Django Wexler - The Thousand Names

“Something’s wrong with them,” Graff said, puffing to a halt. “Look.”

The oil-damped coats were going out, throwing the room into relative darkness once again. Winter could see the dead things as vague shapes in the firelight, with green eyes cutting through the smoke here and there. They didn’t seem to be pursuing. In fact, they’d all frozen in place, as though some vital force had suddenly been removed.

“Is that everyone?” Winter said. “I saw a couple of men fall.”

“We picked ’em back up again,” Graff said. “That’s every man who wasn’t already dead out the door. Except the captain and the colonel, poor bastards.”

The captain and the colonel. “Right.” Winter waved him on up the corridor. “Go. I’ll be right behind.”

Graff saluted and hurried after the rest. Winter and Feor remained in the doorway.

The green lights went out all at once. The corpses toppled wherever they stood, sprawling in heaps across the flagstones. Here and there flame still clung to them, filling the air with the smell of burning cloth and flesh.

The captain and the colonel. She’d almost forgotten about them. But they must be dead. They weren’t in the square, so they must be dead.

“Fuck,” Winter said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

She chewed her lip for a long moment, then rounded angrily on Feor. “You’d better go after-”

“I’m going with you,” Feor said.

“No, you are-” Winter caught Feor’s expression and suddenly felt too tired to argue. “All right. But stay close.”

Feor stepped up and took her hand again. Winter raised the torch over her head, took a deep breath, and hurried back into the gloom.

MARCUS

Marcus gave a grunt as he wrenched his saber free, stepping away from the demon’s still-scrabbling hands. His next carefully aimed stroke split its skull, sending up a torrent of white smoke. Then he retreated to where Janus waited in the shadow of one of the twisted statues. The thing kept thrashing behind him, but without a head it was blind.

“We’re almost there,” Janus said, tapping the corner of the statue’s plinth with the tip of his sword. “Two more, I think.”

“Fucking saints,” Marcus said. “How many men did Khtoba have left?”

He knew objectively that they’d been lucky. Some of the Seventh Company had managed to form a square after all, and they were attracting the attention of the vast majority of the creatures. Picking their way around the edge of the vast cavern, he and Janus had to deal with only the scattered remnants, and he’d disposed of a dozen or so of those. But it felt like they’d been at it forever. He’d opened his jacket, his undershirt was soaked with sweat, and someone seemed to have added several tons of lead to his sword. His shoulder ached abominably from the impact of steel on bone, and the bite on his hand throbbed.

At least the colonel knew where he was going. Or he says he does, anyway. They’d been weaving through the statues, cutting down the demons singly or in pairs, but Janus had kept to a relatively constant direction. Marcus hadn’t asked where they were going, because he frankly didn’t want to know. He just hoped like hell the colonel had some kind of plan.

“Two,” Marcus said after a moment. “Okay.”

“I’ll go right; you go left,” Janus said. He didn’t even seem winded. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Marcus lied.

“Go!”

They spun around opposite sides of the statue. Two of the green-eyed creatures stood in the gap between another pair of idols, as idly as a couple of sentries. They looked up, mouths opening to trickle white smoke, as the two officers charged.

Janus’ first instinct had been the correct one. As usual. Nothing Marcus had been able to do had put an end to the creatures’ scrabbling parody of life, but their bodies could be damaged as easily as any human’s. A good hit to the legs would leave them nothing to do but crawl. He ducked and aimed low, swinging the heavy cavalry saber in two hands like a sledgehammer. The demon’s outstretched hands brushed past his cheek and over his shoulder, while his blow caught the thing on the knee. Flesh and bone exploded, bloodless as rotten wood, and Marcus spun away from the clutching fingers as the suddenly unbalanced monster toppled.

The colonel had dissected his opponent with typical grace, dodging its clumsy lunge and dancing behind it to neatly sever the muscles in its thighs with his lighter blade. It fell facedown, and Marcus gave it a slash in passing, smashing its face into a ruin. Once they were down and blinded, the demons presented a danger only if you managed to step on one.

“There.” Janus pointed with his sword. A small campfire burned up ahead, banked against the base of one of the statues and invisible from a distance. “Come on-we have to hurry.”

He trotted toward it, and Marcus heaved a deep breath and lumbered after him. Janus’ reserve of strength seemed boundless, and keeping up with him made Marcus feel like a milk cow trying to race a warhorse.

The little half circle of firelight looked as though it had been someone’s camp. A small sack and a waterskin were propped neatly against the statue, and a thick blanket was unrolled over the hard flagstones for use as a bed. Lying on the bed-

At first Marcus thought it was a corpse. It looked more like a corpse than the green-eyed demons did. The young man’s flesh was withered and shrunken, and his skin hung in loose folds from protruding bones. Ribs and hips were clearly visible, moving slowly under his gray skin like puppies squirming in a sack, and Marcus realized with a start the boy was still breathing in short, sharp gasps. His eyes were closed, but at the sound of the two Vordanai approaching they flickered open.

Janus crossed the flagstones to stand beside the boy in a few quick, sure strides, and flicked the point of his sword to hover just above the throat of the emaciated youth. He spoke in Khandarai, loud and clear enough that even Marcus could follow him.

“Call them off. Now.”

A dozen pairs of green eyes turned to stare at them. Marcus raised his sword. The closest of the demons regarded him through the curtain of white smoke rising from its lips.

“Call them off,” Janus said. “All of them, or I slit your throat.”

The boy’s mouth opened slowly. His voice was a thin rasp.

“I am dead already,” he said.

A hollow boom echoed through the chamber, followed by two more in rapid succession. Marcus tried to see what was happening, but there were too many statues blocking the way. He could hear a tide of shouts rising above the hissing of the demons.

“Call them off,” Janus said.

“He won’t do it,” said a woman’s voice, also in Khandarai. “You should know better than to try to reason with fanatics, Colonel.”

Jen Alhundt walked between two of the frozen demons, for all the world as if she hadn’t noticed them. Her spectacles gleamed white in the light of the campfire. She held a pistol in one hand and had another thrust through her belt.

“Jen.” Marcus’ sword arm dropped slowly to his side. “Jen? What the hell-”

“Miss Alhundt,” Janus interrupted. “I take it you have a suggestion?”

“Only the obvious,” Jen said. She leveled the pistol abruptly and pulled the trigger. The boy’s body jerked and stiffened for a moment, blood blooming from his chest, and then sagged.

All across the vast cavern, the green lights went out. The corpses dropped into place with a final exhalation of white smoke, staggering drunkenly into one another or sagging against the statues. Silence fell throughout the vast cavern as the inhuman hiss of the demons finally quieted. Marcus couldn’t hear the shouts of the Colonials anymore, either. He swallowed hard.