The Spear of Stars

by Edward W. Robertson

  "Look at that." He motioned to the window.

  Dante peered outside. "Look at what? I don't see anything."

  "Exactly. The idiots are so hungry for meat they didn't leave anyone to watch the streets. Which means…"

  He got on his pack, then grabbed the sheets he'd tied to the desk, held on tight, and swung out the window. Letting out a bit of rope at a time, he lowered himself down the face of the Chenney, which aside from the occasional window was all but featureless, presumably to prevent people like Blays from climbing up it. With a few feet of sheet to spare, Blays reached the ground. He pressed himself against the wall and lifted his arm.

  Dante sent Winden down next, then Gladdic. He descended last, the rain dampening his clothes. His pack weighed him down, but the hour of rest he'd had had been good for him, and he made it to the street without any trouble.

  "We'll head north," Blays said. "That's the shortest distance to—" He snapped his mouth shut. Up the street, bare feet slapped against the wet cobbles. "More change of plan. Back inside."

  He ran along the face of the building to the pried-open shutters, stepping inside.

  Dante was right after him. A piece of broken glass ground under his boot. "What are you doing?"

  "Living," Blays whispered. "The Blighted have all gone upstairs. Take us down to the tunnel."

  Dante laughed in understanding. He motioned to the others, bringing them across the dark floor. Splintered furniture spewed from the mouth of the stairwell. The sound of footsteps and fists pounding doors echoed from upstairs. Dante brought them to an out-of-the way corner of the room and pulled back a thick tapestry, revealing a hole in the wall. A set of steps led down into blackness.

  He descended blindly, toeing his way forward, left hand trailing along the wall. Once they were assembled at the bottom, Gladdic conjured up a pea-sized ball of ether, shedding light across the tunnel, which was just a little wider than the average hallway, making it significantly smaller than the yawning one Dante had excavated beneath the palace. He half expected to be met with another swarm of Blighted, but the passage was empty. He jogged forward.

  "Where does this lead?" Gladdic said.

  "To that tower over there," Dante said, gesturing vaguely. "The one with the brown and orange bricks."

  "The Wrightly. And is there another tunnel from there?"

  "Just one more. I didn't want all of our strongholds accessible to each other in case the Blighted found a way to use them against us."

  They came to the next staircase, leading up to the ground floor of the Wrightly. Gladdic snuffed his light. Blays ascended first. When he reached the top, he stopped, causing Dante to bump into him.

  "Tapestry's been pulled down," Blays murmured, motioning to where it had been tossed to the side, leaving the doorway exposed. "Eyes sharp."

  He edged into the room beyond. It was almost completely dark, but there was no sound of any Blighted scurrying about. Blays moved to one of the windows.

  He pulled back and shook his head. "They're in the street. We either hole up here, or take the next tunnel."

  "They're searching the entire neighborhood," Dante said. "Unless you know a way to make us look like four harmless chairs just sitting around doing chair things, I suggest we find somewhere else more quiet."

  He had forgotten exactly where he'd put the second tunnel to the next of the makeshift forts and it took some blundering about in the dark before he found the other tapestry. One of its corners had fallen or been torn down. He inspected it for claw marks, but didn't see any damage.

  Blays brought them down into the next tunnel. Dante activated his torchstone. Strands of a spiderweb hung from the left wall, but there were none across the passage. Shallow pools of water glistened from the floor. Either there was a spring down here Dante hadn't noticed while excavating, or all of the recent rain had caused a leak. He examined the ceiling, then attempted to move into it to feel if it was in danger of collapse, but the nether acted like he wasn't even there.

  "Hello!" Blays' swords leaped into his hands, doubling the light in the tunnel. Across from him, a mass of Blighted stirred from whatever had been occupying them, throwing their hands across their eyes. "You appear to be trespassing. Allow me to return you to your rightful home."

