by Tanya Huff
Five of the others stood where they’d been left. The sixth sat crumpled in a corner. It wasn’t like the others. It wasn’t like her. She stopped in front of it.
*Get up!*
It ignored her. She could feel it frantically struggling against the tormented flesh that held it.
Five would have to be enough.
* * * *
Kars looked at the hand stretched out toward him. “I can’t leave now.”
“It’s time.”
Just for a moment, it seemed that the insanity left his eyes and he was only a very old and very tired man “Long past time,” he said softly. “But I’ve promised Kait I’d stay.”
* * * *
Gerek grabbed Karlene’s shoulder, fingers sinking deep into the heavy sweater, and spun her around to face him. “Do something!”
“Like what?”
“How should I know? You’re the bard!” He waved his sword at the stockade. “Sing something!”
“There are no kigh!” she reminded him through clenched teeth.
He pushed his face toward hers, and spat each word at her with separate emphasis. “Yes. There. Are.”
“She’s too far away!”
“Try!”
Jerking free of his grip, Karlene faced the stockade and pitched her voice to carry. “Vireyda Magaly!”
* * * *
Gyhard barely held on as Vree surged forward. They meshed for a heartbeat, then separated again. *What the …?*
*Karlene’s using my name, like she used it at the way station when Bannon took control.*
*How could she know which kigh is dominant from outside the holding?*
*How the slaughter should I know? I’ve been here with you.*
*She’s going to ruin everything!*
“Vireyda Magaly!”
The second call was harder to fight.
Head cocked to catch the sound of the distant voice, Kars slid back into insanity, his eyes growing wider with every passing second.
“Vireyda Magaly, answer me!”
“Demons! A trick! A trap!” Gibbering in terror, Kars leaped backward, slamming the door.
“Shit!” Impossible to tell which one of them spoke, which one of them was in control.
The cabbage hit them just above the left elbow, numbing the arm and knocking them sideways. They turned and saw the dead approaching, their joined kigh too strong to accept the false comfort of denial.
*Gyhard, give way. You can’t fight them.*
*Neither can you!* But he released her body, drawing quickly back within his original boundaries as she surged forward. The brief moment of unity brought a flare of heat that lasted long enough to be a dangerous distraction. *We’ve got to open the gate!*
Unfortunately, in order to confront Kars, they’d come too far in the yard. An ax balanced across her palms, one of the dead moved to stand between them and reinforcements.
Vree dove forward to avoid being brained with a stone crock of honey, rolled awkwardly because of the numb arm, and felt fingers close around her ankle, the touch so cold she could feel the chill through the leather of her boots. Writhing in the dead man’s grip, she kicked up with her free leg, catching him on the point of his chin.
Teeth shattered as Ondro’s head whipped back, but he didn’t let go. Kait had told them the father was in danger. The father must be protected. He could dimly remember a man he’d called Father being set gently into a hole in the ground, but that memory had been stripped of power by the Song that held him. If Kait said the father was in danger, then Ondro would protect the father.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Narrowly avoiding a grab by the dead man’s other hand, Vree curled up and drove the point of her long dagger into his waist, sawing it from side to side, severing tendons, separating the small bones. Suddenly, she could feel the air above her being pushed aside. At the perimeter of her vision, she could still see the woman guarding the gate—obviously, someone else had stopped to pick up a weapon. There was no longer time to waste on freedom. Flinging herself to the right, she dragged the dead man over with her and left a fold of her sleeve lying severed in the dirt of the yard.
* * * *
“Now what’s happening?”
“They’re fighting.”
“Who?”
Magda blinked and looked up at her brother. “The dead.”
Gerek glared at the stockade then, snarling wordlessly, ran down the path to the tree where Bannon was tied. Barely pausing, he raised his sword. As it descended, Bannon twisted to present as small a target as possible.
“GEREK!” Magda rushed forward, hands outstretched, unable to believe what she was seeing.
