Scourge

by Gail Z. Martin

  The priest raised his left arm and let the long sleeve of his robe fall back. In one smooth slice, he brought a sharp knife down along the flesh, opening a bloody wound. The priest held his arm over the candle, allowing the blood to drop into the bowl.

  “Once, for the asking. Twice, for the hearing,” he said as the drops fell. “Thrice—let it be so.”

  Corran’s eyes widened and he stopped digging. “Rigan,” he hissed, with a nod toward where the priest leaned over the bloody bowl.

  Something stood at the end of the suicide’s grave, a silhouette that wavered in the torchlight. The priest fell to his knees as the dark figure gestured over the grave and spoke words Corran did not catch. For a few seconds, Corran felt trapped by the shadowy figure’s gaze. Then the image winked out, taking with it the bloody candle and bowl, leaving the trinkets for the priest.

  “Shit,” Rigan muttered. “I’ve never seen that before.”

  “Seems that Eshtamon was listening,” Corran said, before returning to his digging, unwilling to let his brother see how much the vision had shaken him.

  “Can’t say any of the Guild gods have ever shown up for a burial,” Rigan said as he filled and emptied his shovel.

  “I’d say that’s probably a good thing.”

  The priest pocketed the offerings from the foot of the grave. He said something under his breath, and the gash in his forearm healed as if it had never been. Then he turned to where the brothers stood, chest deep in a newly dug grave.

  “Tell the woman’s mother that her daughter will be avenged.” With that, he shouldered the small pack he had brought with him and walked into the night.

  Rigan looked as spooked as Corran felt. “Keep digging,” Corran said, with an eye toward the woman’s grave. “We’ve got two more to bury, and hers to fill in. I don’t want to push our luck tonight.”

  A candlemark later, they were shoveling dirt into the next-to-last grave when Rigan straightened. “Did you hear something?”

  Corran slapped the mound of dirt with the back of his shovel, and paused to listen. “Like what?” The wind clattered through the high branches, and swept across the grass. Overhead, clouds slipped across a nearly-full moon. In the distance, an owl hooted and the tower bells rang.

  Then he heard it: the sound of digging, coming from a back corner of the graveyard. Half a dozen gray figures closed in on them. Shit. Those look like hancha.

  The creatures had the shapes of men, but their skin was obsidian, like a long-dead corpse. Feral, yellow eyes gleamed from sunken sockets over hollow cheeks. Hancha were vengeful spirits that possessed the dead, animating them with unnatural strength, fuelling their hold on their host bodies by consuming freshly-killed human flesh.

  “Watch out!” Corran reached for his knife and wielded the shovel like a staff in his other hand. “Behind you!”

  Rigan ducked, swinging his shovel, and the iron blade sank into the monster’s abdomen just beneath the ribs. Even so, it kept moving. Clawed hands ripped at Rigan’s sleeve as the animated corpse lurched forward. Corran thrust his shovel forward, knocking the creature backward and driving the point of the blade through its open belly, severing the spine and cutting the monster in two.

  The hancha’s legs kicked out at Rigan, knocking him backward, while its hands dug into the dirt, pulling its upper body toward fresh meat.

  “Two more behind you!” Corran warned.

  “I see three coming from the back.” Rigan scrambled to grab the nearest torch, and brandished it at the advancing corpses.

  “We just buried those bodies last week,” Corran said. “I recognize some of them.”

  “Well, they’re back,” Rigan snapped. “And if we’re lucky, we’ll get to bury them again.”

  Corran and Rigan lunged in opposite directions, taking the offensive. Hancha were tough to destroy and would put up a good fight, but they had all the swiftness of a drunkard.

  The spirits that possessed them transformed the corpses, elongating the arms, stretching bony fingers into calcified talons, sharpening and lengthening the teeth. The creatures could not talk, but they shrieked like the damned to distract their prey.

  Corran swung his shovel with his full might, slamming one of the hancha in the head so hard that the bones in the corpse’s face shattered. Still, it continued to shamble towards him.

  Rigan thrust his torch at the closest creature, lighting its moldering clothing on fire. The monster never slowed, even as its hair singed and the dead skin charred. Thick smoke rose from the burning hancha, and Rigan struggled not to gag from the stench.

