Lusam: The Dragon Mage Wars Book Three

by Dean Cadman

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  It had been five days since the strange men in black robes had descended on Rebekah and Kayden’s village. They themselves hadn’t stayed long, but the terror and devastation they had left behind was terrible. They had killed everyone they found that first day, and Rebekah and Kayden were forced to listen to their screams and pleas from within their hiding place, powerless to do anything about it.

  Rebekah could not understand what the men were saying, even when they had been close enough to hear them clearly. They spoke in a strange language Rebekah had never heard before, and their laughter at her own villagers’ suffering was almost more than she could bear. She witnessed the killing of dozens of her friends and kin through the small openings in the grate, unable, or unwilling to look away from their suffering as they died horrible deaths. The strange men left them all where they fell for what seemed like a very long time to Rebekah, some still burning, and others horribly mutilated from what they had done to them.

  She witnessed incredible balls of flame appearing in the hands of the strange men, before they threw them with inhuman force towards her fellow villagers. From others came what looked like bolts of lightning, or some simply raised their arms, and Rebekah watched as people she knew began to sail through the sky, only to return to earth with a sickening crunch moments later. They rained down the same balls of fire upon many of the buildings in her village, and many were completely destroyed by the flames. If it had not been for the fact that they’d had a heavy rainstorm shortly after the men left her village, Rebekah felt sure that the village would have been completely destroyed by the spreading fire.

  By far the strangest thing that Rebekah witnessed that first day, was the men in black robes making the dead people come back to life again—except, they were no longer alive somehow. The people she had once known, now dead in the streets, were twisted and burned beyond all recognition. But it didn’t seem to matter to the strange men, they chanted some strange words over and over, and made them move again. Some had legs and arms so badly damaged that they could barely move, others were so burned that they no longer even looked like people.

  After the strange men brought them back to life, they all went to the centre of the village and just stood there, not moving, like horribly twisted and burned statues. As time went by, more and more joined them, until it looked like her whole village had gathered in the same spot. Desperately, she scanned the forms for any sign of her mother, but it was almost impossible to recognise anyone amongst the crowd. She could not be sure, but she didn’t think her mother was among them, and that gave her a small amount of hope that she had somehow escaped the men before the killing had begun.

  It seemed that once the men had finished with their grisly task of making the dead bodies live again, they too gathered in the centre of the village. There was some kind of order given by one of the men, and soon after, they all began to leave the village in single file. At first, none of the villagers followed, but once the last man had joined the back of the line, the first of the villagers also set off in single file after them. Rebekah watched, praying to Deas that they would all leave, so she and Kayden could emerge from their hiding place and find their mother. But moments later, her hopes were dashed. All of the badly injured villagers were left behind, and after several more minutes, they began to wander aimlessly up and down the streets, as if searching for something. That was two days ago.

  The sun had gone down over an hour ago, and it was beginning to get cold again inside the room where Rebekah and Kayden were still hiding. During the day the sun warmed the room to a comfortable temperature, but by night the grate cover acted like a chimney, evacuating all the heat from within the small room quite rapidly through all of the holes. Rebekah knew that she desperately needed to leave the small wood-drying room to find food and water, but there had always been at least one of the undead villagers nearby most of the time. She tried to open the door they had found inside the room, but it was firmly bolted from the other side, so she watched the streets from her firewood platform, waiting for an opportunity to exit the grate unseen.

  “I’m hungry and thirsty, Bekah,” Kayden said weakly from the shadows. Neither of them had eaten anything much in the last two days, and now they were both very hungry indeed. Luckily, Rebekah had saved the remains of their lunch in her dress pocket from the first day on the docks, which they had managed to ration out over the last two days, but now they were completely out of food. It had also rained quite heavily during the first two days, and Rebekah had managed to peel off a length of bark from a piece of firewood and used it to collect water for them both. She had pushed the length of bark through one of the holes in the grate, and as the rain fell, it collected in the curved bark and ran back towards them, supplying them with an almost constant trickle of clean drinking water. Unfortunately, there had been no way to store the water, and now that the rain had stopped, they were also beginning to dehydrate too.

  “I know you are, Kayden, I’m sorry,” Rebekah replied quietly, still watching for an opportunity to leave their hiding place unseen. “Kay, I need you to listen to me carefully. Do you understand?” Rebekah said in her most serious big sister voice. Kayden had already stood up and moved to where his big sister was peering down at him from her platform. She could just about make him out, as the moonlight trickled in through the multitude of gaps around the grate. He nodded his head, and waited for her to continue.

  “I have to go outside…” she began to say, but was cut short by her little brother’s whine of a reply.

  “No, Bekah! I don’t want you to go. Those… things will get you. Please don’t go. Please,” he pleaded with her, tears rolling down his cheeks.

  “I have to, Kay. We need food and water. We’ll get sick if I don’t go fetch us something soon,” she replied, climbing down from the platform to hug her little brother.

