“Not much to fight a war,” Holismus said when told of the threat posed by Farrak.
“We’re not fighting a war,” Kurt replied. “We’re fighting for survival. Besides, there are other stations south of the Rijksweg besides Suiddock—we’re not alone in this.”
“We might as well be, captain. I don’t know if every street between here and the swing bridge has been evacuated or slaughtered, but we’ve hardly seen a soul since the black flies drove us away from Suiddock.”
“They fled,” Molly interjected, joining the two watchmen. “All the people from Suiddock who came across the Draaienbrug, they spread the word about what was happening there. Anybody who could get out of Doodkanaal or Kruiersmuur did.” She gave Kurt a grim smile. “You were right to send us east once we came over the bridge. Two of my girls went west to Winkelmarkt, hoping to get out of the city by crossing the Gisoreux road bridge. They came back this afternoon, said it was jammed with horses and carts and people, all trying to flee south. Those who can’t get out that way went towards Tempelwijk, but Manann knows what happened to them.”
Kurt grimaced. “They won’t find much sanctuary there, knowing Captain Wout. He looks after his own kind first, and damn the consequences for anyone else. But he’s got the most strongly fortified station in the city, so his forces should still be intact. If we need to launch an assault on Suiddock, we’ll need Wout’s help to make it happen.”
“So what is the plan?” Holismus asked.
Kurt told him and Molly about the directive to rig the Draaienbrug with barrels of gunpowder so it could be blown up if the undead army sought to expand its territory.
“That’s futile,” Holismus said, shaking his head. “It might work at the Hoogbrug, but Farrak’s taint has already taken hold in Doodkanaal.”
“I don’t believe blowing up the Hoogbrug will make much difference either,” Kurt replied. “The necromancer’s moving his troops into place underwater, where nobody can see them. Once he’s ready, Farrak can attack almost any district in the city at will.”
“So what’s he waiting for?” Molly wondered.
“I don’t know,” Kurt admitted as the old priest approached them.
“Perhaps you’d like me to tell you,” the Manann worshipper said, with a smile.
“Sorry?”
“You seem so interested in what I have planned,” the priest continued. “Of course, if I did tell you my strategy, I would have to kill all of you.”
Molly noticed a trail of red leading to where the priest stood. It was blood. His hands were held together in front of him, as if in prayer, but crimson drops were falling from his wrists. Flaps of skin hung off the bone, where a blunt object had been scraped back and forth with vicious abandon. She studied the priest’s kind face. It was pale, drained of life, an empty shell animated by some outward force. “Farrak,” she whispered.
The priest’s head twisted to glare at her, one eyebrow arching upwards as if pulled by an invisible thread. “You’re a brave woman, speaking the name of a necromancer inside a holy place like this. Don’t you fear excommunication, Molly? Or do you feel your soul’s already damned, since you drowned your own baby?”
The madam staggered back. Tripping over her own feet, she fell to the floor.
In an instant, both Kurt and Holismus had drawn their short swords, ready to strike down the priest if he made a movement against them. “Such anger, such violence,” Farrak’s voice chided them, speaking through the dead priest’s lips. “Perhaps there are some unresolved issues that have made you so dangerous. It can’t be easy having a brother who surrendered himself to Chaos so easily, can it Lothar Holismus? And as for you, Kurt Schnell—the dead wife, the butchered brother, all the other injustices you’ve suffered. It’s a surprise you haven’t taken your own life before now, as this priest just did. Seems he couldn’t cope with luring all of you to death in exchange for his own life.”
“What do you mean, luring us to death?” Kurt demanded.
Something resembling laughter escaped from the priest’s mouth, but it sounded more like a death rattle, empty husks rasping against each other in his throat. “You didn’t think it strange all of you should end up in the same temple? I drew you here, channelled all of you to this one place. This is a trap, a charnel house, naught but an abattoir for your souls. I brought you here to die and die you shall—in abundance!”
