by William King
His shoulders slumped. He felt physically nauseous. Defeat hit him like a blow, more potent even than pain and fatigue. He took an inventory of his gear. He still had his sword. He had lost his pistol somewhere. He had a small pouch of dried meat and a water flask full of spirits.
He glanced at the others- the Barbarian was present, covered in gore, his head bandaged with a strip torn from someone’s tunic. Weasel pulled on his pipe. His face grimy, deep lines of fatigue and worry etched in his face, older than Sardec could ever remember him looking. Toadface was there and Handsome Jan as well but no one else he recognised. He cast his mind back. The last he remembered of Sergeant Hef was seeing the little man disappear beneath a pile of snarling biting corpses.
How had it come to this, he thought? How could the proud army of Talorea have been so comprehensively beaten? The answer seemed clear enough-sorcery and superior numbers. An army poorly supplied, worn out by plague and hunger had simply been overwhelmed by an army that had no need for sleep or food or shelter.
It was not quite that simple. The Sardeans had living warriors too, but they had been sheltered behind a wall of walking corpses. They had been fresh when they entered combat and they had not been near unmanned by the presence of the walking dead. They were allies after all, not foes.
“Sir,” said Weasel
“Yes?” Sardec realised that the humans had been talking to him for a while. He had barely noticed their voices while lost in his own thoughts.
“What do you want us to do?” Sardec fought down his sense of hopelessness. He felt like telling them to do anything they felt like, that none of it mattered now. He took a deep breath and brought the impulse under control. He was a Terrarch officer. Better was expected of him.
One step at a time, he told himself. First things first. They needed to get clear of this place and find shelter for the night. After that they could give thought to what they should do. At least he thought he was with the right men for the job. It was time for the Foragers to forage.
“Let’s get some shelter and some food,” he said, “then we will start looking for a way back to home. Back to the camp and see if we can salvage any gear.”
“The bastards beat us,” said the Barbarian. “I don’t believe it. Maybe we should have prayed Weasel.”
If there ever was a time to pray, thought Sardec, now was it.
Sardec reeled back into what this morning had been their camp. All around were the signs of a hasty departure where people had simply picked up whatever possessions were nearby and turned and fled.
He paused for a moment, and the full magnitude of the defeat washed over him. The camp was lost. The baggage train was lost. The men would have surrendered if there had been anybody to surrender to, but the dead just kept on coming, and there was no alternative but to flee or to fight until your body was dragged down and became part of the attacking horde when it rose.
Desperately he looked around for Rena, searching through the debris of a camp made suddenly strange, looking for the spot where they had slept the night before. It felt now as if that had happened in another lifetime not merely a few hours in the past. At first he saw no sight of her or of any of the other girls or camp followers.
Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of a group of people arguing. One woman was screaming and a bunch of children clustered around her crying. To his surprise he noticed that the Barbarian and Weasel were there as well, talking and gesturing and pointing towards the horizon. Relief surged through Sardec when he saw that Rena was amongst that small group as well.
As he approached a group he saw that the crying woman was Sergeant Hef's wife Marcie and the children were hers. It occurred to him then that there had been a real human cost to the battle today beyond the lives lost. This woman had lost her husband and those children had lost her father. None of which was going to count for much if they were still around when the Sardeans got here.
Rena rushed towards him and threw her arms around him. For once he did not push her away but kissed her hungrily not caring who saw them. It seemed absurd to worry about such things with the world falling into ruin all around them.
"Round up those people! Now!" Sardec shouted to the remaining soldiers. "We've got to get them out of here."
Marcie screamed and struggled. The Barbarian lifted her, still kicking, and tossed her across his shoulder. He told the children to come with him. They danced around him, aiming kicks and punches, having no more effect than if they had attacked a giant wyrm.
"The rest of you have got two minutes to grab what you can," Sardec shouted, "and then we're leaving. Anyone not with us can stay behind and argue with the dead men."
Rena stared at him, as if she'd never seen him before, and he realised that she never had. He was covered in blood and muck and filled with an urgency to get them all out of here before disaster could overtake them completely.
The surviving Foragers shouted their acknowledgements and hustled the camp followers to get ready. In less than two minutes they were heading out of the camp and away from the battlefield, terribly aware of the whoops and howls of the Sardeans soldiers behind them. Sardec shouted at them to keep up the pace. He knew that he had to get as much ground between the survivors and the Sardeans as he could before nightfall.
It was extremely unlikely that any of them would manage to escape but looking at Rena and the children he felt he had to try.
Chapter Twenty-One
Sardec sat by the camp fire conscious for perhaps the first time in his life of the enormity of defeat. It hung over him like a vast shadow, making its presence felt in the chill of the breeze and the darkness that danced around the flickering embers.
