The Marching Dead

by Lee Battersby

  “So I’m told.”

  “But…” The King bit his lip. “But if that’s really him out there…” A wave towards the world outside. “And he’s going to kill everyone in the city and kill me and my family and take the crown and make everyone dead…” He stared at the picture, stared and stared until Marius could see the coming question as if it were written in the air itself. “What kind of king am I supposed to be if I’m supposed to be like him?”

  Marius gaped at him. Ten years old. When Marius was ten he could barely button his flies without help, and his greatest fear had been accidentally running into the Fish Alley Gang and getting his arse kicked for being out of his parents’ street. No matter what this kid did, he realised, someone was going to use it as an excuse to act against him. Children have too many enemies. Ten years old was no age to be a king. He smiled.

  “You know something?” he said. “I never liked this portrait.” He reached up and pulled it from the wall. Billinor gasped.

  “You can’t do that!”

  “Why not? Who’s going to stop me? You?”

  Billinor giggled. Marius pointed at the picture.

  “Ugly fucker, isn’t he?”

  The King chortled. “You said fucker,” he said, and snorted. “That is so rude.”

  Marius smiled again. That was more like it.

  “I’m worse than that.” He pointed to a diamond stickpin on the King’s chest. “Give me that and I’ll teach you something.”

  Billinor picked it out and handed it to him. Marius held it up.

  “See it?”

  “Yes?”

  Marius waved his fingers. The stickpin disappeared. Billinor rolled his eyes.

  “Please,” he said, with all the world-weariness of his ten years. “Grandmamma used to do that when I was little.” He tilted his head. “Go on, then.”

  “Go on what?”

  “You’re supposed to make it come out from behind my ear.”

  Marius grinned, and raised an eyebrow. “Stupid kid.”

  The young King stared at him; then slowly, raised a hand and stifled a giggle. Marius poked him gently in the forehead.

  “Have we learned something?”

  Billinor nodded.

  “Good. Now, you know what else?” Marius hefted the portrait. With one quick twist of his wrists he snapped the frame and tore the canvas into two pieces. “It’s not important whether or not you act like a dead man.” He tossed the broken canvas over his shoulder while the King was still gaping, and leaned down so that he stared the child fully in the face. “You need to be the King that you need to be. Not for him, or the rich people who stand behind your throne and tell you what to do as if you’re some kid who doesn’t understand. You do it for the people who don’t care that you’re young, and scared, and probably want to play ring-the-hoop in a park rather than sit in some dusty old throne room and listen to rich adults tell you all the ways you’re getting things wrong all day. The people out there who look at you and don’t see a kid, but see their King, and who love and trust you because you are their King. You’re their King, as long as you keep your thoughts on them. You don’t need to worry about what dead people think.”

  Billinor looked scared again, but he straightened his thin shoulders, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and nodded at Marius. Not as child to adult, Marius thought, but as monarch to sort-of just-about pretending-to-be-to-get-the-job-done monarch.

  “Yes,” he replied. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

  “You’re welcome,” Marius replied, then with a grin. “Half-pint.”

  The King grinned, and began the long walk down the corridor. A mob waited beyond those doors, Marius knew: confused, and terrified, and looking for a reason to panic. Even in the middle of the night, with advisors racing this way and that up and down corridors, with his mother fluttering from room to room calling his name, with the entire world in chaos, the people in that square waited only for the presence of one person. Their King.

  Their King reached the balcony doors, and opened them. A sound like thunder greeted him. He stopped for a moment, as if taken aback by the sheer volume, then gathered himself and stepped out. Marius glimpsed a short set of steps placed hard up against the balcony edge before the doors swung closed. He resisted the temptation to sneak up and place an ear against the glass. He had guided the youngster as best he could. What he said now, what comfort or rage or fear he gave his people, was his alone to give. Marius could only hope it coincided with his needs. He turned from the doors, and made his way back to the apex of the corridor.

