Death's Chosen (First Cohort Book 3)

by M. R. Anthony

  “Where’s Hacker?” I heard someone shout.

  “There!” someone answered. “Over there!”

  I was tall enough to see over the heads of most men if I stretched. Another fifty paces distant, I watched steel rise and fall, fancied I could hear the cries of the wounded. Everything dropped into place for me as my inner senses took a firm grasp of the battlefield. I confess I was a man who liked control. I liked to see the units move around under my command, as if they were pieces on a board. When everything became fragmented, it took longer for me to see what I needed to see - like the men of magic who find it progressively harder the more threads of the world they try to twist to their will.

  The arrival of my squad gave new impetus to Stumble’s men. Our angry shouts drowned out the battle cries of our opponents as we waged war with noise as well as our swords and our shields. In the clamour and confusion, I tore a huge hole through one man’s spine, before turning and shattering the nose and jaw of another with my shield. He tripped over something on the ground and fell. His death came regardless when Grids kicked him in the side of his helmeted head, snapping his neck.

  From out of nowhere, angry flames washed amongst us. They appeared around us in a deep, crimson hue unlike any flame I’d seen before. The magic howled and tore at our flesh, trying to destroy us. All about, I saw the tattoos on my men’s skin flare up, their intricate patterns warding off the enemy sorcerer’s attempts to incinerate us. The flames claimed none of ours, but they were indiscriminate, blistering and charring the flesh of the men we faced. Many of their infantry panicked, fleeing in agony or rolling on the ground to quench the fire. They died and were replaced by others – more and more streamed into the sphere of light from all directions, drawn by the white glow to our location.

  The flames vanished and the battle madness came to me. My brain took the chaos and turned it into order, giving me all the time in the world to look around. The air was a mixture of dazzling colours and movement. Sorcerous light reflected eerily from the spraying blood, the bright white of our teeth and the fading blue of our sigils. Silver patterns of steel and armour wove their patterns of death and I revelled in it. Not in the deaths of men, but in the battle of strength and the battle of wills between us. I decapitated a man – my blade cutting easily through the protective steel of his neck guard and sending his head spinning away, to be lost amongst the dance.

  Sinnar joined. When the mist descended he was a juggernaut against mere men, as if a beast of tremendous, calculating rage possessed him and gave him a power that transcended even his huge physical form. He thundered into their ranks, with his men behind him. He had his shield across his back and wielded his sword with both hands, sweeping aside his opponents with ease and leaving terrible wounds that their armour could not prevent.

  Our arrival forced them back. We were fewer in number, but we were stronger. They kept on coming – more and more from the forest around us, yet they couldn’t stop us. Hacker’s squad were close now. Our opponents had singled his thirty out as an easier target and they did their best to encircle his men. Craddock reached us, bolstering our rear, and I sensed the remaining squads were close.

  I saw something – at the far edges of the light. There was a man, standing impassively in the shadows of a tree. His robes were black, his head was bald and he carried a shortsword. Now that my eyes were upon him, I could feel the energy surging out of him as he plucked at the strands of power. He tried to burn someone with mageflame – I read it as easily as I could read the words on a page – and then he tried again. His efforts were rebuffed by something – Ploster - and I could feel the man’s frustration growing.

  I plunged my sword into the thigh of an enemy soldier, leaving him with a wound that would kill him in a few seconds. I found myself with space and I burst away from the main body of the fighting and ran towards the sorcerer. Some of my men came with me, though I didn’t see their faces. The robed man saw me immediately and waited for me to come closer. There was no fear in his eyes and he raised his hand, pointing his palm towards me. His death magic tried to tear the life from my body and leave my corpse twitching amongst the leaves. I ignored it and shattered his ribcage with a swing of my sword, the blade dragging out a mess of his innards with it. He fell and I kicked his head on the way down, furious that he had murdered the men on his own side as he tried to kill us. With his death, the betraying light winked out, reducing the battlefield to a scrum of noise and shadows.