  He was already slashing into them, the Odo Sein blades casting off black and white and purple sparks as they cleaved into the enemy. He downed three of them before they knew what was happening and two more before the others threw themselves at him. He backed off, shifting posture to allow Dante to form up on his right. Dante turned his shoulders to open more space, jabbing his sword into the chest of a Blighted. The creature wriggled forward, reaching for his face. Dante jerked his arm to the side, cutting through its ribs and casting it to the ground.

  Before he had time to reform his guard, another Blighted jumped at him, plowing into his chest. It bit hard on his neck. Its breath smelled of an old pond. Dante tucked his chin, but it still might have bitten his throat out if not for the flecks of ether Gladdic threw into the side of its head. The assailant fell back, foaming and jerking. Dante swept off its head.

  He would have spat on it, but the next one was already running forward and probably would have tackled him if it hadn't tripped on the corpse. Instead, it flopped down in front of him. He stabbed it through its thin and matted black hair. Despite the narrowness of the tunnel, two more of them launched themselves at him at the same time. He fell back, slashing upward at one and cutting off most of its arm. The wounded Blighted spun to the ground, only to bite and claw at Dante's right leg as he drove his blade through the other's skull.

  Dante staggered to the side, clunking his head against the hard dirt wall. He kicked his leg, doing nothing to dislodge the undead from it, then put his back to the wall, freeing his sword enough to poke it through the Blighted's eye and out the back of its head.

  Blays was battling two others. He put them both down before Dante could close on them, sheathing his swords before the bodies hit the ground.

  "They bit you?" Dante said.

  "Here and there." Blays clamped his hand to a wound on his other forearm. "Unfortunately for them, they weren't wielding their two-handed teeth."

  Gladdic craned his neck. "I can stop the bleeding."

  Blays waved him off. "I've gotten harder bites from Minn. Save whatever strength you've got left."

  Dante and Winden quickly bandaged his injuries, some of which were bleeding freely but none of which were serious, then Winden set to patching up Dante. She was clipping the last bandage in place when the smack of footsteps sounded behind them.

  The four of them exchanged a look and broke into a run toward the third tower. The noise of the Blighted became an incoherent mass, suggesting dozens of pairs of feet. As they came to the stairs up to the third tower, Dante glanced back and saw pale, angry faces in the fringe of the light.

  He was last up. As soon as he exited the stairs, he dug into his trace. Withdrawing more of it from himself ached in exactly the same way that a hand numbed by the cold regains its feeling. He moved into the stone floor and pulled it shut over the stairs, sealing them off.

  He backed up. The blood was rushing away from his head and he leaned against a wall for support. Fists pounded on the floor from below, muffled by the rock.

  The room snapped into pitch blackness. For a second, Dante thought he had passed out, but he could still feel the cool stone wall against his arm.

  "My torchstone," he said, still dizzy and sounding like a simpleton. "It's run out of torch."

  Fabric ruffled against itself: Gladdic's robe, as he gestured a small light into being. It faded quickly, but the room was still exposed by the flickering candle he had used the ether to light. Winden used his to light one of her own.

  The pounding on the seal stopped. Blays listened a few seconds, then grunted. "They're on their way back to the other tower. That gives us about five minutes to get out of here before they're all over us."

  They
exited the closet where Dante had installed the stairs and went into the main room. This, as it turned out, was a temple of Gashen, with many tall windows to let in as much sunlight as possible. In preparation for the siege, however, these had been boarded up. Blays motioned for the others to stay where they were and headed toward the double doors. Gently, he pushed one open just wide enough to get a look outside.

  He closed it a second later, bolting it and going for the massive wooden bar leaning next to the left door. "We can't run. There's enough of them out there to found their own city. Which I hope they do, because that might distract them long enough for us to finally get out of this one."

  "What do you suggest we do if not run?" Gladdic said. "Sit in here and wait?"

  "No," Blays said. "You don't have to sit."

  Gladdic moved to one of the boarded-up windows. "Inspect them all. If the Blighted from the tunnel return outside, these barriers will be the only things keeping us alive."

