She chuckled and tried to be patient. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she had better start looking for food. She doubted that she could make it all the way back to Moscow without it.
She took the time to search the undergrowth for anything edible. Fortune decided to smile on her and she came across several wild strawberry bushes, heavy with plump, ripe fruit.
“First I avoid death by dragon fire and now this bounty?” Liliana exclaimed. “Well, all I can say is, if someone is actually watching over me, then I thank you very much.”
She stuffed herself with the sweet berries and, once her things were dry, picked a few more handfuls to take with her. She wrapped them in her spare shirt and tossed it into her backpack for later.
Once she was back up on the highway, Liliana stopped at the edge of the pavement under the shelter of some trees and searched the skies carefully. There were no signs of any flying monsters, so she took a deep breath and set off again. Never again would she freeze at the sight of distant leathern wings flapping across the sky, nor would she ever stand and stare in awe at such a sight. She had definitely learned her lesson.
It took another week of slow progress to get back to the suburbs surrounding Moscow. Liliana had to avoid several packs of drakes that were sweeping the countryside, apparently looking for survivors. And once she had actually had to climb a tree to hide when she had stopped for the night to camp and she'd heard the distant howls of the monsters. None had gotten too close to her location, but they had screeched and called to each other for hours and she had chosen to spend all night in the tree. It hadn't been a pleasant experience.
Liliana reasoned that the creatures had spread out from the city, killing everyone in their path and then eventually doubled back to pick up any stragglers. The systematic and well-planned search was frightening in its efficiency. She didn't believe that the drakes were all that intelligent, which meant that they were taking orders from something else. Dragons maybe? There was no way to know.
Finally, a week or so after the dragon's attack, she crested a hill and stopped to stare at the panorama below. It was Moscow, finally. She was home.
It was hard to calculate exactly how much time had passed since the first dragon attacks against the city had forced Liliana to flee with only the clothes on her back; it felt like it was years ago. And yet, as she looked out over the sprawling city, she could still see wisps of smoke rising from locations all over the capital.
She had picked up a sturdy tree branch the day before and had stripped small branches off of it with her old kitchen knife to use it as a staff. Now she leaned against it and studied the columns of smoke carefully.
“Must be fires burning underground,” she said quietly. “Maybe old petrol stations that haven't been used since the automobiles stopped working.”
There was a thin haze like fog covering most of the city, obscuring her view, but Liliana could clearly see that every tall building had been leveled. Almost all of the larger buildings were smashed open and, from what she can see, every street was choked with rubble and debris.
The city itself was eerily quiet. There was very little wind and she could see nothing moving; no people, animals or birds. It struck her like a physical blow that what she was looking at was a massive tomb. Millions of her fellow Russians had been slaughtered; innocents who had wanted nothing more that to live their lives in peace. All of that was gone now.
Her anger bubbled up anew. The sheer injustice of what had been done to her people made her shake with fury. And yet she was impotent; she could not turn back time. What was done was done, she told herself again. What was of most importance now to her was saving any survivors that she could find.
With a last, sorrowful look at her city, Liliana began to walk down the hill toward Moscow. It was time to get to work.
Chapter 12
Liliana sat up abruptly and looked around, unsure for a moment of where she was. It took several seconds to realize that she was lying on the couch in her cottage.
Night had fallen while she was lost in her memories and the only light that she could see was a dim glow through her front window; the moon was probably just rising.
She stood up and stretched, still caught up in the feelings of loss and hopelessness that she had experienced at the sight of the ruins of Moscow. It had been such a beautiful city in its day, when she was young, and then, just like that, it was gone.
She used a match to light several candles around the room, including two on her mantelpiece, and splashed some water on her face to wake herself up. She had no interest in sleeping at the moment.
When Liliana peered out of the front window, a large shadow moved across her field of view and gave her a start. The she breathed a sigh of relief; it was the stallion.
She watched as he sauntered slowly away to her left and disappeared around the side of the cottage.
At least he's still inside the palisade, she thought with a smile. So far anyway.
The window fogged up from her breath as Liliana leaned against the window frame and stared out into the night. She could see her reflection in the glass and, in the room behind her, the shivering gleam of her armor in the candlelight.
She turned around and leaned back against the wall, crossing her arms as she stared at the armor. She had built a wooden frame to hang the suit on, and always leaned her shield against the wall next to it when it was not in use.
“I remember finding you,” she whispered to the shining metal suit. “Was I led to you too? Or was it just luck that I found you? The gods never told me, so I suppose that I'll never really know.”
Liliana had entered Moscow from the south. Her old home was actually farther to the east, but she didn't really want to go back there right away. She wasn't ready to see just how much damage her old neighborhood had sustained. The house itself had probably been destroyed, but she might still be able to find some old photos of her family or keepsakes of some kind. It would be worth the search, but that would have to wait. If there were any survivors roaming the city, she wanted to find them and offer them her aid.