  “We have to get back, Captain,” said a voice. It was Grids, his eyes glittering as he tried to make out the details of the battle. Tander was with him. He held his shield defensively as if he expected a blow to land at any moment. We’d come further from the Cohort than I’d realised, or the melee had gone away from us in the few seconds it had taken to kill the sorcerer.

  I didn’t speak a reply and simply broke into a run towards my men, with Grids and Tander following. The other squads had joined with Hacker and as far as I could tell, all of our groups were together. We probably only had minutes until the darkness would become too much of an impediment for any of us to fight in. I was still yards away from the rest of the Cohort when something grasped at my leg. My speed and weight tore me free, but I almost fell headlong to the earth. I righted myself and continued, chancing a look behind. Something rose from the ground, then others joined it, struggling to raise themselves upright. At first, I couldn’t make sense of what I saw. Then, the nearby body of an infantryman shuddered violently and he rose to his feet like he was pulled upright by a thick rope. Something glistened at his neck – a deep wound that I knew would have been fatal.

  In front and all around, more of the enemy dead clambered to their feet. Their armour was smashed and punctured, with rivulets of blood drying across the polished steel. I came close to one and hit him in the side of the head with my sword. The top of his skull was ripped away and the man slumped to the ground at once. I joined with my men, Grids and Tander only a moment behind. “The Flesh Shaper,” I shouted.

  Lieutenant Craddock looked across. “Understood,” was all he had time to say, before he resumed his efforts to repel the living men who pressed endlessly against our flank.

  I turned and saw dozens upon dozens of shapes running towards us from the north and the east. Even in the darkness I could see the jerkiness as the death sorcerer’s magic tried imperfectly to operate the vessels which the dead men had become.

  “Watch to the flanks!” I roared, fearful that some of my men might be unaware of the threat. To the far side, soldiers turned just in time to defend themselves from the corpses of men they thought defeated. Death magic wouldn’t frighten us – we’d seen this before and sent the bodies back to their graves again.

  Craddock pushed his way through until he was close to me. All about us, there were grunts and curses as we focused on defending ourselves against our opponents.

  “We have to get out,” I said. “There’ll be no victory for us if we stay put.”

  In the distance, I heard something. It was neither a roar, nor quite a howl. It was a vile noise that did not come from anything living. I knew what it was, and I could see from the faces around me that the others did too.

  “As if it couldn’t get any worse,” I said.

  Lieutenant Craddock grinned unexpectedly. “It makes you feel alive again, doesn’t it?” I grinned back and he clawed his way through the struggling mass of bodies to a position where he could order the withdrawal. I found myself still on the outer edge of the Cohort and pushed my shield into a position between Weevil and Ninks. I could have taken command of the withdrawal, but sometimes it was nice to show my face to the men. They all knew I couldn’t stay away.

  “Was that noise what I thought it was, Captain?” asked Weevil. A blade clashed off his shield. I lunged forward and plunged my blade into a dead man’s neck, exposing the whiteness of bone at his throat. He ignored the damage and I struck him again. This time he fell away. I heard Craddock and Sinnar shout the orders
and I saw our line straighten and heard the clank of shields as they interlocked, like the shutters closing along a street of houses when a storm approaches.

  “I reckon,” was all I had the time to say. I heard Craddock shout again and we disengaged from the enemy infantry. In the dark, it was easy for us to surge one way to drive them back and then break off in the opposite direction. I think they had little appetite to fight us. Perhaps their commander had fallen to an unlucky blow early on, leaving them without leadership. The Cohort split neatly into two parts so that we could pass more easily through the trees, and we moved to the north-east in wide columns at a half-run. The men at the rear used their shields to protect against the living infantrymen who chose to pursue us. Even those soon fell behind, unwilling to give chase once they got sight of their dead former comrades.

