Byzantium, Book 1: Dead Men's Road

by I.A. Watson

  Alfosus scowled and gestured for his guard to unhitch the bullock pair. “I’m beginning to regret setting out for Byzantium,” he admitted.

  “No man regrets a visit to the capital,” Rhodin assured him. “The journey might be difficult but the destination is reward enough.” He looked over at the stock in the slaver’s cage. “I see you’ve heard of our famous auction mart.”

  “My brother brought a consignment across two years ago. Made quite a killing with a plump breasted Sarmatian dancing girl and a couple of fair headed lads raided from Eire. I might have picked a bad time to try my luck, though.”

  “Oh, Duke Sebastio will restore order soon enough. I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t encounter Imperial Brigades heading out along the road to meet us. In the meantime we just have to be patient.” The courier eyed the sweet faced twins at the back of the cage wagon. “Are they available, by any chance? Since it looks like we’re going to have a wait.”

  “Something might be possible,” Alfosus conceded. He’d seen the intense Kirkgrim leave the train ten minutes before halt was called. “I’m not whoring these chicks out to the commoners of the caravan, you understand, but for a gentleman like yourself…”

  He would have gone on to discuss fees, but a sharp pain in his groin doubled him over.

  “What is it, man?” Rhodin demanded. “What’s wrong with you?”

  The excruciating agony felt like hot needles in intimate places. The slaver dropped to his knees in the mud, clutching his lap. “Not… not for rent…” he managed to gasp. “The girls aren’t… aren’t working.”

  The stabbing eased off, leaving only a throbbing ache. Alfosus felt something itching on his palm. When he looked he found a Celtic rune burned onto his hand – the hand that Kirkgrim had shaken two days earlier – Kirkgrim who had warned him about the twins. Kirkgrim who worked divine miracles.

  “The girls aren’t for hire,” the slaver managed to gasp out before he vomited over the imperial courier’s shoes.

  ***

  The trees thinned out in the foothills but the gaps between them were tangled with thorns. This had once been civilized, populated landscape before the collapse of empire, so the woods were scattered with piles of stones, last remains of villas and farms. On the northern horizon a surviving section of aqueduct still stood, five tall arches channeling diverted water halfway between two hills before spilling it in a spectacular cascade to the valley below.

  “This must have been even more beautiful once,” Mirabelle considered, looking at the sunset washed forest down the rise and the rainbow rising from the aqueduct waterfall’s spray. “Before the fall.”

  Fitz understood. She was talking about the earthquakes that had wrecked this landscape in the final days of the War of the Dead Name. “The old Romans built those big bridges all over Bithnia to channel water to their city and to feed the fields across this whole region. I’m told there’s still a working section in Byzantium itself. They were a remarkable people.”

  “Then why did they build so many ruins?” Sigroth objected.

  “They weren’t always wrecked,” Mirabelle told the big Viking gently. “Eleven hundred and sixteen years ad urbe condita, when the Dead Name was cast down, finally unspoken, the world shook. It was the end of the Empire-as-was. What’s left now is a mere shadow of what once existed.”

  “The ruins are all that’s left us,” Fitz sighed. “Well, ruins, monsters, and magic.” He looked Byzantium-wards at the setting sun. “We’ll have to move fast if we want to get far before the light fails us. I don’t fancy coming upon a horde of walking corpses just as it’s getting dark, no matter how nice the view is otherwise. I’m still not sure we should have brought you along, Lady Mirabelle.”

  The Venetian mage glanced across at the grim countenanced Kirkgrim the Wanderer. “I felt I should do something to help resolve the situation,” she explained. She carried the large ironbound grimoire from her wagon under her arm, although it made her look absurdly small.

  “The nice thing about tracking undead is that they make it so easy,” noted Fitz. “They shamble in a more or less straight line. Occasionally they’re are obliging enough to have a bit drop off so that you know you’re on the right trail.”

  “Axe goes across the neck,” Sigroth reminded himself. “Sever the spine. Across the neck.”

  Kirkgrim said nothing. He’d barely spoken since he’d heard about a horde of possible undead in the woods ahead.