Moscow had been a large, modern city and, now that most of it had been reduced to rubble, traveling through it was a long, painstaking process. Liliana found herself backtracking constantly to get around mounds of unstable debris or deep holes in the middle of roads. She guessed that the holes had been caused by the explosion of underground gas lines.
An amazing detail that she hadn't noticed from a distance was just how many buildings were still largely intact. Granted, all the structures had been damaged to a greater or lesser extent, but she was able to search through office buildings, grocery stores and other buildings fairly easily, as long as they hadn't been more than a few stories high. Anything taller than that had been knocked over or reduced to slag by dragon fire and almost all of them were impossible to explore.
What she found most perplexing, even though it gave her some relief, was the lack of human remains. Moscow had been home to over twelve million people when the dragons had attacked. Granted, many had left the city in search of a better life elsewhere when technology had started to fail, but still, most of the people had stayed. Where were all of the bodies?
I know that dozens of dragons had razed the city on the Night of Burning, Liliana thought sadly.
She was climbing to the top of a collapsed apartment building to look around the area she was in.
But still, even that many monsters couldn't have killed the entire population, she reasoned. Had the drakes really attacked in such numbers that they could have accounted for the rest? Or was something else going on here?
It would be years before she learned of the virulent plague that the dragons had unleashed during their attacks. Green dragons had used poison and black dragons had spread disease to help wipe out the majority of the population in all large cities. Drakes had mopped up the few stragglers who managed to escape the pestilence.
And the bodies? Most of the bodies had rotted where
they fell within days of their deaths. But again, that was information that she hadn't had at the time.
As she stood looking to the north across the city, searching for any movement or other signs of survivors, Liliana felt a chill of premonition creep down her back. She turned around quickly and gasped. A flight of dragons, at least three huge winged forms, was approaching the city from the south.
She didn't hesitate at the sight this time. Instead, she scrambled down the mound of broken cement and metal she had been standing on, frantically searching for some place to hide.
A low doorway tilted drunkenly to the left offered shelter and she dove into it just as the sound of massive wings arose overhead. In the shadows of the small room she had retreated to, Liliana peeked upward and watched as the dragons sailed majestically across the sky, hundreds of feet above her.
Haven't you done enough, she raged silently as she watched the monsters pass overhead. Do you have to keep searching for people to kill?
If there had been a way at that moment, Liliana would have slaughtered every last one of the monsters. But of course that was foolishness. Paladin or not, she was still just one person and, every time she saw one of the enormous creatures, she was reminded of that fact.
It would be like me being threatened by an ant, she thought with sad amusement. No, I will do what I can to save others. Maybe some day someone will find a way to strike back at the dragons, but it won't be me.
At that very moment on the other side of the world, a young man named Simon O'Toole, who would one day be the dragons' nemesis, was casting his very first spell.
When she could no longer hear the sound of distant wings, Liliana stepped outside and scanned the skies. The coast was clear and she set off again, moving even slower now because she would stop every few minutes to check for danger from above.
At this rate, it will take me a week just to cross the city once, she thought with a sense of despair. But what else can I do? At least this way I won't miss anyone along the way, assuming that there is anyone left in Moscow.
An hour later, she finally stumbled across a mall that was more or less intact. There was a large grocery store there that she was able to enter and search through, even though the roof had collapsed and creaked alarmingly as she crawled around beneath it.
There were hundreds of cans of beans and stew, canned fruit and even a few loaves of bread that weren't too stale yet. She felt like she had discovered buried treasure.
Well, as long as I'm not killed by dragons or drakes, I won't starve for years if I stay in the city, she thought as she sat down just inside the entrance to the store.
She opened a can of beef stew and ate it slowly. It was delicious.
She drank a bottle of water with her meal and felt reinvigorated when she was finished.
Time to carry on, Liliana told herself as she slung her pack over her shoulders again.
It was heavier now with new supplies and it was a relief to know that she wouldn't have to ration food while she searched the city.
Now I just have to worry about threats from monsters, she thought with wry amusement. No problem at all.
She left the mall behind her, heading once again toward the city center.
All that day she continued her weary walk through the city. By the time the sun hit the distant horizon, Liliana realized that she hadn't traveled even a fifth of the way across. Moscow was big enough back when it was intact, but now it was a jumbled maze of dead ends, blocked streets and canyons filled with slippery debris and hidden dangers. She had already almost broken her leg when a hole had opened up under her feet and she had dropped heavily into a pit filled with stinking, yellowish water. The scramble to climb out again had been exhausting.
Even if anyone else has actually been foolish enough to return home, she thought as she sat down to catch her breath. How long would they survive in such a dangerous place? Forget the dragons; it feels like Moscow itself wants to kill me.
But what else could she do? Search the entire country looked for people to help?
If that's what it takes, she told herself resolutely. If the city truly is lifeless, then you will head out and find others in the wilderness. That is your task and your destiny, isn't it?
