The Watchers Trilogy: Omnibus Edition

by William Meikle

  Then suddenly he was drenched again, and he felt his hands slide over the Other’s flesh as it sloughed away from under his fingers. He gagged as the stench of rotting meat filled his mouth and nose. Then he was holding little more than a loose jelly which fell through his hands and slid to the ground.

  He looked up to see Menzies smiling down at him, the large bellows poised in his hands. Sean could now see that a flexible pipe made of soft leather stretched from the back of the bellows and into a large oak barrel on top of the wall. The stench of garlic was everywhere.

  “Well met, young guardsman! How do you like my water musket?” the doctor shouted. Sean started to reply when the great bell suddenly went quiet and the sound of fighting slowly died away. A great silence fell on Milecastle.

  High in the watchtower Martin realised that all noises of fighting had stopped. A deadly silence fell outside as if the castle was shrouded in thick, deep fog. And suddenly he knew what was happening—he had seen it all back in Newcastleton in the woodsman’s fire. The Boy King would be coming forward with his dark companions. He would stop, and look up to the sky, as if half- expecting to see someone floating there.

  There was a doubling in Martin’s mind. Although he still lay on the bed, part of him was once more out above the fort. Once again he saw the crescent moon, and once again the darkness took note of him, and the Boy King bent his mind towards him.

  “Where is my bride?” a voice commanded in his head. He was powerless to resist as a string of pictures formed in his mind. He saw Mary Campbell as she was when he first saw her, her departure with Sean, her standing in the Great Hall with Barnstable’s hands on her—that picture lingered longer than the rest—and finally, peacefully asleep in the adjoining room.

  Although he hadn’t moved from the bed, he could see that Menzies had done a good job of cleaning her up. She was wearing one of his old nightshirts, and her hair, newly combed, lay on the bed like silk. Martin felt a pang of desire, and a voice chuckled in his head.

  “No. She is already spoken for. But maybe I’ll give her to you when she has fulfilled her destiny, although I don’t think you will find her quite so pretty by then.”

  The voice chuckled again. “Now bring her to me.”

  Martin felt a spasm run through his body and his legs twitched violently, but even the Boy King’s mentalist powers were not strong enough to overcome the fatigue in his limbs. He heard a snort of disgust and felt the parasite mind depart, looking for a new prey to subdue.

  “Are you all right, lad?” Campbell said, noticing Martin’s sudden distress, but Martin waved him away, back to his position by the door.

  “He knows where she is,” he said. “He’ll be coming. Don’t trust anyone.”

  Campbell didn’t waste time asking questions. His stance grew straighter and more alert as he moved closer to the door.

  The silence went on, and Martin could almost believe it had been a dream. Almost.

  His muscles continued to twitch and his lower legs jumped as if he were a dog dreaming of chasing rabbits. He was nauseous, his head light. He closed his eyes, but felt like he was spinning down through a vortex and opened them again to see Campbell watching him, concerned.

  “Are you well, laddie,” he asked again.

  “I’ve been better,” Martin said. “But I’ll live. Watch the door. It will come soon.”

  “You have seen him again?” the Scotsman asked. “He is here?”

  “Aye. He is here. Now be still, it’ll be on us sooner than we wish.”

  The Scotsman turned back to the door once more, and Martin lay quiet until his muscles felt like his own again. He still felt as weak as a lamb. How was he going to prevent this monster getting to Mary Campbell if her father fell?

  Sean was also thinking of Mary Campbell as he ran across the main quadrangle in the centre of the fort.

  He was heading for the east wall. He had been surprised to find that the girl was actually here, having half expected to find that she was already over the wall and out of his reach. Menzies had assured him she was safe and with her father, which probably meant that he was free of his oath, but he would not rest easy until she was well, could look at him with those eyes and recognise him.

