by Rex Jameson
“Sir,” the man in the polished spaulders and chainmail said, “the second army has arrived. They fight with the Red Army.”
“The second army fights the first?” Julian asked.
“Indeed,” the sergeant said.
Julian put down his fork and knife and casually walked over to the battlements. He could hear screams and the distant sounds of battle. As he looked down, past the outer wall, he saw only streaks of blood on the field and the blur of men running into the trees. Their pursuers moved more like animal than man, and when they caught up to their prey, gore sprayed into the air in fine mists and entrails.
“What the—?” Julian said.
His father strode briskly to a spot beside him. His sister raised her hand to her mouth at the doorway. Each of them stood transfixed, watching men behaving like orcs.
“It’s unconscionable,” Julian said. “These are men from Perketh? Our Perketh? I drove through there only—”
He remembered the carriage ride, and the dalliance with Jayna that resulted in a dead local. He didn’t turn to look at her, but he knew her eyes were on him. He didn’t say another word.
A man in a brown cloak on a gray horse cantered within hailing distance of the wall. Around him, men and women dragged screaming Red Army bandits into the woods. The man did not seem bothered by the slaughter. He continued to push his horse closer to the castle.
“Is this how you protect your people?” the man yelled, his voice just barely reaching them atop the high wall.
Julian and his father looked at each other and then back down at the speck of a man below. Julian strained to hear the man.
“Are you no longer content with running us down one at a time with your carriages?” the man asked. “Now, you must allow armies to come in and slaughter us at such larger scale?”
Julian gulped.
“Who are you?” Janus called loudly. “Why are you here?”
A woman on the field grew tired of dragging her screaming prey into the forest. She threw his feet to the ground, straddled him, and drove her fists into the man’s skull until he cried no more. She didn’t stop until the contents of the man’s head poured onto the ground and then she began devouring his innards.
“What madness is this?” Janus asked.
“This is the madness you have wrought upon us,” the man in the brown cloak stated. “When you allowed these men to slaughter the entire town of Perketh. You waited here… Did you not? And why? For what purpose did you hide behind these walls when that same army sacked and slaughtered Dona? To save yourself? To eat breakfast? Perhaps you were too busy to save us.”
The man’s horse grew uneasy with the slaughter around it. It paced and neighed, as people were dragged to their deaths nearby. The rider pulled his reins to force the horse to face the castle once more.
“You created this chaos!” the man accused. “Do you now complain about the manner in which your subjects seek their justice? After you have given them no recourse?”
Julian became distracted by a pair of men fighting over the corpse of a man with a red sash near the wagon camp along the roads. They yanked and pulled at him so hard that he split in two. The ghouls raced into the nearby woods with their bloody parcels.
“What is your name, boy?” Janus demanded.
The man did not respond for a long minute. Instead, the horse continued to pace and complain, and the rider corrected the beast.
“Name yourself!” Julian echoed.
“You are the second person to demand my name in as many days,” the man said. “What power does this thing give you? Will you send soldiers to my house?”
“I ask only because I’m curious,” Janus shouted.
“Why aren’t you curious about the names of the people you lost in Perketh and Dona?” the man asked. He pointed to the woman who had bashed a man’s head in and was devouring him. “Do you not want to know what her name was before you let her die and forced her to live like this?”
The necromancer pointed at a man who was eating a bandit’s shoulder and then at another who was ripping out entrails. He pointed to others nearby in the forest, splashing blood against tall grass, shrubs and trees.
“But maybe you’re right,” he yelled to them. “Maybe none of their names would have mattered to you.”
He sat atop his horse, watching the undead killing and eating for a time.
“Bakers and butchers,” the man finally said. “Ironmen and smiths. Housewives and laundry women. Their names mean nothing to them now. They didn’t need you to know their names. They needed your protection. Have you no shame?!”
Julian stared at a pair of children who gnawed at the arms of a man who watched their grisly work on his person in shock. The panicked cries had died down. All Julian could hear was the crack of sticks as the forests gave way to the fiends, chasing their quarry through the bushes and the undergrowth that hid the atrocities of the second army.
“Do you come for us?” Lord Janus asked.
“Do you admit you’ve done wrong?” the man asked, looking up at them through the bright sun. “Do we, the people, have cause for retribution?”
“We did not sack our own towns,” Janus said. “We will make things right. The King will be informed and…”
“Make recompense?” The man shouted. “Do you not see? Do you not see what’s going on down here?”
He pointed to the scenes of carnage all around him. A young girl with blonde hair ripped a dead man’s hair from his scalp. A large woman slowly and methodically head-butted a man’s skull into mush. A young boy stabbed a faceless bandit over and over again. A man plunged two fistfuls of guts into his mouth near the abandoned cart caravan.
The rider walked his horse slowly toward the abandoned bandit caravan. He stopped short of the man consuming fistfuls of flesh. The perpetrator of the bloody attack looked up at the rider and appeared to panic. He wiped his hands in the grass, and Julian could hear muffled cries as the horror of the cannibalism dawned on the undead man consuming the flesh.
