Shepherd’s Awakening (Books 1-3)

by Pablo Andrés Wunderlich Padilla

  “It was the simplest, most amusing thing to convince the rich to squander, to consume their lives without glory. They died so easily! It’s impressive how easy you are to manipulate, you oafs, you loathsome Mandrakes.

  “Those who wouldn’t allow themselves to be seduced I had to torture. It was a pleasure to shed their blood for the divine sacrifice. The master returned, thanks to your vital liquids! Lives, thousands of them, in exchange for a much more important life! This is a work of great beauty!”

  The Dark Shepherd laughed like a veritable maniac. “I don’t know how you got here, but I’m glad, this makes my way so much easier. I’ll finish you off quickly; there’ll be no one to protect you. Look at you: You’re a skinny child, innocent as well as ignorant. You’re useless.

  “I’m the Dark Shepherd who created the most important necromantic ritual of all times. The master will save my soul, there’s no doubt about that. Come here, you little rat… I have your fate on the blade of this dagger. Die! Long live the Black Arts! Let the Mandrake Empire succumb!”

  Feliel hurled himself into the attack with a war cry and the dagger aimed at Manchego’s neck. He was faster than he had imagined, but not as fast as the boy.

  Teitú exploded, and with a nimble movement Manchego dodged the knife and then hurled himself at Feliel. It all happened as quickly as a bolt of lightning crossing the sky. Manchego wielded his broken sword, which… pierced Feliel’s chest. The Dark Shepherd’s face had turned pale, and out of the corner of his mouth ran a trickle of blood.

  The boy took a deep breath. He felt that all his energy had evaporated. He had killed a person, but he did not feel bad. It was the end of Feliel’s terror. The Mayor was no longer a threat, and all this was thanks to the forces of good which had prepared him for this confrontation. But if he had accomplished his mission, why did he feel this business was not yet over? He looked around. He was no longer beneath a dome, but in one of the many rooms of the Town Hall. Somehow seeing Feliel’s inert cadaver made him feel empty, when it should have made him feel accomplished for having stopped the author of this menace.

  “Feliel’s government of terror has finally fallen. We’ve won,” the boy said to himself, and he got up, surprised by the silence and the fact that he had appeared somewhere else without noticing. The need to flee the Town Hall brought him out of his self-absorption. He went to a window and looked up at the sky, where the spiral cloud was still spinning. Should it not have stopped with Feliel’s death?

  He ran to the exit, hoping to find the explanation for this dark phenomenon. Outside there was only silence. His heart sank, Teitú shone a bright red. Something terrible was on its way.

  Chapter XXIX – The Battle of the Besieged

  Night fell over the village; a gust of wind shook the houses within the fort violently and raised a cloud of dust so dense that it got into eyes and throats. There was coughing everywhere, soon drowned by the sound of thousands of boots approaching along the cobbled streets.

  The rhythmic tread of the soldiers was a true funeral march, a chilling boom, boom, boom that reached as far as the last nook and cranny of the grave which the village had now become.

  Positioned on the roofs of the houses, those in charge of defending each cardinal point of the fort—Lula, Savarb, Otto, and Lombardo—watched the scene, illuminated at times by the moon which peered between the long arms of the spiraling cloud.

  They were spectators in the anteroom of the final game in this swift, lethal war in which all of them would die. With thousands upon thousands of soldiers ready to unleash their hatred on the survivors, there was no salvation. A howl, as of someone breathing his last breath, sounded amid the night.

  “Archers!” cried Savarb. Every man who carried a bow nocked an arrow, drew the string, and aimed at the dark void, keen for his arrow to hit the desired target. All prayed to the God of Light, some to the Goddess of Night, that after they died they might be admitted as soon as possible to the Deep Azure of the Heavens.

