Harbinger: The Downfall - Book One (19 page)

“The Day of Phaz happens every four years. It’s a time of wondrous and frightening events. It comes between years, after the last day of Milwen and before the first day of Loen. It’s said the Gods would walk the lands and that makes all magic unstable and unpredictable. Most folks give their animals extra food and water the night before, gather indoors with their families, lock the doors, close the shutters and shades, and celebrate. Others feel the Day of Phaz is a day of High Magic and they have grand rituals in private, or sometimes with a group. Most churches hold twenty-four hour ceremonies, but not allow anyone to enter or exit during the service.

“The dates rarely lined up since the Talisman did not appear on a regular schedule. But one hundred and fifty-four years ago they did line up. They say Pirtaku came to the area to find a living dead demon in the small village of Aborgas to the west of Red City, but when he arrived in here he was faced with hordes of half-wolf, half-man creatures. He and his companions freed Red City from its curse then went to Aborgas to face the creature there that had been feeding on the souls of the people in the surrounding countryside.”

The bard stopped to take a drink from his mug and looked into it, a frown on his face. Gruedo refilled it from the pitcher on the table. Someone else called out for a livelier tune and the bard plucked out a dancing jig for a while. Before he had finished the song, the crowd had turned back to their conversations and he leaned towards Gruedo and Cyril again and continued his tale.

“Now the Talisman has come again; some say it arrived on the equinox of last year. It has been here longer than any other visit. The equinox and new moon lie just three days away and the holy day of Chanian and the Changing Wheel hold their monthly celebrations on the same day. People feel this means something. Already the townsfolk speak of things in the night. They tell of lights from the cliffs in Aborgas, beasts from the forest of the Fae, Kala the Black near New Roval and Lysunius, and of other portents. Milk souring, warts appearing, goats clucking, and chickens mooing. The list goes on,” the bard said with a wink.

Gruedo dropped a few more coins into the man’s hat, leaned back in her chair, picked up her mug, and studied the rest of the patrons in the room. Cyril stared at a small drip of water coming in from the window as it fell from the windowsill to the floor. Gruedo stood and grabbed the pitcher and her mug. She nodded at the bard - who nodded back - gestured for Cyril to follow, and led the way to the upstairs balcony.

When she found a more private table, she sat down and waited for Cyril to do the same. Then she leaned forward and asked in a hushed voice, “So what do you think?”

“About what we should do?” Cyril took a drink from his mug. “I think we should find a room and in the morning, hopefully it will be better weather, and we can head south. Maybe follow the coast around to avoid the thick of the woods, since it seems things have already decided to come out and play.” He stopped and stared into his mug. “This isn’t too bad.”

“Then the mug is probably dirty,” said Gruedo with a wink. Ignoring the look Cyril gave her in return she continued, “We should have something to eat here, and then get a room next door at the sister inn to this tavern.”

“Oh? And what is it called? The Bloody Bitch Bed and Breakfast?” Cyril asked.

“No,” Gruedo answered with a straight face, “Two Bit Rest.”

The rain continued. Dinner consisted of mushroom stew with a dash of red wine thrown in. It was a specialty of the house and had been perfected over years of serving it. The tavern had a fetish for serving drinks and meals with red in them. It served red potatoes only, many red wines, several dishes with red peppers or red cabbage, and they preferred to serve red meat.

A thud hit the shutters on the second floor beside the table at which Gruedo and Cyril were sitting. A stifled scream came from the street below. Gruedo stared at Cyril over her wooden spoon, a large lump of mushroom balanced on the end. Another thud sounded from the front of the building and something rolled off the porch roof. Gruedo’s mushroom fell back into her stew with a wet splash. Cyril leapt from his chair and ran to the window, pulled it up and pushed open the shutters.

In the street below was a mob, lit by the flickering light of oil lamps hung outside of businesses. A slow-moving, shuffling, grayish mob. It lumbered and shambled forward, and herded the people on the street in front of it like sheep.

