“What now?” Thyss asked quietly in his ear. He hadn’t realized that she had dismounted and lowered herself behind him. She draped her arms over his shoulders and around his neck.
“I don’t know.”
17.
As far as anyone in Byrverus could tell, the world was ending. The earthquake, for that is what it appeared to be at first, caused fear and cries from the people within its great white walls. However, when the dead first began to crawl from cemeteries, mausoleums and crypts, the terror really began to set in among the commoners. It was those newly dead that truly inspired the most horror, as their loved ones watched them arise, watched them begin to tear the flesh from the living. Then, the dead came in greater and greater numbers as they spilled from the sewer drains and crawled from the very ground itself, ground which had no known burials.
Rederick saw walking dead in wide ranges of decay and some who were nothing but fleshless skeletons. They ripped the flesh from the bones of the living and tore into their throats.
The soldiers, to their credit, dispatched the first few quickly and efficiently, given hope and strength by their priests. It was easy work, for the most minor of wounds made them drop to the ground unmoving, but they came in greater and greater numbers. Then those that had been recently put back to rest began to rise again, despite the benedictions and holy powers of the priests. The situation quickly became untenable as men began to fall under the horde. One of the great gates gave way. Weakened by the tremors, it simply could not hold under the mass of bodies that pressed against it.
The ferocity of Rederick and his Paladins rallied the troops as they tore through droves of the corpses with both the power of Garod and the strength of steel. Rederick himself lost count as his blade cleaved through walking corpses in scores, but they pushed back even he as his men fell around him. Alongside Mora, he organized his men to make a fighting retreat, dropping back through the city streets step by step in an effort to save as many of the people as possible. But the dead began to appear from everywhere, not just in front, but also from behind and their flanks.
Rederick dispatched runners to the other Paladins, his other captains, in the hopes that they could reunite closer to the center of the city. They would combine all of their forces and make a stand together in the center, around their great temple. Surrounded by hordes of shambling corpses, he had no idea if any of the fleet footed boys made it. He only hoped.
And he prayed. Rederick prayed that the messengers somehow avoided the ranks of foes. He prayed for those soldiers who had already fallen that they may find rest even as they began to rise up again. He prayed for his Paladins that they found the strength to fend off the necromancer’s horde. He begged Garod to keep his muscles moving as they tired in the heavy plate armor, and he begged for the power to save just one more life from this fate. Rederick prayed that Garod would send a miracle, some great force to save His people and their greatest city. He never once prayed for himself.
The ranks slowly lost form as they backed through the streets step by step. Men fell at the front and rear from the sheer number of enemies to fight, but the sides of the columns grew weak as well. The dead would suddenly spill from shops or homes that lined the city streets, taking down soldiers whose attention was diverted elsewhere. The men fell quickly from such unexpected attacks, unable to save themselves or each other from the ever coming dead.
It seemed to most that they had been fighting and falling back through the city for hours, but Rederick knew this was not so. He knew that in the heat of such battle, especially when it seemed that one fought a losing battle, the minutes stretched into hours. He had been in many such battles over the years, and Rederick had always prevailed. Always, he formed some plan to break through the weak points of an enemy’s assault, but this was different. There was no weak point in this enemy. Without help from the outside, it would just come down to pure numbers. Even if Nadav lied about Kythol and other ancient cities, how many were buried under Byrverus alone?
And then the city began to fall down around them. The tremors had never stopped, and that made the fighting hard enough. More tremors and rumbles added to the cacophony, making the entire city seem to vibrate from within. Rederick looked around and felt disoriented, as if he was falling yet flying at the same time. It was then that he realized that the building he stood next to, a small tavern by the look of it, had actually cracked and split, one side of it sinking down into the ground. He backed away from it in awed confusion, and as he looked round, he realized that almost the entire city did the same.
Could it be true? Are Garod’s cities truly built on foundations made of corpses? If it is so, all is lost. By Garod, the catacombs under the temple, he thought.
