by Max Anthony
Viddo turned back to the dead mummy. The gold circlet had been damaged by Jera’s sword, which had left a deep indentation in the metal. This told Viddo at once that the item wasn’t magical. It had a fair heft and he put it into his pack.
The creature wore four rings upon its fingers and a fifth on one thumb. Viddo knew that the laws of magic only allowed the wearing of two magical rings at the same time. Sure enough, two of them were magical, though they had no way of identifying them at the moment. Viddo dropped these two into a concealed pouch at his waist, where he kept items which likely had the greatest value.
He held out his hand palm-upwards, with the other three rings on it. They were all thick bands of soft, dark gold. “Pick which one you want,” he said, offering them to Jera. She reached out tentatively and took one. She removed a gauntlet and placed the ring over her middle finger.
“I’ve never worn jewellery before,” she said. “And now I have a ring and a necklace.”
Rasmus didn’t habitually wear a ring, but took one anyway and found a finger it fitted. Viddo slid the last one over his first finger.
“I’m afraid I need to do a quick cavity search,” he informed them. “There is many a nobleman who has gone into the afterlife with a sack of gems shoved into a place one would not normally consider looking.”
The mummy’s bandages proved tougher than they looked, so Viddo used his sword. He delivered a hefty diagonal chop across its torso. The blade went through the bandages and flesh almost as if it were hungry for it. A dim blue light flickered along its length.
“That gives me a bit of a clue about what this sword might be useful for,” he said, prodding away with the blade’s tip at the dry, shrivelled innards his strike had revealed.
His searching method turned up a glint of metal and he pulled out a thin platinum chain. At the end was a small disc of metal with the image of an exquisitely beautiful woman etched on it. “This poor fellow’s wife, do you think?” he asked, feeling the memories of the ages flooding through his body and reminding him that this had once been a living creature. He shivered, wondering if he was getting old and sentimental. Whatever the truth of that, it didn’t stop him putting the necklace in the same pouch as the two magical rings. The necklace held no enchantment, though it definitely had value.
Rasmus was already looking at the mural which surrounded the insides of the crypt. There were no words, though the art was sufficient to tell this man’s story thousands of years after his death.
“It looks like he served a king,” said Rasmus, pointing to one section of the wall. “These parts here show a great battle, clearly held underground. Over there are some figures who look much more savage. I think they defeated the king whom this man once served and claimed the area over which he ruled.”
“These drawings are meant to portray the end of their civilisation,” said Viddo, looking at an area nearby.
“Perhaps the man who become this mummy perished before his civilisation died,” offered Jera. “They appear to have had sufficient time to bury him in here.”
“I wonder if this place was once filled with dead,” said Rasmus. “Long since raised as undead servants to fight for Him Without Name.”
“Something in what you say makes me think it might be true,” said Viddo. “We’ve seen a few skeletons in the alcoves. Perhaps they are more recent additions.” He shrugged.
Rasmus found himself becoming progressively more interested in the history described by the mural and would have liked to have spent some time studying it. The opportunity was denied him when Viddo picked up the sound of something in the catacombs outside. He waved for quiet and ran to the hole which Rasmus had made in the wall. There were sounds which he recognized and none of which he liked. There was a crashing noise, as of heavy metal-shod boots upon stone. Accompanying the sound was the pattering of bare feet running across a hard surface. Viddo turned to his companions.
“Dread knights coming,” he said. “And undead. Lots of them.”
15
By now, Rasmus and Viddo had already filled Jera in on most of the details pertaining to their earlier visit to the underground world. Therefore, she didn’t hold them up by asking pointless questions, or standing with her jaw open in surprise. She ran after her companions, keeping up easily enough even under the weight of her armour.
Viddo’s ears had told him that their enemy approached from the left-hand direction, with the possibility that there were more coming from the tunnel opposite to the one they’d taken to reach the central tomb. This left them with only one option and it was along the right-hand tunnel they fled. Their pursuers were not yet in sight, but the trio knew that the undead didn’t tire and it would be only a matter of time until the pursued had to slow down to catch their breath.