Cyril watched as a woman slipped in the mud and fell within the reach of the humanoid creatures. One reached out and caught a handful of her hair and another grabbed her arm and brought it to its mouth with a jerk. Cyril heard the crack of bone as the arm bent in an unnatural way. A third wrapped both of its arms around one of the woman’s legs and hugged it to its mouth as it too began to bite into her flesh. Her screams echoed off the building.

One man ran to try to help her. He grabbed her shoulder and pulled her away from the horrors. He almost succeeded. As he pulled her away the one that had her hair in its grip, tore loose a hank of bloody scalp. The other that had her arm was showered with blood as the bone tore through the skin. The monster lowered its mouth to tear and rip at the exposed muscle. The man froze in horror as he saw what had happened; he wasted the valuable seconds he should have used to escape. Four more surrounded the man, and pawed at him. They grabbed him and tore at him with dirty nails that had become claws. He joined the woman in dying, rather than saving her.

Cyril began to climb out of the window to help the people below. A hand on his shoulder stopped him.

“Take the stairs, you will do them no good if you slip on that porch roof and break your neck jumping to the street,” Gruedo said. Cyril nodded and turned to run for the stairs.

“I’ll go out the window,” Gruedo said with a smile and launched herself out the window, rolled across the porch and sprang from the roof into the leading monsters. She hit the ground with a roll and came up with a long dagger in each hand. The smell of the creatures almost overcame her before they even realized she was there.

The things that were overrunning the town and devouring its citizens were decayed parodies of people. They were partially decomposed corpses stalking about on stiff joints and withered tendons and muscles. They moved in the jerky way a puppet moves when operated by a child. Many showed signs of infestation, maggots crawling across their milky eyes, a beetle running from a hole in the ribs to disappear into a hole in the throat, or a spray of roaches when the man tried to punch one in the last defiant act before it tore away most of his face with its remaining teeth.

The things reached for Gruedo. She felt the wrongness of their existence. The dead had risen and come to town for dinner. They were dressed for a formal dinner too. Most of the inhuman mob was dressed in fine clothes; the rest were dressed for bed. Their clothes were stained and covered with mud, as if they had dug their way up from the ground. Gobs of rotting flesh hung from faces and loose gray skin hung from arms, necks, and bellies, where it appeared they had lost weight suddenly on some mad diet. It made Gruedo’s mind spin. She felt like running, and could not control the mad laughter that spilled from her lips. They reached for her and dragged her forward into the mass of stinking flesh of the mob.

Gruedo heard a faint voice, she knew it was loud, but it was hard to hear and seemed very distant. A serene feeling washed over her and her senses returned. The monsters hesitated and looked over her form for a moment. She twisted her body and fell from their grip and to the muddy ground. Gruedo whipped her feet around, knocking one of the clumsy creatures to the ground, but others still had hold of her arms and clothing. She slashed out with her daggers, aiming for the tendons that kept the monsters erect and the once soft tissue of the forearms that controlled their tight grip on her.

She saw a brilliant silver light part the crowd. Cyril stood at the end of the corridor that had been created. He shone in the gray mist of rain. In his hand was a silvery trident with three gleaming prongs and a large diamond set in the point where they converged with the shaft. The brilliance came from the symbol of Jonath that hung around his neck. A hole had burned through his shirt where the medallion sat, but his flesh underneath was untouched.

Cyril strode forward swinging his trident back and forth. Wherever it touched any of the monsters it left scorch marks and the smell of burning flesh. This did nothing to settle the nauseous feeling in Gruedo’s stomach.

“What took you so long?” Gruedo panted as she stood and turned her back on Cyril and faced the attacking horde.

“They wouldn’t let me out of the pub. They were barring the door. People were banging to get in, and I had to fight my way out.” Cyril sounded calm and in control, as if this was what he knew how to do, and he was born into this job of slaying the unnatural horrors.

