“Well, no, but–”
“That’s what I thought,” Tiarnach spat. “You can kill normal folk but when it comes to real power it’s all flimflammery.” He turned to Maeven. “And as for you, you corpse-botherer–”
Amogg’s fist smashed another table into kindling. She rose, looming over the riven war council. “Enough! I will take many heads for Wundak and Ragash. What is plan?”
Black Herran seemed to age before their eyes, lines deepening to shadowy chasms in her face. “Maeven, the Lucent force to the north is only two days away. It is time to send your army of the dead to slow them down and give us time to face the deadlier threat disembarking onto our shores even as we speak. If they attack us from both directions at the same time, then we are all done for.”
Maeven smiled and drummed her fingers on the table. “You will tell me where my brother and sister are first.”
Lorimer sneered. “Is this what all your scheming is for, some petty sibling rivalry?”
The necromancer scowled back at him. “Some things cannot be forgiven. And my sister will be freed from his clutches.”
The vampire’s sneer faded, replaced with something worse to her mind – pity. “So, you do have some kind of soul after all.”
“Your brother arrives with the ships,” Black Herran said, exchanging a glance with Verena. “I will reveal your sister’s whereabouts once the Lucent army has been defeated. Now please send your corpse army north.”
“You might have mentioned he was fighting with the Lucent forces,” Maeven snapped. “You said you would bring him to me but you did not say he would come with an entire army around him.” The necromancer tilted her head for a moment, concentrating. “It is done. They are on the march.” She proceeded to glare at her general and imagine all the different ways to kill her.
Black Herran stood and ran a calming hand through her hair. “I will deal with this Bright One the Lucents worship. The great demon general Malifer knocks on the door to this world and only my iron will delays his entrance. When the time is right, I will throw open that door. It is my hope that godly avatar and demon will destroy each other.”
They chewed over the details and plans for hours, almost coming to blows several times. Under the stone eyes of the Elder Gods, they finalised their battle strategy and handed down orders to Estevan and the town elders.
In the end it would all come down to luck, timing, and blind hope. All present knew how likely it was that none of them would survive the coming conflict, and only Amogg seemed pleased at the prospect of a brutal death in battle.
CHAPTER 34
Johann of Allstane scouted south through the valley, keeping to the main drover’s track revealed by the recent thaw. Off the track there were still sinkholes and snow-covered hollows that could easily turn a man’s ankle. There was no sign of men or monsters, praise the gods – no, he corrected himself, praise the Bright One!
He was alone and hadn’t spoken aloud, but the fear was upon him all the same, heart pounding, eyes scouring the darkness around him for sign of inquisitors who might have overheard. His home had been spared the worst of the purges thanks to Lord Daryn, but the priests and acolytes had still torn people from their beds and taken them away, never to be seen again. Now that Grand Inquisitor Malleus was in charge of the whole northern army, Johann’s paranoia had climbed to new heights.
He took a deep and calming breath. To the south, monsters; to the north, another sort of monster; and Johann was alone in a quiet place somewhere between the two. He took another breath and felt his heartbeat slowing as he passed abandoned hovels and farmsteads.
It was a dreary sort of place, barren and sparse compared to the deep woods and wide rivers of Allstane. What he wouldn’t give to be back home, sat in the sun with his rod and line in the lazy river and a skin of cheap wine beside him. It wounded his heart to think so many of his friends’ and family’s graves were here on this cold heathen land – not that Johann was any great believer in sentimentality, but it didn’t sit right with him that they were buried so far from home. If buried they in fact were and not left in a heap for the crows to pick over.
Guilt and anger mixed in his belly, a heady brew that had gifted him sleepless nights. He had been carrying messages and reports back and forth, and had been with the main army when the vanguard under Lord Daryn had been annihilated in a tremendous explosion of unknown magic. Grand Inquisitor Malleus had now tasked him to range ahead, take note of enemy positions, and try to find out what had happened to the rest of the Allstane levy.
