by Scott Kaelen
“Thank you,” Shade whispered, her warm breath upon Eriqwyn’s neck. “I’m sorry, Eri.”
“Sorry? Sorry for what?” Eriqwyn tensed, understanding too late. Searing pain stabbed into her back and coursed through her chest as she sagged within Shade’s strong embrace. Dead, she thought as her vision darkened. Killed by a wanton whore…
“It will only hurt for a moment,” Shade whispered sibilantly. “You won’t be alone any more. You can let go now, Eri. Let go…”
The hypnotic thrum of the earth faded from her senses, and Eriqwyn slipped into death.
After all he’d been through in the last 24 hours, Dagra realised he had become numb to the horror and madness. Gone was the terror that consumed him as he fought his way out of the graveyard, replaced with a grim determination. Dispatching the undead was almost cathartic, and he was starting to see it as an act of kindness.
Stepping behind a reaching corpse, he ran his sword through its torso then moved aside. “You should have done this ages ago,” he told Sabrian.
With a nod of agreement, Sabrian hacked the creature’s head off and watched it bounce and roll into the gutter. “By the time I arrived here, the routine was long since set. The problem is that these are the ancestors – and in some cases the immediate families – of the people who live here.”
Dagra chewed on that thought, turning away as Sabrian spilled the next corpse’s innards to the flagstones. A brittle near-skeletal figure stood in the centre of the street, swaying gently much like the first corpse Dagra had laid eyes on in the graveyard. He regarded the creature, wondering how he might feel if it were his own mother, twenty five years dead now, or his Grandpa Gafrid or Grandma Ilhdra, both still alive, or so he hoped; he hadn’t visited them in three years, and suddenly he felt profoundly sorry for that. The skeletal creature half-turned, its blind face seeming to sense his proximity.
“Mindless, tortured souls,” he muttered, walking around the corpse and thrusting his gladius through its neck. The head flopped forwards, hanging to its chest by a sliver of leathery skin, then the corpse pitched over. The tips of its finger-bones scratched at the stones, its wasted form too ravaged to return to its feet.
“Mindless, yes,” Sabrian said. “But proportionate to how long they were dead before the blight took them.”
Dagra wheeled on Sabrian. “Why?” he demanded.
“Why what, friend?”
“Why does the blight cure wounds, like with Gorven, you, me, but it leaves these creatures in a permanent state of decay?”
Sabrian chuckled mirthlessly. “Some say the gods work in mysterious ways. Or merely the goddess. Or, more accurately in this case, the Mother.” Turning to Jalis and Oriken, who had finished dispatching a cluster of corpses, Sabrian gestured for them to move on. Setting a fast pace into the nearby alleyway, he added, “The truth of it is simply that the power which holds sway over the city – aye, and the graveyard – maintains each of its vessels in the form in which it first entered them, at least in most cases. For me, I was close to death. For the majority of Lachylans, they were very much alive. As for the bodies buried in the graveyard…”
Dagra understood, but shook his head. “It isn’t right.”
“The world we live in doesn’t care,” Jalis commented from behind. “Nature knows nothing about right or wrong.”
“This isn’t nature,” Dagra argued.
“Actually,” Jalis said, “I’m beginning to think it is. Out of control, perhaps, but nature nonetheless.”
“From what Mallak said,” Oriken added, “and from what I saw with my own eyes beneath the castle, I have to agree with you.”
“Piss on your nature,” Dagra muttered beneath the noise of the dead as they passed by the far end of the alleyway. “A turd by any other name is still a turd.”
“The front of the monastery is just around the corner,” Sabrian announced. “The denizens are passing directly by its garden, which is enclosed by iron railings. Once we get in there—”
Dagra stopped as one of the passing corpses paused and turned their way. Its mouth opened and it staggered into the alleyway. Several of its brethren instinctively followed, and suddenly a crush of the creatures was pouring into the confined space.
“Retreat!” Sabrian shouted. “There are too many!” He raced back the way they had come, but more corpses were filing in from ahead.
Hot on Sabrian’s heels, Oriken swung about. “We’re trapped!”
