William King - The Queen's assassin

“Why don’t you arrange for somebody to show us the way?”

Uri nodded. “I can do that.”

Sardec lay on his back and looked up at the bright moonbeams slipping in through the chinks in the curtain. Sleep would not come. Rena stirred beside him. He lay still, not wanting to wake her. Soft footsteps sounded on the stair and he sat upright. Someone knocked on the door. Sardec rose, slipped the lock and looked out. Sergeant Hef stood there.

“What is it?” Sardec asked.

“Weasel and the Barbarian just came in, sir. Lady Asea is below. Looks like they found a lead on the necromancers everybody is looking for. Her Ladyship would like you to lead the lads out and investigate.”

"Can't it wait till morning, Sergeant?" Sardec knew that it could not, but he felt he needed to vent his exasperation.

"I don't think so, sir," said the Sergeant. "They say it’s important."

"All right then, lead on," said Sardec.

“What is it?” Rena asked from the bed.

“Duty calls,” said Sardec

Sardec trudged through the snow, wondering what was going on. The raggedly dressed men with Asea had led his unit to the remains of a collapsed building. There were some signs of burning but it looked like it had fallen when hit by something big. This whole street had suffered during the siege; a large section of the city was abandoned now by all but scavengers and beggars and worse things. There was a strange smell in the air, a hint of something he had encountered before, something disturbing and strange that reminded him of the graveyard encounter with the ghouls. The moment his nostrils twitched he reached for his pistol. Sardec dreaded the presence of ghouls.

“This is the place,” said the more villainous of the two men. He was a Kharadrean human of the lowest type. This war had certainly given them some strange allies. He checked his pistol and made sure all the men had truesilver bullets loaded. He had been told to expect sorcery. The stump of his missing hand itched where the gutta-percha padding met flesh, a constant reminder of how dangerous evil magic could be. He looked at Asea who stood there with her half-breed lover. She was garbed for war, in her strange living leather armour and silver facemask. Sardec lifted a lantern.

“Wait here,” Sardec said, just to let everyone know he was in charge, and then gestured for the Foragers to enter the ruins. There was still a ceiling overhead although tumbled at a crazy angle. The bright moon shone through the gaps, illuminating an interior partially covered by snow. Shafts of silver light speared the ground in a dozen places. Wreckage lay everywhere — broken furniture, torn clothes. At the back of the room was an open trapdoor of the kind that would normally have run down into a coal cellar. As he approached it, the smell got worse; there was a hint of rot, and chemical bleach, as if someone had set up a tannery inside an old abattoir.

He looked at the men. They were pale and nervous and looked to him for leadership. He picked up the lantern with his hook and made for the stairwell. The Sergeant and the Barbarian and Weasel fell into step behind him.

Blood, he thought, as he descended into the gloom. Blood and chemicals. The stairs took him down into a large cellar. Something squelched beneath his foot as he reached the bottom. The stink of rot followed a bellow's wheeze. His footing was soft and slippery and he realised why soon enough. He was standing on a dead body. More dead bodies lay round about. They were oddly pale. He got off the corpse, looked around and saw that the flesh was white, the eyeballs grey. There were faded bruise marks in the arms and neck.

"No blood," said Weasel. His voice was sombre. "Something drained them of blood."

"What's that?" Sardec asked pointing to the large metal tub, bigger than a wine-vat, that dominated the centre of the cellar. It seemed like they had encountered nothing but dark sorcery this whole year, ever since they had ventured into the valley of Deep Achenar and fought with the followers of the Spider God and the thing they had worshipped. Sardec shivered. He had lost his hand during that encounter, and almost his life. It had made him wary. He wished he still had his truesilver blade, but that had been turned to slag during the final battle in the abandoned city.

He looked around the walls. More corpses hung from hooks, some split like pigs at a butcher's shop, others still intact but pale, so pale. His skin crawled. He fought the urge to run from the place. If he had been alone, he might have, but it would not do to let the men see he was afraid, so he strode forwards towards the vat, conscious even as he did so of the fear that gnawed at his stomach, as if a massive rat were in there trying to bite its way through to his heart.

He heard something and paused, shocked. One of the corpses had shifted on its hook. For a moment, he feared that it had come alive, and was about to attack him. Memories of the Nerghul, the strange sorcerous assassin Lord Jaderac had sent to kill the Lady Asea back in Morven, gibbered at the back of his mind. That thing had almost killed him despite the presence of a squad of troops and the most powerful sorceress in the western world.

Sardec moved closer, set the lantern down nearby and looked into the vat. It was filled with a reddish black congealed fluid. Blood, he thought, with chemicals added to it to keep it liquid. There seemed to be something deep below, a vaguely humanoid outline that moved disturbingly, as if currents in the fluid were shifting its limbs. Heat rose from the vat and it bubbled obscenely, sending odd little farts of chemical exhalation into the air.

Sardec bent down and looked below the vat. It stood on metal legs. There was a mechanism that looked like a boiler; pipes connected it to the bottom of the tub. The chemical smell was more intense.

Something touched his forehead, wetting the brim of his tricorne hat before dribbling down onto his head and hands. A chill ran down his spine. He looked up and saw that the fluid had slopped over the edge of the vat. Something large and spidery crawled into view. It took him a moment to realise it was a hand.

Sardec sprang upright and brought his hook down in a vicious arc so that it pierced the back of the hand. Reddish fluid oozed forth from it to flow back into the vat. A head emerged from the liquid, to be followed by a broad pair of naked shoulders and a massive burly torso. He slashed at it with his hook and drew more blood. The thing made no noise and reached for him. He sprang backwards and away.

"What the hell?" the Barbarian shouted. Sardec looked around. The intact corpses on the hooks had started to move, flailing their limbs as they attempted to dislodge themselves from their hanging places and get to grip with the intruders in their domain. One by one, like obscene fruits dropping from an overloaded tree, they hit the cellar floor and began to advance towards the startled soldiers.

Sardec snatched the lantern up in his hook. "Back!" he shouted, "Out of the cellar." He knew it was imperative that they not be trapped down here. Once they were on the surface they could call on the rest of the Foragers for help. If they failed to get away, these night-stalking things would emerge and take the troops by surprise. He was not going to allow that.

He raised his pistol and fired it at the head of the thing in the vat. The bullet caught it squarely between the eyes. The whole back of its head exploded. Brain jelly splattered one of the animated corpses hanging behind it. The undead creature vanished beneath the surface of the vat like a drowning swimmer. A long-barrelled rifle spoke thunderously as Weasel shot down another walking dead man. The Barbarian raced into the room, blade held in each hand, filled with desperate fury and desire to get to grips with his undead foes.