“Red!” screamed a woman’s voice.
Pulled from his thoughts, he turned just as a smaller armored form crashed into him. They both went down, though Rederick only fell onto his backside and skidded a few feet away. Mora lay on the ground only a few feet away, just where he had been standing. He started to move, to stand to help her to her feet – an action that seemed to take forever. Just as he got his legs underneath him, a giant formation of limestone landed on the ground before him, and the impact knocked him back onto his backside. The limestone, dozens of cut blocks still held together by mortar, seemed to have completely engulfed the fallen Mora.
As soldiers fought and died around him, Rederick hung his head low so that they touched his knees, and he wished that he had gotten to know Mora better than simply as a loyal follower and fellow Paladin. She had made it clear on several occasions that she wanted to know him as a man, not just Lord of Martherus.
Standing, he shook the feelings off and brought himself back to the moment, and it was then that he heard Mora’s voice just barely under the bedlam that surrounded him. Knowing that she couldn’t possibly have survived, he focused on the sound, just to be sure that he didn’t hear merely what he wanted to hear. Rederick jumped into action, cleaving and hacking his way through another swarm that had appeared in the street. On the other side of the great boulder of masonry, he found Mora on her back, fending off the dead as best as possible with her morning star and steel plated feet. Her left arm disappeared under the limestone just above the elbow. Seeing him, hope flooded her eyes.
“My Lord! Help!”
“Men, to me!” he roared.
He waded into the crowd of walking dead, bringing them down in great swathes on the left and right. Seeing his bravery, his soldiers rallied to his side and pushed the horde back, allowing Mora to cease her struggles. They pushed their foes back over two dozen paces, and satisfied for the moment, Rederick turned and jaunted back to where Mora was trapped under the limestone. Dropping his sword, he launched his entire body against it, but his feet slowly slid backward on the paving stones as the thing did not budge. Watching their leader, several of the soldiers joined him, and one even tried to use his sword as lever, swiftly snapping the blade in half. The limestone blocks must have weighed thousands of pounds, and it would not give.
“Take the arm!” shouted Mora, anxious for their wasted time as much as the pain.
Rederick knelt down beside her, holding his hand up to stay a soldier who already had a formidable axe at the ready. He searched her deep brown eyes through her visor and found fear, but fear of death or the loss of her arm he couldn’t be certain. He gently pushed her visor up to see her face, haggard and fraught with pain.
“Mora, I may be able to heal your arm if we can move these stones,” he said.
“There’s no time, My Lord. They come again!” she nodded toward the dead, and indeed they again pushed the Westerners. Half of the distance Rederick had earned was now gone. “For my love and the love of Garod, take the arm!”
The Steward of Aquis stood and yanked the axe from the young man who began to heft it over his head. Rederick looked at it, felt the weight of it, for just a moment. It was a fine weapon – a simple, worn smooth hickory handle and shaft with a single large
and razor sharp half moon blade. He stood over his fallen comrade, raised the axe over his head and brought it down with one terrific blow. His aim was true, and the axe met her steel clad arm just wear it disappeared under the limestone. The blade sheared through polished plate, bone and flesh to imbed itself deep into the crushed and broken street.
Rederick knew he had a matter of moments, for her heart would pump its blood clear out of her severed left arm in no time at all. He scooped her limp form off the ground as if she were a child and charged up the street to the relative safety of the bulk of his remaining men. “Sword!” he shouted as he ran, and the axeman retrieved both weapons. The rest of the soldiers fell back as orderly as possible, abandoning the limestone in a horde of walking corpses and skeletons.
* * *
Lord Rederick brooded in his borrowed cell in Garod’s temple, for the entire city of Byrverus had fallen into Loszian hands in perhaps four hours, five at the most. Everywhere they went, the found the same scene playing out. Buildings crumbled, sank and even fell, blocking paths and killing soldiers and citizens alike. The dead were everywhere, coming from all directions, and they cared not who they attacked. Any who died rose within minutes, and even those walking dead that were put to rest did not have the good grace to stay down for long.
