Dead But Once

by Auston Habershaw

  The crowd immediately began arguing with itself, an oceanic uproar of finger pointing and order shouting. Tyvian retreated to an alcove and waved for the Guardian to follow him. The unflappable old man was a rock of evident calm in a sea of panic. “The golem stand ready for your command, sire.”

  “How many golem are there?”

  “Functional, or altogether?”

  “Hann’s Boots, man, does it look like we’re going to repair any golem in the next fifteen minutes? Functional, for the love of all the gods!”

  “Ten.”

  Tyvian blinked. “There have to be at least thirty on the grounds! Only ten work?”

  The Guardian shrugged. “Well, sire, there usually isn’t that much here for them to protect. Ten always seemed a reasonable number.”

  Tyvian scowled. He was, in a perverse way, glad that he had expected to die here tonight. It made everything a bit less stressful. “Keep them in reserve. Wait to see where Sahand plans to break through and then deploy them there.”

  The Guardian bowed his head. “As you command.”

  Tyvian gave him a terse nod and emerged from the alcove into the chaos of the Congress. There were about a thousand metaphorical fires he ought to put out—he needed to secure Ayventry’s loyalty, to unify Hadda and Davram, to prop up the panicky Houses of Camis and Vora.

  He didn’t do any of this.

  Instead, he walked through the screaming masses of peers, nodding regally to certain important persons, and then through the pleading throngs of peasants, all of them begging for salvation, and went to the balcony overlooking Ayventry Lawn—the palace’s front door.

  Across two hundred yards of stately gardens and carefully pruned trees was an iron fence, fifteen feet high, that comprised the only defensive fortification the palace possessed. The stone pillars that anchored the fence every fifty feet or so all bore the wards that kept uninvited persons out, but Tyvian rather doubted those would hold for long. Beyond the iron bars, the city seemed quiet, or perhaps was just in hiding. He could hear the beat of drums in the distance, growing ever closer.

  On the lawn, a variety of mercenaries from numerous companies were seeking to arrange themselves into some kind of cohesive fighting force. Their efforts were going rather well, Tyvian thought, but their numbers only just reached into the several hundred. It wouldn’t be enough at all. Not by half.

  He was joined on the balcony by the Counts Duren and Yvert and the Countess Ousienne, plus their champions. All of them gazed outward, awaiting the approach of the Delloran army.

  Count Yvert was wringing his hands. “Join together? Is this the extent of your plan, monsieur? You can’t be serious! You must do something!”

  Tyvian spared him a hard look. “If you can’t work together to survive this, monsieur, then you deserve what comes. You lot have put a lot of labor into destroying my father and making me superfluous—this turn of events is out of my hands.”

  On the lawn below, troops of peasants, armed with improvised weaponry torn from the fixtures of the palace, were forming crude ranks to bolster the mercenaries. He watched men hug their wives and kiss their children before joining the defense. Many, he noted, turned to salute him as they slapped a pot on their head and entered ranks. The ring squeezed hard, and Tyvian blinked away tears from the pain.

  At last, the enemy appeared.

  The Delloran soldiers marched in perfect unison, a wall of glittering iron beneath a forest of pikes. As they deployed on the other side of the great plaza before the garden’s main entrance, Tyvian felt as though he were watching some kind of complicated machine unfolding for use—efficient, organized, and remorseless. The drums beat steady time, drowned out only by the sound of hundreds of hard boots on cobbles stamping in unison. Tyvian felt his stomach shrink.

  The Countess Ousienne leaned on her husband’s arm. “What do you suppose his terms will be?”

  “Terms?” Tyvian laughed. “This is Sahand, isn’t it? He won’t offer terms until half of us are dead.”

  Ousienne glared at him. “Then why isn’t he coming across the plaza? Why isn’t he shooting?”

  The drums stopped and there was a rapid call of a short horn. As one, the legions of Dellor planted their pikes butt-down on the cobbles. The front rank knelt behind shields that the third rank passed up and planted in front of them. Some kind of defensive formation. Then silence.

