Another leaped after it, snagging the end of the line. The second creature had only gotten a foot upward when a third of the undead grabbed it by the legs and hauled itself up to the other's waist. The first of them came after Blays, who was now climbing hand over hand. A fourth Blighted added its weight to the others hanging from the bottom of the rope. Five feet below the roof's edge, a length of sheet tore away.
Blays fell on top of a pile of Blighted. More awake now, he kicked himself free of their reaching hands and popped to his feet. He drew his swords, slashing through the tangle of bodies, then took one step to his left, perhaps to find a doorway into the building.
But the mass of the enemy had already arrived. They came at him less like living things and more like a power of nature, a flood or a gale-fed fire. His swords cleaved back and forth, dropping one after another; within moments, he was ringed by their corpses, but the ones still on their feet were hissing and screeching, calling others from the nearby streets, who screeched in answer.
Blays had shrugged off his pack and fought nimbly enough, but Dante could tell at a glance that something was off with his left leg, injured in the fall. Even if he were able to cut a hole through the enemy—which seemed less and less possible the more of them crowded to surround him—he wouldn't be able to make a break for it.
Dante scooped up a broken tile and hurled it down into the masses of Blighted. "His leg's hurt. If neither of you can heal him, he's not getting out of this."
"My power, it is spent," Winden said.
"What about your trace?"
"My what?"
He shook his head; there was no time to explain, let alone teach her how to access it. "Gladdic?"
"Mine is all but gone as well," Gladdic said. "This will mark the very last of what I can spend."
He extended his hand, his fingers contorting and stiffening like those of a corpse under the rigor. His eyes seemed to sink into their sockets as he plumbed within himself, sending a tight stream of shadows down to Blays. With a glimmer, they vanished into his left leg.
"That's a start," Blays shouted over the clack of steel cutting through bone. "Now how about getting me out of here?"
"We're out of rope," Dante said. "And nether. Just shadowalk away!"
"Of course! Do that thing I ran out of the ability to do hours ago!"
"Your swords are still working. That means you've got more nether left in your trace. Can't you use that?"
"No!"
If Blays had more to say, he was interrupted by faltering on one of the bodies piling up beneath him, which were now three or four deep. This gave him a height advantage over his foes, but the footing, being much more pliable than your typical ground, was treacherous.
Feeling grossly useless, Dante found a few more broken tiles to throw down at the teeming enemy. Blays tried to cut a path down from the bodies, but a dozen arms raked at him, pushing him back. He now stood on a waist-high pile, forcing the undead to climb up at him.
He slipped again, dropping to one knee. The instant his swords stopped their dance, the Blighted flung themselves at him like salmon leaping up a wild river. He disappeared under their weight.
"No!" Winden blurted.
Dante grabbed at the nether like a drowning man to a line, ready to shadowburn himself into a coma if that's what it took. But the river was dry, and the nether was as still as a limestone hill.
Blays screamed—but the sound, at first pained, transformed into a roar. Blighted toppled away, sliding down the sides of the hillock of the dead. A purple blade broke free, hoisted into the sky, followed by Blays' bloody head.
"Come on then!" he boomed. "I'll heap you up like the Dundens! Until your blood runs as deep as the Chanset! Until the lich himself looks away in the horror of what I've done!"
He laid about with both swords, flesh and blood spraying in all directions. But the Blighted were all too happy to answer his challenge.
Gladdic's fingers dug into Dante's arm like old iron. "You must do something!"
"Like what?" Dante said. "I have nothing left!"
"I do not know! But if you do nothing, he will die!"
"Oh, to hell with it." Dante cast off his pack and took hold of the short length of sheets hanging down the front of the building. "Find a way to make this long enough to reach us or we're both dead!"
He belted out something that was meant to be a battle cry, but was perhaps more squeak than he would have liked. He swung from the roof and hung from the last knot of the rope. There, he drew his sword and dropped into the melee, landing on top of a Blighted and driving his sword down through its chest.
