When they emerged onto the surface the sun had just begun to sink in the sky. Through leaden clouds it cast weakened rays upon the earth. Looking up at it Tirce had never felt so lucky to be alive. The chancer came up alongside her and Tirce did her best to shun him with cold silence. But he just drank in the sight the same way she had then walked on without a saying word.
Tirce trudged after him, feeling the ache in her bones and the sting of acid in her muscles as her body paid the price of sarkomancy. The glamouring had cost her more that she’d realized. She still kept pace with the others for show if nothing else, since it would not do to appear weak. Ravelin wasn’t the only one she had to keep an eye on. The old crook Modlin in particular kept leering at her and trying to strike up conversation.
“Beautiful day, isn’t it, my poppet?” he said, “Close shaves like that have a way of making a man remember his reasons fer living.”
Modlin leered at her rump for good measure.
“Call me poppet again and I’ll make you wish you were dead,” she replied. That shut him up for the rest of the day, which was a small blessing, though in truth the convict was the least of her concerns. Her journey had scarcely begun, yet thrice already she had come within a whisker of inglorious death, whether by drowning in sewage or a bullet to the brainpan. For the first time she was confronted by the enormity of the task and the near-certainty of failure. Fear worried at her gut like a mongrel dog, whining and insatiable.
Tirce found herself feeling at the contents of her satchel every time someone drew near, fingers closing protectively around the loop of cold metal. So much trouble over some misremembered myth and its promise of power. Was all this really worth trading her life away? The answer to that question lay over the hills and far away, in the blighted city of Wheelsborough.
Before them stretched the scarp of the city’s first defensive belt, a high embankment of earth that was angled to protect the walls from direct cannon fire. Ravelin took them the long way round to reach it, hugging the shadow of the walls till they came to a demi-lune that stood hundreds of feet apart from the walls, a spade-shaped miniature fortress designed to break the enemy’s impetus before they reached the crossfire of the bastions.
Ravelin motioned for silence then pulled out his hatchet and stuck its back spike into the crumbling mortar of the wall. He then put his ear to the haft, listening intently.
“Two sentries right above us,” he said, “No, wait…three.”
Tirce thought it was a clever trick, though she would never have admitted it.
“So do we turn back?” Kyber said, also whispering. Ravelin worked the hatchet free and shook his head.
“Not at all. There’s usually a dozen sharpshooters assigned to this point. I suppose there’s truth to the rumour after all,” he continued in hopeful undertone, “The militia’s spread thin.”
The chancer rolled his tongue around in his cheek and thought things over. Then he motioned for Neisha to approach and asked her:
“How fast can you run?”
“At grammar school I won the egg and spoon race three years in a row,” the girl said proudly.
“Good, good,” Ravelin sounded pleased, “Now see that pile of rubble over there, by the ditch full of yellow water?”
The chancer pointed at a heap of broken masonry some fifty feet away from the demi-lune.
“Yes?”
“Do you think you could get there in under, oh, I don’t know, eight seconds?”
“It’ll be as easy as peas pudding,” Neisha said brightly. At this point Yleine came in like a battering ram, saying:
“I dislike this. Whatever you’re trying to do, I’ll have none of it. None of it! Do you hear me, chancer?”
Everyone winced as her voice rose by an octave.
“Gods and garters, woman, keep it down,” Rene said, casting fearful looks at the parapets above them.
“Exactly what are you proposing here, sir?” Kyber’s politeness was being stretched to its limits, “That my daughter present herself as bait to draw their fire while you make your brave escape?”
“You’ve got it backwards,” the chancer assured them with an easy smile, “The first to cross will actually be the safest. Besides, a small quick thing like Neisha should be harder to—”
“This is quite unacceptable, sir,” Kyber insisted. A hot flush was creeping up his pale neck and clerk looked to be on the verge of breaking down.
“But he’s right,” Tirce said, much to her own dissatisfaction. As Kyber and his wife stared at her aghast, she explained: “When she crosses into their view, the sharpshooters will have to stop and light their slow matches to shoot. It’s the ones who come after her who’ll be in the real danger. Even then we should all be out of range before they can get off a second volley. That is, assuming they’re musketeers and not arbalists. And they are musketeers, aren’t they?”
She raised an eyebrow at Ravelin. Arbalests outranged matchlocks by more than a hundred feet, and more importantly their strings could be kept under tension and ready to shoot at a moment’s notice.
“It’s a chance we’ll have to take,” Ravelin replied with the relish of a man making use of his favourite quote.