  The guide found his path opening on to an old cart road.

  “Which way?” Sigroth asked eagerly.

  Fitz made a few low whistles to Fred and the truffle pig rooted around in the wheel ruts before ambling off up the rise to the north. “That way,” his master answered. “I think there’s a village up ahead.”

  Kirkgrim scowled more.

  “Maybe the people here can tell us more about what’s going on?” Mirabelle suggested. “If we had any idea why or how the dead are walking we might…”

  She fell silent as the hamlet came into view. It was very obvious that the village was dead. The wooden structures had been shredded. Every animal in the place lay rotting on the ground.

  “They were here,” the Wanderer surmised.

  “This was just a peaceful farm settlement,” Mirabelle protested. The mage was unused to such carnage. “What did they want here?”

  Fitz pointed to the grove of trees on the other side of the little stream that wended its way through the ruined village. Amongst the firs stood a little stone shrine, the only building still standing. The broken soil around it indicated that graves had been dug open and emptied. “They were recruiting.”

  Sigroth splashed across the stream to take a closer look. “Why is there soil everywhere? Why not dig it into a nice heap?”

  “They weren’t dug up,” Fitz concluded. “They clawed their way out.”

  “There are necromancies that can do this,” Mirabelle agreed. “Dark, forbidden magics that twist the crafter’s soul and damn him for his blasphemy. Magic can’t return life, but it can offer some semblance for a while, if the mage is powerful enough.”

  “Oh, there’s several ways to make the dead walk,” Kirkgrim agreed. “At least the souls of these long buried corpses would be long gone. I can’t say the same for any of their descendents they rose to slaughter.”

  “Is this that one eyed wizard? Is it?” demanded Sigroth, fondling his axe.

  “Maybe,” the priest of Lugh considered, but he sounded doubtful. “But why would the shambling revenant horde attack his own bandits? Control problems? More likely we’ve got two factions out here: bandit wizard and vile necromancer. You’re allowed to chop them both to pieces, Sigroth.”

  “That’s what I was hoping.”

  Fitz looked up at the leaden gray sky. “It’ll be getting dark soon. If we’re going to do something then let’s do it fast. I don’t like the idea of camping the train on the road without walls around them when there’s an undead army wandering around.”

  “See if you or Fred can discern where the things that attacked this village went to,” Mirabelle asked. She clutched her grimoire to her chest like a shield.

  “Come on, Fred,” the scout called his truffle pig. “We’ll take a pass round the perimeter.”

  “Call me if there’s anything that needs beheading,” Sigroth instructed. “I wouldn’t want to miss…” His head swiveled round and cocked to one side. “Did you hear that?”

  “Crying?” Fitz checked.

  “There’s a noise coming from the temple,” Sigroth warned. “Chaaaaarge!”

  The others hurried after the charging Viking, but Sigroth had already buried his axe in the shrine door and splintered the obstruction with three massive blows.

  Seventeen terrified children huddled in the darkness of the interior.

  “Er…” Sigroth puzzled. “Why aren’t you walking corpses for me to fight?”

  The eldest girl present was perhaps fourteen, and she clutched a baby in her
arms. “We were hidden in here when the monsters came,” she trembled. “We’ve been here since last night.”

  “They said we had to hide here until the walking dead people had gone and our folks came to get us,” a second child contributed. “Are our folks coming to get us out yet? I’m hungry.”

  “They won’t be coming back, Aggie,” a third answered. “I d-don’t think they can.”

  Mirabelle stooped to comfort the abandoned infants. “Don’t be frightened,” she told them. “ A terrible thing has happened here, but you’re safe now.”

  “Not yet,” Fitz warned. “I don’t think the undead went that far.”

  “So we can still catch them?” Sigroth enthused.

  “Not really,” Kirkgrim judged. “Not with these children to get to safety. We can hardly leave them here.”

  “Padavas will have a fit if we try and take them back to the train,” judged Fitz. “He doesn’t like children, and he really doesn’t like non paying customers.”

