by Frank Tuttle
They broke cover and charged me, half a dozen of them, clubs and axes raised in the moonlight.
They might have been men once. Might have been shopkeeps or bartenders or barrel-wrights or bankers.
Then they’d died. Died and been resurrected, stitched back together by someone with little skill in needlework and no concern for their craft. One had the arms of an Ogre. One had a woman’s head. All were voicing bubbling screams, and all were racing toward me as fast as their bloated, mismatched legs could carry them.
I flipped the coin.
Another night fell, this time with a huge harvest moon. The street was still littered with corpses, though their bones were cracked and crumbling, and even their leather shoes were mere scraps where they remained at all.
Rannit was quickly reverting to wilderness. Saplings sprouted amid the corpses. Leaves moved in a warm wind, rising up through the skeletal remnants of structures. An owl floated overhead, silhouetted briefly against the fat, orange moon.
I turned in a circle, saw movement to the south.
The slilth, taller than any mountain, ambled past, well beyond the old wall. Its many silver legs glinted and shone in the moonlight, and I could hear, faint and delayed, the stomp-stomp-stomp thud of its footfalls.
There rose a grumbling behind me as the godlet’s voice rang out, muttering from heaven. The sky lit up as a bolt of silent lightning arced down upon the slilth, but it merely batted the bolt away with a casually upraised leg and continued its stroll, apparently unconcerned.
The god grumbled curses, but fell silent, and soon the night was quiet again, save for the distant footfalls of the slilth.
It took me most of the night, but I made my way back to Middling Lane.
I knew I wouldn’t find her there. Rannit was dead. Dead and nothing left but bones. I didn’t think about her every time I stepped on a bone, every time a hollow-eyed skull caught my gaze. I didn’t think about what might have happened to her, or that she was likely among the dead, her bones weathering away to dust beneath a merciless moon.
Our house was gone. Not a foundation stone remained. The ground was bare and blasted, glittering in the moonlight. I picked up a clod of it and crumbled the soil, and found something like bubbled glass amid the dirt.
I called out her name, just once. There was, of course, no answer.
After a while, I turned my face toward the blasted mound that was the Hill, and I picked my way slowly through the dead until I came back to the banks of the Brown.
Chapter Eighteen
The Brown River Bridge was no more.
A single pair of pilings remained, far out in the middle of the river. Twisted iron girders drooped from each, rendering their appearance that of monstrous trees gone bare and gaunt for the winter. Under the pilings, sluggish water swelled and curved, hinting at debris just beneath.
I spent the day making a raft out of charred lumber. I lashed the whole mess together with scraps of belts and chains, forgot I’d have to pull the works down to the water myself, and wound up chopping it in half just so I could move it.
By the time I took to the river, it was dark. I didn’t dare show a light, even if I’d managed to find a working lantern. For all I knew, the death god still kept watch from his tower, probably desperate for a snack since he’d consumed the whole of Rannit.
I got soaked, of course, and spent the whole wretched trip clinging to the world’s worst raft after it came apart halfway to the other side. But I’d chosen my launch point wisely, and the slight bend in the Brown put me in swimming distance of the far bank. I made it, sputtering and coughing and cussing, but alive.
Alive. I wondered if I was the only living thing in all the world, aside from owls and frogs. I heard a single frog sing as I clambered up the muddy bank to lie gasping just beyond the water’s reach.
I should have been hearing tens of thousands.
The Hill was a blasted mound. Rubble lay strewn across rubble. The Dark Houses had put up a fight.
But if the shattered masonry and scattered bones were any indication, they’d fought in vain, and in the end they’d all died, halfdead and human alike.
The roads were gone. I was left to pick my way through debris, slipping and sliding on broken slate roof tiles and treacherous heaps of loose bricks. How I managed the ascent without breaking both legs and three arms is beyond me.
I managed to make maybe a quarter of the Hill’s height before both night and my strength failed. With dawn touching the empty sky, I found a heap of weathered masonry and hid within it, not wanting to expose my pitiful scramblings to the light of day and the gaze of a ravenous death god.
