by Bruce Blake
“Traitor. How could you do this to your king? To your kingdom?”
Perdaro’s laughter echoed down the tunnel and Sienhin felt heat rise in his cheeks. He concentrated to keep anger from quaking his sword hand.
“This kingdom was lost long ago—long before Braymon ever fell. It just didn’t know it yet.” He brandished the glowing end of his staff toward the general. “Do you see this? That’s not flame, old friend, it’s magic. How can you fight it? And them.” He gestured again at the undead soldiers.
“I care not for your magic and your dead men, Hahn.” Sienhin took a step forward, closing the distance between himself and his adversaries, and felt a familiar calmness descend on his mind despite his outward bluster. It was ever this way with a fight imminent. “I care only for my homeland.”
“Don’t be foolish, Sir Alton. This is a battle you cannot win. Lay down your sword and join me. I have the Archon’s ear, and I’ll make sure she knows of your cooperation. You will be compensated.”
“You can have that whore’s ear. I’ll not lay my sword down until I have her head.”
“As you like.”
Perdaro stepped back and swept his arms forward. With the gesture, the five undead soldiers advanced, chipped swords and rusted axes in hand.
The general’s muscles tensed, ready to accept their attack, but his gaze flickered away at the feel of a cold touch around his knees. A billowy white mist had crept into the drainage tunnel from one of the side ducts. It resembled a mist that might collect in a meadow with the dawn of a springtime sun, and it floated past him as though it moved with a purpose, collecting in the space between him and the dead men. Sienhin’s legs and sword arm strained to the point of pain.
What manner of deviltry is this?
The Kanosee dead men halted at the sight of it, seemingly unwilling to let their lifeless flesh contact the vapor. It swirled a slow, gentle circle, then extended upward into a slender column.
“What are you waiting for?” Perdaro screeched. “Kill him!”
The Kanosee soldiers looked at each other with dead eyes and hesitated a second longer. In that instant, the column of mist rectified itself into the shape of a ghostly woman. Sienhin gasped a half-breath in surprise but stopped himself for fear inhaling the mist might prove deadly.
“Whore,” he muttered raising his sword.
The translucent woman advanced on him before the soldiers did and, before she made contact with him, he saw it wasn’t the Archon, but a face he didn’t know. Then the ghostly woman’s hands touched his chest and, instead of passing through him or wrapping around him as a mist should have done, her palms hit him like a mace, knocking his wind free of his lungs and sending him from his feet.
The general tumbled backward, arms thrashing for balance. The torch hit the murky water first, hissing as it extinguished and throwing the tunnel into the sickly green glow of Hahn Perdaro’s staff, but Sienhin’s experience of it was short-lived. His back hit the water, then his head. In an instant, the sludgy liquid surrounded him, covered him.
Foul fluid touched his tongue, rubbed against his eyes. The black water muted the light of Perdaro’s staff to a far-off turquoise tint, but Sienhin paid it little attention, for in a matter of seconds the undead soldiers, or the ghost woman, or both, would be on him. He fought his throat’s urge to gag the squalid water from his mouth and attempted to sit up and remove himself from its depths, to bring his sword to bear in defense, but it felt as though a weight sat atop his chest, holding him below the surface.
He blinked flecks of detritus out of his eyes and flailed uselessly under the water. The turquoise hue grew brighter, changed in quality, and something about it made Sir Alton Sienhin cease his thrashing. He sank to the bottom, black water cradling him until he settled in the layer of sludge. His back touched the bricks and a calmness settled in on him.
This is the end then.
The thought of dying didn’t scare him; he’d faced death more times than he could count or wanted to try. But with him died Therrador’s message. With him died the hope of the kingdom. The weight of his failure weighed him down, held him under the water.
Then the flash came, startling him. Orange-yellow light bright enough to penetrate the murky water and nearly blind him flashed like a bolt of lightning. It remained for a second, maybe two, then disappeared and darkness descended—no orange-yellow light, no turquoise glow. Sienhin rose off the bottom as though rescued by helping hands. His face broke the surface and he coughed viscous fluid out of his lungs and throat and nose.
