Divided We Fall

by Gareth Mottram

  ‘No,’ Rowenna hissed and burst out of the shield wall, her sword and seax out.

  ‘Fool!’ Osbert shouted and started after her, everyone else following.

  Will, unarmoured and with no heavy shield, almost caught her before she reached the group. The surviving forester woman had stepped in front of children and was desperately trying to fend off the man’s short sword slices with her seax and a log she had snatched up. Both her arms had deep cuts.

  Rowenna didn’t break stride as she ran behind the attacker and punched her razor-sharp sword in and out of his back. She stepped back to let him fall but, quick as an arrow, he spun around to swing his shorter blade at her head. She just managed to deflect it enough with her seax to dodge back and save her life.

  The man, stuck with arrows and clothes and flesh pierced through by steel, swung twice more in the two seconds it took Will to catch up and run him all the way through with his spear.

  There was no cold shock from the life leaving the man, no swirl of black flecks.

  He still stood, unmoving, skewered by Will’s spear.

  Then with incredible strength, he twisted, yanking the spear shaft out of Will’s hand, and hammering the buckler into his shoulder.

  Will flew backwards and crashed into a hut wall. He sank to the floor as the Shields closed with the attacker in a blur of flashing swords.

  Moments later, the man, finally fell to the floor in pieces. Will climbed back to his feet in stunned silence to stare at the body. Still no god had claimed it. There was a stink of rotting meat although there was little blood. His spear was still poking through the man’s torso.

  ‘What in the name of the gods is that?’ Bragg asked as they quickly formed up around Rowenna who had gathered the three children to her.

  ‘This is… necromancy.’ Wyatt said, almost too quiet to hear. He had made sure he was inside the shield circle as well. ‘That creature was one of the risen.’ He stared at the uncomprehending faces around him and his voice got louder, higher pitched. ‘It’s a living corpse… undead! The reaper tales are all true. We need to run; we can’t kill those already dead.’

  ‘I seem to have managed it,’ Osbert said, kicking away a bit of leg from underfoot.

  Several foresters had darted out of the trees, heading towards the Angalsax. ‘Go, children, quickly,’ Rowenna said, ushering them between the Shields towards the trees.

  None of the children moved.

  ‘Go!’ yelled Osbert, ‘we’ve risked our bloody lives for you useless…’

  ‘Quickly,’ Rowenna said, cutting him off. The foresters arrived, grabbed the little hands and tugged them away.

  ‘You’re bloody welcome,’ Osbert shouted after them. ‘Next time we’ll leave them to…’

  ‘More,’ yelled Brant, ‘brace.’

  The shields, even Osbert, reacted instantly. Shields locked tight together, and spears raised up, poised to jab.

  It happened in a blur.

  Ten of the risen hit them at once, all with swords, shields and neck collars. In seconds, all three lobbers were dead, their arrows and throwing axes still buried in their killers.

  Bridget pulled Will into a doorway as Gwen and Wade retreated into the darkness. The corpses ignored them and hammered into the shield wall.

  Osbert and his men held against the initial crash. Their training and strength ensured each spear punched past the small bucklers and ran through a body. But the risen simply twisted and yanked away the spears before snapping the shafts.

  The Angalsax had their swords out in an instant and hacked at the corpses whilst smashing them back with their steel-bossed shields. Even so, the dead kept attacking and the wall was quickly driven back against the kitchen.

  Ignored in the initial charge, Brant and Puck now closed in and hammered at the corpses from behind. The creatures still ignored them. They attacked the shield wall in a frenzy of blades, bucklers and even clawed fingers, desperate to break it, to get through.

  Even when Brant sliced off an arm with his axe, the risen kept their focus on the Shields.

  They want Rowenna. Will dashed over to the hacked-up corpse, pushed his spear free and charged at the melee.

  Just as he arrived, Puck pushed him to one side as another two risen streaked past to attack the shield wall.

