The gates finally opened with a painful squeal of frozen hinges and the guard pushed the large doors aside until they were wide enough for Chief to slide through.
She signaled them urgently to enter and, once they had, quickly slammed the gates closed behind them.
Simon slowly and rather stiffly dismounted. He stood holding on to the saddle for a moment until his legs felt steady. Then he slapped Chief several times on the neck to show his appreciation and the big horse whickered and brushed his huge head across Simon's chest.
The wizard turned and waited for the guard to lock the gates. He took off his gloves and stuffed them into his pockets. When the guard walked over, he nodded at the gates and looked at her curiously.
“Is it normal these days to keep the place locked down?”
She shook her head, the spear across her back catching the sunlight.
“No sir. It's only since the attacks began a few days ago that we've been keeping the gates locked.” She made a sound of derision. “I know he's my superior, but Richard should know better. They only come after dark, so why lock the place down during the day? You know what I mean?”
Simon stared at her and then looked at Aeris, who shrugged.
“Um, not really. What are you talking about? What attack?”
Now it was the guard's turn to look confused.
“You mean, you aren't here because of the assault?” Simon shook his head. “Oh, I'm so sorry. I assumed that Clara had gotten in touch with you and that you'd traveled here to help.”
“Well, I'll certainly help in any way I can, but actually I just decided that the weather was finally decent enough to pay you folks a visit.”
He held out his hand and smiled at the guard.
“I don't actually know your name, so let me introduce myself. My name is Simon.”
Aeris snorted softly from behind him but Simon ignored him. The guard's face reddened and she hurriedly took off her furred glove and shook his hand.
“Oh, sorry. I'm Lynn. It's, ah, it's a pleasure to meet you.”
Simon's smile widened and he shook her hand twice.
“Same here. Now then, is Clara up at the hall or..?”
“She should be,” Lynn told him. “Richard and a few others are meeting with her to discuss tactics, or something. Go ahead up. And again, I apologize for not recognizing you when you arrived.”
Simon laughed and waved off the apology.
“Don't worry about it.” He became serious again. “If you've been attacked, I totally understand your caution.”
He gave her a wave and turned away, leading Chief up the narrow street toward the center of town.
“An attack?” Aeris said as he floated beside Simon. “By whom?”
“No idea, but Lynn said they only attack at night. I don't like that.”
“Neither do I,” the elemental agreed, his voice thick with concern.
They met no one on their walk to the main hall and that made Simon even more uneasy. The weather wasn't that bad, except for the biting wind. If people were staying indoors, there really was a problem.
At the hall, the wizard tied Chief's reins to a post next to the main door then removed his saddlebags and slung them over his shoulder. With a glance at Aeris, he opened the door and slipped into the warmth beyond.
The large hall was lit by torches hanging in sconces around the walls. There were many benches facing toward the center of the room, where a roaring fire shed welcome warmth. Smoke rose from the fire and found its way out through a hole in the ceiling.
Simon saw several figures standing or seated around the fire and he walked toward them slowly, waiting for someone to notice him.
As he neared the group, a woman looked up and made a sound of surprise. Her eyebrows rose and she smiled brightly.
“Simon! Well, what do you know? Who says that prayers are never answered?”
It was Clara.
Simon grinned at the warm greeting and looked at her companions.
Richard was standing next to the fire, gleaming in his armor, a sword on his hip. Near him stood another guardsman, a youngster still in his teens that the wizard didn't know.
On a bench facing the fire-pit sat Virginia and her three friends, with whom she shared her magical powers; Eric, Anna and Gerard.
Everyone greeted Simon with apparent relief. Richard strode forward and shook his hand firmly.
“Sir wizard! Welcome. We are very pleased to see you.” He turned and indicated the young armored man with him. “May I introduce my squire, Edmund. Ed, this is Simon, the wizard I've told you about.”
With wide eyes, the teenager awkwardly extended his hand and Simon shook it twice.
“Nice to meet you,” he said politely. He looked at Richard. “Squire?”
With a chuckle, the large man shrugged, his bald head glowing in the firelight.
“Old fashioned, I know. But on the New Earth, I suppose we'll have to fall back on ancient traditions. The fact is, an armored fighter needs help with his tools, weapons and armor. And he or she should try to train others who want to learn.”
He clapped Edmund on the shoulder with a clang of metal on metal. The young man smiled shyly.
“He's a good lad, even if he was older than I was before the Change.”
Simon knew exactly how that felt. He turned away at a touch on his arm and was enfolded in a huge hug from Virginia.
“It's great to see you,” she exclaimed after she'd let him loose. “The four of us were just trying to convince Clara that we should either go to see you or at least send someone.”
The wizard staggered a bit as she let him go and then looked from the four Changlings to the cleric.
“Why? What's going on? Clara, if you needed my help, all you had to do was use the lodestone to get my attention.”
Clara waved him to a bench and Simon sat down, after he slipped his staff off of his back and laid it down beside him. Aeris hovered next to him at shoulder height, watching silently.
She sat down near the wizard and smiled ruefully.
