Something was calling to them.
And the three needed to know what it was. Just in case.
Because there was always the chance…
“Can you hear them?” came a voice. The Plainsman turned, looking behind him down into the boat where sat the Servant, eyes closed in his swarthy face. He opened them and looked up, slowly, to the Plainsman, meeting his gaze. “Listen.”
The Plainsman did as he was asked, ears straining to filter sounds through the splashing of the parting waves, through the roar of the straining engines. Yes. Yes, he could hear them.
Screaming. Wailing. Shrieking. Harsh, unnatural sounds that had no business coming from human throats. His ears picked out the noise of the massed throng of once-men and women as they clamoured in their rush to reach their objective. He looked out; they were half a mile from the shore, small low-level buildings still, suburbs of the greater city before them. How could he hear them so well? Perhaps it was yet another of the mysterious gifts with which they appeared to have been blessed.
Or perhaps, and the thought left him cold, perhaps there were simply that many.
Regardless, he feared no minions of the hellfire, and he could see from the grim, set expressions of the other two with him that they shared his conviction. Since that fateful night within the Great Hall of the Barbarian City, they had found themselves possessed of gifts beyond those of normal men. Gifts, without which, they would never have been able to survive these past weeks.
The Plainsman shivered once again at the memory of some of the sights they had seen. This, this is the future which they had come here to forestall, to prevent. A people raped, plundered and taken, mind, body and soul. A land, despoiled. He dared not think of home, his former land beyond the portal, lest the thoughts and visions drive him mad, instead, letting the images he had seen feed his rage and anger to help him in the now. One hand reached down, to the wooden staff, or Hruti, that was strapped to his back, gripping the wood and squeezing tight.
They would find it, whatever the creatures were heading for in that city before them. If it proved to be friendly, they would rescue it. And if it proved not…
Then it would feel the furious vengeance of the Woodsman’s Three.
The boat sped on.
***
“Move! Move! Move!”
Noises. Flashes of golden light and the cry of the wounded. Staccato flurries of images, corridors, helping hands grasping to drag his half-conscious form. The shrieks and roars of inhuman voices.
“Marlyn!” A face began to resolve itself blurrily in front of him. Clear eyes, a slim aristocratic nose. “Marlyn, can you hear me?”
“Yes.” The youth shook his head, trying to clear the incessant ringing that seemed to echo throughout his head. “What…?”
“We need to move, lad.” Arbistrath’s voice was calm, collected, yet there was an undercurrent of urgency there. Marlyn looked about, his vision getting clearer by the second. His hand, by instinct, found the handle of his Cannon, fresh strength and warmth seeming to flow in an instant to clear his mind and let him take in the scene.
Tuladors formed a defensive wall across the wide promenade of the shopping centre, two ranks, one kneeling, one standing. Blasts of golden power leapt out at increasing intervals to race away down the corridor, to be rewarded by screams of hideous pain and rage.
“What the hell has happened…?”
“Someone let them in,” Arbistrath explained. “We found you here, unconscious. Lawrence is missing.”
Images flickered through Marlyn’s mind. Lawrence, yes. He remembered now.
“Shit.”
“Aye, shit indeed.” His Lord’s tone was grim, even for him, even for these times. “First we knew of it was the screams of our wounded and dying as they fell upon us. Five men dead before we could even rally. Somehow, we fought the first wave off. But they keep coming.” He marched Marlyn over to the defensive wall, pointing down the corridor to the far end, to where the Tuladors were focusing their firepower. “Numbers and ferocity like we’ve not seen these past months. These aren’t random attacks, Marlyn, not like the roaming pockets outside. These once-men know we’re here. And they’re determined to have us.”
The youth stared down the promenade to witness the truth of his master’s words. The two hundred yard stretch of building had been decimated by the unleashed firepower of the massed Tulador cannon, the balls of superheated plasma cracking tiles, warping glass, causing metal bars and guardrails to glow orange with heat. The air rippled with the energies. Even as Marlyn watched, the elevator within its glass shaft in the middle of the promenade plummeted, the steel cables melted through by a glancing shot, the steel and glass carriage hurtling down to the levels below to shatter upon the ground floor with a resounding crash.