  “Hold steady!” Tyvian yelled to the defenders below, but couldn’t see the point. Not a man in his rag-tag force was about to set foot beyond the enchanted borders of the palace—not for him and not for anybody. If Sahand didn’t come to them, they would happily stand here and starve to death.

  The quiet stretched out. “What are they waiting for?” Count Duren hissed.

  Tyvian felt something—a change in air pressure, perhaps a down draft. It made him look up. Something was coming—something big.

  It swept over the palace defenders, too high to see clearly, but low enough to get a sense of its scope—a forty-foot wingspan of purest black, darker than the sky itself, with a slender body like a serpent, a pair of huge, horse-snatching talons pulled up underneath its body. Tyvian felt his mouth fall open. “Oh . . . oh sweet merciful Hann . . .”

  Below, a mercenary officer’s horse began to panic and he struggled to control it. Countess Ousienne put a hand to her mouth. “A wyvern? An actual wyvern?”

  The beast did a lazy circle over the battlefield and at last landed on the roof of a Saldorian trading house across the plaza, behind the ranks of Delloran steel. It folded its wings like a parrot and dipped its head low, its talons clutching the ridge of the roof tightly enough to make the shingles buckle. There, seated in an elaborate saddle just in front of the wings, was a man in black plate wielding a huge scepter. There was only one person it could have been.

  Count Duren muttered aloud what they all knew. “Banric Sahand.”

  Tyvian grimaced. That pass alone had probably lost them twenty men who now fled back across the gardens toward the palace itself. He yelled down at them again, “Hold the line, dammit!”

  The orders echoed through the air. It didn’t look like anybody was bothering to listen.

  Sahand’s voice, boosted by sorcery, boomed across the plaza, loud enough for all to hear. It began with a laugh, hard and vicious—a bully mocking his victim. “You all know me. You know my reputation. You know the reputation of my men.”

  Sahand let that sink in for a moment. Tyvian’s heart was pounding. He knew him all right. He felt tingles running up and down his body—a little voice was telling him to run, but he knew well enough that there was no such option.

  “This time,” Sahand boomed, “There is no Perwynnon that will save you. No Finn Cadogan to stop me. No Conrad Varner to bring you victory. There is only my army and yours.”

  “We’re all going to die,” Count Yvert muttered, pale. “Sweet merciful Hann, he’ll kill us all!”

  “All the more reason to stick together, then!” Tyvian snapped at him.

  “But I have good news,” Sahand said, laughing, “I am not interested in you and your miserable little country. I have no need to spill Delloran blood to teach you a lesson. All of you may yet live, if I have my way. All I ask is very simple: bring me Tyvian Reldamar, the son of Perwynnon, your so-called king. Bring him to me, throw him out of his own gates, lay down your arms, and know my mercy. Or . . .”

  A shot of adrenaline bolted up Tyvian’s spine. He shouted down to the gardens, “Get down! Everyone get down!”

  But it was too late.

  The wyvern’s long neck bulged for a moment and then its snout opened. A jet of sticky liquid arced across the plaza and struck the palace gates and those standing immediately behind it. The caustic slime sizzled at the silver metal and burned through the flesh and bone of those it struck. Men screamed as their clothing burned away. Tyvian caught a whiff of some horrid chemical—it made his eyes water. The ranks of peasants behind the gates fell back, some noble souls dragging thei
r still-burning comrades away.

  Then the arrows began to fall. Not crossbows bolts, with their flat trajectories—these were longbowmen, hidden somewhere in the rear of the Delloran column. Yard-long arrows fell across the lawn, mostly at random. Peasants went down left and right—they had no shields, no armor, no way of protecting themselves. Even the mercenaries, dressed for a party, were ill suited to weather the barrage. The whole Eretherian “army,” such as it was, retreated twenty paces from the palace border. The grass before them was littered with a few dozen dead and injured.

  “That was but a gentle caress, Eretheria,” Sahand said. Tyvian could somehow hear his smile. “Next time, the rain of death does not cease. Bring me Reldamar. You have ten minutes.”

