by Paul Finch
Overall, he was very satisfied with the way the siege had progressed. Even those one or two English who had survived could now be of use. They would return home and spread the word that Grogen, King Edward's mightiest bastion, had fallen within a matter of days, and that Earl Corotocus of Clun, his fiercest dog of war, had been vanquished. The fear and confusion this would cause would be worth more than threats delivered in the Welsh tongue ever could.
And then of course there was the bliss of victory. Even here, in the foulest chamber in the foulest building of the entire castle, Gwyddon was imbued with it, almost light-headed. How could he not feel triumphant; how could he not feel his own glory wrapped around him like a silken cloak? The first blow in the war to end all wars had been struck - and what a blow it was. The enemy was reeling with it. Of course, it was important not to be totally overcome with one's own importance. There was much to do yet if he was to realise his dreams of conquest. But there was no denying that this had been a more successful start to his campaign than he had ever imagined possible.
He turned to leave the garderobe, and was confronted by a shadowy figure standing in its doorway. Gwyddon stepped forward, curious.
It was one of the English. A large, burly fellow, wearing a steel-studded leather hauberk, covered in fragments of straw. His face was black with clotted blood from a brutally smashed nose, his hair and beard thickly matted by it. He was solid on his feet, but very still. He regarded Gwyddon with dull, ox-like eyes.
"Go north," Gwyddon told him. "Join your comrades. The great battle goes on."
The creature responded by hitting him under the sternum.
At first Gwyddon was merely shocked. He thought the creature had struck him with a clenched fist. But then a slow, agonising chill began to ebb through his lower body. He looked downward, and saw the hilt of a dagger jutting from his midriff. He tried to grab hold of it, but there was no longer strength in his arms. He glanced up at his assailant, his mouth dropping open. This creature was indeed English, but not one of their dead.
His vision fading, Gwyddon sank to his knees. Try as he may, he couldn't give voice to the anger he suddenly felt at his own folly. The Englishman now crouched in front of him, took hold of the dagger and yanked it loose.
The druid grunted; his onyx eyes rolled white. But that didn't concern Murlock the mercenary, for whom other men's deaths had been the currency of life since childhood. Pulling the druid's beard aside, he inserted the dagger into the Adam's apple beneath and sliced it neatly from one side to the other. The crimson gout that throbbed forth lasted only a couple of seconds, before the body slumped heavily to the floor. But only when Murlock was sure the druid was dead did he strip the moon-crescent pendant from his throat, the gem-encrusted rings from his fingers and the silver dragon-head pin from his robe.
Murlock examined each item one after another, cleaning the gore from them with his own beard. He smiled, pleased. He'd been deeply unconscious for a considerable time, but his instincts had not deserted him. When he'd first come round beneath that pile of rancid straw, his first aim had been to get even with Ranulf FitzOsbern, but time had clearly overtaken that ambition. Whatever had happened here, the earl's army had been crushed, and the Welsh themselves had now departed. It was not the ideal outcome, especially with those who owed him wages slain. But the upside was that there was nothing to stop him going home.
He wrapped the valuables in a leather pouch and stuffed it under his belt. Before leaving, he flung the druid's body down the garderobe chute, where most likely it would never be found, though first he searched it thoroughly just to ensure there was nothing else of worth that he'd missed.
He chuckled.
It might have been a distasteful habit of his, but whichever war he was fighting in, whether he was on the winning side or the losing side, Murlock had always believed in making his service pay.
Paul Finch is a former cop and journalist, now turned full time writer. He first cut his literary teeth penning episodes of the British TV crime drama, The Bill, and has written extensively in the field of children's animation. However, he is probably best known for his work in horror.
To date, he's had ten books and nearly 300 stories and novellas published on both sides of the Atlantic. His first collection, Aftershocks, won the British Fantasy Award in 2002, while he won the award again in 2007 for his novella, Kid. Later in 2007, he won the International Horror Guild Award for his mid-length story, The Old North Road. Most recently, he has written two Doctor Who audio dramas for Big Finish and is now busy writing a third. His no-holds-barred cop novel, The Nice Guys' Club, will be published later this year.
Paul lives in Wigan, Lancashire, with his wife Cathy and his children, Eleanor and Harry.
Now read the Prologue from the next exciting Tomes of the Dead novel - the finest in original zombie horror fiction.
The Viking Dead
Toby Venables
Skalla sat, his hands resting on the pommel of his sword, his chin resting on his hands, staring at the pile of bodies.
