by Jim Galford
Swearing loudly, Ilarra threw the sword aside and spun on Nenophar and the orc, summoning what magic she could manage to hold together. She hoped unleashing every ounce of it into the Turessian would weaken him enough that Nenophar could finish him off. She raised her arms overhead, flames from the tips of her fingers to her elbows, and then lost control over the spell as she saw the two men sitting down and grinning stupidly at one another.
“Dragon?” the orc said, staring in disbelief at Nenophar.
Nenophar answered, “Orc.”
“Scaled chump.”
“Betrayer.”
The orc sneered and lowered his head slightly. “You win, as always. Betrayer trumps most anything I can call you.”
“Then perhaps we should stick to names, On’esquin.”
“I never could pronounce your real name. Eight languages, but can’t even fumble my way through that.”
Nenophar smirked, then noticed Ilarra watching them. Instantly, he let the smile drop. “I am still answering to Nenophar. My companion is Ilarra, and I believe you will owe her an explanation about your honor markings and why you tried to take her arm off.”
Touching his face, On’esquin grumbled softly and nodded. “Bigger concerns at the moment,” he said, touching his hand to his chest and lowering his head in greeting to Ilarra the same way Therec had. “We’re losing the wall. I’ll explain myself when we get out of here alive.”
A sudden surge in the number of undead coming up over the wall pushed the defenders almost on top of Ilarra and the others. She found herself surrounded, though it put Raeln within reach as he struggled against several zombies already covered with fresh gore from others that had fallen.
“Ilarra,” Raeln shouted, kicking one of the rotted men out of reach to give himself and the soldiers closest to him a momentary break. “Get to Greth and find us a way out. We’ll be dead in under an hour otherwise.”
Ilarra patted his back to let him know she had heard, then pushed her way free of the soldiers to get to the next closest group. All across the northern section of the wall, the defenders were rapidly falling back toward where she stood, surrounded on all sides by a legion of undead. Even down below the wall, the last of those trying to hold their ground were being torn apart by undead both inside and outside the city.
To the north, she saw Nenophar’s brother was doing little better than the other defenders. A thousand or more undead crawled all over him as he flailed and tried to smash them into the ground.
Farther north, the closest of the elementals—the walking mountain of stone—moved away from the city, following a large group of retreating undead. The immense creature was attacking the undead, but it would be no help in saving the city. She had to assume the others would be equally useless.
Ilarra went to the inner side of the battlements, searching for a way to make a break for the city, in hopes of disappearing into the buildings or at least using them as cover. With more undead streaming into the streets every second, any route to flee the walls would vanish at any moment.
She started to back away from the wall and move to another vantage point, then stopped when she realized her right hand was covered with fresh blood that was not her own. Looking back, she saw Raeln’s fur had matted with blood from the bodies he was tearing into, as well as from hundreds of small wounds. His armor hid much of the blood, but it oozed out of gashes in the thick leather. He still fought hard, trying to drive the enemy back and protect those around him, but Ilarra knew he was on borrowed time. Already, she could see him struggling against exhaustion, barely able to keep his weapons raised, now that she knew what to look for. Even his breathing was labored—so very unlike how he normally would fight.
As Ilarra turned back to the wall, frantic to find a way out before Raeln could no longer fight, she came face-to-face with the vacant stare of an undead woman. The woman had crawled up the short section of wall between the battlements and the stairs from the inner courtyard. The zombie silently opened her mouth to bite at Ilarra, reaching to grab her arm at the same time.
Ilarra reacted without thinking, avoiding the zombie’s clumsy attempt to grapple her and reaching out to grab the decayed face with her left hand. As soon as she touched the zombie, she let a flicker of magic flow through her—again, by some odd instinct—and reduced the zombie to ash and bone. The remains fell away from her, crashing and shattering at the bottom of the wall.
