He got to his feet and backed away, heading down the slope towards the castle. Slowly.
'That's it,' he said. 'This way. Come this way. Just a few paces.'
Julius had made it to the cliff path and was watching. Roberto could see that not all the dead had taken his bait. If this really meant independent thought, the Conquord was in even more trouble than Roberto had feared.
'Climb, Julius.'
Roberto couldn't afford to draw the dead away very far. Down the slope he could see hundreds more had gathered. All were Tsardon. And on the road, yet more. From this distance he couldn't see if they were living or dead but the fact that there was no noise coming from them; no rank and file chatter, no songs and no shouted orders left him in little doubt. He shook his head, unable to fully conceive the magnitude of Gorian's crime.
He began to circle back towards the crag. He'd only strayed ten yards from it. He glanced at the path. Julius wasn't climbing. He was backing away towards the writhing graves.
'No! Idiot. Go up, it's your only chance.'
Roberto broke into a run. The dead tracked his movement. But from the back of their party, others broke off to close the gap to the crag path. Julius had stopped again. His head turned this way and that.
'Up! Climb the bloody path. God-surround-me, climb.'
It was too late. Roberto slid to a stop by Julius. The first of the dead had reached the path. Others were joining him. Those that Roberto had led away were coming back. Still more were heading back up from the road. And as Roberto looked on, his heart fell. They dead began to climb. He rammed his sword back into its scabbard.
'Congratulations, Julius, I think you've killed us both.'
'They wouldn't listen,' he said. 'They couldn't hear me.'
Roberto grabbed his shoulders. The dead closed in on them.
‘I
told you. I tried to tell you but you wouldn't listen. They are lost to you, don't you get
it?' He shook Julius, got some r
eaction at least. 'Come on. Only one way to go now.'
He turned Julius and began to run him down the crag towards the river, not sure quite what he'd do when they got there. Dahnishev was still shouting at him. The surgeon and his team were trapped now. No way down, no way up. Roberto stopped and turned.
'Then you're like me, Dahnishev! You'll have to wait until they're gone. Pray, old friend, that we see each other again.'
Roberto shoved Julius in the back and made him move again.
'That I should be stuck with you of all people,' he said. 'You'd better make yourself useful or so help me, I will leave you behind.'
'Where are we going?' asked Julius, breathing hard as they ran.
'Back to Estorr. What else is there? And don't worry about your damned lost flock. Because I can promise you that you'll see them all again at the gates of the Hill. Now run. Can you swim?'
‘I
... yes, I can.'
'Good, because I doubt anyone left a boat moored down at the river bank and I am not about to knock on the castle gates and ask for one.'
Trying not to think too hard about his predicament, Roberto ran ·from the dead, ran from the legion, ran for his life.
Chapter Thirty-Four
859th cycle of God, 36th day of Genasrise
Gorian fell back on the bed and his hand came away from Kessian's shoulder. The Gor-Karkulas relaxed.
'Keep the path closed to them. And the road. They won't get far.'
'I think we lost them,' said Kessian.
'But we learned so much,' said Gorian. 'Just look what we can make our people do.'
'But it costs a lot of energy to split them so small,' said Kessian.
'Yes it does. Yet there are times it might be necessary.'
'It makes them weak, the ones we split away.'
'But we can return them to the mass and there be strong again.' Gorian rubbed his face and sat up. He stared at Kessian. 'You felt this all by yourself?'
Kessian nodded.
'You learn fast.' Gorian fell back on the bed again. 'I'm exhausted and I still have to contact Atreska and Gestern. Kessian, go out with the Karkulas and my Lords Tydiol and Runok. We have to track the enemy.'
'What about that man you want?'
'We have him trapped,' said Gorian. 'Now go on. Our people need their leaders. I'll join you later. Don't go far. I don't think our trapped enemy has plans to run. They'll want to watch us, so keep out of sight.'
Silence grew as their footsteps died away. Gorian felt he could sleep for three days but his work was not yet done. The excitement of raising six thousand, and the realisation of the power they gained from being among so many of their kind was still with him. The ability to split their tasks if only temporarily. And the thrill of the brief chase for Del Aglios who had revealed himself through the eyes of one of
his own legionaries so recently taken to stand by Gorian. 'And I will get you, Del Aglios.'
If Gorian was honest with himself, he felt quite ill, not just exhausted. A consequence of the dark energies he had sent up the slope. Another wonderful result, another successful experiment harvesting so many undamaged dead. But there was residue in him that he was fighting off. He laughed to himself, wishing just for a moment that he was Ossacer and could dismiss disease on an instant. He would work it out. Later. Other matters were more pressing.
Gorian settled himself and let the energy maps coalesce in his mind's eye. Thousands upon thousands of gossamer threads emanated from his body and fled away to every point of the compass. Thick knots of slowly pulsing energies led to Kessian and through him to the two Gor-Karkulas. Here rested the structures that were the Works keeping the dead animated. They were intense orbs of incandescent blue from which the individual strands that linked to each dead writhed away.
Those energy lines that tracked away through earth and under sea to more distant places were those that interested Gorian now. These were barely visible filaments but still one existed between Gorian and each one of the dead walking and fighting for him in Atreska and Gestern. The Gor-Karkulas merely boosted his own strength. He could feel them, his dead, and if he concentrated, he could channel his thoughts. His greatest discovery had been the ability to maintain these links without conscious, constant thought. It was the beauty of the earth; the greatest rumbling circuit of them all.