Blays barked in surprise, halving an undead as it drove toward Dante. "Lyle's balls! What do you think you're doing?"
"Saving you!"
"By getting killed and letting them eat you so they're not hungry for me?"
Dante swept his weapon in a forehand, felling one Blighted, then backhanded the next to come at him. "They're building a staircase for you. I thought I'd hasten the process."
"You can't possibly mean what I think you mean. This will never work!"
"It already is." Dante stepped back, letting his latest kill collapse in front of him. "The only question is whether we can finish it before these swords suck up the last of our traces."
"So about two to five minutes? What do we do then, start punching them?"
"If that's what you'd like to do with your hands. I'll be using mine to show the gods exactly what I think of them."
They were now standing on a heap of bodies six feet high. Some of the Blighted were reduced to running up at them like a dog up the stairs, making it that much easier to cut them down and add them to the pile. Others slid down the sides as they died, but for each one that collapsed at the top, they gained another six inches of height.
But Dante could feel what was inside him getting thinner. His hands were shaking and his heart felt like it had to beat twice as fast to keep up, like it did whenever he drank far too much tea. The Odo Sein swords hacked and hewed—without them, they'd already have been dead a hundred times over—but even with the nether-charged blades that cut so easily through flesh and even bone, some of the Blighted made it through, ripping and bashing at them. Yet whenever one of the two men tripped on a body, or staggered under the pain of a new wound, the other moved in to guard him until he had recovered his feet beneath him.
"Well," Blays said. He had a Collener's tan, especially after all the sailing and outdoor work they'd recently been up to, but he now looked nearly as pale as the monsters they were slaughtering. "About at the end of my rope here."
"Rope is exactly what we're waiting for." Dante tried to glance up, but a Blighted scrambled up the heap to bowl into his knees. He stabbed down through its neck. "Gladdic! Winden! If you don't get us a rope in the next sixty seconds, then you better hope you live a long and happy life, or else I'm going to throttle you when we all get to the Mists!"
Behind him, shutters creaked open. "No rope," Winden said from what sounded like just over his shoulder. "But maybe you can use this not to die."
Dante shot a glance behind him. Above his head, but within easy arm's reach, the shutters of a window hung open: they had heaped up so many dead Blighted they had lifted themselves to the second floor.
"Get out," Blays said. "I'll be right behind you."
"If this is a heroic sacrifice—"
"I said get out!"
Dante tossed his sword through the window and jumped. He liked to think he was in very good shape for a sorcerer, who tended to be too skinny or too stout by half, but after the last few minutes of frenetic hacking and slashing, his arms had about as much strength as a clump of wilted spinach. Winden and Gladdic appeared in the window and helped haul him in.
As soon as Dante thudded to the floor, Blays' swords twirled through the window and clattered past him. Two hands appeared on the sill, bloody-knuckled and sweaty. Dante swayed to his feet and pulled Blays through.
He slammed the
shutters, locking them from the inside. All he wanted to do was sit down, rest his forehead on his knees, and let time pass as it would. But the Blighted were already jumping from the pile to scratch at the shutters. Another minute and they'd be piling themselves up for the others to climb inside.
"This way," Gladdic said. "Quickly now."
Using a candle to light the way, the priest led them through a room full of bunks and to a staircase. Beads of fluid dripped from Dante's face and arms. At first he assumed they were sweat, but it was too warm for that. It was the blood of scratches and bites. The battle-thrill was still running through his veins, but he knew that it would wear off soon, and he was going to pay.
Gladdic led them downstairs, blew out the candle, then took them to a door. This opened to a quiet street. They hurried down it. It was raining again, the water cool on Dante's feverish skin.
"We're closest to the north wall," he said. "But we're not that close. I'm thinking—"
Feet splashed through puddles. The four of them shrank against the dark face of a building. A half dozen Blighted ran through the intersection ahead. Dante waited a few seconds, then hurried on. As they neared the crossing, more footsteps sounded from their right, far more numerous than before. Again, they pressed themselves against the front of a building, meaning to hide, but the footsteps slowed. Gladdic bared his teeth, edged toward the door, and tried it.
