by Nick Harrow
The wahket cheered, but I wasn’t ready to celebrate yet.
Despite the damage the falling statues had inflicted on the gruesome undead, it hadn’t killed any. The ghouls groaned in a hideous parody of life and dragged their damaged bodies from beneath the statues. Slick yellow bones gleamed through tears in rotted flesh and decayed muscle, but the ghouls were not out of the fight.
“Crossbows, fire!” Anunaset cried. She’d taken up a position at the top of the ladder, her spear poised to plunge down into the face of any ghoul who came within range.
I admired her courage and clear thinking when the shit was on the verge of hitting the fan. She hadn’t assumed the traps would kill all the ghouls; she’d positioned herself to respond if things went south.
The rest of the wahket responded to Anunaset’s command and sent a storm of quarrels into the mob of wounded undead. The bolts found their targets, but the ghouls kept right on coming.
Kezakazek unleashed a ball of acid that struck one of the ghouls in the back of the head. The deadly spell dissolved away a fist-sized chunk of the ghoul’s scalp and a patch of skull I could have dropped a silver dollar through without touching an edge. A viscous splash of decomposed brain, black and gelatinous, flowed out of the ugly hole and splattered down the ghoul’s back.
But that didn’t stop the goddamned monster any more than the crossbow bolt that jutted out of its chest had.
“Focus fire on my targets!” Kezakazek barked. She jabbed her finger at the ghoul with the remnants of glowing green acid splashed across its head and down the side of its face.
The wahket who’d reloaded their crossbows ran up to the edge of the pit to get a better line on the ghoul at the base of the ladder. The cat women fired in almost perfect unison, and all five of their bolts found their target’s torso. The beast’s corrupted flesh offered little resistance, and the bolts buried themselves to their fletchings.
The ghoul unleashed a hellish shriek and its legs gave out. It collapsed into a pile of reeking meat, and the baleful blue fire in its eyes winked out with the last echoes of its death screech.
The wahket cheered at the fallen creature, and those who’d fired stepped back from the edge and stomped on their stirrups to reload their bows.
But one dead ghoul was hardly a dent in Delsinia’s forces.
“Another at the ladder,” Anunaset announced. Her voice was calm and cool under pressure, and that seemed to jolt the wahket into action even more than her shout. “Iszet and Keft, to me with your spears. The rest of you keep firing.”
Kezakazek launched a second acid ball into the mass of ghouls that had gathered around the base of the ladder. The deadly sphere skidded across a ghoul’s face and peeled the creature’s nose away like a moist scab.
The undead had no sense of tactics and no real skill. They operated by a ferocious instinct fueled by an insatiable hunger. For the moment that gave us the advantage as the undead struggled to navigate the ladder without knocking one another off its metal rungs.
Kezakazek’s next acid sphere hit the spine of one of the ghouls, and a half-dozen quarrels from the wahket found their marks in the same creature. That snuffed out the blue light in the eyes of the undead beast, and my bloodlust rose within me like magma bubbling from a volcano’s guts.
Two down, twenty-two to go.
But in spite of that victory, the ghouls had figured out how to climb the ladder and were nearing their goal.
Anunaset and her partners at the top of the ladder stabbed their spears into the monster closest to escaping the trench. The sharpened tips of their weapons punched through the ghoul’s moist skin and burst from its back in a spray of black, clotted blood. For a moment, I thought the wahket would be dragged down into the trench by the unexpected weight of the creature’s body impaled on their spears, but the cat women had braced themselves so their weight was farther back from the edge. They ripped their weapons free of the wounded ghoul with a simple tug that sent the creature tumbling off the ladder.
The injured undead fell back into its allies, who shredded it with their talons before they realized it wasn’t a living creature. They stared up at the wahket with fury in their eyes, and even I felt a cold tingle of dread run down my spine at the focused hatred that poured out of the ghouls.
The wahket cheered one another, certain that their defensive position gave them supreme advantage over the ghouls. The undead monstrosities had to climb the ladder to get out of the pit, and they were too slow and clumsy to manage that as long as the wahket stood ready to stab the shit out of any ghoul who managed to get anywhere near the top of the trench.
