Dead of Knight (The Gryphonpike Chronicles Book 4) (3 page)

I, with all my full power, the ability to sing life and death and force my will upon the very fabric of the world, would have trembled to face a Saliidruin army, even an undead one. Here, neutered as I was with no voice and only an immortal’s understanding without an immortal’s power, I trembled, my blood turning to water in my veins.

This is what despair tastes like,
I thought as sour fear coated my tongue. I did not like it.

“In here! Help!” yelled a voice from the windmill. A woman leaned out a high window, waving to us as we waded into the clot of skeletons trying to break in the thick iron and oak door.

Azyrin stumbled free of Makha, drawing his falchion. I sent an arrow into the back of a skeleton’s head, the broadhead making a satisfying crunch as it punched through the grey helm. The skeleton dropped in midswing of its leaf-shaped sword, the red glow of its eyes dying away.

As it died, so did some of my despair. Thorn, my bow, and I could kill these things, same as any other undead. I had taken out many skeletons in my adventures, defeated fell wights, liches, necromancers, and even an undead dragon. And had not Azyrin and I just overcome a deathwyrm?

The skeletons shifted to face the new threat, glowing eyes turning toward us. I risked a glance off toward the main part of town and realized some of the peat smoke smell I’d thought signaled normalcy earlier came from burning roofs. Grey bodies and distant dull coal-red eyes swarmed the village in eerie silence. Dread magic was at work here.

Makha raised her sword and shield and screamed an Orcish battle-cry in unison with her husband as she set to charge into the clot of skeletons blocking us off from the windmill.

The first light of dawn spilled over the horizon behind us, cutting across the land with light the color of old blood. The skeletons hissed and threw up their arms, shying away from the light. They charged past us, seemingly desperate now to flee instead of fight.

We did not let them go without heavy losses. I shot an arrow point-blank into one and danced aside as another swung haphazardly at me as it tried to get by. Drake ducked a swing as he moved up beside me, covering my side. Rahiel and Bill swung down from the quickly brightening sky, two crackling bolts smashing apart another skeleton.

A deep tone vibrated through the air and the ground shook again, though not with the violence of the quake the afternoon before. The remaining skeletons dissolved into shadows, armor, swords, and all, swirling away from us with the oiliness of swamp mist.

The silence broke and the crackling fires from the village mingled with wails and screams.

“Aunt Emili!” Alew yelled, finding his voice before anyone else.

A thin woman with hair more grey than brown now, emerged from the windmill, running toward the children, tears streaking her face. Blood coated her leather apron and simple wool dress.

“Where is Morin?” she asked, then stopped and shook her head. “Never you all mind. We must get to the temple.” She looked at us as though seeing me and my companions for the first time. “Adventurers?” she said. “Thank the gods. Are there more of you coming?”

“I do not think so,” Azyrin said. His blue skin was winter-pale with exhaustion and he leaned heavily on Makha and his unsheathed falchion.

“Uncle Snufi?” Alew whispered, looking at the blood coating his aunt’s clothing.

“Gone,” she said, tears brightening her hazel eyes. “We’ve been fighting them off since dusk. They got into the house, so we tried to make the mill. Snufi held them off and I got inside. He was…” she swallowed and straightened. “It don’t matter. It isn’t safe out here.”

“Show us to the temple,” Makha said.

Fade slunk up to my side, his black-and-silver striped fur matted with ash, dirt, and blackish ichor. I wished I could ask him what he’d been fighting, but I didn’t want to know. I wanted a long drink of cold water, a bath, and for this all to be ended. Somehow I guessed that daylight was a reprieve, not our salvation.

We found no one living as we moved through the village. Bodies lay where they had fallen, torn and shredded by sword, tooth, and claw. The children were weeping openly as we picked our way through the carnage. I tucked my arm against my nose, but my skin stank of death and soot, so even that gesture was useless. Blood dried into the packed earth between houses and flies started to gather, forming clots of seething shadow on the dead.

Azyrin made Makha stop and help him close the eyes of every body we found. After the first few, Drake and I took over that duty. Their eyelids were sticky, difficult to slide down over eyes that had seen their last stars. Some bodies were so mangled I couldn’t find eyes to close. I left those alone.

