Alexey Pehov - Chasers of the Wind

After waiting several minutes, the Son of the Snow Leopard crawled away from the edge. He stood there, carefully examining the spot where he’d been lying. The thick carpet of soggy needles looked trampled. That was bad, but there was no help for it. He couldn’t wipe away all traces of himself even if he tried.

Ga-Nor flung the hood of his stolen cloak over his head and trotted along the route he’d chosen. He didn’t think that he should try to go very far into the mountains; it would slow his progress too much. It would be better to walk along the ridge under the cover of the forest. Very soon the foothills would turn into rolling hills and then into flatlands. There he could turn to the west and try to reach the frontier garrison if, of course, it had not yet fallen to the advance troops of the enemy. The tracker wanted to hope that the well-fed, idle southern army would be able to hold back the wave of dark blue (referring to Nabator’s colors) locusts that would soon come swarming over them.

It got dark quickly. The rain didn’t let up for a minute. As he passed through the branches of the drowsy trees, so heavy with water that they brushed against the ground, it seemed to the tracker that the forest was conducting an unhurried argument with the sky. Suddenly the experienced ear of the tracker caught the distinct sounds of a battle winding through the disarming murmuring of the trees.

Someone yelled, “Well, come at me, you bastard! Come on!” Someone else croaked brokenly in reply and then bellowed. Ga-Nor unsheathed his sword and resolutely headed toward the sounds. He would not leave danger at his back. Furthermore, someone needed help and that someone could very well turn out to be an ally.

The sounds of the scuffle were closer. The invective ceased, and in return the groans became more bloodthirsty. The Son of the Snow Leopard pushed aside a fir bough that was blocking his view and saw a rocky hillside with the dark square entrance of an abandoned mine carved into it. A bit farther on stood a barracks, ravaged by time, on whose roof a young tree had already managed to take root. The path along which the ore had been transported was overgrown with young spruce trees, so the only clearing was the one right in front of the mine itself. Mounds of rubble, extracted from the depths of the earth, rusted braces, water-filled carts, roof support beams rotted down to nothing. Amid all this desolation a fight was going on.

Ga-Nor instantly recognized the stout man regardless of the fact that his face was dirty from spending the last twenty-four hours in the mine. He had no doubt whatsoever—it was Luk, a guard from the garrison of the Towers. A lover of dice, and in his debt.

He was standing in the empty doorway to the barracks, clearly in jeopardy as he swung his axe at his lunging opponents. One of the walking dead had already been taken care of. It was resting right by the entrance to the mines with a fractured skull. But there were four others who were avidly trying to feast upon the meat they hungered for. Luckily, the soldier had chosen a good defensive position so the dead men kept getting in one another’s way—otherwise they would have long since reached him. As the northerner watched, Luk cut a chunk out of the shoulder of one of the corpses with his axe and kicked it in the stomach, pushing it away. He couldn’t continue like this for much longer. The guard was starting to get tired.

Ga-Nor slipped out from underneath the cover of the trees and rushed to help.

He couldn’t imagine a worse situation. The creature that Luk had originally taken for a living man had turned out to be a walking corpse. The soldier had never come across anything like this before. Sure, he’d heard all kinds of tales, but he’d never seen it for himself. Necromancy was banned in the Empire. This wasn’t Sdis, where sorcerers practiced black magic and controlled the dead.

It all seemed unreal. Luk didn’t want to believe his eyes but he had to. And quickly.

The creature lunged at him without any warning. Regardless of how frightened he was, Luk knew his business and killed the man-eater with the first strike, cutting off its head with a single well-placed blow. Before the soldier had time to come to his senses and curse as he always did, two more attacked him.

The first corpse had been hanging over the entrance to the mines the entire time. Melot knew what he was doing there, but he jumped and nearly landed on Luk’s back. The man was only saved by the fact that he’d decided to take a closer look at his kill and had stepped forward. A second corpse emerged from the darkness of the mine to help the first. The soldier had just heard his footsteps when he burst out of hiding. The former guardian of the Gates gave thanks that fate had so providently kept them apart in the mines. If he had encountered the monster in the darkness underground who knew how it would have ended.

Luk managed to hold back the first assault, but then two more unwelcome guests emerged from the barracks. They cornered him. He had to turn tail and stand in the doors so that the bastards would come at him one at a time. While he had so far managed to hold the charging creatures off, it was becoming harder and harder with every second. His arms felt like they were filled with lead, and the astonishingly nimble dead men were not tiring at all.

Moans, green eyes burning with fire, gnashing teeth, pale skin, caked blood.

He groaned in despair, hacked into the shoulder of one of his enemies, kicked him in the stomach, almost cut off the arm of another, and then sunk his axe into the face of a third.

“Cut off their heads! Their heads!” somebody shouted.

Two of the corpses immediately turned their attention to the new arrival. Luk was far from relieved. He could see that the man, his apparent savior, was wearing the cloak of the Nabatorian cavalry. But this was something he could try to understand later. Right now, the stranger was not coming after him. And he was also fighting for his life.

The two corpses who ran away allowed Luk to go on the counterattack. He sprang to the left and then forward, spun around, and with all his strength swung a blow at the skull of one of the corpses jumping at his heels. But his aim was off and he tore through the corpse’s collarbone and sternum, the momentum of his swing forcing the axe to hit the ground. He wrenched it up, twirled it around, and brought it down on the head of a corpse that was trying to sneak up behind him. He spun the axe again, raining down a hail of blows on the first zombie, which was already rising up from the ground. Its shattered skull burst apart repulsively and the corpse, enlivened by the magic of a necromancer, jerked, and then went limp.

“It worked! Screw a toad!” spat the winner victoriously.

Only now did the soldier recall his savior. The man had just finished dealing with his own troubles and was wiping off his blade.

Luk had not been mistaken. This man really did seem to be a Nabatorian. It was impossible to tell what he looked like because of the hood riding low over his face. The man finished wiping his sword, nudged the headless corpse with his foot, and began walking toward the soldier. Luk waved his axe threateningly.

“Have you gone mad?” asked the stranger.

“Listen,” said Luk, breathless from the battle. “I’m grateful to you for your help but our paths diverge here. You go that way, I go the other way, and we forget about meeting each other.”

“Did you lose the last of your brains from terror?” the stranger asked warmly, and then he took off his hood.

Luk stood stock-still and gaped. He recognized that visage. The lean face with high cheekbones, the hawkish nose, the red mustache, and the hair of the same color pulled back into short, thick braids. It was Ga-Nor, Son of the Snow Leopard, who had been lost in the mountains with Da-Tur’s squad. The very northerner to whom Luk lost money playing dice.