by Annie Bellet
My mind turned and spun and despaired as I tried to think of other ways in which what I had seen could be interpreted. The sigils left on the tatters of the skeletons, combined with the horror of the deathwym, on top of a huge pack of hellhounds had little other explanation, and so it was with a heavy heart and heavier step I accepted the decision my companions and the few survivors of Fallbarrow came to.
We would stay in the village. Bury the dead, put out what fires we could, and prepare for another night. If no stragglers came from the outlying farms by dawn the next day, we would set out and try to guard these last few as we made a run for the lake. If we could reach the shores of Ghost Lake, we might be able to hail one of the boats and get across to Clearbarrow and warn the Duke of Barrows. At least Clearbarrow had a Guild chapterhouse.
I knew in my heart that no number of bold adventurers could stop the Saliidruin. I admired the ability to go on in the face of such odds and rallied myself to stand and help. At least if I were to die here, I would die with my bow in my hand and in the commission of a final heroic act.
The day’s work was grim. Grit clogged my eyes and nose and blood turned my hands sticky and black as I helped lay out the dead and dig what graves we could. Azyrin and Rahiel had been ordered to sleep as we guessed we would need our spellcasters come dark, so I labored alongside the handful of villagers and the boy Alew.
He did not blink nor complain and I watched him sidelong. The boy had turned a man overnight amid the horror and it was clear from his steady brown gaze and stiff shoulders that he was aware of his new burdens.
As the shadows grew longer, we finished what we could do and all took shelter in the shade of the temple, drinking cold water and trying to swallow bread that tasted like dust and stuck in my throat. No one had come in from the farms. No birds sang. The only insect noise was the low hum of the flies feeding on the pools of blood where some had not yet dried into the earth or where it had splashed on stone and wood.
Cher emerged from the temple, her face frantic as her eyes searched for Alew.
“Is Enil not with you?” she asked, wringing her hands in her dress.
“No, we left him sleeping inside with you.” Emili jumped up, looking between Alew and Cher’s worried faces as Alew shook his head.
I rose and grabbed my hauberk, pulling the elven leather over my sweat and gore-stained shirt. I had made a promise to their father that I would keep his children safe. Though we were all likely to die before the next dawn, I couldn’t give up. As if he sensed my intent, Fade rose from the shadow of the unicorn statue and lifted his nose into the slight breeze. He had stuck close to me all day, despite the amount of strange humans around, and if my own knowledge hadn’t convinced me of our doom, his flattened ears, constant growling, and tucked tail would have done the job.
Eying the sky, I guessed I had an hour at most before the last rays of the bloody sun fell away behind the golden hills and left me exposed to the undead horde.
Alew picked up a wood-cutting axe and came up beside me as I strung Thorn. I glanced at him and wished I could shake my head. He would only slow me down, though I admitted I wasn’t sure what I would do if Fade and I managed to find his surly, frightened brother. I could hardly talk the child into coming back to the illusory safety of the temple. Maybe I could hit him gently in the head and drag him back.
“He’s gone back for Da,” Alew said, his voice carrying only the smallest tremor of fear. “I’m going.”
“Me, too,” Drake said, twisting his neck from side to side to work out the kinks.
The more the merrier, I thought. At least I wouldn’t die out there alone. With that depressing thought, I set out after Fade.
Beside me, Alew whispered, “Thank you, lady elf.” And that just made it all worse.
* * *
My muscles were exhausted, my shirt itchy beneath my armor, and I could hear from the increasingly ragged breathing of my two companions that I wasn’t the only one hitting their limits. Fortunately, the young boy hadn’t covered his trail at all and didn’t have much of a start on us. Broken and bent grasses showed his path and Fade had no trouble leading us in the growing twilight.
It was still dangerously close to dusk when we caught up to him. The idiot human started running when he saw Fade, but the mist-lynx caught him and had carefully shoved him to the dirt, putting a paw, claws sheathed, on the child’s back until we caught up. His brother was not so gentle.
“You knucklebrained idjeet,” Alew yelled as he yanked Enil to his feet.