Hours later, as the day waned and darkness fell heavily around her, Liliana found a sheltered nook beneath the overhanging roof of a wrecked tavern and settled in for the night. She didn't dare risk a fire, so she put on her jacket to keep warm and curled up against a wall.
All around her, strange groans and creaks, along with the occasional distant crash of falling debris, made it hard to sleep. To her weary mind, it was as if the spirits of the restless dead were haunting the ruins, still struggling to accept their untimely deaths. It was a sad and depressing idea and it made her both restless and nervous.
When she was finally about to drift off to sleep, Liliana's head snapped up and she looked into the thick blanket of darkness around her.
What was that? For a moment, she thought that she had heard footsteps.
She lowered her head and tried to ignore the sound of her heart pounding in her ears as she listened intently. The sounds of the city settling were ongoing, but this had been different. It had sounded closer, more immediate. And more threatening.
A few minutes passed and she sighed. Nothing. Must have been hearing things. Maybe she had dreamed it? Yes, that had to be it. Who would be wandering around the city at night anyway? The place was dangerous enough to travel in during the day.
The light of the stars was bright enough to make out vague shapes and Liliana's imagination gave them a sinister, suspicious appearance.
Stop it, she told herself sternly. The city is dead. If there were any survivors here, they would be doing what she was doing; camping for the night. Moving around in the ruins was simply too dangerous.
Again she closed her eyes, determined to get some sleep. She was drained from the battle to make her way through the city and knew that she needed to rest because the next day would be just as exhausting.
This time less than a minute passed before another strange sound caught Liliana's attention. This time she jumped to her feet and put a hand on her sword hilt. She hadn't heard an unidentifiable noise this time; she had heard a moan.
She turned her head to the right and waited. Nothing.
“Hello? Is someone there?” she called out. “Don't be afraid; I'm not a threat.”
Another low moan came from the same direction.
“Are you hurt? Do you need help?”
A shuffling of feet being dragged over pavement lifted the hair on the back of her neck. This wasn't a survivor. There was something evil approaching.
Liliana drew her sword in one smooth motion and pointed it toward the invisible intruder.
“I warn you, I am armed,” she said loudly. “Show yourself!”
A dark mass moved, detaching itself from the other shadows and, without warning, her blade suddenly blazed with a silvery light. It illuminated the area around her and revealed the source of the sounds.
“My God,” she hissed.
At first glance, she thought that it was another person, a survivor of the dragon attacks. But whatever this thing was, it had not survived.
Ragged, singed clothing hung off of burned and twisted flesh. One rheumy blank eye stared out of an oily face straight at her. The thing's mouth hung open, revealing a black tongue protruding between broken teeth. There was a gaping hole where the nose had been and an errant breeze blowing past the creature toward Liliana made her gag with the stench of decay.
In short, it was a walking corpse. It was so emaciated and damaged that she couldn't even tell if it had been a man or a woman when it was alive. The only thing that she knew was that it radiated malevolence as it dragged its clumsy feet toward her, arms groping hungrily.
“Not possible,” Liliana whispered. “This is not possible.”
She stepped back involuntarily and hit the wall behind her. There was no retr
eating from the horror.
The thing moaned as if it was a lover longing to embrace her. Liliana's revulsion overcame her fear and she leaped forward with a shout, slashing her sword at the undead monster.
One of its grasping hands was sliced off by her blow and a gout of thick, black blood spurted out of its stump. The zombie didn't even notice; it just kept staggering toward her.
Liliana was shaken by the thing's lack of response to her attack, but also less afraid of it as she realized that the monster was clumsy and mindless. It was so slow that it posed little threat to her as long as she stayed calm.
Her next swing was much more deliberate as she avoided the undead thing's groping hand and severed its head with a precise stroke. Another spray of blood followed the attack and the zombie dropped to the ground with a wet thud. It writhed and twisted for a few seconds and then became still. The smell rising from the body became even stronger and Liliana tried to breathe through her mouth as she stared at it.
How had this happened? She poked at the body with the toe of her boot, but there was no response. It was definitely dead this time.
But it shouldn't have been moving at all, she thought as she raised her sword to illuminate the corpse better. What had caused this thing to rise from the dead?
Liliana backed away from the stinking remains and shook her sword a few times to clean it. The gore sloughed off of the blade and then she used it as a torch to find her pack and slip it over her shoulder.
She couldn't remain near the body. The stench was stomach-turning and just looking at the thing made her gag.
She walked around it and set off through the ruins, watching her footing as she went to try to avoid any holes or obstacles.
Unfortunately, as she got further away from the body, the glow from the sword diminished until she was walking in total darkness again. Liliana sheathed the weapon and did her best to advance until she found another sheltered corner where she would be able to camp with her back against a wall for protection. There was no way that she would be able to sleep that night, so she just took off her pack and sat down, resting her head against the cement wall behind her.
The First Paladin (The New Earth Chronicles Book 1) Page 16