“I lost the bloody thing,” she said simply.
“What?”
She blushed and looked away. One of the young women, Anna probably, giggled at her embarrassment.
“I lost it, I said. I don't know where. I've torn apart my quarters looking for it, but it's gone. Since I usually carry it everywhere I go, it probably fell out into the snow sometime since we spoke last. I hope it turns up eventually but for now, it's just gone.”
For one moment, Simon was tempted to tease her a bit, but Clara looked genuinely distressed at the loss, so he just patted her hand reassuringly.
“Don't worry about it. I'll have Kronk make us a new pair when I get home.”
“Oh, that would be such a relief, Simon. Thank you so much.”
“Not a problem. Now the question is, why did you want to speak to me. The guard on duty, Lynn, mentioned an attack?”
“Not just one attack, sir wizard,” Richard rumbled. He gripped the hilt of his sword tightly. “Several. We've been assaulted three times in as many nights.”
“Three times!” Simon stared from face to face. “Who's attacking you? And why?”
Clara stood up and walked to the fire. She stared at it a moment and then turned to look at the wizard.
“Not who, my friend. What.” She tilted her head a bit as she watched him. “Do you remember me telling you about that town about ten miles away? Where I got my books on magic and lore from the library?”
“Yes, of course. Why? Does that have something to do with these attacks?”
“Not directly, no. But it's an old town. And it has a cemetery filled with graves, some over a century old.”
Simon watched her in confusion.
“And?”
“And we believe that the attackers are coming from there.”
“Undead, Simon,” Eric spoke for the first time. His skin seemed paler than usual and his black eyes were enormous in the flickering
firelight. “We're being attacked by corpses. Dozens of them.”
Simon put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. He looked at Clara, who nodded in confirmation of Eric's incredible assertion and then at Richard, who did the same.
“Corpses,” Simon said flatly. “You mean like in the movies in the old days? Shambling zombies lurching along and moaning about brains?”
There were a few strained laughs at his question, but Clara and Richard maintained their serious expressions.
“I wish they were like that, Simon,” the cleric told him. “But they aren't. Not even close. These...things move with speed. They climb like monkeys. Fortunately, your Kronk and his fellow elementals built the wall well. It is too smooth for them to climb, and your wards seem to be painful to them, so they have to come over the front or rear gates. It allows us to focus on only two points along the wall instead of the whole length of it. Thank the gods for that small mercy.”
“They shy away from light, Simon,” Virginia said. “So we keep a bunch of torches burning in front of both gates each night. We learned about that after their first attack.”
She swallowed hard and looked away, rubbing her eyes.
“What happened during that first attack?” Simon asked gently. It was obviously an emotional subject for the young woman.
“The first night,” Richard said, answering the question, “we were caught completely off-guard. How could we not be? Who in the hell thought we'd be attacked by the undead, of all things?”
He sounded both furious and defensive and Clara looked at him compassionately.
“Richard, you're being too hard on yourself. It's not your fault that they died.”
“Isn't it?” he asked bitterly. “I am the captain of the guard, Clara. I am responsible for the security of this town and I failed in that duty. Kind words won't bring back our people.”
“What happened?” Simon asked again, feeling a sense of horror rising within himself.
Richard turned away and Clara gave Simon a sad look.
“They came over the front and back gates simultaneously. We, at the time, only maintained a guard at the front gate. There are always torches lit there and when the monsters dropped inside, they seemed stunned and shrank away from the light. That gave the guard there a chance to raise the alarm.”
She walked back to the bench and sat down next to Simon again.
“You may not have noticed, my friend, but we installed a bell in a housing next to the front gate. Just as a precaution, you understand. Well, thank the gods we did.” She looked at Richard who had turned back to listen. “My big friend's idea, by the way.”
The armored man just shrugged and Clara shook her head at him sadly.
“The guard rang the bell and roused the town. We rushed to the gate and Richard and his people fought the undead. I learned that night that the few spells that I've been gifted with by the gods are useful for something after all.”
“Spells?” Simon sat up attentively. “What spells?”
“Holy Light, for one. The clean white light of Goodness burns these creatures like fire. And fire is the only way to stop them. Even hacking them to pieces doesn't work. The pieces keep moving and crawling like so many insects. Ugh, disgusting.”
She shuddered and took a deep breath before she continued.
“And a spell that, according to what I've read in fantasy books, could be called Turn Undead. It caused these walking corpses to flee mindlessly, making them easy targets for anyone armed with a torch.”
“Fortunately,” Virginia spoke up, “they burn like the dessicated corpses that they are. One thrust of a torch or a fire arrow and they burst into flames.”
Simon was having a hard time accepting this entire thing but his friends were too obviously upset by the events for it to be some sort of joke.
“Well, it sounds like you've acquitted yourselves admirably.” He paused and thought for a moment. “Wait a second. You've only mentioned the attack on the front gate. What happened when they came over the back?”
There was a long silence. Simon watched everyone avoiding each other's eyes and he felt a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Finally, Richard cleared his throat loudly and everyone jumped.