He was ranging a day’s march ahead of the army when darkness fell. It was an overcast night, dark clouds blocking out most of the moonlight from the Twins above, and the terrain was too treacherous to stumble about blindly. He found a secluded hollow under a tree by a dry stone wall that protected him from the worst of the wind, and curled up in his blanket in an attempt to catch a few hours’ sleep. He tossed and turned on the cold hard earth. Sleep proved an elusive foe, the faces of the slain trooping through his mind.
A distant clink of metal to the south caused him to lie still, hold his breath and listen hard. It came again, near the main track through the valley, accompanied this time by the clack of pebbles kicked across rock. He swallowed and prayed it was something innocuous: a wild goat or a fox caught in a hunter’s trap perhaps, and not one of those vicious vampire creatures that had attacked them a few days ago. As the sound came closer he realised it was being followed by many more. A shuffling and scuffing of hundreds of feet and the clinking of steel on steel approached and passed by his hiding place, heading north away from Tarnbrooke. Those were not animals.
He cracked an eyelid and peered through gaps in the old stone wall. The darker-than-night outlines of men were on the move under the cover of darkness, slow and steady as if bone-weary. Hundreds marched past. He couldn’t make out much detail from this distance.
Johann slowly peeled back his blanket and kept low, crawling along the earth until he could get a better view. His eyes widened at the sight of men in armour from the Lucent Empire. Some bore the sunburst emblem of the Goddess on their battered breastplates and stained tabards. The men of Allstane were coming home.
He almost rose to shout out, but some dark thought whispered a warning that something was not right. The way they moved, those lurching steps… and then he realised that they marched without lanterns to light their way. Then there was the fetid stench.
A man walked into view, his armour rent all along one side of his caved-in torso. Broken ribs pierced through flesh and torn mail, white bone visible even on a cloudy night.
Johann gasped and hastily clamped a hand over his mouth. A dozen heads turned as one towards his direction, searching. Not all had eyes in their skulls, their hollow sockets flickering with a dull green flame. He lay very, very still. Six shambling dead men broke away from the army and fanned out, walking in his direction and searching through grass, trees and over walls. Cold sweat exploded across his body and ice rippled up his spine. He was doomed.
Johann swallowed and struggled to keep his breathing slow and quiet. He would die here, but the choice of how was up to him. He could curl up into a ball and cower, hoping the Goddess’s mercy would fall upon him – a likely story! – or he could stand, draw his sword and go down fighting the forces of evil like his lord had.
He wasn’t sure about any supposed afterlife but he didn’t much feel like dying like a snivelling weakling in this one. Many of his friends and family had already perished in this accursed place and he didn’t want to shame their memory. He stood and drew his sword.
“Come on then, you stinking corpses!” he shouted, backing up to the tree so they couldn’t attack him from the rear. He took a fighting stance with his sword held high and tried to ignore the wavering point.
Three dead men in blackened and twisted mail came for him, hands of shredded leather gloves and bare bone outstretched. Bile seared the back of his throat at the stench. All six abruptly stopped.
They turned as one and marched right back the way they had come to rejoin the army of the dead.
He stood mouth agape, heart thundering in his ears.
“Hello, Johann,” a familiar voice said from behind.
Johann spun, sword up, keeping the tree between the owner of that voice and himself. “Landgrave? It… it can’t be.”
Daryn approached slowly, his helmet held under one arm. His plate armour was bent and blackened, the enamelled golden sunburst of the Bright One ripped away, but his face – what was left of it – was unmistakable.
“What are you, creature?” Johann said, hand shaking, bladder complaining.
The corpse-knight’s lips curved, juddering back over dry teeth to reveal a broken smile. “Why, I’m a dead man walking, Johann.”
The scout swallowed and kept his sword up between them. “Whatever dark magic controls you, monster, it shall not have me.”
The corpse-knight’s smile faded. “Not if I can help it, no.”
