by D. P. Prior
***
Didn’t matter how much Jankson Brau was paying her, it wasn’t enough.
Ilesa ducked beneath a blue-tinged fist and skewered another zombie with her dagger. Its guts sloshed out, and she whipped her blade back just in time to avoid being tainted with putrescence. Icy fingers groped at her back, but she reversed her sword and thrust the blade into something pulpy.
Nils’s prone body started to stir, probably due to the slush that was pouring on it from eviscerated zombies. Ilesa could have run, she knew it. Could have weaved through their shambling ranks, maybe thrown up another disguise to keep them off her scent, but she’d not been able to leave the boy. She’d thrown her knife on reflex, felling the cadaver that was about to rip his ear off with its teeth, then darted in to retrieve it before she even realised what she was doing. Protecting his stupid arse, is what. Because he reminded her, she guessed, ducking beneath a clubbing arm, thrusting with the sword and slicing with the dagger. Reminded her of her brother Davy, back before that stinking piece of shit who was supposed to be their father—
A clubbing blow slammed her sideways, straight into the arms of a huge living carcass. Ice coursed through her ribs as the air was squeezed from her lungs. Fetid breath threatened to choke her, and she screamed her rage as a flaccid tongue tasted the skin of her neck. She stamped down on the corpse’s foot and shoved at the same time. The ankle snapped clean off and the zombie toppled, only it didn’t release its hold on Ilesa. She landed on top of it, shattering its ribcage, cold pus and gore soaking her bodice. She rolled free, stabbing her dagger through its eye socket and into the brain, then came up into a fighting crouch.
Son of a pox-ridden whore!
She was completely surrounded. Couldn’t even see the farm buildings now, there were so many moaning, shuffling corpses pressing in upon her. Nils crawled over to her, but one of the zombies grabbed him by the leg of his breeches. He thrashed about like a fish on the hook, wriggled around trying to free his sword from its scabbard. If she hadn’t been so close to death, Ilesa would have laughed. He looked like a little boy desperate to get his cock out before he pissed his pants. Maybe he already had; it was difficult to tell, what with the sludge from the pig sty caking him head to toe.
She lunged in and severed the zombie’s hand, and Nils scrabbled backwards on his arse.
“Thanks,” he said, finding his feet and drawing his sword.
“Welcome,” Ilesa said. “You any good with that thing?”
Nils took a double-handed grip and Ilesa suppressed a sigh. “I can handle myself,” he said, puffing out his chest.
“Sure you can.” Ilesa glanced at his groin. “But can you fight?”
She already knew the answer, and he just reinforced the fact with a wild swing that nearly took his own toes off. She tugged him out of the way of a slavering maw and stuck her sword down the zombie’s throat.
That’s it, she thought as the throng pressed in tight around them. That’s shogging it! She shut her eyes and imagined being one of them again, imagined her flesh hanging from the bone, her organs turning to slush. She was almost there, almost there. Shog that little runt, Nils. He was nothing like Davy. Nothing. At least when that shogging bastard had come for him, Davy had put up a half decent—
The zombies in front surged forward, but there was nowhere to back away. Hands as strong as vices gripped her from behind, and a drooling face pressed up so close she gagged. She couldn’t see Nils any longer, but she could hear him screaming.
Shog Brau and his plans. Shog his money.
“Shoggers!” she roared, spit flying from her mouth. She cracked her head against the zombie’s nose. Half its face came off, but the teeth were still there, straining for her.
“Shoggers!” she screamed again as the horde swamped her and her knees buckled under the weight.
***
“Walk away, Silas,” he told himself as Ilesa and Nils disappeared beneath a sea of rotting limbs. “No sense in us all getting killed.”
He cast a look over his shoulder, but Nameless was nowhere to be seen. Of all the times to get constipated, he had to pick this one.
The grimoire slipped from his bag and thudded as it hit the ground, open and demanding to be read.
What the Abyss? How the hell did … ? Silas flicked his gaze between the book and the zombies ripping his companions apart. Not now, for crying out loud. Not now, damn it.