Breath surged into his chest and decades of combat brought his sword up, ready for an attack as he lay in the water. None came. Sienhin remained stationary, his blade held over him, only his eyes moving as they darted side-to-side. He sensed no movement in the darkness, heard no sound save the plunk of water droplets falling from his blade. A gust of foul wind buffeted his cheeks and sent a wave washing over his nose before it died away. After a few seconds, he drew another ragged breath through his nostrils. He never would have thought he’d be happy to draw such a rank smell into his chest, but it was better than sucking polluted water into his lungs.
Wondering where a breeze had come from in an underground tunnel, Sienhin struggled to his feet and tossed aside the useless torch he still held in his left hand. It banged against the wall and landed in the water with a mute splash, as though it hit something below the surface. The general gritted his teeth and swallowed hard, struggling the taste of sewage down his throat, then moved toward the spot where the torch had landed.
He advanced cautiously, dragging his feet on the slimy bottom and probing the dark in front of him with the tip of his sword. As he moved, the smell of sewage dissipated, overpowered by another odor that brought a hard lump to the back of the general’s throat.
The smell of burnt flesh.
Sir Alton pressed forward another step, squinting against the darkness, and realized he could see a little, the tunnel illuminated by a tiny light under the water to his right. His eyes flickered toward it, saw the spot of green light beneath the surface some distance away, then he looked back to his target ahead. A dark mass, blacker than the black water, floated near the wall. Three more steps brought him close enough to see it was one of the undead Kanosee soldiers floating face down. He pushed the tip of his sword into its side; it sank in a couple of inches without reaction.
That one’s no longer un-dead.
Closer to the body, the acrid smell of burnt flesh was enough to make the veteran soldier hold his breath. He reached forward with his free hand and grabbed the Kanosee’s wrist to turn him, but when he pulled on him to do so, the flesh of the thing’s forearm and hand stripped off like a macabre glove. Sienhin tossed it aside to hit the water with a hollow slap.
What in the name of the Gods happened?
The general faced the dim light and started toward it, wading carefully through the murky water. Between him and his goal, he saw other darker patches floating. Each of them he touched with the tip of his sword; none of them reacted. A disembodied head floated by. An arm. A leg. Things so badly damaged they were rendered unrecognizable.
How did I survive this?
Dank water splashed around his knees as he approached the light and he heard a noise that made him stop. For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of dripping water and the lap of the tiny waves created by his movement sloshing against dismembered body parts.
Then he heard it again: a moan from the vicinity of the underwater glow. Perhaps a human sound, perhaps not. Sienhin inhaled a distasteful breath into his chest and moved toward the sound.
A few strides away, the glow cast enough light for him to see the man slouching precariously against the tunnel wall. In the dim illumination, his skin looked black, his physique frail, and Sienhin wondered if this might be the fiend responsible for the blinding flash of light that almost ended his life. He extended the tip of his sword at the man’s throat.
“Who are you, devil?”
White eyes, a stark contrast against the black skin, moved lazily at the sound of his voice, but the man did not otherwise move. Sienhin took two more steps.
“Speak or die,” he barked.
A sound whispered through charred lips, a sibilance that might have been nothing more than a breath. The general leaned closer, his blade pressed close to the man’s throat.
“Did you do this? Did you kill them all?”
He turned his ear toward the man. A click sounded at the back of his parched throat, then words hissed past a swollen tongue.
“Ssssssienhinnn. Hhhhhhelpp meeeeee.”
Sienhin pulled his face away from the man, looked into his eyes and saw pain in them. The eyelids were burned away, the ability to blink taken with them. The man’s nose was gone, his cheeks blackened and cracked. All the hair was melted from his head.
“Perdaro.”
The general lowered his sword and looked the man up and down. Tatters of clothing hung from his shoulders and a patch of flesh burnt red rather than charred black showed through his shirt. His fingers were curled to useless claws, his arms bent crooked and tight by tendons shrunken with the heat. Sienhin’s lips flattened to a thin line beneath his bushy mustache. No man should have to endure such pain.
