by Ember Lane
“Kill them! Kill them all!” he screamed down at the heaving mass of the undead. But no zombay-killing construct army appeared. No terrible retribution for the bastards. The Power of Nascent had failed Merl in his hour of true need, and he staggered back, falling, and sitting, all alone.
The guardians easily vanquished the few stray zombays that had reached the battlement tops. Frank gathered up spare weapons, Desmelda tended her own head, and Billy Muckspreader sat with his old friend Merl.
For once, Billy was silent. Merl had his head between his knees. His shoulders were shaking, but no other sound came from the gentle soul. Then Billy shook his head wildly as his eyes blinked time and again, and he nudged Merl, and he tried to say something, but his tongue tripped his words up. Merl elbowed him away, but Billy was blabbering and pointing.
Merl looked up.
Gloomy Joe peered through the crenellations. He looked extra confused about life, though to all intents and purposes appeared to be having a very gloomy day. Quaiyl’s hand grabbed the wall, heaving them both up as the rest of Gloomy Joe came into view. The construct tossed the dune dog onto the battlements and leapt over them too. Merl rubbed his eyes. His glee-filled cry ringing out, “Gloomy!” He near tripped over his own feet in a bid to get to the hapless dog. Gloomy Joe wagged his entire back half and leapt at Merl, pushing him backwards and pinning him to the battlements. The dog’s tongue set about cleaning Merl’s gut-stained face.
22
Merl woke up in Frank’s mud hut, curled around the fire pit. He had his arm draped over Gloomy Joe. Desmelda was asleep in her bed. Billy was under it. Frank was sitting just outside. Scaramanza rested on his lap. For a moment, Merl thought everything was right with the world. Then he added the following caveats.
They were in a strange, feudal land called Alaria. They were atop the battlements of a great wall that surrounded a city called Vorast whose leader, in all probability, wanted to kill them. It appeared the entire city had been turned into zombays. He was also the subject of a prophecy that no one appeared to have ever read or heard and that Merl was beginning to doubt really existed. There was also something about a Dark One who loomed on his horizon and that tale sounded far too scary to even bother with.
“Never mind all that, Gloomy,” Merl said, yawning. “Today can’t be worse than yesterday.”
Merl had no basis for that statement, but just the saying of it made him feel better about on rushing day. He sat up, punching Billy to wake him up, and then he stood and inched past Frank. The battlements were twenty-odd feet wide. Two lines of guardian constructs were positioned on either side of the mud hut. Five archers faced out of the city, and five faced in.
“I couldn’t do it, Frank. When I needed to, I just couldn’t do it.”
Merl leant on the battlements and looked down on the milling zombays. They weren’t raging anymore. They also weren’t quiet, but at least they weren’t chomping at the bit to tear down the battlements brick-by-brick to get to them. Frank slumped next to him.
“They have us trapped. They’re just waiting, now, waiting for us to make our move. What couldn’t you do, Merl?”
“I couldn’t magic up a load of constructs to rip them limb from limb. I tried, Frank. I truly tried. When I thought they had Gloomy, I tried to kill them all. I sent my instruction out, but nothing appeared—not a single one of them.”
Frank grunted. “Let me tell you something, Merl. Something about learning to walk before you try and run.”
Merl decided Frank must be drunk; although he didn’t look or smell it, he was talking the type of gibberish normally associated with too much ale. Merl knew. His dad had always talked gibberish.
“Eh?”
It was the only word Merl could think of. He decided to look over the now quite smelly city while Frank got off his chest what was clearly squatting on it.
“Quintz, Merl, is a daunting place. When I first arrived there, I was in a terrible state. I had my arm in a sling. A festering wound split my calf. I was beaten, Merl, both in mind and body. It had taken me a month, maybe two to get there. Don’t mind telling you, I was on my last legs. Quintz to me, Merl, had become more than a place. It had become a dream, even a utopia.”
“That’s how I think of it. Some magical place where all is right with the world.”
