They were thirty yards from the Bear Claw lines. Nunan took his magnifier from his belt sheath and put it to his eye. The light was still poor but it was just good enough to bring him grim detail. Badges hanging from torn cloth. Blood lines showing wounds. Blank expressions. He stopped moving the magnifier.
One was different. He marched at the exact centre of the force and he was not dead. He was Tsardon, head covered in what looked like piercings and tattoos and he was speaking. His lips moved and though he could not be shouting, he was certainly saying something. The dead surely marched to his tune.
'Who
...?'
It didn't matter. What mattered was that he was there and that the momentum of the dead march had a metronome. Nunan grabbed his hornsman who was staring at the advance, shivering.
'Sound the advance. Sound the advance now.'
Nunan began to run back towards the rear of the lines. As the horn sounded its single long, repeating tone he shouted for attention from his centurions.
'Break their advance. They want us to stand in fear. Take it to them, Claws. Archers, target the centre. Tsardon commander is centre. Do it, do it now.'
More horns took up the order. The legion began to move. Songs swelled in throats. Arrows began to pepper the centre of the dead line, disrupting its flow. Left and right, the gladius flanks moved in. The dead ignored them, moving on forwards towards the sarissas.
'Engage!' ordered Nunan.
The prayer echoed from the sides of the valley and bounced from the cliff behind. The sarissa infantry lowered their weapons and drove them into defenceless dead. Some of the living cried out at what they were doing. Nunan, following the line in, saw tears on the cheeks of triarii. The flanks of gladius infantry pivoted down their slopes. The Bear Claws moved in. Weapons clashed. Men were screaming.
The dead marched on. Those who encountered sarissas were driven back but did not fall. They walked, they pushed themselves up blades and those who came behind them did the same. Alarm started to filter across the centre of the legion. The Bear Claws' advance stalled almost as soon as it started. The sarissas could not make any more ground. Step by step, the dead forced gaps in their defence. Dead legionaries impaled on the long blades, began to walk up the shafts. And the more the legionaries held their weapons secure, the more they helped those making the grisly walk towards them.
Not knowing what to do, the sarissa infantry began to back away. Centurions roared for them to hold but between each shaft, the dead were closing. The right flank marched into the dead at pace. Nunan heard the crunch of impact. Shields up, the gladius infantry ploughed in. Swords hacked around and over shields. Nunan saw the dead sway inwards. Men and women lost their balance, falling into others who were still facing forwards, not realising for a moment that they were being attacked from three directions.
Nunan's hope rose but it was a brief flicker. Almost immediately, the dead on the flanks began to turn. Feverish strikes from the Claws battered and bludgeoned heads and bodies. Dead with smashed skulls dragged themselves back to their feet and tried to move on. Those with sword arms chopped from their bodies still moved forwards, adding to the weight. The initial push was stopped. Dead filled in behind those pushing back outwards on the flanks. And still they walked up the centre along the sarissa shafts.
To put down any of the dead took so many strikes, so much energy. And now they were beginning to strike back. Nunan had expected the blows of the dead to be directionless but they were not. Dead turned to face their attackers and struck out. Bear Claws were shouting at them to stop, begging them to remember who they had been, calling out names. And while one might falter and drop his sword, another would not.
Standards began to waver. Nunan could see the Claws shift backwards. Dead were on them in the centre. He looked but could not believe, while a man who had walked right up the shaft of a sarissa thrust his blade into the chest of the screaming legionary who held it. He collapsed, dragging his attacker down. But the dead man still tried to move forward. Into the gap came more, trampling over those in their way. Sarissas were dropped from dozens of hands, disrupting the advance further but nothing was stopping it. Gladiuses were drawn. The front rank closed again.
A bellowed order saw a renewed rush into the enemy. Nunan saw soldiers possessed by a frenzy, crashing their swords again and again into the dead that faced them. Bodies were dismembered, heads smashed inside their helmets, legs cut from underneath. The dead began to fall, yet as fast as they did they tried to rise once more. They were not tiring. They had no fear of death or pain. The fury of the assault began to dissipate.
The Claws were creaking. Arrows came overhead but those they struck ignored them, only breaking shafts that obstructed movement. And still the Tsardon commander lived. Nunan could hear him. A lone voice in the silent army.
'We have to get the leader,' shouted Nunan. 'More arrows centre. Press, Claws.'
Horns sounded again. They, like those they commanded, were uncertain, losing heart. But they moved in again anyway. Shields forward to batter a path, swords looking to disable, eyes front and fearful of any strike. No one wanted to become like them and it showed. A timidity was falling on them.
'Nunan!'
The general turned. Roberto Del Aglios was running towards him. Others were with him, carrying crates and a brazier. Engineers. He frowned. Behind him, the cries of his legion reached a new level. The line was under threat. The legion was retreating.
'Hold!' bellowed a centurion. 'Hold.'
'God-surround-me, General, we can't stop them. We can't even contain them.'
'Then help me,' said Roberto. 'We no longer have a choice.'
The crates were placed on the ground, the engineers levering up the lids to reveal straw-packed flasks. Nunan stared down and then up at Roberto.
'You can't mean this,' he said.
'Got a better idea? Some must perish that the rest can live to fight another day.'
'But this isn't just death, this is cycle's end.'
'I know,' said Roberto and Nunan could see the conflict in his face. 'Now will you help me or not? I will throw the first flask.'
Nunan scanned the engineers. They were with him but there was a sheen to their faces that told of the crime they were abetting. And more were running down the road too. Shouting for Roberto to be stopped. The Order.