Kurt took the priest’s head off with a single sword swipe, but the respite was brief. The temple windows exploded inwards, raining shards of stained glass on all those within, as hundreds of black seagulls flung themselves into the temple. The first wave of birds was shredded by the impact; they fell to the marble floor, spewing noxious green pus. Once the windows had been destroyed, more black gulls flew in unharmed. They swarmed high above the watchmen and militia, close to the vaulted ceiling, before tipping their wings over to dive at those below.
The gulls turned themselves into missiles, flying straight down at their targets, making no attempt to save themselves. The black birds were projectiles, death from above for anyone caught in their path.
Dretsky was first to die, the former River Watch oarsman killed when a gull impaled itself in his throat. As it perished the crazed creature thrashed its beak about in Dretsky’s neck, tearing open his windpipe so the militiaman perished with a hollow gasp. Two more militiamen were taken out by the death dives, while their brethren and several Black Caps were injured.
“Under the pews!” Kurt bellowed, struggling to be heard above the horrific sound of squawking gulls flinging themselves into the marble floor. “Get under the pews, it’s safer there!”
The others followed his orders, diving beneath the nearest wooden bench. The black gulls kept raining down on the temple interior, but nobody else suffered for their sacrifice. Only when the marble floor was caked with the bodies of dead birds did the onslaught cease, the swarm of sinister gulls depleted. But each smashed corpse was giving off a sickly green vapour, the acrid mist floating above the marble surface. As the last gull’s cry perished, the greasy mist sought out the besieged men and women with pernicious accuracy. Kurt took one breath of the putrid fog and lost whatever food still lingered inside his stomach. The others were retching too, their bodies going into spasm against the foul stench escaping the dead birds.
“We’ve got to get out,” Molly coughed at Kurt from beneath the next pew.
The captain rolled out from under the bench and got to his feet. “We’re being poisoned,” he shouted at the others. “Everybody outside—now!” Kurt stumbled across to the church doors, still coughing and retching. He lifted the heavy wooden beam that had been used to secure the doors, letting it drop to the floor. Using his last breath, he slid aside the iron bolt and pulled on the handle. The doors shuddered backwards into the temple, and fresh air swept into the building. The Black Caps and militiamen staggered to the church entrance, several of them helping Molly and her girls.
Kurt had his sword poised for battle, expecting to find an army of undead waiting for them—but the cobbles outside the temple were empty. He staggered into the street, filling his lungs with the cool night air, the others following him out.
It would be dawn soon, but night or day made no great difference to the likes of Farrak. The necromancer’s undead army had no need for sleep or rest. They could fight until eternity, powered by dark magic and sheer malevolent force of will. If the watchmen were to have any hope of stopping Farrak, they needed reinforcements. Crossing the Rijksweg again was not an option, not in the fragile wooden craft that had borne them across from Luigistad. They needed to reach Tempelwijk, consolidate their forces with those of Wout.
As the others recovered from the poison gas attack, Kurt took Holismus, Auteuil and Molly to one side. He outlined his plan to cross the southern districts to Tempelwijk. Holismus agreed, while Auteuil was less enthusiastic. “We came here to help you rig a swing bridge with gunpowder, not start a war,” he protested.
“The war’s
already started, or hadn’t you noticed?” Holismus sneered.
“Enough,” Kurt told his colleague. “Remember, we’re all on the same side.” He turned to Auteuil. “If you want to stay here, that’s your choice, and none of my men will blame you. If you want to find another sanctuary, or cross back over the Rijksweg, so be it, but you’ll be doing that without us. You might make it safely across—but I doubt it.” The militiaman went away to consult with his brethren.
“What about my girls?” Molly asked.
“Where we’re going, I can’t ask you to go too. This is little more than a suicide mission, and none of you deserve that,” Kurt said. “Head for Kruiersmuur’s most easterly point. From there take a boat up the Reik to Altdorf or somewhere else. Get away from Marienburg and stay away until it’s safe to return.”
“And when is that going to be?”
The captain didn’t have an answer for that question. “Please, just go—while you still can. The longer you stay, the more likely you’ll get recruited into Farrak’s army. Dead or alive, that’s not a fate I’d wish on my worst enemy. Just go.”
