by Max Anthony
What made this room thoroughly unpleasant was the presence of the bodies. Each set of manacles had an emaciated body dangling from them – the wrists of the corpses so thin it was a wonder that none of them hadn’t slipped free and onto the stone floor. The torture tables all had a similarly desiccated body atop them. Worst of all, there was a pile of such bodies near to the far tables. The pile was huge, stretching almost to the ceiling and spilling for several feet in all directions – perhaps hundreds of dead in this one single heap. The smell of death pervaded the air, though mercifully it was not as pungent as it might have been had all of these people been freshly killed.
“I don’t like it,” said Rasmus, without saying which one of the many possibilities most concerned him.
“None of these emaciated corpses have risen yet in order to attack us,” said Jera.
Viddo walked the four paces to the nearest bucket and picked it up, meaning to throw it at the pile of bodies to see if he could encourage any of the constituent parts into activity. The bucket was solid, heavy and half-filled with something dark. He looked at the unidentified mass for a moment – it was a deep, brown solid.
“Blood,” he whispered. “Lots of it.”
Jera looked into another bucket and found it one third full of the same brown matter. She left it untouched and turned just in time to see Viddo hurl his own bucket with a side-arm whip from his shoulder. The container described a low arc across the room and landed with a dull thud in the middle of the corpse pile. The stillness persisted.
“I still think I should fireball it,” said Rasmus.
“How many have you got?” asked Viddo. “If you have enough to cast at every shadow, then by all means do so. Otherwise we may need them later.”
Rasmus still looked undecided until Jera stepped in. “There are items on those work tables that might provide information we need. Your fireballs, as welcome as they are, might destroy any pieces of paper.” She paused for a moment before reminding him of another possibility. “And any valuables might suffer likewise.”
The wizard lowered his hand, which he’d unconsciously raised into a casting position. Acting as if nothing at all had happened, he headed across the room, following the perimeter in order that he wouldn’t have to weave his way amongst the torture tables. Viddo and Jera accompanied him.
As the wizard’s magical light illuminated the work tables more brightly, they could see vials and pots scattered around. There was also something that looked like a sheet of paper. Rasmus picked up the pace, keen to see what might be written upon it. His short journey was interrupted in a most unwanted manner. Still twenty feet from their destination, they were alerted by a sudden, violent movement from within the pile of corpses. Jera raised her shield and reached for her hammer, whilst Viddo stepped back a pace and drew his sword. Rasmus would have normally let rip with the high-damage magic, but found himself in a temporary quandary, since he was desperately interested to have a rummage through the contents of the table. Then, it was as if the pile of bodies simply exploded.
With nothing to announce it, fifty or more corpses fountained outwards in all directions, as though they had been thrown by an enormously strong hand. Jera had already set herself and felt the weight of a body as it crashed off her shield, an arm or a leg glancing off her breastplate as it went by. She was forced back a pace when another hit her at waist level. The bodies were much lighter than one would have expected, but they were travelling at speed and were still heavy enough to cause an injury.
Viddo would have usually expected to dodge anything as simple as a flying corpse, and he almost managed to escape completely unscathed except for one trailing hand which slapped him in the face as it went by. It reminded him for a brief moment of a long-forgotten incident where he had earned just such a slap from a high-bred lady whom he had attempted to woo with a stale and ill-considered witticism.
Rasmus took the brunt of it, and found himself positively drenched in limbs and grinning heads, which weighed down upon him and bore him to the ground. It was fortunate that he had been knocked out of the way, for just a second after he fell, something barrelled past him. He didn’t get a clear view of what it was, though he sensed the size and weight of the creature through the vibrations of its footfall. Spitting out a toe which had somehow found its way into his mouth, the wizard tipped the bodies to one side and struggled to his feet, winded.