Soaked and stinking and miserable, I finally drifted off to sleep.
I dreamed of home. And Darla. I dreamed we were back in our house on Middling Lane, that Rannit was whole and bustling and alive, that the streets weren’t littered with bones. That Death himself hadn’t risen up and swallowed the city whole.
The last thing I remember of the dream is hearing Buttercup humming a lullaby. Then I slept, a chunk of granite for a pillow, bones beneath my feet.
I woke just before sunset. I scrambled from shadow to shadow, crawling most of the time until night fell. By then my hands and knees were so bruised I didn’t much give a damn whether I was seen or not.
From my vantage point partway up the Hill, I had a good clear view of Rannit.
There wasn’t much left to see.
A few structures still stood here and there, though I could see stars through gaps in the frames.
Not a single light shone. Not a single meager cookfire flickered in the dark.
The old wall was still there, in places. I scoured the dark where I knew the death god’s tower ought to be, but that portion of Rannit lay in deep shadow, and I might as well have tried to see the bottom of the Brown.
Around midnight, the slilth wandered into view, this time towering over the western horizon. It ambled about for half an hour, so distant the godlet didn’t stir, and then it strolled out of sight.
I climbed. It was slow going, as my every step was dogged by sliding debris or hidden holes. I judged I was three-quarters of the way to Avalante when I saw the yellow-gold light bobbing amid the destruction a quarter-mile up the Hill.
I dropped and froze, cussing every rolling pebble, every snap and crack of debris. In the absence of frogs and crickets and nightbirds, the silence was absolute, and the soldier in me was aghast at the noise even the smallest movement made.
I peeked through a gap in the rubble.
The glow was descending, darting from place to place, coming right at my hiding place.
I unsheathed Toadsticker, risked enough movement to position myself so I had room to swing if I was discovered. I laid down a pistol by my knee, thinking if one swing of my sword wasn’t enough, I’d drop my blade and break the dead silence by opening fire.
Buttercup popped her head over the rim of the debris and stuck out her tongue.
She vanished, reappeared directly before me, and wrapped her skinny arms around my neck in a fierce, giggling hug.
I dropped my sword, caught her up, sure for an instant I’d fallen and concussed my fool self and was hallucinating.
But Buttercup remained. Her hair was wild and matted. She smelled of dirt and ash. She hugged me so hard we both heard bones creak and she giggled and let me go.
“How?” I asked.
She shrugged and spun, wild hair flying. I sank to my knees and put my hand on the top of her head, just to reassure myself she was solid.
She squealed and disappeared. Instantly, tiny hands slipped around my face from behind and covered each of my eyes.
“I have never been so glad not to see someone,” I said.
She returned to stand before me.
“Uncle Evis? Aunt Gertriss? Darla? Mama Hog?”
Her radiance failed. She lost her smile, and in that instant she looked like a dirty, hungry child, and nothing more.
“I’m goin
g to Avalante,” I said. “Would you like to go too?”
She giggled and clapped her hands. I sheathed Toadsticker and retrieved my revolver. Buttercup took my hand, and we headed uphill.
Avalante was gone.
In its place was a crater, at least a block across. Smokes and fumes still rose from the darkness within.
I’d hoped part of Avalante survived. I knew most of the House was far underground, but I also knew that wasn’t common knowledge. My plan, tenuous as it was, was to find the remains of the hidden tunnels and hope part of the House lay intact in some deep secret chamber.
But there was nothing. Just a hole, filled with impenetrable shadow.
I found a brick, tossed it into the chasm, counted seconds as it fell.
If it ever hit the bottom, I didn’t hear it.
I fought back an urge to leap in after the brick.
“I could use some light, Buttercup,” I said. “Just enough to see twenty feet or so.”
She nodded and glowed.
