Sebastian Van Graif gasped for air. With his blade planted point first into the ground, he was doubled over, seeking a moment’s respite from the violence.
Ghouls didn’t tire. They didn’t sweat or give way to fatigue. They were relentless, vicious, merciless, savage, and cold. Sebastian cursed himself; every second he didn’t fight, more Nosmerian life died. He was ready to collapse; if he did that, he’d fail everyone.
A ghoul saw him, snarled, and charged.
Sebastian stole the will to fight from reserves of desperation and adrenaline. He grabbed his blade and wrenched it from the ground. He moved at the black-eyed beast without reservation. It brandished a spear and had better reach; Sebastian had people, human lives, who depended on him. He parried the ghoul’s strike and ran the ghoul through the chest. It kept coming, so he grunted and planted a well-placed kick to its chest.
The ghoul almost looked surprised at its sudden change of momentum as it slammed against an outside wall in the alley. Sebastian fell back a few steps but readied himself to catch the ghoul’s second charge. He thrust his blade through its chest again, but this time, he found its heart, and it dropped as its eyes flashed. He stumbled out of the ally, panting as he regained his surroundings.
Commandant De Zwart had told him that everyone was trying to evacuate, but based on the screams and the civilians who fled before the monsters now, the city was still largely populated. ghouls ran among them and cut down everyone who resisted. After the lioness lich Sekhmet transported a unit of liches behind the artillery line, the human soldiers gave way quickly, surrendering their greatest weapons against the Rahashelians.
Julleck was a large city and the capital of the region. Even with their sharp advantage in numbers and ferocity, the ghouls would take quite some time to overcome it.
Sebastian also noticed them herding the noncombatants, probably to be turned into crops once they won the city. But they hadn’t won the city—not yet. There were still people who drew breath and defied those without a pulse.
Sebastian gripped the handle of his blade tighter. He could feel his blisters growing under his thick calluses, even through his sword gloves. His ears perked to rifle gas coming from the central market. Yes, there were other survivors there, other soldiers; he had to rendezvous with them.
He ran, passing humans and that occasional soldier. He immediately barked at those in uniform, rallying them to himself. He gathered a handful of five who would listen and ran them back to the central market. They ran into a group of three ghouls who were herding civilians eastward. Sebastian utilized his momentum and the element of surprise to cut them all down before his other five men could get off a shot.
The twenty or so surviving civilians regarded their savior in awe as he panted over the motionless ghouls.
“I’m Commandant Sebastian Van Graif of the Nine Fingers!” he announced as he flicked some black blood off of his sword. “Get everyone you can and evacuate south.”
“South?” someone cried. “We’re going west, to Macbare!”
“It’s too late for that,” Sebastian corrected them. “This city is surrounded to the west; you’d be running into a trap. Flee south to Shay.”
“Shay is too close to Stalpia!” one man cried. “There’s nothing there but ashes now!”
Sebastian frowned when he saw the man; he moved well enough and looked strong.
He leaped at the man, grabbed and threw him onto the cobbles below. After facing the militant undead, this human man fell with surprising ease and a cry of alarm. Behind him, a woman and two children cried out.
“What are you running for?” Sebastian said flatly, with absolutely no humor in his voice. “You’ll join me at the central market with the rest of my soldiers.”
“Let him go!” the woman cried.
“Is this your family?” Sebastian demanded. “You think you’ll escape Rahashel? Do you think he’ll stop and show you mercy? You Idiot! There is no life for your family unless Rahashel is stopped, and if you won’t stop him, no one will!”
“It’s not possible,” the man choked, cowering in Sebastian’s shadow. “You can’t stop him.”
“Not without you, I can’t.” Sebastian hauled the man to his feet by the collar. “All the men who can fight stay with me! Only the women and children can escape. This is war. You are now all soldiers, whether you like it or not.”
“I’ll fight!” A lone boy in his early teens stepped forward, with the ice of loss and the fire of wrath in his eyes.
