For a few intense seconds Sergeant Tolbar thought he would have to loose his crossbow on the man with the axe, maybe even the fisherman, but a commanding voice from above them broke into the power of the moment.
“There’s no need for any of that, Commander. Give me the report you wrote for the High King and I’ll order the wagon into your custody.”
“No tricks?” Commander Lyle asked with an inward grin of relief.
Lord Vidian didn’t seem to be all that much. An imposing figure to the common folk maybe; he was well built, with long, silver-gray hair. He had intense eyes and a calm, controlling demeanor. He wore a plush suede cloak over his silk blouse and kidskin pants.
“I’m only here for the cage and the contents,” Lyle said a little nervously. “The rest of it is none of my business.” He took the scroll he had carried out of the office, held it up and lit it with a torch. It burned away in his hand.
From above, Lord Vidian nodded to his men that a deal had been struck. It didn’t take long to clear the grounds after that. The fisherman looked sullen, especially when Commander Lyle and his men began ogling the unnerving sight in his cage.
The skeletons turned their eyeless heads as if they could somehow observe what was going on. They didn’t seem pleased to be there, but they didn’t look to have the strength to escape.
“We heard there were three of them now,” Lyle said as he flinched away from a grasping, bony hand. Inside the cage, yellowed teeth clacked together.
“Don’t know nothing ’bout more than these two,” the fisherman replied a little too quickly, and gave a fearful glance at his wagon.
Commander Lyle was sure he was lying, but only sighed and ordered his men to prepare to roll out. His orders were to get the cage and the two skeletons in it. He would amend his report to warn of the third skeleton they had heard about. He felt lucky to accomplish what he had without getting himself or his men killed.
Around midnight they, along with the fisherman and his wagon, were moving north out of Weir’s city gate. The ferry didn’t run in darkness, and the commander wanted to be away from the inhospitable city as quickly as possible. He knew there was a bridge into Seaward in the city called Xway. It was just a short distance up the Pixie River. He figured they could be out of Highwander altogether by midday on the morrow. Only then would he and his men be allowed to rest.
It wasn’t a great surprise when a group of hooded bandits swarmed them just before dawn. River road bandits were common, and Lyle’s men were trained to deal with them. What was surprising was that they didn’t fall or stop when they were hit by the crossbow bolts fired at them. What really shocked the commander was when the leader of the group pulled back his hood revealing that he was nothing more than a living skeleton himself.
Chapter 18
The evening Lord Spyra returned to Southport, Master Wizard Sholt was waiting for him in the royal apartments.
It was unsettling for Spyra when he tried to conceive the nature of magic. It bothered him that the wizard could seemingly read his mind. Spyra had just been contemplating how to get word swiftly to Sholt and then he opened the door to the apartment and Sholt was there. Spyra didn’t want to think about how the wizard had gotten there so swiftly either. He thought in military terms. His mind worked in offensive and defensive mode, whichever one was appropriate for the situation. He could never get himself out of defensive mode when he was around any sort of mage. Sholt was a slightly different case because the two of them were both from Highwander. Both had sat on the council with Queen Willa in Xwarda as well. They had fought Pael side by side. There was a bond of trust between the two men which allowed Spyra to confer with Sholt as if they were true friends, and maybe, Spyra decided, they really were.
It seemed fitting to the one-time general that the two of them were still chasing down and snuffing out the last tendrils of Pael’s destructive rampage. Lord Spyra tried his best to keep himself on equal footing with the master wizard as they spoke.
“Lord Spyra.” Sholt bowed respectfully. He was of middle age, though with wizards you never really knew. He wore a white, high-collared robe. The hem, collar, and belled sleeves of the garment displayed an intricate pattern of black and gold lions and swords. The man’s long, dark hair and closely trimmed mustache and beard framed his thin face and gave his deep-set eyes an almost menacing cast. The hard look evaporated when he smiled, though, which was what he was doing when he saw Lord Spyra wave off his bow with a look that showed it was unnecessary.
