“Which way?” Gordo whispered to the head.
“Er, left, that’s it, no, right. Hang on. Go back a ways, then turn east, no—”
“Oh, for god’s sake!” Gape snapped. “You don’t have the slightest clue, do you?”
“Not really, no.”
“This way,” Groan thundered, causing both of them to turn toward him (the head didn’t have a choice).
“How do you know?”
Groan shrugged. “Smells o’ death.”
“Sounds promising,” said Gape, creeping after his brother and signaling to Gordo to do the same.
“I can see where he’s going, phlegm-ball; I don’t need hand gestures.”
“Shh!”
“Shh yourself!”
The trees seemed to be drawing together, bending so low that the path ahead was almost totally hidden.
“Ah, this is the way,” the head advised. “I’m sure of it.”
Groan took no notice, carving his way through the undergrowth with reckless abandon. Gape was creeping close behind him, swords drawn at the ready.
“Looks very familiar, this bit,” the head droned on.
Gordo was feeling increasingly nervous. He’d seen something moving between the trees, and he was fairly certain that it wasn’t alone. Still, he didn’t want to mention it to the others until he was one hundred percent sure that the “something” was following them. Fortunately, he didn’t have to wait very long to find out. An arrow zipped through the wood and plunged into a tree, three inches from Gape’s right ear.
Thirteen
STUMP HAD MADE A startling discovery about horses. The thing that he’d found out, much to his dismay, was that you could get a horse to gallop with relative ease: it was getting it to stop galloping that caused the problem. In fact, the royal mare was going at such a speed that he’d briefly considered severing all links with the coach and letting the cursed thing trundle off to hell on its own. Unfortunately, the tethers were fastened far too well to disengage while the horse was in motion. Stump cursed under his breath, and clung on to the reins for dear life.
To make things worse, there were a couple of soldiers after him. He could hear them thundering along a short distance behind him, and it sounded as though they had stronger horses than the crazy beast he’d stolen. They were definitely gaining on him.
Stump grimaced.
He was over the last of the hills now, and there was a river coming up. It slid along below him like a watery serpent.
“Stop! Stop! Please stop!” he screamed, thrashing the reins with all his might, which only served to make the horse go faster. He dived below the bench and made one final attempt to disconnect the coach, his fumbling fingers straining at a concealed lever beneath the rein hooks. There was a tiny click and, to Stump’s surprise, the horse galloped a little to the right, about-turned, and gently clip-clopped to a halt. Unfortunately, the coach didn’t …
Stump cried out as the severed vehicle careered down the embankment and plunged into the icy waters of the Washin.
A solitary old man watched from the near bank, cackling cruelly when he saw the frantic stranger clambering onto the roof of the coach as it sank into the water. He found the whole scene very entertaining; it was only a pity his own boat had gone.
There came the sudden and unmistakable sound of hoofbeats, and two horses exploded down the hill toward the river. They soon slowed, and the soldiers mounted on them dropped to the ground and began to draw crossbows from their saddlebags.
The old man chuckled with delight as they began to fire on the stranger, who, by this time, was quite a way out on the river, balancing precariously on the roof of the half-submerged coach, with both hands covering his head.
The crossbows spewed their bolts at the coach, obliterating various parts of the coach roof but mercilessly missing the man struggling madly for purchase atop it.
“Stolen your coach, has he?” the old man screamed at the soldiers. “Get him; go on! Bloody thieves! They’re all scum!”
Their first rounds spent, the soldiers paused to reload their weapons. When they looked up again, their target had disappeared.
“Down! Down! DOWN!”
Gape threw himself to the floor, and Groan stepped behind a sturdy oak as the arrows flew hard and fast through the trees. Gordo, on the other hand, hefted his battle-axe in both hands and dashed forward, the head bouncing up and down at his waist.
“Get back here, you crazy midget!” Gape yelled, but the dwarf was already accelerating away from the path at top speed.
“I can handle it! I can handle it!” Gordo called back, his battle-axe visible every few seconds in brief flashes.
There was a series of screams, a few low moans, and then the arrows stopped coming.
Groan stepped out from behind his tree, and Gape jumped to his feet.
The forest was completely silent.
Then a scream started up, low at first, but quickly increasing in pitch …
… and Gordo Goldeaxe came rushing back into view, the head a veritable blur on his belt. It was screaming: “He can’t handle it! He can’t handle it!”
A line of figures appeared between the trees. Several were staggering around in the daze of the living dead, while a few leveled long bows from afar. There was a moment of grim realization before the arrows started up again, exploding all over the wood like rogue fireworks.
Groan stepped forward, ducked two arrows, and pitched his sword at the nearest figure. The giant blade arced through the air and sprouted out of the first unfortunate like a third arm. The zombie in question staggered back, then casually removed the sword and tossed it aside like an unwanted Christmas present.
Gape was next to be disappointed. His enchanted swords met their mark, but were soon retrieved and discarded by the dauntless zombies.
