by B. V. Larson
Therian pointed toward the inky pool in the middle of the soulless priests. “You were right, that way does lead to the sea. They called him here, leading him to this spot from where he walked upon the sea bottom. He cannot drown, you know.”
“Should we alert Corium?” Gruum asked.
Therian huffed. “All in Corium who are capable of doing anything against Vosh now know of his presence here. Whether they seek to hinder him or aid him—that is the question.”
Gruum looked back along the series of holes they had followed to this spot. “We went the wrong way. We followed him to his point of entry. He must lie at the other end of these holes.”
Therian followed his gaze. “A logical assumption.”
Gruum stared at his master, awaiting action. Therian did nothing.
“Why do we stand here then, milord?” Gruum asked.
Therian made a vague wave of the hand toward the trail of holes. “Where do you think these lead?”
Gruum followed the direction. “To the north…to the priestesses?”
“Exactly. We shall soon learn what it is these women of the Black Order intend to unleash.”
“Why don’t we follow?”
Therian looked at him with raised brows. “A direct stratagem, Gruum. An infinitely superior strategy would be to allow these enemies to destroy one another while watching from afar.”
“What if they invade the city while we sit back?” Gruum asked.
Therian heaved a sigh. “I suppose we should have a closer look.”
-10-
When the battle did begin, Gruum was unpleasantly surprised to find they were not left out of it.
Events began with a distant flaring of bizarre sounds and eldritch lights. First a white flash blinded everyone, as their eyes had adjusted to the gloom of the Necropolis. Moments after the flash, a rolling peal of thunder boomed. The echoing qualities of it reminded Gruum of a thunderclap at sea. An impossible wind then blew into their faces and pushed back their locks from their squinting eyes. Every man put up a hand to his shield his face, save Therian himself, who stood tall and pensive.
“It has begun,” the King said.
Gruum did not have time to ask him what he meant, for at that moment things began to crawl up out of every hole in the Necropolis. Dead things they were, some with vestiges of meat and clothing still clinging to them. They smelt of the sea. Ocean growths, worms, and even crabs fell from their dripping forms as they shambled closer.
“Destroy them! Quickly now, before they outnumber us,” Therian ordered his guardsmen.
After only a few moments of gaping in sick horror, the men surged forward and fell upon the dead. In response the growing legion of dead lifted weapons, if they had them. The rest met the onslaught with grasping fingers, lipless teeth and mindless determination.
“Who are they, milord?” Gruum asked, his teeth gritting as he hacked and chopped.
“Don’t you recognize them?” Therian demanded. “They are the barbarian sailors who sought to invade. We killed at sea with our war arks—and they naturally sank to the bottom. Some of our own sailors march with them as well. Anyone who perished at sea in the battle. Vosh has been busy on the sea floors, filling the underwater canyons with these servants.”
Gruum slashed at a dead sailor who wielded a cutlass. The dead man held his weapon by the blade in the fleshless bones of his hand. The creature swung the sword like club, and managed to catch Gruum with a glancing blow to the shoulder before being cut down. Gruum kicked the remains into one of the holes, but no sooner had he dispatched sailor than another dripping corpse rose up to replace the first.
This time he stomped upon the rising head while it gnawed at his boot. He felt a tug then, and stumbled forward. Panicked, he realized the dead thing sought to drag him into the hole. If it pulled a leg down there, would he be forced to go down with it to whence it came? Would that be a dark place at the bottom of the sea, boiling with undead?
Gruum yanked his foot loose and slammed down the pommel of his saber, hammering a dozen times until the skull cracked open. Squirming things from the sea that had been feasting upon the brain inside splattered. The corpse sank down after that, like an eel retreating into its tunnel in the seabed.
“Vosh has indeed been busy,” Gruum shouted to Therian, who chopped apart more dead nearby.
“He was fat with the souls of his men and mine,” Therian said. “He’s built himself an army down there. I hope you can see now that the true villains here were those of the Red Order. They brought Vosh to Corium.”
