“And bone dancers?” Blake interjects. “It does not matter what is natural, Necromancer, we are not taken in by your concern for our present course. I can smell more of your filth close by, I do not know why you are pretending to negotiate when you have already opened graves to stop us. This conflict has been unavoidable from the start.”
The clown throws his hands up in protest.
“Not so. Forgive my hasty words. I do not know what you sense but it has nothing to do with me,” the breathless voice assures them hastily. The clown’s dull tones hide Rugan’s alarm at the idea that the battle will be forced on him before he can find out all he needs to know. “I have given my advice and asked you to see sense. Forgive my attempt at intimidation, I have little experience dealing with the living and I merely seek to ensure that the girl and the book are safe.”
“And going where it suits you.”
“And to give you the benefit of my knowledge. If you go further you cannot hope to escape the Inquisitors, they can sense the book you stole and will find you in the open. Your father speaks for many of the barons, they might be able to offer you protection, even find away to hide the book.”
“That won’t matter we don’t have the…” Lillian starts.
“Say no more!” Sam snaps.
“You don’t have the book,” the clown finishes for her. “My dear, however did you manage to lose it, after being clever enough to steal it in the first place?”
“How did you know I stole it in the first place?” Lillian asks, “I’m sure that Angus isn’t shouting that information from the roof of the palace.”
“I have access to knowledge that is hidden from the living, Lillian it is why I am so intent on keeping you from your present course. Captain Blake is blinded by his desperation to reach the Gate but you must realize that it is far more important for you to be kept from our mutual enemy’s hands. Now tell me how did you come to lose the book? Was it taken from you?”
“Don’t say any more!”
Aden
says, echoing the Pilgrim, “Sam’s right, it is not here to help us, it’s just fishing for information.”
“There are other ways to learn what I need to know,” the clown responds setting his pipe to his teeth, “just as there are other ways to make you go the way I wish you to.”
A shrill note sounds! A note barely on the edge of hearing, yet somehow louder than Sam’s sudden call to “RIDE!” and the old graveyard of Maulten spits forth her dead, in a writhing tide of mindless corruption. Rotting bodies claw their way up blackened stone then tumble over the low wall, groping for legs and bridles. The terrible silence of the sudden attack is quickly broken by the sound of Aden’s pistols roaring and flashing in the darkness. A few corpses tumble back under the impact but they pick themselves up almost as soon as they have hit the ground.
Aden
yells a guerrilla war cry and kicks out, shattering a desiccated hand and the skull behind it but he can already feel a pulling on his other leg. He desperately pulls the triggers under his finger but the chambers are already empty and the tide of undead swells around him.
Confronted by the unnatural wave of death the horses scream in panic and rise up, their front hooves flailing. All her years of riding experience are of no use, Lillian can’t hold herself in the saddle and finds herself sliding back into the morass of rotting flesh. The sounds of stiff tendons given sudden life and the gnashing of withered jaws reaches her, even through her determination to keep her grip on the slippery reigns. She screams as a hand locks on her boot. From the corner of her eye she sees the Pilgrim spurring his horse towards her, the sound of bones, ground beneath the panicked
horses
hooves reaches Lillian, as she struggles to maintain her position on her own mount. Then Samuel Blake’s bade flashes in the night air, its arc like the passing of a falling star. There is no blood, no scream of pain, simply an explosion of dust and the snapping of dried bone. The weight on Lillian’s ankle diminishes but the grip of the severed hand is just as firm.
Still only half in the saddle, Lillian tries to urge the horse forward but there are just too many of the shambling attackers still in her way. To her left she hears Sam’s cry of defiance, as he goes down beneath the dry, groping hands. Claw-like fingers, covered with patchy mottled flesh slide over her scalp and finding no purchase in her short hair, latch onto the collar of her shirt, tugging her back and away from the bucking horse. Rage and defiance erupt in her mind as the dead bodies swarm over her, grasping for her wrists and throat. Images of the marshes and the taste of undead flesh being forced into her mouth drive Lillian into a thrashing frenzy. Somehow, she manages to stop the dead limbs finding purchase and draws the heavy dagger she had taken from the Pilgrim. She lays about her, using the heavy pommel and the butt of her gun. Again and again she lashes out, breaking brittle limbs until pure exhaustion starts to replace the rage that sustains her. The dead have no such problem and for each shattered bone there is only more dead weight to throw against their flailing victims, patiently and inexorably dragging them down to the earth.
Beneath the writhing mound of his attackers, Sam gathers himself for one last effort. He has heard the eerie notes of the clown’s tune ever since the attack began, his concern for Lillian had been his undoing, he should have always been focused on the clown. With a grunt of effort, he gathers his legs beneath him, biting off a foul tasting finger as it tries to enter his mouth. With a burst of strength, every bit as supernatural as the forces animating his attackers, Blake bursts from his captors’ grips and powers his way towards the bone clown, his blade cutting a path through the corpses lurching towards him. His keen eyes pick out the mounds of carrion beneath which his two companions are still striving but he can do nothing for them, the only hope for them all is an end to the half audible tune spilling from the bone clown’s pipe.