No nightmare Rederick ever had prepared him for such constant and adrenaline fueled terror.
They charged deeper into the city, but they found no reprieve, for the corpses and skeletons rose to meet them from all directions. They fought valiantly to link up with the other captains, the other Paladins, but they found that they too were overrun. Some they never found at all. There was no exit to be had from the city, for the press of the undead army was strongest near the outer wall. In the end, they had no choice but to fight their way to the city’s center.
Once there, Rederick tried to turn and make a stand, for the Palace still stood on its own, having easily fended off what few attempted to gain entry. The temple, the most sacred place to Garod in the entire city if not the Shining West, had been completely unmolested. The catacombs were flooded with the shambling horrors, but the creatures could not seem to pass out of the lower levels. Finding strong and undefiled fortifications at his back, Rederick turned to the offensive. It did not last long, for the dead simply would not stay dead, no matter how many benedictions Rederick and the priests hurled their way.
In the end, he called for the abandonment of the palace, and all of his remaining forces backed themselves into the temple. It was the only place the undead would not tread, and the Loszians had too few living soldiers to mount an assault. At least for now. He had less than five hundred at his command. A few hundred priests and only three of his Paladins had survived. He hadn’t done a head count, but he thought that there were perhaps a thousand other Westerners inside as well. Certainly there were far more out in the city, mounting their own private defense of their homes.
All Rederick could do was wait for the eventual assault that would bring down the temple. The massive building was not meant for siege, but it would serve in that capacity for a time. It would take some time for siege engines to battle down the massive edifice. He wondered how long he would have to wait. The temple had adequate stores in its cellars to offer three months with strict rationing, and they still had access to the sewers for water that could be purified with the powers of Garod. The Loszians had to do nothing but wait and starve out the Westerners.
Rederick begged Garod for forgiveness for his failure, and kneeling in his battered and dented armor, he began to weep silently.
The hinges of his cell door squealed slightly as the door opened inward, and Mora silently walked through the opening. She no longer wore her armor, but she still carried herself like a warrior, despite being barefoot and dressed in a simple white robe. Her dark hair hung loosely about her shoulders, in contrast to its usual position pulled back tightly. Rederick’s eyes lingered on the robe’s sleeve that hung emptily, and he felt suddenly guilty. She quietly knelt next to him.
“My Lord has yet to remove his armor.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“And My Lord is a very bad liar,” she replied.
Mora reached up with her right hand to unclasp buckles around his helm and under his arms, but found it difficult with only one hand. He could not help but notice that her left arm moved occasionally as if she had forgotten that the hand was no longer there. She had no success in unbuckling his armor, but her face remained serene despite the struggles. Rederick touched her hand with his to stay it and began to remove the armor himself. As he removed the helm and laid it to the side, she saw the tracks his tears had made down his face only minutes before. She stood and wiped them away with the sleeve of her good arm.
“I’m sorry,” Rederick said.
“It’s not so bad,” she replied. “It hasn’t hurt since you laid your hands upon it, and I’d have surely died if you hadn’t done what had to be done. I’m neither angry nor sad for it, though I still feel my fingers. It’s as if they’re still there.”
He nodded, “I’ve heard that before, but that is not what I meant. I’m sorry I failed us, the Shining West, Garod.”
Tears welled up in his eyes again, and she understood then that the pain he felt for his failure was greater than her lost arm ever could have been. He began to weep, reciting his failures of the last few hours. Mora wrapped her arms about him, pulling him to her in an embrace as he spoke, and he was such a towering man that his face laid on her breasts, even though she stood and he knelt. Eventually, he quieted, and she turned his tear stricken face up to hers and kissed him gently.