Frank scoffed. “Cling to it, Merl. It will be different for you. I was a soldier, a bruised and battered soldier, but I carried a note, and that note was supposed to be my introduction. However, soldiers and wizards don’t mix. Wizards don’t like to sully themselves by getting too close to the business of war. When I finally gained entry to Quintz, I was faced with a whole bunch of pompous, self-righteous wizards so wrapped up in their own selves that nothing and no one came even close to as important as them. I never counted them all, Merl, never counted them all, but each one was disgusted by me.”
“Counted what all?”
“Wizards, Merl. There are loads, but not one works with another, not one, Merl. They each reach for their own objectives and deny the other’s studies with ill-concealed ridicule. When I came there, I was bounced from one to the next until only one wizard was left.”
“Left for what?” Merl asked, shuffling closer to Frank and feeling the wizard’s warmth.
“For me. In Quintz, you have to have a mentor. If you don’t, they just toss you out. Ricklefess, the last one, accepted me, and he set aside his own studies to investigate the letters and numbers that I could see—the same ones you see. We came up with some fantastic theories about what it all meant.”
“When did you… you know,” Merl pointed at the hut.
“One day, sitting in the cloisters of the Inverted College. I pointed at the lawn in its center and just thought hut. And that appeared.” Frank turned and faced the hut. “But that’s not why I’m telling you this. I’m telling you this because that’s it. I can’t build a level-two hut. I can’t build a farm, a woodyard, anything, Merl, anything else. Thanks to you, I now command an army of fifty constructs, and that is the sum of the progress I have made since I created that hut from thin air.”
“So, why are you telling me this?” Merl asked.
“Because that’s as far as I go, Merl. It’s as far as I’ve got. You? You control Quaiyl. You can magic fifty guardians into being at will. You can build constructs with a snap of your fingers. Hell, you built a bloody great wall around the ruins of One. You’re growing, Merl, growing where I became stagnant. I don’t know why I’m stuck and you’re not, but I’m here for you. Let’s see how far we can take this, together.”
The thought of sticking with Frank brought a glow to Merl’s heart, but his earlier caveats about their current situation still lurked in the forefront of his mind.
“We gotta work out how to get out of here first.”
“That? That’s the easy part. We can walk around the battlements all the way to the river. Drop down the other side and scramble to a boat. We row upriver and take the western road. Easy.”
Merl scoffed. Now that Frank had put it like that, it didn’t seem that bad. “Let’s do that, then.”
“Only one problem. Rourke’s holed up in there.” Frank pointed to the castle. “And he might have answers.”
Vorast’s castle reared above markets and homes, barracks and stables. It towered above the temples and shops of what must have once been a bustling, thriving city. From Merl’s vantage point, Vorast looked pure. It looked unsullied. Its roofs were islands swimming in a hell of roaming zombays, and that was wrong. The castle was wrong. Whoever had holed up in there had saved their own skin and damned all the others. Merl thought the castle an abomination of peace. How could it be so? Had those inside shut the city gates and tipped the boiling oil? Had they then all hid when the zombays had broken through?
“Bastard set light to his own folks,” Frank said. “Look, look over there at the empty oil barrels. He set them all on fire—the poor, the desperate—the folk who live in the shadows of the castle’s w
alls. Too late though, my guess is they did it all far too late. The castle looks pretty from here, Merl, but I bet there’s zombays inside. We have to get to Rourke before his protection turns.”
Frank snapped his fingers and his mud hut vanished. Desmelda screamed as she bolted upright in her bed.
“Do you mind?”
“Breakfast, then we get going. Let’s put this place behind us by nightfall,” Frank said. A couple of logs appeared on the fire, and then Desmelda’s cauldron appeared atop it. “By nightfall.”
Desmelda glared at him, but then relented.
Billy pushed himself out from under the bed. “Did someone say breakfast?”
They fought their way along the battlements, although only a few zombays had climbed the towers. Merl’s guardians marched in front. Quaiyl stuck to Merl’s side. Gloomy Joe padded along next to him. He had his circle of protection, but even so, Merl carried the fear of what was to come. Desmelda was resolute and appeared more determined than ever. Frank was grim but sure. Billy laughed and joked but swung and slaughtered in the next breath. The city was beginning to stink. Swarms of flies were getting thicker—not quite to Three Valley’s terrible standard, but incrementally thicker than the day before. The soup of rot was thickening.