Two more quick cuts and the ropes binding wrists and ankles were in pieces. Another and Bannon’s knives spilled out of a split pack and onto the ground.
“Gerek, what are you doing!”
He grabbed his sister as she flung herself by him, but he directed his answer up the path at the bard. “Bannon’s the only one who can get over the wall. Don’t you dare call him back!”
Karlene’s pale eyes blazed. “Are you threatening me, Your Grace?”
The steel point lifted. “If I have to.”
Bannon ignored them. Scooping up the two throwing daggers and the long belt knife out of the pile, he sprinted for the wall, swarming up the same imperfections Vree had used, pausing as she had at the top. A quick glance down into the enclosed area showed him five to one odds. When his gaze tried to slide away as his kigh refused to deal with the dead/undead kigh below, he forced his focus back onto the fight. Vree was down there. And she needed him.
He saw her sever a hand to free herself and grimaced, remembering the fight with the dead soldiers at the ford. The dead didn’t feel pain. Unless the bard could get inside the stockade and do whatever it was she did, this lot would have to be chopped to pieces before they’d give up. Five to one odds were no longer survivable.
With his feet braced against the inside of the logs, Bannon scuttled hand over hand along the top of the wall, his weight hanging from the rough points hacked into the upper ends of the logs. His right arm throbbed just above his wrist where it had been broken while Gyhard controlled his body. Swearing under his breath, he moved a little faster. He dangled for a heartbeat over the gate, then dropped, landing behind the dead woman with the ax.
Straightening, he grabbed the bar, began to lift, and flung himself to one side as an ax head thudded into the wood where his right shoulder had been. Almost like someone told her I was there …
Twisting the blade out of the wood with practiced ease, Anca swung again. She would protect the father.
The edges split the air an inch from Bannon’s back as he dove under the swing and slammed his shoulder into her stomach. They hit the ground together, but with no air to be knocked from her lungs, she continued to flail about and managed to smack him in the side of the head with the ax handle.
Grunting in pain, he rolled clear and staggered for the gate. Could use that pig-sticker of His Grace’s in here right about now.
On the other side of the yard, the severed hand still clutching her ankle, Vree dragged herself under a split rail fence and into the cow byre. At this moment, crawling through shit was a small price to pay. As a heavyset middle-aged man with arms like small trees chopped through the rails, she lurched toward the stable. From the stable roof she could get to the wall. Once on the wall, she could get out.
Slipping in the muck, she twisted to keep from falling, and saw Bannon lifting the bar on the gate. Her left arm snapped forward.
The throwing dagger embedded itself hilt-deep in Anca’s armpit, grinding in the joint. The ax missed flesh and it bit deeply into wood. One arm dangling uselessly, she fought to free it.
Cut off from the stable, Vree picked up a splintered rail and smashed it into the face of the charging dead man. It slowed him down a little. With all her strength, she drove her heel into his knee. That shook off the clinging hand and slowed him down a little more.
It didn’t stop him.
Bannon kicked back, catching Anca in the ribs, hurling her away from both ax and gate. The sudden appearance of the dagger told him that Vree was back in control of her own body. Whatever had happened between her and Gyhard before the dead attacked was no longer happening. Kars kept calling Gyhard “my heart”; maybe he Sang his lost heart right back into his chest. The thought of Gyhard trapped in an ancient ruin of a body with a crazy old man made him smile as he shoved open the gate.
Gerek’s sword whistled down through the slowly widening space, deflecting the ax blow aimed at Bannon’s head.
“Chop off her slaughtering arm!” he yelled scrabbling out of the way.
Momentum carried Gerek into the yard, but when it ran out, he stood frozen in horror, surrounded by the walking dead. His sword arm began to shake and the point fell until the tip dimpled the packed earth.
“Gerek!” Seeing only her brother’s danger, Magda rushed forward.
*NO! NO! NO!*
Hands clutching her head, she screamed and fell writhing to the ground.