Gordo, however, was having more luck. He’d quickly decided that the bowmen were the more immediate threat, and had acted accordingly, putting one down with his belt dagger, beheading the second with his axe, and knocking the third out cold with a well-aimed blow to the head (or rather, a well-aimed blow with the head). At least, he reflected as he bent down to retrieve Loogie’s moaning cranium, he’d managed to stop the arrows.
Groan and Gape were physically fighting the first of the zombies to reach them: Gape with a series of kicks and punches, and Groan by using one of the zombies to bowl out the two behind it. However, the sheer weight of numbers prevailed, and the two barbarians were quickly overwhelmed.
Gordo fought on, lopping off arms and legs left, right, and center. Unfortunately, for every limb that he severed, another quickly sprang up to take its place.
“How come you haven’t regenerated so quickly?” he barked at the head of Loogie Lambontroff, stepping back with his axe held aloft as the zombies advanced.
“It’s the twinling thing,” Loogie snapped. “Takes a lot out of me.”
“Typical,” Gordo managed, swinging wide. “I don’t suppose you could make it happen again, could you?”
“Nah, sorry,” the head muttered. “Only happens when I least expect it. Besides, I doubt an evil head would do you much good in these circumstances.”
“Good point.”
“No, I was joking. I don’t reckon my physical state would have any bearing on the other me: not if I got really mad—”
Gordo took another wild swipe at the zombies, but this time one caught hold of the axe head and wrenched it from the dwarf’s grasp. Another lumbered at Gordo, seizing him around the neck, while a third snatched up his legs. He was carried along the path in this curiously undignified fashion, noticing as he went that the others were being conveyed similarly. A stout zombie with matted black hair was leading the group, while a pale and particularly gaunt one at the back of the group carried their weapons.
“They’re taking us to Wemeru,” the head whispered.
Gordo twisted and turned in the zombies’ grip. “But you’re the nephew of their lord,” he spat. “Can�
�t you order them to let us go?”
“I’m disgraced,” Loogie explained. “And you can understand them not recognizing me, all things considered.”
Gordo conceded the point. It really was turning out to be one of those days again.
“Does Modeset know you’re doing this?” Susti asked, when Pegrand arrived at her chamber door with two giant platters of food.
The manservant nodded. “Yes, milady. In fact, I’m bringing you these under the duke’s instructions.”
“Ha! Then they’re probably poisoned.”
Pegrand shook his head.
“Oh, no, milady. Duke Modeset would never knowingly do you harm.”
“Ha! Don’t be ridiculous; didn’t you hear him threaten me earlier?”
“Oh, well, Duke Modeset threatens everyone; he’s just not very good at following things through.”
Susti grimaced. “Well he’s certainly done all right for himself here, hasn’t he?” she snapped.
Pegrand didn’t reply. He simply laid down both platters on the room’s single table and took a step back.
Bronwyn jumped up from the corner of the bed on which she’d been perched, hurried across the room, and began to tuck into the food. She was ravenously hungry.
Susti, it seemed, was in no such hurry.
“Have you worked for him long?” she asked, looking the scruffy manservant up and down with a disdainful glance.
Pegrand shrugged. “Since I was six.”
“And now you’re …?”
“Thirty-nine.”
“Really? Have you had a very hard life?”
“Not particularly, milady.”
“Only, you look a lot older.”
“Thank you, milady; very kind of you to say so.”
“Hmm … so you were with him during the rat catastrophe?”
Pegrand nodded. “Yes, milady. I was also with him when he saved the city from a fanatical cult, at no small risk to his own safety.”
Susti took exception to the manservant’s tone, but smiled in spite of herself. “You really like him, don’t you?”
“He’s my master,” said Pegrand. “I have to!”
“No, you don’t,” Susti assured him. “You don’t have to like anybody!”
Pegrand shrugged, and turned to watch Bronwyn hungrily devouring the remains of a pork chop. At length, he returned his attention to the young princess.
“How old are you, milady?” he ventured. “If it’s not a rude question.”
“I’m eighteen,” said Susti cautiously. “Why?”
Pegrand smiled. “Well, speaking as someone more than twice your age, I believe that Duke Modeset is a good man. A little unpredictable, maybe, but good nonetheless.”
“What does age have to do with it?”
“I’m just saying that I probably know more about people than you do, milady.”
Susti chuckled. “That’s the biggest load of nonsense I’ve ever heard in my life. You’re a manservant to a man who has probably, in his lifetime, been responsible for more chaos than any other single man in the history of the continent. You do realize that, don’t you?”
Pegrand quickly shook his head. “I’m afraid you’re wrong. Duke Modeset is a good person, he just needs to be in charge of a city. If he’s not, he gets … touchy.”
“Touchy?” Susti exclaimed. “Touchy? He’s imprisoned my father and taken control of the city guard!”
“Look, I don’t want to argue with you, milady. Apart from anything else, you’re a princess, and it’s not my place.”
The manservant headed for the door, and was halfway through it when Susti called him back.
“Yes, milady?”
“You seem like a decent fellow, Pegrand,” she said. “And if you ever see sense long enough to dump Duke Modeset, I’m sure there would be a job for you in Phlegm.”
Pegrand considered this, but politely declined. “I already have a job in Phlegm, milady,” he said. “I work for the duke.”