Still, still, despite the firepower levelled against them, the once-men kept on coming. Relentless, fearless. A single shot, a single ball of blinding plasma from any of the mystical cannons might vaporise any target it hit, passing on with unstoppable force, leaving nought but severed limbs and ash in its wake. But for every aggressor that went down, ten more erupted from the rooms and corridors that branched off. The tide of fallen humanity was endless.
Slowly, surely, the line of corpses grew nearer; each wave of the possessed making it one step nearer before they fell.
Calculations flashed through Marlyn’s head as he took in the situation.
“We cannot stay here.” He turned to his Lord. “We need to leave now, or we will be overwhelmed. I know a way out.”
Arbistrath nodded, no need for further interrogation; he trusted the youth.
“Men!” he roared out above the din of the fusillade. “We move out! Maintain fire as we withdraw!”
Marlyn nodded, turning, hefting his cannon to his shoulder and jogging back to the control room behind them, ready to flick the switch which would open their route to escape. He just hoped, judging by the numbers he’d seen already, that the hordes weren’t simply waiting out there to greet them…
***
The sounds of glass crunching underfoot mingled with the clank of their armour and the wheezing rasps of their breath within their chests. They moved at a pace, a good march, but they moved without aim, without purpose, save to get away from the horde at their heels.
They kept to the sides of the roads, hiding as close as they could to the walls, hugging the buildings, as much to stay out of sight as to avoid the debris and rusting vehicles that clogged the streets. Every once in a while, a pocket of their pursuers might leap out from some hidden alley between the buildings, to be cut down by a flash of golden power. It was noisy work, however, and the use of their cannons was discouraged, stealth becoming the more favoured option; besides, the cannons had grown hot with the strain of repeated use during the desperate defence at the shopping mall, the whining of their capacitors sounding more high-pitched, the recharge time between shots growing longer. Marlyn had shown the men how to turn down the power of their shots, reducing the strain on the mechanisms. This had the adverse effect of decreasing the size of the balls of energy that launched out, meaning shots had to be better aimed lest they merely nick a foe rather than vanquishing it entirely. Needs must, however.
Even the shamanic engineering of their Lord appeared to have limits, it seemed.
Arbistrath paced forwards, feet ever careful not to trip on the cluttered masonry and metal, mindful of the corpses that lay strewn in the streets, desiccated and exposed to the elements. Here and there, a crow or rat might scuttle, seeking out a feast of dried meat, or attempting to gnaw open a bone to reach the marrow within. But other than that, no sign of life save the two dozen Tuladors that marched as silently, yet swiftly, as they could.
They moved forth from a side-street and into a large clearing, what looked to be a town square, such as that of Pen-Tulador, only magnified ten-fold and roughly triangular in shape, long and thin. Roads traversed the square at four points. Buildings loomed on all sides, high i
nto the air. Glass screens, similar to those back at the shopping mall, yet dwarfing them in scale, hung dark and cracked from the sides of buildings. Symbols, fifty feet across, were scorched onto every surface; five-pointed stars and other strange and twisting runes that hurt the eyes to gaze upon. The shapes looked strangely familiar as they writhed before Arbistrath’s eyes; he had seen them before, long ago, carved into the very walls of Pen-Merethia.
He spat on the floor and averted his gaze as he continued on at the head of his men.
The young Lord’s mouth remained slightly open at all times to help him hear that tiny bit better, an old trick he remembered from his days of hunting on the lands about Pen-Tulador. Simpler times, those. Old Hofsted had been an able teacher. Arbistrath, a difficult and entitled youth. Yet those times out hunting deer, boar or whatever they may have stumbled upon in the forests and fields of his homeland had been times of simple peace and pleasure for the young Lord-to-be. He had never felt comfortable around people, always ever aware of the pressures his father has been under and that he had known, even at a young age, would in turn be his. Hunting had been a way to escape those pressures. It was a noble pursuit, a match of wits twixt man and beast. Oftentimes he had not even been angry to lose a deer after a day on the trail; any beast with skill and reflexes enough to save itself deserved to see another sunrise.
