The dead marched. Within the faceless ranks of rotting corpses he saw more recent fatalities bearing their wounds nakedly. In his mind he carved out the passage of the dead, using the valley and his memory of the lodestone to orientate his fear. Sickly, he realised that Grimminhagen lay directly in the path of their march.
There was a grotesque order to the force. There was a hierarchy that mimicked the structure of a real army, with the rotting zombies and flesh-stripped skeletons forming the infantry that made up the bulk of the lines, marshalled by more fearsome foes: ghouls, ghosts and wights clinging to the flanks, and black riders on skeletal mounts that snorted smoke and flame that in turn fed the miasma that clung to the dead army. In the centre of the abomination he saw a huge chariot fashioned from bone, and a withered vampire spurring on the corpses that dragged it, flaying strips of skin from their backs with his whip.
Metzger lurched away from the tree, dread, fear, and horror ripping his mind asunder as he scrambled down the hill, tripping and sliding, and digging his heels in to stop himself from pitching forward and falling even as he started to run. His first instinct was to draw his sword and throw himself into the river of shambling dead swinging, but that instinct did not last long. He had to get back to Grimminhagen in time to warn his people.
A hand came down hard on his shoulder and pulled him up short. He wheeled around, blade raised to gut whatever ghoul thought to feed on him, and barely managed to pull the blow when he saw that it was Kaspar Bohme.
“We must away from this place,” Kaspar said, his face bled of all colour. “Die here and we damn everyone.” It was a simple truth.
Metzger nodded, grimly determined. All thoughts of age and retirement banished, the knight sheathed his blade. There would be time aplenty for swords and violence, but not now and not here.
“How many towns and villages have fallen along the way to feed that vile force? How many families are rotting in this river of filth because no one was strong enough to stop them? How many is too many? One hundred? Fifty? One, that’s how many: one.” Bohme had no answer for that.
The moon burned within the dead, augmenting the eerie torchlight of the living that marched side by side with them. The dead were not, as he had first suspected, whole. Decay was rife, pallid skins and sallow complexions turned an ethereal grey. The rot of the grave bared white bones where the flesh had failed. More of the dead men were skeletal, cages of ribs torn open on putrid giblets, limbs stripped of muscle and tendon reduced to lichen-thick bones.
Carrion eaters flew above them, hundreds of black-winged birds that swept low time and again to feed on the soft tissues of the dead as they shambled and lurched and staggered, dancing to the pull of the chains that had dragged them back to this wretched unlife so mercilessly. Ravens clawed at the last remaining strips of muscle, beaks tugging at the wormed fat of gaping cheeks and the soft humours of leaking eyes.
It was a procession of damnation.
He rubbed at his stubbled jaw, the urge to throw himself at them all still strong. He imagined hacking and slashing at the mortal chains that bound them, but no matter how many he freed of their damnation, it could never be enough.
All he could do was prepare his town for the worst.
Had Orlof been somewhere in there marching on with blindly staring eyes? That was what the dead did, after all. They swelled their ranks with the corpses of the men they killed, growing stronger and stronger by the mile.
Metzger turned his back on the dead. Bohme was looking at him strangely. Metzger had seen enough blood shed in hate to know that the things seen in the eyes of others were reflections of the things that burned in your own eyes. They were not secret glimpses of the other man, they were the hidden truths of the self. There had been fear in Bohme’s eyes, Metzger’s fear.
The cries of the ravens rose, mad caws that spiralled, taking on an almost human quality. It took him a moment to realise what he was hearing within them: the wretched sobs of a baby.
“Did you hear that?” he asked, but Kaspar was already moving, swiftly back up into the next layer of undergrowth where the brambles and thorns tangled around the tree trunks. The cries became more and more obvious and heartbreaking as they retreated back up the hillside, until they found the baby, wrapped in a bundle of swaddling clothes, nestled down beside a hollowed out tree stump, crying and crying and crying for the mother that had abandoned it. Metzger gathered the crying child into his arms and hushed it, offering his thick finger to the babe to suckle on in the hopes of quieting it.