  But for now his place was on the wall with the rest of the guard. Menzies had quickly shown him the operation of the bellows, ten of which had been placed at strategic places on the walls. During the last attack they had been the only things that kept the Others at bay, but the water was already running low and even now, all over the fort, garlic was being crushed into what remaining supply of water could be found. The barrels on the wall were being replenished, by bucket, gourd and anything else that could be used to carry liquid.

  He ran alongside the Warden, the pair of them heading for the east wall where the fighting had been thickest.

  “Maybe they have drawn back,” Sean said, noting the silence that still hung over the town. All he could hear was the sound of their footsteps and their breathing.

  “No,” said the Warden who ran beside him. “They are still there. Can you not feel it?”

  And in truth, he could, a dark place in his soul that chattered and gibbered, demanding attention. Join us, the voices said. Join us and be free.

  But Sean wasn’t tempted—he’d seen what happened to those who joined.

  “If I fall, bitten, you will do the right thing by me?” he said.

  “What—and lose the chance of a public hanging?” The Warden gave out a hollow laugh. “I doubt if either of us will survive this night, but I promise you a quick dispatching, whatever way it falls. Good enough?”

  “Good enough,” Sean said, and was surprised to see that the big man was smiling.

  “Now let us kill some of the dark ones. After chasing you all over the country, I’m itching for a decent fight.”

  As they approached the wall, they saw the carnage that the last assault had wrought. Bodies lay strewn on the ground, and the women of the town were going amongst them, armed with hammers and stakes, searching for those who had been bitten. And when they found one, they cried, in recognition and in sorrow, before driving a stake through the heart and passing on to the next.

  Some of the Others had made it over the wall, but Menzies’ water cannon had caught them, and Sean had to be careful where to place his feet to avoid the steaming, oily puddles of gore.

  The stench was like nothing he had ever encountered, and even breathing through his mouth did little to help. The only saving grace was the fact that he had not eaten.

  The Warden wasn’t so lucky. Sean stepped out of his way as the big man lurched to one side, covering his mouth. Sean averted his eyes, but could do nothing about the hollow, retching sounds from behind. He moved away, trying to put some distance between them.

  As he mounted the short flight of stairs to the wall, he met the Constable Barnstable coming down, but there was no recognition in the man’s eyes, only a blank stare.

  “How goes it?” Sean asked. But the Constable pushed passed him, almost knocking him off the narrow staircase.

  “Master William? Are you well?” he asked, grabbing at the man’s shoulder.

  The man turned, and again Sean saw no recognition in his eyes as his mouth raised in a cold smile.

  “I have never felt better,” the Constable said, and laughed from deep in his chest. It was a sound Sean had never before heard issued from the big man’s mouth. He could only stand, slack- jawed in amazement and watch as Barnstable headed away over the quadrangle. Sean saw the Thane notice the Constable and follow some yards behind, his sword drawn, but he had no time to wonder at the reason as the silence finally broke.

  Out there beyond the wall a drone started, low pitched at first, but rising ever higher until a tune was just recognisable, the battle pipes of old Scotland rousing the dark clans to battle.

  The scene that met him when he reached the top of the wall was worse than the most frightening of his childhood nightmares. The black shadows m
illed in a throng that blackened the field for as far as he could see, a horde of Others that included men, women and children, all grist to the Boy King’s mill. Amid the Others, men and only men walked, but men with the same blank stare he was so used to seeing in Mary Campbell, men who carried muskets and wielded broadswords.

  Sean had heard of such as these—slaves employed to protect the Boy King in daylight hours, and to go places where the Others would not. Such as these would not be affected by the liquid, and he wondered how long it would be before they were the ones attacking the wall. But maybe they had been part of that first attack, for from what Sean could see, the protective chain of bulbs was already gone, torn from its place by force.

  Out there, two hundred yards away, sat a patch of greater darkness from which ripples of movement seemed to run as if a great black spider was sitting in the middle of a web, manipulating the whole structure with twitches of its legs.

  As he looked at that greater blackness, Sean felt a twinge in the bite in his shoulder, but that was soon forgotten as the black horde crashed against the wall.