The rider came down from his horse and comforted the man and looked at the grisly work. The overwhelmed undead man ran into the woods as the rider closed the eyes of the dead man who had been half eaten.
“Are you the one they call the Necromancer?” Janus yelled.
The rider walked into the caravan, closing the eyes of others who had died, some of whom had not been further violated. The members of the second army began to appear from the forest, where no further cries echoed from. The bandits had either successfully escaped or had been overwhelmed and fallen. The commonly-dressed folk were covered in blood.
“These men and women of Perketh and Dona,” Janus said, “are they your creatures?”
“They are no one’s creatures!” the man replied. “They are free men and women! You released them from your service when you let them die.”
“Do they still breathe?”
“You ask me if they are still alive?” the rider asked.
“Speak plainly,” Janus said, “or do not speak at all.”
The men, women and children along the forest’s edge began to walk toward the castle. Many appeared hurt and limped or even dragged their way toward the walls of the keep.
The rider moved through the bandit camp, closing more eyes. If he was the Necromancer, he made no effort to showcase his gifts with these freshly dead men. Perhaps, he thought the bandits had gotten what they deserved.
The rider stopped behind an open carriage and gazed at what must have been another body. He reached into the back of the wooden deck and pulled at a naked creature, eventually bringing it to the ground and slapping its face to try to revive it.
Far below, Julian could hear the sound of hands and fists slamming into the stone outer wall. He looked down to see many of the common folk hammering away at the exterior of Mallory Keep, but these fortifications were rated to withstand direct attacks from siege weapons. Even the strongest of men did nothing but bloody their knuckles.
/> “Loose a wave of arrows at them,” Lord Janus commanded Sergeant Myers.
“Should we aim near them or at them?” Myers asked.
“They attack our walls,” Lord Janus said. “We mustn’t tolerate such acts, especially from our own subjects. It’s time for this mob to disperse. Fill a few of them with arrows. If they persist, loose some pitch and light it.”
The Sergeant hurried along the walkway and down a nearby stairwell. His steps echoed until they disappeared, and Julian watched as a line of fifty archers were summoned along one of the parapets.
The men pounding their fists against the lower walls were but a handful of the necromancer’s army. At least a thousand men and women still stood in full view along the edge of the forest, possibly waiting for orders from the rider.
“Should I gather the knights?” Julian asked, pointing toward the wood. “We could disperse the men along the forest.”
“Let’s see how they react first,” his father said. “I want to see just how motivated his loyal subjects are.”
Julian nodded and looked back to the remains of the main bandit camp. The rider had pulled a naked man from the carriage and hoisted him atop the rider’s horse, which he led into the forest.
“It appears our speaker has lost his stomach for battle,” Janus said.
Julian nodded again.
He heard the twang of arrows leaving bowstrings and watched as the deadly projectiles descended to the ground. He held his breath as he counted the seconds before impact. Half the arrows found their mark, and Julian watched as the front line of men staggered backward and faltered. Some fell to the ground, but most recovered quickly and looked up at the Mallories.
With grim determination, the dozens of men below returned to their feet and the work of pounding against the wall.
“Remarkable,” Julian said.
“Let loose the pitch!” Janus commanded.
A five man crew pushed a seventy gallon vat of boiling pitch until the contents poured down the wall. The nasty liquid clumped and rolled down the slanted walls for several seconds, forming balls of black tar that mowed over some of the men, who did not try to dodge them. Torches fell from the ramparts, and fire spread down the walls inexorably toward the bloodthirsty attackers.
In horror, Julian watched as emblazoned men continued to hammer their fists into the stone walls. None left their task. They only stopped pounding at the impenetrable brick when their bodies collapsed to the earth in a heap of charred bones and ash.
“Should I gather the knights?” Julian asked again.
“And fight these undead with swords?” Janus asked rhetorically. “No, I think not. Let us stay within our walls for a while. Take your sister inside and bring up a scholar from the library. See if there is a precedent in our books. Bring up someone from the Order of Godun, if you can find one. Make sure they see this, and find me some answers.”
“Yes, father,” Julian said.
Julian looked once more to the forest, where the rider had left the battlefield carrying a dead man on his horse. Three men now followed the necromancer. A dark knight on a white horse approached from the west along the forest edge. A dark-skinned man followed the dark knight from the shadows to the east. A large undead man with the build of a blacksmith limped further behind.
“I would see you go immediately,” his father stated, breaking him from his gaze.
Julian turned toward the nearby door where they had emerged from breakfast and prepared to return to his room far below where he needed to change from his robes.
“And son?” Janus called.
Julian turned from the doorway.
“Yes, father?”
“Until this is over,” Janus said, “take Jayna to the ground floor and stay near the main tunnels that lead to the southern waterways. Pack everything you might need for a long journey. If anything should happen, if these undead break into this castle, you take your sister and escape together to the south. Take Master Kraytos with you and travel across the Small Sea, if you must. The House of Mallory must not fall. Even to the undead.”
