William King - Shadowblood

A moment later he sensed Tamara arriving. “Rik?” she whispered, “are you there?”

He reached out and touched her. It felt as if he was insubstantial or she was immensely dense. “I am here,” he said. She glanced around fearfully and said, “What are you doing?”

“A trick I thought of.”

“Are you sure it’s wise, that you can control the magic?”

“If it lets me walk through this place undetected…” She nodded and worked sorcery herself, her outline shimmering and changing until she looked like a Palace guard. Rik doubted that the disguise would fool Asea or a truly potent sorcerer but it would deceive an ordinary Terrarch.

“Watch over me,” she said. Rik nodded even though he doubted that she could see him, and moved as quickly and quietly as he could in her wake as she moved towards the door.

Sardec looked at the ruined farmhouse and wondered if this was the place where he was going to die. It was not the most inspiring of spots but it was the most defensible position for miles around. It looked as if the building had been abandoned long before the plague. It had that sort of feel. Ivy overgrew many of the walls and the shutters were partially rotted. Any glass that might have been in the windows had been removed a long time ago. It was valuable and would have been carried away when the occupants had left.

It was a sort of place that featured as a haunted house in the stories he had read when he was a child. It seemed appropriate to be making a last stand here against an army of the walking dead.

The building lay near the top of the slope and it had clear fields of fire all the way down the hill. If Sardec had had a company of men and they had been fighting against ordinary foes he would have felt confident that he could have defended the place for a week given enough supplies.

In the distance, despite the fading light of the early evening, he could see their pursuers moving like a dark tide through the valley below. There were so many of them and they moved with a deceptive slowness that hid the fact that they were tireless and implacable pursuers.

He cursed their bad luck. They had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time and crossed the path of a wandering horde of undead monsters.

He kept looking at them, hoping that it was a mistake, and that the creatures would pass on along the trail. Perhaps it was just a coincidence that they were on the same path.

For a moment, his hopes were raised, for the creatures passed where the Foragers had left the road. They streamed past the narrow trail as if they intended to continue along the valley. Sardec let out a long sigh of relief but then one of two of them stopped, looked around with a sort of stupid puzzlement and began to follow the pathway up to the ruined farmhouse. There could be no mistake. They had not missed the Foragers trail after all.

"Get everybody inside," Sardec said. "See if you can find a way to barricade the doors!"

"Yes, sir," said Weasel. He stared down at the oncoming horde of dead men impassively and Sardec could tell that he had the same thoughts on his mind. He knew they were going to die here and quite possibly join the legions of dead men who were conquering the world.

Perhaps not though, perhaps it was infection with the plague that made the dead rise after they were killed and perhaps the fact that they had taken the cure would also prevent them from rising. Sardec hoped that was the case, for the sake of the men at least. He was pretty sure it would not happen to him. He had never seen a Terrarch among the walking dead.

One by one the small party passed into the farmhouse. Sardec remained outside keeping an eye on the advancing enemy. They shambled slowly up the slope. It would probably take them at least an hour to get here. At least there was a full moon tonight and there were not that many clouds in the sky. They would have some light to shoot by.

Who was he trying to fool? It did no matter how many shots they fired or how many of those shots hit, there was still no winning this battle. There were so many of the dead down there that they would be swamped by simple weight of numbers. He racked his mind to try and find a solution to the problem. There had to be some way of stopping the monsters. There had to be.

If he had naphtha or oil he might have burned the dead as they advanced. If there had been a sorcerer present, magic might be usefully deployed. But he did not have any of those things. He had a small group of armed men and some women and children, all of them tired, all of them hungry, all of them scared and none of them over-supplied with bullets.

Think. There had to be an answer. Reason told him that there was not. His grasp of tactics let him know that the situation was hopeless. All they could do was barricade themselves in the ruins and fight until they ran out of bullets and strength. He doubted that would take very long. In the end, he would achieve the same result by simply surrendering to the undead and letting his people be devoured. Whether they fought or not would not make much difference.

He told himself not to give in to despair, that there was always hope, that somehow they would make it through the night. He could not convince himself though and he knew he needed to if he was going to convince the others. Why? Why give them false hope when they were all going to die anyway?

From behind him came the sounds of the Foragers at work, as they manhandled old furniture into position to block the doors and threw open the shutters to give themselves clear shots. Sardec was amazed by their energy. They knew as well as he did what was going to happen but still they went on behaving as if there was a chance of survival. He could do no less.

"Better get inside, sir," shouted Weasel. "We're about to barricade the door."

Sardec hurried inside and swiftly the soldiers piled up old furniture behind him and then took up their positions with rifles ready, waiting for the armies of death to come.

Unconscious sentries lay at their feet. Tamara opened the postern gate. For a moment Rik feared that something had gone wrong, that Asea was not there but then she stepped into view, fully garbed in her war-gear, and said, “You have not been spotted?”

“Not as far as I can tell,” said Tamara.

“Where is Rik?” Asea asked. Rik was pleased. Even a master sorcerer could not spot him. His new talent might prove very useful if he survived. On the other hand he was starting to discover a downside. Maintaining this strange form of invisibility was draining his strength fast. He felt as if the life were slowly being leeched out of him.

“He is with us.”

“I am here,” Rik said. His voice emerged as a thin whisper, as if he were only partially in the same world, or it were echoing down a long corridor from very far away.

“I see you have been developing new talents,” she said. “Did Tamara teach you this?”

“He taught himself.”

“Impressive. You have become wraith-like. That might prove to be dangerous in the long run.”

Rik wanted to ask her what she meant, but this did not seem like the time or the place. They had too much to do, and too little time to do it in. “We had best move on,” said Rik. “If we’re going to do what we came for.”

Asea nodded. There was worry etched on the silver mask of her face and suddenly, and for the first time, it made her look old. Rik had a sudden fierce premonition that this was not going to end well for her, or any of them. He regretted coming to this vast ancient fortress, surrounded by its deadly spells, inhabited by servants of an ancient evil.

They headed along the benighted corridors, their way lit be sorcerous glowglobes, their path led by Tamara. Every now and again, Asea stopped and worked a simple-looking sorcery, as if she were trying to confirm something, perhaps the direction in which they intended to go.