‘I performed it exactly as it is written,’ he muttered. ‘Each rune, each verse. Every turn of the staff exactly correct.’
‘Try it again!’ Felix shouted, seeing the wight close in.
‘What good will that do?’ he replied. ‘I’ve done it all exactly right, it was supposed to work. It should have worked. The moonlight should show the…’
A moment later, Draeder saw something that stopped him. Behind the dolmen, on the far side of the hill, he caught sight of something. A pile of stones rested over an indentation in the earth, where one flat rock lay atop the rest. It was glowing. The stone was illuminated, gleaming in the moonlight. Runes sparkled milky white and bright red across its surface.
‘Of course!’ he shouted. ‘The second stone marker! The dolmen is not the gateway! That is!’
Felix readied for another attack. He looked over to Draeder, pointing frantically in the direction of the glowing rune-stone.
‘But you said the dolmen was–’ Felix began.
‘I was mistaken,’ Draeder replied. ‘You were more correct than you realized, Felix, the rune stones there are the second marker on the map! That is the meaning of the inscription. The portal rests behind the dolmen, not within it! We must get past the wight!’
‘It’s impossible!’ Erhard shouted back. ‘Have you seen nothing here? It can’t be slowed, or even wounded. It is relentless. There’s no way to get by.’
Draeder snarled and he reached for Erhard, grabbing his subordinate by his cloak like a master would assail an unruly child.
‘I cannot abandon this venture now!’ he shouted in the older man’s face. ‘I refuse to accept that. There must be a way! You must find a way!’
Erhard finally lost his temper. Seething in a rage of suppressed anger, he reached up with his thick arms and seized Draeder. He stared into the younger man’s face.
‘I am done taking orders from you, boy!’ he shouted.
Then he lifted Draeder off of his feet and heaved him backwards, throwing the young wizard against the dolmen. He landed so hard his back edged the upper stone of the triptych, grinding it against the stones beneath.
He groaned and wheezed as he fell, but Felix noticed something else in that instant – the guardian staggered as well.
As Draeder tried to come to his feet, the mix of pain and wrath across his face making clear that he intended on a second run at his sergeant, Felix jumped between the two. Erhard turned his back on the wizard, returning his attention to the wight.
‘You’ll pay for that!’ Draeder shouted.
‘I doubt any of us will live long enough,’ the sergeant answered.
He lifted his sword once more, and again he charged upon the wight, its armour dripping with Strang and Torsten’s blood.
Draeder grabbed his scythe and started to follow, but Felix stopped him.
‘This creature is bound to this spot, you told us,’ he said.
The wizard seemed uninterested in answering. Felix grabbed him and shook him.
‘Tell me!’ he demanded. ‘How is this undead thing held here?’
‘As I said,’ Draeder replied, angrily. ‘The dark magic of Skethris binds him to his eternal resting place.’
‘This dolmen,’ Felix replied.
‘Indeed, he is bound to this place for…’
Felix ignored the rest of his answer, turning to the dolmen itself. He dropped his sword, bared both hands and pushed against the capstone. For all his strength, he managed to shift it only a tiny bit.
The moment it moved however, even just a small distance, he heard a peel of agony from across the hilltop. Turning his head, he saw the wight stagger again, though Erhard had not landed a blow.
‘Help me!’ Felix shouted, grabbing Draeder and turning him toward the dolmen. ‘Push with everything you’ve got!’
The two men joined forces, heaving their full weight into the capstone until they felt it edge away, grinding pebbles and dust under it as it scraped across the standing stones beneath it. The effort took all of their might.
The wight howled, stumbling for a moment. Erhard stood against it still, his twin swords meeting the undead warrior’s next blow.
‘Again!’ Felix shouted.
Once more the two men pushed, and a second time they managed to shove the dolmen’s top stone until it was teetering. The wight staggered again, weakened but not defeated. It raged, striking a blow that sent Erhard careening across the hill. The old sergeant fell with a painful thud.
