The Brave and the Dead

by Robertson, Dave

  “We can’t fight.”

  “What?” Marek replied. “What are you talking about?”

  “We … can’t,” Vorus managed.

  “We’ve conquered half a continent, sailed for days, taken half of Orngaart, and you want to quit now?” Marek said.

  Vorus steadied himself against a post.

  “I can’t hold them together much longer. You … and the others. My power is failing.”

  Marek watched the sick man, his sunken eyes and the dried blood under his nose. He thought about killing Vorus. If ever he wanted to, this was the time. One quick swipe and the defenseless necromancer would be no more.

  “I’m leading the men into battle. You can thank me when you feel better,” Marek said.

  The truth was that the strain was getting to Vorus. It was not sickness, not some sort of illness. The skeletons were kept alive, as it were, by magic which in turn depended on Vorus’ force of will. A part of his power, his concentration and his mental strength was required to keep the dead men going, and the pressure of that was mounting.

  The headache had started a few days earlier, but Vorus had been sure that his army would take Stonehelm in just a few days. He could last that long, he had told himself. After it was all over and Stonehelm had fallen, he could rest.

  But things had gotten worse.

  The headache was growing. His whole head throbbed now. He could barely gather power enough to speak. The dark power was fuzzy and scattered. He could no longer focus it. His control was hanging by a thread, and he knew that even that wouldn’t last long.

  A serrated pain drove into his head and Vorus fell to his knees, hands over his ears. His screams echoed in his head, intensifying the misery inside. The enemy was running, shouting. Skeletons and dead men stood ready to meet them.

  Marek started forward and the others began to follow in close formation.

  The enemy was a hundred yards away and closing.

  One of the skeletons next to Marek stepped awkwardly. Leg bones splintered and the skeleton fell. Another behind him collapsed with a clatter, ancient ligaments letting loose, bones coming apart. Others were falling, loose bones landing on the snow-covered battlefield.

  The two armies came together, but the Army of the Risen was coming undone. Elbows and shoulders came apart as the dead men swung their weapons. Ancient vertebrae began to shift and separate. Decaying bones slipped out of sockets.

  The men of Orngaart attacked with everything they had, everyone pushed forward. Skeletal fiends exploded into fragments and dust.

  Some of the dead warriors were holding together, the newly reanimated dead men were intact, but no longer seemed capable of taking orders. They wandered about, some fighting, some just stumbling aimlessly. Marek tried his best to affect a fighting retreat. He managed to back up with a few hundred men. The warriors of Orngaart gave chase.

  Marek was the last to retreat.

  He was caught a few hundred yards later by two men with swords. He killed one, managed to block the other. He parried and dodged, buying time. Hairline cracks began to run through his bones. He managed to run his sword through the second man, but now there were others. The men of Orngaart were not to be denied. They saw their opportunity. Marek was surrounded.

  Men hacked at him, slashed him, furious blows coming from every angle. He managed to block a few, but others cut deep. He slipped on the frozen field, falling. A dozen blows came crashing down on him. Men were stabbing, hammering, kicking. Marek’s old bones crunched and splintered. A blow to his head finally extinguished him forever.

  Vorus knew the end was near. His power over the dead was slipping away. He had managed to give them life, to power their bony frames, but that power was escaping him like a million grains of sand running through his fingers. Soon the army would be destroyed and then the men of Orngaart would find him, and kill him. Vorus was not about to let that happen. He could save himself, even if he couldn’t save the warriors.

  Vorus lay on the cold, hard ground. His lips began to move, slightly, almost silently. He pulled a few stones from his pocket and a black feather. He arranged them with shaking hands, his eyes barely focusing enough to see. More words escaped his lips; his final plea to the Goddess of Shadow and Bone.

  A dense black fog rolled across the field. At first it stayed near ground level and then it began to billow, to coalesce and to rise. The fog rose to waist level, then shoulder height. The men of Orngaart, the defenders of Stonehelm, stopped in their tracks. What evil was this? The last of the skeletons turned and ran, their white bones disappearing in the ebony haze. The fog was thickening, rising, rolling toward Stonehelm. It had reached the full height of a man now.