'What is going on, General?'
'Speaker Barias does not agree with me,' said Roberto. 'I can see his point.'
The orders and shouts of the infantry had an edge of desperation to them. Centurions were looking to Nunan and he was not looking back.
'You have to make a choice,' said Roberto, his tone sharp, voice loud enough to carry to the rear ranks. 'Give them something or watch them fall and join the dead.'
Nunan paused.
'You haven't the time, General,' said Roberto. 'Examine your conscience later. We have to destroy these now before the cavalry is broken and the Tsardon hit us full force. Take the fear from your soldiers.'
Nunan nodded. 'Light the tapers,' he said. 'Yes, General,' said an engineer.
The Order delegation were pounding down the road at a sprint. Roberto glanced in their direction.
'Don't let them divert you.' He beckoned to the engineers. 'Quickly. One for each hand. Pray as you throw.'
Nunan turned to the hornsman. 'Signal disengage.'
The hornsman stared back. 'General?'
'Do it,' snapped Roberto. 'Or the Bear Claws die here and now.'
Tapers were lit. The engineers were ready. Julius Barias and three Order Readers were roaring, their fury understandable but their self-control gone. Nunan felt cold inside. His mind raced, his pulse likewise and he fought to control a shiver in his arms. He nodded at the hornsman and the disengage was sounded. Roberto picked up two flasks and proffered them to the engineer holding the taper.
'May God forgive us this day,' he said.
'May our friends forgive us,' said the engineer.
The disengage was heralded across the line and Nunan heard instant confusion. Centurions were looking to him for explanation. They were going to get one but they weren't going to like it.
'You'd better be right, Roberto,' he said.
'Trust me.'
The legion was moving backwards. It was a controlled move designed to produce a gap of four yards, then ten, quickly and without casualties. But of course the dead weren't like any other army, happy to rest and defend the inevitable arrows. They just moved up and the gap was under pressure.
The engineer lit the fuses on Del Aglios's flasks and those of another two engineers whom he'd convinced to his thinking. Nunan bent to take flasks himself. Del Aglios was moving forward to the back of the line and into it, shouting men from his path. Julius Barias sprinted past yelling his rage. Del Aglios cocked an arm to throw. Barias grabbed it, tore the flask from his hand and threw it away behind him where it smashed on a rock and threw fire over the grass; a sudden flare in the dim light.
Del Aglios turned on him, fuse burning down his second flask.
'Touch me again and you'll feel the flame, Barias.'
'I am an officer of the Omniscient and you will—'
'And I'm a man trying to save my people and
my
countr
y,' said Del Aglios.
He shoved Barias so hard that the Speaker stumbled and fell backwards and into the arms of his Readers. In the next motion, he'd switched his second flask to his throwing arm and hurled it in a high tumbling arc.
'General, no!'
It was the voice of a centurion. Others joined it and every eye watched the flask. The flame illuminated the clear liquid sloshing within, the upturned faces blanking in realisation. It hadn't even landed before Roberto was shouting for more. But then it did. Cannoning into the helmet of a dead Bear Claw legionary. The naphtha sprayed wide, the flame igniting it as it travelled, sending a sheet of flame that covered twenty.
Four other flasks followed quickly, shattering in the centre of the dead army. The Bear Claws took another pace backwards. The cries of condemnation began to ring out but they were drowned by the shout of the dead. Weapons dropped from every hand, burning or not. Every face turned towards the Bear Claws. Eyes that had been blank registered betrayal. And from the mouths of those aflame came a dreadful keening wail. Within it, Nunan was certain he could hear a scream of 'why?' and the sound tore at his heart and drained his determination.
'No more!' he shouted. 'No more fire. Claws, let's get into them. Save all you can.'
The dead did not raise a hand. In their midst, the single living Tsardon was trapped. The Bear Claws waded back into the attack. They carved and hacked and bludgeoned. Nunan pressed forwards to be seen in the centre of the action, stamping out fires, trying to send the screaming dead back to the embrace of God, trying to save them from the demons on the wind.
But while they did not fight back, the dead had found their voice. The wail had become a howl. It spoke pain and dread. It dredged horror from the deepest recesses of the human mind and flung it at the living who could do nothing but try to scythe the limbs from their former comrades and try to bring them new peace.
Yet on the ground, even
those with arms hanging by a thr
ead or with heads crushed in or cut from their necks still tried to move. Nunan felt nausea growing. Around him, men and women could not control themselves, vomiting, calling out for it all to end but knowing it could not.
'Finish the job,' called Nunan. 'We must.' - He stopped talking before his voice broke. In front of him, a dead legionary was a sheet of flame. He battered his shield into the man's body, sending him sprawling backwards. He chopped down, taking the sword arm off at the elbow then dropped to his knees to heap dirt on the burning, writhing body. To roll it over to extinguish the naphtha flames that he himself had thrown.
'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry,' he muttered. 'Forgive me.'
And in the next instant, the dead dropped soundlessly to the ground. Crumpling where they had stood and leaving just one man standing. The tattooed Tsardon commander.
Silence washed across the battlefield. The growing dawn illuminated the smoke-blown carnage. The air stank of burned cloth and flesh. From down the road towards the castle, Nunan could see the sutviving cavalry turn and pound up towards him. Prayers were being said in every quarter. And those accusing eyes turned from the dead all around them, fixing on him and Roberto Del Aglios.
'This crime cannot go unpunished,' said Julius Barias from behind him.