Gruedo dodged forward and dropped low, bringing her dagger between the legs of one, cutting at the hamstring in the inner thigh. The beast fell sideways and then began to pull itself up on its other leg. “How did you get the crowd to open it?” she asked ass he came out of a spin that cut a slice across the belly of another.

“I commanded them to open it in the Name of Jonath. They couldn’t resist,” Cyril said as he turned in a half circle, touching three more and watching their flesh peel back, more from the holy power of the ethereal weapon than the force of his cut. “These are undead. Zombies born of whatever power it was that I felt when I woke screaming the other day. Your weapons will not kill them.”

“Looks like they are doing just fine to me,” Gruedo yelled as she struck out again. The stream of undead surrounded them now. The main body pushed past the knot that created a wall around them, seeking other prey.

“Look again,” was all Cyril said. Gruedo looked for a moment at the one she had cut on the inner thigh and saw the wound closing, muscle and sinew knitting together as it did.

“Chanian’s Boots! How am I supposed to kill these things?” she shouted.

“Fire, the power of magic, or the power of a God. Good thing I brought one of those with me.” Cyril began chanting in the dull monotone Gruedo had heard once before in the room of the inn back in Edgewater. “Jonath, I call upon your protection from these unnatural horrors. Give us the power to turn them back, bless our weapons as we do the duty you have given us of protecting those weaker than ourselves.”

As Cyril finished there was a burst of light and the zombies fell backwards as if hit with a wall of lightning. Smoke rose from the front row of walking dead. The other brainless monsters stepped over, or on, them to reach their quarry.

Gruedo felt fear then, but only for a moment. She was not the type ever to be defenseless, and she was not defenseless now. She sheathed one of her daggers and reached into her satchel that was slung, as always, over her shoulder and hung at her hip. She drew out a padded leather case and unlaced it with her teeth as she knelt. She set the open case on the ground and picked a hollow double glass marble from it. She took aim and threw this into the face of one of the zombies that was stepping over its fallen brethren. It exploded spectacularly. Flames enveloped the thing, but it continued forward. The fire spread though. Each zombie it brushed against caught fire easier than it should have.

“Try your weapons again,” Cyril told her as she stabbed at the remaining monsters. Gruedo looked down at the useless dagger in her hand and saw a faint silvery glow. It was not as strong as the one that emanated from Cyril’s trident, but Gruedo grinned anyway and spun into action, grabbing a handful of her glass explosives as she did.

Cyril marched forward with grim determination. He stabbed with the points of his trident and clubbed with the four-foot handle. He chanted an almost constant prayer to Jonath now, calling upon his God to support, protect, and inspire him as well as destroy and vanquish the evil that attacked the town. Gruedo weaved and dodged her way through the thinning crowd of undead. Her weapons now cut with the blessing of Jonath and the wounds did not close and mend as they had before. She used her alchemical bombs to the best advantage, and flung them into tight groups of the rotting creatures.

The townsfolk hid, barring their doors, shuttering their windows, and barricading themselves inside. A few peeked through knotholes or second story windows. Later tales would be told of those that swore that they were outside when the horde of undead marched through town. Some would tell how they fought the things, destroying many. Others would tell how they hid or ran, not willing to test their lives against the monsters’ unlife. Those who died that day would tell the truth, without question.

The battle continued well into the night. The mass of the undead creatures moved on, as if attacking the village was incidental, rather than the goal. After an hour or so, Cyril had destroyed most of the creatures that remained with Gruedo’s help. It fell to them to hunt the remaining creatures in the dark. Some of the city’s braver residents came out, armed with torches, lanterns, and various weapons.

One zombie had become locked in a barn and was scraping at the door, trying to find a way out. When Gruedo opened the door, with Cyril waiting, the creature lurched out towards the crowd of people that had gathered to help. The crowd scattered. Weapons were dropped as they ran, torches were thrown, and lanterns were shattered. Cyril did away with the flesh-eating zombie, but came away with burns along one leg where a lantern someone had dropped had splashed him with flaming oil. The wet and rain stopped the barn and hay from catching fire.