“Perhaps I want to be bothered by something,” he said. Ingrge stood in the center of the trail and watched the caravan continue north. He let it get about a mile ahead, then followed off the side of the trail.
Morning drifted into late afternoon, and Ingrge started thinking of Florida again, wondering about his job at the station ... if it would still be there for him if he managed to find a way out of this medieval nightmare.
But was it such a nightmare? When he dabbled in the role-playing game with his friends, most often at local science-fiction conventions, he imagined what it might be like to live in a world such as this. It was primitive by the standards he was used to. No radio stations or television sets with attached DVD players, no flush toilets or refrigerators dispensing chilled water and ice through the door. No Dis-neyworld, to which he’d bought a season pass and managed to visit more often than he thought he should.
But it was not . . . dreadful. His elven senses appreciated how clean this place was, how untouched from car exhaust and smoke from factories, from the chatter of people who were everywhere. So very many people. This world was not as populated. It was simpler. Maybe better.
Would it be so bad if he couldn’t make it home for a while? And would he forget his Florida self if they tarried here too long? Would James Ritchie cease to exist and only Ingrge remain? Would it be so bad?
He knew it would be better in one respect—that being if he was earning some coins and working at something other than paying off Milo and Naile’s debt.
“It would be. . . .” He stared at a spot on the horizon south of the caravan. Near a clump of willow birches, he thought he saw something moving. A deer was his first guess, but after he focused on it, he could tell the shape was wrong. Too far away to make it out for certain, and still bothered by the tracks to the north, Ingrge skirted off the trail and dropped to a crouch, expecting trouble.
Hidden by the tall grass, he made his way toward the shape. He moved silently, avoiding stepping on dry twigs that could snap and give him away. The elf carefully brushed aside the branches of bushes and reed stalks, not making a sound as he continued south and closed in on what he now knew was two-legged quarry.
So someone was following the caravan. Perhaps several someones, and the elf had managed to only catch a glimpse of this one. Breathing shallowly and practically crawling as he closed the distance, Ingrge circled the figure and then came up behind it.
The figure was moving away from the willow birches now and straight down the trail. The caravan ahead had become a speck, and so the figure was not risking being seen by any caravan guards.
A spy? Ingrge thought. But for whom and why? Did one of the merchants have an enemy? The elf waited in the foliage, looking around and making sure the spy had no other companions. When Ingrge was satisfied the spy was alone, the elf crept up.
The figure was dressed in clothes the shade of cold ashes, nearly matching the color of the sky. It was on the small side, as thin as the elf and not quite as tall. A boy or a woman maybe, but the figure carried itself like a man by the roll of the hips and the way the arms swung. When the wind gusted, the figure’s cloak billowed away, revealing more of the ash-gray clothes, and a strap filled with daggers that ran along his back from his right shoulder to the left side of his waist. Likely more daggers were sheathed on the front side. The pommels were wrapped with gray leather twine, as were the pommels of the daggers strapped to the man’s thighs and calves.
The elf had no way of knowing that the figure had watched Milo and Naile in the Golden Tankard many days past, and that he’d managed to slip out as the fight began.
"A walking arsenal, with all those knives,” Ingrge whispered. “And certainly up to no good.”
The elf reached for the pommel of his thin-blade, then changed his mind and drew a dagger of his own. Easier to run with a shorter weapon, he knew. He moved onto the center of the trail, sprang forward into a fast gait, and a moment later slammed into the back of the ash-gray man.
Ingrge knocked the wind from the man, and the elf held him on the ground, right knee in the small of his back, dagger trained at the back of his neck. With his free hand, Ingrge began pulling daggers from the leather band and tossing them to the side of the trail. Then the elf jammed his other knee on the man’s left hand, which was reaching down to grab at a dagger strapped to his thigh.
“I will kill you,” Ingrge hissed, “if you make a move to draw a weapon.” In the back of his mind, the elf knew that James Ritchie of Daytona Beach would be horrified at the notion of taking a life. But James wasn’t here, Ingrge was. And the elf had no compunctions about killing this man.