Jera saw the shape as it burst out from the pile of bodies where it had been lying. It was easily nine feet tall and seemed to be six feet wide across the shoulders. It charged, impossibly massive in comparison to the warrior who stood before it. At the last moment, Jera stepped to one side. One pumping arm clipped her shield and would have sent most people to the floor, except that Jera had a warrior’s balance and she kept her feet. The shape continued its charge, scattering the rows of heavy wooden tables as if they were hardly there at all.
Viddo hadn’t been caught by the charge, having recovered from his slap and his unwelcome memory in time to roll aside. “Gargantuan undead,” he said, loudly enough for all three to hear him.
“Pantagruelian undead,” said Rasmus, using the alternative nomenclature for such beasts.
Jera had no idea what a gargantua or a pantagruel was, except that this one was a big bastard. Without spending any time thinking about it, her brain decided that it preferred the former term and decided to mentally refer to it as a gargantuan. Across the room, the creature had brought itself to a halt close to the far wall. It wasn’t near to the door, yet it was close enough to prevent the trio from dashing through it had they wanted to.
“You look like a blind carpenter’s thumb, you horrible shit!” said Jera in her most alluring voice. As the creature wheeled to face the room, its eyes saw her first.
The gargantuan undead was terrible to look upon. It was humanoid in shape, though misshapen and lumpy, with stocky legs, muscular arms and a wide chest. The head of the creature was swollen in places and shrunken in others, with tiny eyes looking out with a mixture of hatred and hunger. It had only half a nose and no lips to speak of, revealing teeth which were either brown or missing. The overall impression was something akin to that of an oversized zombie, which wasn’t a million miles from the truth, though this creature was much, much more dangerous. There were rags hanging from its frame, which gave Jera the impression that they were hanging there incidentally, rather than being worn intentionally.
“Your breath stinks!” called Jera, insulting it again when she noticed that it was sizing up Viddo and Rasmus. “And your bits have fallen off!” she added for good measure.
Against a lesser foe, Rasmus would have normally started hurling his magic by this point. However, he’d fought a couple of gargantuans in the past and knew they were tough to kill, so he didn’t want to get its attention before Jera had smacked it a couple of times. The wizard had a spell or two that would have rocked it on its heels quite nicely but he didn’t want to use up all of his good stuff so soon after entering the bowels of the castle. Thus, he waited and tried to look unimportant, though it didn’t escape his notice that the creature was looking at him more intently now.
Realising that the creature was hesitating, Jera advanced a few paces, whirling her hammer around threateningly. It was evidently too stupid to be lured in by her taunts and it continued to look at Rasmus - perhaps it had a natural hatred of men in robes, or maybe it just didn’t like the cut of his jib. Not willing to have it ignore her, not least of which because it was an insult to her professional pride, Jera threw her hammer. The weapon flew at a tremendous velocity, powered by the magic within. It struck the gargantuan blunt-end first squarely in the forehead, leaving a neat indentation as a reminder of its visit. There was the dullest of cracks and the magical hammer reappeared instantly in Jera’s hand, having been enchanted to return to its owner.
It was enough. The gargantuan looked once more at Jera and noticed that she was sticking her tongue out at it. The tiny brain within its damaged skul
l slowly put in motion the commands needed for its tree trunk legs to propel it forward in another charge. The chance was denied it and Jera took the initiative. Not willing to let the gargantuan get up enough speed to flatten her, she charged first. Jera wasn’t sure where she got the idea from – her legs just went and she sped across the floor, over the shards of the broken torture tables and clonked her shield into its crotch. It didn’t move, nor grunt with pain, even when she thudded her hammer into its hip bone. A blotchy hand, green and grey in colour, swept down and across, seeking to club Jera to death. She sidestepped it neatly and belted her shield into the crotch once again.
“I know I’d be pretty pissed off if someone kept hitting me in the balls with a shield,” said Rasmus conversationally to Viddo.
“Yes. Even if I lacked genitalia like this creature does, I imagine it would be infuriating beyond belief to be struck there with such regularity.”