  Will dived back into the attack, running one dead woman through and trying to pull her back off the Shields. She twisted but this time, Will was ready for it and held on to the spear. The shaft snapped and for a moment, the woman faced him, dead white eyes staring into his. Will leapt back but the woman turned and leapt at the Shields with Will’s half a spear still in her. Strips of her own flesh swung from her limbs like dried fish skin as she struggled to reach the Shields with her sword.

  Gods, how do you kill them?

  One of the risen leapt up and clung to Bada’s shield. The Huscarl desperately sliced his blade down into the corpse’s skull but the combined weight pulled his shield down. Instantly, another risen hacked down with a heavy blade and Bada crashed to the floor.

  Even as his body and soul swirled skyward, Eric and Osbert slammed their shields together over him, just in time to stop a corpse getting through.

  It was only a matter of time before they all died here.

  ‘Yes,’ Brant suddenly yelled. His great axe had cut through the upper leg bone of a corpse and it fell to the ground. The Skandian raised his axe and managed to chop below the steel collar and clean through its neck. As the head rolled away, the corpse twitched then fell still.

  Instantly, two more corpses sprinted from the shadows and attacked him, driving him away from Rowenna step by step. Gwen and Wade leapt out from the shadows and tried to help Brant, stabbing the dead with their spears from behind. Their eyes darted fearfully to the mass of corpses swarming around the shield wall just a few yards from them.

  Will pulled out Rowenna’s sword. Maybe if I go for the knees – they can’t stand with one leg.

  Will swung Rowenna’s sword down at the nearest knees. The legs were moving so fast he missed twice, chopping through flesh and hitting thigh bone. The third time he hit home.

  The corpse’s kneecap cracked. It stumbled back and hobbled around to face Will, it’s completely white eyes seeming to bore into him.

  Will heard the kneecap crack back into place just before the corpse’s sword jabbed out at him. He dodged to the left but was caught by a lightning-fast punch from its buckler.

  Will crashed backwards and sank to his knees, his vision blurring. The corpse hesitated a moment. A knife flashed out of the shadows and bounced off its skull, followed an instant later by another which punched through its cheek. It ignored the injuries and turned back to attack the shield wall again.

  We can’t kill them. Will’s head swam. He tried to stand but stumbled back down onto his face, dizzy and sick. Corpse-reek filled his nostrils – his head had landed on half an arm.

  Retching, he grabbed the limb and threw it away from him.

  Into the campfire.

  Where it burst into flame.

  Will’s pounding head struggled with the realisation.

  Suddenly, Bridget was beside him. ‘Come on – we’ll get the boats ready. There’s nothing we can do here.’

  She helped him to his feet then quickly pulled his arm around her thin shoulders when he wobbled. She started for the nearest shadows, heading towards the river.

  Will dug his heels in. ‘Drive them into the fire.’ His voice was weak, cracked.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Bridget hissed. ‘We need to go – you’ll just get killed trying to help them.’

  Will bent down, pulling Bridget with him. He picked up another piece of corpse, a foot. ‘Drive them into the fire,’ he tried again, louder this time and he threw the foot into the flames.

  One warrior heard him over the grunts and cries of battle – Bragg.

  The youth saw the foot flare into ashes.

  ‘Fire destroys them,’ Bragg shouted above the cacoph
ony, ‘push them back into the bonfire.’

  Great idea. Will thought, his head slowly clearing, wish I’d thought of it.

  ‘Do it,’ yelled Osbert a moment later, ‘on my count…One – two; one – two.’

  Shield wall warriors trained religiously every day – they knew how to push – and these were the best of the best.

  It was five of them against the seven unnaturally strong corpses that still had all their limbs. They pushed them back from the wall, step by step.

  Until two more corpses sped in from nowhere and attacked from each side.

  They were closer to the fire now though, out of the building’s shadow. Perhaps they could get closer with some help. Brant was still fighting off his two and Puck had leapt to intercept a third new arrival.

  Will sheathed his sword and ran to the roaring fire. With smoke filling his nostrils and the fire dazzling him, he grabbed two thick branches which were poking out and pulled them free.