  An aged man in that line was unable to stop his hands, his feet, his soul from trembling. A river of urine ran down his leg. He thought about his wife, about his daughter, about his sons, his cousins and aunts and uncles, all murdered. He wanted revenge. His fingers weakened and… he released the arrow too soon. The arrow flew in silence. There came a distant moan and the sound of a body falling in the dark. The smile on the archer’s face lasted no more than two seconds, the time it took the reply to reach him. A spear skewered him to the roof of the house.

  “Release!” ordered Savarb.

  A swarm of arrows flew to meet the enemy which they could not see in the darkness. Thousands of spears returned the attack, driven on by the war-cries of those soldiers: heartless, remorseless, unafraid of any loss.

  They attacked the four fronts at the same time, and the crash made the foundations of the houses shake. Lulita, at her post, felt she was losing her balance. The walls buckled and the roof collapsed. She fell onto a pile of rubble and bodies but forced herself to recover from the horror. The soldiers were shoving each other to reach the collapsed roof. The first ones died with arrows in their chests, but more and more of the enemy kept coming, and soon they had invaded the area completely.

  Savarb shouted orders until he was hoarse, but it was useless; the strategy had been well-thought-out, and the fort was already in the hands of the soldiers. Lulita defended herself with her axe and felled anyone who came near her, but the tide of men seemed endless. Lombardo was like a rabid dog, his face contorted, his mouth open, his eyes filled with fury. With his two-handed sword he slashed soldiers in half, so that innards spilled out in pools on the cobbles. He moved with an ease even he himself had not known he was capable of. With each blow he was avenging his beloved ranch burning in flames. But there were too many of them; not even so much accumulated rage could withstand an attack on that scale.

  Tomasa, the big woman of the Wild Lands, attacked with the pick, breaking skulls, making mincemeat of the soldiers. Wherever she looked, there was nothing but armed shadows and more armed shadows that kept coming. How long could she resist? The end was near, but Savarb had a farewell surprise ready.

  “Fire!” the Captain shouted.

  Two young men, Maslon and Ermand, who had distributed fifty barrels of fermented lard throughout the fort, were waiting for the order their captain had arranged with them. At the shout of fire they looked at one another, nodded, and began to light the wicks of the explosive trap.

  The flames began to sputter. Fed by the wood, they climbed swiftly toward the sky. The barrier of fire divided the enemy army, as well as swallowing a number of the militia. There followed a brutal explosion which spewed rubble and bodies all over and destroyed everything for a hundred strides around: things, animals or people, enemies or villagers.

  Savarb was deafened. He could barely move with that mountain of bodies on top of him. He saw two armless soldiers, still alive, who carried on relentlessly with their task of wiping out the people of the village. Everything ended for them when they met with Lulita and her deadly axe. Two little girls were running in terror. Savarb gathered his strength together and, with a heave, freed himself from the bodies. He was covered in blood from head to foot. He felt himself; everything was in order. Someone grabbed him by the arm and made him turn around.

  It was Lombardo, who handed him a sharp sword. “If we want to survive, Captain, we’ve got to get away at once! The soldiers are still advancing!”

  It was true. Perhaps they had managed to reduce the number of soldiers, but the swine would not stop; many dragged themselves on, mutilated and moving their jaws, aiming to bite in the right place and so go on killing. Savarb tried to get a sense of the scope of the battle. A kind of monument of fire arose, and amid the flames it seemed to him that he recognized a demon. This must be the one casting spells so as to control the fire and with it create a monster at his command.

  ***

  Those few who came out of the fort alive had been on th
e run for hours. The soldiers were after them, and on occasion they caught those lagging behind. The beast of fire advanced at the same time, threatening the small group. Lombardo wielded his sword but did not manage to inflict any damage. There was an explosion.

  The house where the group had taken refuge began to burn and the claws of the beast of fire appeared through the cracks in the walls. Inside were Phelias, one of the nurses of the Resistance; Luchy, who was clinging to Lulita, and another girl, Nissa, whom she had become friends with; also Lombardo and Tomasa, who were ready to respond to the attack.

  The claws of the beast tore at the wall and trapped Phelias. Luchy closed her eyes so as not to see, but she still had to listen to the cries of pain and the flames crackling, breathe the nauseating smell of burnt flesh.