“I'll tell him,” he said to the others. “It's mostly my fault anyway, so I should be the one to do it.”
“Richard...” Clara begun but he cut her off with a look.
“I'm telling the truth, Clara. Don't worry, I'm not rolling in self-pity. We've learned some very valuable lessons from that night, but it was a hard way to learn them.”
He threw back his shoulders and stared at the fire. Simon thought that he suddenly looked and sounded much older than he was.
“While we were fighting off the undead at the front,” Richard began, “another group, unbeknownst to us, climbed over the rear gate. There were no torches there, no guards. Nothing to stop them. We aren't sure how many there were but I'd guess at least a dozen, maybe more. They swarmed over the first home they came to.”
He stopped speaking and rubbed his eyes with one hand. Simon looked around and saw that almost everyone was staring at the floor, except for Clara, who was watching Richard closely.
“It was a slaughter. These creatures are strong, but not supernaturally so. They can be balked by a locked door, but of course none of our houses had locks on them then. They do now,” he added grimly.
“There were four people living in that little house. Jennifer Bernstein, Andrew Lock, Anthony Haddad and...” A moment's hesitation. “Jacklyn Bernstein. Little Jackie was the first child born since the dragons attacked and destroyed the old world.”
Simon heard a sob and looked over to see Anna weeping quietly. Gerard had an arm around her shoulders and held her tightly. He looked as miserable as she sounded.
“My God,” Simon said faintly.
“I think gods is the proper term here, my friend,” Clara said angrily. “Those dark gods who have torn our world apart and let loose these abominations are to blame for this.”
She stood up abruptly and walked toward Richard so quickly that he took a step back in surprise. Under different circumstances, Simon would have been amused seeing the big man retreat from a tiny woman like the cleric. But now he found nothing funny in anything.
Clara poked the breastplate of the armored man and it rang with a subdued metallic sound.
“Those are the ones you should be blaming, Richard. Not yourself, not your people. Them. They unleashed the evil magic into the world that is doing this. And somehow, we have to stop them.”
She turned around, stomped back to the bench and sat down again. Then she crossed her arms and glared at Richard, who stood there, speechless.
“Um, yeah. So anyway,” Richard finally found his voice and continued, “we heard the screaming from the front gate and I left a handful of people to defend it, the undead were almost all destroyed by then, and the rest of us raced back toward the screams. We found, well, you can imagine what we found. All of the undead were inside the house and it took only one look to see that everyone in there was dead.”
He closed his eyes tightly, obviously trying to block out the memory and failing.
“They were torn apart. So I slammed the door shut, got some beams to seal it closed and set the house on fire. That's how we destroyed that bunch.”
“And since then,” Virginia said in a small, tired voice, “we've been attacked every night. Richard is right, though. We have learned. Torches are kept lit outside the gates and on the wall as well. Fire arrows work well at a distance, as long as you can see your target and fire at close range works if they do get over the gates.”
“It's exhausting though,” Clara added. “I sleep part of the day now so that I can be ready if I'm called on to deal with any undead that get over the front gate. Virginia and her group,” she smiled at the four Changlings, “use their magic to guard the rear gate. Gerard's Force spell rips these creatures apart quite well.”
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Simon glanced at Gerard, who smiled weakly.
“Yeah, I've never wanted to use that power on the living, but against these monsters, I can help protect our home.”
Everyone stopped speaking and sat quietly for a time, watching the fire play its game of light and shadow.
Simon was thinking hard and eventually turned to look at Clara.
“I have no idea why this is happening now, but you seem to be dealing with the attacks as well as anyone could. So what did you need me for?”
Clara smoothed out her robe nervously before answering.
“Our problem isn't the attacks, Simon. At least, not now. We can repel these monsters. But there is no way to know how many undead will rise from that one cemetery. And that is just the closest one. This country is riddled with burial sites. Not just modern ones, but the sites of aboriginal burials as well. And the towns and cities where thousands of people were slaughtered. Yes, I know that drakes...consumed the dead after the dragon attacks, but I doubt if they got them all. So we thought that we needed a new strategy, another layer of protection if you will.”
Simon was intrigued.
“Like what?” he asked.
Clara looked over at Richard, who made a small gesture of encouragement at her. This time, Simon did grin.
“Come on, guys, just spit it out. We're all friends here.”
“Okay then,” the cleric said, taking a deep breath. “We think that we need a moat.”
Of all the requests that Clara could have made of him, Simon thought, that wasn't one that he was expecting.
“A moat?”
Clara nodded once.
“A moat. You mean like an actual moat, filled with water, all around the town?”
Richard chuckled.
“No, not exactly. What we need is a deep trench around the town, yes, but filling it with water, even if we could, would serve no purpose.”
“We doubt that the undead can drown, Simon,” Clara said with the ghost of a smile. “And in the winter, the water would simply freeze. So that would be a waste of time. Now, as I told you once, our blacksmith has the ability to enchant metals, like Richard's sword.”
“I remember,” Simon commented.
The Dragons Revenge (Tales from the New Earth #2) Page 11