  The warriors of Orngaart stepped back, coughing and gasping. The fog burned. It choked. The men abandoned their pursuit and turned back toward the city. The town and its defenders were now enveloped in a stinking, cloudy blackness. Sense of direction, like light itself, was swallowed up. Men choked, gagged, and retched, such was the stench of the fog. They ran in every direction, colliding in the inky morass.

  Vorus crawled to his carriage and found the twins standing nearby.

  He pointed toward the driver’s seat and managed to croak one word; “Go”.

  One of the twins helped Vorus into the carriage. The door slammed shut. In seconds, he felt the carriage turning and then speeding off in the other direction. Blood was pouring from his nose and Vorus saw everything doubled, fuzzy. He held the square of cloth to his nose, closed his eyes, and stretched out on the carriage floor.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The Necromancer

  The black fog had rolled right through Stonehelm. It snaked its way between tents and filled houses and shops, drifting slowly. People choked, gasped. Torches extinguished, and a cloying darkness hung over the town. It was later said that a third of the people of Stonehelm died from the nefarious mist. For a few hours, the fog obscured the very streets before it began to dissipate.

  On the battlefield, patches of dark mist clung to the hilltops. The spirits of the dead floated above the sea of corpses, shocked and confused. No matter what a person believed, death was an unsettling experience. Some spirits had moved on, others would soon. Some were overwhelmed, overcome with emotion, lost in the horror of the killing field.

  The Goddess of Shadow and Bone walked among them. She was in the form of a slender girl, topless and wearing dark leggings and high boots. A deep purple flower was tucked behind one ear. Her hair was black, though when the light hit it just right it appeared a very dark red. She muttered to herself as she tiptoed between the bodies, choosing the souls that were lost, the ones in doubt. With a wave of her hand she sent them on to the Lord of the Dead. What happened to them after that was beyond her.

  It was the least she could do. She had promised the Great Lord victory in this war. She had recommended Vorus and his plan. She had promised that darkness would rule the north lands. Now, the whole plan had collapsed. Were it not for her sending her Black Death rolling across the battlefield, Vorus and his army would have been wiped out. Total defeat. Total humiliation. Vorus had escaped, at least, and now she was trying to salvage what she could of the situation. Every soul she sent on was like an apology to The Lord of The Dead. She just hoped it was enough.

  Vorus managed to escape to the town of Elkhurst with about forty of his skeletons. From there they made a two day march to the coast. Twenty nine skeletons were still intact by then. The rest were slowly decaying, eroding. The dead men were coming apart and Vorus no longer had the strength to hold them together. Unfortunately, the men of Stonehelm were in no condition to give chase.

  Ingo Sarnesen, the sailor who had delivered the dead army to Orngaart, was drunk and had been ever since arriving in Orngaart. He had watched the army of dead men walk off his ship and he had crawled into the nearest bottle, vowing never to come out again. At least the drink would erase the memories, he hoped. If he was lucky, he thought, he would drink himself to death.
<
br />   Unfortunately for Ingo, neither of those happened. He managed to live through his drinking bouts, and his memory often served up images of the horrid, gruesome corpses that had been guests on his ship. He shivered just thinking about it.

  Ingo woke to a pounding on his door. He sat up in bed and set his feet on the cold wooden floor. The fire had long since gone out and a terrible draft flowed through the little house. That was one of the bad side effects of passing out, he thought. The pounding started up again, rousing Ingo from his thoughts. His head ached and his tongue felt thick and dry. He stood, ran a hand through his hair, and started toward the door. Who could be knocking on his door? Couldn’t people leave him to his own misery?

  Ingo opened the door. Before him stood the twin men that worked for that evil male witch, the one who was in charge of the dead men.

  “Get your crew together. You’re taking us away,” one of the twins said.