  “The fit might be interesting to watch,” Kirkgrim smirked. Finding the children and meeting their needs seemed to have restored his good humor. “It’s too bad our esteemed Caravan Master doesn’t like guests, but he should know that amongst other things Lugh the Long-Handed is a god of fertility, and if he’s ever hoping to be fertile again he’d better take seriously my requirement that these children be conveyed to safety.”

  “Why weren’t the children taken?” wondered Mirabelle. “Because they were on holy ground?”

  Kirkgrim concentrated for a moment, and his eyes took on the same distant look that the mage’s had when she was spying out magic. “This ground is consecrated, to one of the local sky deities I think,” he judged. “And it should have been enough to keep minor undead away.”

  Fitz pointed to the long ugly scratch marks on the temple door. “Why didn’t it, then?”

  “That’s a damned good question.”

  The children had identified Mirabelle as the least frightening looking member of the party. “Please, milady, where are our families? When will they come for us?”

  The Venetian mage struggled to find a kind way of breaking bad news.

  “Your kinfolk knew there was danger,” Kirkgrim cut in. He squatted down beside the new orphans so he was face-to-face with them. “Your parents must have loved you very much. They sealed you in here to save you. Now you have to be brave because they might be gone. They might be killed. But if they are, they managed to do what every parent hopes they can – they saved their children. So now you have to reward their care and sacrifice by being their true inheritors. You have to live and prosper, as they gave up so much so you could.”

  “K-killed?”

  “Possibly. Probably. We’ll know for sure later. For now, hold to them keeping you safe. Now we’re here to look after you for them. Lady Mirabelle there is a mage – a mighty sorceress. Fitz is a wonderful tracker with a massive battle pig that can fight anything. And Sigroth – that huge hairy thing over there – why even monsters are scared of him. Oh, and I’m Kirkgrim, and all-round amazing. We are going to take you with us, to safety.”

  “All-round amazing?” objected Mirabelle.

  “Well I am. The gods dislike dishonesty.” The priest of the Tuatha de Danaan switched from talk-kindly-to-the-children mode and stared out at the twilight churchyard. “We need to finish up here fast. Take a look at those broken graves, Fitz, and see how – and who – dug them up. Or called them up. Check the grave soil and see if anything was set on it – a talisman, some etching, anything to show what process the black sorcerer used. If the whole burial ground decided to get up for a stroll I need to know about it. It’s important.”

  “A Necromancer who can raise a corpse to animation is worrying,” Mirabelle de Castile considered. “A Necromancer who can raise a whole graveyard… that’s terrifying.”

  “Especially if he’s doing it to chase after your message box,” Kirkgrim disturbed her further.

  Some of the younger children were crying, so Sigroth comforted them. “See this big axe?” he told them. “If anything tries to hurt you, this big axe is going to hit them so hard they split into two pieces. And then we’ll jump up and down on them.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “A whole generation of children imprinting on Sigroth as a role model,” murmured Mirabelle. “Wonderful.

  Fitz and Fred inspected the sundered burial ground. “You’re not going to like this,” the forest ranger warned Kirkgrim. “Some of the charnel soil is muddied with blood. I think it was poured over the marker stones. Then their occupants seem to have clawed their way out of their own graves.”

  “There are necromancies that can do that,” the cleric replied. His eyes turned cold. “They are forbidden.”

  “And as a holy man you take it personally that they were used. You want to do something nasty to whoever did it?” Fitz guessed.

  “Any right thinking human being would want to string the perpetrator up by his tripes,” answered the Wanderer, “but yes, I’m happy to make this personal.”

  “And I want whoever orphaned these bairns about one axe swing away from me,” Sigroth added.

  “Whatever will become of them?” Mirabelle worried, looking at the wide eyed trail of infants and older children who were cautiously coming out of the dark crowded shrine.

  “We’ll deal with that when we have to,” Kirkgrim decided. “They might have relatives in other villages or farms, or we can find homes for them in Byzantium or something. Right now they’re cold and frightened and they haven’t eaten for a day or more. Get them ready to walk back to the caravan road and let’s catch up with Padavas.”