“There,” Frank said, pointing. “That’s our route.”
“How?” Desmelda asked.
Frank led them a couple of hundred yards along the city wall to get closer to the castle. The streets were packed with zombays. All faced the keep, seeming as if they knew fresh meat lurked there. All were silent, just the odd low moan or the bubble of gas belching up.
“How?” Desmelda repeated.
“I was kind of hoping you’d deal with that,” Frank told her. “I was hoping we could go rooftop to rooftop, and I was thinking your vines were the way. I need a vine bridge. I need you, Desmelda, to get us into that castle.”
Desmelda ruffled her hair. She cocked her head one way and then the other.
“Doable,” she said. “Doable.”
“What about Gloomy?” Merl asked. “Quaiyl,” he said, answering his own question.
Desmelda spouted her crimson magic. It swirled around, twisting in midair as it formed a fat, magical rope. A thick, plaited vine materialized, then it wrapped around a crenellation on their side and the chimney of the closest building.
“It should hold. Who’s first?” Desmelda said offhandedly, as though the incredible magical feat they’d all witnessed demeaned her prowess.
Merl hesitated. He waited for Frank to grab hold. He waited for Billy to take the plunge. No one moved. Gloomy Joe panted. Merl patted the dune dog’s head and grabbed the rope. He swung over the battlements and dangled. Sudden realization gripped his gut.
“Oh no!” Merl said as he looked down.
His arms started shaking. His teeth started chattering.
“Oh damn!” he repeated.
The rope swayed. Merl swayed. He swung his legs up and crossed his feet, trapping the vine.
“You can do this.”
Merl glanced down. The zombays started wailing, groaning, and reaching up to him. Merl gritted his teeth. He tried to move forward, but he couldn’t let go. His arms began aching.
“Go on, Merl!” Billy shouted from behind.
“Shut up, Billy Muckspreader, shut the bloody hell up!” he cried, then growled silently, gripping the vine with all his might. He lunged forward, letting go with one hand and grabbing out, scooching his knees in. His fingers snapped around the vine, his feet grabbed hold, and he breathed again. “Hand over hand,” he muttered to his self. “Hand over hand and slide your feet, Merl.”
He crossed the street, then dropped to the tiled roof. His legs gave way. He began to slide. Merl scrambled around and grabbed hold of the ridge tile, pulling himself up and sitting astride it. He slid over to the chimney, where he held on for dear life. Billy came next, then Desmelda and Frank. Quaiyl waltzed across the vine holding Gloomy Joe.
Billy grabbed hold of the chimney. “Bugger that, Merl. Bugger that.”
“Wish I was a construct,” Merl said, and then immediately wondered if he was.
One by one, they clambered from building to building until they reached the castle wall. Desmelda magicked one last vine. This time, Frank climbed first, vanishing over the wall. Merl climbed next and inched his way up. By the time he reached the wall, his arms screamed in exhausted pain. Frank hauled him over, and Merl immediately conjured his guardians.
The wall was a mere few feet thick, just room enough to walk two abreast. Frank urged Desmelda across, grabbing her and pulling her over too. Billy came last, moving far too slowly for Merl’s liking. When he was halfway across, the first arrows thudded down on them. The guardians formed a wall in front of the group as Quaiyl sprinted across, Gloomy Joe in hand, jumping over Billy as he went.
“Shields, give them shields!” Frank cried. “Come on, Billy! We’re under attack.”
Desmelda wove a thorny wall. Merl, wanting to help her, thought of guardians with shields, but nothing changed. The guardian bowmen began loosing their arrows. Where Rourke’s bowmen were thankfully inaccurate, Merl’s guardians were dead true. Frank grabbed Billy’s hand, and pulled the big lad over. They loped along the battlements as a shout suddenly came from the keep.
“Who are you?” a deep voice thundered.
“We’re here to rescue you!” Frank shouted back. “So, stop bloody well shooting at us.”
