The Marching Dead

by Lee Battersby

  “Afraid of driving the boat against the rocks and smashing us into jelly.”

  “Ah. Best be getting on then, hadn’t you?”

  Marius wiggled his eyebrows and went forward to the wheel. Gerd hauled up the anchor, and they were on their way.

  Night caught up with them three miles down the coast. It came earlier here than they had hoped, the sun cut off prematurely by the cliffs, their massive shadow – almost an entity in itself – pushing out from the shore to engulf them in gloom a full hour earlier than expected. Even their dead vision, allowing them a fuzzy, detail-poor glimpse of the world in the pitch-black of midnight, struggled with the crisscross of curling water, distant shore, and darkening sky. Marius furled the sails early, leaving only the little triangular headsail up to help them jink across the swell towards a tiny curve that looked as if it might be a sheltered cove with some sort of small beach upon which they could ground.

  “Keep your eyes on it,” he called to Gerd, holding his arm out like a signpost until Gerd joined him at the wheel and turned his head in the right direction. “Don’t let it disappear. We should be all right as long as the approach is clear and you keep guiding me.”

  “And if it’s not?”

  “Then hope it’s a sandbar or something we can walk into shore from.”

  “You just flood me with confidence, you do.”

  “Let’s not say ‘flood’ for the moment, shall we?” He made sure Gerd’s attention was pinned to the right spot, and bent back to the helm. The boat swung around, and they began the long, slow approach to shore.

  With the fall in light came a fall in mood. The two companions sat silent, concentrating on their tasks and their internal thoughts, allowing the rhythm of the waves to lull them into dull contemplation. The shore slowly bobbed closer, only the slap of water against the hull breaking the empty silence. Then, off to port, something wooden slid through something metal with a clunk, drawing each man out of his mental space.

  “Did you do that?” they said simultaneously, then: “Don’t look at me.”

  Gerd turned to stare at Marius.

  “Shit!”

  “What?”

  “The cove! I’ve lost it.”

  “I told you not to turn around.”

  “I’m sorry. I just–”

  “Ssh.”

  “What?”

  “Shut up.”

  The sound came again.

  “There.” Marius stared into the gloom off port.

  “What–”

  “Shush.”

  Gerd shushed. More sounds manifested in the dark: the creak of wood, the splash of water against moving objects, the occasional muffled slap as a paddle missed its mark and skated across the top of a wave instead of biting into it. Marius swivelled from side to side at each sound, gauging distance, straining to discern movement through the darkness. Gerd gave up trying to relocate the curve of shoreline and turned to his mentor, questions deep in his eyes.

  “Five,” Marius mouthed, pointing to various spots in the dark to either side of them. “At least.”

  “Who?” Gerd’s voice was loud inside his head, and he winced.

  “I don’t know. Soldiers, maybe?”

  Troops had attempted to destroy the nunnery before, back when men fought by rules of chivalry and misogyny. They had learned the hard way that warfare-trained women with no thick-headed assumptions about the inequality of the sexes will gouge your heart out of your chest before you’ve finished reading the list of your lord’s demands out to them in a clear, patronising tone of voice. Easier just to let them be. Easier to control the women you already have, and persuade them that living in the cliffs represents a form of punishment. It had been a good couple of centuries since anybody was stupid enough to try an armed takeover. Armies fight with honour, and respect for the rules of warfare. Nuns fight dirty.

  “What do we do?”

  Good question. Marius considered the unseen boats to either side, the feel of the hull bumping gently across the rolling swell. The boats were tightly packed, pointed towards the same invisible curve of beach. They moved slowly under the command of oars and minimal sail, as if waiting for the right moment to unfurl and sweep down upon the land in a sudden rush. There was no room to manoeuvre sideways without running the risk of collision, no chance to drop anchor and wait out the other boats’ progress. Besides, the swell was rising, and the wind that had dropped during the late day was increasing as the cold night began to cool the surface of the water. Conditions would get rougher, and he had no idea whether the boat could ride out the night without seeking some sort of shelter.