For the briefest moment, Ilarra smiled at the ease with which she had dispatched the zombie, wondering if she might be able to hold her own against the remaining undead forces after all. Then, pain flared across her left hand, forcing her fingers to curl against her palm and shake violently. She watched helplessly as her nails cracked and fell away in small pieces, the skin darkening at the tips until it looked as if she had dipped them in ink. Try as she might, she could not make her hand open, and the whole bottom half of her arm felt as though it were being held over an open flame. Everything below the burns from On’esquin’s weapon burned.
Hugging her aching hand to her stomach, Ilarra gritted her teeth in frustration as no less than a hundred zombies continued up the stairs, closing off the last possible route away from the wall. A glance north showed the undead there had nearly reached the top of the wall and soon would overwhelm the defenders bunched up around Raeln.
“Get back!”
Ilarra had no time to find the source of the shout before strong hands threw her facedown on the ground and someone stepped over her protectively. She heard a blade tearing through flesh, and then realized large paws were positioned on either side of her. Biting back the instinct to attack the man, Ilarra slid free, intending to thank Raeln for saving her from her own inattention.
Instead, she found herself looking up at Greth, fighting for all he was worth with a sword that had its tip already broken off and a battered shield that barely protected him anymore. The suit of chain and leather he wore was torn to the point of absurdity, though he looked as though he had not had a chance to cast it aside in the heat of battle. For all his lack of grace and style like Raeln, Greth fought with a strength and ferocity that seemed boundless.
“Find a way down to the city!” Greth shouted, cleaving a zombie’s head nearly in half as he shoved two more off the wall with his shield. “We’re losing ground!”
Everywhere Ilarra looked, the wall was being filled with stumbling and groaning undead who dragged down the defenders not working together quickly enough. Men were screaming and being torn limb from limb as they were pulled into the swarming zombie horde. With each fallen soldier, the army of the dead pushed all the harder, until the last fifty men were huddled around Ilarra, back to back and shoulder to shoulder, straining to keep every inch of space.
Ilarra had no room to get off the ground without shoving a soldier into the enemy line, so she curled into a ball and clung to her hand, which continued to burn. Blood sprayed her face almost immediately, but she could not be sure if it was from one of the soldiers or the undead, and she was not even sure she wanted to find out.
A scream behind Ilarra made her flinch. She glanced over her shoulder in time to see Raeln fall as the line broke. Men and women were being knocked down under the force of the undead charge, and Raeln was not moving. Blood covered his face and chest, and a pair of zombies grabbed at his legs to drag him away from the group.
Somewhere nearby, Ilarra heard Greth scream for someone to help Raeln. No one she saw had any hope of getting to him in time. They had far greater concerns as the zombies overwhelmed them.
Ilarra gritted her teeth and pushed the soldiers away as she stood. There was little choice left to her. She had to do something or everyone there would die, possibly even her. More importantly, the only two people she still considered family were about to die.
“Stop!” she shouted, her voice breaking as she tried to make herself heard over the noise of battle. The man in front of her screamed as he was torn apart by emotionless corpses. “Undead, I said, sto
p!”
This time, Ilarra felt the magic roil within her, empowering her demand against the undead bound to serve the Turessians. As soon as she felt that, the battle went silent. Hundreds of broken, bloodied, rotten faces stared straight ahead, standing motionless, some with their fingers only inches from trembling defenders. One even froze with its broken teeth less than an inch from a man’s neck.
The soldiers were equally still, looking around wide-eyed and waiting for the undead to rush in again.
Farther out from the ring of barely moving defenders and frozen zombies, more of the undead continued to search for new targets to attack, though none appeared interested in moving any closer to Ilarra and the others. Out past the walls, she could see the sun setting behind the mountains, and with the darkness spreading across the area, Ilarra could feel more creatures of death approaching, ones that would not brave the daylight. If and when those arrived, the zombies would be hardly a concern.
