by Max Anthony
To one side was Zera Graves, commanding the arm-steed to greater efforts. With her back to Skulks, she suddenly and quietly toppled forwards, smacking her skull on the flooring with a note that spoke of death. Between her shoulder blades a deep hole provided sign of where the thief’s blade had deprived her of life.
When Zera Graves fell dead, the arm-steed jerked as if it had been lifted by invisible ropes. Skulks had faintly hoped that it would be unmade following the death of the necromancer, but it was not to be. The arm-steed was as mentally vapid as all of the re-animated limbs, but it knew that something had killed its master. Sensing nothing, it nonetheless charged along the corridor, barricade of crates temporarily forgotten. Skulks pressed himself against the wall in the hope that the creature would bypass him, because he was dearly hoping to avoid fighting it. Even thinking himself thin was insufficient and the creature brushed his tunic as it scampered by. It stopped at once and pattered casually back up the corridor as if it were walking arm-in-arm by the Hardened Canal with a lady arm-steed of its acquaintance.
It knew something was there and it was most definitely correct, though that something now dangled from the ceiling. With a monumental effort from his Wielding, Skulks clung to the roof with one hand, whilst his other hand reached down to grasp at something of interest. Luck smiled upon Skulks’ reaching hand and he took a firm grip on the plump, loose thread he’d seen protruding from the top of the arm-steed, just next to where the saddle was attached. It was a sign of poor needlework or carelessness, but Skulks minded not which of the two.
He dropped soundlessly from above, landing neatly in the saddle. He dug in his heels and the arm-steed went off at a gallop. As he sped by, he was given a brief glimpse of Heathen Spout and Doris Grumps looking through a gap in the crate wall. Both mouths were agape at the sight of Tan Skulks atop his new and peculiar-looking horse.
Skulks did not attempt to break the will of the arm-steed - he knew that these re-animated arms were beyond redemption. As it bucked, hopped and spun in an attempt to dislodge its unwanted passenger, Skulks pulled and tugged at the loose thread, unravelling it from the flesh of this unnatural mount. After a few short moments, the beast stopped trying to throw its rider and instead chose to balance on two hands to free up the third for throttling duties. Skulks felt he’d seen enough attempts at his life for one day and cast himself out of the saddle, whereupon he executed a beautiful roll and came to his feet, with thread still in hand.
Off he dashed, back past the crates where the faces of Spout and Grumps had now been joined by the faces of Glady Fulup and Harman Granulis, all with mouths drooping and aghast. The pitter-pattering was renewed behind him but by now Skulks had several feet of thick, black thread wrapped around his wrist where he’d been gathering it. With a thud and a bump, the arm-steed fell into pieces, though nary a whinny was to be heard. Skulks stopped and returned to where Zera Graves’ steed writhed in bits on the floor tiles. The arms flexed and wriggled, with Skulks half expecting them to sprout spider legs and attack once more. With the threads binding them removed, the former arms of Jake the Headcracker subsided to a mild twitching and soon fell still.
While the Chamber Council removed the wall of crates and boxes, Skulks approached Zera Graves. Having seen too many of her machinations in the recent past, he was loath to believe she was dead. A hefty boot into her ribs confirmed his suspicions: the necromancer was truly deceased. As he stood over her, he felt swamped with giddiness and stumbled. He was only vaguely aware of arms catching him and concerned faces speaking words he couldn’t hear, before his vision faded and he was left to the mercies of those he had rescued.
Twenty-Five
Three-and-a-half days later, Skulks woke up. He didn’t immediately recognize his surroundings – it wasn’t his house on Cow’s Skirt Corner. His brain added up the details it saw and shortly concluded that he was in Heathen Spout’s office. A bed had been set up for him in one corner so that Spout could watch him over the course of the long hours she habitually worked. Given recent events, there was a great deal of extra work to keep her occupied. Fortunately, Clerk Souter had shown himself willing and very capable at assisting the Chamber Council, allowing them to concentrate on the most important tasks.
As she saw him stirring, Spout hurried over from her writing desk.
“Tan? How are you feeling?”
His dried, cracked lips moved as they tried to form words of incredible importance that he needed to impart. Spout leaned over to listen carefully, worried lest she miss a vital detail.
“Ale,” wheezed Skulks. “Get me ale.” Strengthening by the moment, he gathered himself for more utterances. “And a chicken sandwich. With lots of butter.”
It wasn’t long before he was sitting up on his bed with the three members of the Chamber Council gathered around him, who watched patiently as Skulks ate and drank. Although there was little solace in anything that had happened to the city recently, everyone in the Council was greatly impressed by the performance of the Office of Covert Operations.
When he had recovered enough, they talked. They filled in his gaps and he filled in theirs. It turned out that almost three-hundred members of the Hardened army had been turned into the necromancer’s pets and though they had almost succeeded in storming the command building, they had eventually been surrounded and destroyed by the reserve forces who had been somehow alerted and had gathered in numbers at the barracks. Jake the Headcracker had taken some time to locate, until a keen-eared guardsman had heard the lilting sounds of The Three-Cocked Hangman being sung enthusiastically (but tunelessly) in a little-used corner of the basement. Finally, the potions which had started it all had been found on the body of Zera Graves and Skulks turned over his own two.
“Put them somewhere safe,” he implored. “Very safe.”
“Don’t you worry about that, Tan,” Heathen Spout reassured him. “We’ll put them in a crate in the basement and no one will ever find them.” Skulks didn’t know if she was joking. It was possible that she wasn’t, but some things just weren’t worth the effort of pursuing.
Eventually, when Harman Granulis and Glady Fulup had left the room to pursue their other duties, Skulks asked the question he’d been inexplicably too nervous to ask in front of the others.
“Captain Honey?” he asked. “How is she?”
Spout patted him maternally on the head. “She’s doing well, but she’s got a lot of work ahead of her to build the army back up again.” She paused. “Of course, that’s not really what you’re asking is it? To answer your question properly, Captain Honey has been here several times a day in the hope that she’d be able to speak to the man who saved her mother. She’s a very nice young lady, Tan. You should ask her out for dinner some time.”
The expression on Skulks’ face was difficult to read. At the very least he looked infinitely pleased to hear that Captain Honey had escaped from the assault on the command building unscathed. Before the eyes of Heathen Spout, Skulks slipped over onto his side. There was a slight smile on his face and the sound of gentle snoring indicated that all was well.
*******
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Table of Contents
No.12, Mops Lane
The Prince’s Gout
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
r /> Max Anthony, The Limbs of the Dead (A Wielders Novel Book 3)