  “I don’t know. Wait and see.”

  Gerd’s reply had no words, but Marius could sense it anyway: a confusion of fear, exasperation, and impatience. He felt it too. Marius had few rules, but central to his way of life was the notion that any movement was better than none. To sit still, to let the world dictate his actions to him, to let fate have even the smallest grip upon his progress, was alien and uncomfortable. He strained to see forward, to discern some tiny escape route between them and the cove that even now was beginning to make itself clearer to his dead eyes.

  Nothing came. His view was too fuzzy. Clearer than those around him, certainly, but not so much that he could make out any but the most general details. A shallow curve of shingle, lighter than the water in front of it and perhaps thirty feet wide, with blank white cliff walls to either side, narrowing to a defile that was undoubtedly riddled with paths leading upwards to the moors above. Marius could just about make out puddles of dark at the base of the cliffs – caves, maybe, or overhangs worn into the soft chalk surface by millennia of waves scraping along their side. But only one cove, only one beach, and not even the benefit of a decent-sized boulder to hide behind. The whole thing was as featureless as a Post-Necrotist’s cathedral: one stripe of grey against different stripes of grey, with nothing to draw the eye away.

  Except… Marius frowned. Something to the side, near the black patches of the maybe-caves. There. And again. A tiny pop of yellow light against the darkness, momentary and quickly muffled. It happened again as he watched: a pinpoint of illumination, then another, a sequence of flashes that disappeared as quickly as they happened.

  “Marius!”

  He saw it at the same time as Gerd hissed his name. An answering flash of light to his left. The sequence from the beach repeated, quick as a snakebite, before the dark reasserted its dominance. Marius almost laughed aloud, then bit down on it.

  “What?”

  He projected the image of a grin. “Smugglers.”

  “And that’s good?”

  “You bet it is!”

  “How?”

  Marius shifted his hands until they were comfortable, and gauged his position within the mini-fleet. Six boats, now that he could distinguish their positions more closely. Yawls or ketches, most likely – large enough to carry a decent load from nearby kingdoms but small and fast enough to evade pursuit and still come to shore under the command of oars if need be. His own boat would be amongst the smaller of them, but it was at least a coast-hugger, able to be beached without disrupting too deep a keel.

  “Marius. How is this a good thing?”

  Marius sighed. It was easy to forget just how much of a farm boy Gerd was. He would know of smugglers only through word of mouth, if at all: horror stories from news sheets and penny presses, believed wholesale because they had the magic effect of being written down by someone who professed expertise in the matter.

  “Smugglers means secrecy,” he projected. “If they’re landing here then they’re probably bringing in applejack or cock ale from the Northern Reaches.”

  “Why?”

  “To make money, of course. Why else?”

  Gerd’s face crumpled in confusion.

  “But why are they sneaking it in? I’ve drunk applejack all over the place. It’s not against the law.”

  “Yes, but what did you pay for it?”

  �
�Huh?”

  “Scorban taxes, boy. That’s what smuggling is for. Whoever’s bringing it in is paying Reaches prices and avoiding the duties. If they serve it at Scorban prices…”

  “More profit.”

  “In one.” Marius frowned. “Mind you, it’s a three day ride to the nearest city from here, and there are beaches further down the coast that would do just as well. Doesn’t seem… Oops, wait a minute.”

  “The lights were flashing again: a burst of three in rapid succession, then a gap, then another three. Boats creaked around them. Marius responded by sliding a quarter to starboard, in tune with the rest of the fleet now. He found the swell and rode it past a short sandbar that crunched against a hull somewhere to their rear.

  “Smugglers are better than soldiers, believe me.” The tiller twitched, and he righted it. “Soldiers would have one task in mind, and they wouldn’t welcome finding strangers in their midst. Smugglers have a code.”

  “But I thought you said they want secrecy. Won’t they be afraid we’ll blab or something?”

