by Evren, S. K.
A band of border guards rushed into the city’s smoking square to investigate, and a small skirmish began in the flickering firelight. The caravan’s dismounted cavalry fell upon the border guards, cutting them down before they could organize themselves properly. Cries rang out from the guards, calling to companions who could not hear them. Swords clashed against each other and deflected into the cobbled street. Crunching blows bit into armor and flesh, and blades were withdrawn with sickly, sticking sounds. Still forms once again littered the streets of Æostemark, and the smell of fresh blood lingered in the night air. Within minutes, the fight was finished. Some few of the caravan’s dismounted cavalry had fallen beside the border guards’ entire detachment. The wounded soldiers were helped back to the fountain by others, and again, those remaining took up the ring.
The old man, meanwhile, had come to a state near frenzy. He walked from one bound corpse to the next, staring into their eyes. He walked to the woman and lifted her chin. She gazed blankly back at him. He started to turn away, her chin sliding out of his fingers, when her warm hand snapped its restraints and caught his wrist. Dead eyes fixed him coolly. The black-robed servants rushed up to his side brandishing small weapons of their own. The old man ripped his arm out of her grasp and spoke to her in the same ancient language he had used before. Her eyes showed no emotion, but her head nodded acceptingly. She snapped her other arm loose from her bindings and stepped away from the stake. Her chest gaped open, like a glaring eye accusing all around her. A few feet away, the body of the dead border guard broke its own bonds and stepped away from its stake. It stood, chest steaming in the night air, facing the old man, waiting. The black-robed minions backed away toward the living soldiers, unconsciously seeking their protection.
The still forms of the recent battle began to shudder and stir in the shadows where they had fallen. Maimed and bleeding, they stood and dragged themselves into the light surrounding the altar. The living winced and gagged at the walking atrocities they had committed. They were all soldiers, and had seen the secrets of man spilled on the ground in battle. They had not, however, seen such bodies rise again to stand accusingly before them. The soldiers had known, to some degree, the mission of their master. Knowing, however, was quite different from experiencing.
The leader of the caravan’s guard approached his master, standing quietly to one side, awaiting acknowledgement. The old man, glowing with dark pleasure, turned to admire his night’s work. His eyes fell on each and every body before him, noting its condition, noting its obedience. He had been pallid after his second invocation, but now drew himself up in strength and power. His gaze finally settled on his guards’ commander, and his eyes permitted the man to speak.
“My Lord,” the commander began, “what do we do now?”
“Now, my dear Troseth, we wait,” came the old man’s reply.
“For what, my Lord?”
“The Harvest, Troseth.” The old man turned to look out into the shadows of the city. Troseth followed his view, at first seeing nothing. Something, however, disturbed his eye. Some movement seemed to taunt his gaze, a slight changing of the shadows. As he watched, his mind worked to form images from the broken patterns of the darkness. What emerged shattered all of his preconceptions. A rotting collection of bones, dragging tattered clothes around its feet, shuffled slowly out of the blackness. “The Harvest.”
Chapter 4 – Harvest
Across the shattered city of Æostemark the dead began to rise. The ground erupted, spitting forth the vile fruits of war, disease, and human frailty. Dry, skeletal fingers pierced up through the ground like fast growing weeds. Massive stones pushed away from crypts. Coffins crumbled under the soil. The bones of the wealthy shambled forth to join those of peasants and beggars.
The maddened, searching citizens of Æostemark finally began to see rewards for their efforts. One woman, both of her hands raw and bleeding, saw movement in a pile of rubble. She rushed over and clawed at the brick and stone, hoping to find a friend, a loved one, perhaps her own child. As the weight of war and collapse pushed aside, a cold, hard set of fingers closed around her wrist. Clamping down with crushing strength, the hand pulled her down into the rubble as it rose, the way a drowning man might offer his savior as sacrifice to appease an angry sea.
Outside the city, in several of the massive fields surrounding, the ground boiled up, shedding the weight of its own skin. Great communal graves, the resting places of invader and defender alike, shuddered and released their contents. Silhouetted against the night sky, the emerging figures looked not unlike giant black ants emerging from the soil.
Some of the dead, those having suffered more damage than others, began searching the ground for something, though not nearly as feverishly as the maddened living. Here and there a collection of bones would reach down, sift through the dirt with one remaining hand, and pull another set of bones from the moist, dark ground. Arm or hand, leg or skull, the animated form would seek to reattach its missing bones and join its comrades. Other skeletal forms, those too incomplete or too badly damaged to walk, dragged themselves by whatever means necessary to follow.
Mass graves continued to open in the fields around Æostemark. The skeletal forms of animals pushed and scrambled their way from their own burial sites. Horses, having once lain bloated on the field, emerged gaunt and thin, sleek in their skeletal structures. Moonlight sifted through their massive rib cages as they followed an unseen call. Great lines of dry and clicking bones from a vast radius moved to that call, all heading toward Æostemark.