  The servants of the Flesh Shaper were not easily dissuaded from following us. We’d faced hundreds of Nightingale’s dead citizens a few months ago. That battle had been a terrible one, though we had learned where best to strike these creatures in order to break the magic’s hold upon them. We aimed our blows at their heads, hoping to destroy the tissue of their brains within. Our opponents wore helmets and it wasn’t easy to dispose of them in a single hit, especially when we were trying to run over treacherous ground at the same time. Once or twice, someone among us tripped and had to be pulled upright by the men around him, so that we wouldn’t have to break stride. We’d faced it all and I was proud that we’d adapted so readily.

  There was another of the rasping howls behind us, this time loud enough to be clearly heard over the sound of our boots and the skirmishes all around our flanks. It was coming closer. Underfoot, the ground became covered in what I took to be soft needles from the trees above us, the green faded to a brown that made them hard to distinguish against the night. They were thickly-spread and they concealed the unevenness of the forest floor. Weevil put his foot under a root and staggered forward. The timing was bad for him and he took a sword thrust into his upper arm. I knocked the corpse back with my shield. Weevil cursed and recovered his footing in time to keep pace.

  I was close to the rear of our second column and was in a better position than Craddock and Sinnar to judge our predicament. It’s easy to break away from an organised foe in darkness, but the dead men which the Flesh Shaper threw against us didn’t care about formation, nor were they fearful of our blades. I believe that only a man who cares for his life or his fellows can fight well. Once you deprive him of these things, he is no longer an effective weapon. Hundreds of them continued to pursue us – individually they were hardly a worry, yet we were not able stop and give them our full attention. We’d run for seven or eight minutes, which was probably enough to ensure the living infantry wouldn’t engage with us again. However, it wasn’t the living or the Flesh Shaper’s raised army of dead men that we hoped to escape.

  There was a crashing sound somewhere away in the darkness, beyond the massed packs of dead. I fancied I saw a shape – something massive and bulky caught for a moment against a lighter part of the background. I swore loudly. It would be upon us soon.

  Something happened that I had not expected. It was so far away from any imagined outcome that I could never have guessed at it in a hundred years of trying. The night was suddenly lit up. A fierce orange light overtook us, showing details of the trees and ground nearby. I looked and dozens – perhaps hundreds – of the Flesh Shaper’s minions had burst into flame. Columns of orange reached for many feet above their heads as they were incinerated, burning their fats and their muscles so quickly that their bodies were shrivelled into blackened pillars of char. The flames greedily reached out to their fellows, washing over armour and onto the dead skin beneath. So bright was the light that I had to shield my eyes as I ran and I squinted to block out the glare.

  We didn’t slow, though our pursuers faltered as the fire tore through them. They tripped over each other and scrambled up again, only to be caught by a fresh wave of flames. Further away, there was something in the darkness, that continued its approach towards us. I imagined the impossibly heavy bulk of the creature shaking the leaves from the trees above. I knew it was much faster than anyone could have thought it to be.

  As we ran, I looked ahead once more. The light of the flames was flickering and fading now as it consumed its fuel with unnatural speed. In front and to the side, I saw a figure. He was tall and dressed in black clothing, with a wide-brimmed hat on his head, pulled low to hide a face I couldn’t have seen through the darkness anyway. Wreaths of smoke surrounded the figure, swirling and rising as his body smouldered beneath his tunic. I got the unnerving sensation that he was looking directly at me. He raised his hand and pointed away directly north, indicating that we should take a different course.

  “Lieutenant Craddock, Sinnar! Due north!” I shouted.

  At once, we changed direction, many feet pounding a new path through the forest. The flames which had ripped into the Flesh Shaper’s creatures had given us the opportunity to put some distance between us and them. They nipped at our heels, though their numbers were now much fewer. The darkness which had descended again hid the true threat from sight. We could hear it still – the night didn’t conceal the sound of its footfall as it brushed through the trees. It was close to the place where the dark figure had been standing. I didn’t think we could outrun it and I was already calculating when would be the best time to bring us to a halt so that we could face it in formation.

