Bone Magic

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Bone Magic Page 7

by Brent Nichols


  "I think we should go around," said Mikail, and Tira nodded.

  They circled wide around the town and took the road leading into the forest. Tam smiled as the trees closed in around him, and the children looked more relaxed as well. This was the same forest that surrounded Raven Crossing. It was comfortable and familiar.

  That evening they reached a familiar crossroad. Raven Crossing was no more than half a day's travel away. The sky was filled with dark clouds, so they took shelter in the ruins of a long-abandoned inn at the crossroad. They split the watch three ways, starting with Mikail, who promised solemnly that he wouldn't nod off.

  Tam woke Tira a couple of hours before dawn. "Everything's quiet," he whispered, before crawling into his blankets.

  Not much remained of the inn's second floor. Tira crept up a staircase to a landing. The walls had enough holes to let her see down three out of four roads, not that she could see much in the darkness. She leaned against a firm part of the wall and gazed outside, letting her mind wander over the events of the past few days.

  The sky was bright with pre-dawn light when a distant metallic clank reached her ears. She couldn't see a thing, so he hurried down the stairs and prodded Tam with her foot. Then she headed outside.

  It had rained during the night, and the yard of the inn was full of puddles. The overcast sky looked spectacular, streaked red and orange with the first light of the morning sun. She ignored it, standing on the porch, listening, and stiffened when she heard a distant, rhythmic splashing.

  Someone was marching through puddles.

  Tam stepped onto the porch. He didn't speak, just raised his eyebrows, and she whispered, "Get the children. I'll saddle the horses."

  "Too late," he whispered back, staring past her.

  She turned her head and froze. An army was coming up the road, a shambling, disheveled army of the walking dead. They marched into view past the nearest row of trees, one after another, and the cold knot of dread in her stomach grew heavier with each walking corpse. There were fifteen of them in total, including four soldiers in dirty breastplates and helmets. She was glad of the helmets. She didn't want to recognize a face she knew.

  With every lurching step she waited for them to turn toward the inn, to begin the final nightmare. Tam was a statue beside her, barely breathing. The grisly army reached the end of the weed-infested lane where it met the road – and kept going.

  Tira stared, scared to blink. The porch was in shadow, but she was plainly visible to any undead who really looked. She wanted to duck, but any movement might draw attention, so she stood there, exposed, watching death go shuffling past. All it would take would be one of the children waking up, one horse deciding to give a good loud whinny, and it would all be over.

  After what felt like a lifetime the last of the undead was past the end of the lane. Another few steps would put them far enough along that the inn would be out of their peripheral vision. Tira watched, counting her own heartbeats, and when she was sure it was safe, she dropped into a crouch. Only her eyes and the top of her head were above the porch railing now. She stayed in that position until the last corpse was out of sight.

  "Are they gone?"

  Tira glanced backward. Sari crouched in the doorway of the inn, her face pale in the morning light. Tira released a breath she'd been holding for far too long, and nodded. "Yes. They're gone."

  "You have to take the children," said Tam, his voice strangely calm. "I don't know where you should take them. I don't know how far you'll have to go to find somewhere safe."

  She stared up at him, then stood. "What are you talking about?"

  "They're heading straight for the village," he said. "I have to warn them. I have to get home."

  Tira opened her mouth to argue, but no sound came out. The problem was, he was right. Raven Crossing was doomed.

  Unless somebody went barreling past the undead on a horse, to carry a warning.

  Mikail came out, holding Lina's hand. Their wide, scared eyes told Tira that they had seen the undead army, too.

  "Lina, you'll have to double up with Mikail," Tam said. "Be good and do whatever Tira says, okay?"

  "I should go," Mikail said. "I'm getting to be pretty good on a horse now."

  "I want to go home," said Lina.

  "Tam, I don't want you to go," Sari wailed.

  Tira just watched, her mouth still open, with no idea what to say. "What if you don't get through?" she asked at last.