Felix knelt down next to him, helping him back to his feet.
‘Give a hand to Draeder,’ he said. ‘When I call back to you, follow his lead.’
The sergeant nodded, fighting to regain his balance as he fell in beside the young wizard, both men poised beside the dolmen with the precarious capstone.
Once again lumbering toward them, Felix intercepted the cackling wight. Drawing his sword, he bounded and leaped toward the grisly guardian.
‘Now!’ he shouted back to the others.
Draeder and Erhard threw their combined weight at the dolmen. They pushed hard against it with everything their arms could muster, until the capstone slid off of its perch between the two supports, collapsing down in a heap of broke stone.
Felix’s blade crashed against the barbarian king’s rune sword the instant the dolmen crumbled. The two razor edges slid down against one another until the pommels met, wedging the cross-guards together with a clang and a spark.
The wight squealed in agony as the ancient monument broke apart. He shrieked and shook, but Felix held fast. He wrestled with the weakened guardian, forcing the undead sentinel backward. They moved to and fro, the wight’s strength failing with Felix’s every move. Then, as the dead king staggered, Felix shouted back to Draeder and Erhard a second time.
The two answered the call, joining Felix in jumping upon the wight with sword and scythe. As Felix held the undead watcher, Erhard stabbed at the creature and Draeder slashed. This time, their blades wreaked havoc, cutting and chopping the pale flesh of the watcher until his body mirrored the ruin of his grave marker. His severed arms dropped down at his sides, followed by his legs as they collapsed under him.
Finally, Felix swung his sword in an arc, slicing through the wight’s throat. His head tumbled down from his neck, dropping its winged helmet as its body crumpled into a heap of dust and ancient armour.
Draeder fell back against the fractured dolmen, relieved and out of breath for the moment. When he did recover, he ignored Erhard and looked to Felix only.
‘Good thinking all around, Felix,’ he said. ‘Truly, I could not have asked for a more able assistant on this endeavour.’
Erhard looked over to Felix then, his face dour and his brow furrowed. Felix sighed and turned his head, for he found that he could not muster anything to say.
9.
It was not much of a memorial, but Felix and Erhard took the savaged bodies of the fallen brothers and carried them both to the dolmen. There, in the centre of the ancient burial site, collapsed though it was, they laid the two brave warriors to rest.
Though they gave some thought to keeping Strang and Torsten’s horses, they chose instead to leave them behind, freeing the animals to run wild. By the time the moon was fully overhead, they were re-packed and ready to move on.
No sooner had they observed a silent moment than Draeder demanded they resume. He had already studied the portal entrance, the stones above it still gleaming with inscrutable runes. Where there had once been little more than a marker of several stones embedded over a hole in the earth, his incantation had magically opened it into a wide stone gate. Behind lay a tunnel, deep enough to ride a horse down into it with room to spare.
Draeder led the way again, the first to enter the portal. Felix and Erhard formed up in his wake, leaving behind the moonlight and following only the eerie glo
w of Draeder’s violet scythe flame.
‘I seem to think I might have once considered something like this rather unwise,’ Felix said, as his horse carried him down into the tunnel. ‘But now I suppose I can’t complain.’
The descent through the tunnel seemed to carry them deep into the earth. No hint of the outside world remained as they moved down a long and dark path. On the far side they found that it opened upon a slope at the edge of a long and deep valley – but of the dolmen or the Barren Hills, there was no sign at all.
The grade was steep and the ground was rocky. They could not see the floor of the valley, blanketed by thick carpet of fog. Strangely, the mist did not rise to the higher elevations, obscuring only the distance but leaving the near terrain untouched.
Jagged boulders lay strewn about, massive broken hunks of stone that looked more like the rubble of giants than natural formations. The fractured rock jutted out from the dirt, forcing them to follow a narrow path that snaked for miles in every direction before it finally brought them down to the edge of the mist.