“Master Wizard, we’ve known each other far too long for that ceremonious crap,” Spyra smiled back. “Can I offer you some refreshment, some food?”
“No, General,” Sholt replied. He intentionally used Spyra’s old title, as he often did, out of respect. “I’ve been here a full day, so I'm settled. I came to test a remedy for the problem these men are facing.”
“How would you test something of that sort?” Spyra asked curiously. “If you remove the spell or enchantment from one of the inflicted men, wouldn’t you only know if it worked if you killed him and made sure he stayed dead?”
Sholt chuckled. “Well that would work, but since I can cast a seeing spell to let me know if a man has been ensorcelled, we don’t have to kill them. If my remedy works, after a while the man wouldn’t appear to be under Pael’s spell anymore.”
Spyra pinched the bridge of his nose and tried not to get mixed up. “You’re telling me that you’re going to cast a spell, or whatever it is that you do, on one of these men. Then, if your spell works, when you cast another spell to see if they’ve been spelled, then you’ll see that they haven’t been spelled at all?” He shook his head and knew that he appeared baffled.
Sholt laughed out loud this time, but not mockingly. “I think you’ve got it, General,” he said. “It’s not necessary for you to understand. We can start by trying it on the two who are still…” He steepled his fingers in front of his chest searching for the word he wanted. “…lingering,” he finished.
“If it works on them, those two will just die?”
“Correct.”
“Without pain, I hope,” Spyra mumbled. “They were afraid to cooperate when they were falling apart. I’ve fought in the trenches and seen the most grievous of wounds. I’ve seen them days after they were inflicted, but I don’t think anything has ever gotten to me like seeing those two rot away before my eyes.” He stood and indicated the door that led out to the street. “Both of them want to pass on, Master Wizard. When they could still speak, they told me so.”
“Then I think we should oblige them.” Sholt’s expression was grave. “I observed them for a while yesterday. I hope I didn’t offend them. It’s hard to think of them as once being human and alive in their current state.”
“I understand,” Spyra said as they exited the apartment into the cobbled street.
They were in the most prestigious section of Southport. The autumn evening was chill, and the light fog left a slick sheen on everything so that the flickering of the many lantern flames danced on a million reflective surfaces. The street was relatively empty; only a few people could be seen moving about the city. A couple spoke quietly above them from a balcony as Spyra and Sholt passed by. A lute playing a lighthearted melody could be heard in the distance.
“It makes me feel like a monster to keep them in a cell,” Spyra said as they neared the constable’s office.
As far as cells go it was far from your typical rock square with steel-barred doors. The constable’s office, in this part of Southport, was clean and well kept. The cells were used primarily for drunken merchants, or noble folk who became a temporary threat to themselves or those around them. The occasional thief or murderer had occupied one of the large, furnished chambers. But not often.
When they entered the constable’s office, which was connected to the prison by a long hallway, the stench of rotted flesh hit them like a hammer blow.
“Hold on, my lord,” the constable called from across the str
eet. “I had to take a breather. It fargin stinks so badly in there I can hardly stand it.”
Spyra noticed that the sign over the establishment the constable was leaving read, The Axe Master’s Lodge. It was a private drinkery for the many merchants who’d made their gold off of the lumbering industry, one way or another. He could see that the constable had had more than a few sips of stout by the man’s gait as he closed the distance between them. With two rotting dead men who weren’t quite dead in the rooms inside, who could blame him?
“You’ll be getting rid of them soon,” the constable said as he opened the door for the other two.
“Very soon,” Spyra assured him. “As a matter of fact, why don’t you go round up a man or two and a wagon to haul them out to the gravediggers.”
“With pleasure, my lord,” the constable replied and then scurried off.
