William King - Shadowblood

Tamara shook her head. “You might encounter people on the road who were curious as to why you did not have a coach and they might ask you questions to which you might not be able to provide good answers. And they might ask you those questions in such a way that you would have little choice but to answer them.”

“Surely you can spare my wife and servants. They have done nothing to you.”

“Neither have you, Lord Inglis. It’s just one of those unfortunate things.”

She moved so suddenly that even Rik was taken by surprise and within a heartbeat the two Terrarchs lay headless in the dust. A few heartbeats later their servants joined them in death.

Tamara looked down on the corpses, shaking her head sadly. “I always liked Lord Inglis. He was very kind to me when I was a girl. Always gave me sweets.”

“Karim will drive us,” said Asea. “We have to go.”

"I don't think the children should see this, sir," said Weasel. He indicated the tumbled down remains of the village behind him with one large, knobbly knuckled hand. It was silent but there was nothing about it that looked particularly unusual when compared to all of the other ruined villages and homesteads they had passed through in the last few days. That combined with Weasel’s reaction to it made Sardec nervous.

The former poacher looked tired and he had a haunted look in his eyes. Things would have to be bad for Weasel to look like this. He was a man who had seen horrors enough in his life and it would take something very nasty to make him queasy. Sardec might have thought it was simply the cumulative effect of all they had witnessed but the Barbarian loomed behind Weasel, nodding his head in agreement. He looked a little sick which made Sardec think that he really did not want to look upon what they had seen.

Rena and the others looked at them nervously. Lorraine clung to her mother’s skirts. The boys looked nervous. Something of the two men’s mood communicated to the rest of the soldiers for they looked grim. Sardec nodded towards a clump of trees and the two scouts followed him there, out of hearing of the rest of their small party. "What is it? What did you find?"

"One of the buildings in the village was a Temple School," said Weasel. "It was probably a place where they took in orphan children. There were a lot of small corpses."

"Any of them walking?" Sardec asked.

Weasel shook his head. "None that I could see but I suspect a few of the pupils are missing."

"You think they could be waiting for us in the village?"

"They might be but I don't think so. I think we would have seen them or heard them by now."

"So where are they?"

"Where do they all go, sir?"

Sardec thought about it. Weasel was not being insolent. Sardec knew what he meant. Something was summoning the plague victims, drawing them to the Sardean armies, swelling of the regiments of the dead. Most of the towns and villages they had passed through had been empty. There were corpses left rotting in the streets but always less than there should have been for places of that size. It sometimes seemed to Sardec that soon the walking dead would outnumber the living.

An image danced in his mind of a world full of cities populated by the dead, and roads filled with walking corpses, of dead nobles and farms where the living were raised as recruits for the armies of the dead. He pushed it to one side and studied the soldiers' faces. A question occurred to him. “Why do some of the dead rise, and others not?”

“If I knew the answer to that, sir, I would be a wizard not a soldier,” Weasel replied.

“Let’s get out of here,” Sardec said. “We’ll circle around the village.”

Morbid curiosity filled his mind. "What did you see in there that horrified you so?"

"Lots of the children's corpses had been half eaten," said Weasel. "Some of their eyes had been scooped out like grapes taken for dessert."

Sardec tried not to think about that.

Rik heard Karim shouting at the horses and flicking his whip to urge their stolen coach on over the muddy road. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the glass window of the coach. Something alien gleamed in his eyes, something sinister and hungry.

He studied the two women with him and wondered how it was possible that they could be so composed. Asea seemed pensive. She had withdrawn into herself as if seeking answers that could only be found in her own consciousness. Tamara noticed him looking at her and smiled, as gaily as a girl going on a picnic. She gave no sign that they were travelling through a land in which she was a wanted traitor. Perhaps their success in getting so far had made her overconfident.

Throughout the entire last stage of their journey, no one had questioned them which surprised him, although he supposed it should not. They were Terrarchs garbed as Terrarchs and the humans of the East had long ago had all desire to question their betters whipped and knouted out of them. They had met a few military couriers on the road, and occasionally seen the carriages of nobles far off and withdrawn from the roads.

The land altered, became flatter, and split by many broad rivers. Here and there huge dark forests loomed against the horizon. The sky seemed lower and wider to Rik although he could not say exactly why. Perhaps it was the grey clouds that filled it, hanging lower than any he had ever seen.

“It’s like the far North,” said Asea. “The islands there have skies like this, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen anything like this in the south.”

“You think the weather patterns are changing,” Tamara asked. “Or do you think this is the product of some sorcery of Xephan’s?”

“Using the power of a Gate can alter the weather patterns,” said Asea. “Some say it’s because the Gate affects the geomancy of the land, others that some Gates suck air in, or breathe cold air out.”

“What do you think?” Rik asked.

“It’s some combination of all of three. The flow of magical energies has many surprising side-effects. It can seed clouds making them rain, or cause lightning storms and tornadoes and worse things. And I’ve seen Gates that connected lowlands and mountain heights and when they were opened they always breathed condensation and caused stiff breezes to blow around them.”

“You think the Gate is being opened then?” She nodded.

“I think it’s being tapped to raise the Army of the Dead. It’s the only thing I can think of, other than mass sacrifice that could do that, and there’s no evidence of mass sacrifice unless the plague is that.”

“So you are saying that if the Gate is not closed things will get much worse.”

“I believe so, but I think we need to get close enough to find out.”

Rik was not sure he liked the idea of getting that close to such a dangerous thing, but he saw no way around it if he was going to accompany Asea and Tamara.

“You really think you will be able to close the Gate if it’s been opened?” Tamara asked.

“I think that I am going to have to try. The alternative is to simply have a portal through which the Princes of Shadow can come and go at will.”

“I think you are missing the point,” said Rik. “Someone already seems to have mastered that trick.”

After that they travelled in silence for the rest of the day.

The Foragers paused for a moment by a roadside shrine. It was small, built from dry stone and the altar was merely some pieces of slate with sacred runes carved on them. Sardec recognised a few Elder Signs.

They had been marching along an old drover's path through the hills for a few days now. The landscape around them was barren. Every now and again they would see an occasional goat and Weasel's long rifle would roar and shoot sparks and the animal would fall and they would have some more food for the pot. The stringy beasts were not enough to feed the whole party well but they supplemented their meagre rations.