  Dante pried at one of the boards. "Who on earth decided it was a good thing to try to make a fortress out of a place with so many windows?"

  Blays made a thoughtful sound. "Come to think of it, I believe that was your decision!"

  "Well, why didn't someone stop me?"

  All of the windows seemed firmly barricaded. Dante didn't think there were any other doors into the place, but checked around to be sure. There was a second floor on top of the tall first one, and a blocky rise that was more tower than spire on top of that. None of it seemed like anything the Blighted would be able to access.

  His inspection, quick as it was, felt like it should have allowed enough time for the Blighted that had chased them down the now-sealed tunnel to have gone back and returned to the temple through the streets. But while there were undead enough roaming the grounds outside, none seemed interested in the building. Maybe the ones that had been chasing them had gotten distracted, or assigned to a new task.

  He returned downstairs and sat on a velvet-covered bench and thought about where they were, how much further it was to the northern wall, and whether there were any other tunnel systems or hidden routes they might be able to take along the way. Just as he was about to finish his mental map, someone tugged on the door.

  The others looked up. The outsider pulled again, harder, but Blays had barely been able to lift the wooden bar across the doors and it would take a battering ram to overcome it. Multiple hands went to work on the outer handles, rattling the doors; then they pounded upon them, at first with the some thumps of bare fists, then with the hard crack of stones and tools. At the same time, the pounding resumed on the stone seal over the staircase.

  "Question," Blays said. "If they break inside, do we have any way out of here?"

  Dante thought. "Yes. Suicide."

  "That strikes me as a bit counterproductive."

  "You asked for a way out. If you want a way to get out alive, you should specify that next time."

  Those at the door continued to bash at it, but others moved to the windows, shattering the glass and savagely attacking the boards that had been put up behind the panes. Planks rattled. It was only a matter of moments before some began to splinter. Nails squeaked as they were jarred loose.

  "More light!" Blays called.

  Dante made to get out more candles, but Gladdic strode to the lamps at the dais at the back of the room, lighting them with his wick. Warm yellow light spilled across the room along with the cozy scent of burning oil.

  On the right side of the room, a board gave way with a squeal of nails and clattered to the stone floor. Snow white arms reached through the gap and clawed at the air. Blays ran to the break, drawing a sword and giving it a twitch. Two severed hands plopped to the ground.

  The other arms withdrew and resumed bashing with rocks and clubs. With a crack, a second board bowed inward.

  "Another minute, and they'll be doing the same thing to our bones!" Blays said. "What about the tunnel?"

  Dante shook his head. "It's filled with them."

  "About that suicide, then. Did you want to kill yourself? Or should we kill each other?"

  "Below's out." Dante muttered the words to himself. "But that doesn't rule out above. Hold them off for another minute!"

  There were two symmetrical sets of stairs up to the second floor. Dante ran up one of them as quick as he could, then to the stairwell in the central tower, taking it all the way up to the roof.

  The upper floor of the tower was still hot and stuffy from the heat of the day and he burst from it into a welcomely cool night. Below him, Blighted hammered away at the boards. Others ran through the streets in all directions. He thought he'd have to carve a rock out from the roof, but he found a loose one fallen inside the ledge of the building.

  He got his longest sheet-rope from his pack and knotted one end around the rock. He stepped back from the ledge, then ran toward it and threw the bundle as hard as he could toward the closest building. The distance wasn't that far, but the rope unfurled and dragged against the stone's progress, causing it to plummet quickly, toward the street—but it bounced on the very edge of the other roof.

  Dante reached inside his trace. Shaking, feeling as though he might vomit, he liquefied the rock on the other roof and drew it over the stone he'd cast, locking it in place. The effort sent a wave of white light over his eyes, forcing him to sit down.

  The light faded, his sight returning. The center of the tower bore a giant marble statue of Gashen, war axe in one hand, a severed head held aloft in the other. Dante tied the loose end of the rope around the god's right foot, tugging it to test the knot.