A loud clank reverberated across the room as the shield pounded for a third time into the gargantuan’s crotch area. It threw two powerful blows in response, one of which Jera dodged and another of which connected with her shield, knocking her three paces backwards but doing nothing to upset her composure.
“It’s probably angry enough with her now that we can attack it without fear of reprisal,” said Rasmus.
“Watching is almost hypnotic,” said Viddo, pulling himself together and jogging towards the life-and-death struggle that was in full flow.
“You took your time,” said Jera, ducking to avoid being crumpled by a battering ram punch.
“One must give the warrior an opportunity to become the sole focus of the enemy’s attention,” said Viddo as he went past, dagger in one hand and sword in the other.
There were three heavy percussive thumps which boomed loudly in the room, the shock of the noise reflecting from the rear wall. The gargantuan stumbled as if it had been struck by a fist larger than its own and Jera winced as she heard rending sounds from deep within its body. The creature was undead and therefore immune to pain, anger and fear. As it recovered from the magical assault, it almost caught Jera off guard with a powerful and sudden kick. The creature was broad and heavy but it was shockingly quick for its bulk, and its rotting foot skimmed by, a whisker from her ribs. Through a combination of luck and skill, Jera landed a hefty blow on the foot as it went by, dislodging something large, which flew into the air. She ignored the object and prepared for the next attack, just as a stream of white-hot arcane energy seared a wide, deep hole in her enemy’s chest, revealing charred bones and blackness beneath the flesh.
Viddo had managed to work his way to the back of the giant. It was close to the wall, yet the thief still had room to attack. Ignored for the moment, he sprang upwards and plunged his dagger through the soiled rags and into the undead back. There was something about the way it moved that suggested it was imperfectly formed beneath the skin – it had lumps and bumps in all the wrong places. Nevertheless, he guided his blade into the spot he thought was most likely between the shoulder blades and in all the way up to the hilt. It hardly flinched. Good grief, I might as well have stabbed a ham sandwich he thought, stabbing it again. Sounds of magical discharge reached his ears, joined by the orange glow of flames. He drove his dagger into the creature for a third time, coinciding with a second series of powerful booms. If there was one thing about Rasmus, he liked to cast his spells.
Standing heroically astride the shrivelled and naked corpse of an old woman, Rasmus was actually holding back. Firstly, he didn’t want to unload everything from his arsenal at the first hefty brute they came across and secondly, he’d seen the gargantuan undead look at him once or twice after he’d seared its face with a particularly well-placed barrage of arcane balls. Although Jera was performing a splendid job of keeping its focus, the wizard was aware he was treading a fine line and that if he got it wrong the creature would soon be attacking him instead. Sod it, everything will be fine, whispered a little voice in his mind. Just get stuck in there.
Cajoled by this inner voice, Rasmus sent a low-level-but-surprisingly-damaging-when-cast-by-a-high-level-wizard spell of incineration at the undead, followed by another and then a third. The creature’s flesh crackled and melted, sliding away from its arms and skull in big, fat gobbets. All would have been just about fine, except for the fact that the last three of Jera’s attacks had been glancing blows owing to her preoccupation with avoiding instant death from the pummelling arms which attacked without cease.
Uh oh, thought Rasmus as the gargantuan looked at him again. Without pause, it barged Jera to one side and made for the wizard. As it passed, she landed a resounding smack on its missing balls, yet even this was not enough to make it hesitate.
Rasmus was not a coward, nor was he foolish. He judged that he would be unable to knock the gargantuan over before it reached him so he scarpered, turning tail and running towards the far end of the room. The creature pursued him, with Jera hot on its heels, beating it about the arms and shoulders with her hammer. It didn’t slow – in fact, it was much quicker than it looked and it soon had Rasmus hemmed into one corner, with the wizard unable to escape what looked like an inevitable death. All the while, he cast spells at the undead, scalding it and sizzling its flesh.
“Stop casting,” said Jera, calm in spite of the wizard’s predicament. “Else it won’t stop attacking you!”