The remaining living denizens of Æostemark began to wake slowly in the night. Some heard the shifting of rubble, the clatter of stone falling on stone. They thought that, perhaps, the deranged seekers had moved too close, or that another rotting building had chosen to fall. Others thought that the looters were getting bold again, and sought what weapons they had. They lit their lanterns and peered through barred windows into the surrounding night. Alone in their homes they could see, and sometimes feel, the passing of shadows in the darkness. Even the shadows, revealing no hints of form or structure, caused the very hair to stand on their skin.
A chill sense of dread filled each heart, making it pound in the chest containing it. Blood coursed through the veins of the living, surging in an effort to make itself known, to segregate itself from what instinct sensed was moving outside. The rational, conscious mind argued against what the subconscious and soul had discovered as a slight scent in the air or as a living being’s intuition. The citizens stood in their places, fighting down urges to run and hide. They had homes to defend, fortunes and wealth to consider. Who could be frightened by a few bumps in the night?
In the square, bodies gathered before the Necromancer and his minions. The black-robed priests, having once retreated in fear, fell on the ground in awe and worship. Their eyes revealed a living ecstasy, a dark joy in their master’s success. They knelt to the ground and prayed as if wracked by fever.
The Necromancer, for his part, watched their slavering adoration with contemptuous amusement. Had their faith in his power been true, their admiration might have struck them less as a surprise. He, however, paid scant attention to the living around him. For seven years he had held the spirits in place in a vast radius around Æostemark. He had contained the dead and dying through his sheer will and power. It had drained him, cost him, even come close to destroying him, but now the Harvest had begun. The seeding, seven years earlier, had borne its dark fruit, and his patience had been rewarded. He had encouraged the invasion that led to the slaughter of two great armies around Æostemark. He held up the ideals of pride, hope, and, ultimately, religion to give the invaders a prize worth dying for. He promised them life beyond death, and now, here, he had finally delivered.
Rank after rank of the dead stood before him. Some were mere bones, flesh stripped by creatures large or too small to be seen by the eye. Others had some flesh still rotting from their structure. These, he realized had died more recently,
a bonus to his seven year plan.
The magic that bound the spirits to these forms had been quite powerful, if costly. If only he’d had this power, this knowledge, in the years he had served the Empire. He had known how to encase spirits in their corporeal forms before his long slumber. He had used it as threat and punishment against his Emperor’s enemies. He had even been able to reanimate a body or two, though it had taken all his concentration. Never before had he wielded this amount of power. Awakened seven hundred years after the fall of his Emperor, he was shown the path by the visionary who had roused him, the visionary who served him still, Poson. His only question was, “Why?”
Poson had always been obsequious. He was a fawning, bootlicking sycophant who had sworn his loyalty the moment the awakening was complete. Why had he not used this power himself? Why had he sought out the barely living husk of a thousand—and more—year old Imperial Mage? True, as a mage with the knowledge of captivating souls he could more readily cross into necromancy, but surely others had possessed this knowledge. Why disturb the guilty slumber of a being who sought only to fade away?
The Necromancer’s face flushed a deep red at the thought. He felt guilt for the fall of the Empire. What use had his power been when it couldn’t stop the flood of uneducated, ill-mannered, bipedal vermin from trampling over what he had served for over three hundred years of his life? A scowl crossed his face and his teeth bit into each other accusingly. Anger welled into his eyes and he clenched his bloody fists. No more, he thought, looking out again over the undead forms still gathering in and around the square. He created now a new force, a new “Imperial Army.” This army would not grow tired. This army would not flee the field before superior numbers of inferior creatures. They would require neither food nor sleep, and their victories would only swell their ranks.
He looked out over the city of Æostemark. “City,” he scoffed. Æostemark was a collection of hovels compared to the majesty of the cities of the Empire. The Empire, he thought. The glory, he remembered. The guilt, he felt accompanying those disjointed memories. He raised his bloody hands to his head, knocking off his black mitre and streaking his lank white hair with his own blood. He would wash away that guilt, yes, he would, wash it clean. With what, he wondered to himself. He began to shake violently, the emotions boiling inside him seeming to burst in his very muscles. He shook and tore at his hair, maddened by the thought of his failure. Failure. Having failed once, could he not fail again? His head began to rock back and forth over his chest. His eyes darted left to right, looking for answers, pleading for answers. Slowly, through his agitation, the blood from his hands ran though his hair and down his forehead. Falling into his eyes, he became annoyed and dashed it away.
Blood. Of course, that was why he was here. He would wash away the past with the blood of the present. He would forge the future on the bodies of his enemies. He slowly brought himself under control. He stopped his violent shaking and raised his head proudly. He looked out into the gathered dead before him and selected some two hundred in his mind. Closing his eyes, he issued an order to slay the living vermin hidden away in the rubble of Æostemark, carefully excluding those who served him. Everything, he thought, has its uses.
Troseth and his surviving soldiers had watched their Master’s seeming-seizure. They also kept close eye on the animated bones before them, praying fervently to whatever they held dear that their Master would not lose control. Even the men that Troseth knew had no faith in anything other than their own sword mumbled reverently under their own breath.