  He ran right up behind the corpses and thrust the torches against two of the writhing, jumping backs and held them there.

  It took a moment, but the ragged clothes caught. Will quickly moved the torches against the hair.

  The two risen burst into flame.

  But two more span around to stare directly at him.

  Chapter 17

  Fight or Flight?

  ‘Run,’ Bridget screamed from somewhere behind him.

  Will was frozen - the corpse’s white eyes seemed to draw him in, call to him somehow.

  Then the two ragged dead charged forward, swords raised, bucklers forward but eerily silent.

  Will snapped out of his paralysis just in time to leap to one side and swing a flaming torch at one of them. It smashed into its back, but nothing caught fire.

  Fire needs time to catch. This won’t work.

  Will swung both torches in front of the dead faces then hurled one into the mass around the shields and the other between Brant and Puck. Maybe they would have more success.

  Then he ran for the bonfire, drawing his sword.

  Bridget was gone. She’d run away.

  The two risen sped after him, gaining with every step. Will skidded to a halt by the bonfire and swung back with his sword as he spun around. His only hope was to somehow drive them into the flames.

  He overbalanced and flung out his free arm to steady himself.

  A blazing torch was slapped into his palm as Bridget streaked past him and dodged behind the two risen.

  The corpses closed on him, swords swinging. He was in the wrong position, his back to the bonfire. Bridget closed in behind them, holding another torch to one of their backs.

  Suddenly, they both stopped, their heads straightening as if listening to something.

  As one, they turned and ran back to the shield wall, one smoking but not on fire.

  Will started to follow.

  ‘No,’ Bridget hissed, grabbing his shoulder, ‘you’ll just get in the way. Look, they’re winning, pushing the dead back here.’

  She was right. The Shields were marching in lockstep, driving the risen slowly towards the fire. Rowenna had somehow got the torch he’d thrown and was jabbing it between the Shields, trying to set the corpse’s hair alight and making them flinch away.

  Puck had the other torch. He danced behind Brant’s one remaining corpse, holding the flame to its mud-matted ponytail.

  ‘They need more torches,’ Will said, turning back to the fire.

  Then he froze. In the light, he saw a thin horizontal stream of smoke, no thicker than a pencil, wavering a few feet in front of him. Then he saw others – one smoke line seeming to stream into the head or back of each animated corpse.

  His eyes traced back along the smoke threads. They all converged, writhing across each other like a broken spider web in the wind and streaming into a deep darkness between two buildings.

  ‘Let’s get the boats in the water,’ Bridget said, tugging him hard.

  ‘Wait - can’t you see them?’ Will asked.

  ‘See what?’ Bridget snapped.

  Will ignored her and stepped forward to put his hand into one of the threads.

  A shock of heat ran through him and with it, a jolt of energy. The smoke quickly redirected itself and flowed around his hand.

  ‘There’s nothing there. You’re delirious,’ Bridget said, ‘now come on!’ She tugged him towards the river again.

  Will pulled away. The jolt had given him some strength back, almost cleared his head.

  But he had sensed something else as well as the heat when he broke into the smoke stream – a consciousness, a control.

  ‘The dead are being controlled from over there,’ he said shakily and pointed to the alley where the smoky threads disappeared. ‘Come on.’

  ‘What?’ Bridget said, staring into the dark, ‘How do you know.’

  Will didn’t answer and started to follow the smoke trails, but Bridget pushed him towards a building on the other side of the fire. ‘If you’re set on doing this, let’s not go head-on, alright?’

  ‘Okay,’ Will grunted. It made sense – he really didn’t want to be seen by whatever was controlling the corpses.

  As they darted into the shadow of the next building, another risen streaked past on the other side of the fire. Its smoke link trailed behind it – but this one was as thick as a man’s wrist. The corpse sprinted straight at the backs of its brethren, leapt onto their shoulders and jumped over the Angalsax shields straight at Rowenna.