“I gotta bury Da or he’ll turn into one of them burning dead!” Enil’s face was stubborn beneath the tearstains and streaks of dirt.
“Argue later, boys,” Drake muttered, eying the hills around us.
Fade’s low, continuous growl convinced them both. We turned back toward the village, running as quickly as we could, even Enil’s tired legs keeping a speed born of shame and terror as the last rays of daylight sank away beyond the now dark hills.
We almost made it. The windmill reared up against a starry sky and the huddled lumps of houses marked how close we were when the first of the Saliidruin dead attacked. It was a sign of my extreme exhaustion that I broke one of the fundamental rules of adventuring.
Always. Look. Up.
The hrafen descended upon us from above. The huge bird, its body the size of a warhorse and its wings thrice that span, dropped down and snatched up both Drake and Enil in its foul claws before I could react. My dulled senses barely registered the foul wave reeking from its inky feathers. Drake’s yell and Enil’s scream turned me back in time to see the huge undead bird change course and start to pump its wings for altitude.
Alew swung at it with his axe but its huge beak, as big as the boy’s torso, knocked him into the grass, batting the axe from his hands as though it were a toy.
Fade crouched beside me, hissing, but seemingly unwilling to spring on this new monster. I let an arrow fly and had another pulled before the first stuck just above the claw holding Drake’s squirming, yelling form. He was stabbing the scaly claw over and over with a dagger, but it was my arrow that caused the fiendish creature to drop him. My second arrow sank out of sight into one of the wings.
The hrafen gained more altitude as Drake tumbled to the ground and lay still. Enil’s screams were cut short as I was knocked from my feet by a final powerful buffet of its wings, the choking stench of rotting meat and sun-bloated bodies turning my stomach, blinding me to anything but my own nausea and fear for too long a moment.
I lurched to my feet and aimed another arrow at the fiend, but it was a dark and shrinking blot against the stars now. Spitting blood and bile, I ran to where Drake had fallen.
My friend wasn’t moving but I heard him taking uneven breaths as I bent over him, turning his body with as much care as I could in my haste. Tears stung my eyes as the wet metal scent of fresh blood cleared the stench of the undead. Drake’s eyes opened briefly, he almost seemed to smile, and then they closed. But he kept on breathing.
Don’t you die on me, you damned bastard, I swore at him in my mind. Unable to tell the extent of his injuries, I lifted him up, throwing him over my shoulder and steadying his lanky bulk with my left arm as I grabbed up Thorn in my right. Drake had a scant inch on me in height and some stone on me in weight, but my Elemental Elven blood gave me strength beyond the usual for mortals. Even if it hadn’t, I think I could have flown if I had to in order to get my friend to the dubious safety of the temple.
A groan behind me told me Alew lived. He stumbled to his feet and stared at me with blank eyes. He had no grave injury I could see, so I turned away from him, moving as quickly as I could to the village, Fade a silent and deadly shadow ahead of us. A dead man’s voice rang in my mind, berating me for letting one of his children go and showing so little concern for another. I shoved the farmer’s accusing eyes out of my head. Drake was more important to me than any oath.
Chaos greeted us. Azyrin and Makha stood outside the temple wi
th Rahiel and Bill standing on the sloping slate roof. The two clerics, plump Odyll and gaunt Titor, were crouched over a broken form in front of the statue of Thunla. Cher clung, screaming, to her aunt Emili, who looked as though she, too, would prefer to be screaming instead of trying to hold the young girl back.
The broken shape was Enil. I guessed the hrafen had dropped him onto the unicorn statue, since the body and base now carried a fresh, wide smear of blood. Accusing words rang in my mind once again and a new wave of tears and despair washed over me in an unwelcome rush.
“No, no, no, no, no,” crooned Alew over and over as he ran past me.
I stumbled forward, and it was then that Azyrin saw me staggering under Drake’s weight.
“Killer, what happened?” he asked, rushing forward with Makha as they took Drake from my shoulder.
I gave him a look, knowing that in his fear and concern he’d forgotten I would never answer.
“My brother,” Alew cried as the two priests rose and rushed to help Azyrin take Drake into the temple.