  Fire might not stop the hancha, but as the flames consumed them, their movements became erratic. “Hit them harder!” Corran yelled. “But watch out for their blood. It burns!” He swung his knife, tearing into the creature’s neck, sawing at bone until he could send its head flying. The body continued to writhe, even as Corran drove the heavy iron shovel blade down again and again, chopping the rotting corpse to pieces. The limbs thrashed, heaving across the ground. Where the blood splattered Corran’s bare flesh it raised welts.

  “Heads up! We’ve got more coming!” Rigan yelped as four more hancha closed on them, two from each side.

  Rigan moved into position, so that he and Corran were fighting back to back. “Why are they here?” Corran’s voice was hoarse with the smoke. “What called them?”

  “No idea,” Rigan countered. “But we’ve got to stop them from leaving the cemetery.”

  Corran sliced with the blade of his shovel, bringing the solid wooden handle down across one creature’s head with enough force to split bone. He barely danced out of the way of a second hancha as it grabbed for his face with one clawed hand and snatched at his shirt with the other. His knife sliced through the stiff, dead flesh to the ribs, but the monster kept coming. Rigan fended off two more creatures, thrusting his torch at their ragged clothing, sending them up in flames. Corran thrust with his shovel’s handle, breaking ribs and shattering bones, then slammed the solid iron blade into knees and arms with a crunch.

  Rigan and Corran were exhausted but the hancha were relentless. They would remain animated with ancient, foul energies until the sun rose. “They’ll outlast us,” Corran said, breathing hard.

  “We’ve just got to be smarter than them. Their brains are rotting, after all.”

  Four tireless hancha might as well have been an army. Burning the creatures slowed but did not stop them, and the dead bodies took a beating no living man could have survived. Cutting the monsters to pieces was effective, but dangerous and difficult. Their torches guttered, nearly spent.

  Corran and Rigan bled from fresh wounds and burns from the monsters’ blood. Corran gathered his strength and bellowed as he ran at the two closest hancha with a fresh burst of energy. That drew them away from Rigan, who fought two more opponents of his own. Corran swung his shovel at the creatures’s kneecaps, crippling them as the bones broke beneath the iron blade.

  Two of the torches flickered out, leaving the brothers in a shrinking pool of light. Clouds hid the moon overhead. Corran summoned up all his rage for another salvo, using his shovel to keep one hancha at bay while he closed on the other. He dared not take his eyes from the advancing monsters. Despite their grievous injuries, the hancha were undeterred. Corran dove forward, thrusting his long knife through the chest of the nearest creature and heaving the blade upward, slicing through rotted flesh and organs. He pushed the creature backward, kicking its feet out from under it, grabbed a torch and stabbed it into the hancha’s open belly. The monster jerked and writhed as the fire consumed it.

  The other hancha launched itself at Corran, knocking him to the ground and slamming his left arm against a grave marker, hard enough to dash the knife from his grip. His shovel was useless at this range, and it took all his waning strength to keep the hancha from clawing him open. The hancha brought its bony fists down with more power than Corran thought possible, snapping his head to the side and making his vision swim.

&n
bsp; He cried out as the creature dragged its sharp fingers across his chest. Blood soaked his shirt. He tried to get his legs up, but the monster pinned him. One skeletal hand closed around Corran’s throat, choking off his breath. He beat at the thing with both fists, but the cold, stiff body did not yield.

  “Stay down!” Rigan yelled. A wave of blue-white fire swept across the burying yard, turning night to day. Corran felt the flames sizzle just a few feet from his face.

  The fire cut through the hancha, blowing apart rotten bodies and shattering decomposing heads. Heat scorched Corran, and a bloody rain covered him in gobbets of dead flesh, burning everywhere it touched. The hancha that had knocked him to the ground careened to one side, missing its head and shoulders. The strange fire took only seconds to spread across the graveyard before it vanished, but in that moment, nothing stood in its way.

  Corran managed to roll over and rise onto his forearms as Rigan dropped to his knees, spent.

  “You… did that?”

  Rigan nodded, not looking up. “The hancha was killing you.”