She struck the undead once more and unleashed a multitude of pithy insults, none of which had the desired effect of making it attack her again. With his back against a wall, Rasmus looked doomed when the creature swung a hefty blow towards his head. Elusive to the last, the wizard winked out of view, resulting in the attack swishing through empty air.
“Ping!” said Rasmus to announce his arrival at the opposite end of the room, where his portal spell had dumped him. Viddo – giving chase to their opponent - diverted his attention from the gargantuan just in time to see Rasmus dash out of the room and close the door behind him.
The gargantuan undead completed a lumbering turn and realised that the target of its ire had not stuck around for second helpings. A more intelligent creature might have chased him to the door and seen if it could catch up, but this one did not. With Rasmus gone, it directed its attention once more at Jera, who had not for a moment stopped hitting it. The beady eyes fixed on her once more and it threw a barrage of punches.
The creature was looking ragged by this point. Its frontage was a mess of burns and scorches, with lumps of flesh entirely gone in places. Viddo had made it once more to the rear, where he stabbed it enthusiastically and accurately, being very careful not to overdo it. He knew he could put up a much better show face-to-face than Rasmus, though he had no desire to do so. Far better for an armoured fighter such as Jera to soak up the assault, whilst the cunning thief was left free to inflict damage.
It was soon finished. Without a sound from its mouth, the creature fell onto its front, slain by a particularly intrusive series of dagger thrusts through its innards. Jera was hardly flustered by the mound of toppling flesh and she danced away, cracking it on the skull for good measure. She was breathing heavily and had a flush to her cheeks.
“That was good fun!” she said. “Even if my shield arm feels like it’s been put through a mincing machine.”
“It was a tough one,” admitted Viddo. “I didn’t think it was going to give up.”
“Where’s that fool of a wizard got to?” asked Jera with a smile.
She walked to the door, taking care not to trip over the liberally-strewn corpses and opened the exit door. Rasmus was in the corridor outside, looking innocent. Several zombies lay still on the floor near him, showing signs that they’d suffered very recent magical damage.
“These fellows must have heard the noises and came to investigate,” said the wizard by way of explanation. “I’d have come back to see how you were getting on, but it seemed wise to dispose of the interlopers first.”
They entered the room again. It was something of a me
ss now, with hardly any part of the floor unoccupied by either broken pieces of wood or body parts. The smell was definitely not agreeable, though the room was almost large enough for the odour to disperse to a tolerable level. Where the gargantuan undead corpse lay, a thief was to be seen, his head and upper torso vanished within the creature’s body cavity. Jera watched for a moment, with a feeling that was close to revulsion. It didn’t take long for Viddo to finish his search and his head emerged, looking clean as it somehow always did.
“I might have known there’d be no treasure,” he said in disgust. “You’d think that a creature this size would have swallowed at least a handful of coins or gems during its lifetime.”
“The true prize in this room was never likely to be found within the bowels of our opponent,” Rasmus told him. “These tables over here are where we must seek our reward.”
Viddo straightened and patted himself down. The tables in question had escaped damage, perhaps because Jera had ensured that the undead was kept away from them or perhaps through luck. Either way, there was no sign of breakages.
“Potions, dried herbs, pots, pans,” said Rasmus, looking through. “And some writing!” He scooped up some sheets of yellowing paper that had been held down by a brass weight in the shape of a severed foot.
“It looks like random jottings. The notes of an officer or a warden, perhaps.”
“What does it say?”
“The prisoners have been getting rowdy of late. As if they know what is about to befall them. No mind, they are easily contained.” Rasmus looked over a few other sentences, none of which seemed important, until he reached the next page. “We’ve almost got enough blood. The Baron craves it. I am interested to know what will happen when we’ve finished bleeding the last of the villagers.”
“All very unpleasant, from the sounds of it,” said Viddo. “Looks like this Baron Valps was systematically murdering his subjects and harvesting their blood. This room must have been built for just that purpose.”