He hoped they had put enough distance between themselves and the battlefield. He had led them northward away from the main track taken by the Talorean staff and all the other retreating soldiers. Any Sardean cavalry would follow the main road in the hopes of overtaking the officers, Generals and the rich pickings of their baggage train.
Rena was still trying to comfort Sergeant Hef's wife. The children sat round the fire, looking bleakly into the embers. Toadface talked with Handsome Jan.
“What do we do now, sir?” asked one of the new men. Sardec had not bothered to learn his name yet. He could not remember whether the man had told him it or not, and to be honest, he did not really care. He knew he should but he could not. All eyes focused on him. Everyone present was looking to him for a lead.
All of them, even Weasel and the Barbarian, normally so self-confident, had a beaten whipped-dog look. He was surprised that those two were still present. He had half-expected them to slope off on their own. But, like the others, they seemed to find some reassurance in numbers. And Sardec did not blame them. At this time he found their familiar faces oddly comforting even though he had never liked the men who owned them.
“We strike West,” he said as confidently as he could, trying not to think of all the long miles that separated them from Halim, let alone the Talorean border. “There will be a garrison there, and most likely reinforcements will have arrived.”
“What good will that do?” asked Handsome Jan. “They won’t be able to stand against the dead any more than we could.”
If you have any more constructive suggestions I will be happy to hear them, Sardec almost said but resisted the temptation. Now was not the time to get into arguments with the men. Now more than ever he needed to maintain his position in their eyes, and provide them with the sort of leadership they would need to get home. “It will get us back into the Queen’s service, soldier, and we will get another chance to throw back those Shadow-worshipping scum.”
There, he had said it, the words they had all feared to mention were out in the open now, and they all knew it. “Do you think the Princes of Shadow have really come, sir?” asked Toadface, licking his fat lips with his obscenely long tongue.
Sardec nodded. “You’ve seen the dead men walking; can you doubt it?”
“They just k
ept coming,” said the Barbarian. “I’ve never seen dark magic like it, not even when we were below Achenar. And sometimes when they pulled a man down he would get right up and fight alongside them, against his mates and all.”
He said the last as if it were somehow more obscene than the man rising from the dead in the first place. Perhaps to someone with his primitive code of honour, it was. Sardec smiled sourly. For the first time ever he had allowed himself to think that a man like the Barbarian might possess something like honour. It was a measure of how much his thinking on the subject had changed.
“I’m surprised we managed to get away at all,” said Weasel. Sardec was not. If any two men were able to escape from such a situation he and the Barbarian were them. The only other person who Sardec had encountered who equalled their slipperiness was the half-breed Rik. Had he and Asea managed to escape or had the half-breed’s astonishing good luck finally ran out? Sardec wondered if he would ever know.
“Perhaps God is preserving us for a reason,” said one of the newcomers, his eyes fixed on Sardec, begging for confirmation of this. They were all looking for any reassurance in the face of the vast supernatural evil that had reached out and touched their world. Sardec saw no reason to deny them this consolation. After all, who was he to say whether or not it was true? In times like this faith could be a source of strength and they were going to need all the strength they could find.
“Perhaps he has.” All of them were grateful for the words, and Sardec found himself oddly grateful to them for their faith in him. It was reassuring to feel trusted and needed in a time like this. Resolution firmed in his heart that he would not let them down while breath was still in him.
Sardec’s thoughts wandered back to Rena in the ensuing silence. He wished she had not come with the army. What chance did she have of surviving? The weather was getting worse. The walking dead were everywhere, and the Sardean cavalry would scour the countryside to round up survivors.
He shuddered to think what would happen to anyone they found. He had seen the Sardeans sabering any fleeing Taloreans they had encountered. He told himself that it was most likely that they were still filled with the fury and bloodlust of battle, but he had a suspicion that it was more than that, that they had been given orders to do so, to kill and leave the bodies so that they might rise again and follow the dreadful drumbeat to which the armies of the dead marched.
The newcomer’s question came back to haunt him. What could they do in the face of such uncanny sorcery? It was so new and strange and potent, on a scale unlike anything Sardec had yet witnessed. The destruction of the Serpent Tower had been impressive, but it had been a local event, unique, that could and would happen only once, but this was different. Evil magic had reached out and blanketed a nation, and unless he missed his guess it was getting stronger with every day that passed. Perhaps it fed on the deaths of the plague victims or on any deaths at all. Perhaps it really was a harbinger of the end of the world. Perhaps the Light really was passing judgement.
Sardec looked at the soldiers. “I believe we should pray,” he said.
No one disagreed.
The building in which Rik and Asea camped had been a watermill once. The rotting remains of the wheel were still there even though the upper part of the structure had long ago tumbled into the river. The place was defensible and they were unlikely to find a better one in which to camp for the night.
A flame crystal burned in a brass setting in the middle of the main chamber, providing both heat and light by virtue of its magic. Karim produced food and wine from the travelling chests. Tamara sat nearby, still in chains, watching everything with a wary eye.