The men turned to the youth in surprise, then, bowing their heads in shame, nearly all left their families to stand by Van Graif.
“You can flee to Shay or stay close. We’re joining the conflict in the central market.”
A ghoul shrieked as it leaped from the roof at Van Graif. The commandant gasped and spun; he thrust his blade up and found its heart. He stepped to the side and let the dead ghoul fall at his feet.
“Let’s go!” he hollered, whipping his blade over his head in circles. “Let’s show them that the living of Nosmeria are not so easily beaten!”
The men cried their assent and snatched any weapon they could find — Nosmerian, Rahashelian, or makeshift — and followed after the commandant.
The charge, with Sebastian in the front, managed to cut down the few ghouls they encountered. They rescued several groups of civilians, and their numbers grew until they had twenty-five fighting men and soldiers and twice as many civilians. Van Graif amended his evaluation of the strength of his little army as he noticed most of the women marching by their husbands’ and fathers’ sides with weapons in hand.
They found the central market in a mad skirmish. A mix of civilians and soldiers worked to build a barricade, but it was slow going. Sebastian’s eyes scanned the fighting and saw Commandant De Zwart trying to load a blunderbuss. He was trying to do it one-handed, as he was missing his other hand; the nub was covered by a bloody tourniquet and bandage. Despite the crippling wound, the stocky, wizened Commandant of Julleck was still fighting. Maybe he merited more respect than Sebastian initially had in store for him.
Sebastian turned on one of the first soldiers he had collected, and he had the lieutenant badge. “I’m going to forget the fact that I found you deserting. You’re in command of these people now. Aim for the heart, or overwhelm and restrain them with numbers. They’re much easier to kill if five others hold them down.”
The lieutenant gasped, “What about you, commandant?”
Sebastian pointed to Sekhmet, the lioness in the distance, with his sword. “I’m going to disrupt their command structure.”
His new lieutenant gave a crisp salute before relaying Sebastian’s instructions to the others in a louder voice.
Sebastian skipped into the melee and took down a handful of ghouls with deep stabs to the back as they engaged someone else. There was no honor lost in killing these corpse machines with their backs turned.
As he approached Sekhmet, he realized he wasn’t alone in his strategy. A Dinnian struck at her fiercely with dual compact scimitars. He kept them moving, deadly arches dancing around his body and raining down on the lich. She was bigger than the feline Bastet but also wore armor that actually covered her body.
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The Dinnian broke past her defense on several occasions, but her wounds would smoke and disappear. As Van Graif approached, she summoned a few tiles to refuel herself.
Sebastian drew near as she took a cut across the throat and plowed the Dinnian on his back with a vicious shove. She planted a powerful foot on his chest, making him gasp for air, and raised her weapon for the killing blow. Smoke billowed from her neck as it healed with supernatural speed.
Sebastian rammed his officer’s blade into her exposed armpit, through her heart, and out the other side. Her lion eyes grew wide as she fell back a step and choked. She looked at Sebastian in shock, then reset. Sebastian’s sword burned away inside her, and he fell back with a useless handle.
Sebastian leaped away and heaved the Dinnian back to his feet. With a growl, Sebastian threw his handle to the ground and looked around for a new weapon.
The Dinnian pressed one of his scimitars into Sebastian’s hand. “I’ll want that back.”
“Very nice!” Sebastian said as he gave it an experimental swipe, getting a feel for the weight. Sebastian was fond of all kinds of swords.
The commandant and Dinnian took their battle stances, facing the lioness. She was equipped with a heavy and oversized Khopesh. The half-straight half, the curved sword, was oddly exotic to be here, but it was standard Rahashelian equipment, and Rahashel fell from the sky, so nothing could really surprise him anymore.
“She likes to fight two-handed, but will switch it when you don’t expect it,” the Dinnian warned.
Sebastian nodded in acknowledgment.
She growled and attacked, and both men met her. Sebastian recognized that their mixed styles threw her off as she tried to get past their defenses.