A vile reek filled their nostrils before they reached the fog, and it only grew deeper as they penetrated it. There was no wind down there. The air was cold and stagnant, and filled with a dense curtain of grey mist that hung all about in a dim murk. It stank of corpses, the musty reek of old tombs and decay.
While Felix and Erhard recoiled at the stench, Draeder took the opposite approach. He inhaled the rotten scent with a peculiar relish.
The sun had just gone down, their winding descent having consumed the entire day. Though they found themselves now on the floor of the valley, the fog robbed them of all but the faintest hints of moonlight to guide their way, leaving the forest ahead cloaked in a deep shadow.
‘Should we not pause here, and attempt to continue once the safety of daylight has returned?’ Felix asked.
Draeder shook his head.
‘Daylight may guide our eyes, but we now follow the path of the scythe. The violet flame is strongest at night. Death magic is weakest at midday, and nowhere is the odour of death stronger than here. We must proceed now.’
‘It might be wise to leave the horses,’ Erhard said. ‘If we’re to approach this place with some stealth.’
‘Indeed,’ Draeder replied, as if it had been his own idea. ‘I believe we should proceed on foot from here.’
They dismounted, tethering the horses to a tree and following behind him on foot as they entered into the lower valley. The realm of the necromancer quickly revealed a more ghastly character than the monster-addled lands they’d left behind. The forest had been cleared in every direction, leaving only scattered groves of winter-bare trees. What stood in its place was an immense landscape of blight and ruin.
Hints of faded grandeur stood all around, age-worn and battered, yet clinging to a shadow of opulence, a vast plantation of death.
Crumbled walls lined the edges of what might have once been gardens. The stone work was incredible, chiselled with such care that the granite seemed as thin as a veil of lace, petrified for all the ages. Everything was mouldered and decrepit, a ghost of its former splendour.
Rows of broken columns flanked the grim estates. The pillars were solid marble, but cut with such exquisite artistry as to resemble flowers in spring bloom, vine-covered and delicate as rose petals. The once-fine white stone was now stained with swarms of black lichen. The perfect masonry was pockmarked and charred from some long-ago violence.
Felix ran his hand over the faces of some, almost in disbelief at both the richness and the decay alike. He found that the stone had been eaten away in places – as if gnawed upon. The thought sent a shiver through him.
Water remained in artificial ponds, brown and fetid with oily slicks that lingered across the weed-clogged surface. The detritus of some long-forgotten battle left its mark, in the broken spears and rusted helmets that lay abandoned throughout, grisly monuments to the fall of an entire realm.
The complex and beautiful designs of ancient courtyards survived as mere outlines etched into the scrub-brush and the dirt. Dry canals choked with debris traced the lines of once-flowing streams and captive waterfalls, the rushing rivers reduced to mere trickles of sludge.
The viscous gray mist floated beside them everywhere they went, seething up from the rotten earth, stinking of decomposition. After more than an hour pressing onward, strange noises began to echo in the dim. Footsteps sounded in the misty shadows. Creaking and clanking followed, joined by muffled screams in the distance.
The men penetrated ever deeper into the ruins, and with every moment the noises grew louder. Still they moved forward, further into the gloom, until figures began to emerge from the haze and the darkness ahead.
At first, only their outlines could be discerned, and they were unlike any sentinels the three men had ever seen. Thin and nearly stick-like in silhouette, their movements were likewise inhuman. Awkward, herky-jerky steps brought them closer until the front ranks paraded into the moonlight, revealing their horrid nature.
They appeared from the mist as though marching forth from a nightmare. None were truly men, nothing more than bones animated beyond the grave. All of them stared ahead with cold, soulless eyes, every face exactly the same – a bare skull.
‘The watchers of the valley,’ Draeder said. ‘Long-dead warriors forever bound to this place by the will of the necromancer.’
Erhard pointed just behind them to their left, where a wall of ancient stone ran along the edge of a decrepit garden.