Gruum nodded. “They are deserving of their fate, milord. I only hope the Black Order is not equally treacherous.”
With all the dead that had risen from nearby holes beaten down, Therian ordered them covered over by stones. The men tried to obey. They found the holes could not be covered, however, as any stones tossed within vanished to places unknown.
“Let us advance and learn what is at the end of these countless gopher-holes,” the King said.
The men, disgusted by the work but heartened by their victory, followed him. They sent up a ragged cheer: “For Corium!”
They formed a shield wall and marched behind it, wary not to step into any holes. The dead that met their line went down, hacked quickly to bits. Now that the men had their confidence back by easy victories, they began to sing a battle song, the words of which Gruum could not understand.
One of the guardsmen, less jubilant than the rest, glanced over his shoulder and cried out: “Behind us, milord!”
The marching line of singing soldiers faltered, broke apart. Each man that looked back stood in shock and horror and marched no further.
Gruum was one of those that halted to look back. It was in his nature to do so, and as he did, he chided himself for not having done so every second.
Out of the holes a vapor had arisen. This vapor was greenish-black, the color of acid or bile. Viscous and thick, it bubbled over the endless cairns and rolled out to meet similar fountains of vapor from a dozen matching holes. No more than a foot deep, the frothing vapor did not dissipate as it moved and spread. Gruum felt the stones under his feet shift and quiver. Some sank as he put his weight upon them, while others sank.
“Halt the march,” Therian commanded. “Pull in ranks. Each company form a square. Sergeants, get the men moving.”
As the roiling vapor approached them and began to flow from the nearest holes, the men quailed. A few ran. Therian ordered them cut down. They were slaughtered and thrown down.
“Stand!” Therian roared. He walked quickly to the nearest thrashing deserter and spoke words of Dragon Speech. He thrust his blade home and stilled the man’s death throes, removing his soul to power his limbs.
Gruum noticed the vapors spilling from the sorcerer’s lips fell to blend with that which boiled around everyone’s boots. Could this all be one tremendous spell? Did he stand in the midst of foul magicks unleashed?
The troops formed squares, but gazed in near panic at their surroundings. No Hyborean was completely unfamiliar with sorcery, but this was on a scale few had witnessed in their lifetimes.
The men quieted and listened as a new sound came to them. It was the sound of shifting stones. The sound of many bricks clacking against one another, as if a great pile of them had been disturbed.
From out of the vapors, shapes arose. They were wreathed in the frothing greenish clouds, which slowly dripped away from their bodies. These new foes did not come from the holes, but rather they heaved up from beneath the stones that carpeted the Necropolis. They were the ancient Hyborean dead, awakened by the sorcerous fumes that flowed over them. Once fully erect, the shapes shuffled toward the squares of men. Some appeared in the very midst of the companies, and were quickly cut down. Others gathered into large clumps before seeming to hear a call. These then changed demeanor, as an awakened watchdog might change from a quiet and motionless creature to a vicious snarling beast. The dead came at them with implacable determination.
The squares of men moaned and wept with fear as they fought for their lives. A hundred bodies soon were stacked around every square. Then hundreds more climbed over the first waves and were in turn destroyed. Gruum fought his way to Therian, who worked to shore up a break at one corner of the square they stood within. They cut and hacked the dead to bits, then kicked the pieces into the nearest holes. The holes themselves were still visible, fortunately, evidenced by the vapor which sank down within each one and vanished.
“Milord, we must get out of here!” Gruum shouted to the King as they fought side by side.
“We fight our own ancestors,” Therian growled in return, as if he had not heard. “This is another insult, the worst of all. Vosh forces us to cut apart our own carefully preserved dead.”
“My King, we can’t fight all the dead of the sea and Necropolis together!” Gruum said. “We are losing men every minute, and soon the survivors will grow tired and die faster.”
