The Fire Islands

by Gilbert M. Stack

  But they weren’t killing the dead most of the time. The bones fell back down the rocky slope and reassembled into new skeletons.

  “Break the skulls!” he shouted, remembering the Magus’ instructions. “Break the skulls!”

  A grizzled red band veteran slipped and fell, temporarily taking six or seven of the monsters with him at the cost of his life. A raw recruit in the green band was screaming piteously for his mother as he hacked at creatures which would not stop climbing up to kill him.

  Then the dead legionnaires joined the fight against Julian and he truly understood the meaning of despair. They weren’t just going to die. They were going to join this Kekipi’s army and fight forever under his dark banner.

  He didn’t want that. Sol protect him! When a man died he should at least be able to stay dead!

  There were only ten of them left when his tribune, Rogellius, climbed up to face him, sword still in hand.

  Julian rammed his blade through his former superior’s mouth and up into what served the foul beast as a brain.

  The bastard wrenched the sword from his hand as he fell off the rock truly dead.

  Julian wiped ash from his face, knowing that in a few scant moments, he would replace Rogellius in Kekipi’s army of the undead.

  Chapter Fifteen

  He’d Lost Nearly Half His Men

  “Calidus, rotate your front two ranks. Acteon, rotate half your reds with the black band,” Marcus ordered. “I want fresh legionnaires on the front lines.”

  They were deep in the cave now and much to his delight, there hadn’t been dozens of side passages to confuse the path. The strangely rounded tunnel led fairly straight deep into the mountain. On the down side, this allowed both the skeletons coming up the path, and those following them down it, to find them without difficulty. And the only way to move forward was for the greens to knock the skeletons down and break their skulls with their swords. Fortunately, there were far fewer skeletons in front of them impeding their progress than behind them trying to pull them down. If Marcus had guessed wrong and this cave dead ended in the bowels of Keahi, then they were all dead. They would never fight their way back out past the hundreds—possibly thousands—of undead that seemed to be pursuing them.

  The legionnaires rotated their ranks with a clean and efficient discipline that made Marcus proud—especially in these circumstances. While the black band and the men who had formed the front ranks of the green caught their breath the relatively fresh men threw themselves against the undead with a vigor that would please any commanding officer. He’d lost nearly half his men getting this far, but the stream of skeletons from the front was ebbing and he hoped that soon they would be able to make better speed in their journey down the length of this peculiar cave.

  Behind Marcus, a man cried out in pain and others cursed as another red legionnaire was lost to them. If only Praetor Castor had thought of more than seeking vengeance on the man who had cuckolded him. With the full phalanx behind them fighting the skeletal horde, Marcus was certain he could have punched his way through to whatever awaited them in these depths. Now he feared that he’d get there, but without the strength to win the day for Aquila.

  Yet Castor was not one of the great commanders or he wouldn’t have been sent to the far off Fire Islands. And Marcus must make do with what he had.

  “Forward, Calidus! Keep them pressing forward!”

  Even as his adjutant agreed, another man died.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Kekipi Will Have Your Bones

  A great crowd of people—not all women and children—had gathered around Makuahine Akela on the parade ground of the Aquila castrum. They huddled against each other in fear watching the unnatural line of roiling black clouds race toward them from the summit of Keahi seventy miles away. The speed with which those clouds rolled in told them more than anything else that something truly terrible was coming. No horse could run half as fast as those clouds moved, and while they had often watched storms zip in from the horizon, they were but slow plodders by comparison.

  “Have courage!” Makuahine Akela told them. “I will protect you on this field for as long as my strength lasts.”

  “Protect us from what?” one of the children asked, but her mother shushed her. The adults knew that in Kekipi the hewa ke kahuna had returned. They knew that terror was once again about to walk the land.

  A plaintive cry rose up from the assembled hundreds when the boiling clouds passed over them and the rain of ash fell down upon the land. The legionnaires had built a cemetery not far from here and many of the townspeople had copied their new rulers—giving up the ancient practice of burying the dead at sea to keep the bodies from hewa ke kahuna like the Rule of Twenty. Thousands were likely to die today because of their shortsightedness.

  Ash struck Akela in the face—burnt cinders tainted with the fell magic that she had hoped had died with the Rule. But in her heart of hearts she had known better. Evil never completely goes away. It hides, it waits, it plans—always looking for an opportunity to strike again.

  Her grandfather, a maikai kahuna of great renown and onetime leader of this island, had taught Akela that kings were created to help the people, not subjugate them as did the Rule. The Aquilans with their beautiful rhetoric of citizen assemblies and self-sacrificing leaders almost understood what her kapunakane had tried to teach her, but she feared their many conquests were leading them down the path of the Rule. Even their bright flames like Marcus saw his people’s destiny in governance—not guidance—and the distinction was an important one. Governors ultimately dictate and oppress those who do not agree with their actions.

  A scream of horror from the edge of the crowd told Akela that it was now time for her to act. She closed her eyes and extended her senses until she began to feel the concentrations of wrongness in the fields around her. There were so many! The dead were rising up all about them, both here in the castrum and in the town. She pressed her senses farther and could feel the dead beneath the waves making their way toward the boats in the harbor and thousands of people still failed to understand what was wrong.

