Death's Chosen (First Cohort Book 3)

by M. R. Anthony

  “They use these as shock troops,” said Ploster, listening to the clangs of metal on metal. He wasn’t excessively short in stature, but he couldn’t easily see around him when he was in the middle of the column.

  “There’s no logic behind it,” I said angrily. “The cold will kill as easily as these risen corpses. You can’t hide from the fog and it comes as fast as a horse can gallop.”

  “You must stop looking for logic where there may be none,” he admonished. “The Northmen are completely unknown to us and their desires must be equally so.”

  “Yet once they must have lived. And we have seen what they built far to the south. Perhaps even the bridges across the Ang.”

  It wasn’t the time to talk and we both knew it. We reached the side street that Sprinter had told me about and I turned our column along it, keeping the pace measured and controlled. It was little more than a wide lane, with two-storey buildings on both sides. I felt hemmed in and was glad when we intersected what I knew to be the main street north out of Angax. There were bodies here, unmoving, twisted and broken. Some had been killed with sharp weapons, others had been beaten to death. There were scattered weapons on the ground – mostly the swords and maces which Cranmar’s men would have carried when they went north. I wondered if they’d set out thinking they could win, or if they’d known all along that they were going to die.

  The fog was thicker here and it reduced visibility to less than thirty yards. Sounds took on a menacing quality – every nearby thump or clatter would herald an attack upon us. We didn’t know where the attacks would come from, but they hardly stopped. Shapes of the dead appeared from all around as if they could track us by something other than sight or sound. If the Northmen had killed all of Cranmar’s men and sent them here it was no surprise that we found so many.

  There was a brief lull, during which all became still and even the muffled sounds seemed to fade away. The respite was short. Before I could get my hopes up that we might escape Angax into the northern countryside, a torrent of the dead dashed itself against us. It was as though they’d been waiting silently up ahead, like their unknown master held them in place to see who would come this way. They came from the front – one moment there was nothing, the next they emerged from the cloaking fog, a horde of many hundreds. It was all the front rows could do to get their spears down in time.

  They hit us with a crunch, compressing our ranks and forcing us back through sheer weight of numbers. We’d seen this before and recently. On the bridge we’d fought like this, though with a greater width than six men. The man in front of me was knocked back a step. I pressed my shield against him and held steady. He kept his feet apart and used his own shield in the same way for the spearman ahead. The front men held and the dead spilled around to our flanks. They didn’t find weakness there, rather there were shields, swords and spears awaiting them. The carnage was terrible to behold and I made an oath to myself that I would see the end of this war, no matter what it took. I didn’t revere the bodies of the dead, but I had always held to the notion that those who had perished deserved peace. For these men there was no peace to be found and the last vestiges of their existence danced to the tune of a dark magic.

  Our enemy outnumbered us greatly, but they were no match for an organized force of soldiers. The slaughter went on without cease, each thrust of a spear or sword brought about new destruction. There was no glory in it – I had long since discounted the very idea of such a concept. A soldier could be noble - indeed I saw it in many of the Cohort’s number, but the killing itself was never glorious. It was how a man comported himself before and after a battle that defined his standing.

  I was in the centre right of my row of six. I didn’t have to draw my sword, nor to wield it. I had to lend my weight to those around me in order to keep them steady. Other than that, I had to do little beyond watch, listen and struggle with my inner anger. It took us a while to destroy them all, since they didn’t stop attacking until we had ruined their bodies sufficiently. Eventually we’d had done with them, leaving them piled high around us, a stack of pallid and cold-scalded flesh that smelled like freshly-butchered meat. Through a gap, I saw one of the bodies twitching horrifically, with one leg kicking and the arms jerking violently. Dags stepped out of rank and used his sword to cut the man’s head off. The corpse lay still and Dags stepped back to the sounds of a minor reprimand from Craddock.

  As the fighting had raged around me, I’d noticed the coldness increasing steadily. I ran a fingernail through the beaded moisture on one vambrace and it left a furrow through the thin ice which had formed. When I looked at my nail I saw that the ice was grey and speckled with black, rather than clear or white. Even the Northmen’s fog couldn’t entirely clear the coal dust from the air. All around me, there were signs of frost spreading across armour and skin. We were not vulnerable to the cold and a few men brushed absently at the frost. Most ignored it and remained alert for signs of trouble.

  We advanced, this time slowly. There was little point in trying to keep quiet. Even so, I could feel the efforts of the men to suppress the sounds of their footsteps and the clashing of their armour.

  “This is the place, Captain,” said Sprinter, his voice a startlingly loud whisper.

  I drew us to a halt and looked anxiously around to see if there was any sign of Rak Ashor. The buildings here were single storey and drab. I squeezed through our motionless ranks and made my way across to the closest one, ignoring the look of concern I saw on Craddock’s face. There was a window in the wall, with wooden shutters swung partially away. I looked through into the house beyond. There were the remains of a fire, which smouldered in defiance against the fog. Shapes littered the floor – the bodies of the family who had once lived here. The poorest were always the first to die. I caught myself for the uncharitable thoughts – there’d be few people in the city who lived through this and none of them deserved what was coming.