Therian looked up from the snapping head of an old Hyborean which he had plucked free and now held before him. He held the head by the hair, the locks yellow-white and ancient. The eyes were dry and clouded, but still they seemed to see them. The jaws worked leathery muscles and sinew, trying futilely to bite them, like a rabid creature held helpless. After a moment’s contemplation, Therian threw the head in a high arc over the lines of men. It fell into the vapors, bounced twice back up into sight, then finally vanished into the mists.
“Soldiers of Corium!” the King roared. “We shall march to the central stairway and withdraw to the streets. Stay in your squares, or be cut down!”
Grateful to hear the order to withdraw, the men fought with new hope rather than simple desperation and horror. They began to move. For the first time in an hour, Gruum thought he might live to see the Sun again. A dozen yards were traveled, then a hundred. The squares were ragged, but stayed whole.
Cries of anguish alerted Gruum after five hundred paces had gone by. He stared in the direction they marched. Their escape route was now visible, but all was not well. At the bottom of the stairway a vast throng of motionless figures stood, waiting to greet them.
-11-
The foremost of the marching squares met the vastly greater army of dead. This enemy had no weaponry. They had been buried—in some cases centuries ago—in fine robes. The bodies had dried and thinned, but not rotted away. Those that had lain the longest under the stones were unclothed, their robes having fallen to dust. Their eyes still functioned after a fashion, however, rolling like leathery balls in wooden sockets. The most ancient, driest eyes made scraping sounds as they moved.
The soldiers of Corium were beyond horror now. They did not sing, but they worked at their job of grim butchery as men might hack a path through a thorn-heavy thicket. Foul liquids stained their swords black, burned in their mouths and sprayed their squinting eyes. Still the dead came on, wordlessly, without hesitation or fear. They came on like a thousand marching ants. Their decapitated heads bit and chewed anything that came near. Their dismembered fingers thrashed upon the stones beneath boots.
Each yard the troops advanced cost them a man. Soldiers were pulled down, sometimes by unlucky chance. Gruum watched a man slip upon the unseen gore at his feet and go down to one knee. A dozen severed limbs grasped him. Sets of teeth closed upon his hand, which he placed down into the vapors to keep from falling onto his face. He howled as the teeth sawed at his gloved fingers. His other hand sought his sword, but that was a mistake. Both hands were grasped now by the twitching parts of the dead that squirmed beneath everyone’s boots. Before Gruum could fight his way to the unfortunate, he was pulled down and joined his ancestors in floundering death.
Before they’d advanced five yards further, Gruum heard a new commotion to the right of his company. The square on the right flank of the army wavered. Men howled in fear and fury. Sergeants urged them to stand, but they folded, the brave and cowardly alike perishing. There is a certain point, Gruum knew, beyond which men can’t be pushed without coming to think of themselves beyond all else. The square broke at one corner, and despite the efforts of sergeants and officers in the middle to patch the break, the lines to either side disintegrated under the press of the dead. Soon, the interior of the square was overrun with shuffling, grasping figures. Men who had fought hard to stop the hordes they faced now found their rear exposed. It was too much to bear.
“Hold! HOLD!” roared Therian toward the square, but none listened.
The lines buckled, and seeing themselves doomed, the men farthest from the slaughter tried to run. There was no escape, however. The dead surged on every front.
“Gruum! To me, man!” Therian boomed.
To Gruum’s shock, he saw his King shoulder his way out of the square they stood within and wade into the dead. Foul speech rolled from his lips and the dead fell, heads and limbs hacked away. Gruum hesitated. He saw his master’s open circle of ground closing behind him. With tears stinging in his eyes, Gruum leapt forward. He accounted it among the hardest things he had done yet. Only driving a stake into the Queen’s breast had been harder.
For a time, Gruum and Therian were an island of life in a sea of the dead. Gruum hacked with fury. He screamed, but could hear little of the sound. He retched, but kept working his sword even as he did so.