  "I'll get through."

  "I think we should stick together," Mikail announced. "Somebody has to get through, or everybody at home will die. We can't risk just sending Tam."

  The four of them argued in circles for several long minutes, the girls wanting to go wherever Tam went, while Tam kept insisting that they flee with Tira. Finally Tam turned to Tira and said, "Tell them, will you?"

  She surprised herself by saying, "I think Mikail's right." Tam gaped at her, flabbergasted, and she almost smiled. "There's no safe place to take them, Tam. This is big, and it's getting bigger, and I can't do anything about it if I'm taking care of children. We need to get them back to their parents, and we need to get those people to hide. I think we should all go."

  For a long moment they stared at one another. Then Tam said, "Well, if that's what we're going to do, let's not dawdle."

  They kept the horses to a brisk walk, conserving their strength, and broke into a gallop when the undead appeared on the road ahead. For a moment there was milling confusion among the corpses. Then they started to organize themselves, the men in breastplates forming a line across the road, swords in hand, the rest clustered behind them.

  Tira was in the lead, the others in a line right behind her. She rode straight down the middle of the road, leaning forward in the saddle, her nose an inch from the horse's mane. She had her sword out, the point extended, pointing toward the undead. She wanted them to believe she was attacking. She wanted them holding their position until the last possible moment.

  Straight at them she galloped, and they braced themselves, swords coming up. When she was a dozen yards away she hauled on the reins, dragging the horse's head to the left. Behind her, the others were breaking right, in the hope that the undead would follow her.

  She hit the ditch at a gallop. A woman stretched out her hand, and Tira slashed with her sword, feeling the shock of contact. She didn't see what damage she'd done, didn't look back, just kept riding. In a moment she was past the undead and angling her horse back onto the road.

  Then she slowed the horse, watching with increasing relief as Tam and Lina passed her, followed a moment later by Mikail and Sari on the bay. All four of her companions were safe. The undead continued their relentless march, not hurrying, not pausing. Tira turned her back on them and followed the other horses.

  Two hours of hard riding brought them to Raven Crossing. A loud cry went up as soon as someone recognized one of the children. Lina's mother pulled her from the saddle, and Sari's father scooped her up and whirled her around before setting her on the ground. Mikail dismounted, trying to look dignified, but three or four village women surrounded him, hugging him joyously. He turned bright red, but he looked pleased.

  The mayor worked his way through the crowd and stopped beside Tira's horse. He was beaming. "Well, young lady, you-"

  "There's no time for that," she snapped. "You have an army of undead marching toward the village. They are going to kill every one of you if you don't flee now."

  That should have been more than enough to clear the village. It wasn't, though. At first no one believed her. Then they couldn't quite believe that the undead would come here, not to quiet, peaceful Raven Crossing. Surely they were headed somewhere else?

  Flight was the only sensible action, immediate flight, but no one seemed capable of doing anything without a good long debate first. They couldn't just leave, half the men were in the fields. And then there were the outlying farms. Mikail's parents, for instance, lived a mile and a half away. It wouldn't be righ
t to run off without warning everyone.

  Around and around it went, and Tira listened with growing impatience. A few people ran to their houses, gathering whatever possessions they considered essential, in some cases more than they could carry. Then someone started gathering the elderly. The village held two women in their eighties, a man in his nineties, and a wrinkled old crone who claimed to be even older. None of them could walk as fast as a baby could crawl, and they certainly couldn't ride. A woman volunteered to run to the nearest farm and ask for a wagon.

  "Never mind," said Tam, his voice cold and hollow. "It's too late." The others followed his outstretched finger, staring down the road where a ragged line of figures had almost reached the edge of the village.

  The undead had arrived.

  Chapter 8

  "I'm done," Tira whispered. It felt as if a terrible weight was sliding from her shoulders. She had done what she was hired to do. Well, most of it, anyway. She had brought the children back safely. If the village itself was about to perish, well, that was hardly Tira's fault, was it? She couldn't save the whole world.