It opened. He beckoned them inside, then guided the door shut.
The interior was exceedingly dark, but with so many Blighted outside, there was no question of lighting a candle, even with the shutters closed. They let their eyes adjust. They stood in a vaulted room, a massive chandelier glinting dimly above them. The furniture was elaborately carved.
"I have dined here before," Gladdic murmured. "Quickly, check the windows."
There were a great deal of them—they were in the house of a lord, or a wealthy merchant, and the premises were as spacious as a cathedral—but that also meant the servants had been scrupulous about closing tight all shutters and bolting and barring every door. With Blighted coming and going outside, the four of them went to a study on the second floor where they could keep an eye on the streets and wait for an opportunity to make a break for it.
"We'll have to wait until it's completely empty," Dante said. "We can't risk another fight. Our swords are on the brink of failing. Against numbers like these, we'll never survive with mundane weapons."
Blays had found another sheet and began to shred it—for bandages, this time. "Not unless one of you harvests us a bunch of new arms to wield enough swords to keep them at bay."
"We've got to figure something else out." The study held a fireplace. Dante went to it and fished out a piece of wood reduced to charcoal. Using it, he drew a semicircle on the hearth, bisecting it down the middle.
"Here's the city." Next, he drew an X just to the right of the bisecting line, and nearly two-thirds of the way toward the top of the semicircle. "Here's us. I've been trying to take us north. That's where we're closest to the wall. But the Blighted only seem to be growing thicker. I think we should try heading east instead."
"That's a lot further," Blays said. "But that's where Pressings last fought. The whole area should be evacuated. If there's no people there, there won't be many Blighted, either."
"That's what I'm thinking. Or hoping. And if the gods really love us, we might even find somewhere safe to recover for a while."
He and Blays saw to the wounds they'd suffered during the last battle, many of which were still leaking blood. Once this was done, Blays went to work tying together a new rope for himself. He had some thirty feet of cut sheets knotted into a line when the downstairs shutters began to rattle.
"They are upon us," Gladdic said wearily.
Dante rose to his feet. "They don't know that anyone's in here. They could get bored and move on."
As they headed for the stairs, a Blighted began to pound on a second window. Gladdic shook his head. "We cannot make it through another fight. You have said so yourself. Our time is upon us. All that is left is to die well."
"Part of the reason I haven't died yet is I just refuse to do so. Do the same, and I swear we'll find a way out of this."
They reached the ground floor. The pounding heightened, then stopped abruptly. They all stood perfectly still in the darkness, barely daring to breathe.
A Blighted hammered at the shutters next to the front door, causing them all to jump. The attack was heavier than before: it had gone to find a stone.
"Well this is shit," Blays said. "A great big stream of it. And when you're in a stream of shit, you can't even drown yourself without—"
"The shit is not to be feared." A light had entered Gladdic's eyes; he laughed happily. "Instead, it may be our salvation."
He ushered them to a staircase down to a musty basement. There, he lit a candle, showing beehive-like wine racks lining the walls and unknown goods sealed away in casks and crates. He crossed the floor, which looked worn and ancient. Stone coffins were set into deep holes in the walls. He came to a door set into the furthest wall. Its seams were sealed with a waxy substance that turned out, in fact, to be wax.
Gladdic tugged on the handle. It didn't budge. He tried again, then fell back, breathing hard.
"Let me handle this," Blays said. He grabbed the ring, set his feet, and pulled. The door swung open, bathing him in the reek of human feces. "What the hell is this? Where shit goes to die?"
Gladdic stepped inside. "Precisely. This is the old sewer."
"We're not traveling through the sewer!"
"It will not be as bad as you think."
"How do you mean? It's a sewer!"