“Your brother is dead. This man lives.” Titor’s voice was soft but his tone held a cold reality. “We must get inside.”
Fade’s growl brought my attention back to the village square. The skeletal army and its horde of hellhounds arrived inside that same deadly silence that had cloaked them the night before. They slunk through the shadows with the slow finality of an advancing tidal wave, in no rush to crush the last bits of life inside.
The undead seemed to know as well as I that all was lost here and that it wasn’t we who fought on the winning side this night.
I shook out my arm muscles and nocked an arrow, checking my quiver. I had a good supply, the metal tips still glowing faintly with Azyrin’s spell. I vowed in my mind that I would empty my quiver before I fell.
Here, with the light from the temple, I could see my adversaries clearly. Their armor was old and chipped, held together with rotting straps. Dull red light, like old blood, burned where their eye sockets would have been. The Saliidruin people had looked more like elves than man, but those features were gone now except for their height, the flesh long rotted from the pale bones that gleamed beneath the dirt-stained pewter color of their armor. Bits of embroidered baldrics and cloaks hung improbably from their armor, the eternal flame of Saliidruin picked out in threads that had lost all color millennia gone. Each face held a maniacal grin carved into the bones forever by lack of lips, flesh, or form.
Broken teeth clicked and gnashed, leaf-shaped swords beat on horned shields, and the hellhounds growled as the horde advanced enough to encase me within their bubble of silence. I held my shot, waiting. Beside me, Jes the blacksmith stepped up, not too close, wielding a heavy double-sided hammer. On her other side, Makha emerged from the temple with Azyrin at her side, both of them with their swords drawn. Azyrin murmured in his native tongue, his free hand gripping his talisman and the sky above crackled with heat lightning as he summoned the power of his storm god.
I glanced his way and wished I could ask if Drake would live. Not that it mattered. I saw the final acceptance of our fates on my companions stubborn faces. We lined up to die in battle, as all adventurers knew they might. Above us, Rahiel and Bill took the sky, the pixie-goblin holding two slender rods. I could not read her expression from this distance, but I imagined that same determination and resignation resided there.
For Drake. I sent the first arrow crushing through one dull red eye, reducing the horde by one skeleton. My arrows would do little good against their bodies, but as with most undead, destroy the head and the animating power goes with it.
Lighting smashed down from the sky as Azyrin yelled for the grace of his god. The air crackled with electricity, and my hair seemed to tug on my scalp as it pulled from the static. The bolts tore into the ranks of the skeletons, frying some where they stood down to a jumble of bones, and coursing among the hellhounds, pushing the circle of enemies into disarray.
Chanting rose from behind us, and the temple itself began to glow with white light, repelling the hellhounds that were trying to flank us along the granite walls. I recognized Odyll’s voice as it joined with Titor’s. Vines sprang up from the packed earth courtyard, tripping up the skeletal army as they stumbled forward, holding them in place for Azyrin’s lightning to ravage and Rahiel’s blue bolts to destroy.
And pinning them for my arrows. I picked my targets carefully, aiming for one shot, one kill, hoping to take as many as I could with me. I spread my feet and set my stance, evening my breathing to the rhythm of my pulls. That one. Dead. Another. Dull eyes turning from red to empty as each of my arrows found its mark and crushed in skull after gruesomely smiling skull.
For a few glorious minutes, we held off the horde.
Then the hrafen returned, its body blotting out the sky above as it swept down toward Rahiel and Bill. It had a rider this time, a tall and spiked shape clinging to its foul feathered back.
Cold, a deep bone chill I’d never felt before, sank over me, locking my arms in midpull of my bow. Every hair on my body seemed to stand on end and my knees buckled, only training combined with sheer will keeping me on my feet. A terrible pealing chant boomed in the air, and the floundering undead horde pulled back, regrouping in its semicircle around us.
Hellhounds, cloaking swirling shadows, charged the two clerics behind me, leaping past me as though they knew that both Fade and I were held frozen. I screamed inwardly for my body to react, to move, but the lethargy had me and my bones might as well have turned to ice for all my body responded.