The still-warm corpses steamed in the cool air of the clearing. Behind him, his black-clad men, done cleaning their weapons, stood in silence, waiting - for what, they knew not. Some, perhaps, suspected. But only Skalla knew for certain.
To his right, he heard feet shifting nervously among the damp leaves. That would be Gamli. Skalla had had his eye on him for some time, aware that he had started to lose faith in their masters. More than once he had questioned their orders. It took a brave man to do that. Or a stupid one. Skalla knew Gamli was no fool - but he also knew the man's boldness hid deeper fears. Fears that could spread, infecting the others, contaminating them with doubt. That, he could not allow. It threatened everything they had built here.
He ran his fingers through the black bristles on his chin, then up to the scar that passed through his left eye. It ran from his forehead down across his cheek, and had left the eye sightless - a milk-white, dead parody of its darker twin. He pushed at the edge of his helm, relieving the pressure on his forehead for a moment. The scar tissue itched badly today. It always did after combat - the result of the heat and sweat. Not that what had just passed could truthfully be termed 'combat'.
There had been six in all. Perhaps seven. He couldn't remember. They were the ones who had been locked up the longest, those meant to be forgotten. The ones who ran, who broke down, who refused to work, who fought back. The biggest heroes and the biggest cowards. All the same, now. They had also been kept separate all this time - well away from the various wonders and horrors that had been unfolding. That, Skalla suspected, was one of the real reasons for this little outing to the woods. True, his masters had no further desire to waste food on these lost causes. But they were also wise enough not to waste an opportunity. They would make some use of them, even in death.
And so, they had marched them to this lonely spot, shackled and at spear point, and forced them to cut logs for firewood. They had performed the tasks well, considering their chequered histories - some, almost with gratitude. Perhaps, thought Skalla, it simply felt good to have a purpose again. He had not told them they were gathering wood for their own funeral pyre.
The killing had been quick. Regrettably, the kills were not as clean as he'd hoped. There were struggles, cries, prolonged agonies, repeated blows. From the start it had not been the most straightforward task. No damage to the head or neck - that's what their masters had specified. The order had bemused Skalla's men, and in the heat of the slaughter - one could hardly dignify the killing of these unarmed, underfed wretches with the term 'battle' - he could not be sure how closely they had adhered to it. At least one had taken a glancing sword blow across the top of the head - protruding from the heap, Skalla could see his hairy, blood-matted scalp, flapped open like the lid of a chest, the yellow-white bone of the skull grinning through the gore. But it didn't matter now. It was done. It would matter again soon, though. Then they would see.
"We're done here," said a voice beh
ind Skalla. It was Gamli. He had stepped closer to where Skalla was sitting. Clearly he was impatient to leave. Perhaps he understood more than Skalla had realised.
"We wait," said Skalla, in a monotone.
"For what?"
"Until we are sure."
"Sure?" Gamli's voice was edgy. As always, he tried to cover it with a kind of swagger. "What is there to be sure of?"
"That they're dead."
Gamli laughed emptily, his throat tight. "Why not burn them now and have done with it?"
"Are you questioning me, Gamli?" Skalla's eyes remained fixed on the corpses.
A kind of panic entered Gamli's eyes. "Not you. I would never... But the masters... There are... doubts about them." He looked around as he said this, as if expecting support from his fellows. None came.
Skalla did not move. "I pledged my sword to them," he said, "and you swore an oath of allegiance to me. You do not question one without also questioning the other."
Gamli stood motionless, robbed of speech.
"Step back into line," said Skalla.
Before he could do so, a sound came from the heap, and an arm flopped out of the tangle. The men's hands jumped to their weapons. The arm hung there, motionless - quite dead. Olvir - one of the three crossbowmen - broke the silence with a nervous laugh. "For a moment, I thought..." He was interrupted by a low groan from the centre of the heap. Skalla stood slowly, hands still upon his sword, and flexed his shoulders. It was part of his ritual before combat.
"Gas. From the bodies," said another of the men, nervously. "They can do that." Olvir began to draw and load his crossbow. The others followed suit.
From deep within the pile came a weird, semi-human grunt, and the whole tangle suddenly shifted. As one, the men drew swords and raised crossbows. The uppermost body - a skinny man, whose abdomen was split open, and whose right arm had been all but severed - slithered from the top of the heap. The hand that had loosed itself from the pile twitched, its fingers beginning to straighten.