“And if you’re wrong?”
“Well, then we’ll have to see who’s the better shot.”
Ravelin patted the dark walnut stock of his crossbow and grinned. The chancer gathered them all together and outlined his plan. It was simple and straightforward enough, though that came as little comfort to the Katsidis family.
“Just you keep running straight ahead. Don’t stop to look back, whatever you hear,” Yleine urged their daughter, “Keep your head down and don’t wait for mummy and daddy.”
“We’ll be right behind you, my dear,” Kyber said.
“It’ll be just like the races at grammar school,” Ravelin pitched in, “Only this time you won’t have to worry about balancing the egg on the spoon.”
Neisha nodded, her parents’ frightened faces dampening her confidence. Before them the fields of fire lay open like an invitation, grey nubs of stone jutting out of the broken land, collapsed sapper’s trenches forming old wounds in the earth that the rains had yet to heal. The girl would have plenty of cover to hide behind if things went sour. That didn’t stop Tirce from worrying, however.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Everyone ready?” the chancer asked, laying a bolt in the groove, “Everyone know what to do?”
When no one replied he shrugged and looked at Tirce. The terranist picked up a fistful of pebbles from the ground and crept around to the rear of the demi-lune where the walls were lower by design. She gave them a few more seconds to get ready before clearing her throat and gave a loud yowl, mimicking the cry of a tomcat in heat. After a moment when nothing happened, she chucked the first pebble over the crenels and onto the parapets, listened to them bounce and rattle on the stonework. There were voices raised, the shuffle of boots. She tossed another stone over just to be sure, then hastily scampered back to the others.
Ravelin saw her coming and gave Neisha pat on the shoulder. The girl took off in an instant, fear lending her wings as she ran for the spot by the ditch. There was a shout from the demi-lune—the lookout had not left his post as Tirce had hoped he would. Neisha was yards away from the rubble heap when a shot rang out and raised a puff of dust at her feet. The girl shied away from the spot and ran out ahead into the open. Ravelin swore and chased after her, reaching the rubble heap before the other sharpshooters returned, Tirce’s distraction buying him just enough time to reach safety.
Two muzzles appeared over the battlements, their snouts tracking the fleeting shape of Neisha. Ravelin stood and loosed a bolt at the militia, forcing them cursing back into cover. No sooner had the girl slipped into a sapper’s trench and out of sight than Ravelin began cranking up his string for another shot.
“Next!” he yelled over to them. Modlin and the Katsidises remained frozen with indecision. Right now, they only had two bullets to worry about, but Tirce knew that the longer they hesitated, the sooner the third sharpshooter would reload his matchlock. So she took the risk and sprinted into the open, running a snaking path that she hoped would throw off their aim. A bullet sang out and snagged her sleeve, tracing a bright line of pain across her wrist. She could feel the third man lining up his sights on her back, the tiny hairs on her neck standing on end. Knowing she would never reach the heap alive, Tirce dove into the ditch beside it.
For the second time that day she found herself drenched in foul water. But the muddy pool had concealed the true depth of the ditch, which turned out to be only ankles-deep. Helpless, she looked up and found herself staring up the barrel of a gun and the smug face of sharpshooter behind it, smirking beneath his snug woollen cap.
Then his forehead sprouted feathers and he lost his smile, toppling over the parapet and slamming into the ground with a resounding thud. At this the other sharpshooters lost heart and ducked back out of view.
“Pick up your feet!” Tirce hollered at the others, “Now, if you please!”
Her urging finally shook them awake and got them moving. They found Ravelin and Neisha waiting for them a little ahead, flustered and breathing hard.
“Maidens grant us mercy,” Modling fell to the ground wheezing, “Is crossing over always this rough?”
“On the contrary. That’s as smooth as it ever gets,” Ravelin told him, “Rest easy, old man. The hard part’s over. For now.”
Or so he claimed. What Ravelin declined to mention was the arduous march through the trench system that followed. For better part of two hours they tramped, crawled, and in some cases swam through the congealed muck. He pushed them relentlessly, only stopping when it got too dark for them to see their hands in front of their faces.
Then the chancer motioned for a halt in a nondescript part of the trenchworks that looked much the same as any other segment, its walls supported with thick, worm-eaten timber planks. He pried apart one of these timbers to reveal a cunning rathole dug into the soil. The entrance was just large enough to admit a man crawling on his belly, and rising upwards at a precipitous incline to make matters even more claustrophobic.