  “It’s done,” he said to his companions, opening the secret panel Billinor had used to travel directly from his room to the balcony entrance. “Let’s go.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  They slid back out through the tunnels bequeathed to them by Goncoy, emerging at the end of an alley in the Whore’s Quarter. Marius waved Gerd and the nuns back underground.

  “What are you doing?”

  He jerked a thumb towards the far end of the street. “I want to see the enemy from the front. I want to make sure my bearings are correct.”

  “And what are we supposed to do? Buy a postcard?”

  “Go back to the others. Wait for us.”

  “Us?”

  He looked at Keth. “You’re coming with me, aren’t you?

  Keth looked between them. “I…” she nodded. “Okay.”

  Gerd rolled his eyes, and shut the hole behind him. Marius took Keth’s hand, then they made for the nearest street.

  They slunk from shadow to shadow down towards the black line of the city walls. The further away from the Radican they got, the more empty the streets became. Marius and Keth walked hand in uncomfortable hand, spooked by the eerie silence. Scorby City was the busiest city in the world: more crowded than Borgho City, more officious than the great palace-state of the Amir of Tal, more conniving and streetwise than the entire nation of the desert caravanserai. And it never, ever stopped. Until now.

  Marius could feel the silence working upon Keth, feel her twitch harder at every creak or groan, every hidden sound of the city’s settling bones that had previously been buried under the cacophony of life. He felt little better himself. He was a creature of noise and chaos. All his skills depended upon being one unnoticed mote in the whirl of city life. Out in the middle of a vacant street, without a press of bodies behind which to hide, he felt exposed, a mouse in an empty field just waiting for eagle claws to grip the back of his neck. They crept along, two mice on a mission, wishing for long grass to offer them shelter. The world stayed silent, until the cobbles changed shape along with the buildings. The city became rougher, less finished. The colours were muted and dirty, the streets less well-defined, becoming little more than dirt tracks that slipped between ramshackle structures that leaned together as if for warmth. Then even Keth could not escape the inevitable question:

  “Where is everyone?”

  “Waiting.” Marius pointed out closed shutters as they passed. “There’s an apocalypse outside the walls, and everyone here knows it’ll hit them before it reaches the rich.”

  Keth made to argue, then thought better of it. They were close to the walls of the city now, two miles from the Radican. Every city is built along similar lines. The wealthy claim the land towards the centre, near the river and up the hills, where the water is clearer and the sun shines for longer in the day. The poor are shunted to where the shadows are longest, and where the water has passed under every privy in the city before it comes up to be drunk. Somewhere up ahead, they could hear someone sobbing in a gap between buildings. They shared a look, and Keth ran ahead of Marius before he could call to her to wait.

  A small child, no more than six or seven years old and looking as if he was held together with dust and rags, crouched in the mouth of an alleyway. He rocked back and forth on his heels, arms hugging himself, chin pressed tight into his chest as he cried. Keth was kneeling down before him as Marius caught up with her and stood
a foot away, arms crossed.

  “Hey, hey.” Keth put out a hand and laid it on the boy’s shoulder. He flinched, and she made shushing noises. “It’s okay. We’re not going to hurt you. It’s okay.”

  The child tensed, then relaxed as Keth stroked his arms, making comforting little noises as if to a child crying out in its sleep. Gradually, he relaxed, and Keth cupped his chin in her hand.

  “What’s the matter, sweetheart? What happened?”

  The child hiccupped, found his voice through a multitude of sobs and sniffs.

  “The… the dead people… me Mam… She said… she said… She… threw… me… out…” He burst into a fresh round of tears and leaned against Keth, who put her arms around him and hugged him tight.

  “There, there. You’re safe now. We’re not going to let–”

  “All right.” Marius stepped forward and drove a hand in between them. He grabbed the child by the wrist and hauled him free of Keth’s embrace. “Show’s over.”

  “What?” Keth looked up in shock. “Marius? What are you doing?”