The temple was at the center of the village. It was built all of stone, dark grey granite quarried from the northern hills and probably brought here by boat and ox cart. The stone was carved around with wheat and fruit motifs, celebrating the gods that were worshipped within. A large unicorn statue reared up from a raw stone base in front of the wide double doors. The doors were scarred with burn marks and deep blade gouges, but it seemed the undead had failed to breach the thick stone and metal.

The right door ground open and a tall, gaunt older human man in dirty white robes emerged, his eyes red rimmed but his face hopeful. A silver medallion stamped with a unicorn’s head marked him as a priest of Thunla.

“Father Titor!” Emili let go of Iera’s and Cher’s hands to greet the priest.

More people spilled out behind the priest as introductions were made. The survivors of the terrible night were few. Too few. My heart ached for them as I scanned their pale and despairing faces. Besides the two priests and our refugees, only five remained and one was a babe in a hollow-eyed young woman’s arms.

Jes, the blacksmith, had the level look and strong arms of someone willing to fight and she said as much as we moved into the wide front room of the temple, but the others were no warriors. They put the children onto cots in the back rooms where the priests lived and then we gathered in the large front room, flowery incense burning in one of the hanging braziers and the doors wide open to try to cut through the smell of death and ash.

“We must bury the dead,” said Odyll, the priestess of the Summer Lady, a middle-aged and plump woman whose light green eyes crinkled with many laugh lines that were now creased with worry and pain.

“We should get far from here in case that evil returns.” This was from a young man with the nice clothing and calloused fingers of a tailor.

“We’ll never make it anywhere. We don’t know what’s come of the outlying farms. What if they come here in daylight seeking safety?” Jes’s voice was as burly as her thick arms. I liked her blunt attitude and tried not to think about how I would be happy to die defending a resilient human like her.

Or my companions. I leaned against the cold stone wall with Fade pressed tight to my side, his warm side rising and falling in steady reminder that all I cared about in the world was here in this large stone room with me. Azyrin sat on a low bench, his hand entwined with Makha’s, her flame-red hair mingling with his white braids as they leaned against each other. Rahiel curled against Bill on a large linen covered cushion provided by the other occupants of the room, giving them reverent space. Bill was probably the only living unicorn they had seen and I doubted that many pixie-goblins came through these parts, either. Drake slumped on a bench next to Alew, Perl asleep between them, her tawny head resting on his thigh. He seemed to sense me looking at him and lifted his hazel eyes to mine, giving me a slight nod and an even slighter smile.

“Was it the quake that awoke them?” Rahiel mused.

“Or some necromancer who caused the quake?” speculated Odyll.

“Chicken! Egg! Who gives two shits?” Makha growled, lifting her head off Azyrin’s shoulder.

“Aye,” Drake murmured, clearly not wanting to disturb the sleeping child. “I care only how to defeat it. Whatever it is.”

I knew what we faced, more or less. Whatever terrible power had awoken or come to raise the Saliidruin dead was greater than my little band could defeat. I had watched in the Hall of Windows as the shadow race spread across the lands, choking out life in their greed for more and more power until finally the gods of men had intervened, burying the might of the empire beneath these very hills.

All that remained of this in mortal memory was the name of this place, The Barrows. My jaw clenched with the desire to tell them what we faced, how much worse it could get, of our doom to come. No words were available to me, only deeds. My curse was always in my mind, hugging me like a second skin, but today it seemed to tighten and constrict worse than a deathwyrm’s rank coils.

I knew of nothing powerful enough to raise the Saliidruin dead except one of their own. There had been, in the halcyon days of the dread empire, clerics of Death itself. Their name was a curse if spoken aloud, and so even my people had called these evil men only by a title. Death Knights, avatars of oblivion itself.

My mind turned and spun and despaired as I tried to think of other ways in which what I had seen could be interpreted. The sigils left on the tatters of the skeletons, combined with the horror of the deathwym, on top of a huge pack of hellhounds had little other explanation, and so it was with a heavy heart and heavier step I accepted the decision my companions and the few survivors of Fallbarrow came to.