  The other handed him a small leather bag that jingled in his palm. Money. At least they paid well.

  “Look, I can’t …”

  The twins grabbed him by each arm and walked him inside.

  “The problem is … the ship, you see. She’s not seaworthy. You see when you were gone I had a … there was …“

  The twins weren’t listening.

  “The Master told us to fetch you and we’re doing it,” Mik said.

  They watched as the boatman dressed, then they walked him to the ship.

  The docks were nearly empty when Ingo and the twins arrived. The rest of the boat owners had wisely decided to evacuate the area when Vorus and his skeleton warriors appeared.

  Ingo and his crew prepared the boat to sail as Vorus and the others went aboard. Vorus went to the front and curled up in the bow, while the skeletons sat at the oars.

  Only the twins stayed and watched as the men worked the ropes and sails. They enjoyed sitting and watching the seagulls while other people worked, for a change.

  In the city of Errborg, Gahspar and Langer sat in what was once the jarl’s fortress. The town was now safe; the skeletons were destroyed, volunteer warriors now manning the gates and the walls.

  “I called you here for a reason,” Langer began.

  Gahspar waited.

  “King Reinvarr would like you to be the Governor of Errborg,” Langer said. “You will be in charge of the city, running it on a daily basis for the king. The city will, of course, be a part of Orngaart now.”

  Gahspar tried to hide his surprise. A great many things went through his head.

  “I’m no ruler. I don’t even know what a governor does,” Gahspar said.

  Langer smiled.

  “You make sure the city is safe. You make decisions. You help people. How hard is that?”

  “I’m honored by the thought,” Gahspar said. “I just don’t know …”

  “It’s for six months, maybe eight at most. After that, the king will grant you land in Orngaart,” Langer said. He paused. “Keep the city safe, that’s all. The businesses know what to do, the people go about their lives. You have only to make sure the guard is posted and the gates manned, maybe settle a few disputes,” Langer said.

  Gahspar looked down at the table and stroked his beard, which he had cut short now that he had a reliable place to sleep indoors.

  “The king wants you to do this. Having a man of Orngaart rule the city, now, that would rub the locals the wrong way. But you, you are a man of Surgaart, the only one the king knows. Do this, for King Reinvarr,” Langer said.

  Gahspar thought about having his own land, his own farm. That was a future worth looking forward to, even if it wasn’t in Surgaart. What options did he have?

  “I’ll do it,” Gahspar said.

  For days they sailed south, through cold mist that left a thin layer of ice on the ropes. The men wore their thickest clothes, layers over layers. Still the wind burned their faces and froze their hands.

  The skeletons were unsettling. They sat and rowed like the temperature was nothing to them, which it wasn’t. It was unnatural, an affront to the gods, in Ingo’s mind. The first journey with these appalling corpses had nearly driven him insane, and the second trip was proving to be worse. The necromancer was sick. He complained of a massive headache and his nose bled daily. His vision was so bad he could barely see. He spent most days huddled in the darkness under an oiled tarp. That left only the twins. They were nice enough, though fairly thick; conversation was not their strong suit. Ingo was looking for anything to distract him from the macabre skeletal things that now inhabited his ship.

  Day after day Ingo cursed his existence, cursed the dead things on board the ship and cursed the necromancer for hiring him. More than once he considered throwing himself over the side, swimming down into the frigid water as deep as he could go. By the time he surfaced, by the time they found him, he would be dead. Hopefully. After that, Ingo passed the time thinking up new ways to kill himself, knowing that he didn’t have the courage to do any of them.

  The only highlight was the demise of several of the skeletal ghouls. One moment they’d be rowing, the next they would be coming apart. Ligaments snapping, joints coming loose, bones rattling to the deck. They lost six more skeletons that way, their old bones cast over the side.

  Finally they could see their destination, the small village on the Estgaart coast that they had left weeks earlier, where they had started their voyage into Ingo’s worst nightmare.