“Who left you here, little man?”
Had the babe’s mother fled her doomed village hoping to deliver her child from the procession of the dead? Was she lying somewhere near or had she become a part of the shuffling zombie army? Or was the babe some unwanted bastard brought out to die? It didn’t matter. Reinhardt Metzger cradled the helpless child to his chest.
Down the slope he saw the first of the pallid corpses pushing through the trees, drawn by the baby’s cries.
CHAPTER FIVE
On Fields of Fire
In the Shadows of the Drakwald Forest, Middenland
The Autumn of Sweet Deceits, 2532
The zombie, he could not think of the wreck of humanity as anything else, came lurching at Kaspar Bohme, the splintered bone of broken-down fingers clawing at his face. He reeled away from the wild, raking blows blocking them easily on his sword. There was no grace or dexterity to its attack, it simply came up the hill swinging, a weird, baleful moan punctuating each missed strike. Though clumsy, it was relentless. He ducked a blow, rocking back on his heels, only for a second to come slashing across where his throat had been a split second before, and even as he compensated for his lost balance, a third and a fourth swing threatened to bowl him over.
“Run!” he yelled at Metzger, throwing himself to his left in an effort to put his body between the dead thing and the child.
The zombie moaned again, lurching forward with its arms outstretched, grasping. There were no words in the sound, only the undertow of grief that it had been shrived of its humanity. It set a chill deep in his bones to hear such an empty sound come from the undead fiend’s mouth.
It was alone, calling out to more of its kind. Would silencing it likewise doom them? Bohme wondered, parrying another savage slash. Were the undead like wasps? Would its second death act as a lure for the others as they were drawn to the stink of its ruin?
“Run!” he yelled at Metzger, putting himself between the zombie and the child.
The big man did not need telling twice. He stumbled away up the hill, clutching the bundle of clothes to his chest.
Kaspar Bohme spun on his heel, delivering a scything kick across the thing’s midriff. It was like kicking a sack of sawdust. The bones and guts powered inwards, pulverised. The dead man stumbled forward, strings of gore clinging to his torn lips. Bohme hammered a heavy left fist into the thing’s face, again and then again, each impact ripping the skin to open a second yellow-toothed leer high up on the side of its face. He stepped in close, avoiding the dead man’s ruined fingers, and straight-armed it in the throat. The muscle and bone collapsed beneath the impact of the blow. It would have killed a normal man, after a moment’s agony. The thing did not so much as flinch from the crushing blow, with no need of air. It came on again, its elegiac moan calling out to its perverted kin.
Kaspar drove his blade into the zombie’s leg, just below the knee with enough force to cleave the cap-bone. The dead man lurched sideways, his leg hideously disjointed, and fell, but even on the ground it was not done. It clutched at Kaspar’s ankle, sinking its fingers deep enough to grate against the bone. His fist clenched around the hilt of his sword, and rammed it into the dead man’s chest, up between the third and fourth ribs. The blade cut through the dead man’s heart. Kaspar jerked it savagely, and jammed the blade down again, working the thing’s ribcage open with a crack of bones. A third blow opened it up fully, tearing through the striated muscle, and even as it grasp
ed for his throat, he leaned down to reach in with his bare hands and tear out its heart.
Whatever ungodly force had animated the corpse, rending its heart was enough to drive it out. The thing lay motionless in the mud of the forest floor. Kaspar looked sickly at the thick black blood that had already begun to coagulate around his clenched fist. The tainted blood burned his skin. He tossed the withered organ aside, sick with revulsion, and scrubbed his hands on the mud and leaves of the forest floor on either side of the corpse.
All around him he heard the rising moans of the shuffling dead and knew that he needed to move, to get as far away from this place as possible.
The skirts of the forest were paradoxically alive with the sighs and moans of the dead.
