Omar touched Wren’s shoulder and gestured politely at the oncoming dead people. “Wren, if you please.”
“It won’t work on the dead, will it?”
“If they still have souls, it will.”
Wren nodded and pushed Leif aside. The aether lay across the ground in shifting, sliding waves of silent white vapor, and when the young girl raised her hands, the aether rose with them as high as she could reach. A moment later the running dead crashed into the wall and fell back, stumbling and falling over each other, clawing at each others’ black and blue and white skin, and groaning as they tumbled to the ground.
With a frown and a wince, Wren tried to shove the aether forward, to push the bodies back across the courtyard. But the writhing corpses lay too thick and heavy on the ground, and the aether merely rippled through them, tossing back several limp arms and legs, and making a few bodies near the rear stagger and topple over backward.
“Come on, keep moving,” Omar barked.
They ran back through the foyer and up a tall, curving stair that circled an ancient, rusting chandelier. On the second floor, Omar turned left and Wren followed him, but immediately heard feet pounding on stairs, and she turned to see Leif and Thora continuing up to the third floor.
“Wait, what are you doing?” she asked. “We need to stay together.”
Omar grasped her arm. “No, we don’t. Let them go.”
Frowning, Wren dashed after Omar down the hall.
I know, I know. Leif’s a killer, and Thora, well, she’d probably be a killer too if the situation ever came up. But there are only four of us and a hundred of those… things.
Omar shoved open a door, and another, and then a third. “Here!” They ran inside and closed the door behind them. It was a large bedroom and in the center of it was the largest bed Wren had ever seen. A huge rotting mattress lay on the wooden platform with four massive wooden columns in each corner to support the steepled wooden roof, from which hung tattered, moth-eaten curtains.
Omar ran to one side, grabbed hold of a large chest of drawers next to the wall, and shoved. The tiny wooden legs screeched across the bare floor, until two of them snapped off. Together, they wrestled the bureau in front of the door, and then stood panting in the shadows.
In the quiet, they heard thumping and grunting and distorted echoes from the hall outside and from the rooms below.
Omar crossed to the windows and looked down. “Good. There’s a balcony here. We can get to the roof, move to another part of the estate, and find our way out of here, quietly.”
“Wait a minute, what’s going on?” Wren asked in an anxious whisper. “We’ve got an army of dead bodies out there walking around, and they’re still got souls inside them. That’s crazy. That’s not how it works.”
“Oh, you noticed that too, did you?” Omar grinned. “Yes, that is a bit unusual.”
Wren frowned. “Doesn’t anything surprise you anymore?”
“Not really, no. The world is huge and strange. If you would just stop expecting it to always play by the rules, it would surprise you a lot less, too.” He unlatched one of the tall glazed windows and gently swung it out. It squeaked softly.
“But don’t you think we should stay here and figure this out? What if it’s another plague, like the one in Ysland? Some sort of ancient soul-breaking creature, maybe? One that turns people into frozen corpses instead of giant foxes?”
Omar chuckled as he swung one leg out the window and carefully slipped through the narrow opening onto the wrought iron balcony, which groaned as it took his weight. “It’s possible,” he said. “But what happened in Ysland was awfully rare and unlikely. I doubt the exact same thing is happening here. And besides, even if it was the same, this time it isn’t my fault, so I don’t feel particularly inclined to linger. Come along, little one. It’s time to go.”
Wren crossed the room. “But—”
The door handle behind her rattled in its housing, and a voice whispered, “Wren? Let us in! Hurry!”
Wren dashed back to the bedroom door. “Thora? Is that you?”
“Of course it’s me. The door at the top of the stairs was locked, so we came back down. And those things are coming up the stairs. Let us in!”
Wren looked down at the bureau and then back at Omar standing out on the balcony. “Help me move this!”
“Absolutely not. Now get out here, young lady. I imagine we have a long night of running and hiding before us. And I may be immortal, but I still get tired and sore-footed, and I’ve no desire to watch those corpses tear you apart, either. Now come along!”
“No, we can’t just leave her out there.”
“We can, and we will. Need I remind you that those two tried to kill us not a quarter of an hour ago?” He held out his hand through the open window. “Now come on!”
You don’t need to remind me, but there’s a difference between a blood feud and Ragnarok, and when it looks like the world is ending, it’s not a crime to set old wounds aside, even if it’s only for a little while.
Wren lunged against the side of the chest of drawers, heaving it slowly back across the room, its two broken feet screaming across the scratched floorboards. Between shoves, she heard the thumping on the stairs outside, and she heard Leif grunting and cursing, his sword sighing through the air as he hacked the frozen bodies to pieces, the limbs banging and rolling on the landing just outside the door.
“Hurry!” Thora yelled. “They’re getting closer!”
The bureau shifted a little more, enough for Thora to slam the door inward a bit, just enough for Wren to see her face in the gap. The taller girl looked pale, her golden eyes wide, her lips twisted into a terrified grimace. Wren shoved again and the bureau screeched again, but her hand slipped and she stumbled off to one side, right against the corner of the bed. Her shoulder struck one of the wooden columns, and the sudden pain jarred her from her chest to her hips.