  Ingo watched parts of the coast appear through a cold fog. Vorus stood next to him.

  “Remember, when we make land, the skeletons are off first. If anyone plans to fight me, they will have to deal with the skeletons first,” Vorus said.

  Ingo nodded, an idea forming in his head.

  They docked the boat and tied it off. The skeletons marched off while Vorus stood near the rail of the ship, waiting to see what reception they would receive. A group of local men had gathered. Had the locals planned rebellion while he was away?

  Vorus watched his undead horde walk up the dock. Ingo picked up a shovel, feeling its heft. The skeletons spread out, watching the gathered villagers with suspicion. Ingo stepped up behind Vorus and bashed his head with the shovel.

  Vorus sank to the deck, unconscious. The twins stepped forward, fists up, but the other men from Ingo’s crew faced them, ready to fight. The twins decided it wasn’t worth it.

  On the shore, more men appeared out of doorways and alleys. They were armed with axes, torches, and crude blades.

  The leader of the remaining skeletons saw the situation unfolding. He barked a command and some of his cohorts drew their swords. Others began to shake and shudder. Some of the skeletons started forward. Others fell to the ground, bones rattling. Skeletons and men came together, swords swinging. A few men fell from grievous wounds. A few more skeletons began to come apart; some just stopped in their tracks and were hacked to pieces by the men. Within moments the skeletons were coming apart, time-worn bones coming undone, limbs dropping off, vertebrae toppling like cairns of old stone. With Vorus unconscious, they had no power, no drive. They were just sets of dead, old bones.

  The men of Estgaart set on them with a fury. They beat the skeletons with everything they could. Vials of oil set more of the bone men ablaze, their desiccated skin burning like old parchment. Bones and tendons blistered and cracked. The fallen skeletons were hacked and bashed to pieces. The pieces were smashed into smaller pieces. The men did not stop until every ancient corpse was utterly destroyed.

  Ingo walked the length of the dock and watched as the last of the skeletons was thoroughly dismembered. One of the local men approached him, axe in hand.

  “You are in league with these demons?” the man said.

  “No.” Ingo said. “I was … I had no choice.”

  The man eyed him warily as two other armed men came and stood behind him.

  “We have captured the necromancer!” Ingo blurted out, pointing toward the ship.

  Two of the crew members stood on dec
k, holding the unconscious Vorus between them.

  “We are officially turning the necromancer over to you,” Ingo said “So you can do what is just and right.”

  Ingo thought that that was what the local men wanted, but he was wrong.

  “No, no. You are not leaving that monster here. His fate is for Errborg to decide. Whoever is in charge is there.”

  Ingo paused to think.

  “The necromancer’s men still hold Errborg, do they not? Awaiting his return?” Ingo asked.

  The man shook his head, then leaned on his heavy woodsman’s axe.

  “You have not heard. The town of Errborg is free again. Without that, we would not have gathered to fight here today.”

  “Errborg is …“ Ingo said.

  “Yes, you must take him to Errborg. Our part in this is done.”

  Vorus was bound thoroughly and gagged. A burlap sack was placed over his head and tied so that he could barely see. His pockets were emptied and his staff taken so that he would not have access to any of his powers. Then he was put in a borrowed hay wagon so that Ingo and one of his crewmen could take him to Errborg.

  Vorus was in bad shape. His whole head throbbed and his memory was scrambled. He remembered being on a boat, but not getting off of one. Things were fuzzy, and pieces seemed to be missing. Events were confused in his head. It all made him very tired. He just wanted to get away from everything: the pain, the confusion.

  He curled up in the back of the wagon and let the gentle rocking lull him to sleep.

  Gahspar sat in a small room looking over a big, leather bound book of records left behind by the jarl. In it was listed every business in Errborg and what they had paid in taxes. At present, Gahspar had no idea who was doing business in Errborg and he had no intention of collecting taxes. It was too complicated, for now. Let the people get back to their normal lives, Gahspar thought.