When at last they reached the crumbling square of men, it had been reduced to a knot of less than twenty. The guardsmen no longer advanced or retreated. They had formed an oval, back-to-back, hacking everything that came at them. They stood their ground and fought to the death. The dead seemed to sense their desperation and pressed harder, snapping and clawing. Therian waded closer to the doomed company aided by the fact the dead had their backs to him. He cut them down in ranks and soon Gruum found himself among the survivors.
“I must ask of thee a foul thing today,” Therian roared, his booming voice all the company could hear over the din of battle. “Soldiers of Corium, I need your strength to win through to the city streets above. The enemy have no souls within their rotting vessels. They do not feed me, and I tire. Who here will volunteer himself to sleep amongst the Dragons so that our city might live through this foul night? Who would rather die now, knowing they have given their families hope through their sacrifice?”
The doomed men glanced at him in grim understanding. This was why their King had fought their way to them: not to save them, but to use their strength to save others. A head nodded. A hand went up. An officer shouldered his way to Therian. “Take me, milord.”
Therian did the foul deed, and then took the life of a sergeant as well. Soon, more men volunteered. In the end, only Gruum stood beside Therian and still drew breath. He calculated that he had sacrificed enough for Hyborea. Further, he harbored no curiosity about the Dragons and their alien ways.
Therian was transformed. A score of souls powered his limbs. His twin blades, Seeker and Succor, flickered out with inhuman speed and precision. The dead were chopped to squelching bits even as they reached for him. Gruum followed his master closely, but not so closely as to be cut down by the deadly, flashing swords.
The remaining squares of men gravitated toward them, following as smaller vessels might follow in the wake of a great ship. They all moved forward and within minutes they had mounted the stairs.
An unknown time later, a bare one hundred surviving guardsmen poured out onto the streets of Corium a dozen flights above the Necropolis. Their eyes stared at things unseen. They were met by their brethren: more shocked members of the guard. Clean and attempting to appear brave, these guardsmen had wide eyes and tightly closed lips. They were ordered to stand at the top of the stairway. Fortunately for them, none of the dead had followed Therian to the surface. The enemy stayed below in the Necropolis for now.
Gruum could barely speak, he was so exhausted. His hands rested upon his gore-slick knees and his sides heaved. Around him, men sagged down and collapsed upon the cobbles. Some smiled up at the predawn skies, disbelieving their luck
at having survived the evils below the ancient streets.
“Muster every man from his bed!” Therian commanded. “No hand shall be without a weapon this night. Press a kitchen knife into the palm of every babe and fishwife. It is up to the living to show the dead they are the lesser of our two stages of existence!”
The King seemed larger than life—swollen with the vigor of brave souls. All who gazed upon his bright eyes and broad smile knew fear and wonder at once.
-12-
Gruum fell asleep on a bench in the town square. The night was cold, but he felt none of it. The foul liquids of the dead, which had clung to his skin and dried like tar-laden mud, cracked as he stirred. He opened his eyes to an unexpected sight. Gawina stooped over him. She whispered to him, but he could not comprehend her words at first.
“…please, Grumm?” she finished, her voice pleading.
He groaned and levered himself up upon one elbow. The girl knelt beside him, he saw. She plucked at his dirty sleeve with fine white fingers.
“What is it you require, priestess?” he asked, befuddled by the sleep of exhaustion.
“The Temple is sealed, but they hunt my sisterhood in the streets. I ask for your protection. Hide me, if you will.”
Gruum’s mind was awake enough now to grasp her words. He saw the fear in her lovely, almond-shaped eyes. “I would, but I don’t know where—”
Her grasp moved from his sleeve to his hand. She slid closer. “Oh please, Gruum. Do you not look favorably upon me?”
He thought to see a tear in her left eye, and he was moved by her beauty and nearness. “I—I suppose I could try, but if my master calls me to battle….”
“I’ll take her,” said a new voice behind them.
Both Gruum and Gawina turned to look at a figure that stood under a tree. A young woman stepped forward. They stared at her as she approached. Gruum recognized the voice—it had to be Nadja. But she was so tall now. She was nearly as big as Gawina.