The slight man tried to nod and say something, but he only gagged, his face pressed in the dirt now by Ingrge’s other hand.
“I’m going to roll you over,” Ingrge continued. “And you’re not going to make a move.” The elf paused, then did just that, transferring his right knee to the man's stomach, his left to the man’s right arm. One hand still held a dagger at the stranger’s throat, the other began pulling more knives from the leather band and throwing these off the trail.
It was difficult to guess the man's age. At first Ingrge thought he was human, and placed him in his late twenties. He had wheat-blond hair and gray eyes, no hint of age lines around them or his near-colorless lips. But then the elf noticed how thin the face was, that there was no trace of a beard, and that the stranger’s ears had the faintest of points to them. Elvish blood ran in the stranger’s veins, not strongly, as he would pass for human in most cities. But it was there, and that stayed Ingrge’s hand — the elf had intended to kill him.
“Who are you?”
“A friend,” was the reply.
Ingrge sniffed. The man was not quite so dirty as the guards in the caravan or the various city folk he’d been around. Cleaner, though he still wore some dirt of the road. Common people in this part of the world took baths, but not often. It was a luxury, one this fellow had indulged in recently. Ingrge snarled and pressed the dagger against the stranger’s throat.
“No friend follows the caravan as a spy would. Tell me . . . were you well in front of the caravan before? Last night?” The elf looked to the man’s boots, seeing they were gray leather slippers and could not have made the heel impressions he’d noted earlier.
The stranger paled, and despite the cold weather, beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. “T-t-truly,” he stammered. “I am a friend. I’m not following the caravan to hurt you, but to help you. I’m trying to save our world.”
EIGHT
Dead Men
The sun was edging toward the horizon when the caravan was called to a stop. The next village was only a handful of miles ahead, and they would reach it before sunset. But first the merchants wanted to make themselves look presentable, rub down their horses, and do any necessary sprucing up to the wagons—an the event they had shoppers who didn’t want to wait for the morning.
It was a practice the merchants had adopted since the beginning of this venture—wanting to look their best, believing it would bring them more customers and ultimately more money. Yevele found the preening all tedious and unnecessary. She was telling Naile just that, Milo watching the two of them from a few yards away.
“Wrong," Milo said, “him thinking he has a chance with her. He ain’t even human.” Then he turned his attention to Ludlow Jade, helping the merchant down from his wagon. “And he’s a lawyer.”
“Such good fortune we’ve had so far,” the merchant told Milo. “Perhaps it is your impressive presence that has kept the bandits away. Or perhaps for once they simply didn’t discover when we were leaving the city.” He sighed. “I consider that latter possibility unlikely.”
Milo watched Ludlow Jade inspect the horses attached to his first wagon. The merchant retrieved a brush and started working on their manes. Milo decided to help and took a damp rag to the tew mud spots on the horses’ legs.
“I should sell more blankets in this next village,”
Ludlow Jade said. “Wheaton Dale, it’s called. The place has several wealthy farmers, was named after the grandfather of one of them. And there is a large orchard that stretches farther than you can see.” He brightened. "There should still be plenty of sweet yellow apples, I think. I will have to buy some for us . . . and for the horses. You like apples, don’t you Milo? I think everyone likes — ”
A scream cut through the air, coming from the front of the caravan.
Milo spun away from Ludlow Jade and took off running, drawing his sword and hollering for Naile and Yevele. His feet pounded across the trail, then suddenly he was flying face forward and landing hard on his stomach. Something had grabbed his ankle, and in his surprise, the sword flew from his fingers.
Something still held his ankle, and Milo pulled against it, at the same time trying to sit up. He had a knife in a scabbard on his thigh, and he drew this, thinking he’d caught his foot somehow in an exposed root.