Fear steeled his resolve. Kaspar looked up the hill, where Metzger had run with the child, and then back down, fearfully, at the line of trees that had opened to reveal the zombie moments before. He leant against the bole of the nearest tree. It was a lyme tree, he realised, a maniacal laugh bubbling up in his mind as his fingernails dug into the bark, a corpse tree, said to grow out of the bodies of the fallen where they were buried on the field of battle. He was alone, for now.
He couldn’t stay here any longer than he already had. He knew that. The stench of old death was ripe in the air where he had opened the thing up. He looked up and through the filter of branches he saw, already, the carrion birds circling in and out of sight. In minutes this quiet glade would be swarming with flesh eaters.
The black blood ate into the his sword’s blade. He crouched, and cleaned it on the ground before sliding it back into its sheath.
Then he heard the rustle and snap of branches being pushed back and the crack of deadfall being crushed underfoot.
They were coming.
He rose, pushing away from the tree, and ran for his life.
Kaspar ran blindly, branches snagging at his body and face as he lunged through spaces barely wide enough to squeeze through. Brambles and thorns tore at his legs. Where the undergrowth grew too thick, he cut it away, hacking and slashing at it with his blade.
He welcomed the darkness as it fell, knowing that it offered another layer of obscurity to his wild flight even if it made it more treacherous.
At times he thought he heard Metzger up ahead, crashing through the choking confines of the forest, but apart from the first occasion, when he caught a glimpse of the startled boar his own reckless charge had set running, it might just as easily have been heavy-footed ghosts, always just out of sight as he chased to catch up with them.
That was the curse of the trees.
The consistency of the ground changed, going from firm, hard-packed mud to a mulch, his feet sinking in up to the ankles and deeper as he struggled to maintain the momentum of his flight. The trees showed no signs of thinning out, though many of their lower branches were denuded by the season. Their skeletal limbs conjured up wraiths of shadow as the darkness descended. Again there were no sounds of the forest. It was as though he were reliving an intimately familiar nightmare. He ran with no conscious thought to direction, but only to distance and putting enough of it between him and the swath of mindless dead cutting across the lowlands.
Kaspar stumbled to a halt, trying to get his bearings, but the lack of landmarks even this near to the fringe of the Drakwald left him guessing. Thick spiders’ webs clung to some of the high branches, joining the upper canopy of trees together with spindles of white thread. He cupped his hands to his mouth and gave two short hoots, the mating call of one of the owls indigenous to the forest. He and Metzger had been using the same call sign for years. Hearing an owl out in the trees at night was hardly uncommon and during the day Kaspar favoured the howl of a silver-furred wolf.
His call went unanswered.
He risked a second call, and a few minutes later a third, but with no more luck.
He stayed quiet for a moment, listening to the emptiness within the canopy of tall trees. The silence was eerie. Forests were living places, but all around him the obvious signs of life were missing; even the whispering of the breeze and the sly voice of the leaves had fallen quiet. He licked his lips nervously. He turned to look back the way he had come, a small twig breaking off against his cheek. The sharp crack of the wood was loud in the dead stillness. He brushed it aside, turning again. Deadfall crunched beneath his boots. Something wasn’t right and he knew enough to trust his instincts. They were all that had kept him alive these long years and they were crying out to him now but he didn’t know how to interpret their warning.
The wind stirred, masking a second sound. Kaspar turned through a full circle, not sure what he was looking for, or what the sound he thought he heard meant.
There it was again: a long slow creaking, of wood straining.
Then the forest floor began to rise up beneath his feet. The deadfall stirred, the soil and the broken branches coming together, leaves and mud and grass and worms giving flesh to a fell beast clawing its way into existence. The head came first, broaching the earth in a vile parody of birth, forcing its way out of the ground. There were bones as well as all the mud and rot of the forest, the bones of a dead bird, its tiny skull like a tattoo on the side of the face of the beast. And it was a face, with fully developed features; an uprooted sapling formed its nose, its roots creating the illusion of a muddy leer as more and more of the fell construct clawed its way free of the earth at Kaspar’s feet.