Almost no man.
“Sssienhinnn. K-k-k-kill mmmmeeee.”
He stared at the man, remembering who he’d been, or who he’d thought he was before he sold out his kingdom. Had he ever been the man Sienhin thought him to be? Or was it years of trickery and deception, living behind a facade, a mask hiding his true nature and allegiance from those closest to him? Now he’d never know.
Sienhin raised his blade to the man’s throat again, pressed its edge against his flesh and watched as the burnt and destroyed face of Hahn Perdaro flinched with the pain of its touch.
“You deserve death,” the general said leaning close to his one-time compatriot’s ear. “But you do not deserve mercy.”
He stepped back and slid his sword back into its scabbard.
Without lips or eyelids, the burnt man was incapable of showing expression, yet Sienhin saw a change in his eyes as panic rose in them. Had he been able to move, he’d have undoubtedly grasped at the general’s clothes, begged him for death, but he could only look back with those panicked, pleading eyes. Breath huffed between his teeth, perhaps intended as words, but Sir Alton Sienhin didn’t stop to find out.
Instead, the veteran warrior plunged his hand into the murky water and retrieved the staff. Its end glowed with eldritch light, an untrustworthy light, but he needed it to help him make his way down the tunnel. He extended it in front of himself and sloshed away, leaving the Voice of the People to his torturous pain and whatever fate might befall him.
Chapter Eighteen
With one quick movement, the undead soldier yanked the mask off Graymon’s face. Khirro slid an inch of the dagger’s blade out of its sheath, but stayed his hand when he saw the face of the living soldiers wrinkle with disgust; he stole a glance at the boy’s face.
Athryn’s magic had worked equally as well on Graymon as it had on Khirro. One side of the boy’s face looked red and wet, glistening in the sun, the other side unscathed. Khirro wondered if this was how Athryn himself looked before his wound healed to the pink, shiny scar he’d had before the Necromancer healed it.
The undead soldier dropped the mask back in place over Graymon’s face.
“What did you do to him?” one of the others asked.
“Tried to escape,” Khirro replied rumbling the words in the back of his throat. “Taught him not to try again.”
“Long as he’s alive, I guess. The witch don’t care what he looks like.”
The second soldier punched the first’s arm. “Don’t call her that.” He gestured toward first Khirro then the undead soldier. “She got ears everywhere, Tugg.”
Tugg shrugged. “Least we get to go back to camp now.”
The two men started back down the road the way they came, toward the salt flats and the Kanosee army camp sprawled across them. The dead man stood in front of Khirro, blocking his way, watching him; expressionless, emotionless. Khirro pulled his lips back to expose his teeth and growled a low rumble at the back of his throat.
What am I doing?
He didn’t know if the dead acted this way, but felt he needed to do something. The thing stared at him a second longer, then turned away to follow his living companions. Khirro released his breath slowly and relaxed his knotted shoulder muscles before looking to Athryn. The magician nodded shallowly. Traveling with the enemy was far from ideal, but it would get them where they wanted to go.
“Come,” Khirro gruffed and yanked on the rope as he started down the road. At the end of it lay the Isthmus Fortress and his beleaguered country, a kingdom he was destined to save.
Or watch perish.
***
Tugg and the other soldier, Mandich, sat near the fire warming their hands and slowly turning a rabbit skewered on a makeshift spit. Flames crackled with the juice dripping from the meat and wispy gray smoke carried the odor of it cooking toward the clear night sky.
Khirro stood off to the side, away from the two Kanosee and the dead man standing erect and unmoving behind them, guarding his prisoners who sat on a fallen log a pace behind him. Each breath he inhaled drew the sweet aroma of cooking meat into his nose, sending it directly to his empty stomach. He felt it stir and move, ready to gurgle its emptiness to the world, and it was for this reason he stood so far away from the others. He hadn’t seen the dead man eat, and could think of no reason why one would be hungry once dead, so why would his stomach growl?
