by Tracey Alley
**********
Wulfstan had crept quietly away from the shack, his heart pounding in his ears, chest constricted with fear. He knew well the risk he was taking, knew that the odds of him succeeding were exceedingly small; but Wulfstan also knew he had no alternative. This was something that had to be done and he was the logical, in fact, the only choice. Still, knowing that did not ease the fear he felt nor did it prevent Wulfstan’s deep sense of unease and exposure; alone, unarmed, in the dark.
Although their panicked retreat from the undead attack had been a completely random dash away from the cemetery site Wulfstan had always possessed a very good sense of direction. He felt certain he could find his way back, even though his very blood ran cold at the thought of moving closer towards the skeletons and zombies that had attacked them. Regardless of his fear he would have to make his way back to the attack site and begin his search for a temple from there. It seemed perfectly reasonable to suppose that where there was a cemetery there would also be a temple. Only one thing troubled Wulfstan about the plan. What if the temple, assuming that it would even be there, was as deserted as the cemetery had been?
Wulfstan steeled himself to put such thoughts out of his mind for the moment. He would deal with each situation as it happened and not worry about what might happen; he had learned that lesson well from his military instructors during the past two years. For a soldier, he and the other recruits had been told, it was imperative to live in the moment, looking neither too far forward and not looking backward at all. To him it had all made perfect sense. In fact he had enjoyed his compulsory military training so much that he was already enrolled to join Vestland’s standing army and due to take up his post upon his return from this trip to Karameikos. If he returned from Karameikos, he added silently to himself.
Wulfstan moved through the dark woodlands as quietly as possible; his years of hunting in Vestland’s woods now standing him in good stead. He had been told during his years of training that the undead had no sense of smell; he prayed to all the gods he could think of that the information he had been given was correct. However he also knew that their lacking a sense of smell would not prevent them from being able to track their prey nor would that affect their ability to see or hear him. Wulfstan’s only hope, and consequently the only chance to protect both the High King who had been like a father to him and the Crown Prince who was his best friend, was for him to remain unseen and be as silent as the night.
As he slipped quietly through the darkness Wulfstan found himself thinking about his childhood. He knew nothing of his parents, both of whom Wulfstan had been told, had died when he was a babe in arms. Wulfstan had been brought to the palace of High King Erich and Queen Urda before he could even walk or talk and he had been raised by the royal couple as though he were one of their own. Not once in all his twenty summers had he ever been made to feel as though he did not belong in the palace. The same held true for Ming, another orphan raised by the King and Queen, and a close friend to himself and Slade, along with Ursula the Princess of the Blood.
When he was younger Wulfstan had given no thought to his status, or lack thereof, had not really even considered that he was an orphan for he had certainly not been treated as such. It was only as he grew older that he had first come to understand his position; that he was not the natural son of High King Erich and Queen Urda, and that he owed his very existence to their charity. As he had come to understand more Wulfstan had felt an incredible sense of gratitude towards the royal couple but he had also felt an increasing sense of curiosity about why High King Erich had chosen to adopt both himself and Ming.
Wulfstan and Ming were the only orphaned children that lived in the palace and both of them had been treated like children of the Blood. Yet he knew well, especially once he had grown older, there were far more orphans in Vestland than simply Ming and himself. Even though the very act of his questioning seemed almost a disloyalty to his adoptive parents Wulfstan could not stop himself from wondering why they, of all the possible orphans in Vestland and indeed in all The Kingdoms, had been chosen.
Wulfstan’s introspective thoughts were halted abruptly as he drew near the site of the initial attack. By this time the Sapphire moon was just beginning its ascent and the shadows created in the woods by the soft blue light it shed made its appearance more frightening than comforting; especially this close to the abandoned cemetery, which he could just now make out at the edge of his vision. Drawing closer to the huge tree he was standing half-hidden behind he could see the dozens of skeletons and zombies that had attacked earlier still picking over the bloody remains of the three horses.
Until this moment Wulfstan had not known that the undead actually consumed living flesh. Although he had been instructed in the ability and willingness of the undead to kill, to have others join their unholy ranks, he had not been aware that they would eat the remains of their victims. He had not even known that they could eat. Was it, he wondered, because the only victims of the skeletons and zombies had been horses or would that become his own fate if the undead caught him? Was that the reason, Wulfstan wondered, that those killed by the undead rose again to become themselves undead, because they had been consumed? He quickly shook his head; he could not allow these types of thoughts to cloud his mind and possibly jeopardize his mission.
Resolutely Wulfstan went through all that he had been taught about the undead by his instructors, every one of whom was either a seasoned army veteran or one of the highly trained Knights of Ilmater, men and women in a position to know the truth behind their words. The undead could only be harmed by blessed weapons and the undead always attacked in large numbers. Those were the two greatest strengths possessed by both skeletons and zombies. There were other types of undead, vampires and ghouls for example, who had other strengths but fortunately Wulfstan did not have to deal with that particular problem.
However, and Wulfstan took some small comfort from the memory, he had also been told that the undead were known to move fairly slowly in comparison to humans. Thinking back over the initial attack he tried to remember exactly how it had occurred. As he let the memory unfold in his mind he could see again the undead reaching up en masse from their abandoned graves, their deadly touch instantly killing the horses. Yet in spite of the fact that the touch alone of the undead could kill, their movements actually were relatively slow and cumbersome. Had the group had a blessed weapon in their possession they would not have had to flee the site on foot, they would have been able to easily defend themselves. With no blessed weapon, however, they had been as vulnerable as the horses.
That being the case, if Wulfstan could get a sense of where the temple might lie, then there was a good chance that he would be able to outrun them to the sanctity of holy ground. At the moment, however, that seemed a far more difficult task than he had anticipated; every direction he looked in showed only the same woodlands he had just crept through. He realized quickly that he could be looking right in the direction of the temple, assuming that there even was a temple, and not be able to see it through the trees. Wulfstan realized he had no choice; he would have to leave the relative sanctuary of his current position and try to edge around the perimeter of the cemetery to try and find a temple.
Wulfstan felt his stomach contract at the very thought of moving out of this relative safety zone. He found that he could not tear his eyes away from the bloody scene as the skeletons and zombies tore chunks of flesh away from the mercifully dead horses. Even in the minimal light cast by the Sapphire moon he could see all too clearly the blood dripping on the bones of the skeletons and oozing from the graying flesh of the zombies. Perhaps, he thought, the horses would be enough to satiate them. Perhaps there was no need for him to go any further and he could creep back to the abandoned shack, to Slade and King Erich.
Again Wulfstan shook his head, his heavy black hair falling across his eyes; those were the thoughts of a coward, not a soldier he told himself. Peop
le were counting on him to fulfill a mission and he realized slowly that it didn’t really matter who those people were, be they High King and Crown Prince or commoner, as a soldier it was his duty to protect, his duty to fight. Standing there in the darkness, for the first time, Wulfstan truly and completely understood what it meant to be a soldier. In that moment he felt he had never been more certain of his decision to join the army.
Forcing himself to breathe slowly and evenly Wulfstan crept quietly around the edge of the tree and began to move, as silently as possible, in a wide circle around the perimeter of the abandoned cemetery. Slipping noiselessly from tree to tree he paused frequently, both to ensure that the undead remained occupied and to peer through the gloom for any indication of a temple. It was a journey that by necessity he had to take one silent step at a time; if he could see the undead then they would surely see him if they should glance his way. For how long Wulfstan made that terrifying trek he did not truly know. The Opal moon had begun to rise, shedding more soft light to the dark woods, before he spotted the temple. Simply the sight of