Julian faltered. His father was not the type to easily scare. He hadn’t even balked at the news that Captain Ross had fallen, despite the fact that the King and the Lord General might end up holding his father accountable. But this undead army appeared to trigger something close to an emotion—a preservation instinct for himself and his sister. He felt his great shame welling inside him. He felt his knees growing weaker, wanting to prostrate himself before his father and begging his forgiveness for falling in love with Jayna.
“Go!” Janus said.
Julian forgot his shame. He nodded quickly and escaped into the dining room, where he tried to process what had just happened. Jayna nestled her arm under his and held his hand as they walked silently toward their rooms. His skin emblazoned at her touch, and the danger of their situation allayed his fears about the discovery of their love.
“Everything will be ok,” she said.
“I know,” he replied.
“The House of Mallory must not fall,” she said, repeating what his father had told him. But her eyes were different than his father’s. They were like her mother’s, and they danced back and forth as she looked at one of his eyes and then the next. “We’ll make sure of it.”
He nodded and patted her arm as he descended the stairs to his chambers.
18
The Rule of Three
Ashton pulled the man off the cart and away from the fire and the arrows at Mallory Keep. He pulled with every muscle fiber he had available, and then pushed the corpse he feared to name onto his horse. He slapped it hard on the rear to get it moving and yanked on the gelding’s reins.
The horse cantered slowly at first, but within a dozen steps or so, he realized Ashton’s panic and galloped ahead of him. Ashton held onto the reins for as long as he could, running as fast as his legs could carry him. When his calves inevitably failed him, he crashed to the ground, being dragged for twenty to thirty feet before the rope leads were ripped from his fingers.
He heard the thud of the body falling from the saddle as Ashton pushed himself to his knees and hands in the mud and grass.
“Father,” he cried, the sound of the label bringing tears to the corners of his eyes. “No, no, no…”
He found renewed strength and crawled across the ground to the naked man whose body lay twisted awkwardly nearby. He rolled his father over. There were multiple knife wounds to his sternum. He counted at least five.
“How did she know?” he asked, afraid to name her as Mekadesh because he felt she may call on him. “What have they done to you?”
A horse approached from the south, away from the men and women banging against the walls of the castle. Ashton cradled his father and turned his head toward the dark knight. The paladin had his war hammer still on his back and did not appear threatening.
“He left us,” Ashton explained to the man, as if he were a friend. “He left my mother and me in Perketh. I hadn’t seen him since.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” the man in black said. “Truly, I am. This world has known suffering for too long. I fear it has lost memory of what it once meant to be full of life and love. To embrace the daylight instead of fearing it. To hope for normalcy.”
Ashton stared at his father’s dirty face. An anger swelled inside of him. If Karl hadn’t left his mother Margaret, both of them might still be alive. Before today, Ashton had sworn that he hated his father—that he wanted nothing further to do with Karl Jeraldson. But that was when Karl was indestructible to his son. That had all changed when Ashton found Karl defiled on that cart. He didn’t know what to feel. All he could do was cry and wish it were not so.
“You bastard…” Ashton muttered as tears coursed down his cheeks and lingered at his chin. “Why weren’t we enough for you? Why’d you have to leave us and remarry in Dona?”
Another man emerged from the shadows of trees to the southeast. He moved familiarly, but i
t wasn’t until he left the darkness and crept into the light that Ashton recognized him. He was the elf who almost attacked him near Perketh the day he found Riley burned in the square. The elf moved like a cat, and his hands crossed over two knives hanging from his belt.
Unlike the dark knight with the yellow star on his plate breastplate, the elf wore only tanned leathers and a dark cape. The knight recognized the elf and nodded to him. He removed his dark plate helmet, revealing a man in his thirties with dirty blond hair and a clean-shaven face. His features were strong and masculine.
“You know what he’s going to do,” the elf said. His tone held a fear in it and maybe a promise.
“I mean to dissuade him,” the dark knight replied.
“Dissuade me from what?” Ashton asked, still crying onto his father.
“My name is Cedric,” the knight said, turning back to Ashton. “I’m what the common folk might call a paladin, by trade. But paladin’s a title I inherited from my father, and one that I detest. It is my great shame. Like you, I held him as he lay dying, stabbed in the chest. Like you, I had to let him go.”
“He doesn’t have to go,” Ashton said. “I can bring him back.”
“Yes, you can,” Cedric admitted. “I have seen such miracles with my own eyes.”
“Miracles?” Ashton asked.
He could hear the moans and cries of the people he had brought back. All along the walls of Mallory Keep, which loomed large above the trees, his army flailed at the masonry. Some of them burned, and yet, still pounded at the stone battlements until their final breaths. Even closer, his resurrected friend Clayton limped toward them, maybe fifty paces behind the elf.
None of these undead seemed like miracles. More like wraiths from the underworld meant only for vengeance.
“This man,” Cedric said. “Your father. He hasn’t breathed for many days. He’s dead. Gone. The Rule of Three. It must be respected.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ashton said.
His friend Clayton passed the elf, and the dark assassin moved aside, retreating toward the forest a few yards. The elf watched Clayton warily.