  He ran back down to the second-floor landing as fast as he could. The light of the two lamps burned placidly, but the rest of the chamber was chaos: boards broken across the floor, hands and faces visible in the growing holes in the windows, severed arms bleeding on the floor, Blays and Winden running from window to window and hacking at anything that tried to climb through while Gladdic was in the middle of lighting one of the other barriers on fire.

  "Upstairs!" Dante said. "Before they break through!"

  Blays and Winden did some impressively ferocious stabbing, then turned and sprinted upstairs. Gladdic was right behind them; he had successfully set his window on fire, driving the Blighted away from it.

  "What's upstairs?" Blays said. "An appropriate height to kill ourselves from?"

  Dante led them up the hatch to the roof. Gladdic's head swiveled, following the rope from the statue of Gashen to the opposite building. "You mean to climb along this? Is it strong enough to hold us?"

  "Let's find out." Dante swung over the lip of the roof, grabbed the rope, and hooked his ankles over it, descending feet-first.

  His first few "steps" were slow and ungainly; his pack hung from his back, weighing on his fingers. Yet that was all the more reason to speed up before his grip gave way altogether. He shimmied downward as fast as he could. As he neared the middle, the rope sagged. He continued on, sure it would soon tear loose at either end, but he touched down on the other side without trouble.

  He scrambled back, waving his arms over his head. The others sent Winden next. She scuttled down the rope as quickly as she might walk along a shaded lane.

  As Gladdic took hold of the rope, Dante's heart sank—it somehow hadn't occurred to him that such a route might not be transversable by someone with only one hand—but the old man simply hooked his elbow over the line along with his ankles and slid downward, letting gravity deliver him to the waiting rooftop.

  Dante had a clear view of the side of the temple and could see the Blighted rushing inside through the holes they'd pounded through the windows. Blays grabbed the rope, dangling from it, then swung his ankles up and over it, moving downward with the skill of one of Naran's sailors in the rigging. Within a matter of moments, he was three-quarters of the way across.

  "Oh," Blays said.

  Dante would have wagered five hundred silver chucks that the next word out of his mouth was going to be precisely
four letters long, but Blays didn't have time to spit it out before the end of the rope pulled loose from the stone Dante had used to secure it to the roof.

  Without another word, he fell toward the street below.

  22

  Dante ran to the roof's edge, hand extended, as if Blays might somehow fly forward ten feet and grab it. Still on his way down, Blays dropped the makeshift rope and twisted his body, tucking his chin to his chest.

  He hit the ground with a heavy slap of limbs.

  "Blays!" Dante crouched at the edge of the gutters. Twenty feet below, Blays lay still. At either end of the street, Blighted turned around and gazed toward the disturbance.

  Dante reached for the nether. It didn't so much as twitch. His heart thundered, but he cleared his mind, waiting for the ether to fill it. A twinkle arrived, no more. He took hold of it and sent it down into Blays' body.

  Beside him, Winden looped another rope around a small chimney and cast it down into the street with the sough of unfurling fabric. Up the street, one of the Blighted uttered an owl-like shriek and broke into a run. Others followed.

  The ether limned Blays' form. He groaned and sat up.

  "The rope!" Dante yelled. "Grab the rope!"

  Blays planted his palm on a cobble and pushed himself to his feet. He was moving as slowly and automatically as if he was sleepwalking, yet he found his way to the rope, wrapped it around his left arm, and began to climb.

  Dante grabbed his end, attempting to pull it upward, but his boots found no purchase on the damp tiles. Blighted rushed down the street, arms waving madly. Blays hauled himself six feet from the ground, then eight. Knotted sheets dangled beneath him.

  Dante grimaced. "Pull it up behind you!"

  Blays glanced down, clearly befuddled, then hooked the lower end of the rope with his ankle and brought it up to his left hand. He began to reel it upward. Yet the nearest Blighted was already jumping for it, grasping it in its gaunt hands and climbing up toward Blays' legs.