  She hardened her will and began to recite the prayers she’d learned so long ago. The dead approaching them hesitated, confused for a moment that the prey they had sought had disappeared from their otherworldly senses. Then they found new prey outside of the parade grounds and turned their attention on other victims.

  She frowned, but unfortunately, she was not strong enough to save everyone. Not even strong enough to save these if Marcus did not act quickly.

  A commotion near the edge of the parade ground caught her attention and despite the risk to her concentration she slowly made her way there to discover the problem.

  Marcus’ mistress, Nani, was arguing with one of Akela’s cooks.

  “You cannot stay here! You tried to kill the Tribune! You are banned.”

  “You dare not drive me out!” Nani hissed back at her. “Kekipi has returned and he will own the souls of all who are not true to him!”

  At the sound of the name Akela refused to say, the nearby dead whipped around and stared at the parade ground. Nani did not realize it, but she had the ability to break the charm warding this place. Akela needed to act now!

  “He will never have these souls!” Akela swore.

  “You!” Nani spit at her. “You think you are one of the maikai kahuna of old? They were weak, woman! And you are more so! Kekipi will have your bones.”

  Outside the parade ground, behind Nani’s back, the dead began to approach.

  “Yours first,” Akela told her before lifting her open palm below her chin and blowing gently across her fingers at Nani.

  The woman blew off her feet as if struck by the force of a typhoon, rolled out of the parade ground and into the midst of the shambling dead. Even as she tried to sit up, they fell on her, seizing and rending her body and her screams to her dark master did nothing but draw more skeletons toward her.

  Akela watched the disme
mberment of Marcus’ mistress without emotion. When the woman was well and truly dead, she turned to the cook who had been fighting with her. “If this ends and we are still here, I want you to find the pieces of that woman’s body and recover her jewelry. Then throw the remnants into the harbor. I do not want the Tribune to be able to find her when he returns. Men are often soft about such things and he does not need to mourn a woman who tried to kill him.”

  “You think we will survive then?” the cook asked her.

  Akela shrugged. “That depends on the Tribune, doesn’t it?”

  Before she could be pestered with another question, she returned to her spot in the center of the grounds, closed her eyes and resumed hiding all of those gathered around her.

  Chapter Seventeen

  This Is the End

  “Kill them!” the withered old man with the star shaped pendant shouted as Marcus and his green band burst into the cavern at the end of the long rounded cave. The whole place was bathed in an eerie orange light emanating from the mouth of a giant face carved into the cavern wall. More than a dozen naked girls, their throats slit from ear to ear, rose off of the floor and shambled across the chamber toward the green band. Behind them, a mob of obviously frightened humans failed to follow after them.

  “This is the end, boys! Kill this group and we’ll destroy the skeletons as well!” Marcus shouted. He didn’t actually know that that was true. But the skeletons would soon catch up with the rear guard again and it didn’t look like there was any way out of this cavern.

  “Who said that?” the old man with the star pendant shouted. “Who said that?”

  Marcus touched the juju bag Makuahine Akela had given him and remembered her promise that it would make Kekipi overlook him. He wondered how many of the others that might apply to as well. It hadn’t worked at all against the skeletons.

  “Tighten the line, lads!” Calidus ordered. The fact that he had stopped calling them green bastards told Marcus he was quite pleased with his men’s performance. “It’s just one more group of undead girls—then we get to show these mortals why you don’t cross swords with the legions of Aquila!”

  The green band cheered. Cheered! Here in the heart of a volcano against an army of undead monsters, Marcus’ men shouted their approval.

  He had never been more proud in all his life.

  Acteon and the much-depleted red band formed up behind the greens, but with a quick word, Marcus directed them to the left flank where he joined them. Together the two lines were long enough to cover the whole cavern. Severus and his six remaining black banders could continue covering the entrance to the cavern.

  “Advance!” Marcus shouted and the line stepped forward just as the dead girls crashed against it. His exhausted men had caught their final wind and knocked the walking corpses back off their shields, then swords flashed and with amazing quickness there was no barrier between the legion and the cowering humans.

  “Get them, boys!” Acteon shouted as the line continued to advance.

  The old man with the star pendant pointed his finger at the Red Vigil and screamed incoherently in his own language. A wave of cold passed through the room and solid Acteon and three red banders to either side of him and five more behind dropped dead.

  The whole legion line stumbled to a halt in sheer horror.

  “Die!” the old man screamed before pointing at a section of the greens and killing them the same way.

  Marcus knew he had to act now or lose the entire war. He pulled his one remaining pilum out of the sling on his back, stepped into the hole in his formation that Kekipi—it had to be Kekipi—had just made and flung the weapon full force at the pendant on his chest.

  Marcus had taken the gold all four years he’d been enrolled in the lycee. No one had ever come close to his skill. His records for distance and accuracy still stood unbroken, but this was not a record breaking distance, nor even a difficult throw. The pilum flew straight and true a distance of no more than twenty yards and Kekipi—thanks to the charm Makuahine Akela had given Marcus—never even tried to dodge out of the way.