They carried on to the nearest turret, all seeking shelter behind it. Quaiyl raced along with Gloomy Joe under his arm. He threw the dune dog at Merl, then turned and leapt from the wall. Quaiyl ran across the bailey, scaling the keep and vanishing inside. Within moments, screams rang out from within the keep.
“That’s a regular one-man army you got there, Merl,” Frank said, and Merl couldn’t agree more—nor could he wipe his smile from his face.
“Call your dog off!” the voice from the keep growled across the bailey. “You’ve made your point.”
“Rourke?” Frank asked.
“Rourke’s here inside. Who sent you?”
“I’ll call the construct off once I talk to Rourke. I need him alive.”
“If you can get across the bailey, you can meet Rourke,” the man called back.
“Call Quaiyl back,” Frank whispered to Merl, but as soon as Merl thought the words, Quaiyl was racing down the keep and up the castle wall.
Frank peered over the bailey looking at milling zombays below.
“How many?” Billy asked.
“A hundred or so.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Billy said.
Scaramanza appeared in Frank’s hand. He threw Merl his cleaver and Billy his pitchfork. “Hold the guardians unless we need them, Merl. No point in giving our secrets away unless we have to.”
They quickly descended the spiral steps that led to the bailey. Frank decapitated a couple of zombays on the way down. Merl kept Gloomy Joe close. They burst back out into the sunlight and the zombays immediately rushed for them, surging in a ravenous wash.
“Damnable soldier zombays,” Billy spat, forking his first in the gut then forging forward and shoving it into another group of drooling horrors. He reached down and scooped up a discarded long sword, and then ditched his pitchfork and swung the sword aloft like a madman. “Now this is a blade,” he crowed.
Merl stuck close to Frank as the Wizard of Quintz fell into his relaxed stride. Frank stepped forward and struck. He stepped back and selected his next victim. Forward, strike, step back, assess—it was simple, efficient, and allowed Frank to be unrelenting. Merl hacked at the zombay militia, but their heavy chainmail jerkins made hard work for his cleaver. Desmelda dashed up alongside Merl, tripping the slathering undead with her thorns and brambles, and Quaiyl twisted and tore at the hideous creations to rip the things apart with his bare hands.
Billy was in his element. He matched his new sword. The elfen sword had looked puny in his hands, but the longswo
rd appeared to be perfect. It was like it was made for him. He screamed with every stroke. He reveled in the zombay death, in the sprays of corruprion bursting from their severed arteries. Bile pumped from their exposed throats. Billy raged. Frank barely seemed winded. Merl struggled, but he fought tirelessly.
They battled until there were none left, and then they stood before the keep’s mighty, iron-braced door.
“Your bailey is clear. Now keep your bargain or we send the construct in again,” Frank called up.
Merl stood proudly by his side. Quaiyl stood just in front of Merl, shielding him from any archers.
“He’s coming down,” a voice shouted from an upstairs window. It belonged to a man that appeared to consist almost entirely of hair. His beard hung over the windowsill and framed his face in an explosion of curls. “You’ll get what you earned.”
The door to the keep opened, and a man was kicked out. He rolled down the few steps and toward Frank. The Wizard of Quintz bent to help him up, but then staggered backward and fell over as the man reared up and growled. Yellow spittle flew and claws reached out.
“Zombay!” Billy screamed, but the thing was already closing on Frank, who for once in his life had been taken completely unawares. Frank scrambled back on his haunches, but the zombay bastard dove toward him.
Merl hesitated for half a tap and then threw his cleaver straight at the zombay. Frank ducked flat as it sailed over the top of him and landed blade first in the thing’s noggin, slicing clean down to its neck and spraying fould blood everywhere.
“Now that was some shot, Merl,” Billy congratulated.
The doors to the keep flew open. Another half-dozen zombays stumbled out.
“Now, Merl! Now! There is nothing for us here but treachery!” Frank screamed.
Merl released his guardians. They stormed into the keep. He tugged on Quaiyl and pointed to the bushy-haired man. “That one.”