Though standing quite still, their hollow eyes focused on the Necromancer, the dead seemed to exude a terrible sense of hunger. They were a vacuum of life, pulling at the spirits of the living around them. The soldiers, handpicked for their discipline, fought the same battle of will versus instinct that the inhabitants of Æostemark fought behind their barred and shuttered doors. The soldiers, however, consciously knew they were facing the dead. These soldiers would also live through the night.
Two hundred of the recently risen dead struggled against the flow of incoming bodies to spread out into the city of Æostemark. The Necromancer’s orders seemed to shake them from the slumber of the grave. They no longer shuffled as they had when they assembled in the square, but walked with purpose. Hollow eyes sought things that only they could see, and unspoken communications spread between them as they marched out into the shadows.
By now, all the living in Æostemark were awake. Merchants and soldiers watched through window and door with lanterns and candles close at hand. Weapons fit every fist that could hold them as hearts hammered in uncertainty and fear. There was no time to seek shelter. Instinct told them that death was in the streets, that it would not be possible to run to the garrison for protection. The soldiers in the barracks within the city numbered only six after their comrades had gone to investigate the disturbance in the square. The six, too, had considered a break for the border post, but their intuition also told them death was outside the door.
One of the soldiers, watching the streets outside, let out an explosive breath. He began to fumble with the bolt on the door.
“Hey, boys, it’s the sergeant! He’s back from the square with the others.” He looked more closely out at the returning soldiers. Dark stains, bled of color by the pale moonlight, covered their bodies. “Hey! I think they’ve got blood on ‘em! Must have been some sorta scuffle out there. I bet they’ll have some stories to tell.” He looked about the room, his eyes searching. “Hey, somebody stir up something hot for ‘em to drink, eh? They’re looking pretty cold.”
As the guards approached the outside door, the watching soldier noticed a deep, wedge-shaped gash in the side of the sergeant’s neck. His gorge rose up within him, and he jumped back with a primal screech of fear. His shaking hands clawed at the weapon sheathed at his side and his friends looked at him as if he’d gone mad. He looked back over his shoulder at them, imploringly, his eyes begging for help, begging for understanding, as fear closed his throat. The door crashed open and the sergeant stepped inside. With a power born of desperation, the soldier who had been on watch managed to draw his sword and strike at their sergeant. The men in the back of the room gaped at what they thought was some maddened attempt at mutiny. The sword bit into the side of their sergeant, deeply, painfully. He didn’t even wince as he swung the blow that decapitated his attacker. The remaining soldiers in the room drew their own weapons as their sergeant advanced, sword still embedded in his side.
A merchant living near the soldiers heard the crashing of their barracks’ door. He raced from his own door to the window that looked out onto the barracks. He strained his eyes to focus on the inside of their building, struggling to make out a figure in the distance. Focused as he was on the distance, he never saw the skeletal hands that broke through his window, filling his eyes with splinters. His head was pulled through the window, his throat run repeatedly over the jagged, shattered glass. He choked and coughed, his blood racing to fight for breath, while skeletal thumbs gouged in upon his eyes. Finally, the dry, hard hands slackened their grip on his head, sensing kinship in their new creation.
On the other side of town, a large merchant and his family heard a crash in their cellar. Certain now he was dealing with looters, the big man caught up his lantern and a wooden club and marched down his stairs shouting threats and curses.
“You vile thieves,” he shouted, “you sons of rotting whores! You break into a man’s business, threaten his very livelihood with your greed, you worthless scum! You wait until I get down there. I’ll teach you a thing or two about breaking!” He shuffled down his stairs, working himself up into a frenzy through fear and anger. He felt the tightness in his stomach, heard the pounding of his pulse in his ears. He was angry and afraid, and angry at being afraid. He slipped into the shadowy black cellar and headed for the broken window. Moonlight poured through the broken glass, but no one stood near the window. He turned to see a hollow set of eyes staring back at him.
The scene was played out in a dozen homes, each varying only in execution. The results were an orgy of slaughter as death reached out to claim more for its own. As the hours passed, fires began to erupt all over the stone corpse of Æostemark. The flames grew so bright that they scorched the low clouds, turning them a ruddy orange.
The fighting in the soldier’s barracks was over. The merchants of Æostemark were dead. The maddened citizens lie still in the rubble, their faces showing none of the peace of final rest. The Necromancer sent out his mind to search the city, and nowhere within its borders did he feel any unaccounted living. He rejoiced at the first triumph of his new “Imperial Army.” Unleashing his powers once more, he called out to the newly slain.
The barracks door opened as the sergeant led his men into the night. Fear no longer showed on their faces, their blood no longer raced through their veins. The merchant who had died over his window pried his throat loose and rose for his door. The smoldering wreckage of the large merchant ignored his family as they joined him in leaving their flaming home. Silent searchers crawled up from the rubble once more and stumbled toward the center of town.