Her banshee radiance revealed the edges of the depression, which showed every sign of having been formed when a monstrous hand reached down from the heavens and simply scooped up the earth.
“Damn, Evis. You never had a chance.”
All about us, bathed in Buttercup’s unwavering glow, lay skeletons. The mix of human to halfdead was more or less even. Buttercup giggled and pointed.
I crouched, inspected the remains of the closest. The elongated finger-bones, talons, and fangs showed them to be halfdead. Their clothes were mere scraps of rags, clinging to bones that showed signs of weathering but hadn’t yet begun to decay, or even fall apart.
Looking around, I realized each of the skeletons scattered about me was whole. Intact.
I grabbed the nearest one by the neck-bones, picked it up, brought its skull close to my face.
“Knock knock, old spook,” I said, thumping the skull for emphasis. “It’s me. Come out, and let’s have a talk.”
Silence.
“I know your name before it was Stitches,” I added in a whisper. “Anybody else know that?”
The bones twitched and moved. Pinpricks of blue light flared to life in the dead eye-sockets.
I let go, and the bones rattled to life. It stood before me, jaw dropped.
“Markhat? Captain Markhat?”
“In the flesh. And Buttercup. You wouldn’t have any beer down there, would you? Rannit seems to be in the midst of an economic slowdown of sorts.”
All around me, bones moved, rising to their feet.
“You died. You died years ago. I was present at your funeral.”
“I hope the event was well attended. I was serious about that beer. Look, can we come in? I’d rather our friend the death god doesn’t glance my way and decide to join the party.”
The skeletons closed in. The human ones bore knives. The halfdead merely flexed those killing claws.
“Tell me who you are, and how you came to be here, or the death god will be the least of your problems.”
“I’m Markhat. I’m here because I flipped the magic coin a god of Fate gave me. I suppose I stepped out of time before my funeral. Buttercup met me here, I have no idea how or why. I figured if anyone lived through this mess you did, and I suspected you had a hidey hole down deep below Avalante.” I poked the slack-jawed skeleton in its bony chest. “Now either kill me or take me in. I’m tired of walking.”
“Is it really you?”
“It is. Be a shame if you killed me after being so kind as to attend my funeral. Please tell me you’ve got something to drink stashed away down there.”
Halfdead talons pricked my skin, but didn’t tear my throat out.
“Only Markhat would be so unnecessarily impudent.”
“So I’ve been told. Are we friends, or aren’t we?”
The tiny pinpricks of light deep inside the empty skull flickered.
The skeletal hand fell away from my throat.
“Follow,” she said. “We have much to talk about.”
The dead vampire turned, and I took banshee in hand and followed after.
Chapter Nineteen
I’d been right.
Stitches, who had once been the Corpsemaster, did indeed have a deep hiding place concealed in the vaults far below Avalante.
And she was using the plentiful dead to keep an eye on the devastation above.
We simply stepped through a fold in the shadows, and emerged into a steep, sloping tunnel that wound in a spiral down and down and down. The walls were curved and glassy smooth, as though formed by great heat. There were no steps, and even the corpse Stitches wore stumbled a few times when its bony toes caught on small irregularities in the fused stone.
She cussed, which I’d seldom heard her do. Her control over the skeleton seemed incomplete as well, though whether that was due to the condition of the remains or overtaxed powers I couldn’t say.
We walked in silence for the better part of an hour. As we descended, a mechanical throbbing began to sound, rising up from the depths, quickly growing loud enough to make the conversation we weren’t having impossible.
At last, we rounded a turn, and the tunnel simply ended. Before us stood a tall, black door, a door with no latch, knob, or visible lock.
“Welcome to my home, such as it is,” said Stitches through her fleshless corpse. “Enter, and be welcome here.”
The pile of bones simply collapsed at my feet. The skull came loose and rolled. I didn’t think Stitches would be using that particular body again.
The black door swung silently open. It opened inward, and it opened to darkness, but Buttercup giggled and skipped through it, and I shrugged and stepped through myself.