  “Yes, well, that’s possible. Still, they have a code.” A code of silent knives, he added to himself, hoping Gerd could not pick up on his inner worries. At the least, it was a code that respected other people’s secrets. He just needed to persuade them that he and Gerd had no interest in their work, and everything should be fine. Perfectly fine.

  The lights shone again, closer now. The beach reached out to them, shining grey in Marius eyes, filling up the world until cropped off at either side by the cliffs. They glided to the far end of the cove in silence. Then their hull ground against the shingle, and stuck, and he and Gerd were over the side and dragging their little vessel up the beach and as far to the side of the others as they possibly could.

  FIFTEEN

  The night was loud with the crunch of footsteps, as sailors hauled barrels up the rocky beach and dumped them in a pile in front of the nearest cave. Marius and Gerd loitered around the phalanx of hulls at the water’s edge until everyone around them was focussed upon the task, then stepped away from their boat as quietly as they could. They matched their footsteps to those of the smugglers, heading at an angle away from them towards the path at the far side of the beach, angling upwards through the messy scrub that formed the beach’s boundary. They had successfully traversed almost eight feet when all sound behind them ceased. They froze.

  “What–“

  “Ssh.” Despite the quietness of their conversation, Marius had never learned to concentrate on external matters while also listening to someone’s voice inside his head. He frowned, trying to locate the hidden sailors.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Someone’s coming. From up there.” Marius pointed towards the path. Behind them, careful footsteps resumed. Marius heard movement back towards the boats and the almost silent hiss of weapons being retrieved and unsheathed.

  “What do we do?”

  “Stay still and keep quiet.”

  Something pointed and extremely sharp pressed coldly into the back of his neck.

  “Well now,” said a voice in his ear. “What do we have here?”

  Marius discovered new depths of stillness.

  “How the hell did you do that?” he asked quietly.

  “I think,” the point dug slightly deeper, “that I might ask the questions first, don’t you?”

  “You know, I think you might.”

  “Mighty civilised of you.” The sword in his neck urged him around, pointing him back towards the beach.

  “My pleasure.”

  A poke had him moving back down.

  “Don’t speak too soon.”

  They trooped in silence: Marius, Gerd, and the two unseen bearers of the swords. They reached the overhang at the base of the cliff, where their legs were kicked out from underneath them, depositing them onto the shingles.

  “Ow.”

  The sword pricked him on the chin.

  “Shush, now.”

  Marius shushed.

  “What now?” Gerd in his mind.

  “Just wait.”

  “What for?”

  A shape appeared before them, dark upon dark, blocking out the grey cliffs at the other end of the beach.

  “Oh,” Gerd projected. “That.”

  “Yep.”

  The shape stepped into the overhang.

  “And what the fuck,” it said, with a female voice that wouldn’t have been out of place in a classroom of naughty children, “have we brought in with us tonight?”

  Marius peered at the figure. “Brys? Brys Kenim?”

  “Keep your bloody voice down!” The reaction was automatic, quickly followed by: “Marius?”

  A short scrape of metal on metal as the cover of a lantern was swung open. A flash of light momentarily blinded both men.

  “Bloody hell! Marius! What the bloody hell are you doing here?”

  “Hello, Brys.”

  “Bloody Marius bloody Helles. Give us a hug, you lovely bugger.” The shape leaned down and scooped Marius to his feet, enveloping him in a blanket of arms, boobs, and long black hair.

  “Brys, this is my pal, Gerd. Gerd, Brys Kenim, smuggler, pirate and all-round cove,” Marius mumbled in the few moments he was able to peel his face away from Brys’ embrace. “Brys and I ran weapons together for a while.”

  Gerd groaned, and rolled his eyes. “Is there anyone in this country you haven’t shagged?”

  “I never…” Marius was swallowed by the embrace once more. His hand waved behind Brys’ back: never, then, one finger. Two. Five. More or less. Finally, she let him go, and held him at arm’s length.