Johann frowned. “Eh?”
“I have no intention of killing you. It was I who stopped those nigh-mindless dead men from gnawing on your flesh.”
The sword point dipped lower. “I… Landgrave, is it really you?”
He nodded. “Alas, I am no longer your lord. As you can see, I am quite dead. In fact, it would seem that you are the only one of the brave men of Allstane to survive this accursed conflict. I would see at least one of us return home to a warm bed and a cold cup of ale. Return as one of the living, I mean.” He cricked his head to one side, as if listening to some invisible voice. “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”
“The Bright One?”
The corpse-knight winced. “That accursed god of the Falcon Prince? I think not. I speak of the necromancer who has me in thrall.”
Johann’s sword point fell to rest upon the earth. He licked his lips and glanced around. “Recently you prayed to the Bright One every morning and night, and Her name was a blessing from your lips every time you spoke.”
“Not by choice, my good man, curse her name. The Falcon Prince did something to me. He infected me with a most unholy magic that altered my thoughts and turned me into a fanatic. It is his manipulation that led to the massacre of our people.”
Johann stifled a sob and fell to one knee. “You are truly back, my lord.”
Daryn grimaced and shook his head. “I have exchanged one accursed existence for another, and my will is now enslaved to that of a vile necromancer. On this occasion our desires, what I have left of those, run in the same direction. She has made of me a weapon packed with dark magic, a dread gift for the Lucent Empire. The men of Allstane will not stand to see the Bright One’s cruelty spread to all other lands as it has ours. We march to war one last time.”
Johann eyed the marching dead. “I will join you.”
“Denied,” Daryn countered. “There is a small goat track east of here by a split boulder that will lead you north past the Lucent camp. Take it, return home and live long and well. I pray to the Elder Gods that the Lucent Empire will be broken by this small town and its dark denizens, allowing freedom to return to our land. Let us hope some good comes from this massacre.”
Tears wet Johann’s cheeks. “I will tell of your sacrifice, my lord. I should inform you that Grand Inquisitor Malleus and ten thousand men are encamped only a day’s march from here.”
The corpse-knight nodded. “I am aware. We will be on him before the dawn. The dead do not tire.” He cocked his head again. “I suggest you gather your belongings and run. The necromancer sleeps for now, but she will soon wake. When that happens, I imagine the ice-hearted witch will compel me to kill you.”
Johann grabbed his belongings and fled the valley and the war. The corpse-knight watched his old friend leave and felt nothing. He rejoined the army of animated corpses, back where he belonged, and resumed his march.
Two hours before dawn Daryn sighted the enemy camp. Back in Tarnbrooke, the necromancer woke and her remorseless will pushed into him. She looked through his eyes at the orderly lines of campfires ahead, red and gold stars flickering in the night. He gasped, his dead body burning as she crammed in yet more dark magic – he could apparently still feel pain, though not as keen as it had been in life. She bottled it all up inside him until he felt ready to burst at the seams. Only then was she satisfied with her magical working, her deadly gift for the Lucent army’s leaders.
Daryn knew exactly how the Lucent army worked – he’d had a hand in writing some of the treatises on warfare for the old queen of Brightwater. Grand Inquisitor Malleus was one to follow the letter of the rule, unless it benefitted him personally to do otherwise. Lookouts would be placed every fifty paces, two staggered lines across the valley with twenty paces between them. A force of heavy infantry would act as night-guard closer to the camp and would spend their lives buying time for the rest of the army to rouse from their beds and repel attackers. Malleus and his command staff would be in the very centre of that camp and ringed with veteran warriors.
Ten thousand men waited ahead, and the corpse-knight only had hundreds of the walking dead.
“Some have been gifted with greater necromantic power,” Maeven advised, her voice a cold deluge across his soul. Shades and ghosts drifted here and there among the ranks of corpses, their translucent forms immune to most mortal weapons and their touch deadly to all living flesh. “The inquisitors and acolytes will have to use all their god-given powers to deal with those,” she added.