  Eadwald, the second huscarl thrust upwards with his longsword, driving his blade up into the ribcage of the flying corpse. Wordlessly, it landed on him, grabbed his head and twisted.

  Will heard the snap of Eadwald’ s neck over all the human roars and metal clashes of battle.

  Rowenna hacked down through Eadwald’s spiralling disintegrating soul and split the corpse’s skull in two as it rose.

  It dropped but the shield wall was driven back from the fire, back against the wall with just four men between the eight rampaging corpses and Rowenna. Three other risen now attacked Brant and Puck, keeping them apart from the shield wall.

  Will gritted his teeth. He could do next to nothing to help Rowenna there but maybe, if whatever controlled them was human…

  ‘Come on,’ he hissed.

  They circled around the outer ring of huts and approached the alley from behind. The buildings were large charcoal storage sheds and a covered pit burned between them and the trees. Wisps of smoke caught in the moonlight and the almost sweet smell of slow burning charcoal filled his nose and made it hard to breathe. Will’s heart was racing. If it was another corpse in that alleyway, maybe an extra-powerful one, controlling the others, he would still have to try to kill it.

  And he had been particularly rubbish at corpse killing so far.

  He edged to the corner of the building and started to look around.

  ‘Kneel,’ whispered Bridget in his ear and she pushed his head down low. ‘People don’t look up or down much for spies.’

  His head just a foot off the floor, Will inched his eyes around the buildings.

  It took a moment even for his night-sight to adjust to the unnatural darkness filling the alleyway but then his vision cleared.

  A woman stood at the end of the alley with her back to them, concentrating on the battle. Thick smoke weaved around her, mixing with long, dark hair and writhing all around her body. Will could see through the smoke though, could see she was dressed all in flowing black robes. She stared intently along the smoke lines which streamed out from both her black-gloved hands to the corpses.

  So that was what a reaper looked like.

  A little to the side of her stood a huge, leather-armoured male risen, a thick smoke line flowing across the inches between them. He just stood there, long seax at the ready and head turning slowly from side to side, scanning the village, ceaselessly watching. The leavings of at least two foresters lay scattered halfway down the alley. They included a short bow and quiver.


  ‘Gods, is that another one of them?’ Bridget whispered.

  ‘Yes. And the woman is the one controlling them all,’ Will whispered back.

  ‘What woman?’

  ‘She’s there in the shadows, right next to the corpse.

  ‘I can’t see anyone... wait, some of that black mist is there.’

  ‘She’s hidden in that.’ Will’s mind was racing. He’d never be able to get down the alley before that corpse heard him, even if the reaper didn’t blast him with some dark magic first. ‘Have you got any throwing weapons?’

  ‘One knife,’ Bridget said, ‘I used the other two trying to save your life.’

  ‘I think if you could stick her with that, it would break her concentration and the corpses would… well maybe… stop working?’

  ‘Maybe?’

  ‘Yes, maybe,’ Will said. ‘I’m a bit new to killing reapers.’ He knew he sounded flippant, but it was fast becoming his way of handling the live or die situations he kept finding himself in.

  ‘Even if I hit this woman I can’t see, one throwing knife from fifteen yards away isn’t going to kill anyone quickly even if I...’ she trailed off.

  Will’s eyes returned to the bow and arrows. ‘I just want her distracted. Throw from the other side of this shed then run for the boats. I’ll make a dash for the forester’s bow over there and shoot her from a couple of yards away – that should do it.’

  ‘That’s a stupid plan,’ Bridget began, ‘what if that smoke stops weapons like—‘. Then a cry came from the centre of the camp – a human cry.

  ‘That’s all I’ve got,’ Will said. ‘We’re their only hope.’

  Bridget stared up at him for a moment then nodded and they pulled back into the shadows. ‘How am I supposed to knife someone I can’t see?’

  ‘Just aim for the darkest part of the smoke,’ Will whispered, ‘– you’ll hit some bit of her.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘Oh, and she might have some armour on under her robes – they looked a bit bulky,’ Will added as Bridget started to move to the other edge of the wall.