  Two of Menzies’ bellows were being deployed along this stretch, and Sean pulled rank to take charge of one of them. The Warden followed him and took charge of the second.

  He was just in time. The Others were crawling up the wall as if it were horizontal, their eyes gleaming red in the dark, heavy drools of saliva running from their mouths.

  They were a rag-tag bunch for an army. From his vantage point Sean saw kilted Scotsmen, the red-tunics of those who had once been in the English army, the tattered woolen over garments of farm workers, and, down there, just beginning to climb, the recently animated bodies of fellow officers of the watch killed in the last attack. They made up little more than a screaming, disorganised, mob; men, women and older children all united in just one common cause—to get over the wall and feed.

  He aimed the nozzle of the bellows down at them and pressed the handles together. The stench of garlic suddenly filled his nose and brought tears to his eyes.

  As the water hit the attackers, they fell back, hissing and mewling, leaving long trails of greasy marks as they slid back to the earth. Screams rent the air, inhuman screeches of pain. Some of them, only their heads touched by the liquid, kept trying to climb until being hosed down further. And still the throng pressed forward, walking over the bodies of the fallen. And everywhere that water touched it brought boiling lesions to the skin and fresh screams in the air.

  “This is no way for a man to fight!” the Warden shouted, and Sean had to agree with him, but anything that killed the Others so efficiently was welcome at a time like this.

  He saw that the Warden was managing to pump nearly double the volume of water that he was capable of; the huge muscles of his shoulders and arms bunched and knotted tight under his overshirt. The Others had fallen in their scores below him and he was now beginning to create an empty buffer zone. However, the enemy was getting smarter, and more of them were moving in Sean’s direction, where the flow of the killing liquid was less.

  “Close up!” Sean shouted, and the Warden moved nearer. Sean kept pumping water down over the wall, and further along he could see another doing the same, and the Others kept coming, and they kept dying. The smell that came off the hissing, bubbling bodies stung his eyes and threatened to make him gag as it hit the back of his throat, but he kept pumping.

  “Check the barrels!” he shouted at the Warden. “We can’t let them run dry.”

  “Too late,” the big man replied. There was a sucking sound as his pump brought up air. He dropped the bellows.

  “To me!” the big man shouted. “More water! More garlic!”

  At the same time Sean’s bellows began to wheeze. He turned, and saw a convoy of children labouring with buckets and gourds, heading for the wall, but it would be long seconds before they would be able to replenish his weapon. One final squeeze left barely a dribble coming from the spout.

  Sean dropped the bellows and unsheathed his sword as the black swarm began to slowly make their way up the wall over their twice dead.

  The sound of the pipes wafted up to the high tower and in to Martin’s bedchamber.

  “What in Jesu’s name is that?” Martin asked. “Are they skinning something alive?”

  There was just a trace of a grim smile on Campbell’s lips.

  “Don’t mock the pipes, laddie, they stir the blood in battle. If you have any to stir. It pains me greatly to hear them in these circumstances. They should be heard skirling for the dancing, or as a backdrop for the old stories, not in the employ of the dark ones,” he said.

  Martin could not imagine that sound ever being employed for anything else—it spoke of battle and bloodlust, of death and destruction, and it drew a sharp dagger of fear up his spine as the screaming outside started again with renewed vigour.

  “My friends, my family, are dying,” Martin said. “We cannot stay here and do nothing.”

  Campbell looked grim. His eyes never left the door as he spoke.

  “But that is exactly what we must do, until our time comes. Your father has it right—do not be so quick to embrace the inevitable. It will come in its own time.”

  There was a movement in the adjoining chamber. The curtain parted, and Mary Campbell came through. Martin started when he realised that the Boy King’s vision was a true one—she was dressed exactly as he had foreseen. The difference was that the spell seemed broken and her eyes were clear. She looked lost and confused.

  “Father?” she said. “Where are we? What is happening here?”

  Campbell turned towards her, sudden tears in his eyes. He pulled her close in an embrace, and that was when Barnstable appeared in the doorway behind him, an already bloodied sword raised.