Wind turned the pages, but it seemed to Silas it was the book doing it, goading him into reading more. And he was sorely tempted, though he’d have been happier doing so a thousand miles from this place. He looked back at the zombies, and then returned his gaze lingeringly to the pages of the grimoire. He stooped to pick it up and an idea struck him.
“You clod, Silas.” He mentally slapped himself. First Nameless had had to remind him he had the power to free himself with magic, and now the book—an inanimate object—was prompting him to use arcane power to save his companions. He knew he lacked the skill to do so by himself, but Blightey’s ancient tome held out a promise to him, though he couldn’t tell how. All he had to do was focus on the page. All he had to—
“Make way!” bellowed Nameless, sending Silas into a spin as he thundered past, stumpy legs pumping, chainmail clanking, axe held high above his bald head. “Come to Nameless, you shoggers! You’re dead, you hear me! All shogging dead.”
Nothing like stating the obvious, Silas thought, closing the book so he could put it back in his bag. Only the book wouldn’t close. The spine had stiffened and the pages refused to be turned.
It actually hurt Silas’s neck to look away from the grimoire to see what was happening. Nameless tore straight into the zombies, axe rising and falling with elemental savagery. Blood flew up in great showers, limbs were lopped off, bones crushed, and then the dwarf disappeared in amongst the dead as if swallowed by a colossal maw.
“Nothing I can do,” Silas said, once more trying to close the book. He strained with the effort, but the spine resisted him. The letters on the page flashed red, and an angry whisper hissed between his ears like a whiplash. He blinked, and then squinted down at a jumbled confusion of Aeternam script. There were sigils in the margins, each of which was swirling, drawing him in. Silas tried to pull back, but couldn’t break the rapture. His lips started moving in time with the shifting letters on the page. Still reading, still incanting, he turned to face the fray, even as molten lava pooled at the base of his spine and surged in a great torrent towards his head.
***
“This ol’ dwarf, he killed one,” Nameless sang as he lopped off a head amidst a spray of reeking pus. “He shoved his axe right up your—”
The shambling corpses let out a communal hiss and started to turn away from Nils and Ilesa. The axe crunched through a skull, splitting it clean in two. A swipe to the left, a hack to the right, and he was in the midst of the horde, bobbing and weaving, barging and kicking. He thought he could make out Nils’s jerkin, caught a glimpse of Ilesa sprawled on the ground, half a dozen zombies crouching over her.
“With a quick hack, bloody splat, make a shogger groan.” He barrelled into them, bowling them out of the way.
Nils came to his knees, clutching his throat and hawking up phlegm. There was blood streaming from one ear. Ilesa scrabbled about for her sword and dagger, bleeding from half a dozen cuts. Nameless stepped over her to hammer his axe into the face of a groping zombie.
“This ol’ dwarf came rolling home.”
The instant Ilesa got to her feet she was slammed back down by a wall of bludgeoning limbs. Nameless roared and cut a swathe through rotting flesh, spilling gore all over her. Nils was up and running, but an arm took him across the throat and he dropped like a stone.
Nameless was relentless, swinging his axe in great chopping arcs, the inexorable press of zombies doing nothing to curb his good mood.
“This ol’ dwarf…” Hack. “He killed…ten? Eleven?” Chop. “Shog it, lost count.” Crunch. “You hear that
you putrid shoggers? Made me lose track.”
He drew the axe back for another blow and froze. The zombie before him was suddenly shorter, and sporting a beard.
“What the…?”
He twisted away, seeking another target, but each face was now thick with hair, and deep-set eyes bright with moisture looked at him in horror. He whirled this way and that, his heart pounding in his ears, breaths coming faster and faster.
“No,” he muttered. “What have I …? Oh, sweet Arnoch, no.”
“Nameless!” Nils screamed. “Nameless, help me!”
Nameless backed towards the voice, stumbled and nearly fell.
“Nameless!” Ilesa this time, shrill and despairing.
He took a shaky step towards her, saw the zombie about to rip out her throat, raised his axe. But it wasn’t a zombie … or was it?
