expected to find sentries or soldiers here; he had been traveling cross-country, instead of following the Gogror Highway, specifically to avoid them. Desertion was a serious crime.

  “My name's Bagar,” he said. Giving his own name, without the title, seemed safe enough. After all, Bagar was not a particularly unusual name.

  “Step forward where I can see you,” the sentry ordered.

  Bagar obeyed, walking forward with his empty hands raised.

  “What are you doing here?” the sentry demanded, when could see Bagar clearly.

  “I'm on my way to Seidabar, to stay with relatives,” Bagar replied. “It's not safe in Drievabor – the nightwalkers are too close!”

  “Ha! I can believe that,” the sentry answered. “So you're from Drievabor? But what are you doing out here, instead of on the road?”

  “I got lost in the dark,” Bagar improvised hastily. He gestured at the sky. “I couldn't see anything!”

  “Oh,” the sentry said. He pointed off to his right, bringing his left arm across his chest to do it without lowering his sword. “The road's that way. About two miles.”

  “Thank you,” Bagar said. He hesitated. He had been avoiding the highway for a hundred miles, but he couldn't think of any good reason he could give this sentry for continuing to do so.

  Maybe there really wasn't any reason to go on avoiding it. This fellow seemed to be taking his story at face value, and even now that he was close enough for his face to be visible in the torchlight the soldier didn't seem to have recognized him. Bagar turned and looked to the south, toward the road.

  A red glow caught his eye, off to the left – something much redder than any flame. He stared.

  There was definitely a red glow there, and it seemed to be moving westward along the highway, coming closer.

  “What's that?” he asked, pointing.

  Just then the distant wail of a horn reached them – someone to the south was sounding the alarm.

  “Oh, gods,” the sentry said. He looked south, then back at Bagar, then west at the tents and fires behind him. “You stay there!” he ordered; then he turned and ran for the tents.

  Bagar watched him go, then stared southward. Men were pouring from tents and gathering around campfires to the west, and to the south that eerie red light was moving steadily along the highway.

  Now, belatedly, Bagar recognized it. He had seen that glow before, but he had never expected to see it here, a hundred miles from the Grebiguata. That was the glow of Rebiri Nazakri's staff. The wizard had crossed the river and was marching toward Seidabar.

  Bagar shuddered.

  He had tried, back there at the river. He had fought for several triads, beheaded his share of nightwalkers, but he had known almost at once, once the fighting began, that he was no champion, no great warrior. He had been terrified every time he went into battle; all he had been able to think of, when the foe came charging at him, was staying alive. Every fight had been a constant struggle not just against the enemy, but against his own fears; he had fought as hard to keep from running away as he had fought to remove heads.

  And it had all seemed so futile. He had seen the endless rows of nightwalkers watching from the eastern bank, had seen the black essence that spilled free and flew away unscathed, back to the wizard's staff, whenever a nightwalker went down. He had seen the soldiers around him die, one by one, or grow steadily more exhausted as they fought on, night after night, with no hope of victory in sight.

  Finally, one day, he hadn't been able to fight any more. It hadn't been anything specific; he had just known he couldn't continue, and he had packed up some of his belongings and had headed west.

  But now the Olnamians and the nightwalkers had come after him. There was no safety here. There was no safety anywhere until those things were all destroyed.

  He had had a break from the battle, had had time to rest, but now it was time to do his duty t
o his grandmother, his family, and the Empire once again. He was no divine champion, but he was still Domdur. He unslung the pack from his shoulder and pulled out his sword; then he lifted the pack again and began trudging southward to meet the foe.

  As he walked he saw the red-garbed companies of soldiers forming up between the rows of tents to his right, their tunics bright in the light of the campfires. He heard orders being shouted.

  This was the Imperial Army, ready at last to meet the rebels in battle. The reinforcements that had never reached the vanguard had existed, after all; they had simply been delayed. Now, at last, he would have sufficient numbers on his side; that horde of walking corpses could be wiped out, sent back to the graveyards where they belonged.

  He walked past the southernmost row of tents just as the first company of soldiers began to march south, paralleling his own path.

  And then a messenger came running out to the company's captain, shouting for him to wait. Bagar stopped, curious, to see why the soldiers were delaying.

  The messenger was gasping something to the captain; Bagar was too far away to make out the words. Bagar hesitated, then turned and headed west, toward the soldiers.

  The captain and the messenger were arguing now. Bagar picked up his pace, but the dispute ended before he could hear what it was about.

  The captain shouted a command, and the entire company wheeled about, each man turning on his heel with a precision no regiment in the half-trained vanguard could ever have matched. Then they began marching north, back to camp.

  Bagar broke into a run.

  “Captain!” he called.

  The captain paused.

  “Who are you?” he demanded, as Bagar came running up.

  “I'm... I'm a deserter from the vanguard, Captain,” Bagar said. “I lost my nerve, but I'm ready to fight again – and you're turning back! What's happening?”