Gorian breathed deep and pushed out along these distance lines. Fed by the slumbering muscle of the earth itself, those extraordinary powers that fed earthquake and volcano; using amplification points along the way where the energy concentrated and leading to the lights that represented the Gor-Karkulas travelling with the Tsardon, the Dead Lords and his people.
Without Kessian by him, he was too tired to go further than his chosen Karkulas but he could at least use the Karku priest.
‘I
am here,' he said.
Gorian felt a ripple back through the lifelines. It was a reflexive defence. The Karkulas couldn't know how to respond proactively but he was uncomfortable with Gorian's intrusion into his life map nonetheless. They had been quelled very quickly, these Karku. Having promised resistance to all Gorian and King Khuran desired, they understood almost immediately that Gorian could use them whether or not they gave consent.
They had threatened to starve themselves but the Tsardon had demonstrated a willingness to force-feed and Gorian had been happy to call their bluff. The Karkulas feared him, he knew that. They could sense the power within the Ascendant even if they did not fully understand it. And he let them know he understood the implications of their deaths on the whole of Karku society. In return for their compliance he had promised them their safety and ultimate return to the Heart Shrine.
For the moment the Karkulas were acquiescent. They hated Gorian but he could live with that. He was used to it.
The Karkulas couldn't respond directly through the energy map but he could speak. Gorian heard the words (or those of the people speaking to the priest) through the Karku's ears. Again, the understanding had been so simple to come by in the end. In the same way that Ossacer used life energies against the blankness of stone to draw a mind map of the world to counter his blindness, so it was possible to interpret the modulations of energy in the ear and reproduce them as sound in his own. It was the same with his remote sight.
'What do you want?' said the Karkulas.
It would always give Gorian a thrill. It had to be five hundred miles as the crow flew to the army of Tsardon and dead marching through Atreska. More than fifteen hundred miles between him and the devastation in Gestern that was quickly approaching the capital city of Skiona and the principal port of Portbrial. That was for later.
'I will speak with Lord Hasheth,' said Gorian. 'And you will open your eyes. Don't forget that though I am a long way from you, I can still hurt you.'
The world slowly swam into view. It revealed a stark picture of the march, most resembling a child's painting. Colours brightly drawn, shaped with hard edges. The Karkulas was sitting in an open cart, facing backwards over open ground. He was unbound, surrounded by Tsardon. He moved his head quickly from side to side, giving Gorian uncomfortable blurring images. He responded, feeding cold through the lines of the earth.
'I do not need all six of you,' said Gorian. 'Face forward, keep your head still and get me Hasheth.'
Gorian heard the Karkulas ask for Hasheth to be brought to him.
He didn't hear the response. The Karkulas turned, making sure to move his head quickly and bounce his body around. Gorian chose to remain silent this time. Ahead of him, the Tsardon army were in a loose marching column. They were travelling across the wide open spaces of Atreska, heading for the border with Neratharn. The dead would be a fair distance in front of the living. The Tsardon warriors were openly hostile to the dead, only Khuran keeping them in check. Two Dead Lords and two Karkulas marshalled the dead in rotation. Hasheth, the preferred, was soon in Gorian's vision, climbing into the front of the ox-cart.
'My Master,' he said.
'You still move well?'
'The King has set a healthy pace,' replied Hasheth. 'And there is still no resistance though we are tracked and observed.' 'And my people?'
'Well enough. Your efforts maintain them in better condition than those on the snows of Kark but there is attrition. We need to harvest more.'
Gorian chuckled. 'The Atreskans have done what the Gesterners did not. But I do not see the Neratharnese simply opening their gates, do you?'
'No, Master,' said Hasheth. 'Your progress is assured?'
'I have been forced to bring forward the plan but we remain strong and are chasing down the remainder of the opposition. They are broken.'
He felt Hasheth's hesitation rather than saw it. Nuances were lost in the vision afforded him. 'The prince?'
'Is content and whole,' said Gorian.
'I understand. We await your instructions.'
'No need for anything precipitate before Neratharn. The King and the Tsardon must have their time on the battlefield. A warrior must feel flesh beneath his blade.'
The soldiers around the wagon grunted approval. Hasheth nodded his head.
'I hear you,' he said.
'Good. Relate our success to the King. Assure him of my allegiance. We are unstoppable. I will speak with you again tomorrow.'
Gorian broke connection. He would have sat up but a wave of tiredness swept over him and his stomach turned over. Gestern would have to wait. He needed to rest.
The panic had subsided, the running had stopped and a bizarre altered reality had fallen on the survivors of the wave of disease that had consumed so many. Most of the cavalry had survived and the majority of them were in a dense block across the road about a mile from the crag and in clear sight of any enemies coming at them from the castle. Scouts had already been despatched. They would not stop all day and had been tasked to make contact with the force travelling on the slopes high above them that led into the Farian Mountains.
Kell had remained on the road. Not thirty yards away, the surviving Tsardon were gathered. They were leaderless and confused. Kell knew how they felt. Following the escape, when it became clear that quite suddenly, they were outnumbered and amongst two hundred Conquord horsemen and a similar number of angry legionaries, the Tsardon had grown suspicious.
There had been scuffles and enemies who had helped each other away were separated and the sides drawn up again. But Kell had no intention whatever of attacking them and she was sure the Tsardon felt the same. She stood by her horse as did the rest of her riders and she waited.