  The beast screeched, gave off smoke and sparks. It moved aside and let the soldiers in to finish the attack. Lombardo split the first one in two with a single stroke. He continued with the flow of men who started pouring in, helped by Tomasa and her well-aimed pick. Nissa too entered the fray with a spear she had found on the ground, but the enemies dodged her easily. She lost her balance, and two soldiers seized their chance to drive her to the wall and thrust the spear into her abdomen. The girl gasped and pawed at the bloody mast.

  More soldiers made their way in, and the beast of fire scratched the wooden walls. The situation was critical; they would not withstand this assault. But then something happened, a miracle which none of those watching would ever forget. A red light, intense and angelic, revealed itself in the midst of the uproar. All felt a divine energy. Hope soon began to fade when the light rushed out of the house, toward the village. In its place there entered a being that appeared bewitched.

  He was missing an arm but was wielding his sword with an enviable dexterity. Lulita recognized him: It was Mowriz. Despite the strangeness, the woman was impressed by the courage and energy the lad showed in his defense of the last survivors.

  The animal of fire ceased its roaring, and the soldiers stopped. Their gazes were vacant. Suddenly those lackeys started killing each other. The hatred of the South, of the land of evil called Némaldon, was unleashed. The spell had taken a course which nobody had predicted and which confounded everybody even more. What was the purpose of all this horror? Lulita suspected they would soon find out the answer.

  There was a great blast of sound. Startled, Luchy saw a crack running fast along the ground toward the center of the village. In the distance a green light was visible. The soldiers were dead; the survivors emerged from the house. They stared at the spiral cloud which went on spinning around its axis, now with a green light in its core. They heard footsteps.

  Lulita thought it was Luchy but stumbled on a soldier who a few seconds ago had been lying dead on the ground. She stopped him with an axe-blow to the jaw. The man kept walking, with half his face hanging to one side. He was staggering, dragging his feet. He was not the only one; this living dead was soon joined by others, and yet others.

  Luchy was crying her eyes out, horrified by what she was witnessing. Nissa had woken and was trying unsuccessfully to walk, impaled as she was to the wall.

  “Blessed be the Gods…” muttered Lombardo. All the dead, soldiers and villagers alike, were walking in the same direction: the center of the village.

  “What the hell’s going on? Where are all the dead going?” Lulita asked.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Lombardo replied.

  “I don’t like the look of this,” said Savarb.

  They were not the only survivors. Out of other houses came young and old alike. Lulita thanked the Gods that as yet not all was lost, but she could not get rid of the image of the dead walking toward the center of the village. She was overcome by an attack of anxiety. Her heart galloped; a pang ran through her chest. She noticed that Luchy was feeling the same pain. Both of them turned to look, amazed at having felt the same thing. It was impossible…

  “Manchego…” they murmured in unison.

  “Sun, little sun,” chanted Mowriz.

  Lulita and Luchy paled. The old woman ran out, with Luchy close behind her. Guided by instinct, Lombardo and Savarb followed them.

  Chapter XXX – The Resurrection of the Dead

  Teitú! What’s happening?

  I don’t know… but it looks as if…

  The whole structure of the Town Hall was swaying; the walls were like sheets of paper at the mercy of the earthquake. First the stones of the roof fell. The avalanche of rock crashed onto the floor, raising dust. Manchego leapt back with a start, just in time to save himself from being buried under the building, which was beginning to crumble like a sandcastle. The earth trembled. Everything ended with an implosion that left no trace of the ancient Town Hall’s majesty.

  A crack began to run along the ground. It parted the earth in two, continued beneath the ruins of the Town Hall and in a few seconds swallowed up the building. There followed a great cloud of suffocating dust. Manchego covered his eyes, but he had time to glimpse something he was not expecting: a hellish green light, the same one he and his grandfather had seen in the tunnels of the shadow. Beside him, Teitú became aware of the danger and gave out a furious red flash which bathed everything around them.