“No,” he moaned. “I can’t. No more. I can’t …”
Cold hands gripped him from behind, spread their chill into his bones. Faces pressed up close, one moment ghoulish with peeling skin, the next dwarfish and terrified, accusing. Rank breath assailed his nostrils … or was it stale beer?
He tried to lift his axe, but his arms had turned to lead.
“Nameless!”—Nils.
“Nameless!”—Ilesa.
Then each of the dwarven faces crowding around him called out to him one at a time, building into a garbled chorus that made him drop his axe so he could cover his ears. He spun to face each and every one of them; those he had betrayed; his people. His victims.
Nameless dropped to his knees, pounding at his ears with his palms. Fingers tugged at his armour, curled around his throat. A lone voice within cried out the danger, but all he could see was his kin, and the terrible things he’d done to them filled his mind to bursting.
He began to choke as clammy hands throttled the life from him. The skin of his arms was aflame with cuts and tears. A swollen cloud sank over his vision. He was falling. Falling.
A crack of thunder, a rush of heat, as if he were caught in a sandstorm in the scorching sun. The hands left him, let him topple face-first to the dirt. There were voices. Voices he dimly recognised.
“Run! Come on, before they close the gap!”—Silas. A way off by the sounds of it.
“But Nameless…”—The lad, Nils.
“Forget him.”—Ilesa. “Come on!”
The dirt tasted wholesome, gave Nameless something to cling to. He was swooning, spiralling into a bottomless pit.
“No way.”—Nils again. “I’m a Night Hawk, remember? We don’t leave our mates.”
Hands grabbed him roughly, pulled him across the ground. Felt like someone had opened a window to let in the noise from outside, and the moaning started again, a great swelling tide rolling towards him.
“For shog’s sake,” Ilesa said, and Nameless felt himself hoisted to his feet and dragged along on the tips of his toes.
“Move it!” Silas shouted from somewhere up ahead.
“We’re moving,” Nils said. “We’re moving.”
Nameless shook his head, tried to clear it. He needed to speak, needed to say something, but whatever it was swirled from his mind like a dark fog.
“Quickly,’ Silas said. “And don’t look back.”
They half-carried Nameless now, his feet barely touching the ground. He could hear Ilesa panting in one ear, Nils in the other. The groaning was falling behind, but they kept up their pace. Something flicked into Nameless’ face, caused him to blink. He saw blurs of green and brown, felt leaves brushing his skin, brambles pricking at him. The heat of the suns gave way to a cool dampness, and at last they slowed to a walk.
“They’re going back,” Silas said. “Put him down. We can rest up here a while.”
“Thank shog for that,” Ilesa said, ducking out from under Nameless’ arm and letting him tumble groundwards. Nils hung on best he could, then got down on one knee to straighten Nameless out, make him comfy.
“I remember,” Nameless mumbled.
“What?” Nils said. “What do you remember?”
“My axe. I dropped my …” But before he could finish, his jaw set like dwarvish cement, and an old familiar sludge oozed through his veins, cloyed his thoughts, until he was nothing more than a brooding presence entombed in his own flesh.
***
The three moons took over the sky with unnatural quickness. One minute it was day, the next it was night. Nils was shivering, his clothes still sodden from where he’d washed them in a stream to get off the worst of the shite. Better on than off, though, he told himself. Last thing he wanted was for Ilesa to see him starkers.
He was relieved when Silas clapped his hands and a fire sprang up in their midst, complete with a pig on a spit, turning and dripping fat that sizzled in the flames. Fresh baked bread appeared in a hamper at Nils’s feet and Silas winked, though there was little humour in it. His face was deathly pale. It may have been the pallid glow of Raphoe, the largest of the moons, but Nils thought the wizard had sickened rapidly since their flight from the village. His cheeks appeared sunken, his eyes bloodshot and set in deep cavities. He had the look of a skull about him. Even his hair was thinner, some how, straggly and in need of a good wash.
Ilesa looked about as on edge as Nils felt. She turned her nose up at the display of magic and constantly shifted from foot to foot. Her fingers brushed the pommel of her sword, eyes flitting this way and that as if she expected the zombies to lumber from the trees at any moment. Nils caught her watching Nameless once or twice, but the dwarf did nothing to hold her attention. He was flat out, or so it seemed. Nils couldn’t be too sure, ’cause the dwarf had his eyes open, although they were fixed and unblinking.