Viddo’s hearing rarely failed him and on this occasion, it was mostly successful at imparting accurate details into his brain. The right-hand passage was identical to the other one they’d walked along, except for the smattering of grey-skinned undead which now hurtled in their direction from ahead.
“They must be coming from all sides,” said Viddo, jumping over the falling body of the creature he’d just decapitated with his sword. Jera staggered another with her shield, allowing them to continue at speed.
In spite of Rasmus’ self-deprecating evaluation of his smallest of paunches, all three were in good physical shape and they didn’t slow down, except where they had to break stride to deal with the occasional undead which had happened to come along this passage. Viddo was an excellent swordsman and found himself rediscovering the joys of having a magical blade in his hand. He’d had swords before, but always seemed to get bored with them after a time, reverting to the dagger as his weapon of choice. This new sword had clearly been enchanted with the specific goal of doing as much damage as possible to undead flesh and he marvelled at the ease with which it took away arms, legs and heads. Jera hadn’t yet seen this side of Viddo and admitted to herself that even Goosty the Placid would have struggled to fend off the thief’s flurry of blows that he meted so enthusiastically to the grey bodies that came at them.
For her own part, Jera acted more like a battering ram than a killer. She wasn’t broad, nor heavy, yet she didn’t need to be these things. A natural warrior, she used her shield to knock the undead aside, sending them reeling or crashing to the floor.
Rasmus was putting his metaphorical feet up. There was nothing that immediately demanded that he use one of his dwindling array of spells, so he followed in the wake of his two bodyguards, occasionally lashing out with his cosh at an undead skull, or swinging his boot into a pair of undead balls. There were lady undead as well as gentlemen undead and these former received no special treatment, excepting the lack of balls to kick.
After a hard-ran half-mile, they burst free of the catacombs, entering a wide room of enormous proportions. This chamber was lit more brightly than the area they’d just left and it extended for at least fifty yards to their left and right, and another hundred yards into the distance. Grand statues lined all of the walls, twenty or more feet tall and carved in the likeness of the people shown on the mural in the mummy’s tomb.
Across the middle of the room was a wide channel, twenty yards wide and clearly not natural in origins. They weren’t able to see what lay at the bottom from here. An arched, stone bridge crossed this channel, exactly in the middle of the room. The bridge was wide and constructed of what they thought was marble. Without knowing it to be true, the romantic in Rasmus told him that this must have once been a gathering place, intended for the people who came to pay their respects to the dead in the catacombs adjacent. The ancient splendour of the room had not lost any of its magnificence even now.
“Dread knight,” said Viddo.
Rasmus and Jera had already seen it. Seven feet tall it stood, clad in plates of black metal. They were thirty yards from it – close enough to see the red orbs glowing through the visor as it stared back at them from its position in the middl
e of the bridge. At first, it looked as though it had been waiting for them, but Viddo saw that it hadn’t drawn its monstrous two-handed sword. It had been in mid-step when they’d first got here and had evidently decided to stop in place once it had spotted them. It reached over its shoulder and slid the black sword from the sheath across its back and stood silently, waiting. Then, without warning, it vanished, leaving behind only a cloud of dust. Rasmus stifled a laugh.
“What have you done?” demanded Viddo.
“I couldn’t help it,” spluttered Rasmus. “I deconstructed the bridge beneath its feet. There it was, trying to act all menacing, and now it’s fallen below. It must be well pissed off!”
Viddo raised a finger, intending to wag it in remonstration. Then, Jera giggled and Viddo lowered his finger. “I’ll bet it feels like a proper tit now,” he said, smiling in spite of himself. Everyone liked to see a smug, evil bastard get its comeuppance and Viddo was no exception.
