Matt Forbeck - Ghosts of Ascalon

"You stupid-" Dougal bit his tongue in an effort to control his fury. He was angrier at the norn than he'd been with the guard who'd been trying to kill him. "You didn't need to do that!"

Gullik smiled at him grimly. "And you, good fellow, are welcome! It's not every day I get to save a human's life."

Dougal gripped his sword so hard, he felt like his knuckles might pop out of his skin. "He surrendered!"

"He and his friends meant to kill us. They fired on us. They charged us, blades bared. This one chose his fate." The norn clapped Dougal on the back. "If it makes you feel better, I will speak well of him when I tell this part of my saga. And of the others as well."

Dougal surveyed the tunnel. The cooling corpses of the black-and-gold-uniformed guards who'd ambushed them littered the ground, their blood running down the tunnel that had brought them from the world above to spill into the river of sludge and be carried away. Most of the rats had run off as quickly as they'd come, but a few still nibbled on the bodies of the guards they'd killed.

Every one of his compatriots seemed fine. The hail of bullets had ripped smoking channels through Ember's orange fur but not her flesh. She wiped the blood from her claws, while Gullik did the same with his axe. Killeen leaned over one of the rat-eaten guards, examining him closely. Riona knelt on one knee, staring down in abject horror at the woman she'd been battling. From the amount of the female officer's face that was missing, Dougal guessed that Ember had helped dispatch her.

Kranxx stood in front of his open pack, a bottle of bright blue fluid in his hand. "Anybody hurt?" he asked. "I've got a healing potion right here. I made it myself, and I'm eager to see how it turned out."

The asura's face fell when no one tried to claim his offered potion. "Anyone? Ember? No? All right, then." He rewrapped the potion and placed it back in his pack. "I'll just save it for later."

Dougal kicked the rats off the fallen guards, and they scampered away. Killeen noticed him shooing them away and blushed, turning a deeper shade of green.

"It's rare that I get to examine deaths this fresh," she said.

Dougal nodded, then sheathed his blade and put his head in his hands. He heard Killeen start to mutter something, but he ignored it. He needed to shut it all out for a minute.

"The Ebon Vanguard is the law in this city," Dougal said, to himself more than anyone else. "And we just killed them."

"Then it is good that we're leaving," said Ember. She arched her back and cracked her knuckles. "And better that we are not coming back."

Riona put a hand on Dougal's shoulder as he walked back toward the sewage tunnel. "I know," she said. Her voice was soft and low, but her eyes were wide and troubled: mirrors of Dougal's own. "They fired on us first. We had to defend ourselves." Unspoken was the question, If you had listened to me-if Ember had been kept in her chains-could this have been avoided?

Dougal grimaced as he looked down at the ruined corpse of the man he'd been fighting. He was younger than Dougal, but a stranger. If Dougal hadn't left Ebonhawke, they might have served together in the Vanguard. Now the man was dead, and although Dougal's hand hadn't been the one that had killed him, he still felt at fault.

"We need to keep moving," Ember said, heading for the dirty stream once more. "I doubt they came down here without telling anyone. There may be other patrols, and even if not, they will come looking for these people soon."

Dougal was less worried about getting away from the Vanguard now than he was about watching any more of them die. He glanced back up from the intersection and saw a guard-the woman who Riona had been fighting-back on her feet. She stood before the sylvari, who was now bathed in a greenish, necromantic glow.

"Killeen!" Dougal shouted.

The sylvari turned and flashed him a proud smile, then gestured at the guard to show Dougal her handiwork.

The creature had once been one of their foes but was now a bloodstained wreck, one arm shredded and the other obviously dislocated but still holding her sword in a literal death grip. The left side of her face had been torn from her skull, and the skin that remained was as pale as dried bone. Her eyes lolled about in her head as she moved, unseeing and unfocused, twitching with drained life.

Killeen had used her death magic. She had made the body walk again.

Killeen! Stop it!" Dougal said. "Let her go! Now!"

The ferocity of his revulsion stunned him, but he could not deny it. He'd seen the sylvari use her magics to animate corpses before, but not with someone so freshly dead, and not with a fallen member of the Ebon Vanguard.

Killeen's brow crinkled with concern. "What is it?" she said, examining the walking corpse. "Are her eyes falling out or something? I miss things like that sometimes."

Killeen's sincerity nearly deflated Dougal's anger. When he spoke again, he struggled to keep his words measured and his tone even. "Killeen," he said, "could you please let that woman rest in peace?"

"Why? Don't you think she'll make a good- Oh!" The sylvari clapped a hand to her forehead. When she pulled it away, regret twisted her face into a rueful frown. "I'm so sorry! I didn't even think about how that might offend you."

"It's all right," Dougal finally said. "Just let her go."

"No!" said Kranxx. He raced forward, peering up at the walking corpse from below. "Don't do that. She's perfect just the way she is."

"Dougal's right," said Riona, who looked just as distressed as Dougal felt. "This is beyond the pale. The guardswoman was just trying to do her job."

"And we're doing ours," said Kranxx. "There's a good chance that the sewage tunnel exit is trapped, and we could use a walking test case to send in first to check things out."

"That is exactly what I was thinking," said Killeen, obviously pleased that someone understood that she had only the best intentions.

"Trapped?" Dougal glared at Kranxx. "And why didn't you mention that before?"

Kranxx shrugged. "I didn't want to complicate the matter with other issues. I figured you-and I mean the collective 'you' here-would have a hard enough time making the right choice about how to get to Ascalon City from here without having to sift through extraneous points of data."

"Wolf's breath!" said Gullik. "We've been wading through this river of sludge to reach a tunnel of traps?"

"Some of us have," said Kranxx. "Others have remained nice and clean."

"Maybe too clean," said Ember. "You didn't dirty your hands in that fight, did you?"

Kranxx cringed at the accusation. "I was trying to get a surprise for our foes out of my pack, but the rest of you made such quick work of them that I never had the chance."

"Sure," said Ember. "Lucky you."

Kranxx bristled at her words. "The next time I pull something from my pack, just remember this: Close your eyes."

"By the time you pull something from your pack, we all will be dead," muttered the charr.

Dougal returned to Killeen. "Just let the woman go."

"Wynne," Riona said in a voice thick and raw. "I know her. I mean, I knew her. Her name was Wynne. Her father was friends with my father when we were young. He ran the armorer's shop."

Dougal couldn't look at the woman anymore. He had to turn away.

"She's dead," said Ember. "But she may still be of some use. That seems like a good way to honor her life."

"Charr or not," Dougal said, "that's the coldest rationalization I've ever heard."

"Bear's blood!" said Gullik. "I've never heard a pack of warriors natter on so like a gaggle of old women squabbling over their weaving."

The norn turned to Killeen. "Next time, show some more respect to those you kill. Every one of them was someone's child once."