“Ah, blessed Mother of God!” Niobea exclaimed at the sight of him. She quickly stood up, losing balance for a moment from having sat still all night long.
“Bless you, my daughter,” the priest replied in an automatic and habitual monotone. “Make room now,” he added, stepping forward to lean over the bed.
He stared in silence, punctuated only by the old woman’s breathing, then straightened and said, “Rejoice, Alann. Your good mother is not of this world much longer, and a finer place awaits her clean soul. She is fading even as we look upon her.”
Alann cleared his throat.
But it was Niobea who again spoke. “She’s been fading thus since last nightfall, Father, and it does not look like she will be taken into the Arms of the Lord any time soon.”
Father Dibue cleared his throat, wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, then began removing his coat and shawls and mittens. Underneath he wore the dark wool robes of the parish. Belle stepped up to receive his articles of clothing and hung them up carefully on pegs near their own.
“Sometimes,” Father Dibue said, “though everything is in the Lord’s Hands, undoubtedly, there’s the urgent need to administer the Holy Sacrament of the Last Rites. Otherwise, the humble servant of the Lord lingers, such as now, waiting for grace, for absolution.”
“Then proceed, Father, I beg you,” Alann said.
The priest nodded and reached for his bag.
H
e was numb and cold as winter.
Ian Chidair, Duke Hoarfrost, had no blood inside of him. It had drained completely from his body by the time he walked up the sloping incline of the shore and stopped before his men.
The soldiers stood holding torches against the heavy blue twilight, some mounted, many on foot. His son, Beltain, sat on his warhorse.
They had grown silent, all of them. It was peculiar to observe the stricken expressions on those nearest, and the hastily concealed signs of the cross that swept across the ranks in pure animal reflex.
“Father? Are you my father? Are you . . .
dead?
” his son had asked him.
And Hoarfrost had to pause and think, his mind sluggish and devoid of emotion as though he resided in a waking dream.
“My . . . son. I don’t . . . know.” The words came with uncustomary difficulty, forced and hissing, because his chest was constricted somehow—indeed, frozen like a side of meat.
Ian Chidair realized that he was not breathing and made a conscious effort to inhale, so that he could form words, so that he could speak. But as his chest expanded that first time, his lungs were burning, seemingly on fire, endlessly so, with
. . . ice; they had stiffened in rigor mortis.
Or maybe it was the simple action of cold upon water. Each intake of air caused him to fight against a new crust of ice that filmed over the insides of his lungs, and each ballooning of the membranes was breaking that ice, over and over, so that there were permanent razor-shards inside him.
. . .
Along with the everpresent ice there was pain. At first it was raging mortal agony, foremost in his mind. But then it too had grown numb in the cold—in particular when he was first submerged in the icy waters of the lake. He didn’t know cold could burn so. Cold burned with an inferno without end, and then it
. . . receded. And thus pain became secondary, a constant sensation of remote horror that simply slipped in the back of his mind and lurked—for now.
Or, maybe pain was just a memory, and was not there at all.
Duke Hoarfrost pumped his chest in and out, or did something that caused a movement inside of him. Something; he was not sure what. He could hear the cold air swishing through the holes in his flesh, a soft hiss. It was almost curious to consider it, to listen. . . . Too bad he was so stiff, so cumbersome—he had never remembered being so peculiarly solid and heavy before, as though he was not made of meat but granite.
Am I dead?
he thought, for the first time voluntarily, directly. But it was a lazy thought, a dreamlike passing thought with no emotion attached to it. And so he did not give it more than cursory attention, let it pass on into the void with other insignificant filaments of images and dream-fragments.
As though he had mused out-loud, Beltain, his son, spoke.
“What has happened, father?” he whispered. It was unclear whether he was afraid to speak up in a full voice or if he was unable to do so from the shock.
“What has happened to me?” the Duke echoed. He listened not to Beltain but to his own words. Somehow he found it now easier to speak once again, to form words on the exhalation of breath, as though the practice of pumping his own lungs was merely an old rhythm he could reclaim so that it was again becoming a habit. Inhale, exhale, his mechanism was working like clockwork.
And then he shook himself like a dog with great sudden strength that was not inhuman but merely impossible, considering the condition of his body. And he sent bits of water and ice flying around him. He flexed his arms, stomped his feet, his torso covered in iron plate and wet tunic.
“Am
. . . I . . . dead?” he said out-loud, practicing, as the air hissed out of his chest.