Molly nodded. She led her girls away to the east, where the first glimmers of light were bruising the horizon. Burly Auteuil returned from talking with the other militiamen. “We figure there’s a fighting chance if we throw our lot in with you Black Caps.”
“Thank you,” Kurt said. “Are your men fit to run?”
Auteuil nodded. “It’s been a long night, but we’ve had worse.”
“Then let’s go. The sooner we reach Tempelwijk, the better.” At a signal from Kurt the group of sixteen set off running west, away from the rising sun. In the gloaming before dawn, they couldn’t see the waterways boiling and bubbling, the waft of greasy yellow gas rising up from the surface. Fingers emerged from beneath the sluggish waters, some digits still coated with flesh and skin, others mere bone, all of them discoloured by so long spent under the water. Every dead body ever tossed into a canal or a cut was coming back to the surface, rising up in search of the living. The war for Marienburg’s southern archipelago was nigh, a slaughterhouse in the making.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Kurt and his cohort had reached Winkelmarkt when the first few barnacle-encrusted corpses lurched into their path. The stench of death and rotting flesh had been growing ever stronger the further west Kurt and the others went, so the running men knew trouble was coming. But smelling a decomposing body and having to fight it were two different things. The first purple- and black-blotched figure staggered into Kurt’s way, dripping water and worms onto the cobbles. The captain already had his sword drawn, so he kept running straight at the creature. It reached for him with suppurating hands.
Roaring with rage, Kurt sliced off his foe’s arms with a single, savage blow, before decapitating it with another. The thing went down and stayed down, whatever foul animation it had possessed now banished by the captain’s blade. Kurt ran on, his pace not once slackening. The others followed close behind, ignoring the last twitches of the corpse on the cobbles, concentrating their energies on the dangerous journey ahead.
Two came at them in the next attack, and were dealt with just as summarily, then three, and then seven. By now the cohort’s pace was slowing, those at the front forced to stop and fight, while those behind stood their ground, guarding the flank from attack. Blades hacked at sodden, slime-coated limbs, while crossbows fired deadly bolts through mottled scalps, puncturing brains and shattering bones. Some of the living dead went down harder than others, fighting on even when their limbs were lost. The fresher the corpse, the more tenacious it proved. Recently drowned bodies still had their musculature and were better able to fight back against blade and bow.
By the time the cohort crossed a narrow bridge into the rundown district of Oudgeldwijk, their progress has slowed to little more than stumbling pace. The press of corpses ahead and to either side was making it increasingly difficult to swing a sword, no matter how short the blade. There simply wasn’t room for such an ostentatious weapon. Realising he could no longer make good use of his sword, Kurt rammed his long blade in the chest of a walking corpse, and switched to daggers, ordering his men to follow suit.
The militia stuck with their long-bladed weapons, but these were ill kept and out of use. Ornamental hilts prove ineffective in close-quarters combat, the steady flow of blood and viscera making the grip unreliable. Those who favoured the flintlock soon discovered the flaw in a weapon that needed such frequent reloading. Human foes were cautious when facing pistols, unable to combat the weapon’s range and devastating effect. But the living dead had no such fear of the flintlock, no emotions and no urge to save themselves from harm. The risen dead were weapons themselves, and weight of numbers was their greatest strength. They did not tire like the out-of-shape militiamen, nor did they despair of ever reaching safety. They knew only death and killing, driven ever onwards by the implacable urgings of their murderous master and his dark magic.
It was the watchman Acco who succumbed first, his boot slipping on the spilled intestines of a butchered corpse. He fell to one knee, the impact jarring loose a crossbow from his grip. The others kept going around him, too busy fighting their own life-or-death battles to help Acco back to his feet. He stretched out a hand to reclaim his weapon. One of the living dead fell upon him, burying its jaws in his neck, biting clean through his larynx, stifling Acco’s cry for help.