“Maggi!” The edge of his sword chopped through flesh and into bone. Jerking away from clutching hands, he fought to free the blade from a dead thigh.
Karlene Sang as she ran into the holding and that was all that kept her from falling as Magda had.
*NO! NO! NO!*
The voice shrieked denial in her head, trying to drown out the Song.
*NO! NO! NO!*
The pain was so intense she could hardly see, Karlene forced her voice to run up and down an eight-note scale. It was the best shield she could manage, and it wasn’t nearly enough. Grabbing Magda’s foot, she dragged the girl back out through the gate.
The shrieking stopped.
Wiping at a dribble of blood from a lip she didn’t remember biting through, Karlene dropped to her knees and gently lifted Magda’s head onto her lap. When the girl’s eyes fluttered open, her heart started beating again. “Are you all right?” It was probably a stupid question, Karlene realized, considering how she felt, but it was the only question that came to mind.
Magda blinked and tried to focus on the bard’s face. “Her name is Kait.”
“Whose name?”
“The girl who kept saying no.” Tears spilled over and ran down Magda’s cheeks. “She’s just barely hanging on to who she is.”
“I’m not surprised.” Setting Magda gently on the ground, Karlene got shakily to her feet. Considering the condition Kait’s body had been in when she’d found it on the other side of the pass, and how long before that Kars had Sung the girl’s kigh back into a parody of life, she was amazed Kait had any sense of self remaining at all. But since she did …
Leaning on the gate, careful not to cross over into the yard, Karlene Sang. Although she Sang everything she’d found out about the girl after returning with Prince Otavas to the Capital, Kait’s kigh stayed just out of reach of her Song.
“She’s protecting her father,” Magda said, waving a shaky hand at the fighting. “They all are.”
“Her father?”
“Kars. I think if Kars wasn’t there, they’d stop fighting.” She winced as Gerek parried blows from a maul. “I think.”
* * * *
A living fighter recoils from pain, leaving openings to be exploited; the dead do not. Unable to disengage long enough to run for it, Vree found herself pushed back against one of the buildings, an ax blade cutting patterns in the air inches in front of her face. Instinct flipped her right arm forward, but the dagger that should have dropped into her hand lay somewhere off the coast of the Broken Islands.
“Shit!” She ducked as the ax smashed through the narrow shutter behind her and swore louder as a splinter of wood embedded itself in her cheek.
“Vree! To the right!”
She flung herself sideways as the dead man catapulted toward her. Dropping to one knee under the flailing arms, she caught a glimpse of Bannon running something into his back.
Pinned to the wall by the steel point on the log gaff, Kiril struggled to free himself. He must protect the father. Pressing his palms against the wood, he pushed and, inch by inch moved backward, passing the shaft through his body. When his arms no longer reached the wall, he dug his heels in and kept moving.
Bannon grabbed Vree’s arm and shoved her toward the broken shutter. “Karlene says Gyhard has to deal with Kars. Kait won’t let her into the holding, and it’s the only thing that’ll stop this lot.”
“What?”
“I’ll explain later. Just deal with Kars.” He ripped off the remains of the shutter and boosted her into the narrow opening. “Hurry up, before Gerek gets his legs chopped off. His Grace doesn’t like hurting people.”
“But they’re dead!”
He flashed her a brilliant and achingly familiar smile. “Tell him.”
* * * *
*NO! NO! NO!*
Reeling backward, Karlene threw everything she had into Kait’s Song. It was barely enough to chase the tortured kigh out of her head. Panting, most of her weight on Magda’s shoulder, the bard shook her head. “All that seems to do is remind her we’re out here.”
* * * *
Squatting by the hearth, a hand resting on the partially burned body of the old woman, Kars rocked back and forth Singing softly to himself, trying to drown out the Song of the demon. It wasn’t working. One after another, the demon Songs that had been beaten out of him in his childhood welled up out of memory and built piteous harmonies in his head.