The two undead men were in their shared cell. The one with the crushed ribcage was lying in a thick, congealed pool of muck on the bed. The other sat in a chair with his skull laid across his folded, nearly skeletal, arms at the small table in the middle of the cell.
“The master wizard here has come to help you pass on,” Spyra said awkwardly. “He will remove the enchantment on you so that Pael’s evil taint won’t follow you to the grave.”
The one at the table stood, stumbled, and then caught himself. A piece of loose yellow-green stuff splatted on the floor below him, and a half-dozen maggots fell out of his eye and nose holes as he began pointing and trying to speak from a ruined throat. He stopped after a moment and slumped back down in defeat.
“Can you write?” Master Sholt asked. Suddenly the skull rose up and nodded affirmatively.
Just as suddenly, an ink pot, a quill, and a curling piece of parchment appeared on the table before the rotting corpse. It was slow and awkward, but eventually the thing began to scribble out what he wanted to say. After a few long moments, during which Spyra thought he might vomit from the thick smell of the place, the undead man stood and brought the page over to the bars.
Sholt took it and read aloud.
“ Kill us. Kill us so he will stop calling us to him. What?” Sholt asked. “Who’s calling you, and where do they want you to go?”
The undead man reached out, took the parchment, and went back to the table. Already a clean piece of paper awaited him. Seeing it, he let the first fall to the floor. He leaned over, wrote a few words, and gave the new page to Sholt.
The Warlord is calling us. He wants us to go that way. Please make me die.
Sholt looked up and saw where the man was pointing.
“That’s east,” Spyra observed. Oraphel and Southport were the only two places immediately east, he thought. Beyond that there were only the marsh lands, but beyond the marshes was Dakahn.
The undead man pulled his finger across where his throat had once been and glared with empty sockets at the master wizard. It was the unmistakable sign of a man slicing his neck. In this case, it was an undead thing begging for true death.
Sholt nodded his understanding. “You must leave us now, general,” he said. “Outside the building, preferably.”
Spyra left and went across the road to the Axe Master’s Lodge. Hopefully, as a lord of the realm, he could get a drink in the private establishment. He needed one.
Sholt emptied a pouch of silvery dust on the floor and then poured a flask of virgin water onto it. He chanted the words to a spell, and a bright, crackling lavender flame flared from the pile. Smoke divided into two equal wavering streams and made its way through the bars. For a long while nothing else happened, then suddenly the fire faded and both of the bodies collapsed. Sholt cast another spell and was relieved to learn that Pael’s taint lingered here no longer.
His spell-weary mind was racing with the implications of what the undead had written, but he tried not to think of them. He left the constable’s office and went straight across the way to join Spyra. If they wouldn’t serve him, he decided that he would cast a charm spell on them all. They didn’t so much as question Lord Spyra or Sholt. They seemed to know what the men were about. In fact, the barman sat a full flagon of his most potent brandy wine in front of each of them and then went about his business.
After shaking off his initial shock, Commander Lyle charged his destrier at the nearest robed skeletons. It was dark but a pair of torches had been kept aflame on the wagon, so there was some visibility, but not much.
His horse reared up and lashed out with its powerful hooves. The skeleton had apparently expected a different sort of attack, like a sword swing or a passing stab. It was caught off guard when the destrier didn’t charge past him. The first hoof went into its ribcage, and when the horse came down it crushed the whole skeleton to the ground. The other hoof struck the skull and shattered it with a splintering pop.
Sergeant Tolbar called out a couple of orders after seeing his commander engage the unnerving enemy. Soon, the sound of steel on steel, and steel on bone, rang out. Some of the skeletons had loose-fitting shirts of mail under their cloaks; others had old leather pieces, unmatched and ill-fitting, strapped to their tissueless frames. Most of them had short swords that they seemed to wield effectively, but a few of them had deadly crossbows.
It appeared that maybe twenty of the skeletons were ringed around the group, but with only two torches and a ground full of long, dancing shadows, it was hard to tell.