  She walked to her horse and climbed into the saddle. The village owed her money, but that was all right. She had her bow and her sword, and a horse instead of a mule. She was fine.

  Half the village was looking at her. She saw a mix of expressions on their faces, fear and hope and a strange confidence, and it came to her that they expected her to do something. More than that, some of them expected whatever she did to work.

  Fools.

  She caught Tam's eye, and he raised an eyebrow, asking if he should get in the saddle as well. She gave her head a tiny shake and looked away. He had the same look of confidence as the more gullible of the villagers. He thought there was something that could be done.

  The west road beckoned. It would take her into country she'd never seen before, take her closer to home. The undead would be busy with the village, so she would have a good head start.

  Sari, her voice plaintive, said "Tira, where are you going?" It felt almost strange to be riding without her little arms wrapped around Tira's waist.

  Tira turned her horse to the east. The undead were on foot, after all. She would cut past them on her way out of the village, and maybe a few of them would try to follow her. She might buy the people of Raven Crossing a little more time.

  She booted the horse forward, and some fool villager cheered. "I'm abandoning you, you moron," she muttered as she cleared the edge of the village. The undead were close, very close. The people of Raven Crossing were in a lot of trouble. She turned the horse and trotted past the first of the undead, one of the soldiers from the palisade. She cut it as close as she could, coming almost in reach of the sword that dangled from his hand, but he ignored her. All of them ignored her, marching inexorably toward the village.

  It was nothing to do with Tira. Not any more. She had the open road ahead of her, and nothing behind her but a battle that couldn't be won.

  Like the battle at the palisade. Good men had died when they might have fled and lived. They had stayed because of discipline, or loyalty to their comrades, or because they wanted to give Tira a chance to escape with the children. Now the children were going to die anyway. All those men had achieved was to provide skilled, armed, armored troops for the necromancer who was behind it all.

  Tira reined in her horse and watched the column of undead march into the village. As near as she could tell, not a single person had had the sense to run. They were gathered in a cluster in the town square, and they were starting to organize themselves. She could see Tam calling orders. The able-bodied men and women gathered shoulder to shoulder with the children and the elderly behind them. People ran into houses or outbuildings and came back carrying knives or pitchforks.

  It was pitiful and hopeless and incredibly brave. Tira watched, unable to just ride away, and from time to time one of the villagers would look past the advancing nightmare and meet her eyes. They still expected some kind of miracle from her.

  "It's not my responsibility," she said out loud. "And anyway, there's nothing I can do. There's only one way I can help. I can ride away, and not become one more undead soldier helping the other side."

  She told herself that, over and over, as the column of undead marched closer and closer to the waiting villagers. Then, in the last instant before the two groups met, she swore, hauled on the reins, and sent her horse galloping back into the village.

  Steel clashed against steel, a man bellowed in rage, and a woman gave an agonized scream. Tira saw a burly village man crash through the undead line, wrapping his arms around a soldier and bowling him over. A man and a woman sprang through the gap, each of them kneeling on one of the soldier's arms. The woman had a cleaver and the man had an axe, and when the soldier rose, his arms ended in stumps.

  Tira ran her horse straight at the thickest group of undead. She knew that a good warhorse was a weapon, able to lash out with teeth and hooves in the thick of battle. She had never been a cavalryman, and she didn't know how to tell the horse to attack, so she charged into the thick of the enemy and hoped for the best.

  A soldier turned to face her, his sword came up, and the horse reared. Hooves flashed, horseshoes crashed against the steel of helmet and breastplate, and then the horse toppled backward. Tira got her feet clear of the stirrups just in time, landing hard on her side as the horse crashed down beside her. The horse was up and gone in an instant, and she lurched to her feet, trying not to damage the bow and quiver on her back.