  Fitz was still studying tracks. “Most of these undead just shuffle,” he spotted, “and they’re barefooted or wearing old worn leathers. But these prints here are made by expensive new boots, and the wearer had a staff that he rested in the ground beside him.”

  “Our necromancer,” guessed Kirkgrim. “Get Fred to have a good sniff of him. I’ll want a discussion with him later. Sigroth, can you get the children into a line ready to move off. Fitz, you’re on point. Then me. Mirabelle halfway down the line. Sig at the back, covering our tails.” He turned to the eldest girl and the boy beside her. “What are your names?”

  “Lessi,” the girl answered. She was almost a woman; in this mountain village she’d have been wed in a year or so. She clung to the baby she’d been entrusted with, some sister or cousin, and held it as tight as she was clinging to her courage.

  “Ulas,” replied the boy. He swallowed hard and held up his hand to show what he was carrying. “Father gave me a dagger.”

  “Good,” the Wanderer approved. “Right, children, I want you all to follow Lessi. Lessi will follow me. What she does, you do. Ulas, can you count well? You go to the back with the mountainous red Viking, right? You keep counting the boys and girls. Seventeen of you. You keep checking they’re all there, that no one’s strayed, that no one’s left behind. Got it?”

  Ulas nodded, steadied by receiving a job within his competence. Kirkgrim reflected that he’d be more reliable at counting than Sigroth.

  The sun dipped, partly vanishing behind the treeline.

  Fred snorted and turned suddenly. A weird ululating howl rose from the forest.

  “What’s that?” Mirabelle demanded. Her hands rose, fingers extended and curved ready to conjure.

  A second howl came in reply from the other side of the village, then a third from behind the church.

  Kirkgrim’s mouth tightened. “We’re not going to be allowed to leave,” he realized. “That’s why the temple door was marred. The consecrations will repel mindless life lusting revenants, but not when they’re driven by some commanding intelligence. Something wants the children. It’s been waiting for night again when its army can move most freely. It’s probably been preparing to overcome the sanctuary.”

  Fitz grabbed Fred by his harness to stop the truffle pig charging off to a
nswer the howls. “And those things making the noise? I’ve ranged far and wide and not heard anything like that before!”

  “No idea,” admitted Kirkgrim. “But I’d prefer to meet them with the children safe behind me inside the temple than on a dark path where we can be attacked from all sides.”

  “You said the undead would be prepared to overcome the sanctity of holy ground,” Mirabelle reminded the Wanderer.

  “Yes. We’ll need to go to plan beta. Or plan gamma. Or possibly plan zeta.”

  The howling got nearer. The children quailed. Lessi tried to keep them calm.

  “Temple. Now,” Sigroth growled. “It’s axe time.”

  VI: On Revenants and Revenge

  It was wolves. The howling came from huge mountain wolves driven from the trackless northern forests; but these animals were dead, and the sound came from rotted throats, strained through maggot riddled gullets.

  Fred gave the alarm as Sigroth and Ulas ushered the last of the children back into the battered shelter of the sky-temple. Four partially decayed predators emerged from between the trees and threaded their way past sundered graves.

  “Those are big fellows,” Fitz breathed. “I don’t suppose an arrow through the eye would put them down?”

  “Probably not yet,” admitted Kirkgrim. “But hold that thought for plan zeta.” He unhooked a small flask from his belt-pouches, sniffed the contents regretfully, then poured it in a wide semicircle around the only entrance to the chapel. “Holy wine,” he explained to Mirabelle. “The Children of Danu aren’t that impressed by just water.”

  “And that will keep the undead out?” the mage asked.

  “For a bit. Until whoever’s driving them turns up to push them harder.”

  “And then we dice ‘em proper,” Sigroth anticipated. “Still the necks, eh?”

  “Yep.” The priest of Lugh took a moment to examine the rest of the temple’s interior. It was little more than a votive shrine, no bigger than six paces square. A lightning struck oak tree was propped on a plinth, surrounded by bowls with small food offerings. Kirkgrim appropriated one of the dishes with apologies to the sky and filled it with oil from another of his flasks. A rag taper converted the dish into a lamp.