She turned to look at the widened gap in the door. Thora had shoved her head and one shoulder into the room and was straining to push the door open, straining to push the bureau just a bit farther away, but the huge chest of drawers had caught on a warped floorboard and refused to move any farther.
Wren staggered up and saw Omar out on the balcony, his arms crossed over his chest, a stern and disapproving look on his face. But she dashed back to the door just as a heavy body was flung against it from the other side. There were two booms in quick succession, and each time Thora winced and grunted. Leif was shouting, and judging from the sounds Wren guessed that his sword was banging and hacking into the walls and floor as much as the corpses.
Thora’s hands clutched the door frame, her eyes screwed shut as she shoved with all her strength against the blocked door. Wren grabbed the bureau and pulled, but with a sinking, exhausted feeling in her belly that there was no hope of it moving any more. She ran to the door and grabbed Thora’s arm and tried to pull the other girl inside, through the gap was still far too small.
Then Thora’s face went slack and she stared into Wren’s eyes, and for a cold instant they stood together, face to face, in silence. Then a blue hand with black nails wrapped around Thora’s face, two of its fingers poking into her mouth, and wrenched her back out into the hall. Wren leapt forward to slam the door shut with shaking hands, and she sat with her back to the door, gasping and shaking as she listened to Thora and Leif scream together just two paces away, just behind her on the other side of the door. Leif roared and Thora shrieked, and then both went suddenly silent, and all Wren could hear were wet thumping sounds on the floor and wall behind her.
Staring across the room, over the bed, through its tattered curtains, and past the window, she saw Omar still standing on the balcony. He was gazing up at the roof, one finger tapping lightly on his chin as though he was trying to decide what sort of flowers might look best around the window frame.
A body crashed against the door behind her, rattling the hinges. With a hot surge of adrenaline in her legs, Wren
scrambled up, ran across the room, and jumped through the open window. She stumbled into Omar’s arms and looked up at the Aegyptian, only to see a weary and slightly condescending smile.
“Oh good, you’re here. Now we can run for our lives.” He jogged across the balcony, pointed out a series of handholds in the brickwork and roof, and together they climbed up onto the icy tiles beside a narrow chimney.
“I can’t believe you just left them like that,” she said.
“And I can’t believe you tried to save them.”
Wren’s foot shot out from under her, and she fell to her knees. Omar helped her back up and they trudged slowly and carefully up the slope of the roof through the snow and over the ice, squinting into the whistling wind.
“How can it possibly be colder here than in Ysland?” Wren muttered.
Omar snorted. “Ysland’s covered in volcanoes. It barely counts as cold at all. This is genuine cold, here. This is winter as it should be.”
“You like this?”
“I hate this. But at least it’s the genuine article.”
The ice underfoot crackled and the snow slid down a bit here and there, but otherwise the roof held together and they walked along the apex arm in arm, each of them looking down at a steep fall across the tiles and into a frozen garden or a snowy courtyard or a wrought iron fence with tiny spikes along the top.
On their right side, they could see the walking dead milling about near the front gates of the castle grounds, but they were merely shuffling in circles or leaning against walls. They moaned softly to one another, making sounds that were almost words. Here and there, a pair of them would collide and paw at each other, sometimes even hitting each other, but never with much force or passion, and they would drift apart again.
At the end of the roof, Omar pointed out a brick chimney at the lower edge and they slid down on their backsides to it. There, between the angle of the roof and the wall of the chimney, the wind was gentler and quieter.
“Now what?” Wren asked. “Those things are everywhere.”
“Not everywhere.” Omar nodded at the north wall where a small gate house stood between a frosted garden and the town outside.
“Won’t they see us?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure if they can see or hear. What if they can only feel vibrations in their feet, or only smell? They’re certainly not the most athletic enemies we’ve ever faced. After all, their bodies are dead and frozen.” Omar ran his thumb along his jaw. “It would seem the only things keeping them moving at all are their souls. And that means you can simply push them away with your little trick.”
Wren nodded. “I can, but I don’t know how many I can manage. And what if the aether thins out? Besides, I don’t think I’m good enough to hold off an entire city yet. Why can’t you just use your seireiken on them?”
Omar shuffled in place and winced. “I could, but frankly I’m not too keen on having these souls absorbed into the blade. What if they’re damaged somehow? Broken, insane, diseased souls, maybe? Forever is a very long time to have a diseased soul trapped in your sword.”
“Couldn’t you just ignore them?”
“Maybe. But what if they infect the other souls in the seireiken? I have some very nice dead people in there, you know. You’ve met them.”
“Then don’t absorb the corpse souls. Just do that fancy cutting thing that doesn’t kill people. Except, you know, use it to kill them this time,” Wren said.
“Iaido? Maybe. It’s still a risk. I’m cold and tired, my hand could slip, I could make a mistake, and forever is a very long—”
“—long time to live with a mistake, I know.” Wren rolled her eyes. “Only you could make immortality sound like such a burden. I think I’m becoming thankful that I’ll die one day.”
“You’re learning!” Omar grinned. “Now let’s go. Quietly.”