“You are not here to win the day through force of arms, my little corpse-knight,” she said. “Their numbers make that impossible. You are here to kill Malleus and as many of his inquisitors as you can take by surprise. The dead are not as swift as in life, but they are relentless. Every wound from your rotting hands and teeth will putrefy, causing fever and perhaps even death. Spread your death and disease among them.”
“I understand,” he replied. She retreated into the back of his mind and watched as he willed the bulk of her army to form up in a pincer formation and advance. The remainder would charge straight ahead in what might otherwise be called a suicidal frontal assault. With any luck Lucent soldiers awakened by screams and clashing steel would rush forward to the front while the greater part of the dead cut in from both flanks to meet in the centre and bury their rotting teeth in Malleus’ throat.
The first line of lookouts peered into the darkness as the sounds of feet and creaking steel, leather and bone approached. Then they screamed as the silent tide of dead men washed over them, heedless of sword and spear. The second line of lookouts ran for it, blowing horns to alert the night-guard to an attack.
The corpse-knight went left with his most heavily armoured and intact dead soldiers, taking the few incorporeal shades and ghosts with him. The other side of the pincer attack was out of sight but not out of mind – the necromancer could see everything the dead could; she was inside them all, and she made them his to command.
The army of the dead hit the centre of the enemy lines, thundering into the raised shields of the night-guard in a clash of steel and breaking bone. Shouts and screams tore the night as bone fingers and broken teeth tore human flesh, heedless of all wounds other than blows that caused total destruction. Mortal men rallied and counter-attacked, only to fall back in disbelieving terror when they discovered they faced an army of the dead in all their grotesque glory. Some fell to their knees praying for supernatural aid – and their goddess did not protect them from cold steel.
A total rout was stopped only by several acolytes of the Bright One who lifted their hands and cast a golden light down on groups of soldiers, stiffening their resolve while weakening the necromantic power animating the undead. Those soldiers charged back into the fray shouting hymns and fighting with unmatched fanaticism. The defenders wavered and then steadied, forming up into organised units and battle lines around the acolytes. They aimed for the heads of the undead, but the mindless ones did not need brains or even skulls. Bone and jellie
d blood sprayed the night to little effect – their bodies were only puppets dancing on the necromancer’s strings.
The right pincer struck and began chewing its way through the night-guard and the panicked, still-rising men behind them. The entire camp roused, firelight glinting from naked steel.
The corpse-knight and his troops smashed into the left flank, the shades and ghosts passing right through shields and armour, stopping hearts or freezing flesh with their touch. They opened the way and the dead burst through, overrunning everything in relentless advance towards the command tents. Resistance quickly stiffened as more soldiers rose from sleep, but it was not easy to kill the already-dead and fear caused many hands to hesitate. The necromancer squatting in what was left of Daryn’s mind gloated at her use of terror as a weapon.
A flare of golden light and a shade to his left burned out of existence. To his right, a knot of corpses in mail and shield exploded in holy fire. But the dead kept coming, an unstoppable tide engulfing the two isolated inquisitors guarding the command tents. They pulled the knights down, stabbing and clawing. Then they were among the tents fighting half-dressed men. As the minutes passed, hundreds of Lucent soldiers awoke and began to swarm them, a meat grinder even the mindless dead could not long endure.
Daryn’s sword rose and fell, wreaking bloody ruin as he cut his way into the centre of the enemy camp. Grand Inquisitor Malleus stepped from a tent right in his path, dressed only in loose night clothes. The man’s cruel eyes blazed with holy fire and fanatic belief, hand outstretched to burn all the monsters from his camp. Daryn cut it off at the wrist, then reversed the blow and slit the bastard’s belly open. As Malleus’ intestines slopped to the earth, Daryn realised he had been wrong earlier – he could still feel joy.
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