Blake is almost within striking distance of the clown, when a corpse rears up in front of him. There is little or no decay on this body and some of the speed it had once known in life is still left in those thicker limbs. Normally this would never have been enough to stop him but with the tide of undead behind him, even the slightest hesitation is too much. Samuel Blake falls down within five feet of the clown, his sword making a desperate lunge for the pipe but missing by inches. Watching from the ground, Lillian gives her own cry of frustration as the Pilgrim is buried under the wave of dead bodies and writhing severed limbs. The Pilgrim will not rise again, she knows that, every body the clown can spare is already piling down on him, bearing the white haired soldier down. Suddenly a cold calm replaces the anger and panic. The heavy silver butt of her pistol is fouled with rotting gore from being used as a club but it occurs to her that, unlike
Aden
, she has never fired her gun. With grim determination, she turns the gun on the nearest corpse, blasting it backwards and splintering bones with its heavy round. Before the undead can rally to stop her, Lillian turns her attention to the target that Blake so recently missed. Sure enough the clown and his master are too certain of victory to be worried by another ineffective shot, the clown doesn’t even flinch until its pipe explodes under the impact of Lillian’s bullet. As soon as the dead troubadour’s music ceases, the bodies of Maulten go limp again, allowing their victims to struggle to their feet. Only Lillian has a clear view of the clown, with its shattered grin, scurrying over the low wall and into the darkness of the graveyard.
“Necromancer!” The Pilgrim’s eyes are red as blood, as he rises from the mound of bodies. He is over the wall in two bounds, his eyes scouring the turned earth for any sign of the clown.
“I will find you, Necromancer! If you interfere again I’ll find you and kill you!” Sam screams, venting his berserker rage into the empty night. When it is clear that his enemy is not going to show itself Blake returns to the road and his two companions.
“Are you alright?” Sam asks, kneeling next to Lillian and examining the scratches and scrapes left by boney finger tips and desiccated nails.
“I’m alive.” Lillian answers, looking around at the corpses littering the road.
“No thanks to our guide!”
Aden
complains. “I can’t believe I agreed to continue this madness, as soon as I find my horse, you can be sure we have seen the last of each other.”
“I have already told you that you would be no safer if you left our company. Like it or not you need us if you are going to survive, just as we need you.”
Aden
looks from one to the other of his companions, both stare back impassively.
“You know there is no way but forward,
Aden
,” Lillian says at last. “Of all of us I have most reason to do as the clown wants. Look around and tell me if you think running for home is a good idea. We’ve got Inquisitors behind us and god knows what waiting ahead, the only way we can survive is together.”
“So because some Strigoi bastard says I have to go with you, you think I am part of this!”
“You would make a very good decoy as an animated corpse.”
“Shut up, Blake, I don’t need any more of your shit.”
“You know there is no choice but to go on,
Aden
, for better or worse fate has placed you on this road.”
“Fate or you and Yorick?”
“I can’t tell you one way or the other for certain but you can take comfort from one fact.”
“What’s that precisely?” The mutant asks, kicking aside a limp corpse and retrieving one of his pistols.
“Yorick must have foreseen one future in which you reach the ruins, at a time like this I’d cling to any hope of survival.”
“You’re a treat to be around, Blake.”
Aden
mutters, wiping the gore from his gun’s handle and replacing it in his belt. All his instincts tell him he should give the weapon a thorough cleaning before using it again but he has not time for such luxuries; the horses are the first priority and then they will have to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the scattered carrion on the road . Slipping off the river before Brigton had been designed to give them the best chance of escaping notice but when the sun rises on the Maulten cemetery there will be no hope of keeping their passing quiet. Sooner or later the Inquisitors will find their trail, sooner if the fact that the clown had been waiting for them was anything to go by.
Aden
looks uneasily into the night and wonders just how many people waiting out there know what he is going to do before he does it.
Chapter 14:
“Hounds and Jackals”
Silverspring
is the last touch of green before the burning emptiness of the desert, the last pool of free standing water before the unyielding thirst of the towns and settlements beyond and even that is like a sip snatched between two cracked lips, aching even as they feel life sinking back into them. The closer one gets to the oasis that spreads below the cleft in the damp rocks, the taller the trees that clustered around the silver waters. The inhabitants of Silverstop all but worshiped the grove and the pool, not above the Christ man or God far above in the sky, but these his more immediate blessings came before family or self. A good citizen would lay down his life to prevent contamination of the waters or so said the city fathers, who met in the only other building besides the Church built close to the edge of the lake. The closest many got to the soothing water was when it was distributed by the many water sellers, each in the employ of one of those great men, as surely as the guards who wandered the groves searching for intruders in their leafy sanctuary.
After the miles of sand and rock, the town struck the weary
travellers
like a mirage, a vision of paradise too wonderful to be entirely trusted. From her position behind
Aden
, Lillian gasps in happiness to see the green splendor of the trees, having been raised beside the Blue Snake, she had not known how much she had taken greenery for granted, until faced with the sweltering starkness of the desert. Now and then on their hurried journey west they had seen the smoke from one of the great trains billowing past and she had yearned to be in the comfort of the first class cabins. The trees and broad streets that would have seemed unimpressive and provincial only months ago, were now a sight every bit as
breath taking as the great cathedral of
Island
City
or the soaring towers of the palace.
Once the small group has entered the town the illusion is quickly ruined by the sound of a growing crowd shouting out in anger and loathing.
“Unless I miss my guess it’s a hanging, I guess there is someone else here from outside of town.”
Aden
says scathingly.
“What do you mean?” Lillian asks, “Silverstop is one of the biggest and busiest towns on the line. There must be hundreds of other outsiders in the city today.”
“You don’t know the setup,”
Aden
answers bitterly, “there’s always someone from out of town which means there’s always someone to blame something on. Oh they wouldn’t trouble a high born citizen such as yourself but any vagrant will do when the priests or water merchants are feeling vindictive.”