Kyber lit their one remaining lantern and they found themselves in a surprisingly spacious crawlspace, complete with breathing holes and escape hatches in several directions. The clay was lined with brick and mortar to form a cozy hideout complete with a cot bed, a card table balanced on a pile of sandbags, and a chest full of supplies. There was even a small samovar in the corner for making tea. Ravelin took his place on the cot bed and let the rest of them sleep on the floor. Don’t know why I expected any less from him, thought Tirce as she stretched out on the cold clay in a thin blanket she’d brought.
They passed the first night in the rathole. At first everyone was too tired to make much conversation aside from the occasional grumble of discomfort. Kyber and his family had actually brought bedrolls (now soiled from the sewers) and set them out while Ravelin set out their dinner, such as it was. He’d brought along a sack of raisins, dried milk curds and figs, and with these they made a surprisingly hearty meal. The chancer ate only sparingly then got out a tin box from under the cot and gnawed on some raw ship’s biscuit. All the food was designed to be eaten cold, for Ravelin would allow no fires this close to nightfall.
His reasons for this soon became clear. For in the still of the night when all lay awake in the pitch blackness, they heard a muttering outside.
“The flesh must serve,” it said in a soft, guttural voice as if choked by phlegm and clotted blood. Tirce sat up straight in her bedroll and drew her sickle-blades.
“What was that?” she hissed.
“The dead. What else?” came Ravelin’s unconcerned reply. More voices soon joined the first, a dry and croaking chorus that came from every direction. Some were hysterical, screaming through rasping, dust-choked throats:
“Get to cover, Illem. Dragons darken the skies…”
“Reload you sons of whores…wing them, bring them down before they—”
“Fire! Kill me! Kill me! It hurts, it hurts, it hurts…”
Others were quiet mutters in the background:
“Spare some water? In the name of Aeden, a cup of water please?”
“Vyl kagdalik puzdol?” said another in guttural dwarfish, “Nu polydeni. Esto?”
But always there came the inevitablerefrain: “The flesh must serve.”
It soon became clear to Tirce that they were hearing the last words of the doomed Axiomites who perished during the siege. Men of the free cities of Utregost and the dwarves of mighty Nozgorod that had dared challenge the largest empire the world had ever seen.
Neisha clapped a hand over her mouth and sobbed. Yleine covered her daughter’s ears and blinked away tears of her own.
“Whatever you do,” Ravelin told them, “Don’t ever reply. The dead know things that the living were never meant to hear.”
Tirce could well believe it. They could hear the dead scraping at the earth, and saw in their mind’s eye soil and pebbles being torn up by their rotting claws.
“They’ll dig us out,” Modlin quailed, “We’re goners!”
“The walls will hold,” Ravelin assured him.
And they did. None of them could sleep a wink that night, so instead they passed the time with talk, whispering like children under their covers after their parents had sent them to bed.
“No one knows how the necrotics came to exist,” Kyber told them, “Not even in the Ministry of Reclamation. Ghouls and those like them do not follow the laws of arcanic preservation. The flesh doesn’t decompose and nervous functions continue even after catastrophic damage. They do not require any sustenance but are sustained, it seems, by sheer will alone. Rudimentary motor functions and aggression are the only qualities their minds still possess. The original personality is destroyed, of course, erased by the passage of death.”
“How kin you be sure?” Modlin demanded, “Can’t you hear them sorry bastards out there?”
“Perhaps it is just a remnant of their nerval systems firing their final spasms, over and over again. I’ve heard of alchemists who tickle dead animals with lightning, and get their limbs to dance.”
“I think they’re alive,” Modlin whispered hoarsely, “And never mind what the scholar says. I think they’re alive and can feel every moment in rotting agony.”
“I think you both talk too much,” Ravelin quipped irritably. He was tossing and turning in his cot trying to sleep.
“You should know the truth better than anyone else,” Yleine argued, “You hear them all the time. How have you not gone mad?”
“Who says I haven’t?” the chancer said softly.
“Ravi…” came a distant croak from without.
The chancer was out of his bed in one bound, standing with eyes wide and staring.
“Something wrong?” Tirce asked. It was hard to read Ravelin’s face just then, but Tirce thought she saw his lips work ever so slightly.
“No,” Ravelin said. He gave strange sigh and sat back down on the cot, eyes hooded and distant.
“That’s enough talk for one day. Get some rest, all of you. You’ll need it.”
Tirce doubted that was possible after all that had been said. But if anyone managed to sleep, they did so with one eye open.