Perhaps that recollection of simpler times had been why, when entrusted with the stewardship of Pen-Tulador and its lands, following the passing of his father, Arbistrath had been so vehemently opposed to the ‘Hunts’ organised by that vicious bastard Kurnos. Barbarian Clansmen, whooping and hollering, riding on wings of dust upon their scythed chariots, scouring the land for any peasants unfortunate enough to be abroad, to be captured and taken back to the capital city of Pen-Merethia for the amusement of the multitudes. The laws of the land had dictated that all Lords must allow the hunt free access to their lands and peoples.
Arbistrath had always arranged, however, for festivals, for parties, open to his subjects, within the safety of the castle walls. Always conveniently when he had heard wind of the Hunt’s approach. His people had loved him for it, thinking him a benevolent and merciful ruler. Perhaps he was. Or perhaps it was simply the way he viewed the Hunt as a corruption of his childhood memories. Either way, it had gotten him into trouble.
He still remembered the cold, merciless glint in the eyes of Memphias, Invictus’ personal assassin. Lord of the Khrdas. Killer without peer. That he and his Tulador guard had lived was merely down to the mystical skills of the shaman-folk of the Hills. That, and luck.
He continued musing, even as his keen eyes scanned every shadow for ambush, even as his ears listened out to hear for the distant and closing shrieks and howls of the foe.
Invictus. He should stop using that name, for that man no longer existed. There was only Stone. Upon the bridge that fateful night, he had witnessed, finally and fully, the extent of the dark powers that had come down upon that man’s poor soul; crushing him, beguiling him, remoulding him until no trace of his former self had remained. Gazing upon the vast, eyeless Beast of the Bridge, Arbistrath had suddenly understood how great the powers had been, how tightly wound the threads of fate had been about Stone all those years.
Arbistrath, since the translocation spell that had torn him from his home of Pen-Tulador and plopped him straight into the heart of the Retreat in the distant northern mountains, had been a broken man, feeling himself betrayed and used by what he had viewed as the most evil man in history. But, he had eventually realised that it was Stone who had been betrayed most of all; the man’s entire life had been nothing more than a ruse, all his losses and triumphs nothing more than steps leading him to ultimate betrayal at the hands of those he thought closest.
Until that moment, Arbistrath had been lost, thinking himself leaderless, unwilling and unable to put his trust in what he saw as merely a man asking for forgiveness from dire deeds. But upon that realisation, a loyalty had erupted, forged out of fear and a mad, desperate kinship. Even immortals could be betrayed, it seemed. Fate had not reserved horrors and pains merely for him, but everyone had their share. Brooding would get him nowhere, cowardice avail him nothing.
Arbistrath, on that bridge that stormy night, had in a very real sense faced his demons and defeated them. Once upon a time, he had merely suffered misfortunes.
Now, he endured them.
A wailing cry broke him from his reverie, and he whirled about, the sound of a dozen cannons snapping into position in unison causing a brief smile of pride to flicker on his grim face. A pack of once-men launched themselves from an alleyway across the square, bounding across the road, scrambling over the twisted wrecks of cars and mounds of rubble in their desperation to kill. A large vehicle, longer than the cars, sides bedecked with glass windows by the score, barred them mostly from sight, shielding the foe until they were close.
A flurry of bright flashes, golden balls of superheated energy flying forth to smite their targets as they came into sight. But the cannons were powered down, harder to aim, several shots missing their mark. The creatures came on. One, a woman, perhaps once beautiful, with long brown hair and startlingly blue eyes, lunged for Arbistrath, reaching with raw and bloodied fingers for his throat. His cannon yet recharging with its high-pitched whine, he brought the handle round like a club, smashing the woman in the side of the head with a resounding crack, sending the poor wretch to the ground.
