Harban's voice rose above the growing anxiety, halting the backward step some of the Karku were making. Harkov took a deep breath and faced the rotting legionary one more time.
'May God forgive me for what I must do,' he said.
Harkov changed the angle of his attack and hacked down into the man's unprotected legs at the knee. He felt the blade part flesh and rattle into bone. The leg gave way. Harkov kept his shield high, fending off the falling body. Even as he went down, the Gesternan dead man lashed out, his blade clattering into Harkov's defence.
'Bring them down!' he shouted. 'Go for their legs.'
In the chill mist that blew across the island from Mirron's work on the ice, the Karku and Estoreans got to their grisly work. The silence of the dead was deeply unsettling. Harkov was desperate for a reaction but got none. Passion begets passion and in the carnage that followed, tears mixed with determination in many of the island's defenders. It was hard to fell an opponent who did not have the will to kill you.
The Estoreans led the attack. The dead were slow but implacable. Shields were held firm, in front and above. Harkov found his gladius a difficult weapon for the work it had to perform. The short stabbing blade was unsuited to the hack and chop. But there was no choice. He drove himself into the press of the dead, trying to blank his mind and think only that he was clearing a path.
'Dead wood,' he said to himself. 'They aren't alive, they aren't alive. Send them back to God. To his embrace and to peace.'
Harkov carved his gladius into the hip of a soaking, stinking Karku. He felt the bone shatter and the man was flung sideways into one of his grim companions. Not a sound but the splash as he hit the water right on the shore. His heart might not be beating but Harkov's thundered in his chest. He felt sick. The stench this close to was appalling. Like a five-day-dead horse on a hot solastro battlefield.
Harkov gagged and battered his shield forwards, feeling it connect with armour. He looked over the top. The man in front of him had no eyes. Dear God, he had no eyes and a flap of diseased skin hung down from one cheek, ripped by small teeth. But still he came forward. He held a gladius. He was another Gesternan. Another militia man brought here by foul Ascendant magic.
'Release him from torment,' he muttered. 'Help him.'
He tried to chop down and round at the back of the thigh to cut a hamstring. The man's blade whisked just above his head, clipping the top of his shield. Harkov raised his arm a little more, giving him better defence, and hacked his blade in again. The flesh parted. The man stumbled. Harkov stepped back out of his way, the next blow missing him. The man fell.
Left and right he saw frightened Karku and Ascendancy guard engaged with the dead. Next to him, a Karku screamed his disgust and horror, slashing an axe across in front of his face. It struck the neck of his victim, smashing through leather and bone. The man's head fell from his body. The Karku grunted satisfaction but in the next instant whimpered in fear. The body came on. The man's sword rose and fell blind. The Karku stood helpless, the blade cutting him deeply in the shoulder.
it can't be,' said Harkov. 'Tell me, God, please.'
It could have been that all of them sensed what Harkov had just seen. But in truth it was the fact that not one of those who had been felled was still. Panic rippled through the defence. The crippled dead were dragging themselves slowly up the beach while those behind them simply walked on and over them if they were in the way.
Harkov could do nothing more. He backed off a pace. He needed time to breathe though he knew there was none.
'Don't break!' he called, his voice perilously close to just that.
But they were. He couldn't deny the fear and the sense of helplessness. And yet at his feet, there were dead who could not threaten them and only a couple of hundred still walked. The rest, the mass, were lost to the bottom of the Eternal Water.
'We can take these down,' he said, hearing Harban shouting what he presumed were similar words.
Jhered's voice behind him gave him fresh heart.
'Send them to the deeps. Stand. You're on an island. Where are you going to go? Harban. Tell them.'
But he didn't wait for Harban to speak. Jhered crashed into the fray right next to Harkov. He'd picked up a long blade from somewhere and had abandoned his shield. He wielded the blade in both hands, sweeping it into the shoulder of one man and then back down into the midriff of another. Both enemies were flung into other dead, making a gap into which Jhered strode.
'They can't hurt you without arms, they can't come at you without legs.'
Harkov moved in behind him, crouching and hacking out with his gladius, feeling it shear into exposed flesh. Karku came in to support them, bringing a remnant of tattered confidence back to the defence. Voices rose again, echoing from the cavern walls and sheeting across the water. Harkov felled another, his gladius chopping into an enemy spine just above the waist.
In front of them, the density of dead was just beginning to lessen. They were tripping over the crawling bodies of those fallen in front of them. Karku, led by Ascendancy guard, were beginning to work the flanks. Harkov heard Harban's voice, loud above the thud of weapon on armour and the sick sound of flesh dividing. The Karku began chanting. It sounded like a prayer but more important, it sounded like victory.
Harkov found himself energised. He surged upright and slammed his shield into the face of a dead Karku brave. The man's head snapped back and he fell backwards, splashing down in front of another who tripped over his body. Harkov smiled.
'Touch the embrace of God. Leave this place.'
Around them, the fires guttered on the island and the pathways above. Harkov felt a rush of warm air. Mirron, surely. A blink before the Work was cast, Harkov smelt the taint. A tongue of flame speared from the mouth of the outflow. For a heartbeat it lit the cavern as it traced across the roof. Harkov shielded his eyes. He didn't see the impact but he heard Mirron scream. Darkness fell.
It was blackness so complete it stole the breath and stilled the tongue in every mouth. Harkov could hear the dead still moving forwards and the panic that swept the island, the whole of Inthen-Gor, was complete and all-consuming.
'Stand!' roared Jhered. 'One pace back and stand.'