"It's beginning..." said Skalla. The first hollow moan repeated itself - to be joined by two more in a kind of desolate, mindless chorus. As they watched in horror, dead limbs moved, arms flailed and grasped, lifeless eyes flicked open.
"This can't be happening." said Gamli. From the heap, one of the men - a solid, muscular fellow who had taken two crossbow bolts through the chest, one of which had pinned his right hand to his sternum - staggered unsteadily to his feet. For a moment he seemed to sniff the air, then turned and lurched towards them.
Skalla spat on his palms and raised his sword. "Aim for the heads," he said, and swung his blade with all his strength at the dead man's neck. It sliced clean through, knocking the attacker off his feet and sending his head bowling into the bushes. Already two more were on their feet - the skinny man, his right arm hanging by a sinew, his glistening guts dangling between his legs, and the scalped man, his hair flapping absurdly to one side like a piece of bearskin, who Skalla could now see had been killed by a heavy sword blow to the left side of his chest, the upper and lower parts sliding past each other gruesomely with each lurching step. A crossbow bolt hit the skinny man in the shoulder, spinning him round. "In the head!" called Skalla. As the skinny man resumed his steady progress a second bolt thudded into his eye, knocking him flat. A third flew uselessly past the scalped man's ear. His arms reached out, grasping at Skalla, as another three grotesque figures rose stiffly behind him.
The rest of Skalla's men, momentarily mesmerised by the scene unfolding before them, now threw themselves into the fight. Gamli stepped forward first, grasping the scalped man's outstretched arm and hurling him to the floor. Drawing a cavalry axe from his belt, he flipped it around and, with one blow, drove its long spike through the exposed skull. As his other men hacked mercilessly at two of the remaining ghouls, Skalla advanced to finish off the third - a once fat man with folds of saggy skin beneath his ragged, filthy tunic. Skalla recognised the stab wounds in his chest - wounds that he himself had delivered with his knife. The fat man's left arm - bloody and slashed where he had attempted to defend himself from Skalla's blade - waved before him, his right, bloodier still, hanging crippled and useless by his side. Skalla raised his sword steadily, waiting for the right moment. The man's hand, formed into a claw, swayed and snatched at Skalla, his jaws opening and closing like those of an idiot child, dribbling bloody drool down his chest. But as Skalla began to swing, something pulled him off balance. He stumbled and fell, his foot caught. When he looked down, he understood. The seventh prisoner - his spinal cord severed, his legs useless - had dragged himself along the forest floor, and now, bearing his teeth, Skalla's ankle gripped in both hands, was biting on his leather boot. Skalla recoiled in disgust, kicking at the ghoul's slavering, gap-toothed mouth, but the tenacious grip held, and over him now loomed the fat man, moaning and clawing at his face. Too close for an effective blow, Skalla abandoned his sword and scrabbled for his knife but, before he had time to draw it, another sword blade was driven hard into the fat man's mouth, sending him choking and tottering backwards, his teeth grinding horribly against its metal edge. It was Gamli's sword. Skalla regained his feet, took up his own sword once more and brought it down with a crashing blow, cleaving the skull of the crawling man in two. He gave a nod of acknowledgement to Gamli, and scraped the man's brains off his boot with the point of his blade.
It was over. And his men, thankfully, had escaped unscathed.
"So it's true," said Gamli, surveying the carnage that surrounded them. "Our worst fear has come true."
Skalla ignored him, wiping clean and sheathing his sword as he hunted around for the head of the first of the undead men. He would take that back to his masters.
"I'm sorry," said Gamli, bowing his head. Skalla turned to face him. "I will not question you again."
"No," said Skalla. "You will not." And without blinking he stabbed Gamli in the side of the throat with his knife, severing both carotid arteries, before pulling the blade forward through his windpipe. Gamli collapsed in an eruption of blood, his last cry turned to a choked gurgle of air bubbling and frothing from his neck.
As he pumped crimson onto the forest floor, a contorted expression of disbelief frozen upon his face, Skalla looked upon him for the last time. "I did not kill you before only because I needed your sword," he said matter-of-factly, and stepped over the body. The other men drew back perceptibly as he approached. He scanned their faces one at a time, then sheathed his knife.
"Burn them," said Skalla, the still-living Gamli convulsing behind him. "All of them."
Table of Contents
Title
Indicia
Map of Grogen Castle
Guide to Castle Map
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Epilogue
About the author
Preview: The Viking Dead