Once upon a time, he may have left it there, turning his attention back to the rest of the battle. The scar of bite marks about his ankle, however, forever reminded him of the folly of ignoring one of the fallen; a blow that might kill a normal man would oftentimes mean little to these strangely animated puppets. Sure enough, a pool of blood slowly spreading from her head, the creature snarled and scrambled back towards him on all fours, eager to attack once more. A quiet beep from his weapon spoke to him of its readiness.
With one hand, he aimed the barrel down, a squeeze of the trigger bisecting the assailant with an instant of golden release and a thunderclap roar of power. Her atomised midsection had vanished, leaving only the glowing and cracked tarmac beneath. Against this kind of wound, not even the dark powers that fuelled her could prevail.
The clamour of battle about him had ceased as quickly as it had begun and the young Lord knew that the danger had passed. Reaching into the leather pouch at his waist, he withdrew a cigar, unsheathing it from its clear and flimsy surround, before reaching down and lighting it on the glowing heat of the scorched ground. He stood tall, taking a deep drag, enjoying the rich and thick smoke as he swilled it about his mouth before letting it out through his nose. This was a world of horrors, true enough, but the shopping centre had yielding some interesting secrets. The small tobacconist on the second floor had revealed quite the stockpile of such cigars, and they had become Arbistrath’s little luxury. They helped to clear his mind. Steady his nerves.
“My Lord.”
Marlyn had drawn near, his face a mask of fatigue and worry.
“Yes, lad?”
“The attacks are getting more frequent. I think the bulk of the force may be catching us up again. They move slower than we, but they do not tire. Plus, the noise from that battle will surely attract them to our position.”
Arbistrath considered this.
“Right you are. What do you suggest?”
Once, perhaps, he may have sneered at the idea of asking this youth for suggestions. Was this boy not merely some green youth from a backwater village in the most rural fields of Tulador? And he, a high-born and educated Lord, schooled in tactics, warfare and history? Once, perhaps. But no longer was Arbistrath so naïve.
“We need to put water between us and them. This city has a water supply; there must be lakes, rivers, a sea, something nearby that we can use to our advantage.” The young Tulador’s eyes flicked about, searching, before alighting on a shattered storefront across the way.
Gift Shop, what remained of the
tattered sign read.
“A map,” he murmured beneath his breath. “Yes, that’ll do.” He turned to Arbistrath. “Back in a moment. Hold position, I shan’t be long.”
“Be sure you don’t. Take Thom and Reno with you.”
The three, Marlyn, Reno and Thom moved out, slowly, but purposefully, towards the dark store before them. Behind them, the Tuladors formed a defensive circle, tense and ready for action, expecting at any moment that the silence of the city would be shattered by the inhuman shrieks of impending doom.
***
The store was eerily silent, the rows of shelves and racking lying smashed in places, the aisles of the shop overflowing with books, posters and trinkets. This place had once been a shop for tourists, Marlyn mused. This city must once have been a vibrant place, to attract crowds of visitors from lands afar.
He pondered, not for the first time, whether there remained anyone else alive in this entire world. And, not for the first time, he pushed the thought from his mind lest it still his heart with fear.
His eyes penetrated the gloom, his cannon sweaty in his hand. It was close, in here, the air thick, musty, lying undisturbed for a long while. There, towards the rear: maps and guides. He made his way over, looking side to side, listening out with his ears as much as looking with his eyes. Danger was everywhere here, he had learnt over the months. Yet there was nothing to hear save himself and his two companions.
Further down the aisle he walked. Yes, that’d do. He picked it up, the pamphlet of folded paper. City Map, it read. He unfolded it, cannon dangling from its harness as he examined it. The city was completely alien to him, foreign, yet somehow his mind focused, showing him local landmarks, large stores and buildings that he remembered from the signs on the frontages, as well as recognising the layout of the roads they’d travelled. Yes, there they were, in the triangular clearing between two of the longer roads and bisected by two others. Fie- but this city was big! To a country youth such as he, even Tulador had seemed a metropolis. But this was place was on a different scale entirely.
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