  “Damn.”

  “We’ve got to get out of here.” Rigan warned, his voice frayed. “That had to reek of magic.”

  “The bodies,” Corran grunted, dragging himself to all fours.

  Body parts were scattered across the cemetery—decomposing, badly burned and hacked to pieces. “The guards will haul us out of our beds and hang us for murder,” Rigan groaned.

  “Good thing I’m here.” Kell emerged from the shadows. “You two look like something the cat puked up.”

  “What in the name of the gods—” Rigan was pale and shaking, but he managed to get to his feet.

  “Sit down before you fall down,” Kell ordered as Corran staggered. “I’ll get the bits into the grave and cover them over. I have some green vitriol with me for the remains. We’ll see to you once we get home.”

  “I’ll help,” Rigan said. He raised an eyebrow at Kell’s incredulous glance. “I’m in better shape than I look. Most of the blood on me isn’t actually mine.”

  “Corran’s going to give you an earful once he stops bleeding,” Rigan said under his breath as he shoveled the corpse limbs into the open grave. Finding and burying the pieces went quickly, though there was no hiding the gobbets of dead flesh and congealed blood splattered across the grass.

  “Lucky for all of us I don’t listen well,” Kell replied. He did more than his share filling in the grave, then wiped his brow and leaned against his shovel. “Here’s hoping the crows and vultures will take care of the rest.”

  CORRAN SAGGED BETWEEN Rigan and Kell as they made their way back to the workshop, struggling to remain conscious. Blood plastered the shreds of Corran’s shirt to his skin, and he winced with every movement that jostled his damaged chest and bruised ribs. Weeping burns peppered his face, arms and shoulders. The bells in the city tolled, announcing the start of curfew.

  “Just a little further,” Rigan murmured. He held a knife ready in case the guards discovered them but they reached the alleyway behind their workshop without incident.

  “You two are going through our supplies a little too quickly for my liking,” Kell grumbled as he pulled a kettle of hot water off the brazier. Rigan eased Corran onto one of the tables, and gently stripped away what remained of his shirt.

  “I thought you weren’t going to use magic.” Corran managed, barely above a whisper.

  Rigan lowered his eyes. “I tried not to. I didn’t want to bring the guards down on us, on top of the hancha. But then that thing tackled you, and I knew I couldn’t fight my way out alone. It was the only way I could think of to get it off you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Kell steeped medicinal herbs in hot water and looked at Corran’s injuries. “What a mess,” he said. He looked at Rigan. “You don’t look much better.”

  “What were you doing in the cemetery, anyway?” Rigan asked. Kell glared at him. “It turned out to be handy, wouldn’t you say?” “I wasn’t criticizing. But it was almost curfew, and it’s not safe—”

  “You were late,” Kell said, preparing a poultice. “I was worried. Figured at worst you’d need a hand digging the graves, since you had more bodies than usual. So I headed over.”

  “You’re just lucky those creatures didn’t get you,” Corran said.

  “I stayed out of the graveyard, once I saw what was going on,” Kell replied. “Give me credit; I’m not stupid. I knew there wasn’t much I could do to help with the fight, but I stuck around in case you needed me.” He looked up with a grin. “And you did.”

  Rigan put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Kell, thanks. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have buried the remains and gotten us both out of there by myself.”

  “You’re welcome,” Kell said with a satisfied smile. He turned his attention back to Corran. “I’ll let you off with a warning, since you look like death warmed over; don’t scare me like that again.”

  He turned to Rigan. “How about sitting down? You don’t look much better than Corran.”

  Rigan sank into a chair and rested his head in his hands. “I just need to rest,” he said. “I grounded my power better this time, so I didn’t get knocked flat on my ass.”

  Corran groaned, too miserable to reply. Four deep gashes on his chest bled heavily. Cuts and punctures from the hancha’s sharp fingers showed on his arms and belly.

  “Let’s hope I can get those clean,” Kell fussed, daubing at the wounds with a mixture of alcohol and witchhazel. Corran bit his lip at the sting. “No idea what’s on those things’s claws,” Kell continued. “And we don’t need the burns going bad.”

  He barely spared a glance in Rigan’s direction. “Take a table. We’ve got room.”