  Tyvian looked at the nobles surrounding him, at the terror on their faces. He saw the champions reaching for their swords. “I’d like to say, for the record, that handing me over to that man would be a mistake.”

  Duren smoothed his thick moustache and nodded to his champion. “Go on, then—seize him.”

  Tyvian backed away, sword drawn.

  Ousienne was somewhat less restrained than Duren. She screeched, “Get him! Get him—a thousand marks for Reldamar!”

  It was at about this time that the living dead showed up.

  Chapter 39

  It’s All Fun and Games Until the Dead Walk

  Artus was just about dressed and ready to go. Michelle, blushing the whole while, was helping him lace up his shirt. Outside, there was some manner of commotion—he could hear people running, people screaming. “Something’s going on.” He grimaced, trying to see how easily he could move. He nearly fainted, and Michelle had to hold him up. “Kroth.”

  “Artus,” Michelle gasped, “language, please!”

  With all that was going on in his life, he almost laughed at the absurdity of it all. Before he could, though, the door was kicked in and on the other side was a . . . a thing. A rotting corpse, dusty from the grave, wearing a torn and ancient tabard so filthy that its heraldry was forever obscured. In its hand was a rusty axe, dripping with blood. Behind it, reaching out with skeletal fingers, were more of the same.

  Michelle literally jumped into Artus’s arms. “Kroth’s teeth!”

  Artus, completely unable to support her weight, fell down right away.

  The animated corpse stomped slowly toward them.

  Michelle screamed and threw a pillow at it. The creature did not seem to notice. It raised its axe and staggered forward, swinging wildly.

  Artus rolled to his knees and struggled to his feet. “Michelle . . . a little help . . .”

  The girl put an arm under his and hauled him up, still shrieking.

  Artus pushed a chair in the thing’s way. The risen dead smashed it apart. Artus and Michelle found themselves backed into a corner of the room. Artus tried to think where he had put his weapons—in the armoire!

  The armoire on the other side of the room.

  “Do something!” Michelle screamed.

  “I’m open to suggestions.”

  And that’s when Brana arrived, swinging a warhammer. The undead were little match for the young gnoll’s gleeful ferocity—they were crushed utterly. The one with the axe barely had time to turn around before Brana smashed it into pulp. He kept smashing it, too, even as the body twitched and tried to rise.

  Artus grinned at him. “Good timing.”

  Brana wiggled his rear end. “Found you, brother!”

  Michelle fainted dead away.

  It was then that Artus realized Brana wasn’t wearing his shroud.

  “Brana, help her up, okay? What the hell is going on out there?”

  Brana closed his mouth and eyes, searching for the words. “Everything” is what he came up with.

  He wasn’t wrong. In the corridors, men in fancy clothes dueled with swords, some yelling “Perwynnon and the King” and others yelling various other things that Artus couldn’t bother to figure out. Mercenaries hacked at legions of the living dead who smelled of wet earth and rust. Common people ran to and fro, looting what they could carry while others searched for safety that was not to be found.

  In one gallery, a ten-foot golem of silvery steel crushed four wriggling corpses with its massive hammer even as a half dozen more swarmed on its back. A Defender shot at them with his firepike before being run through from behind by mercenary, who took the weapon and started shooting at other corpse-things. The madness of it boggled Artus’s mind. “We have got to get out of here.”

  Brana nodded.

  Hool found them, with Sir Damon by her side, his sword drawn and blooded. He had a look on his face of near-permanent panic. Artus thought maybe his eyebrows were going to climb all the way to the top of his head.

  “Mama!” Brana rushed to leap into his mother’s arms.

  Hool batted him away. “Hurry up! There are soldiers and monsters and walking dead people all over this place!”

  “We hadn’t noticed,” Artus said.

  “You sound like Tyvian now. Let’s go.”

  Artus tried to put some power behind his strides, but he felt as though . . . well, he felt as though all his blood had been recently drained out. But she brought up a good point. Artus pointed to Michelle, still passed out. “Get Michelle, Hool. I need to find Tyvian.”