  She had landed on her sword, and her hip was on fire with pain. There was going to be one hell of a bruise, in the unlikely event that she survived this battle. She hauled the sword out of its scabbard, looking around for a target.

  Only one of the undead was facing her. It was a soldier, his helmet dented by a hoof, his face a gory mess. She didn't know if the damage was from her horse or from an earlier battle, but one of his eyes was gone and the other was partly covered by a flap of skin that hung from his forehead. He was peering around, unable to see her, and she took her sword in a two-handed grip and slashed for the side of his knee.

  The riposte came with blinding speed. His sword slashed across, and she had no chance to block. She threw herself sideways and down, and the blade cut into her side. Her cloak took most of the force, but she felt a hot line of pain across her ribs.

  He kicked her, and she rolled with the force of the blow, coming up on her feet. He took a step toward her, and his injured knee gave out. She stabbed for his remaining eye, then skipped back out of reach as he slashed at her. She stabbed at his eye again, feeling the tip of the sword grate against bone, then darted around him. He was blind or incapacitated, and she had bigger problems to deal with.

  She saw a man and woman locked together, knife blade to knife blade, hands on each other's wrists. The woman had a terrible sword wound, a hole just under her heart and a matching exit wound in the middle of her back. Her face was blank, while the man had his lips peeled back from his teeth in a mix of rage and horror. Tira drew her belt knife and dragged it across the inside of the woman's wrist, cutting the tendons. The knife fell from her grip, and Tira stepped past them, joining the little knot of survivors at the center of the battle.

  A man came at her in the clumsy charge, an axe in his hand. She recognized him, a villager now fighting for the other side. He lifted the axe high, and she swung for his wrists, feeling the sword blade bite into bone. She lost her grip on the sword as his hands came down. He stood as if confused, staring at the blade jammed in the bones of his wrists, and Tira plucked the axe from his hands. A blow to the leg dropped him in the dirt.

  A quick look around told her the battle was hopeless. At least a quarter of the villagers now fought alongside the undead, doing their best to murder friends and neighbors. If anyone was going to survive, they had to retreat, but where?

  Her eyes fell on the temple to Neris. It was big enough to hold all the survivors, and it was at least marginally defensib
le.

  "Fall back!" she bellowed, and flung herself at the undead, driving a few of them back several steps. "Head for the temple!"

  The villagers broke and ran. A burly man scooped up an old woman, slung her over his shoulder, and fled for the temple. A woman ran with a child in each arm, too slow to escape, and her husband ran beside her, trying desperately to protect her with a kitchen knife. Tam joined him, sword in hand, and they fought a frantic retreat over the thirty or forty feet that separated them from the temple doors.

  Tira tried to fight her way toward them, but a broad-shouldered soldier came charging at her. She threw herself at the ground in front of his feet, wincing as his legs crashed into her back. It would be a miracle if her bow wasn't broken yet. He tripped over her, landed on his chest, and she sprang up, jumping over him and running after the other survivors.

  She found herself following an undead man up the steps to the temple. She swung her axe, hooking it over his shoulder, planted her foot behind his heels, and hauled backward. He fell back, and she twisted out of his way. He crashed onto the steps, and the woman with two children started to trip. Her husband caught her and helped her up the steps as Tam jumped over the fallen man and stopped beside Tira.

  The man Tira had knocked down started to rise, tripping an undead man who was about to charge up the steps. His head thumped into the wood with a resounding crack, and the crowd of undead paused.

  A broad-shouldered man in a breastplate stood at the base of the stairs, feet apart, a bloody sword held chest high, waiting for the stairs to clear. His eyes were fixed on Tira, and she gulped.

  Then he looked down. Lina popped through the gap between his knees, sprang halfway up the steps, ducked under a grasping hand, and leaped for the temple door. She fell face-first on the steps, an undead man's hand tight around her ankle, and Tira threw her axe. It sailed past the little girl, missing her by inches, and thunked into flesh as Tam reached down, grabbed Lina's wrist, and yanked.

 

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