  Rigan did not argue. “I tried to stay out of their way, but the hancha got in a few good hits,” he said ruefully, looking at the bloody slashes on his arms. “Make sure you do a good job cleaning cuts,” he added, exhaustion heavy in his voice. “Mine are already starting to go sour.”

  “You’ll have to wait your turn,” Kell replied primly. “I’ll get to you.”

  Rigan hauled himself up onto a table, and felt the fight in every aching muscle. “I’m amazed no one noticed the magic,” he said. “I thought for sure the guards would storm in once the hancha were dead.”

  “The guards don’t notice anything they’re not paid to notice,” Kell grumbled. “Doesn’t mean no one paid attention.”

  Corran felt a chill. “What do you mean?”

  Kell finished cleaning his wounds and returned with a bowl of herbal paste and a shroud torn into strips for bandages. “What made the hancha rise?”

  “I wondered that myself,” Rigan replied, “but I was too damn busy fighting them off to wonder for long.”

  “Did someone call the hancha to attack you and Corran because they knew you’d be in the cemetery? Or did some dark magic just happen to make them rise tonight, the way the monsters seem to, coming and going without any rhyme or reason?”

  “I don’t know,” Rigan answered. “But if someone meant them to attack us, then they intended for us to die. They wouldn’t have known about my magic—although they might, now.”

  “There are a lot easier ways to kill us,” Corran grumbled. “Seems a bit extreme.”

  Kell shrugged. “It would look like a monster kill,” he said. “Everyone would have thought you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Ravenwood is a big enough shithole without imagining monsterassassins,” Rigan replied. “I mean, we’re nobodies. Even the Guild barely knows who we are.”

  “Speaking of which, Guild fees will be due again soon,” Kell said.

  Rigan sighed. “Yeah. Sad to say it, but it’s a damn good thing there’ve been so many deaths, or we wouldn’t be able to pay the fees and the taxes too—and still pay off the guards.”

  “How far do you think those bribes go?” Kell was nearly done patching up Corran, and he stirred up more of his foul-smelling mixture
to clean up Rigan’s injuries.

  “Not far enough to keep me out of the noose for magic, or get Corran off for being a hunter,” Rigan warned. “All they do is keep the guards from breaking our windows or stealing our tools. It’s protection money, pure and simple—protection from the guards, not the monsters.”

  “That’s what I figured,” Kell replied.

  Corran saw the flicker of something dark in Kell’s eyes as his brother looked away. “Kell, did something happen when you were out on your rounds?”

  Kell let out a deep breath. “It’s nothing.”

  “Bullshit,” Rigan said. “What’s the matter?”

  Kell slumped. “Polly—the serving girl at The Lame Dragon— she’s gone. Ran away.”

  Rigan frowned. “Was she in trouble?”

  “Maybe she thought she was.”

  “Just like Elinor,” Rigan said. Corran and Kell both looked up at that. “She was too good at mixing pigments. Someone started talk that she might have magic. So she ran before they could take her.”

  “I’m sorry,” Corran said, seeing the hurt on his brothers’ faces. “Looks like none of us are very lucky in love.”

  “Doesn’t bode well for carrying on the family name,” Rigan said with a sigh. He looked at Kell, who was staring at the floor, and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m trying to tell myself that it’s better for Elinor to have run and maybe gotten to safety than to be taken by the guards, or by a mob,” he said quietly. “I know it’s cold comfort, but it’s true for Polly, too.”

  Kell swallowed hard. “I just hope she’s safe. But I won’t ever know whether she made it or not.”

  “Then until we have proof of the worst, let yourself believe the best,” Corran advised, feeling his heart clench as Jora’s loss ached afresh. He let it go unsaid that the finality of knowing might be worse than the scant hope of wondering.

  Kell gave a curt nod and turned back to the business at hand, dipping a cloth in the healing elixir and gently daubing at Rigan’s injuries; his brother tried not to wince at the burn of the antiseptic or the sting of the herbs. “You’re not as banged up on the outside as he is,” Kell added, nodding at Corran. “But you’d better eat something if you pulled that much magic out of thin air. You look like you’re going to pass out.”