Odyll screamed, a horrible ragged sound cut short with a slickly sickening gurgle.
Death Knight. I knew it in my frigid bones. Death’s avatar itself rode the hulking hrafen. This chill was the touch of death. My fight was over.
The spell shattered as the most pure note I had ever heard in my life rang against the Death Knight’s chant. As the freeze slid from my bones, I looked up to see Rahiel flying free of Bill’s back.
The mini-unicorn was screaming. Or singing. I couldn’t begin to understand how he made such a beautiful and joyful note in the midst of death itself. One moment he was a little pink-and-gold unicorn, no bigger than a farm dog, the next, he expanded, turning flaming gold and white, growing and growing until I had to turn my head.
Oh, I thought, feeling like an idiot for not ever even speculating on what was obvious now. Bill. Billarhian. Consort of the goddess Thunla. One question answered, five hundred more now lurking.
Bill, burning with golden power, engaged the hrafen, his horn tearing into the screeching fiend. The Death Knight leapt free of its back and dropped to the ground, the earth shaking as he landed just beyond the temple.
I tore my eyes from the sky and brought my bow up. Only a handful of arrows left. Fade’s growls and the dying shrieks of hellhounds behind me told me that my mist-lynx was doing his best to avenge the clerics. Makha and Azyrin advanced even as the horde parted, allowing their lord and master to engage us.
I had no way to cry a warning or explain to my friends why, even with the help from a goddess’s consort, we were all going to die. All I could do was try to go down fighting with them.
The Death Knight stood ten feet tall. His armor was intact, and he had a howling demon’s visage on his vast shield, which stood nearly as tall as I and half again as wide. Blood-colored rags were all that was left of his cloak, hanging off his spiked armor like shredded flesh. His six-foot sword glowed with veins of red and his eyes burned with the same chill fire as the deathwyrm’s. The Knight moved with the floating grace of a dancer, despite the plate armor and his large weapons. He laughed, a horrible, hollow sound, as he advanced.
The chill threatened to take my bones again, but I loosed the arrow in my hand and the very act of fighting back seemed to shove away the touch of Death. My arrow shattered on the dark grey armor, same as it would have against Makha’s Saliidruin scalemail. I hoped that her armor would hold up against a weapon created by the same race th
at forged the mail.
Azyrin called down lightning from the sky again, though it was clear he would pay a hefty price if we miraculously managed to survive this night, as the drain on his strength staggered him. Makha hesitated in her advance as crackling golden light wreathed the Death Knight. The Knight’s own shadowy power absorbed the lightning and the evil one laughed again.
A scream from above and the foul rush of wings dragged my attention upward once more. Bill had gored the hrafen and molten gold seemed to be burning it apart from the inside as it tumbled out of the sky and crashed in a burning, stinking heap onto one of the abandoned houses. At least that was one battle we would win.
The Death Knight cried out something in a language my mind refused to hear, the words themselves anathema, oily and evil, slamming into me like a physical blow. I fell backward, twisting to catch myself with my left arm and to spare Thorn any potential damage.
Bill screamed back but his power was diminishing even as he dropped down and charged the Death Knight, the unicorn’s burning gold fading and his huge body shrinking back down to miniature size.
With a shriek, Rahiel attacked, her tiny butterfly wings propelling her quickly toward the Death Knight even as the evil creature raised its shield and batted away Bill as though he were no more than a nuisance. The mini-unicorn, now mini again, flew into the side of the temple behind me. I turned my head to see him in a pale pink-and-gold heap, unmoving. To the side of him, I was surprised to see Titor, a short sword in hand, still alive and standing over the torn body of his fellow priest, guarding the closed doors of the temple.
“You evil death whore of a bastard magicless ogre,” screamed Rahiel. She flew right at the Death Knight, wands in her hands, ignoring the warning yell from Makha.
Shadowy tendrils snaked from the Death Knight and blocked the crackling bolts that flew from both her wands. The tentacles latched onto the pixie-goblin, tearing into her delicate green-and-purple wings and flinging her to the ground. A pack of hellhounds closed in around her and she was lost from view.