There was little he could do. Harkov took his pace and raised his shield. The noise was growing around him. Shouts bounced from the walls, the sound of feet scrabbling on sand and stone came from everywhere. Men were screaming. He heard the wild swishing of blades. People were running, colliding, plunging into the water. Anything to try and escape the stumbling dead menace.
'Harkov?' Jhered's shout nearby was curtailed by his violent exhaling as he was struck by some desperate Karku.
'Behind you, Exchequer. And right.'
Harkov was rocked by a hand placed on his shoulder as a fulcrum. He steadied himself.
'I'm feeling out. Don't put your sword point in my way.'
'It's down,' said Harkov. 'Shield is towards you. Low. I'm crouched.'
'Best place to be. God-around-me. Calm! Calm!' The last a bellow at anyone who might be listening.
There was the faintest luminescence growing in the cavern. Blue-green and gaining slowly. Lichen all over the walls and algae in the lake. Harkov blinked, trying to discern the distance to the dead, aware he couldn't hear their movement over the screaming panic sweeping the island. Another Karku bounced from him on his way to who knew where. In the half light, Harkov saw his eyes; wild and terrified. No coherent thought behind them.
More images swam before him; shapes in the gloom, ghosts in shadow. The pale glint of light in dead eyes. He had expected to feel the dead at his shield by now but it was Jhered's hand that gripped his shield arm.
'They aren't advancing.'
The light grew to a watery green, strengthened a little by the relighting of a few fires behind them at the shrine. As it did, the clamour and the panic died away. Two thousand Karku and two hundred Estorean guard stared out over the Eternal Water. Some Karku began mumbling prayers. Harkov shivered, feeling cold deep inside. Next to him, Jhered's face was set.
The beach was crowded with the dead. Before them, under their feet, those of their like that had fallen, discarded now like grotesque unwanted dolls. Thousands of them. They had spread all around the island as far as Harkov could see before the shrine obscured his view. He was in no doubt they were encircled.
'How?' began Jhered.
The answer was walking from beneath the lake's surface. All those they had thought perished in the deep. Some just breaking surface, heads and eyes above. Others wading chest and thigh deep. Yet more moving to stand with their comrades. Water dripped from them, poured from opened mouths. Cough reflexes sent spasms through bodies but the sound was guttural, sub-human. These were the only sounds that the dead had made.
From the mouth of the outflow, the ice was growing again. More slowly this time. The dead crowded the entrance, waiting their order to march. Harkov glanced up to the passageways and tunnels. All sounds of conflict there had ceased. Not even a gorthock roar punctuated the quiet.
Harkov's heart missed a beat.
'Mirron,' he said. Her place was empty, her fire smoking gently in still air.
Jhered turned to him. 'She can't burn and she can't drown. So long as she survived the impact, she'll be all right.' 'But she can't help us.' Jhered shook his head. 'No. But who can?' 'What can we do?' asked Harkov.
His mind was filled with images of his family. Dangerous thoughts to harbour right now. He tried to push them away and believe he would survive. He just didn't know how.
'I don't know,' said Jhered. 'Beyond surrender.'
Harkov looked at him sharply. 'You mean that?'
'It is a bitter drink but it might save us for another day if Gorian or whoever is commanding these corpses will listen.'
'You aren't serious. You heard Harban. The mountain will fall.'
'Do you really believe that, General? It is figurative at best. It certainly has no basis in geology or physics. Remember yourself.'
'I didn't believe the dead would walk or that the Ascendants could tame the elements.'
Jhered's smile was brief and without humour.
'Harkov, look around you. Do you think for one moment these Karku have the courage to stand together against this enemy? I can't even vouch for our own people, not if those they are here to help cannot fight.'
'But they have no choice, they have nowhere to run. You said it yourself, this is an island.'
'Speak logic to a panicked man. How far do you get?'
Harkov's response stopped in his throat. In his heart, he knew Jhered was right. And there was that part of him that was already prepared to cling on to any vestige of hope he might see the daylight again. Thoughts of a heroic death faded. What heroism was there dying at the hand of a rotting dead man here in a cold, dark cavern.
The temperature fell away again like it had before. Wind played across the island. The ice fled out ever faster and the dead waiting in the outflow began to walk. The fires guttered. The algae and lichen dimmed. Darkness closed in once more and they heard the dead moving forwards.
The screams and shouts started afresh. The running of feet and the calls for order too. Harkov and Jhered stood their ground trying to pierce a blackness that was so complete that neither could see their hands in front of their faces. The crush and tumult was all behind them. Harkov knew a few Ascendancy guard stood with them but the bulk of the broken defence was swarming in, over and around the shrine.
So it was that Harkov knew the dead had stopped walking after perhaps only a couple of paces. It dawned on the terrified Karku stumbling about in the dark with agonising slowness and it was only then that the shouts of Jhered and Harban began to be heard. The island fell silent once more, bar the whimpering of those too scared to know reason. And they waited.
'You are beaten yet I will be merciful.' The voice was carried easily over ice and water.
'Gorian.' Jhered's gravel whisper made Harkov start, the fury it contained feeling like murder.
Not another sound. How many could understand him was hard to guess. Not many. But enough. And all of them knew a voice of evil when they heard it.
'I will take what I came here to take. You can choose the manner in which that takes place.'
The voice was so calm, so measured. It seemed to float in the air and caress the ear. And beneath it, the sound of countless echoes whispered in countless different tones. Harkov swallowed. He didn't need to see to know that the echoes came from the mouths of the dead.
'You will never take the Heart Shrine!' Harban, from somewhere behind them, voice choked with emotion. 'You will not overcome us.'