“Don’t all thank me at once,” Silas said as he seated himself cross-legged on the ground. “It might not look like much, but its quite an effort rustling up food for four.”
Nils grabbed some still warm bread and crammed a chunk in his mouth.
“Thanks,” he grunted.
“Don’t mention it.”
Ilesa crouched by the spitted pig and sliced off a haunch with her dagger. “Great wizard like you, fries a couple of dozen zombies and then makes a fuss about a minor cantrip.”
“So minor that it escaped your meagre abilities.” Silas’s eyelids drooped shut and he steepled his fingers beneath his nose.
“I make no claims to wizardry.” Ilesa sat back against a tree.
“Yeah, right,” Nils said, reaching for the pig and realising he had nothing to cut it with. “Mind if I…?”
“Help yourself.” Ilesa reversed her blade and passed it to him.
“Yeah, like I was saying,” Nils said as he sawed himself a slice of meat, “I wouldn’t call them spells of yours meagre. Gaw, had ’em fooled good and proper, you did.”
Ilesa held her hand out, head cocked until Nils returned her dagger. “Who says it was a spell?”
“Well what else—?” Silas started, but Ilesa cut him off.
“I’ve told you nothing and see no reason for that to change.”
“Mystery woman, eh?” Silas looked up, a thin smile crossing his face. “I’m impressed.”
Nils felt the tension between them like the heaviness that sets in before a thunder storm. How many times had he felt that at home? How many times had he stopped Mum and Dad going at each other hammer and tongs with a bit of a laugh and a joke?
“Shoulda seen her as a zombie, Silas. Dead funny, she was. Get it? Dead funny?”
“Shut up, piss pants,” Ilesa said, sucking the grease from her fingers.
Nils gave a shrill laugh and swiftly tried to deepen it. “It weren’t piss,” he said, praying the silvery moonlight would keep her from seeing his cheeks redden. “It was blood and pig shit.”
“Whatever.”
“It shogging was, I tell you. Silas—”
“I’m staying out of it.” The wizard still hadn’t touched the food. His fingers were drumming against the canvas bag that contained his big leat
her book, and he had a far away look in his eyes. “Why don’t you two lovebirds just kiss and make up?”
Ilesa gave a contemptuous snort that stung Nils down to the bone.
“Shog off,” he said, doing his best to sound as dismissive of her as she’d been of him. “Credit me with some taste.”
“Wanker,” Ilesa said, her mouth curling into a knowing smile that had Nils seething inside.
“I ain’t rising to that,” Nils said, rummaging about in his belt pouch and pulling out the crumpled map he’d copied by hand before setting off to bring Nameless to Malfen.
“Oh, please,” Ilesa said. “Don’t pretend you’re going to read.”
“It ain’t reading,” Nils said, holding the map up for them both to see.
Silas leaned over and snatched it from Nils’s hand. “You draw this?”
Nils nodded, not sure whether to feel pride or embarrassment.
“Not bad. The lettering’s a bit shaky, like it was written by a drunken spider.”
Nils snatched it back. “Well I ain’t no writer, am I?”
“Ain’t no magsman, neither,” Ilesa mimicked his voice.
“Wanna bet? I can thieve better’n most. They don’t let just anyone into the Night Hawks, you know.”
“No, just whiney boys who piss their pants.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Ilesa said.
“Least I don’t abandon my friends.”
“No friend of mine. Maybe that’s something you better learn, if you’re gonna live long in this business. Just because you’re travelling with someone, doesn’t mean you owe them your life. Next time, I’ll leave you both behind. This isn’t any place for cowards and wannabe rogues.”
Nils half-expected Nameless to leap up and clobber her for disrespecting him, but the dwarf may as well have been dead, he was so still.
“Whatever you might say about our friend the Nameless Dwarf here,” Silas said, “he’s no coward. Believe me, I’ve seen first hand.”
“Me too,” Nils said. “Saw him kick your arse, Missy I’m so tough.”