The first of the pursuing undead arrived in the room, though not before the trio had been given time to see the damage which Rasmus had wrought upon the bridge. His magic had plucked out a twenty-feet square across the middle of it, leaving no way to cross. With the integrity of the arch ruined, there were already cracks starting to appear on the closest side as the stone sagged inwards.
“I can’t get across there,” said Jera in dismay.
“Nor me,” said Rasmus, wondering if she’d thought he was a champion long jumper himself.
There was only one amongst them who could make the jump and he wasn’t going to abandon his friends. Those undead with the greatest quantity of fast-twitch muscle fibres had left their slower brethren behind and they hurled themselves at the adventurers. Almost absent-mindedly, Viddo sliced the first one in two, and then tripped a second, sending it headlong into the channel. Jera gathered herself to defend and lifted her shield in preparation of the approaching horde, which they could now hear pattering in the distance of the catacombs.
The creatures spilled out, flooding into the room like an almost unstoppable tide. Unlike a normal tide, this particular flood was highly susceptible to explosives and Rasmus incinerated the first wave with a greater fireball spell. It detonated at the tunnel entrance, a dense, roiling sphere of red and orange, which threw the charred bodies to all corners of the room. It rolled into the catacombs, greedily ripping flesh from bones and reducing whatever remained into cinders. Viddo had to duck to avoid a fiercely burning mass of flesh. It sailed over the channel, to land wherever it would fall. There was comparative silence for a moment, broken only by the crackling of burnt undead flesh.
“That was a big one,” said Viddo, nodding sagely to himself. “Fair near took my eyebrows off.”
The brief lull was broken by the resumption of footsteps as more of the undead approached. The grey figures sprinted eagerly onwards, some falling over the destroyed bodies of their comrades, but many of them uninterrupted in their flight. There was another blast, this one much smaller than the last. It was enough to kill many and more bodies were scattered, never to rise again.
While corpses burned, Viddo looked over the edge of the channel to see if there was any possibility of escape that way. Even his thief’s night sight couldn’t see a bottom – it could have dropped away forever as far as he could see.
“We’ll not be jumping down there,” he said. “Unless you’ve got any more levitate spells?”
“None,” confirmed Rasmus.
“Invisibility spells?”
“Nope.”
“Anything else?”
“I have things available to me, yes,” said Rasmus. “Nothing that will win us this battle with a waggle of my fingers, however.”
More of the undead came close and Viddo carved a great swathe through them with one powerful sweep of his sword. Bodies fell and others came to replace them. Two dread knights appeared from the catacombs. They were slower than the smaller figures and they loomed above them, swatting the weaker creatures out of their path. Rasmus sent his last remaining fireball at them, flattening fifty or sixty of the grey-fleshed ones. When the flames cleared, the dread knights remained standing. Here and there, flames showed on the surface of their armour, where clods of burning flesh had struck them.
Jera looked around, not in panic, but with the calculating glances of someone who is still in control. They were in front of the bridge and up till this point they’d been able to easily dispatch the grey undead who had escaped the worst of Rasmus’ magic. Now, the creatures arrived in greater numbers, first five, then ten, with more coming behind.
“You take the dread knights,” came Viddo’s voice. Then, a harsh note reached the ears of Jera and Rasmus. It was followed by a grating screech and afterwards came a shrill warble. The rushing undead who were closest stopped as if they’d run into a summoned stone wall. The looks on their faces did not quite change to a calm serenity, but their snarling faces took on a calmer appearance. As the other undead came closer, they too stopped. The dread knights didn’t slow and they waded through the crowds of lower-level creatures that had now forgotten all thoughts of combat.
“You two! My great grandfather could knock you both down with a feather!” came the voice of Jera, alluring and beautiful. As she spoke the words, she backed away from the ever more tightly-packed throng of grey figures until she found an area of open space in which she thought she could fight. One of the dread knights changed course to follow, but the other did not and it remained on its path towards Viddo. The thief continued to play notes on his magical flute.