“My Lord of Martherus, I would lay with you tonight.”
“Mora, I would be improper,” he said, defeat in his voice. “We are both servants to Garod, and you serve under me directly in the affairs of Martherus. We are here together in Garod’s greatest temple, and I know His eyes watch all that happens here.”
“Then He shall see the comfort two people must find with one another,” she said as she pulled her robe over her head.
She stood naked before him, and her body was quite unlike that of his lady wife’s so many years ago in the north. She had been soft and voluptuous, made more so by the sons she bore him over the years. Mora was strong and fierce with the hardened body of a warrior, skin pulled tightly over well made sinews. Her left arm ended just above the elbow, exactly where he had severed it with a heavy axe just hours ago. The end was perfectly smooth with no scars, no sign that the arm had ever continued beyond that point, a side effect of Garod’s healing.
Rederick allowed her to lay him back, accepting any comfort she might give.
18.
They rode into Lord Paton’s stronghold in the afternoon of the previous day, having only needed three weeks to make the return journey. Absolutely thrilled, the Dahken ran to greet them, and Keth took Cor’s arm with a giant stupid grin on his face, pulling Cor into an embrace of men. Even Paton, somewhat cold upon their departure, seemed genuinely happy to see them return. Cor thought that the lord likely hadn’t expected the four of them to leave Byrverus safely, but Nadav had kept his word.
Marya dismounted from her horse and stormed past Keth wordlessly to the Dahken that waited behind him. She embraced some of them, and knelt down beside the smaller children as they asked of their adventures. “Later,” she told them.
Celia and her daughters came running from the small castle’s main hall, stopping in a small cloud of dust to wrap themselves fiercely around Thom. He simply stared blankly, unable or unwilling to return the embrace, and as it continued, Cor saw something building in the man’s eyes. “Enough!” he raged, shrugging them off forcefully enough to knock his younger daughter to the ground. She stared up at her father in fright and shock, and Celia backed away while kneeling next to the girl.
“Thom? What’s wrong?” Celia asked, tears welling in her eyes.
“I beg you to keep their filthy hands off me,” he very nearly shoute
d at her. “I have no use for them, and all I need from you is your cunt.”
Thom stormed off to head inside, leaving Celia and their daughters to hold each other and cry. Cor’s heart went out to them; he wanted to kneel in front of them and tell them it would all pass, but he knew it would be a lie. He stepped over and helped them to their feet, and Celia slowly walked off with her daughters, all three of them crying. As he watched them go, Cor’s eyes darkened.
Against Cor’s better judgment and the instruction of the midwives, Thyss insisted they keep up a steady, brisk pace. It exhausted her and caused her much pain Cor knew, but she kept it to herself more often than not. Marya tried to help, but found she could offer Thyss no release from it. When they arrived, the elementalist handed the reigns of her horse to a stable boy and wordlessly climbed the stairs to find a place to sleep.
Lord Paton was still a gracious host, despite that his original warmth had not returned. He immediately called for a table to be set so that they may enjoy a real meal while discussing the events that had transpired. Cor explained what happened at Byrverus with as much detail as he could remember, and Lord Paton’s face grew bleaker with each passing minute. As Cor ended his tale, no one spoke around the table for quite some time.
“We will talk more in the morning, Lord Cor,” he had said. “You should all rest, and perhaps you should take a plate up to your Lady wife.”
Cor did just that, and though he tried to be quiet, she awoke when he entered the room. She had shuttered the window, keeping most of the light out of the room. Wordlessly, he set the plate on the bed in front of her, and she began to tear into the meat first using only her hands and teeth. Cor carefully rounded the bed to the window, opening the darkly stained pine shutters to allow in the orange early evening light. When he turned back to her, he saw the wet crimson stain on the bedclothes. Three midwives came running, intent on performing the birth right there in the room. They stripped Thyss down and pulled away any excess blankets to examine her thoroughly.
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