The vile monstrosities suddenly tilted their heads to one side in unison. Those on the ladder dropped off of it and gathered around its base. More crossbow bolts and acid balls fell on the creatures, but they ignored the attacks and formed a knot against the trench’s wall.
What the hell were they up to?
The first half of the ghouls had dragged themselves out of the rubble and surged to the same wall, where they lowered their arms and pressed their faces against the stone. Several of the second wave of ghouls wrapped their arms around the waists of the undead ahead of them and crouched down to bring their heads just below the shoulders of the undead nearest the wall. Another wave of ghouls rushed forward and dropped to their hands and knees right behind the second rank of their allies.
In the blink of an eye, another undead warrior scrambled up the makeshift ramp formed by the bodies of the other walking corpses. When it stood on the shoulders of the ghouls nearest the wall, it turned and braced its back against the ladder. It laced its fingers together to create a stirrup before it, and bent its knees as another of the ghouls raced up the ramp of living corpses in far less time than it would have taken it to climb the ladder.
Well, shit. The assholes had gotten a lot smarter.
Before I could warn the wahket, the charging ghoul reached his friend at the top of the undead pyramid. It planted its foot in the pocket of rotten flesh formed by its ally’s fingers, and leaped up toward the lip of the trench.
Even with a little help from his friends, the ghoul didn’t quite reach the top of the trench, but its hands locked around a rung of the ladder within inches of its goal.
Anunaset shouted in surprise but didn’t back away from the ladder. She and the other wahket plunged their weapons through the ghoul’s face and popped the back of its skull off.
The thick and chunky stew of the ghoul’s brains rained down on the ghouls behind it, but the wounded creature didn’t stop its determined climb. It reached the top of the ladder and lashed out with one clawed hand as it thrust itself out of the trench.
Iszet shrieked as the creature’s black nails raked down the side of her leg. She shuddered, and her spear fell from her nerveless fingers as her body locked up. With a quiet groan, the wahket tumbled back and collapsed onto her side. She trembled, eyes wide, but her muscles were as rigid as the statues she’d help drop onto the ghouls.
The undead let out a victorious shriek and tried to drag itself the rest of the way up the ladder. Anunaset and Keft retaliated with a flurry of vicious stabs that ripped the ghoul’s arms from its torso before it could climb free of the trench. Before Anunaset could call for reinforcements, another of her wahket sisters had already moved up to take Iszet’s place.
But the ghouls had reinforcements, too. Another ghoul scrambled over the armless body ahead of it, and another was hot behind it. The undead knew no fear and didn’t care about casualties. Even as one of them fell, the next in line lurched forward to snap its jaws and flail its claws at the wahket.
Crossbow bolts shrieked into the mass of undead near the ladder’s base, and Kezakazek added a blistering rain of acid spheres to the mix. The missile fire dropped a ghoul, but another of the foul creatures had scrambled up the ladder and paralyzed Keft with a brutal slash of its claws.
“Spears, to me!” Anunaset shouted. Her cool demeanor vanished in the face of the rising ti
de of ghouls, and I couldn’t blame her. Shit had gotten wildly out of hand.
I wanted to send reinforcements to pull the wahket out of the fire, but I held my tongue. Rathokhetra murmured his agreement as I resisted the urge to disrupt my plans. My defenses were layered to whittle down the ghouls while protecting my core. If I sent the second group of wahket into the jaws of this clusterfuck, there’d be no one left for the next phase of my attack.
Before any of the wahket could step up to help Anunaset, another ghoul clawed its way out of the trench. It unleashed a horrific shriek and lashed out at Anunaset.
The wild slash of undead claws forced the wahket to dance back from her foe. She held her spear in a defensive posture and warded off the creature’s blows with her shield, but I knew we’d lost this front.
With the wahket pushed back from the edge of the trench and their ramp of undead flesh completed, Delsinia’s vile warriors surged onto the room’s upper level. Their rotten teeth clicked together in an incessant clatter that reminded me of a rattlesnake’s warning.