  Hool laid her ears back. “No. Nobody is finding anybody. We are getting out of here right now.”

  “I really must concur, Sir Artus!” Sir Damon said, even as he turned to face a small party of animated skeletons seeking to clamber up the stairs.

  “No!” Artus staggered to a pillar, trying to stay standing. “I won’t leave without him.”

  Brana barked his support. “I stay, too, Mama.”

  Hool bared her teeth. “Tyvian is fine. Tyvian is always fine. If we stay, one of us might die . . .” She pointed at Michelle, who was only just coming to. “. . . probably her. Do you want her to die?”

  Artus looked at Michelle long and hard, his jaw clenched. Finally, he shook his head. “No.”

  “Then let’s go.” Hool turned to head down the hall, but Artus stopped her with a shout.

  “No,” he said, “I know another way.”

  With Brana’s help, Artus led them up the stairs and down another corridor and up more stairs. Everywhere he went he saw people in need of help, in need of rescue, in need of comfort—old men, cowering in corners. Children crying over the bodies of their parents, both commoner and noble alike. Each of these sights was like another sword in Artus’s stomach. He wanted to pick them all up, carry them on his shoulders. But he couldn’t—he didn’t have the strength.

  “Leave me . . .” Michelle howled as they stopped to rest for a moment. Behind them, Hool was tearing apart a pair of mercenaries who had shouted for them to halt.

  Artus blinked at her, shocked at the echo of his own thoughts. “What?”

  Michelle wiped the tears from her face. “Save someone else, Artus. Some of the children. Some of the innocents. I’m just dead weight.”

  Not totally knowing what he was doing, Artus pulled her into an embrace with one arm and kissed her on the lips. “You’re coming with me, understand? I’m not leaving you. Not ever.”

  Hool poked him in the back with a helmet. It was coated with blood. “Stop kissing her and put this thing on. We are running out of time—the Dellorans will be in the palace soon.”

  “Dellorans?”

  Hool sighed. “You have no idea what is even going on, do you?”

  Artus staggered to a window and looked out at the front lawn. He saw the scattered lines of peasant soldiers and sell-swords tasked with holding back the Delloran assault crumpling beneath arrows that fell like rain. Sahand himself, atop a monstrous wyvern, soared over the battlefield like a shadow, raining fire and poison on those below. From his scepter leapt bolts of crimson lightning that shattered the great stone pillars that held together the fence. “He’s destroying the wards,” Artus breathed. He looked at the others. “Come on—we�
�re almost there.”

  He got to the bedroom Tyvian had described to him in the letter. Inside, just as described, was a ballista of Verisi construction—a lightweight naval weapon, designed for easy transport—mounted just inside, overlooking a balcony.

  “What are we doing?” Hool asked, ears back.

  “Remember Galaspin?”

  “Yes.”

  Artus opened the doors to the balcony. “We’re doing that.”

  “That’s a bad idea.”

  Artus shrugged. “You got a better one?”

  The balcony was broad and long, running about fifteen feet to the other door at the opposite end of the room. Rain was beginning to fall in thick, heavy drops and it was the tail end of dusk—visibility was poor. Artus squinted into the growing dark, trying to make out the silhouettes of the Floating Gardens against the dim lamplight of the rest of the city. Behind him, he heard Hool winding the ballista.

  There was a pounding on the doors, too rhythmic to be the living—the dead, then. Sir Damon rushed to bar them by slipping his scabbard through the door handles. “We have company!”

  They had bigger problems, though—literally. A massive shape swooped past the balcony and the city lights were obscured for a moment, it was so close, Artus felt the breeze. He squinted into the darkness. “Sahand’s out there.”

  Hool stopped what she was doing. “On his flying lizard thing?”

  Michelle, sitting with her knees to her face, rocked back and forth in her chair. “We’re all going to die.”

  Hool shrugged. “Probably.”

  “No!” Artus shook his head. An idea was forming—a crazy, electrifying idea. A Tyvian idea. “No we aren’t—we’re going to do the opposite of die. We’re going to win!” He smiled. “In fact, we’re going to save the day!”