  The shadow revealed itself in its pure state. A green light flared from the fault and rose until it touched the eye of the spiral which hovered above the village. Red beams of light like veins crisscrossed the accursed cloud, which never stopped swirling, slowly but steadily.

  Manchego shivered. He felt a terrible foreboding creeping up his spine and finally embedding itself in his terrified heart.

  Footsteps.

  The hairs at the back of his neck stood up like thorns. He turned round with horrible slowness, with his muscles paralyzed by fear. He sharpened his senses. The footsteps were multiple; they seemed to be dragging, lethargic. They were coming toward him.

  They sounded of dried, stiff flesh, of broken bones, of clashing metal. Terrified, he watched the horror unfolding in front of his eyes. The corpses which had previously been lying in piles had come to life and were now moving, clumsily, like puppets controlled by a drunken puppeteer, and they were all heading toward the same place: the Town Hall, now buried in an abyss. There were soldiers, villagers, men and women, children and old people. The eyes of the dead were unfocused.

  Horrified, the boy took a few steps back, tripped and fell. He had stumbled against the arm of a corpse, which was awakening at that very moment. The dead man got to his feet with great difficulty. A column of smoke and fire rose from the village and lit up the horizon.

  Manchego could dimly see that from it tens of thousands of corpses were moving towards the crack into which the Town Hall had sunk, in a sepulchral silence, broken only by the dragging footsteps of the dead. A cold wind struck his face and he reacted.

  He got to his feet and noticed that the monsters did not flinch at his presence. He had an idea: join them and find out where the puppets were headed. When he reached the edge of the crack, he hid behind a lump of rubble and peered out far enough not to miss any detail of what was happening. In the bottom, where the green light was flowing from, was a substance he could not identify, like thousands of snakes coiling over one another.

  The depths gave out a fetid vapor. He moved away a little and heard the sound of the dead approaching. One after another tumbled into the green well. The liquid began to bubble, perhaps satisfied at receiving that human torrent which powerful acids consumed in a matter of seconds.

  Manchego! What’s going on! Why are they throwing themselves into the abyss, which is obviously infernal? Teitú cried in the boy’s mind.

  I don’t know, he replied the same way. It’s probably part of the spell Feliel was conjuring when we burst in on him.

  The wind changed direction, and amid the river of corpses a cohort of beings walked with an enviable grace, like swans. Manchego recognized the demons, those with faces that were both fair and evil; they brough
t to his mind the image of the dethis he had seen in the mirror.

  They carried a shining black coffin; the wood did not look new but was in perfect condition and was densely covered with paintings of beings with long teeth devouring people and animals.

  The beings approached the crack. On a rock, as if it were a dais, they placed the coffin with perfectly synchronized timing. After this they plunged into the crack, which consumed them. Something rose from the green vapor, something that floated naturally. It was being sucked into the core of the cloud.

  Manchego took a close look. Maybe it was a ghost… yes, it had the face of a person. This ghost was followed by two, three, ten, hundreds of souls which went on splitting off from the green abyss to feed the cloud, whose red veins began to pump.

  It gave the impression that the more souls it absorbed, the more energy it accumulated. The core sent a beam of light to the accursed abyss. There came a deep silence, but it did not last for long. A dreadful clamor made Manchego crouch down and cover his ears, fearing he had gone deaf. When he was calmer he saw a figure come out of the coffin, floating gracefully.

  The spell had resurrected a demon of the shadows. But for that beast to be able to wake up, thousands of innocents had been murdered, and afterwards their rest had been violated by the manipulation of their souls. Manchego emitted a light from within him, and Teitú howled as never before. Those energies joined and Manchego established an intimate contact with his soul, which until now had lain slumbering, and at once he understood what he had to do.

  The enlightened shepherd seized the nearest sword. Inspired to fury by an extraordinary force, he ran like a streak of gold light, white and warlike, like an angel flying almost at ground level. The demon was coming down with open arms, finishing feeding itself on the energy of those sacrificed souls.