We would stay in the village. Bury the dead, put out what fires we could, and prepare for another night. If no stragglers came from the outlying farms by dawn the next day, we would set out and try to guard these last few as we made a run for the lake. If we could reach the shores of Ghost Lake, we might be able to hail one of the boats and get across to Clearbarrow and warn the Duke of Barrows. At least Clearbarrow had a Guild chapterhouse.

I knew in my heart that no number of bold adventurers could stop the Saliidruin. I admired the ability to go on in the face of such odds and rallied myself to stand and help. At least if I were to die here, I would die with my bow in my hand and in the commission of a final heroic act.

The day’s work was grim. Grit clogged my eyes and nose and blood turned my hands sticky and black as I helped lay out the dead and dig what graves we could. Azyrin and Rahiel had been ordered to sleep as we guessed we would need our spellcasters come dark, so I labored alongside the handful of villagers and the boy Alew.

He did not blink nor complain and I watched him sidelong. The boy had turned a man overnight amid the horror and it was clear from his steady brown gaze and stiff shoulders that he was aware of his new burdens.

As the shadows grew longer, we finished what we could do and all took shelter in the shade of the temple, drinking cold water and trying to swallow bread that tasted like dust and stuck in my throat. No one had come in from the farms. No birds sang. The only insect noise was the low hum of the flies feeding on the pools of blood where some had not yet dried into the earth or where it had splashed on stone and wood.

Cher emerged from the temple, her face frantic as her eyes searched for Alew.

“Is Enil not with you?” she asked, wringing her hands in her dress.

“No, we left him sleeping inside with you.” Emili jumped up, looking between Alew and Cher’s worried faces as Alew shook his head.

I rose and grabbed my hauberk, pulling the elven leather over my sweat and gore-stained shirt. I had made a promise to their father that I would keep his children safe. Though we were all likely to die before the next dawn, I couldn’t give up. As if he sensed my intent, Fade rose from the shadow of the unicorn statue and lifted his nose into the slight breeze. He had stuck close to me all day, despite the amount of strange humans around, and if my own knowledge hadn’t convinced me of our doom, his flattened ears, constant growling, and tucked tail would have done the job.

Eying the sky, I guessed I had an hour at most before the last rays of the bloody sun fell away behind the golden hills and left me exposed to the undead horde.

Alew picked up a wood-cutting axe and came up beside me as I strung Thorn. I glanced at him and wished I could shake my head. He would only slow me down, though I admitted I wasn’t sure what I would do if Fade and I managed to find his surly, frightened brother. I could hardly talk the child into coming back to the illusory safety of the temple. Maybe I could hit him gently in the head and drag him back.

“He’s gone back for Da,” Alew said, his voice carrying only the smallest tremor of fear. “I’m going.”

“Me, too,” Drake said, twisting his neck from side to side to work out the kinks.

The more the merrier
, I thought. At least I wouldn’t die out there alone. With that depressing thought, I set out after Fade.

Beside me, Alew whispered, “Thank you, lady elf.” And that just made it all worse.

* * *

My muscles were exhausted, my shirt itchy beneath my armor, and I could hear from the increasingly ragged breathing of my two companions that I wasn’t the only one hitting their limits. Fortunately, the young boy hadn’t covered his trail at all and didn’t have much of a start on us. Broken and bent grasses showed his path and Fade had no trouble leading us in the growing twilight.

It was still dangerously close to dusk when we caught up to him. The idiot human started running when he saw Fade, but the mist-lynx caught him and had carefully shoved him to the dirt, putting a paw, claws sheathed, on the child’s back until we caught up. His brother was not so gentle.

“You knucklebrained idjeet,” Alew yelled as he yanked Enil to his feet.

“I gotta bury Da or he’ll turn into one of them burning dead!” Enil’s face was stubborn beneath the tearstains and streaks of dirt.

“Argue later, boys,” Drake muttered, eying the hills around us.

Fade’s low, continuous growl convinced them both. We turned back toward the village, running as quickly as we could, even Enil’s tired legs keeping a speed born of shame and terror as the last rays of daylight sank away beyond the now dark hills.