  “No, Bekah, please don’t go out there… please. I won’t say I’m hungry again, I promise,” he said, sobbing between breaths. Rebekah hugged him tightly as he cried and sobbed into her dress.

  “Kayden, listen to me,” Rebekah said, kneeling down to his level and brushing away his tears with her thumbs. “I promise I’ll be alright. I’ve been watching those things out there for a long time now, and they don’t seem to move very fast. I saw one of farmer Tarquin’s pigs loose in the street today, down by the village well. A few of those things tried to catch it, but it was way too fast for them. Their legs don’t seem to work like they should. Maybe that’s why those men left them behind, and only took the ones that weren’t damaged.”

  “But, I’m scared, Bekah. I don’t want to be here all alone in the dark. I want to come with you,” Kayden sobbed, grabbing hold of his big sister in a bear hug and not letting go.

  “No, Kay, you can’t come with me. But, I do need you to do a very important job for me here while I’m gone. Do you think you could do that for me?” Rebekah said, disengaging herself from the bear hug, and pushing Kayden out to arms length so she could look into his teary eyes. He nodded mutely at his big sister, and continued to sob quietly while she explained what she needed him to do.

  “When I go outside, I need you to lock the grate behind me, then I need you to stay up there on the wood pile and watch for me coming back. When you see me coming, I need you to unlock the grate quickly so I can get back inside, before any of those things out there see me. Do you understand Kay?”

  Kayden nodded at his big sister, as he wiped his nose with his sleeve, leaving what his big sister had always called ‘a slug trail’ behind. Normally she would have berated him for it, but here, now, it seemed such a trivial a thing to do.

  “You see, I knew you could be a big boy and help me do this,” Rebekah said, kissing her little brother on the top of his head, and causing him to smile at her words of praise. Rebekah returned to the platform of firewood and resumed her lookout, waiting for an opportunity to present itself for her to leave the grate unseen. It took a while, but
eventually she spotted an opening. As long as the undead villager at the end of the street didn’t turn back in her direction, she felt sure she could make it to the cover of the barn on the opposite side of the street without being seen.

  “Kayden, get ready. I’ll be back soon. Make sure you watch for me, you hear?” Rebekah whispered loudly.

  “Okay, Bekah,” Kayden replied, getting ready to take his sister’s place on the firewood platform. Rebekah quietly slid the bolts open on the grate lid and gently lifted off the cover, being careful not to clang it on the rim as she did so. She then quickly climbed out of the hole and onto the street above, replacing the grate cover with great care, so as not to make a sound. She was about to remind Kayden to relock the cover, but she heard the bolts slide into place before she had to. With one last check up and down the street, she lifted her dress and ran for the safety of the large barn opposite.

  By the time she had reached the barn a short distance away, her heart was beating so hard and fast that she feared the creatures outside would hear it for sure. Leaning with her back against the wall she tried to steady her breathing, while at the same time taking in the once familiar surrounding of the large barn. What she saw made her first gasp out loud, then gag, as she tried hard not to throw up at the grisly sight before her. Where there were once pens full of healthy animals, now there were only the mutilated remains of disembowelled carcases, crawling with maggots and flies. The smell was overpowering, and it took all of her self control not to vomit at the sight or smell of what was in front of her.

  It took Rebekah a few moments to steel herself against the grisly sight and smell, and then she reminded herself why she had chosen to come here in the first place. She knew there was no way she could approach the village well down the street without being seen, let alone use it to draw any water. The only other source of water that she knew about was inside this barn, and often when she had frequented the barn in the past, she had also seen many types of root vegetables being stored there, ready to feed the animals. She only hoped that there were still some here now. It was difficult to see inside the barn, as the only light was from the moonlight outside which filtered in through the loose fitting wall boards of the structure—creating a strange striped pattern on the barn floor.

  Fortunately, Rebekah knew where most things were stored inside the barn, and quickly located two wooden buckets hanging from hooks on the wall. As she took them down from their hooks, she heard a shuffling sound coming from the other side of the barn wall. Carefully she approached the wall of the barn and peered through one of the gaps between the boards. The badly burned, inhuman form at the other side of the wall startled her so much that she dropped her bucket with a loud clattering sound on the floor, seemingly amplified further by the barn’s cavernous structure. The shadow beyond the barn wall instantly looked in her direction, turning her blood to ice, as she stood there frozen with terror. Suddenly the shadow began to move, shuffling towards the entrance of the barn. Instinctively, Rebekah ran for her preferred hiding spot; one that she had used many times while playing hide and seek with her smaller brother and other friends, but also one they had always seemed to find far too easily for her liking. She dived head first into the pile of hay, and quickly buried herself under it, leaving only a small gap so she could see the floor of the barn. She watched as the shadow approached the barn entrance, and involuntarily held her breath as the creature appeared in the doorway, casting a long moonlit shadow far into the barn.