Rik remembered the nightmare of their flight, as the huge wyrm ploughed through the fleeing soldiers and camp followers blocking the road, like a massive galleon making its way through a swarm of rowboats.
He recalled only too well the looks of shock and suffering on the faces of those they passed, and the despair of those who knew that sometime soon death would overtake them on the road, while the Terrarchs looming above them might still escape. There had been hatred there amidst the despair and Rik could not blame those people for it. He would have felt that way himself in their position.
Asea looked bone weary. Defeat was etched on every line of her face. Tamara did not look much better. She had the appearance of one who thought she had reached sanctuary and found her safe haven a trap. Only Karim looked indifferent to their circumstances but then he always did.
Rik took the bit of beef he had been heating on the point of his dagger and offered it first to Asea and then to Tamara. After both of them had turned it down he began chewing on it himself.
Asea rose and walked around the four corners of the building putting wards into place. Rik felt the slight surge of power as the spell activated. He wondered if the wards’ presence might give them away to any pursuers then dismissed the concept as ludicrous. The presence of a large black bridgeback wyrm outside of the place was all the clue anyone hunting for runaway Terrarchs would need.
Asea sat down once by the heating crystal once more. She was still armoured and looked like a war-goddess from an earlier age.
“I take it things did not go according to plan,” said Tamara. There was a mocking note in her voice, as always. She seemed incapable of keeping it out when she talked to Asea.
“You take it correctly.”
“What now, Milady?” Rik asked to forestall any further sniping. He feared that things would not go well for Tamara, given Asea’s present mood.
Asea considered for a moment. “The power behind the plague is a mighty one. The Army of the Dead is only going to get stronger until the spell is ended and the gateway closed.”
“I would say that is a fair assessment of the situation,” said Tamara. “But somewhat irrelevant.”
“How so?”
“Because we have no way of breaking the spell. Your army was defeated today, Milady, and the armies of the East march towards your homeland.”
“Be that as it may, it does not alter the nature of the problem in the slightest. While the dead march the West cannot win this war. Every casualty is a potential new recruit for our foes. Every loss to our side is doubled.”
Tamara nodded. “I know that as well as you but that was not point. Without your army you have no way of getting to Askander and closing the Gate.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I should think it obvious. All the armies of Sardea lie between you and your destination.”
Asea smiled. “Perhaps not. As you have so astutely pointed out, they will soon sweep on, invincibly, into the West.”
“You cannot be thinking of striking East on your own.”
“Why not? I can do no good here and I may be able to close the Gate in the East.”
“It is guarded.”
“Guards can always be taken by surprise. You of all people should know that. And I doubt our enemies will expect such a bare-faced attack.”
“Presumably because they assume you are not insane.”
Rik stared at Asea. She sounded serious. She really was considering heading East, on her own, to try and close the Gate. Perhaps she had gone mad. It was possible some backlash from today’s sorcery had deranged her.
“You have no chance,” said Tamara.
“I have a tiny chance,” said Asea. “And when you have run out of options, that is better than nothing.”
“I think you might be noticed in your war-gear.”
“There’s always disguise.”
“They will be looking for you.”
“They will be looking for me in the West, with the armies of the West. I doubt they will expect me to go rushing into their territory. Would you?”
Tamara’s smile could almost have been admiring. “No. Because I have always thought you were clever.”
“The Princes of Shadow will come. I have already seen one world lost to them. I will not see another.”
“How will you
go?” Rik asked. “The wyrm is a bit conspicuous and we do not have any dragons. Do you know some sorcery that will transport you there?”
“I will go on foot if necessary and I will go soon, for every day that passes our enemy grows stronger, and it may be that they will soon be sufficiently mighty or Talorea may become sufficiently weak for them to overcome us without their undead legions.”
“You underestimated us, didn’t you?” said Tamara quietly.
“Yes,” said Asea.
“It’s not surprising. I did too.”
“Who could have foreseen anything like this, on a world with so much less power available than Al’Terra?”
“The people who planned it did.”
“Yes. They managed to find something that would work even with the full power of their magic unavailable to them. They were devilishly clever.”
“They had centuries to prepare,” said Rik.
“So did we,” said Asea, “but we spent it building an Empire over the humans and fighting among ourselves, and our greatest foes have taken advantage of that. Then again, they always knew how to exploit our weaknesses, and why should they not, for they are just like us in many ways.”
“Does that not mean that you should be able to exploit their weaknesses in return,” said Rik.
“I hope so, for if we do not then civilisation as we know it on this world is doomed and a new age of darkness has begun.”
“Can you close the Gate?” Rik asked.
“I have done so once. I can do it again. I might even be able to destroy it, if I get close enough.”
“How will you do that?”
“I am hoping that you can show me the way.” There was a hint of pleading in the look she gave him.