Lips caught between his teeth, his Song faded to a moan. He rocked farther back, beating his head against the field-stone wall. Beating. Beating. He could still hear the demons.
“Kars, stop it.” Breathing shallowly through Vree’s mouth, thankful for her nightsight, Gyhard stepped carefully over and around the corpses and broken furniture scattered down the length of the dim room. “Hurting yourself won’t drive away the kigh.”
“The demons.” The protest came out of the old man’s mouth in a young man’s voice.
“They’re not demons, Kars. They’re just the kigh.”
“I don’t want them. Make them go away, Gyhard. Make them go away!”
*You’ve had this conversation before.*
*A long time ago.* He stepped up onto the hearth and wrapped Vree’s arm around the old man’s shoulders, forcing his bleeding head away from the wall.
Kars buried his face against Vree’s chest. “Hold me until they go away.”
Her skin crawling, even though she wasn’t exactly in it, Vree stared down at the tangled mat of gray hair. *Do what you have to.*
She could feel Gyhard’s grief and his guilt as he took her hand and lifted the old man’s chin until their eyes met. “Kars …”
He frowned. “Were you always a girl?”
Gyhard blinked. “What?”
“A girl. You’re a girl. You weren’t always a girl.”
“No, but …”
His smile was everything it had ever been, “I didn’t think so.” Then the smile disappeared. “Why do you keep leaving me?”
“I never meant …”
“Yes, you did.” The rheumy eyes narrowed. “You got on that horse and you rode away.”
*Gyhard. Do it!*
Her hands closed around his neck. “I’m sorry.”
Ignoring the hold intended to kill him, Kars shook his head. “Sorry isn’t enough for what you did.” Remembering another life he’d made his own, he filled his lungs with air and shrieked out a Song.
*GYHARD!* She could feel his kigh being dragged from her body. Forcing her consciousness past him into her hands, she changed her grip and twisted the old man’s head around in one swift motion, snapping the ancient, brittle neck.
*Gyhard!*
*I’m here.*
She threw herself into him, not sure of what parts of her body were under her control and what were under his and not caring. He needed comfort, so she gave it, finding ways to hold him.
“Gyhard.�
��
It was a name whispered with air pushed out of dead lungs. Meshed as tightly together as was possible and still maintaining separate kigh, they looked down at the body.
“Help me.”
* * * *
When Vree disappeared into the building, the dead tried to follow, throwing themselves futilely against the door Kars had bolted from the inside.
Forcing herself to think past the moment, Anca slowly backed away. She couldn’t remember the kitchen. She couldn’t remember exactly what it was for, but she remembered a door from the kitchen to the hall. The father was in the hall.
They had to protect the father. She began moving as quickly as possible toward the back of the building.
“Something tells me there’s another way in!” Bannon yanked his borrowed log gaffe out of the wood, ignoring the rancid fluids smeared along its length, and ran after her. Slashing at her ankles, he brought her down. Planting the point in the center of her back, he leaped up into the air and drove it through her into the ground. It hadn’t worked the last time, but it was all he could think of to do.
Jumping off the body, already rising moistly onto her hands and knees, he looked around for another target and saw Gerek leaning on his sword being noisily sick. Behind him, sunlight glinted on an ax as it descended. Even as Bannon raced forward, he knew he was going to be too late.
“Gerek!” Magda’s scream echoed off the stockade walls.
Gerek straightened …
… started to turn …
Inches away from his shoulder, the ax fell from nerveless fingers and the blow that should have chopped through living flesh from neck to groin, skidded through the heavy muscle across the top of his shoulder on its fall to the ground.
Gerek cried out, clamped his left hand over the wound and swayed where he stood, blood pouring over his chest and arm. He would have fallen had Bannon not grabbed him around the waist and used his own momentum to get him moving toward the gate.
“Lucky we brought a healer with us, Your Grace.” He dumped him into Magda’s arms and turned once again to the yard. He had to stop the dead from getting to Vree.
Except that the dead had stopped.