And suddenly there was an unexpected answer.
A man stepped forward stiffly, from among the ranks of his foot soldiers, and he said in an equally wooden, stone-cold voice. “My . . . Lord. You’re not the only one. I fear me, I’m dead too.”
He pulled off his damaged helmet and showed a head wound that could not belong to a man walking upright. Hair clotted with blood at the left side of his temple showed broken bits of skull and brains pouring out of him in rivulets, freezing against his bluish-white face.
There were groans and exclamations in the crowd.
Beltain pulled his warhorse up tight, for it started to snort and roll its eyes in terror.
And then, one after another, more men stepped forward. They removed hauberks and shirts, parted chest-plates, raised sleeves and lifted helmets. What was revealed could not be called a proper nightmare. For no human history had the words in any language to describe the carnage done to a body that is dead and ravaged and void of living fluids, missing limbs, with stilled organs and lack of movement, yet which continues supporting the living soul.
There were old legends, tales told to scare the young, of the blood-drinking vurdulak and vampir, the God-forsaken undead who rested in their coffins during day but rose at night to walk the darkness in order to appease an unholy hunger. Other legends spoke of incorporeal ghosts, skeletal creatures that would not rest, of ghouls and shades and bodies possessed by demonic forces, of drowned maidens that devoured men, of hoary forest spirits that lurked below the roots of ancient trees and swallowed the living beneath ground.
Yet there was no mention of men who simply would not die, would not leave their mauled and broken bodies, no matter how terrible the damage was. Men who could not leave the trappings of flesh, meanwhile imbued with the ability to feel every bit of pain and think the same fallible thoughts—neither good nor evil, merely ordinary human.
And now, the scene on the bank of the lake was that of military disaster. Soldiers had all broken ranks at this point, the living shying away in terrified suspicion from those around them they deemed dead, when sometimes it were themselves. Men looked closely at those nearest them, at themselves, at their noble Lord and his son.
Some wept and embraced like brothers, forgetting mortal shame. For, in the torch-lit winter night, next to a field of recent battle, this was a time of intimacy. Tears came from what remaining fluids their poor broken bodies still held in reserve. Tears flowed and froze against cold dead skin—for some, their last tears, for when their internal water was depleted the dead body would process no more. And they did not know it yet; if they did, would they save their tears?
Suddenly, in a loud rasping voice, Hoarfrost said, “Enough!” His timbre was different from the first attempts moments ago; it was now fixed in that new mode, as though the peculiar voice came as a result of turning machinery, hand-cranked gears. And it was once again strong and sure, as it had been when he was alive and cantankerous with passion.
In a steady inevitable motion, like ice transforming water, the tall, heavy-set man raised his massive hands above his head to signal for attention.
And then, turning his body still awkwardly to face his dazed son, he said: “My horse, Beltain. Bring me my horse. Now!”
There was a moment of pause, during which decisions were made that would change everything—or not.
“My
. . . Lord,” Beltain replied, after a deep shuddering breath of winter air. “I know not what has come to pass here, with you, with all of them. But I am yours, and . . . I obey.”
With those words, Beltain turned to the knights at his side and gave the command. In moments the Duke’s great charger was brought forward. The noble war-beast had escaped the cracked fissure of ice earlier while its master had not been so lucky. And now the horse snorted in confusion, for it could smell nothing but fresh blood and brackish lake water from the man-shape of his former master that now stood before it. And when Duke Hoarfrost neared the horse and mounted, it neighed in sheer terror, but stood its ground. Even the weight of this rider was different, heavy as an anvil.
“Listen to me, my men!” exclaimed Hoarfrost, sitting in the saddle like a boulder. “Something terrible has come to pass this day, this night, to you, to myself, to all of us! If it’s Goraque sorcery, as I suspect, then—as God is my witness—I will find this sorcery and uproot it! Vitalio Goraque will pay for what he did this night!”
The soldiers cheered weakly, most still staggering barely on their feet.
“What’s this? Are you men or drunken wenches?” Hoarfrost roared in his usual command. “Dead or living be damned! Form rank, all of you! And we march home!”
And they complied, coming to attention, lining up in their proper order the best they could. Beltain took his cue, and so did the other captain knights. Under their orders the army started to come back together, despite everything. In fact this normalcy helped.