The undead warrior stared across the fire at Khirro, his gaze unwavering, unblinking, as though he expected to catch them at something. Khirro stared back, holding the thing’s eyes, but his legs felt weary after their flight, and he struggled to keep them from shaking. He was exhausted and needed to rest.
Do dead men sleep?
Watching the monster in his black mail splashed with red, it didn’t seem so. The thing stood so steady and unmoving, Khirro couldn’t even detect his chest rising and falling with breath. But why should it? If a dead man didn’t need to eat or rest, why would he need to breathe? Khirro made his own breathing as shallow as he could in an attempt to keep the necessity of life from giving away the fact he wasn’t dead.
The other two soldiers chatted and laughed as they rotated the rabbit on the spit, but Khirro tried not to listen to their conversation. The subject matter made him uncomfortable: wenches they’d raped, soldiers they’d killed, acts of bravery they’d performed. He doubted their words held much truth, but he didn’t like what they said nonetheless, even less so with Graymon sitting within earshot.
Why can’t they mind their manners? Do they have to be so crude? Do they--
Athryn shuffled in his seat on the log, feet scuffling in the dirt, and gently nudged Khirro on the back of his foot. Khirro’s head jerked up, surprised; Athryn had caught him on the edge of dozing on his feet.
Khirro looked across the fire, hand hovering near the hilt of the short sword hanging at his side, but his undead counterpart hadn’t moved. He resisted the urge to sigh with relief and stood a little more rigid; the scare of how close he’d come to giving them away made alertness that much easier.
Athryn kicked the back of his foot again, this time more obvious about it. Khirro grunted and faced him, hand on sword.
“The boy needs to make water,” the magician said looking Khirro in the eye. One of his eyelids fluttered slightly, signaling.
Khirro looked back at the fire and saw Tugg removing the rabbit from the spit.
“Eat first,” Khirro said, “then piss.”
He gestured for Tugg to bring the prisoners some meat.
“Pssh. Let them starve, I say. They’re the enemy.”
“I don’t know, Tugg,” Mandich said. “It’ll take us a week to get back to the fortress. What if they don’t make it? What
would the wit...the Archon do to us if we bring them back dead?”
Tugg looked at the rabbit, then at the prisoners. “There ain’t much here.” He reached down and pulled a small knife out of his boot. “I guess they can have a taste to keep them goin’.”
He carved a piece off the thigh of the rabbit and held it out pinched between his thumb and the blade of the knife but remained seated. Khirro strode to him, watching as the eyes of the undead soldier followed his path. He held out his hand and Tugg placed the piece of rabbit meat on his gauntleted palm, then shaved a second piece and gave that to him as well. Khirro waited for a third.
“That’s all they get or there ain’t enough for Mandich and me.”
Khirro grunted and turned away; there would be no meat for him, it seemed. As he walked back to Graymon and Athryn, the smell of the food found his nose again. Savory, fatty. His mouth watered and he felt a gurgling protestation rise in his belly. He hurried his pace to get away from the others, reaching his companions as his gut let go with a loud, hungry growl.
“Here’s your dinner,” Khirro grated, hoping his words covered the sound of his traitorous stomach.
Graymon reached out and snatched a piece of meat from Khirro’s hand, lifted the too big black mask off his face and jammed all of it in his mouth at once, chewing hungrily.
“Give him my piece, too,” Athryn said.
Graymon’s hopeful gaze moved to the magician, then back to the meat in Khirro’s hand, but he didn’t take it. Khirro pushed his hand toward him.
“Take it.”
The boy did, chewing it with as much relish as he did the first piece. Khirro watched him eat, his own belly rumbling. A line of hungry spittle spilled over Graymon’s bottom lip and down his chin; he wiped it away on the sleeve of his shirt and Khirro’s eyes widened as the scar on his chin and the bottom of his cheek wiped away with it. Instinctively, he shifted to keep himself between Graymon and the Kanosee soldiers, then waved his arm toward the line of trees.
“Piss now,” he growled.
“But I don’t--” Graymon began through the meager mouthful of rabbit.