“They’ve broken through a section of the railings.” Sabrian pointed to an iron ladder fixed to the wall. “Quickly! Take to the roof!”
Dagra sheathed his sword and ran behind the others for the ladder. Surrounded, he thought, a surge of the terror returning as he swung this way and that, his eyes on the corpses that filled both ends of the alleyway. Oriken was on the ladder, with Sabrian grasping the ladder, ready to follow.
“Damned shoulder,” Oriken growled.
“Faster!” Jalis called up to him. She pushed Dagra towards the ladder. “Go!” she ordered.
There was no time to argue. He snatched at the rungs and hauled himself onto the first rung, then the second… The metal beneath his palms shook as the quaking ground intensified. He glanced down to see Jalis reaching for the ladder. The nearest of the corpses was fast approaching.
“Move it, you bastards!” Dagra called up to the others as Jalis took to the ladder. The creatures were upon her. She kicked at their grasping hands and hauled herself up.
Beyond Sabrian, Oriken reached the top of the wall and rolled out of view onto the flat roof. Dagra glanced down to see Jalis gripping gripping the rungs tightly, one leg dangling in the grasp of the creatures. Their claws were on the hem of her cloak, dragging her down. As he watched, her hand slipped from the ladder.
“Jalis!” he cried.
She unclasped her cloak and let it fall onto the corpses’ heads. She wrenched her foot free and scrambled out of reach of the reaching hands.
“Thank the gods,” Dagra breathed.
He scurried up the remainder of the ladder. The metal pulsed with the Mother’s ire and rattled as the undead clutched the bottom rungs. The roof was almost within his reach when the ladder shifted and pitched, its lower supports ripped from the wall. He clung on and stared helplessly at the upper joists as they slid from the crumbling stonework. The ladder dropped. Its feet thumped down onto the alley floor.
Sabrian reached over the lip of the roof and grasped Dagra’s hand firmly, then hauled him up and over the edge. Down below, Jalis frantically climbed the teetering ladder. Dagra stretched to grab hold of the uppermost rung, but it tipped backwards out of his reach. His breath caught as the ladder swung out with Jalis gripping onto it.
“No!” Oriken yelled. “Jalis!”
Her back slammed into the far wall. Her foot slid between the rungs and one hand was jarred from its grip. She hung there, dazed and tangled, the ladder jittering as the creatures tugged at it.
Oriken thumbed a bolt into the crossbow. He fixed the string and fired into the mob, then hastily fumbled a second bolt into the chamber.
“Conserve your ammunition,” Sabrian warned. “It won’t help.”
“Fuck off!” Oriken shrugged Sabrian’s hand from his arm and fired into the corpses.
“She’s moving!” Dagra cried. “Come on, lass!”
Jalis had both hands back on the ladder. She pulled her leg free and swung around to the outer side and began to climb.
“That’s it!” Dagra called as a third bolt twanged past him and disappeared into the throng.
The ladder was too far below the opposite roof, but to Jalis’s right was a set of closed shutters. Dagra shouted to tell her. She gave him a quick glance, then reached for a narrow lip that ran the length of the wall and passed beneath the shutters.
It’s closed from the inside, Dagra thought. She’ll never get it open. With growing desperation, he watched as she eased her way along the wall, clinging on only by her fingertips, her feet dang
ling above the mass of reaching bodies.
“Stop!” Sabrian hefted his gladius and stood at the edge of the roof. He brought the sword over his head and launched it at the shutters. His aim was true – the sword’s tip struck slightly off centre and the left shutter flew inwards. The gladius dangled for a moment then dropped into the swarm of corpses. Jalis resumed her course, inching along the lip, her knuckles white with the effort. The creatures below her stretched their taloned hands as if ready to catch her should she fall.
“Go on!” Oriken called.
Finally she was beneath the shutters. Flinging a hand up, she grabbed hold of the sill. The toes of her shoes scrabbled for purchase against the wall as she heaved herself up and flung an arm into the gap. Swinging her leg up, she snagged her foot onto the narrow lip and hauled herself through the shutters. As she disappeared into the shadowed interior, Dagra loosed a sigh of relief.