  Martin took it all in with one glance—the blank-eyed stare and the rigidity of the man’s limbs told the story, and he knew that the Boy King had found another conduit for his will.

  “Look out!” he managed to shout, but the sword was already descending and Campbell could only try to dodge it as he turned. He attempted to push his daughter away, out of danger, but she held on tight to him, and Martin could see the blank stare back in her eyes and the evil smile on her lips. The blade caught the side of the Scotsman’s head and sent him sprawling, unmoving, to the ground.

  Martin tried once again to rise from the bed, but his legs betrayed him by refusing to move. In frustration he threw his sword at the Constable, but it merely bounced harmlessly off the wall by his head.

  Barnstable threw back his head and laughed, then a voice that Martin had previously only heard inside his head came from his lips.

  “Don’t worry. I have already promised that you can have her when I am finished with her.”

  The Constable took Mary Campbell in an embrace, a grotesque parody of the earlier one between father and daughter.

  “She is a beauty, is she not?” the big man said, running his hand down her spine and caressing her buttocks. “I chose well.”

  He slapped the girl lightly across the face.

  “Show some appreciation, woman. I will make your son a prince, surely that is worth something?”

  And she groaned, but somehow Martin knew that it was not her own voice.

  Whatever had hold of Barnstable suddenly seemed to get bored of the situation.

  “Come, my dear. Let us get you to a place of safety where you can rest and grow strong—these day-dwellers have had you running all over the country, and that is not a fit pursuit for a royal bride.”

  He took her by the hand and led her from the room while Martin shook in rage and frustration, hot tears blinding his eyes.

  The first Other came over the wall slowly, almost cautiously. It had been Other for a long time. Its eyes were fiery red pits sunk beneath a heavy brow. Lank white hair hung in rattails and its fingernails were long and torn. It wore nothing apart from a short kilt, but blood had been daubed across its white bony chest in heavy strips, giving the appearance of clothin
g. It smiled, showing yellow, chipped fangs and climbed onto the top of the wall as Sean stepped forward to meet it.

  His first cut took it in the neck, but was not firm enough to take the head off, and the Other was fast enough to grip him on the upper arm, long nails taking hold through the cloth of his shirt. The wound in its neck gaped, but there was no blood, only a wedge of grey, dead flesh.

  Sean let his shoulder drop and threw the creature over his back and away from him, feeling something tear at his arm as the fingernails were torn from his skin. Pirouetting, he brought the sword round at head height, catching the Other full in the neck before it had even fully regained its balance and sending its head spinning to reach the ground just before the body.

  Two more were on him before he even had time to draw his sword back. He thrust the first away from him, gaining a temporary respite, but the second was already reaching for him. He got his sword up, and fangs clashed against steel instead of flesh. With no room to manoeuvre, he head butted the Other, knocking it temporarily to its knees where he was able to thrust the point of his sword through its mouth and out the back of its neck. But when he tried to withdraw, he found the sword caught tight between the Other’s jaws.

  Before he could pull the sword free, the second Other returned and grabbed at his shoulders. He threw his weight backwards, dragging the pinioned Other along with him, and all three fell the ten feet off the wall to the courtyard below, the creature beneath him taking the weight of all three bodies. Sean felt the rib cage crush beneath him, and when he managed to roll off, white watery fluid was spouting from a wound in its chest where bones had pierced through to the heart.

  The second creature still had teeth locked on his sword, and its pale hands fluttered around the blade. Sean tugged at the sword but was still unable to dislodge it from the jaws. The creature laid its hands on the weapon and began pulling itself along it towards him. He let go and stepped inside the creature’s fumbling grasp, kicking it twice in the head before grabbing it in a wrestling lock and twisting hard. He allowed himself a grim smile as he heard the vertebrae snap, and, with the creature thrashing on the ground, he was finally able, using its head as leverage, to retrieve his sword and send the Other to meet its maker.