“Be a bit more insulting!” said Rasmus.
Jera swallowed. She didn’t like to use rude words, having decided in her younger years that if the only thing she had to say was an oath, it might be better if she said nothing at all.
“You! Have your balls fallen off?” she asked, feeling uncomfortable as the words left her mouth.
“That’s it!” said Rasmus “Keep on at it!”
The second dread knight looked in Jera’s direction and drifted slightly off course. It was thousands of years old and not easily fooled by an opponent in her early twenties. Nevertheless, it looked interested now.
“You’ve got bigger tits than my mother, you potbellied louse from a dog’s shit-covered scrotum!” Jera yelled, blushing as she did so.
The language was unknown to the dread knight and it had no idea what the words meant. Even so, it struggled to resist the lure. It failed and marched after the second, trampling the smaller undead in its sudden haste, determined to crush the life from this taunting woman.
Off to one side, Viddo nearly choked as he heard Jera let rip and missed his intended note. The undead which surrounded him didn’t seem to notice. In fact, he saw that one or two had started to tap their feet to some imagined rhythm that certainly wasn’t conveyed by Viddo’s squawking flute. Buoyed by his musical success, he played with increased gusto, releasing a harsh cacophony that hurt his ears, but which seemed to meet with the approval of his audience. Still playing, he turned so that he was facing the shattered bridge. He stepped over the wide stress crack and walked a few paces forward. The undead shuffled a few paces after him.
Twenty-five yards away, the first dread knight reached Jera. Its sword was drawn, which Jera noted was taller than she was. Without hesitation, the black-armoured creature swung the weapon in a great slash aimed at her neck. Jera had a warrior’s eye and in this split-second she could already tell that her opponent wasn’t a simple ‘club-them-to-death’ two-handed sword wielder as many were. This creature was far more dangerous than that. Even so, Jera felt that she’d learned much in the short time she’d been in the company of Rasmus and Viddo. She raised her shield.
At the bridge, Viddo inched a few more paces away from the adulating crowd. At least in his head he told himself they were adulating. To look at their faces one might have used several different adjectives to describe them. The most important thing was that they weren’t trying to kill him. One particularly free-
thinking undead was doing a lively jig, its elbows and knees high as it spun and capered. With the flute still pressed to his lips, Viddo steeled himself. Then, he turned and sprinted away at speed towards the gap in the bridge, reaching a velocity that no other adventuring profession could hope to attain – without magical assistance, at least. As he launched himself over the gap, he heard a sound that was nearly as harsh as that coming from his flute – it was that of metal striking metal.
The first blow from the death knight hurt Jera’s shield arm. Nevertheless, she deflected the black metal sword to one side. Her own sword snaked out, catching the dread knight in the armour joints at the elbow. It was an attack made on the defensive and it didn’t penetrate, nor cause any appreciable injury. The dread knight was too skilled to have been unbalanced by the deflection of its slash and it swung the sword in preparation for another bludgeoning strike, wielding it as if it weighed almost nothing. As it did so, blue sparks lit up its armour, darting rapidly into the joints. The death knight didn’t quite stagger, but it was sufficiently thrown that Jera was able to dodge the black sword and clang a counterattack against its vambraces. The second dread knight arrived, approaching her flank and holding its sword high.
Viddo nearly didn’t make it. Having to keep one hand on the flute was something of an impediment to his running action and his front foot only just reached the other side of the gap. He stood precariously balanced for a second, before throwing himself onto his stomach and scrabbling his lower legs onto the bridge. With scarcely a note missed, Viddo leapt to his feet and blew out what he thought was a series of especially alluring sounds. Across from him, the first of the grey figures walked off the edge of the bridge as they tried to respond to this beautiful, irresistible music. They fell silently through the air, vanishing into the impossible depths below. More of them came – ten, fifty, a hundred, all of them walking happily to their doom, with those behind jostling to take their turn.