“Thank the gods. She made it. You made it, lass!”
Jalis’s face appeared and she looked up at them. “Go!” she called, catching her breath. “I’ll be okay!”
With no way to reach her, Dagra nodded, and she dipped from sight.
“Suffering fucking stars,” Oriken growled, helping Dagra to his feet. “If she’d fallen… I would have jumped right down there. I would.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Dagra said as they followed Sabrian across the roof. “That’s the sort of friend you are.” Yes, he thought, a knot tightening in his throat, but could I say the same for myself?
Jalis sat beneath the shutters, groaning as she rubbed at the back of her head where it had struck the wall. She regarded the dusty storeroom before her, pushing away the lingering image of her terrifying ordeal. Dozens of nightmare countenances swam across the stacked wooden chests and floorboards like a ghastly tableau.
She reached to her throbbing ankle and touched the livid welts caused by the grasping talons.
That was a close call, she thought. Possibly my closest yet.
Releasing a shuddering breath, she checked her weapons. Her throwing daggers were all present, and Silverspire and Dusklight were still in their sheaths, thank the stars.
I need a weapon more suited to the task. Something with more immediate damage. Rising and crossing to the nearest of the chests, she lifted its lid. Parchments, she thought wryly. Not a great deal of good against corpses unless they were willing to hang around while I paper-cut them to a second death.
She opened a second chest, and her breath caught. The coffer was filled with ancient silver dari, with more than a peppering of gold pieces thrown in for good measure. In all of her years in Himaera, she’d seen only one golden dari piece. The dust of centuries permeated the room, and she knew these coins had been forgotten and were worthless to the folk here. Snatching up several gold pieces, she realised her hypocrisy as she stuffed them into a pocket of her leggings.
The next chest contained figurines. She took out an exquisitely-shaped brass depiction of a naked woman and hefted the ornament, testing its weight. It was solid, and the base was heavy. It would do as a cudgel.
The storeroom’s door clicked and she sprang into a stance, waiting as the door swung slowly inwards… but there was no corpse on the other side, just a boy of four or five years dressed in a brown robe and holding a hooked stick.
“So!” he exclaimed in a high-pitched voice as he hung the stick on the door handle. “You’re a worshipper of Aissia?” He nodded to indicate the figurine in Jalis’s hand. “Well, you can take her. It’s for a good cause, after all. Sabrian sent to me that you’d dropped in. Not that I needed to be told, mind you; there was enough racket with that ladder clattering around. Ah, don’t worry.” The boy waved his hand indifferently as Jalis stared. “I am Brother Lewin, custodian of this house of the gods. I’m afraid I can’t leave the monastery to assist in the cleansing of those poor souls – too small, you see – but I will show you to the door.” He turned to leave. “Come, follow me.”
Jalis opened her mouth to reply, but the words died in her throat as a vigorous tremor shook the building.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
BETWEEN TWO ETERNITIES
Ellidar strode from the castle entrance as it closed behind him, and approached the top of the steps to gaze out across the city. Before him, his knights waited in an arrowhead formation upon the marble stairs. Only two knights remained behind in the castle, along with a contingent of cityfolk. Deeper inside the fortress the king’s body sat upon the throne, a roaring pyre at Mallak’s feet as he burned to char. His liege had passed to the true death, but Ellidar had no time to mourn.
“They’re almost upon us!” one of the knights called.
As if I can’t see that. Ellidar shielded the thought, his eyes intent on the mass of denizens that filled the wide street. Three hundred strong, they stumbled over each other as they drew ever closer to the Mother, their moans an almost rapturous cacophony.
A vicious tremor pulsed through the foundations of the castle. Ellidar’s knights held their balance, while a number of the denizens toppled, their fellows trampling over them but scarcely slowing the relentless approach.
An idea came to him, and he sheathed his longsword. “Stand ready!” To his second, he said, “Their mass is unstoppable by us alone. They will reach the doors like a slow battering ram. We must disrupt their advance, but to do so from a frontal defence is not enough.”
“Your orders, sir?”
The horde reached the steps, and the knights at the base met them, their maces swinging into rotting faces.