  Before I could make a decision, the light returned. This time it was far brighter than before. I looked again, just in time to see an explosion that could have torn apart the walls of a castle. Red-orange fire bloomed and blossomed two hundred yards away, roiling with fury as it expanded. The sound reached us, cascading over and around, bringing with it a hint of the superheated air from the blast’s centre. I saw trees fall, their mighty trunks knocked aside like twigs. Somewhere in the centre, a monstrous shape cast a perfect silhouette as it was hurled through the air and out of sight, gone in the darkness. There was a screech, which we heard in the aftermath of the explosion, letting us know that our pursuer wasn’t yet killed.

  “Shit,” I heard someone say and realised it was me.

  6

  We didn’t slow. The figure I’d seen had clearly intended for us to go somewhere or find something. I knew who he was and on this night, I was willing to trust his advice. The darkness was now almost complete and I worried that we might miss something we were expected to see, or we might lose someone if they fell out of formation and were somehow unnoticed. I’d almost forgotten about Ploster in the heat of the combat. He came to our aid by summoning light to assist us. His power lay in other areas and the light he brought was hardly enough to illuminate our way. It was enough – a beacon that shone over the hazards that might have otherwise remained hidden in the night. I didn’t matter that we might be seen – the beast that came after us didn’t need light to find where we’d gone.

  A shape came into view, a little way off to our left. We saw it through a gap in the trees and made towards it. It was a square tower, built from grey stone and standing in the middle of a circular clearing. It could have been thousands of years old and it loomed above us, decaying and abandoned. There is a feeling you get from ancient places – some you approach and can feel a sense of menace, as if the stones themselves retain a memory of evil that once lived within. With this place, there was no sensation of threat. All I felt was a strange sadness and the faintest hint of unease.

  We crossed the clearing. There was grass here, where the sun and rain could properly nourish it. The tower in the centre was three storeys tall and the walls were only forty feet to a side. Deep slits had been cut into the surface at irregular intervals, presumably intended as windows. It had neither a moat, nor surrounding walls for protection. There was a door in the wall to one side – it was eight feet tall and broad. The thick, dark wood reminded me of the gates in the walls of Treads. The gate to this keep had no
iron banding to reinforce it and something told me it wasn’t necessary. I muscled my way through the soldiers who had already begun to mill without purpose. The door had no handle on the outside. Not sure what to expect, I placed my hand upon the surface – it was as cold as stone. I pushed and to my surprise, it swung open without a noise. It was dark behind and a cold draught brushed past me. It smelled old and I found myself relieved that for once there was no stench of death.

  I took five men inside with me, including Ploster for his light. The first room was completely bare and its walls were unadorned apart from sconces in the wall to hold torches. There were two square doorways leading from each of two walls. I guessed there’d be four rooms on this level. I could hear muted conversation as it washed in from the men outside, but otherwise there was a complete absence of noise. I thought about our options – we could continue to run, or we could stay here and see what the passing night brought to us. In the end, the decision was an easy one to make.

  “Bring them in,” I said to one of the men with me. He turned and left, in order to deliver his message.

  The men trooped inside. They looked dirty and grim. Their armour was dented and filthy with the blood of our enemy. I saw many who carried injuries, with one man missing half of his lower jawbone. It was Cricks – I clapped his shoulder as he walked by. He tried to grin, but he was missing too many teeth.

  I sent teams to search the tower and to make sure we were alone. We needed to secure the door, which was easily done. There were three heavy bars of wood that could be slid into grooves in the stone behind the door, preventing it from opening. I didn’t know if they’d stop the Hungerer from getting it open, but it probably wouldn’t have fitted through the opening. It was strong though and could likely rip the surrounding stone blocks free if it were given time.