David Dalglish - Blood Of Gods

“The undead can protect us only so much,” said Preston. The older man jabbed his thumb behind him. “And their presence will mean nothing if the god controlling them falls.”

Tristan turned around, as did Patrick. Ashhur wavered as he walked, his gaze intent on some distant point, his arms hanging limp by his sides. He had been this way for days, ever since he had raised a provisional bridge over the Rigon once they’d reached the scorched remains of Lerder. It looked as if it took his every effort simply to stand upright. It had gotten so bad that at night, when their tents were put up and the men of Paradise gathered around their cookfires, they would express their doubts about whether Ashhur was right in bringing them east at all. Not that Patrick could blame them. He was starting to have those thoughts as well.

“Too late to turn back now,” he whispered.

“What was that?” asked Preston’s other son, Ragnar.

Patrick waved him away. “Nothing. Talking to myself.”

The force progressed down the road, the constant clomp of hooves on cobbles ringing in Patrick’s ears. Their advance was indeed noisy, but it struck him as strange that despite how much of a ruckus they made, they attracted no attention. The opened windows of every building they passed, large and small, were empty. There wasn’t even a hint of movement inside, which was strange in a place that looked like it had once housed thousands upon thousands of people.

“You think the people left?” he asked Preston.

The older man shrugged.

“Perhaps we won’t find Karak here after all,” said Patrick. He reached over his shoulder and tapped Winterbone’s now naked handle for luck.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Preston said with a frown.

The old soldier’s words proved prophetic, for a few minutes later a commotion broke out at the front of the column, half a hundred yards from where Patrick rode. The wall of undead collapsed inward a bit farther up, and Patrick heard Ahaesarus sound his warning horn. The men from Ker, who had been interspersed throughout the column, lifted their elven bows and nocked them with arrows. The horn sounded again. Words of caution were passed from the front of the column to the back.

“On the roofs! Look to the roofs!”

Patrick shouted the same warning to those behind him, then raised his eyes to the tops of the surrounding buildings. Hundreds of people appeared, their hair long and grimy, their clothes tattered. To Patrick it looked as if they had ridden into a den of feral women. The women held various objects in their hands, from rocks to sharpened lengths of wood to the type of iron cookware-pots and ladles and fire pokers-that Patrick had seen used in Haven. There were some wielding bows and arrows as well. Seemingly at once, the women raised their makeshift weapons above their heads.

“Shields up!” Patrick shouted, unhitching from his saddle his borrowed shield-which still bore Karak’s sigil-just as the women released their wares.

Those that had shields lifted them; those that didn’t tried to get close to those who did. Heavy objects rained down on them, pounding against the solid wood and metal of the shields. Men shouted down below while women sounded a primal war cry from above. Patrick braced himself, a heavy chunk of iron striking his shield, cracking it, and bathing his eyes with splinters. A spike of pain jolted through his forearm on impact. An arrow struck his mailed thigh, but not hard enough to pierce it. He glanced down as yet another heavy object thudded against his shield and saw that the arrow was crudely made, simply a sharpened stick with feathers attached to the shaft with twine. He plucked it from the ring it was stuck in and tossed it aside.

The Kerrians fired arrows back at those attacking from the rooftops, their aim truer, their bolts more deadly. Many of the women fell back, disappearing over the other side of the slanted roofs; others caught arrows in the chest and tumbled twenty feet to the ground, only to stand up a moment later and join the undead horde.

A horse galloped along the edge of the convoy. It was Master Warden Ahaesarus, inhumanly tall in his saddle. He shouted at the Kerrians as he passed them by. “Get to the center! Do not waste arrows on the citizens! Save them for the real soldiers!”

A few stubborn Kerrians still loosed arrows, but most men followed orders, pressing their horses into the column to find someone with a large enough shield to hide beneath. Still the rain of debris continued. Patrick lifted his shield slightly and peered at Ashhur. The god had remained silent, even as he was pelted with heavy objects. Each time one struck him, he would wince, but he kept on walking, determined.

At last, the god spoke. “To the right!” he bellowed loudly enough for those still a half-mile away to hear. “We head for the castle.”

Up ahead, the procession turned. Patrick remained beneath his shield, though his stallion was taking a beating. It whinnied every time it was struck, and once a large chunk of stone hit the stallion in the flank, almost breaking its leg. “Easy,” Patrick said, doing his best to soothe the beast. “You have it. You can do it.” The stallion remained true. Others weren’t so lucky. Edward’s horse was taken down by a crude spear; Big Flick lost his when a large iron tub crushed the poor thing’s skull. The numbers of those who carried on by foot grew by the second. The dead men rose to join the undead army while the horses formed obstructions the rest of the convoy had to maneuver their way around. If Patrick thought the road had been a cluttered mess before, it was nothing compared to now.

There were urgent shouts coming from up ahead. As Patrick took the turn onto the adjoining road, guided by the crush of bodies around him, he could see why. Human forms charged from the structures lining both sides of the road and crashed into the wall of undead, hacking and slashing with daggers, spears, small swords, and hatchets. There were hundreds of them, all feminine in shape, yet they were covered head to toe in what looked to be off-white bandages. Patrick watched them battle the undead, slowly cutting through their thick mass. He then peeked around his shield, still held above his head, and saw that the barrage from the rooftops had ceased.

“Small victories,” he muttered.

Then he glanced forward, saw the three giant spires they had been marching toward, rising above a thirty-foot wall, and realized just how small that victory truly was.

The convoy was more packed together now, a writhing mass of bodies rather than three distinct columns. Those on the outside moved hastily toward their undead protectors, hands shaking as they held their weapons at the ready. Not a good sign. The strange, wrapped women seemed to fight without fear, as if driven by some otherworldly force. The barely trained defenders of Paradise, though more numerous, would be cut through in moments. Patrick exchanged a glance with Preston. The old soldier gritted his teeth and leaned forward in his saddle.

“Turncloaks, ride!” he shouted.

Patrick ripped Winterbone off his back and led the way, inching his stallion through the press of struggling bodies until he reached the edge of the undead wall. One of the wrapped women sliced the head off a deceased Warden and shoved her way past the reaching, now-headless corpse. Patrick was there to greet her, hacking down from atop his stallion, clipping the woman on the side of the head. She fell back shrieking, blood spurting from where the wrappings had been sliced on her cheek, until the undead horde swallowed her whole. Patrick felt his stomach clench as he watched the walking corpses tear her apart.

Then Ashhur screamed, and everything went to shit.

Patrick veered around, looking on as his god grabbed the sides of his head and fell to his knees. The undead he commanded stopped in their tracks, swaying in place, looking like indecisive simpletons who couldn’t decide which way to go.