They climbed down from their perch on the roof to a stone balcony, and from there they slipped over the stone walls to the garden below. Snowy evergreens stood in silent rows around them, blocking their view of the north gate as well as everything else. Wren shuffled through the snow, feeling carefully with her thin boots, and soon felt the hard edges of a paved path underfoot.
Waving at Omar to follow, she led the way through the trees into an open space full of snow-capped bushes that stood waist high, and then past flower beds where only a handful of short brown stalks indicated where the flowers had once been. She could see the north gate now, its wooden doors standing slightly ajar.
They paused a moment to listen to the wind howling over the rooftops, and the ice cracking, and the corpses moaning.
Now or never.
Wren strode out into the open and headed straight for the gate. Her eyes darted everywhere, to the buildings on her right and the wall on her left, and to the garden behind.
Still all clear.
When she stepped off the garden path onto the paved lane that led to the gate, her foot slipped on the solid sheet of ice, but Omar caught her arm and they strode on without missing a beat. The open doors of the gate house swayed gently in the wind before them, and Wren heard a dry scraping sound. Then a bare blue foot poked out the gate house door, and then the entire corpse shuffled into view. It was an older man with a scraggly white beard and frostbitten ears. His eyes were brown-in-white, mostly. Thin black veins crept in from the edges.
“Nine hells,” Wren whispered.
The corpse looked up at her sharply, and then lunged at her. Wren threw up her right hand and a mass of aether swept up from the ground, striking the dead man like a huge fist to the stomach. He crumpled over and staggered to one side. Wren swept her right hand across the paved lane and the aether swept along with her, crashing into the corpse like a tidal wave and knocking him out of the way.
She darted toward the open door, but paused to stare down at the black and blue figure on the ground. The corpse was moving, struggling to pick himself up, but his arms and legs seemed stiff and heavy. Icy crystals sparkled in the deep creases on his hands and around his eyes.
“We’re not safe yet,” Omar chided her as he propelled her through the short tunnel of the gate house and back out into the city of Targoviste.
“No one’s safe,” she said.
Chapter 3
After Targoviste, they walked east for two days on the snowy highway and did not see a single living soul. Crows circled high overhead in a pale blue sky, and rabbits dashed through the soft snow, but nothing larger than a beaver appeared. Twice on the road they saw a shambling blue man or woman in the woods, but both times they hurried on and soon lost sight of them.
Just before noon on the first day, they sighted the city of Shumen and Omar led them in a wide circle through the woods, wading through knee-deep snow over rocky and treacherous ground to avoid even the most remote houses, and only rejoined the road when they were well clear of the last signs of civilization. Wren kept her ears uncovered, listening for voices, for the sounds of labor and play and household arguments. She heard none, and saw no one.
That evening they passed through the small town of Kaspichan, and Omar decided to risk the road rather than the wilderness. Again Wren kept watch and listened, and again there was no sign of life. But she did see muddy footprints in the snow, and she saw where the old drifts had been trampled into gray slush in the alleys, but she could not guess how old the tracks were, or whether they were made by men or animals.
During the night they slept in an empty farm house just off the road. They barricaded the doors and windows as best they could and took the watch in shifts. And during Wren’s shift she heard something out in the darkness, something moving slowly through the trees nearby, but she never saw what it was, and when morning came there was no sign of anyone outside.
Late in the afternoon of the second day, with the desolate town of Devnya far behind them, they began to hear familiar sounds in the distance ahead. Flapping canvas, snaking ropes, creaking wagons, clopping mules, and clanging tools.
As they drew closer to their destination, they heard the gulls crying and the waves sloshing onto a pebbled beach, and a church bell ringing, and finally the voices of people. Talking and shouting, and cursing. And when they finally walked into the small port of Varna, they saw the tall slender men in their caps and coats, and the round little wives in their shawls and scarves, and all of them were very much alive.
Wren paused to look back across the hills and down the frozen highway. Something faint tickled her furry ears. “I hear something.”
“Such as?” Omar tugged his supple leather gloves tighter over his hands.
“Footsteps. Behind us.”
“You’re imagining it,” he said. “You’re tired and tense. You need food and sleep.”
Wren hesitated, still staring out across the wintry fields behind them, but she saw nothing. With a worried frown, she raised her scarf to cover her ears and followed Omar into the town. With the sun setting behind them, the streets of Varna were already dim and growing quickly dimmer. A few torches sputtered and growled in iron braziers outside the larger buildings, but otherwise the town was awash in shadows.
The people moving through the lanes were grim and stern, mostly fishermen with sacks over their shoulders or women with aprons full of breads, cheeses, eggs, lukanka salami, and beets. Wren sniffed out the strange meals hidden behind the closed doors, and Omar named them as they passed.
Duvec stew, sarma wraps, pilaf rice, and lamb kebabs.
The names amused her, but the smells soon had her mouth watering and when they stepped inside the little beer hall down by the water, a warm fog of roasted beef and alcoholic sauces wrapped around her senses and led her blissfully to her seat.
“Should we tell them?” Wren asked quietly. “Should we tell these people what we saw out there?”
“Not yet,” Omar said. “Let’s get a sense of the place first, and see what we see.”
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