  The sharp point of the pilum split the amulet in two and penetrated deep into Kekipi’s chest. It was almost exactly in the spot where the man had been hit by another legionnaire forty years earlier, but where that son of Aquila had missed the heart by half an inch, Marcus skewered it.

  The broken amulet vomited forth a torrent of otherworldly disgust. It sprayed across the cavern with more force and far more volume than the life’s blood of the evil witchdoctor’s sacrifices had gushed from his victims’ severed jugular veins.

  It caught four men in its path, coating three from the green band and Marcus Venandus in otherworldly mucus before finally sputtering to a stop.

  Everyone—legionnaires and followers of the now dead Kekipi—stood frozen for a few moments staring at Marcus and the others as the feeling of a million poking needles began to prick his skin. He didn’t know what was happening to him, but Marcus knew that whatever it was, he had to deal with the next threat before it overwhelmed him. “Kill them!” Pointing at the cowering acolytes of the rebel witchdoctor

  Red and green lines—minus the three soaked men—leapt to do Marcus’ bidding and in very little time the rebels were all dead.

  The feeling of pins and needles jabbing him all over his body intensified. The men beside him began to gibber in fear, rubbing at the goop that covered them, trying to get it off again.

  “Tribune,” Severus called. “I can no longer hear the skeletons approaching us.”

  Marcus wiped the goo out of his eyes before answering him. It was important that Severus survive if this gunk was actually killing him, but he didn’t have enough men to protect the Black Vigil from additional danger. “Take the black band and find out if the undead are still walking. Don’t fight with them if they are. Get back here and warn us.”

  “Tribune!” Severus saluted as he accepted his order, bringing his clenched fist to his chest. Then he gestured at the survivors of his band and without complaint all seven started back up the tube-like cave.

  One of the green bander’s who’d been covered in the amulet’s slime sank to his knees, then curled into a ball, still moaning with fear and pain.

  Calidus started toward the man, but Marcus backed him off. “Don’t touch him. If this goo is poisonous, I don’t want to lose another man. I’ll check him out. In the meantime, you double check that all the rebels are dead, then get the—”

  “Look at all this treasure!” a legionnaire shouted attracting for a moment the full attention of every man in the cavern. “It’s a fortune!” the man said again.

  To Marcus’ later shame, like all the others, he momentarily forgot his dying legionnaire and stepped forward to see chest upon chest of gold ingots and silver coins and even a chest full of exquisitely beautiful pearls.

  Then the moment of greed passed as the pain reasserted itself and the Tribune remembered his duty. “Calidus, make arrangements to carry that treasure out with us—every one of you will get his share, boys. You have my word! But in the meantime, I need to see to this—”

  He broke off when he saw that all three of the men who, like him, had been covered in the otherworldly gunk, were lying motionless on the cavern floor. He dropped to his knees beside them, but none were breathing.

  “Tribune?” Calidus called. His extreme concern was evident in his voice. “Are you all right?”

  Marcus tried to assess his own state of health. His heart raced, his skin prickled maddeningly, and he was feverishly hot, but he didn’t actually feel bad. He also noticed that unlike the three corpses lying in front of him, the goop that had splattered him was rapidly evaporating, or possibly absorbing into his skin. Even his clothing was drying and his face, neck and forearms were already clear of the supernatural glop.

  “I think I’m fine, Calidus. Get that treasure packed up and the men ready to march out of here.”

  He stood and crossed the cavern to the body of the man
he thought was Kekipi. In death he seemed only to be a very old man with a pilum sticking out of his chest. The amulet had been split in two and Marcus gingerly picked up each fragment, wrapping them separately in pieces of cloth. He stuck the pieces into his tunic, then drew his sword and chopped off the top of Kekipi’s skull. No one was bringing this bastard back from the dead.

  The carving of the great face with the open mouth rumbled and every man in the room turned to stare at it. Perhaps it was Marcus’ imagination, but the glow in the room seemed a little brighter—a glow that emanated from the maw of the giant figure. The heat in the room also appeared to be rising.

  He moved closer to get a better view inside the opening and saw a puddle of molten rock with a large bubble forming in the center.

  “I think we’d better start back to the open air,” he told his men. “Calidus?”

  Marcus’ adjutant and acting Green Vigil had already organized his men to port the chests to the surface. The only real question was the status of the skeletal army headed toward them. “Let’s go! We’ll meet Severus and the blacks on the—”

  Black Vigil Severus Lupus appeared at the entrance to the cavern. “Tribune, the cave is knee deep in bones for most of the way to the surface but none of the skeletons are moving.” Severus’ gaze fell on the chests of treasure but nothing else in his expression indicated he had seen them.

  “Excellent!” Marcus responded. Organize your black band to take the lead and clear a path for the men carrying the loot. Let’s get back to the surface and assess our situation.”

  Behind him, the great mouth rumbled again and the room grew even brighter—brighter and hotter.