Denkers nearly tripped over his fallen colleague, but just kept his balance. He watched in disbelief as Acco’s eyeballs filled with blood, before bursting from their sockets with a wet plopping sound. The watchman’s skin changed colour to a sickly pallor, black veins spreading through his face and hands like cracks across a thawing ice sheet. Within moments Acco was getting up again, but whatever humanity he’d possessed was long gone, banished by the bite of a resurrected corpse.
Denkers stared at Acco, unable to reconcile what had happened in front of him. It was Auteuil who intervened, chopping off Acco’s head with a short-handled axe. The decapitated watchmen tumbled back to the cobbles, joining the corpses strewn across the narrow street, dead again. “You killed him,” Denkers spluttered at the hefty militiaman.
“He was already dead, and you were next,” Auteuil said, pushing past Denkers. “Keep moving, unless you want to join your friend in eternity.”
Kurt had seen all of this while grappling with a pair of vicious corpses, their rotten teeth biting the air in front of his face. “Auteuil is right, we’ve got to keep moving! We can’t let ourselves get bogged down in street fights or we’ll never reach Tempelwijk station. Keep moving!” The captain buried a dagger in the head of one resurrected corpse, stabbing deep into its brain before twisting the blade. The creature went down, but the other one used Kurt’s distraction to lurch a step closer. The ghoulish monster’s head tilted back, about to lunge at the captain’s neck.
A wooden bolt punctured the attacker’s head and it was gone, ripped aside by the bolt’s vicious momentum. Kurt looked to see who’d saved him. Potts was standing close by, a crossbow clutched in trembling hands. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Potts whispered. The raw recruit was so focused on what he’d done, he didn’t notice one of the living dead monsters burst past the ring of militiamen behind him, didn’t realise the imminence of his own death. Kurt tossed a dagger from his left hand to his right, catching it by the blade’s tip, and flung the weapon past Potts’ face. The dagger pierced deep into the corpse’s forehead and it slumped to the cobbles, restored to death forever. Kurt strode past the ashen-faced Potts to retrieve his blade.
“Keep moving!” Kurt bellowed, his shout galvanising the young man into action. The cohort pressed on, the rising sun at last throwing some light and warmth across the corpse-choked streets they were traversing. But still the walking dead came, relentless and inevitable, wave upon wave of corpses without number. Kurt and his men fought their way close to a bridge that connected Oudgeldwijk and Tempelwijk, but the captain
didn’t want to think how many more resurrected were still waiting between them and sanctuary. He was close to collapsing from exhaustion, the initial surge of adrenaline long past, just the bitter taste of metal in his mouth remaining. But they had no choice. They had to keep going, or face an eternity in the service of the necromancer. Kurt could cope with dying, but he had no intention of serving as a foot soldier to Farrak’s dark magic.
The cohort burst through a line of corpses and rounded a corner. Ahead was the last bridge between them and Tempelwijk. Beyond that they could see the watch station towering over the rest of the district, its fortified walls strong enough to withstand almost any attack. Reach that and they would be safe. But first they had to cross the bridge, a narrow span packed solid with the living dead. The undead warriors stretched from one side of the bridge to the other, standing shoulder to shoulder, at least ten deep. There was no way round, no easier route. To reach sanctuary, Kurt and the fourteen men alongside him had to slaughter more than a hundred slathering, slime-covered atrocities.
Wout rose with the dawn and breakfasted on a cold collation of meats and cheeses, a small beaker of Bretonnian brandy with the meal. He had slept well, confident his watch station could stand alone against the dark magic infesting Marienburg for weeks, even months if needs be. Hammering on the door to his quarters forced the captain to emerge, despite not having had the chance to shave yet. “Yes, what is it?”
Wout’s sergeant, Marcellus de Graaf, was waiting outside. Young for his rank, handsome of face and forthright in his opinions, de Graaf had challenged Wout about bolting shut the station’s entrance overnight. The sergeant felt they had a responsibility to those still outside, but Wout had overruled these objections. Having made up his mind, the captain would not be altered from his chosen course of action. Besides, de Graaf was far too ambitious for his own good, and Wout enjoyed crushing the upstart’s suggestions.
[Marienburg 02] - A Massacre in Marienburg Page 25