‘I don’t think they’ve seen us yet,’ he whispered. ‘If we circle back, taking cover behind the wall, we might be able to side-step them and find another way forward.’
Felix looked at Draeder. Both nodded.
‘No argument,’ Felix said.
Stepping away with utmost care and proceeding on as stealthily as they could, the party ducked behind the wall and re-traced their steps back, looking to chart a path around the advancing skeletal host.
But their efforts soon proved futile.
Coming up from behind the length of the wall, they found their path once again blocked, by yet more of the foul walkers. These emerged not only from the mist, but from the fetid ground as well, creeping up from the rotten earth in fits and starts to stand among their undead brethren.
Of the dozen or so who now mustered before them, some still clung to fading vestiges of life. Scraps of dried flesh or stringy hair hung off of a few. The tattered, yellowed remains of tunics and cloaks dangled from others. Their evil, hollow black eyes scanned in every direction, holding their mouldered shields and waving their antique swords before them.
‘What a vile sight,’ Felix gasped. ‘Of all that we’ve encountered so far, what could be more horrific than bare skeletons that still walk as living men? Please tell me the magic of your scythe holds sway over these things.’
Draeder didn’t answer. Instead, he slowed, taken aback by the lumbering undead that now approached.
Felix sensed his trepidation.
‘You may wish to draw your sword now,’ Draeder whispered.
Erhard grumbled, unsheathing his twin blades. He sneered at the wizard.
‘I hope your courage is stronger than your magic.’
Draeder scoffed at the insult, but beads of sweat had started to form on his forehead, despite the chill.
‘It is no failing of mine,’ he said. ‘My scythe flame draws its power from the wilds of the forest and the winds of Shyish. Though it follows the currents of the purple wind, it has no power to control those who walk beyond death.’
Felix snarled, as he drew his own long-sword and prepared to meet the dreadful sentinels. Erhard fell in beside him, though Draeder attempted to edge his way back, shuffling in the opposite direction. The old sergeant extended his arm, blocking his path.
‘Not this time,’ he said. ‘If you’re planning to conj
ure some spell you’d best get to it, because you’re about to stand and fight right alongside us.’
Felix girded himself for the fight, nodding at Erhard as the two men prepared to enter the battle beside one another yet again. The undead came at them in a surge of un-living warriors staring at them with dead eyes.
Erhard crossed swords with two skull-faced sentinels at once. Withered though they were, they wielded their blades with relentless furor. It took all of Erhard’s might to force two of them back. Even then, they parried his return strokes, dodging and blocking several times without a hint of fatigue.
Though the veteran sergeant managed to dispatch them both, smashing the skull of one with a pommel strike from above and chopping the other to pieces, he took a slash across his shoulder. Blood began to stain the edges of his jerkin, soaking through his undercoat.
Felix struggled in similar fashion beside him, matching every feint and counter-strike before he was able to cleave his undead attacker’s mandible from its jaw. Though it betrayed no hint of pain, Felix nonetheless pressed his advantage and cut down the ghastly guardian with two more cuts that shattered its vertebrae. Once its skull came away, the bones collapsed at once into a heap.
‘The heads,’ Felix shouted. ‘Cut off their heads.’
Erhard saw it, and despite his injury he immediately began striking at the bony necks of the sentinels. Even Draeder took the advice to heart, whirling his scythe in wild fashion, decapitating skeletal warriors one after another.
Drawing on some of his old fencing tutor’s more obscure lessons, Felix dropped down to his knees and sliced the legs out from under three of the skeletal warriors with one single swipe. As they crumpled to the dust, he seized a spear from one, and using his full weight, he drove it through the shield of a warrior nearby, pinning it to four others behind and knocking down an entire row of the undead guardians.
Once the undead warriors were knocked to the ground, Erhard and Felix swooped in. They stomped on the fallen skeletons, chopping the skulls from each one until the entire patrol had been reduced to nothing but a pile of bones.
Into the Valley of Death Page 7