Fourteen
STUMP WAS PROGRESSING THROUGH the Washin via a series of dives and breathers, turning over and over as he struggled against the flow of the river.
Every now and then, a bolt would explode far behind him; a grim reminder that certain death (or at least, inescapable injury) waited for him above the waters. With this in mind, he dived deeper, letting more and more time pass before he came up for air.
At length, he began to drift into a swoon, and the water took him. He washed up, some two hours later, on the eastern bank of the Washin; a sodden, bedraggled mess, but cleaner than he had been for years.
Far behind him, the Phlegmian guards had remounted their horses and were attempting to wade their way out to the coach. However, it soon became clear that the water was too high for this procedure, and they had to turn back, tether up the horses, and swim to the coach instead.
The first man to reach it clambered atop the vehicle roof, which was now almost totally submerged beneath the waters. There was no sign of their target.
“He’s not here!” the guard called back to his partner, who nodded and dived underwater in order to search the sunken coach. After about thirty seconds, he reappeared.
“Nothing!” he shouted. “Maybe he drowned?”
The first guard produced a miniature telescope from his belt and attempted to study the far shore.
“See anything?”
“Nah, it’s too dark.”
“Maybe we should camp here; look again in the morning …”
“Ha! Are you serious? Let’s just tell the general he drowned and have done with it.”
The first guard looked doubtful. “General said to bring him in dead or alive,” he said. “Besides, I reckon he’ll make us come back for the coach.”
The second guard shrugged. “Crikey’s only been a general since yesterday, and besides, if he’s that keen on the coach, he can send a squad out for it.”
“Yeah, right.”
They made one final search of the waters around the coach’s periphery, and began to head back to the shore.
When they got there, an elderly man was waiting for them, his face creased with smiles.
“You two aren’t up to much, are ya?” he cackled.
The guards, soaking wet and in no mood for banter, ignored him and marched on past.
“Oi! Come back here! He got away, you know!”
They stopped, and one turned around.
“Say that again, old-timer?”
The old man pointed out at the river. “Your boy in the coach,” he confirmed. “Swam for it, sure as I was sitting here watching.”
The guards glanced at each other.
“Is there anyone else around here?” one inquired.
“No, not a soul. I’m only here because I work for the Riverboat Association. At least, I did until a gang of bloody barbarians took my boa—”
A crossbow bolt fired at point-blank range cut short the old man’s words, and he collapsed to the ground.
“I dunno,” said the first guard. “It’s nothing but work, work, work, isn’t it?”
His partner sniggered, and the two of them mounted their horses and rode away.
As Groan, Gordo, and Gape were led deeper into the woods by Count Craven’s zombie horde, the city of Wemeru came into view. It wasn’t a pretty sight, even in the fading light.
An avenue of hulking temples swept away from the entrance, and various smaller, pyramidal dwellings were visible in between them. Everything that wasn’t covered in hanging vines was smothered in mud. The entire place reeked of death and decrepitude.
“No place like home,” Loogie muttered from the dwarf’s belt. Gordo wondered if he was serious.
The zombies were leading them toward an enormous, central pyramid that rose about a hundred feet above the temples surrounding it. A rough wooden sign dug into the dirt proclaimed it to be:
H’eylr
The Great House of Wemeru
Gordo took a deep breath: if the air in
the streets smelled like this, he had absolutely no desire to see inside this pyramid. Gape was experiencing a similar sense of disgust, and couldn’t quite believe his ears when his brother sauntered past, whistling.
Count Elias Craven got up twice a year.
There were many reasons for this; most of them having to do with the fact that the ruler of Wemeru existed on very little blood, could barely stand up most of the time, and was about as far past death as any animate creature was ever likely to get. He was also a necromancer, and many people said that the main reason he remained so fast asleep was that no bugger in their right mind would ever dare to wake him.
Well, someone was waking him now. He could hear the giant coffin lid being hefted off.
Torchlight streamed in: burning, blinding torchlight. Still, it could’ve been worse—they could’ve woken him during the day.
Count Craven opened an eye, but there were cobwebs in his socket, and he realized he’d opened the wrong one. He soon corrected that, and a blood-red pupil considered the trembling figure of his zombie captain.
“Well?”
“Intruders, master.”
“I find that very difficult to believe.”
“I’m serious, master; we’ve caught some intruders.”
“I thought I told you to stop hunting on the Washin. The corpse pit is chockablock!”
“We didn’t hunt these, master. They were heading into the wood.”
“Don’t be stupid. No one in their right mind would enter Rintintetly from this side of the wood.”
“Nevertheless, master, these did.”
Count Craven rolled his good eye, raised himself up, and clambered out of the coffin.
“How many?” he snapped.
“Three, master: two large warriors and a dwarf.”
“Bring the men to me.”
“And the dwarf, master?”
“Drown him.”
“Yes, master.”
As the zombie captain juddered away, Count Craven pulled himself together: literally.
Then he staggered out of the family crypt and began the long haul to the throne room (when every breath’s an effort, twelve feet can be an awfully long way away).
Shadewell Shenanigans Page 10