  I crossed the five yards to where the men remained and pushed my way back into position. I was taking a gamble waiting here for any time at all. We’d seen the Northmen themselves in Nightingale. They were not foes to be taken lightly and although I wished for a chance to cut them down, I knew that it would do no good to lose any of my men. My priority had to be to complete the Emperor’s task and then return to the Saviour in Blades. Anything that distracted us from that made it more likely that we’d not succeed.

  I gave the Pyromancer another five minutes. The fog was as dense as I’d ever seen it and it completely obscured anything more than twenty yards away. There were no sounds in the vicinity but we were all aware of the panicked shouts deeper into the city as Cranmar’s dead soldiers set to their task. It wouldn’t be long until the fog completed the work of killing those who’d chosen to remain hidden. I spat at my feet in disgust and the spittle became a solid before it hit the ground.

  “Come on, let’s go,” I said.

  We struck out and I’m sure we all felt a sense of foreboding. We weren’t alone in the fog and if the Northmen found us, the fighting would be much more intense than just killing a group of mindless corpses. We left the city, or at least the houses became so sparsely placed and so shrouded in fog that we couldn’t see them. We were still on a road of some sort and I expected the going underfoot to be good for a few miles at least.

  “How long will this fog last, Captain?” asked Loopy.

  “I don’t know. It feels like it goes on forever,” I replied.

  In truth, I didn’t know how far it extended. I realised that it might in fact stretch all the way from here to our destination – a blanket of fog that covered thousands of miles.

  “There’s no power great enough,” said Ploster, guessing what I was thinking.

  “I hope not. I would hate to travel forever like this. If the Northmen could shroud the world, there would be no life anywhere.”

  We’d travelled less than a mile. The sun was visible as a hazy, pale sphere above us. The road wasn’t leading perfectly nor
th, yet it was close enough that I didn’t point us away from it. There were walls to either side. They were the standard dividing walls between fields, so I assumed we were in the countryside.

  “Something coming,” said Loafer at the front right.

  “Coming from both sides,” said Beamer calmly. “I count four – or more.”

  I called a halt and the men dropped into their defensive stances, lowering their spears and lifting their shields. I don’t know how they managed to come so close without their footsteps alerting us, but the Northmen fell upon us. I counted nine of them in all – bulky shapes that were nearly eight feet tall. Their armour was rusted metal and they had pelts around their shoulders, as if to stave off the chill I was sure they didn’t feel. Their faces had rotted almost completely away – noses gone, flesh hanging off in pale grey shreds. Their eyes were tiny and glowed faintly with a dirty yellow light. There was no expression to be discerned – no indication of what they wanted or why.

  Their actions spoke for them. The first of the Northmen to reach us swung his massive sword at our front rank. The blade didn’t come close and the creature was impaled by four spears. Against anything living, I’d have expected the spear tips to go deep into the flesh. On the Northman, they hardly went more than a hand’s breadth deep. The men holding the spears used their weight to drive the creature onto its back and pinned it there.

  Three more attacked on the left, near to the place I was standing, whilst another six came as a unit, aiming to smash through our back lines. Our spears held them at bay, even if the creatures didn’t seem to be hurt by the metal points. The last time we’d fought them, I’d been left with the impression that only magical weapons could do any real harm.

  “Swords only,” I shouted above the din. Craddock repeated the cry.

  We discarded our spears, either dropping them onto the ground, or leaving them dangling from the rotting flesh of the Northmen. They showed little concern for their lives and battered at our shields, each sweeping blow hitting two or sometimes three at once. I well remembered the force of their strikes and in Nightingale my shield had buckled under the assault of one.

  We stayed strong and whittled them down, bit by bit. The Northmen were strong and hardy. The magic in our swords could hurt them though and pieces of bone, flesh and fur fell away as we repelled them. If you watched us, crouched behind our shields, it would be easy to forget that we were all skilled swordsmen and each man could hold his own with a blade. The first of our enemies fell after two minutes of combat. The Northman toppled inwards, scattering the men nearby.

  Two of the other Northmen moved to take advantage of this breach in our shield wall. I stepped forward to meet the first, giving the men around me a chance to recover. Flames licked briefly over the Northman’s flesh as Ploster tried his best to burn it. The fire was snuffed out almost at once, though the furs caught light, releasing a pungent smoke redolent with the odours of burnt, rancid fat. I got in the first strike, a diagonal chop with my sword that cleaved through the armour of the Northman’s breastplate and into the ribs underneath. As it made contact, the runes on my sword lit up white, thirsting for victory.

  The Northman brought his sword down in an overhead cut that would have torn me apart. They were much quicker than they looked. Even so, the attack was a clumsy one which relied on speed and strength rather than finesse. I sidestepped and cut the Northman’s arm deeply. The grey flesh parted reluctantly and there was nothing to flow from the bloodless veins. My opponent lifted its sword, trying to knock me aside with the backswing. I deflected the attack easily, taking care to knock the sword away, rather than taking the brunt of the strike on my shield. The men around me recovered and closed in, eager to release their pent-up anger against these foes.