Yet while they picked themselves up, and cavalry then foot soldiers started to advance back inland away from the shore, torches flickering orange, there were still moans and hushed whispers. Quite a few men had to carry each other, due to severed body parts, torn off limbs, for there were no crutches for so many. Some of the most seriously dismembered had to be carried alongside their own heads; the heads looked on sadly, eyes unblinking, mute—for they were separated from the throat and larynx and the nerves severed—and yet, somehow, they were aware.
It was the stuff of nightmares.
Hoarfrost took his usual place at the lead of the cavalry vanguard, with Laurent his standard bearer at his left side, and Beltain on the other. There was uncustomary silence between them, indeed among all the ranks, punctuated only by creaking metal armor and footsteps crunching over the fresh powder of snow. They started to turn onto the road leading deeper into Chidair territory, heading North.
Just before they turned onto the deeply rutted stretch of roadway leading away from Lake Merlait, sounds of a mild commotion carried from the rear of the marching columns. Apparently a messenger was heading their way from the enemy’s side.
Within seconds, the messenger appeared, dressed in the red and gold colors of Goraque, galloping with a white banner aloft in one hand.
Hoarfrost signaled to stop their march and half-turned in the saddle to watch the new arrival. The Duke was without a helmet and his wet hair was completely frozen to his scalp in a wild bramble-tangle, with a light dusting of snow, while his skin was matte with a crystallized sheen. His eyes, gradually freezing in their sockets, had difficulty turning, so he simply turned his neck.
Beltain appeared not to look at his father directly, but threw occasional glances sideways at him.
The messenger was a young slip of a boy. Yellow-corn hair, a frost-bitten face and pale eyes in the torchlight stared in wild desperation as he brought his horse up short, then bowed his head in greeting and delivered his message.
“The Duke Vitalio Goraque honorably requests a truce of the Duke Ian Chidair,” the boy said breathlessly. “Due to unknown circumstances and unknown terrible forces, a strange curse has come upon his men. This may be very hard to believe but no one on the Goraque side is able to die, not even the mortally wounded. My master the Lord Duke Goraque suspects sorcery or a curse, and swears upon his honor that he is willing to continue this conflict at some future date.”
“Harumph!” Duke Hoarfrost said, watching the messenger with unblinking dark eyes.
The boy blinked but that was the only indication he made of being terrified.
“So, tell me, young soldier, is it true, this crazy thing your Duke claims?” Hoarfrost continued.
The messenger gathered himself up proudly, and then said, “Yes, my Lord, it is all true!”
“And why should I believe you?”
“Because, my Lord, I see now that this curse has fallen not only upon Goraque, but upon your own men!” the messenger exclaimed. “As I rode here just now, past the army of Chidair, I saw it, my Lord. I saw everything. The dead march alongside the living. It is the exact same thing in our own ranks.”
“Hah!” Hoarfrost said. And then he turned his head fully and trained the intense look of his fixed dark eyes upon the boy.
“Look at me, soldier . . .” the Duke said. “What do you think? How do I look to you? Think you I can dance a cotillion or a gig? Well?”
Placed in a difficult situation that was getting worse by the minute, the young boy apparently decided, to hell with it. “I beg pardon, my Lord,” he said. “But—but I think you’re dead, M’Lord. You look blue and white with cold, like no living man but a corpse. And yet, dead though you might be, begging pardon and all, I think you could dance a fair swell gig, I would bet my shirt on it!”
In reply Duke Hoarfrost roared. At the first sound of his deep thunderous voice the messenger started, shifting in his saddle involuntarily. But the roar was laughter.
The Duke laughed and shook, like a Winter avalanche, ice clinking against armor plate. Finally he quieted, and nodded to the messenger. A difficult crooked smile remained on his face, but it was grim and edged with sorrow. “Well said, soldier boy, well said. Your honesty does you honor. I appear indeed to be a walking corpse, run through by another man who should’ve been dead—for I had killed him first, and had I not turned my back on him, my heart would be beating now. Maybe the Lord has decided to punish me in my moment of arrogance. But—never mind.” He paused. “And yet I am oddly glad to hear from you—all of this. Because I see now that this is not Goraque’s doing, none of it, but something greater than either of us. So, I agree to his offer. Tell him—we are under truce. Until we come to the bottom of this, all of it, the dark sorcery or curse of hell, we will set down our arms and return to our lands. Now, go, tell him my words. Oh, and be sure to tell him that I am dead. The Chidair corpse sends his greetings and his regards! What a wonder, eh? Now, go!”