"It is. But no one will have contributed to it in hours." The old man beckoned to them. "This way! Toward the river!"
Dante stepped inside, breathing through his mouth, though in a way that was much worse. Gladdic closed the door. Winden got out more candles, lighting them from Gladdic's flame.
"No thanks," Blays said. "I'd rather not see where we're going."
The door had been on the north side of the basement. After descending a short earthen ramp, Gladdic turned left, hiking up his robes and striding purposefully forward, the current of the water burbling along beside them. The tunnel looked to be a natural one, an underground stream that had been set to the use of channeling waste to the Chanset. Dante hoped the matter on its banks was mud.
"If this is taking us to the river, maybe we should head north after all," Dante said. "There might be fewer of the enemy along the shores."
Gladdic ducked to avoid a root protruding from the wall. "I would not count on that. I suggest we travel south instead."
"That's a great idea," Blays said. "The enemy will never suspect us of traveling away from any way out."
"But there is a way out, you fool. Out to sea. We will find a small boat and let the current carry us beyond the walls. Once we are outside this cursed city, we can row around it, make landfall beyond the spying eyes of the lich, and hasten to rejoin Nak and Duke Pressings."
"Not a bad idea. Why didn't one of us think of that before we found ourselves marching through an automatic turd conveyor?"
"You should not be complaining. You should be offering your thanks to the gods. There are few places in the city with access to this stream."
It smelled very far from good, but Dante was already getting used to it. And he was so tired of running from and fighting with the Blighted that walking through waste was a welcome change of pace. After a while, he no longer gave any thought to where they were—or, really, to anything else at all.
Now and then they passed short inclines dug out from the walls. Presumably, these led up to other doors like the one they'd used in the manor. Gladdic ignored them all. Fifteen minutes later, the tunnel ended at a brick wall, with a wide brick pipe funneling the stream out into the river.
Gladdic looked about the chamber, then nodded to himself and picked his way up a shallow slope to what appeare
d to be a blank wall. But there was a door there as well. He pulled the handle, opening it easily.
Blays narrowed his eyes. "Were you faking with the other one?"
"Quiet. This is not the time for questions."
They moved out into a small stone room barely large enough to hold the four of them. The door out was locked, but the key was hanging from the wall. They exited the little room into the sweetest night air Dante had ever tasted.
They had emerged from a stone vault grown over with trees and shrubs. As softly as they could, they fought their way through the thorns toward the dark belt of the river. They extracted themselves and came to the shoreline.
Other than a couple of fires, the western half of the city was completely dark, without a single lit window. Although Dante had just been disillusioned of the river's purity, the smell of the fresh water all but compelled him to dive in and wash off anything that had clung to him during their trek through the underground stream.
"North from here, I believe." Gladdic's voice was barely audible. "There are fishermen's docks there. We will find the manner of boat we seek."
They tramped northward. Dante felt stubbornly opposed to the idea of traveling in the opposite direction of their goal, but he supposed Gladdic knew the city much better than he did. Within a minute, they heard splashing not far ahead, and ducked down into the grass. A group of Blighted emerged from the river and walked east into the city, not bothering to slick the water from their bodies.
Gladdic advanced cautiously, beckoning them to get down whenever they heard a sound. Yet it was only a matter of minutes before they came to a motley collection of docks and shacks. The air stank heavily of fish in various states of decay, but after the sewer, it didn't seem all that bad.
It was still raining lightly and all the boats had some water in the bottom. They chose one that looked the best-maintained, then untied from the dock cleat and rowed out just enough to put them into the current. Then they pulled in the oars and hunkered behind the gunwales, gliding along the eastern shore at a good walking speed.
Now and then they saw a mass of Blighted slog out of the water and run off to hunt for survivors, but not one in ten of the undead glanced back at the river, and none took any notice of the dinghy carrying silently along the surface. Now that Dante wasn't moving, his arms and legs began to ache. A complete fatigue hung over him like a constellation.
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