A wahket rushed forward and thrust her spear into the chest of a ghoul, but it threw its head back and clicked its teeth together in a staccato chuckle. Before the wahket could rip her spear free, the ghoul lunged down its length and ripped its claws down her cheek. With a groan, the wahket stiffened and fell back, bringing our casualties to three.
For a split second, I considered ordering the wahket to form a shield wall and hold their ground. If they could get into position in the hallway that left the statue room, they could set up a three-wide barrier and hold off the ghouls for a few more seconds.
But my gut told me there was no time for an orderly fallback to a more defensible position. The ramp trick had earned the ghouls the advantage, and there was no way the wahket could get into position before the undead clawed them to pieces.
“Fall back!” I called out to the wahket. “Retreat to the audience chamber!”
I sensed the gratitude of the wahket as they abandoned their posts and sprinted down the short hallway as fast as their legs would carry them. They had a head start on the ghouls, but it was a slim lead.
I hoped it would be enough, because when the wahket reached our next chokepoint, they would have to scale a five-foot-high wall to reach the relative safety of the chamber’s upper level. If the ghouls caught them before they could climb out of harm’s way, the five who still stood might not survive.
“Go!” Kezakazek shouted and slapped Anunaset hard across the face as the cat woman tried to drag Keft to safety. “Leave the fallen. You’ll all die if you try to bring them with you.”
It was hard to watch the brave warriors turn tail and run, but I kept my attention glued to the battle. If any of the ghouls broke away from the main pack, I needed to know. I couldn’t afford to let one of their number catch me by surprise.
A ghoul stopped to sniff one of the fallen cat women, and for one horrifying moment I thought it would feast on the immobile wahket. It lowered its face toward hers, inhaled deeply, and opened its jaws.
At the last second, it abandoned its fallen prey. Maybe it had decided the paralyzed wahket would keep until it had finished off her sisters. Maybe the thrill of the hunt was just too much for the undead beast to deny.
Or maybe Delsinia had forced the creature to get back to its fucking job.
“Audience chamber,” I directed my voice to the wahket stationed at our second battle line. “Pull your sisters to safety if you can, but your first priority is to deal with the ghouls.”
The wahket seemed confused by my command at first, but then dropped to their knees when the first wahket burst through the doorway to my audience chamber. The warrior sprinted down the center of the room and threw herself up toward the elevated position I’d created for the wahket to fight from. The rest of the fleeing wahket were right behind the one in the lead, with Anunaset and Kezakazek bringing up the rear.
The cat women on the battlements dragged their fleeing allies to safety with quick, efficient jerks. Seconds later, only Kezakazek remained on the floor of the audience chamber.
She flung an acid sphere at the ghouls who shambled through the doorway, and her attack lodged in the chest of a ghoul. It sizzled and spat like bacon on a hot griddle, but the ghoul didn’t seem to have noticed.
“Your hand!” Anunaset called down to the diminutive sorceress. The wahket had leaned out so far over the battlements her sisters had to hold her legs to keep her from falling. Anunaset extended her clawed hand toward the drow and shouted again. “Your hand!”
The ghouls were only ten feet away from Kezakazek. I felt the dread in her heart as she did a quick mental calculation. She was one lunge away from the closest ghoul, and if she turned her back on it, it might rip her apart with its claws and teeth. But if she stayed where she was, she had no hope.
With a desperate shout, the drow whirled to face the wall behind her and leapt with all of her might.
She stretched her hand toward the dungeon’s ceiling, and Anunaset extended her arm to its limits in an attempt to reach the dark elf.
I didn’t think it would be enough.
I watched in horror as Kezakazek’s fingers clawed desperately at the air.
And then Anunaset howled and lunged forward. She almost slipped from the grips of the other wahket.
Anunaset’s long fingers wrapped around Kezakazek’s palm. Her grip was tenuous, but she refused to let go. Streams of blood ran down the back of the drow’s hand as the wahket dug her claws in to secure her grip.
“Pull!” Anunaset shouted.