Stitches, sans stitches, greeted me.
“You never cease to amaze,” she said, using her mundane voice. Her lips showed no scars, nor her eyes. “I commend you. Such cleverness is rare among mortals.”
Buttercup skipped to her and then skipped away, inspecting the contents of the cavernous chamber.
I glanced about myself. The chamber was vast, and lit only here and there, so I had no idea how far back it extended.
Gleaming, metallic contraptions rose up all around. Some moved, pistons and levers whirling in the harsh spotlights. Sparks spewed and flew. Bolts of tame lightning danced from machine to machine, illuminating the whole cavern from time to time but doing so too briefly to allow for a good look at anything distant.
The throbbing was present too, but muted. I felt it through my feet more than I heard it.
“So what happened?” I asked. “How did it win?”
She surprised me by moving to stand near me, and then giving me a brief, chaste hug.
“Let us sit,” she said. “The telling of the tale will be no easier than the hearing of it.”
We wound our way through worktables and banks of humming machines. Papers and drawings littered the place, along with cast-off remains of meals and empty coffee mugs.
“Maid’s day off,” I muttered.
She laughed. We found a table. She shoved a stack of books onto the floor and sat on a rickety chair. I found a stool and did the same.
A pair of beers appeared. They weren’t cold. We opened them and drank them dry anyway.
“They’re all dead, you know,” she said after a time.
I just nodded. I’d known it, the moment I saw the charred, melted ground upon which my house once sat. But the words struck like a blow all the same.
“You died first. Then Evis, who survived the first battle with the god. Mama Hog was next. She nearly landed a blow with that cleaver of hers.”
She paused. Something glistened in her eye.
“Gertriss and your Darla led the resistance,” she said. I watched her search for words that would impart the truth without inflicting unnecessary hurt. “They were brave, Markhat. Brave and gallant and wonderful. You should be very proud.”
I tried to find words, couldn’t. She nodded, and in a moment she continue
d.
“But in the end, the godlet arose. Became a god. The resistance fell. Gertriss died at the south wall, leading a group of survivors out of Rannit.”
“Darla?” Her name stuck in my throat.
Stitches put her hand on mine.
“She had something. An artifact. Something Evis left for Gertriss, and Gertriss gave to Darla. Darla rushed the god, threw it in his face. She…did not survive.” Stitches swallowed, weighing her words. “I was there. I enhanced her attack, but my efforts were insufficient. When I awoke, I was buried in rubble, and Darla was dead. I am sorry, Markhat. So very damned sorry.”
“He killed her.”
She blinked but did not speak.
“Dammit. Tell me.”
“What good will it do?”
“I’ve walked out of time, Corpsemaster. I’ve watched Rannit die. I’ll be dead myself, shortly. I’ve earned the right. Tell me.”
Her gaze lingered.
“The necromancer took her life,” she said.
“How did it happen?”
“Don’t ask that, Markhat. I beg you, don’t ask.”
Buttercup snuggled up against me.
“All right. I won’t ask that. But there’s something I will ask.” I realized my voice was getting shaky, so I swallowed and took a breath.
The ghost of an idea had been born, out there amid Rannit’s bones.
“I left you a note, the day Avalante went after the godlet. Asked you to rob a crypt and hide a body. Did you?”
She nodded. “I did. The corpse showed signs of consciousness and rudimentary animation. It was mother to both the giant and his sister, whom you know as the necromancer.”
Pay dirt. Now for one more stroke of luck.
“Do you still have the body?”
“Yes. Despite their efforts to locate it, I have kept the body hidden. It has lapsed into a state of inactivity, without the ministrations of the female. I fear it is little more than a pile of bones by now.” Her eyes bored into mine. “Is this relevant?”
I sagged in my chair.
At the very least, I thought, I will see Darla avenged.
A dog barked, somewhere back in the shadows. I heard the unmistakable sliding click of a dog’s paws trying to gain purchase on the mirror-smooth floor.