The first person to break the stalemate was Greth, shouldering his way through the remaining soldiers to practically dive over top of Raeln. He ripped pieces off his clothing and tied off several badly bleeding wounds, keeping his palm pressed firmly against another.
“How is he?” asked Ilarra, her voice trembling. Her left arm had gone numb to the shoulder. “Greth…tell me something.”
The wildling shook his head, his eyes frantically darting between different bleeding cuts all over Raeln. Despite dozens of spots on his own armor where blood seeped through, he looked very nearly ready to weep as he struggled to stop all of Raeln’s blood loss. “The oaf barely has a heartbeat,” Greth told her after checking Raeln’s neck. “I might be able to save him, but if he loses another drop of blood, he’s probably gone. We need to go. Now. If you don’t find us a way out, I’m running with him, even if it gets me killed.”
Ilarra bit back a whimper as she limped out of the tight-knit group, her leg still unstable and her left arm so numb that there were no longer even prickles of pain. She used the unmoving zombies as supports with her right, making her way around the group slowly.
Out of hundreds of soldiers that had been around at the start of battle, the few that remained were mostly untrained civilians. She saw no more than five that looked even remotely comfortable with their weapons, and all of those were badly bloodied. With Greth and Raeln out of the fight, if the undead began attacking again, it would be a very short battle before they were all dead.
Ilarra searched farther down the wall, trying to spot Nenophar or On’esquin. More than sixty feet away, beyond the frozen undead, she saw the two people tearing through the zombies with flashes of light and flames. Around them, dozens of bodies lay strewn about, smoking. On’esquin fought tirelessly, with Nenophar assisting from time to time, looking nearly ready to collapse. Neither man seemed to notice her or the other defenders.
“Nenophar!” Ilarra shouted, but neither he nor On’esquin reacted. She screamed again, with no better luck.
InsteadNenophar, someone else heard her. Far out past the wall, Ilarra saw the dragon—Nenophar’s brother, she had to remind herself—raise its head, searching the walls until its slitted eyes locked on her and narrowed. He continued to watch her, even as he swept aside a dozen zombies tugging at his legs.
The dragon looked away briefly, baring teeth larger than Ilarra as he stared off toward the farther reaches of the plains, where she could faintly see a large group of semi-transparent shapes racing toward the city. Whatever was coming was enough that even a dragon looked concerned, making Ilarra feel even more afraid for the people around her. When the dragon’s head came around again, he seemed to be waiting for Ilarra to tell him what she needed his brother for, barely even reacting as hundreds of undead continued to claw at him.
Ilarra glanced back at the defenders and saw broken men and women. Many openly wept, unable to even attack the helpless undead waiting for Ilarra’s next command. Others inched their way through the undead to check on bodies of lost friends or family scattered all across the battlements. She was not even sure a single person in that group could or would put up a fight when the next charge came. They likely would be unable to even fight through a handful of undead in an attempt to get out of the city. She had to get them a clear path or more deaths would haunt her.
Looking back to the dragon, Ilarra started to raise her left hand to gesture, but as she did, she saw that the last two fingers had broken off at the first knuckle and the rest of her hand was burned and cracked. Quickly, she tucked the hand back to her stomach, and using her other hand, pointed at Nenophar, then herself, then the group of defenders, and finally gave a broad sweep of her arm south. The dragon seemed to understand and spread his wings, shaking like a wet dog to cast off the undead that continued to try and drag him down.
A faint whisper in Ilarra’s mind said simply, Hold your ground.
The dragon launched off of the ground with an explosion of kicked-up dirt, sending dozens of undead humanoids tumbling away. Every living soul on the wall turned to look, including Nenophar and On’esquin. The creature was majestic, clearing the wide swath of land beyond the outer city in a single flap as it turned toward the wall to save the survivors.
Then, everything changed.