  Marius shook the child. “Cough it up, squirt.” The kid was crying in earnest now, struggling to get back to Keth. She leapt to her feet and grabbed at Marius’ arm.

  “Stop that. Stop it! What the hell are you doing?”

  “Come on, stop buggerising me about.”

  “Let go.”

  “Miss… help… Miss…”

  “I’m. Not. Fucking. About.”

  “Marius!”

  Marius held him aloft, letting him swing like a street dancer’s monkey. The kid kicked at his face, and Marius gave him a short, hard shake, so that he howled in pain.

  “You’re hurting him.”

  “Check your wrist.”

  “What?”

  Marius nodded at her arm. “Check your wrist. The bracelet I bought you from that little jewellery-maker. Came through the village last year; the guy with the tiny bellows you thought were so cute.”

  Keth grabbed at her bare forearm. “It’s–”

  “With him.” Marius shook the kid again, and this time Keth stood with her hands on her hips, giving him her best angry-mum stare. The boy ceased his struggle and dangled from Marius’ grip.

  “All right, all right,” he said finally, not a trace of the frightened child remaining. “Can’t blame me for trying, though. Worth a week’s meat, that is.” He ducked a hand inside his smock, came out with a thin band.

  “Wrong one.”

  “Oopaday. My mistake.” This time he held out the correct bracelet. Keth snatched it back and slipped it back on. “Thanks for the hug though, lady. Nicest thing I’ve had all day.”

  “Oi.” Marius poked him the chest, hard. “You’re dealing with me, sunshine.”

  “All right, don’t get your linen twist… Holy bugger, look at you.” He stiffened, and for the first time Marius saw genuine fear stain his face. “What are you then, mister? You’re not the start of it then, are you? Cause I gotta tell you–’

  “Shut.” Shake. “Up.” Shake.

  The kid shut. Marius pressed his advantage, drawing him close so that the two of them stared round child-eyes into dead, filmed-over ones.

  “You.”

  The boy gulped.

  “You’re going to do a job for me.”

  Something wet began to drip from the bottom of the child’s foot. Keth was beginning to make small noises of sympathy. Marius turned slightly, blocking her view.

  “You listening?”

  He nodded mutely. Marius grinned, knowing it was scarier than if he kept his face still. The child was almost crying now. Marius felt a pang of guilt, then swept it aside. He needed obedience. If fear was what it took… He caught himself. No. That was too easy, too much like the man on the other side of the wall. He blinked, drew his aura back into himself, let his face settle back into merely dead patterns of flesh.

  “Listen,” he said, and his voice, still stern, lacked the feral edge that had been creeping into it. “Everyone here, in all these buildings. You’re an army, right?”

  The kid shook his head, began to press his eyes closed. Marius sighed. He probably had stories, this child, almost certainly knew more than one family whose sons had been rounded up and marched away never to be seen again, all of it starting with a sentence similar to that one.

  “Not that type of army,” he said. “You get them all together, every one of you, and you’re an army for yourselves, right? And you’re not fighting for some king up on the hill, only knows you to flesh out the wall between you and the other mob’s horses. You get them out of these houses, fighting for all of you, you hear?” He gave the arm a quick wiggle. Eyes popped open, stared into his. A quick nod, then shut again. Marius sighed, and let him down.

  “Listen.” One arm still imprisoned by his grip, the kid was too damn terrified to try to even break away. “Go house to house, savvy? Anybody with a picture, a dead relative, somebody they lost, you get them out, get them into the nearest square. You understand?” Nothing. “You understand?”

  A small nod, eyes closed, wishing it would all go away. Marius clicked his fingers, decided to ignore how brittle and dry it sounded. The boy opened his eyes. Marius rubbed his fingers together, and magically, two riner appeared. Despite his fear, the boy’s eyes widened.

  “One for now.” Marius spun a coin into the air so that it landed in the child’s free hand. “One when the job’s done.” He waggled his fingers and the second coin disappeared. The child’s face showed momentary regret, then shrewdness.