The Dinnian kept his sword in motion; a block would whip out with a moulinet into a counter strike, and Sebastian wouldn’t strike unless he would hit, including to block; he blocked her strikes by pulling short and slashing at her hands.
Confronted by the two men paired together, she quickly fell behind and had to resort to pure defense; whenever she committed to an attack, she was rewarded by several strikes to any exposed flesh from both fighters. She snarled a lion snarl and cried out in clicks and airy gasps. Sebastian recognized it as the language of the dead: she was calling for backup.
“Watch your left!” Sebastian called.
A ghoul tried to flank the Dinnian with a battle ax, but the Dinnian spun on him in the last second to block.
The lioness had a gleam in her eyes as she struck at the exposed man. Sebastian was already swinging at her open side, but he realized mid-strike that she was taking a calculated risk. She would only heal, and after killing one of them, the other would be much easier.
Sebastian cried out as he shifted his strike in mid-motion, and their blades rang as he deflected her blade.
“Switch!” the Dinnian cried.
Sebastian ducked and cut from right to left across Sekhmet’s armored abdomen. The Dinnian’s scimitar glided over Sebastian’s head by inches as the Dinnian made a mirror strike to Sebastian’s, cutting her upper torso from left to right.
Sebastian came up from his maneuver and sank his blade into the axe wielding ghoul’s heart. It was much harder to do with a scimitar than an officer’s blade, but its curve was more subtle than a traditional scimitar, and it was shorter than its larger counterpart. It did its job even if it required a little extra force.
Sekhmet looked at them wide-eyed as she leaped away. “You two are the strongest mortal warriors I have fought in this world,” she said. “I’m sure Court Rahashel could find a use for you. Surrender, and you will be granted power beyond which you can imagine.”
Sebastian and the Dinnian looked at each other for a brief moment.
“Yeah, I think we’ll pass,” the Dinnian started, but the older man stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Surrender your ghouls, Sekhmet. Stop the attack and turn your forces on Stalpia. Then you can live,” Sebastian offered.
“You’re discussing my surrender?” Sekhmet laughed. “I salute you for your courage. I should have known that great warriors are seldom detached from their cause.” She held out a hand to summon more tiles, but nothing happened.
She glanced down with a faint look of surprise on her feline face.
“Missing something?” Van Graif asked as he pointed his blade at her. “Looks like my offensive team was successful. Now, where were we in our arrangements for your surrender?”
“Why reason with them?” Commandant De Zwart asked as he stepped next to them. He leveled his finally loaded blunderbuss, resting it over the forearm of his handless arm. “They will never turn against their master. You just need to blast ’em.”
He shot her at point-blank range, and she shrieked as she went down. The wounds smoked and started to disappear but stopped mid-process, leaving partially healed injuries.
“What’s this?” Sebastian asked her with a vicious edge to his voice. “Looks like you’re out of juice. Now … Tell your ghouls to stand down.”
Sekhmet turned and ran, hissing in the undead language as she did. The ghouls, warring in the market, all abandoned their current fight and ran to cover her retreat.
The fighters lifted their weapons, ready for the charging ghouls. Sebastian clenched his jaw in frustration. His sword felt so heavy he could barely raise it to a proper guard, and at least half a dozen shallow wounds all smarted across his body. If only he could have instantly healed the way a court was supposed to. That would have made this a lot easier.
“I don’t suppose now would be a good time to trouble someone for a drink of water?”
The ghouls slammed into them.
On the fields just outside the city, Julian bobbed and weaved. Bastet’s sickles cut around him, but the blades couldn’t find flesh. The surfing waves rushed out from the weapons to nudge him out of the way just before the strike found its mark. Surfing wasn’t foolproof, as a few stinging lacerations on his arms and legs would testify. Still, their strikes were growing more desperate and aggressive. The more aggression his attacker used, the stronger the surfing ripple would be, so it was getting easier.