  “Marius bloody Helles. Let me look at you.” She scanned him up and down. “Bloody hell. You as well, eh?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She jerked a finger behind her. “Half my crew are dead men. Work cheap, and carry twice as much as a live one. Figured you had a few more years in you before you copped your whack, though.”

  Marius shrugged. “I’ve not let it get to me.” He looked at her appreciatively: a tall woman, broad in the hips and bust, strong face dominated by a nose just the right side of conk and long, expressive eyebrows that were currently raised most of the way towards the hair that flowed past her shoulders and over a red jacket. Velvet trousers, long boots, two swords hanging from a wide leather belt. If Brys Kenim wasn’t already a smuggler queen, she could have played one. “You’re looking good. The eye patch is a nice touch.”

  She laughed. “Earned it in a hamlet further north. Didn’t like what we were taking from them.”

  “What was it?”

  “Don’t know.” She laughed. “I only grabbed it on a whim.”

  Marius nodded. “So what are you doing here?”

  “What comes naturally.” She crouched down, and drew the two men into a rough sitting circle. “Nunnery up the cliff needs supplies it can’t acquire by ordinary means. I’m supplying.” She eyed them both. “But what about you? How did you come to be in the middle of my little fleet?”

  “Similar story. We need something they have, and picked the same approach.”

  “Why not climb the cliff stairs?”

  “That’d be him.” Marius pointed to Gerd. “He likes a flatter type of land.”

  Brys’ face went empty. “Big coincidence.”

  “Overcast night, low swell, one beach along the entire cliff line.” Marius stared into her good eye. “Similar purposes. Sounds to me like the equations throw up the same answer.”

  “Hmm.” Brys sniffed, then smiled. “You always were a calculating sod, Helles.” She clapped her hands on her knees, and it was only then that Marius noticed they had been resting on the hilts of her swords. “Sounds like we have a common destination, then.”

  “Just like old times.”

  “Hmm.” She looked him up and down for a moment, performing her own calculations. “I doubt it. Come and meet the crew.”

  They clambered to their feet and ducked out onto the
beach. Brys’ crew stood in a rough semicircle around the pile of barrels. Marius saw a dozen men of varying sizes, all with the rock-hard leanness of the professional sailor, all with the same long-distance stare that came from a life of mistrust and fear of capture. Marius and Gerd stared at them, then at each other. Every last one of the sailors was dead.

  “Why?”

  Brys laughed. “Do you know how strong a man becomes when he’s dead? Of course you do. What am I saying?” She stalked over and ran an appreciative hand down the arm of the nearest sailor. “I recruited from docks all up the northern coast. Men who died in fights, or back alleys, slung into the harbours for a quick disappearance. Had Cheggmar here for just over two years. The rest have followed.”

  Marius frowned. “And it’s never bothered you? Dead men walking? Working? Not being dead?”

  “Should it?” She slapped Cheggmar on the arm. “I’ve seen it all over. Men ain’t dying the way they used to. They work cheap, last longer…” She slapped the arm again and smiled at him. “Much longer. Don’t have to be too smart a woman to see where there’s profit.”

  “Right.” Marius stared at the dead man. “You ever ask him what he thinks about it?”

  “The captain gives me work,” he said. At the same time his voice sounded clear inside Marius’ mind: “Don’t push it, brother. Let it drop.”

  Marius resisted the temptation to shake the twin voices out of his head. He flicked his gaze across to Brys. “Your loyal crew,” he said.

  “Don’t you know it.” She stepped back to him and poked him in the chest with a pointed finger, letting the nail run three inches down his shirtfront. “I value loyalty.”

  “So I recall.” He nodded towards the pile of barrels. “So what are you carting?”

  “The usual,” Brys said.

  Cheggmar’s voice whispered once more in his mind. “She won’t tell us,” the dead smuggler said. “But tobacco don’t rattle, and neither does gin.”

  Brys pointed. “Forty eight tubs, twelve tubmen. Half the time it would take a living crew. But now you’re here, we’ll go even quicker.”