  “How do I know you’re on the up?” he asked, the tiniest bit of bravado creeping back into his voice. Marius smiled.

  “Because in a couple of hours the King’s going to be marching through here, and he’s a personal friend of mine. And I’ll be asking him.”

  “Really?” the kid asked, and Marius remembered how young he actually was.

  “Trust me,” he said. “I’m the King of the Dead.” He nodded towards the street. “G’wan,” he said. “Get to it.”

  “Right.” The kid spun on his heel and raced around the corner. Marius shook his head to himself.

  “How do you know he’ll do it?” Keth asked. Marius held up a finger and pointed to the end of the alley. A small head reappeared.

  “Another one when I’m done, right?”

  “You get more than a hundred, I’ll make it three.”

  The kid’s eyes widened to an impossible degree, and he was gone.

  “You know he probably has no idea how much a hundred is, don’t you?”

  Marius straightened. “It’s exactly the amount he says he rounded up, if I ever see him again.”

  Keth coughed into her hand. “Great big hard King of the Dead.”

  “Come on.” Marius reached for her hand. “I want to stand on top of the wall.”

  “What for?”

  “Time we saw what we were facing.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  They stood on the empty battlement and stared out at the invading army.

  Marius had been a soldier, when he couldn’t think of any other way to make some money. He’d besieged a city more than once. This was like no besieging army he could remember. There were no fires, no sound of industry as teams came back from surrounding forests dragging trees to turn into siege ladders and ballistae. Tents had not been raised. Voices did not ring out in insult. Swords were not being banged against shields, to distract defending troops and remind them of the sharpened steel that waited outside. Horse-mounted braves did not dart forward to within arrow range, taunting the defenders and daring them to waste precious arrows trying to hit a single, dodging target. The sounds of activity, of building for battle, of consuming the resources that otherwise might have fed and watered the trapped citizens behind the walls, were absent.

  Instead, the army stood silent, rank after serried rank pressed together into uncountable walls of rotting flesh, a hundred thousand faces turned implacably towards the walls of the city. Only silence
reached Marius and Keth: no shuffling, no coughing, no tramping of mud as a nervous soldier shifted from foot to foot. They stood like meat-and-bone statues in the rising light of morning, and not one of them so much as blinked as the sun rose directly into their faces.

  “Good gods, that’s creepy.”

  “It’s meant to be.” Marius gently loosed the ties on his mind and let his consciousness tiptoe across the space between himself and the first rank, opening his mind to the thoughts of the enemy troops. He received nothing back, just a sense of grim determination and absolute belief in the task ahead. And something else, something that finally confirmed the suspicion he had carried all this time.

  “God,” he spat. “All of this because they’re convinced it was God who told them to do it.”

  “How do you know?”

  Marius looked out across the plains. “This being dead,” he said slowly. “It comes with different… abilities, I guess. Skills.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like…” He searched for an analogy, gave up, settled for telling the truth. “I can feel them. All of them. A thousand million consciousnesses, pressing up against the sphere of my thoughts. I can pick them out, if I like, one at a time, dip their pockets, or just slip past them all unnoticed.”

  “Like in the Cathedral. When you said the dead talk. You weren’t just–”

  “Exaggerating for effect? No.”

  “All the gods.” She looked at him, and Marius saw a type of fear. He turned his head away, focussed on the ranks outside the walls.

  “It’s not a magic skill or anything. It’s just something natural, you know?” He glanced at her, snorted. “No, of course not. Silly question.”

  “Can you… feel me?”

  “What? No.” He shook his head. “You’re alive. It’s like…” He paused, staring at her. He didn’t know, actually. It had never occurred to him to try to feel a living mind. He was so hung up on being dead, on his people and his power and his ability to move amongst them. He’d never for a moment considered that “his people” might include those he really thought were his. Keth caught his look, and stepped back.