  The creature shuffled into the barn doorway, then stopped, as if listening for any movement within. Rebekah could barely breathe past her terror. After a few moments the creature shuffled further inside the barn, and headed straight for where she was hiding. She wanted to flee, but her legs had turned to stone and she couldn’t move. Suddenly, the creature kicked over the same bucket she had dropped earlier, and it froze in its tracks, looking down at the upended bucket on the floor. It seemed to be slowly studying the bucket for some reason. Then it did something even stranger. It bent down, picked up the bucket, and returned it to the exact hook Rebekah had removed it from a few moments earlier. It was at that instant she knew exactly who this creature had once been: farmer Tarquin. She suddenly felt a new wave of revulsion at what he had become, and prayed her mother or father had not met a similar fate. After returning the bucket to its rightful hook, the creature took one last look around—lingering longest on what were once his prized animals—then began shuffling slowly back towards the barn entrance.

  It wasn’t until the shadow had long since disappeared from outside the barn that Rebekah dared to breathe freely once more, let alone move again. When she tried to stand up, her legs almost buckled under her, and she had to steady herself on the rails of the animal pen for a moment. Her eyes had adjusted more to the darkened barn now, and she could clearly see the outline of the storage barrel which normally contained the vegetables for the animals. Warily, she made her way over to the corner of the barn, never taking her eyes off the walls for more than a few seconds at a time, watching for any more shadowy movements outside.

  When she reached the large barrel in the corner, she lifted the lid and felt inside. To her great relief, she found there were still plenty of vegetables inside the barrel. For a moment she wondered what had happened to the second bucket, then realised, in her haste to hide she had taken it with her into the pile of hay. Not wanting to be in the barn any longer than she had to be, she ignored that bucket, and took down two more from the hooks on the wall instead. She quickly filled one of the buckets with vegetables, then used the other to collect water from the animal watering trough. It was far too dark to see, but she just hoped there were no discarded animal parts in the watering trough as she scooped up a bucketload of water. The bucket was very heavy for her to lift, and although she knew she could have managed to carry it under normal circumstances, running with it—as well as a second bucket full of vegetables—was not an option right now. Reluctantly, she quietly emptied half the bucket of water onto the barn floor, always watching and listening for any sign of movement outside the barn. She retrieved the bucket of vegetables, and crept slowly towards the entrance of the barn.

  The moonlight outside seemed much brighter to her eyes now, since she had become used to the much darker interior of the barn. She knew it would make spotting the creatures much easier for her, but unfortunately, she also knew that they could spot her easily too, especially in the light blue dress she was wearing. There simply was nowhere to hide between the barn and the relative safety of the grate. She needed something to cover her dress with. Something dark. She thought about smearing herself with mud or manure to camouflage herself, but then remembered she had often seen a horse blanket hanging on the back wall of the barn. Placing the two buckets down quietly, she peered carefully around the barn doorway and onto the street outside. The street was clear, apart from the creature that used to be farmer Tarquin, which was still slowly shuffling along in the distance—thankfully now heading away from her.

  Rebekah turned and headed directly for where she had last seen the blanket, stopping in her tracks almost immediately, as she realised she would have to walk through the main animal pen full of disembowelled animal carcasses. Taking a deep breath—through her mouth so she didn’t retch from the stench—she opened the pen, and picked her way through the carnage as best she could. She made her way to the far rear corner of the barn, hidden in the deepest shadows, and found what she was looking for. It was a thick coarse blanket made from heavy weave, and smelled of the rotting carcases all around her. But at least it was dark brown, and hopefully that would help conceal her out in the open, so she gratefully took it and headed back towards the barn entrance. She cloaked herself in the blanket and retrieved the two buckets, before once again carefully checking the street outside for any signs of the creatures. She was relieved to see that nothing had changed, and the only movement was in the distance, as the remains of poor farmer Tarquin continued to shuffle further down the
street. She took a deep breath, then ran for the refuge of the grate, hoping Kayden was paying attention and watching for her return.

  It was so much more difficult to run whilst carrying the two heavy buckets, and on two occasions she almost tripped and fell, spilling part of the buckets’ contents on the floor as she did so. By the time she reached the grate, she was panting hard for breath. She heard two faint clicks when Kayden released the bolts on the other side of the cover as she crouched down next to it, trying to make her form as small as possible. It was at that point she realised she might have a problem: the buckets were heavy for her to lift, but there was no way Kayden would be able to carry them if she handed them down to him. ‘She would just have to do the best she could,’ she thought to herself, checking the street for any creatures again.

  She lifted the grate cover carefully, and placed it on the ground close to the opening, then peered into the dark hole, just about making out her little brother in the darkness below. The platform below was too far to reach with the buckets, and she would risk falling in head first if she tried to lower them onto it. Instead, she moved the buckets as close as she could to the opening, and climbed inside, onto the platform below. Once her footing was secure, she reached out for the first of the two buckets, and found it was almost impossible to lift it from where she was. Eventually, she managed to ease the bucket over the lip of the grate and get a hand underneath it, spilling a little of the water as it sloshed around inside the bucket. Kayden offered to take the bucket of water from his big sister, but she dared not risk spilling more of its precious cargo, so she carefully climbed down and placed it on the floor herself.