The four wahket who’d grabbed the lunging cat woman, two on each of her legs, scrambled backward and dragged Anunaset up and over the battlement. The instant she was safely back on solid ground, they released her legs and fell to their knees to grab the drow and haul her away from the claws of the ghouls below.
“Shit,” Kezakazek muttered as she cradled her wounded hand. “Thanks for the save, but maybe next time don’t skin me alive.”
“If only you were taller, I wouldn’t have needed the claws,” Anunaset said with a grin. “But I’m glad you are safe.”
“Me, too,” Kezakazek said. She accepted Anunaset’s offered hand in a firm clasp.
The wahket surprised the drow, and me, by dragging Kezakazek in for a quick hug.
“Let’s finish these foul creatures,” Anunaset shouted.
And, for a few seconds, it looked like they just might.
Another ghoul went down under a flurry of crossbow bolts, but his body didn’t hit the floor. Instead, his companions hoisted him up in front of them like a gruesome war banner. Their guttural voices rose into a ragged chorus, and the ghouls in the rear of the pack suddenly surged forward around those in the front.
“Shit. They’re doing it again!” Kezakazek yelled as she flung another acid ball into the crowd. “Stop them before they build another ramp of bodies!”
Delsinia guided her ghouls with a deft hand and turned them to the same trick she’d used to get them out of the trench. It took them only a handful of moments to build a narrow ramp of their own bodies from the floor up to the elevated position of the wahket.
The rotten warrior who’d caught the fallen ghoul hoisted his dead shield onto his shoulder and charged up the ramp into the wahket.
I felt a grim sense of satisfaction from an alien force inside my dungeon. With a start, I realized it was the brush of Delsinia’s mind against my own as she guided her warriors toward my core. She was here, somewhere, but try as I might I couldn’t pinpoint her location.
Anunaset howled in rage and rammed her spear at the rushing ghoul. Crossbow bolts zipped through the air toward the monster, but the attacks never landed. Instead, they hammered into the ghoul’s fleshy shield and did no damage.
With a furious shriek, the ghoul swept in a wide horizontal arc. The unexpected attack ripped the spear out of Anunaset’s hand and drove the rest of the wahket back.
A wahket raced along the edge of
the battlement toward the ghoul’s blind side. Her spear lanced into the creature’s side with a wet squelching noise, but it wasn’t enough to bring the undead down.
The lead ghoul slammed his elbow down and shattered the spear’s haft. Before the wahket could recover, he lunged forward and raked her face with the tips of his blackened claws.
The wahket screamed and stumbled back, but fortunately she was not paralyzed. Blood streamed down her face, and she fumbled for the crossbow at her hip.
“Pull back,” I shouted. There was no sense in leaving the wahket to face the undead here. The battlefront was too wide and the individual ghouls too strong for the cat warriors to fight like that. They needed a confined battle line to put their shields to best use, and I’d fortunately planned ahead to give them one. “Get into the maze, the freshest warriors at your front. Form a shield wall. Now!”
The wahket jumped as if I’d dropped a lightning bolt in their midst and retreated from the ghouls. They used their spears to hold the undead off and backed into the winding passageway I’d created through Zillah’s bedroom.
“What is happening?” Nephket asked me. “We can hear the battle, but I can’t see it. What do you want us to do?”
“Hold,” I responded to my familiar. I had a plan for her, but it needed to be sprung at the right time. “Be ready.”
I felt a wave of displeasure wash over me as Nephket grimaced at my command, but she didn’t challenge my decision.
The wahket who’d retreated from the audience chamber had put enough distance between themselves and the undead invaders to set up safely.
“First line here,” I told the wahket. The passage was just five feet wide, which only narrowed their shield wall to three wahket, but it also forced the ghouls to attack on a narrow front. It would have to do.
The cat women at the front of the wahket raised their shields and wedged their shoulders together. They braced themselves with one leg forward and one back and held their spears ready to stab the fuck out of anything that approached them. It was a solid foundation for defense, and I hoped it would be enough to whittle down the ghoul’s numbers.