"Holy — ” Milo’s jaw dropped open when he saw what held him. It wasn’t a root, it was a skeletal hand, and the bony fingers were digging deep into his flesh. Before Milo could react, a second hand erupted from the ground, and the rest of the body began to unearth itself.
“Undead!” Milo hollered. It was a cry that was repeated from someone toward the front of the caravan. He threw himself forward, leading with the knife and striking at the wrist of the hand that held him. All his strength behind the blow, Milo severed the skeletal hand and scampered free. He jumped to his feet and in a few strides was at his dropped sword. He made a move to grab it, just as another hand rose from the earth, fingers groping about and finding the blade. “No you don’t,” he cautioned.
Milo stepped on the fingers, hearing them crunch. Then he bent and retrieved the sword. Knife in one hand, sword in the other, he put his back to a wagon and quickly took in what was becoming a hellish scene.
Along the length of the caravan undead were bursting from the ground, at the point where the trail met the tall, dead grass. Milo imagined the undead were on both sides of the wagons, judging by the panicked screams of the merchants and the sounds of things scrabbling in the hard-packed dirt.
There were skeletons, reaching out with their hands, fingers bony needles. Others Milo labeled zombies, having rotting flesh hanging from arms and legs, vestiges of clothes clinging to their shoulders and ribs. A few that Milo could see looked freshly dead, their bodies intact, but the skin gray and mottled. One of the recent dead had no eyes, another had a broken neck, and its head hung limp against its breastbone. There were dozens on this side of the caravan, and all of them exuded a stench that had Milo, and the other guards that he could see, gagging.
Milo fought to keep from retching as he held his breath and surged forward, thrusting with his knife while he swept his sword in a wide arc to keep the undead from closing in.
The knife sunk into the chest of a recently dead man, cutting through a yellow linen tunic and into a heart that wasn’t beating. The wound didn’t stop the creature, and it began clawing at Milo’s arm, its fingers breaking against the chainmail sleeve.
Yevele and Naile were fighting on the other side of the caravan, alongside the cheesemaker’s guards.
“Bandits?’’ she cried. “You feared bandits, Ludlow Jade? These men might have been bandits in life! They certainly aren’t bandits now!” She didn’t look for the merchant, expected him to be hiding in his box-like wagon, his son quivering behind him.
She saw one of the cheesemaker’s guards trembling, and watched his face bead with sweat. Then she saw only the undead, as she waded forward, sweeping her long sword in front of her and cutting through the chests and waists of skeletons and zombies, bringing her sword lower and slicing through thighs and breaking leg bones. She wasn’t killing them, she knew, some other force had already done that. But she was crippling several to the point they weren’t a significant threat. They lay on the ground, twitching and clawing, trying to crawl forward, as they could no longer walk. The cheesemaker’s guards came up behind her and starting bashing in the zombies’ skulls.
There was a sparkle in her eyes, and she worked to keep from smiling. Though the stench was nearly overwhelming, and the creatures’ appearance utterly repulsive, Yevele’s spirit soared. Too long she’d been idle, driving a team of horses while her sword arm grew sluggish and her muscles soft. She felt the warm, welcome rush of adrenaline and swore she could hear her heart pounding in her ears.
She brought her sword down hard on a zombie that stumbled toward her, lopping off its right arm, then spinning, ducking beneath the swipe of its remaining arm, jumping up and cutting off its head. The creature still shuffled forward aimlessly, arm flailing about and trying to connect with something living. Coming up behind it, she grabbed the pommel of her sword with both hands and swung hard, cutting the creature in half.
"Finish it,” she yelled to the cheesemaker’s guards. Then she was rushing forward again to meet the charge of a recent-dead, a once-warrior who’d been buried in boiled leather armor. The dead man wielded a mace, and was using part of a coffin lid for a shield. “Finish that one, then follow me! ”
Naile hurried toward the front of the caravan, where it looked like the concentration of undead were swarming the guards and horses. A wave of skeletons had clawed apart the horses pulling the first two wagons, effectively keeping the caravan from moving forward and escaping.