“The command is yours, Heilin.”
“Sir?”
“Change nothing. Hold the steps at all costs. I will break them from within.” Steeling himself, Ellidar charged down the stairs and ploughed into the horde.
Dagra floundered upon the rooftop as the building shook. From his vantage point he could see the undead on the streets below stumble and pause. One woman, caught off-balance, teetered backwards into a group of the creatures, and Dagra watched as their talons and teeth tore into her.
“Gods above and below!” he cried.
A violent tremor shook the building anew and he fell to one knee, planting his hands on the shaking timber of the roof. As sunlight burst through the clouds and washed over him, he glanced into the sky. A tall column of dissipating cloud sloped upward from a darker mass, a thick crescent of sun shining through its apex.
“The Arbiter casts his judgement,” he muttered.
“Hold on!” Sabrian called as the planks began to shift.
Oriken was on his hands and knees. “Shit! We’re gonna—”
The timbers collapsed, and Dagra’s heart lurched into his throat as he plummeted through the roof and crashed into the room below. Stunned, he rolled onto his back amid the fallen planks, and groaned. As the tremor subsided, he stared up through the broken roof to see Sabrian peering down.
“Are you both alright?” he called.
Somewhere behind Dagra, Oriken loosed a stream of obscenities.
“Yes,” Dagra called as the tremor began to subside. With a wince, he pulled a large splinter from his palm. “I think so.”
“Gah, that smarts,” Oriken said. “Damned shoulder!”
Sabrian lowered himself to a supporting beam and dropped into the room, then stumbled across the debris to help Oriken to his feet. “I am needed elsewhere,” he said. “The advance on the castle is being broken as we speak, but there are still many denizens to be neutralised. The best assistance the two of you can give now is to help cut down the stragglers between here and the Litchgate.”
Dagra shook his head. “Jalis—”
“I have observed that your friend is more than capable of fending for herself, and she is currently in the good hands of Lewin. The bulk of the denizens are under control, though barely.” He ushered them across the fallen planks to a set of stairs leading down. “There are few Lachylans assigned to the main boulevard. Please lend your blades there. Your help is important.”
“You’ve got it as long as my shoulder holds up,” Oriken said. “I think the fall pulled the stitches.”
“You freeblades are as tough as old leather,” Sabrian remarked as he eased the door open to peer through the gap. “Right, I’m off to collect my sword then join Gorven. I’ll see you again when this is finally over.” Swinging the door inward, he raced out of the building and disappeared around the side.
The wide street was littered with body parts and peppered with pockets of corpses, perhaps a hundred or more, but Dagra could see only a handful of Lachylans battling their blight-ridden forebears. The few cityfolk between here and the Litchgate looked worse for wear, but were still in the fight.
Oriken gestured for Dagra to lead the way. “After you.”
“Jalis better be safe,” Dagra growled. Drawing his sword, he stepped out onto the street.
“The Arbiter is gone.” Oriken flicked a glance into the sky. “That’s got to be a good sign, right?”
“You’re a mocking bastard, Oriken, but, you’re right.”
“In that case”—Oriken unsheathed the royal gladius—“I’d say we’ve got a street to sweep.”
“Go with the gods,” Brother Lewin squeaked beneath the hum of battle as Jalis opened the monastery door. “Not literally, of course. That would not be good.”
Jalis nodded her gratitude and set off down the path, her eyes on the rear of the large column of undead further down the street.
“Oh!” Lewin called.
Jalis glanced back at the little monk.
“One thing my brothers and I strive for in our cenobitic monasticism is discretion over ruthlessness.” He gave her a sly wink. “Purchase not impetuously, Jalis, but rather spend sensefully.”
“I… How…” Despite the immediate horror beyond the monastery’s fence, Jalis felt her face heat up.
Lewin’s lilting chuckle took the edge off her guilt at pocketing the gold pieces. “One boon of the goddess’s blessing is excellent hearing.” Shrugging, he added, “True, another is being stuck in a four year old’s body forever, but swords and horses, eh?” He stepped back inside the building and pushed the heavy door closed, leaving Jalis shaking her head in bemusement.