  I absorbed the interplay of the individual combats taking place, hardly needing to look at what was happening. We’d broken from our column to allow us to encircle our enemies and bring more of our swords to bear against them. Against greater numbers it wouldn’t have been wise. Here, it worked to our advantage and the etchings on our swords spun and sparkled, cutting easily through the obscuring fog. Dark shapes and bright swords to bring oblivion to these Northmen who had brought so much death with them.

  The Northman in front of me burned again. Ploster had evidently refused to give up. For a sorcerer, it must have been galling beyond belief to find an enemy against whom magic was ineffective. This time the flames held, scouring away the dead flesh. Where fire and fog met, clouds of hot steam rose, billowing out from the Northman and melting the ice that still clung to my skin. We drove it back with our shields, pushing against it until it stumbled away. Its two eyeballs ruptured within a second of each other, bursting with dull popping sounds. Sods tripped it over and I followed in with my sword, which I pushed through its chest where I thought the heart might be. Something crunched and the Northman stopped moving at once.

  I stepped away, suppressing the urge to smash my sword again and again into the Northman’s corpse until it was utterly defiled. The fighting hadn’t yet ended, but there was little I could do to help since there wasn’t enough room for us all to bring our swords into play.

  One by one they fell, their ruined bodies cut to ribbons. They uttered no sound nor showed fear. It was as if they cared nothing at all about what happened to them. I waved the men to form up again, while I stayed out of rank with Ploster next to me.

  “What are they?” I asked simply.

  “I don’t know, Tyrus, I really don’t know.”

  “We killed them and they didn’t care. Perhaps they didn’t even know. It’s as if they too are simply tools of a greater power, in the same way that their spell weavers use the bodies of our own dead against us. Could there be something in control of these?”

  “There’s always something or someone in control,” he replied. “I wonder if you’ve hit upon the truth with your words.”

  I laughed, a mirthless snort of half-derision. “For all the good it’ll do us. Still, it felt good to destroy them. My mind had started to build them up as an unstoppable force against which our efforts would be naught. Now I’m reassured that they can be beaten as readily as anything. They’re tough and fast, but we can overcome them.”

  “We can beat them, Tyrus. We have magical swords and the cold does not kill us. We are only two hundred and fifty men. I have a feeling that even a hundred thousand like us would not be enough to defeat them by force of arms.”

  “There’s a key somewhere, Jon. There must be. After so many years of the Emperor’s rule they have come now and there has to be a reason. If only we could find it.”

  “Or there could be twenty thousand miles of tundra to the north of the mountains and these Northmen may have been advancing across it for hundreds of years, finally reaching the Empire.”

  “You know that’s not true,” I told him. “The body beneath the tower. The architects of the bridge. The Northmen have populated these lands before and they went away. They are back to reclaim what they had.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” he said.

  I gave him a pat on the back. “And you managed to burn one, eh?”

  He cheered up at the reminder. I was sure he’d grown weary of trying and failing against the powerful enemies we’d come up against since we left Blades. “There’s life in the old dog yet.”

  “Plenty of life. It will be a great boon if your magic can damage them.”

  I spun away, ready to take up my place amongst the men. Their eyes were upon me, waiting for the command to be on our way. I hadn’t taken a single pace when I realised that something was amiss. The fog around us hadn’t got any thicker, but it had become colder with a suddenness that was unexpected. The sun’s light continued to provide its illumination, but it was murkier than it had been only moments before. It was like a heavy cloud had crossed over the sun. I looked upwards and the pale orb was still visible, hovering over us like a watchful god. Then I heard the sound, somewhere away to the north-west.
It was faint and distant at first, like the laboured breathing of a dying man as he sucked air into his diseased lungs and expelled it with a rattle. Whatever made this noise was much, much larger than a man.

  My mind returned to the memory of the same sound, heard near to the Nightingale town square. The Hangman had fled from it and warned us to do the same. I heard it again, closer this time, as if the creature which produced the noise knew exactly where we were. The fog is our enemy and our enemies’ friend I warned myself.

  The others around me were aware of the noise and I sensed they were becoming fidgety. Even the hardest soldier doesn’t like to face the unknown if he can avoid it. I raised my hand into the air and gave the order to march. I pushed us into a half-run at once. Whatever it was that came, I didn’t want to see it.

  27

  I’d dallied too long talking with Ploster over the bodies of the dead Northmen and allowed something terrible to find us. We ran along the road, our boots in almost perfect time with each other. I was gripped by the increased coldness. The moisture in the air froze almost the moment it touched my skin and my armour took on a crystalline appearance where the ice coated the metal unevenly. When I flexed my muscles, tiny white flakes tumbled away from me, falling through the air for a brief moment until the man running behind disturbed them and sent them swirling away. I was determined that nothing would slow us, not even the thickening ice. The chill which pursued us would have killed a normal man and as I ran I tried to occupy my mind by questioning if there was any sort of protection that would be proof against the cold. A man wrapped thickly in furs might survive for a time, I thought. I doubted anyone would be able to fight effectively in the amount of clothing they’d need.