As he ran, Naile threw his vest and cloak on the ground, and then kicked off his boots. He concentrated on something deep inside him, and managed to tug his shirt oft before he felt the change begin. What would the partners at the law firm think if they saw him? Impressed and frightened, he suspected, and ordering some secretary to write him a suitable severance check. He could kiss his legal career in New York good-bye.
He’d considered changing that night in the Golden Tankard, turning himself into the beast that lurked in the shadowy part of his soul. He d overheard Milo call him “not human." He wasn’t wholly, he had to admit. He was a werecreature, a man who could, with focus and effort and pain, turn himself into a rampaging wild boar. His twitching fingers fumbled with his belt. A moment, and the belt and the hand axes were on the ground, too. A moment more, and he was clutching at his belly and dropping to his knees, trembling as fire raced through his veins.
His skin rippled and his muscles bunched. Coarse brown-black hair sprouted in clumps then spread like melting butter to cover every inch of him. The bones in his face popped and cracked and grew, his mouth becoming an elongated snout, tusks growing up near a wet, quivering snout. His ears grew long and pointed, twitched and pointed forward as he ran on all fours now.
Naile had become a massive boar, red eyes glowering, hooves tearing up the cold earth as he headed toward the closest skeleton. The wereboar hit the skeleton hard, shattering its calves and knocking it backward. He trampled the undead and rooted through the remains, tossing rib bones into the air and then knocking its head away with a shove from his snout.
The wereboar squealed in victory and moved to another skeleton, then splintering it, moved on to one more. Naile was making short work of the undead in his path, inflicting much more carnage than he could have with his hand axes. There was incredible strength and fury in this form, but he assumed it only when he felt there was no other recourse. Because with that strength came a detachment, it was as if Naile was relegated to a dark corner of the boar’s mind and had to watch what transpired. He had a reasonable amount of control of the creature he’d become, choosing his foes and attacking with a blind rage. But he wasn’t the same “Naile,” he didn’t think as rationally. He acted on emotion and impulse. Logic and reason became foreign concepts, and he had difficulty stopping a rampage once he started it.
He slammed into a zombie, then trampled it, hooked his tusks into its side and tossed it into the air before he trampled it again. The creature tried futilely to rise, before Naile charged it one last time and separated its head from its shoulders. He cast his gaze about,
seeing skeletons circling him, reaching out with needle-fingers. He couldn’t see the caravan for all the bony legs, but he could hear the merchants and guards, all of them shouting and screaming. He could hear the harsh whinnies of horses that he knew were being cut down by the dead men. And he could hear Yevele shouting orders to guards.
With a snort, he plowed forward and broke the leg bones of another skeleton.
Milo had edged toward the middle of the caravan, where a wave of zombies was converging on the wagon belonging to the priests of Glothorio the Coin Gatherer. Milo thought that the priests might need aid; he was confident Yevele and the cheesemaker’s guards could tackle the fewer numbers of undead that were at the rear of the caravan.
But the priests didn’t need help, and Milo was momentarily caught motionless, in awe. Two of the five Glothorio priests were on this side of the caravan. Their backs were against their wagon, and their hoods were thrown back and sleeves pushed up, revealing the myriad of tattoos. The eldest of the two closed his eyes and began humming. He rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, and his fingers danced up and down his arms. In response, the artful sigils on the priest’s left forearm began to writhe like snakes. A red swirl detached itself from the priest's skin and hovered, faintly glowing, above his dancing fingers. Then, like a cracking whip, it lashed out at an approaching zombie. The tip of the sigil flashed when it struck the undead’s chest.
The zombie howled, a sound Milo knew he would never forget, then it exploded in a burst of reeking ashes. More sigils were unwinding from the elder priest’s arms, some of these acted like the first, enchanted whips that turned the undead to ashes and dust. But two sigils were different, these rising above the priest’s head and turning into plate-sized discs that flew unerringly toward the recent-dead, and then decapitated them.
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