Far out past the dragon and any portion of the city, the column of black smoke that continued to hover over the quarry began sending out tendrils far darker than the evening sky. Accompanying the ebon strands, a pack of the black-winged creatures Ilarra had seen with Nenophar during their approach to the city suddenly appeared, racing toward the dragon and ignoring everything else.
The dragon made it one flap further, getting partway across the outer city before the smoke-like tendrils caught up with it. The bands of darkness wrapped around the dragon’s tail and legs, stopping his forward momentum so abruptly Ilarra could see pain and surprise flash across his reptilian face.
Far off to her right, Ilarra could heard Nenophar’s screams as his brother fell from the sky and crashed into the abandoned homes of the outer city seconds before the winged creatures descended on him. In moments, she could not even see the dragon for all the moving bat-like creatures swarming over his body. The tendrils yanked him toward the quarry, dragging him with enough force that stone buildings collapsed with each jerking movement. The dragon left a trail of torn ground where his claws had dug in.
Ilarra forced herself to look away, knowing there was nothing she could possibly do that a dragon would not be more than capable of doing himself. Even if she could, more than half the outer city lay between them, with all of its undead keeping her from any chance of getting to him. As she lowered her eyes, the dragon’s screams began to echo off the city. He was dragged past the last buildings and onto the plains, where the tendrils could drag him all the faster.
Numbly turning toward Nenophar, Ilarra saw On’esquin was holding him back as he struggled to go after his brother. A second later, Nenophar collapsed, and On’esquin held him as he wept.
In the other direction on the wall, the defenders also stared in shock at the dragon’s frantic throes, any shred of hope they had possessed gone with him. She already knew what they were thinking—if a dragon could die, what hope did they have? Nothing was going to save them now.
Though she had never been one to know pride in her own abilities or successes, Ilarra could seek out any number of reasons among the Turessian influences in her mind to understand that emotion. She clung to it for confidence, knowing that by convincing others she could help them—no matter what the truth might be—and that would be their only chance. Ilarra forced herself to walk with some degree of steadiness, her partially healed leg feeling wooden whenever she put weight down on it. She made her way slowly back to the group, shoving aside a zombie that stood in her path, toppling it.
“You,” she snapped at the nearest soldier, whose stare made her wonder if he even heard her, “start marching south. We’re going to use the alleys and follow the western wall around and make for the south gate.
”
No one moved. Several of the men nervously glanced between the zombies that continued to stand quietly and Ilarra, their eyes going to her cradled arm. Greth did not appear to even hear her, his attention still entirely on Raeln, who had not budged.
“Now!” Ilarra growled at the man, this time limping over to confront him, even though he was far taller than her. “Start walking or we’ll leave you behind.”
More than one of the defenders looked down at Raeln and Greth, as if seeking confirmation from someone they had fought beside before agreeing to anything she said. Though he continued to tend to Raeln and did not so much as glance at the soldiers to see they were waiting for him to react, Greth said loudly, “Take everyone and go.”
“We’re all leaving,” she insisted, trying to decide if grabbing the man by the scruff of his neck would help or hurt her efforts.
Greth lifted his head slowly and caught the eyes of the woman nearest him, who had been standing with her weapon limply held in her hand as if she were barely aware of what was going on anymore. “Go with her. Drag anyone who’s still too shaken to make the decision for themselves,” he told the woman.
The female soldier started walking, taking most of the group with her. Those who lagged behind were escorted by the others. They headed toward the stairs slowly, still cautious around the unmoving undead. Within moments, Ilarra, Raeln, and Greth were the only living people on that section of the wall.
“I’m not leaving you behind,” she warned Greth, taking a step toward him.
Immediately, he snarled at her, tensing and baring his teeth like a cornered animal. Something in his demeanor told her that there would be no hesitation before attacking her if she tried to force him. “If I move him, he’ll bleed out before we get off the wall,” Greth finally told her, calming ever so slightly and lowering his head until he his forehead on Raeln’s shoulder. “We’ll find our way out once he comes to.”