Then came the fingers, gnarled tree roots pushing up out of the dirt, the leaves clinging to them as the rest of the hands emerged. Moss and lichen and wood pulp clung to the beast’s arms as it heaved itself up. The ribcage of a large animal, a horse or cow, formed part of its spine, along with the pelvis of a smaller animal. The grasses were coated with a layer of slimelike afterbirth, and still it grew, rising taller and taller to dwarf him.
Kaspar stood, trapped by the impossibility of what he was seeing. Even as his mind screamed: run! his legs refused to obey.
He didn’t even reach for his sword as the creature of mud and leaves and long dead bones lurched forward, shambling towards him with its claws of rotten wood reaching out for him. It stood almost twice his height, arms dragging the floor, dirt and leaves falling off it as it lumbered forward. Its macabre flesh shifted and writhed, the dirt sloughing from the wood, the brittle bones sliding from shoulder to hip and up through the thing’s chest only to work their way back to its broad shoulders again. Not all the things trapped within its ever-shifting shape were dead. Kaspar saw a bird, its wings flapping weakly as it struggled to be free of the cage of roots that snared it. He saw bloated worms and the kicking legs of a vole as the rodent was swallowed by the body of the beast. Vines curled around tree trunks to fashion mighty legs, and more bones added definition to them, shattered vertebrae and fractured femurs. Alive, it roared, its voice gravelly with the detritus of the forest floor. It was a forlorn sound, the voice of a lost soul. Its huge arms raked the canopy of leaves, shedding soil and worms as they dragged through them.
Kaspar staggered back, away from the impossible beast, but even as he did it seemed to notice him properly for the first time. The thing that formed its face had settled around stomach height. It sifted through the mulch until it came level with Kaspar’s own face and roared again, an almost human anguish in its strange voice as the trailing roots ululated. As Kaspar reached for the blade at his side the construct’s huge hand snatched out and grabbed him, the bones and wood and dirt clenching around Kaspar’s waist as he kicked and struggled. The sword fell from his hand and tumbled the fifteen feet down to the ground as the beast scooped him up and shook him as though he were no more than a corn doll.
Part of the ribcage splintered, piercing him like six small daggers along his right side, through the boiled leather of the jerkin beneath his shirt and into the soft skin of his side, drawing blood and screams.
The stench was overpowering, foetid, like stagnant water soaking a foul bog. Rancid sludge dripped from its muddy flesh, down his ne
ck and back, leaking through his clothing. He gagged, trying to turn his face away from it. Kaspar kicked and thrashed in its constricting grasp, but still the verdant hand clenched into a fist, squeezing the life out of him.
He grabbed desperately at the dragging branches, trying to claw himself free of the fist, and then he was falling head over feet, crashing through the low branches as the beast hurled him away. He slammed into the trunk of a lightning-struck tree where it had been split into a V. A long spar of rotten wood pierced his armour, burying itself deep in his shoulder-blade. The pain was excruciating, an all-consuming fire rising up from the blackened wood to spread through his body. Kaspar’s screams were wretched as he grasped the spar and drew it out of his flesh. The rotten wood flaked and powdered, leaving splinters beneath his skin.
Through his screams he heard the unmistakable sound of laughter.
He lifted his head to see a sallow-skinned man, rank with the corruption of the charnel house step into the clearing, though to call it a man was a lie. It was dressed like a beggar, and wore the last vestiges of a mortal face like a death mask, the features riddled with decomposition. The cartilage of its nose was gone, leaving a ragged hole in the centre of its face that wheezed as the thing snorted; it did not breathe. Waves of dread radiated from the wreck of humanity. It clutched a twisted doll of twigs fashioned in the malformed shape of the fell beast that had risen up out of the boggy floor of the forest. The vampiric acolyte, for that was what it had to be, manipulated the effigy, causing the construct to mirror the twig-doll’s disjointed dance.
“The cost of sight is death,” the creature said, his voice the sigh of lament.
“I saw… nothing,” Kaspar Bohme said, rising to his knees. Blood streaked his shirt. His vision swam in an agony of black.
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