“How are you doing this?” she shrieked. “You are a mortal!”
His veralumite had dried up a long time ago. Of the five martial disciplines, surfing was an outlier. Where the four others relied distinctly on Waarheid manipulation, surfers excelled without it. Despite its metaphysical nature, Waarheid was heavy in an ethereal sense. Like rock breaking a wave, slamming and surfing simultaneously was impossible. Ironically, a common way to immobilize a surfer was for a mover to fill them with Waarheid as too much would increase a body’s resistance to the surfing waves. A drained fighter and an aggressive enemy made the most ideal surfing conditions.
Julian had never been to the outskirts of Julleck before, and this fact weakened his ability to perceive and act on surfing waves. Surfing worked best in familiar environments. The environment he was familiar with was the battlefield, and that’s what kept him going.
If he tried to counter-attack, his hand would send its own surfing wave, affecting the swells from his enemies and upset the flow, leaving him vulnerable, so he didn’t try. He simply dodged and weaved as he tried to buy time.
Horus continued to shriek on his knees and claw at his gut. The spent tiles at his feet had grown considerably; there were probably a thousand.
Julian wished he could do more to defend himself. He could try to pull their waarheid from them, much the same way they attempted to leech him, but he was never very good at pulling. The high steward was a jack, meaning he diversified his boons at the expense of mastery of any of them. Julian specialized in slamming, pulsing, and clamping. He wasn’t even very good at any of them, but the mantle of steward came with perks.
Butler Kessels had perfected surfing and pulling. It was said he was untouchable and would leave his foes drained on the battlefield.
Bastet’s sickle grazed his neck, and he cursed. Alarm peeked through. Panic would break his focus and his calm. If he tightened, he would become heavier to the surfing pulses, and they wouldn’t move him as effectively.
“What’s happening?” Horus cried, his voice frantic. “The tiles! The tiles! They’re not com — ” The falcon-headed lich coughed and spat blood before falling over motionless on his side.
The other liches, including Bastet, Sobek, and four newcomers, each having a distinct animal head, stared at their fallen leader in shock.
“You … You killed him!” Bastet screamed before spinning on Julian, but Julian had been ready for this.
As soon as Horus died, Julian felt for his clamp on the Incentiviser and was already pulling on it. The dagger ripped from Horus’ body, still covered in his blood, and into Julian’s hand.
Julian stepped out of the surfing stream and stuck it into Bastet’s gut. She gasped and shrieked as it worked its way into her.
The other liches stepped back, glancing around in uncertainty. Julian took advantage of their stupor and danced back, waving his arms and seizing their Waarheid, then pulled it to himself. He managed to catch them all in his pull, but it was subtle. It would have been stronger if he could have gotten a hand on any of them, but skimming a little from so many was more than enough.
The various Waarheid changed from yellow to green as it filtered into him.
His eyes burned emerald. It wasn’t much, but it vibrated in his bones as he slammed it.
Bastet died at his feet, unable to pull tiles from the vault. Julian pulled the Incentiviser from her with his clamp. The Incentiviser shot from her body in a spray of blood like a fish jumping from the water. He caught it. The remaining liches stepped back.
“Call back half the ghouls!” a baboon-headed lich hissed. “Julleck can wait. Drown the priest in their corpses.”
Great.
Witte spurred his horse, following the tile-laden wagon as it continued up the once-dry river bed, which now ran freely. His job was easy. Follow the immortal man. The old, undying man was lying down as the doctor worked on him for some reason. Witte thought that the old man would leech anyone who got close. He also figured the Nine Fingers lich had no need for a doctor. The straggling Nine Finger cell continued on course until Witte had a good idea of where they were going. The old man’s team seemed to be headed to those old ruins where they had struck camp the previous night.
Tailing them wasn’t hard, but it was boring. The wagon stopped, and Witte pulled his horse to a halt. They were more likely to notice him while he was on the move. Witte was tired of following them. Morris should be done by now.