Petar, following the sergeant's order, spurred his horse and formed up with a few other men around the wagon cage. The two kingdom men on the bench fired their crossbows, reloaded, and fired again as quickly as they could. They didn’t know that they were doing absolutely no damage to the undead. The bolts went right through, or rattled away, deflected by the bony forms of their targets.
A man screamed as an enemy crossbow bolt caught him in the neck. Hot blood sprayed from the wound in pulses.
Suddenly, the light from another torch flared. The man who ignited it threw it up and out from the wagon in a flickering arc that lit up the whole area as it passed through.
Commander Lyle saw that there were only a dozen or so of the skeleton warriors close at hand. A larger number of robed figures appeared to be further out from the group, but he couldn’t trust his eyes. He fought stroke for stroke with one of the things. Finally, the skeleton jabbed its sword into Lyle’s horse, running its bloody blade right up to the hilt. As Lyle tried to dismount without getting crushed, he saw the same skeleton pick up another sword, and thrust it into Sergeant Tolbar’s back. It left the blade inside the man and then ran away into the darkness.
Sergeant Tolbar screamed out in pain and valiantly fought the thing before him. He didn’t last long, though. A moment later he slumped out of the saddle and was hacked to death before he hit the ground.
Out of nowhere, a deep, rumbling roar erupted just as the sound of galloping hoof beats came from behind them. Commander Lyle darted his eyes around, searching for the source of the sound. To his shock, he found it when a dark four-legged thing as big as a horse darted into the light and leapt on a pair of his men. Its wicked maw found one man and its bulky weight carried the other and both horses to the ground in a writhing heap. The man who wasn’t in the creature’s mouth began screaming in pain and fear. Lyle could see that one of his legs was bent at a grotesque angle and partly pinned under a motionless horse.
The thing, whatever it was, and the other man, were already gone.
Lyle took a bolt to the side then. Having caught in his chain mail, the arrow only grazed him. He stumbled out of the way just as a handful of riders passed through the torch light, howling and screaming, and hammering their shields like wild men.
Another torch went spinning through the air, revealing a handful of city guardsmen from Weir. Their horses were terrified as the riders went waving their swords around among the undead.
At the edge of the light, both Petar and Commander Lyle saw the retreating group of skeletal men and the large, hairy back of the creature that was dragging th
eir man’s torso away with it.
“Run me through,” Sergeant Tolbar yelled through clenched teeth from the ground. His body was a ruin lying in the middle of the torchlit scene. How he was still alive was beyond reasoning. “Kill me, man. Come on, do it,” he begged the stupefied man looking down at him.
Petar climbed from his horse and ran to the sergeant. A glance told him that the wounds were fatal. He didn’t hesitate when he pushed his blade tip through Tolbar’s throat, but he did mumble a prayer.
“Well met, Lieutenant,” Commander Lyle said gruffly to the only man he recognized.
“I couldn’t stay around Weir after what happened,” the wiry man said, pulling on his long mustache. His expression was tense and confused as he glanced around the bloody body-strewn road. “But by the gods, Commander, it looks like I might have done better there than out here with you.”
One of the men sitting on the wagon fell forward into the horses. The horses mistook it for the command to go and started ahead. They stopped after only a few feet when the wagon wheel wouldn’t roll over a man’s arrow-ridden corpse.
“I think they were after their friends,” Commander Lyle said with a sigh of frustration. “They’re gone.”
The lieutenant rode around to the far side of the wagon and looked around. “Maybe,” he said as he gracefully leapt from his horse and bent down to retrieve something from the ground. “They killed the fisherman.” He stood back up holding the leather satchel that had been strapped around the fisherman's shoulder.
The lieutenant reached inside it and pulled out a golden crown encrusted with enough jewels to buy a castle.
“Maybe that really was Glendar’s skeleton, Commander,” the lieutenant said, seeing the Westland lion head etched into the circlet’s front-plate.
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