Sunset of Lantonne (88 page)

“I’ll take this,” he said, pulling a hardened leather jacket with metal studding from the pile. “When you’ve given everyone else what they need, bring any melee weapons back here. I’ll want them close when the battle starts.”

“I’ve been bringing weapons to people since well before dawn,” the man explained. “Take whatever you want now. If we run out, there’s hundreds more back at the barracks, but there’s no one else to use them.”

Raeln scooped up a stack of swords and axes, dropping them next to where he had been sitting. Next, he picked up a pair of spears, a bow, and a pile of arrows from the remaining weapons. He let the man know he had all he needed, and the young man hurried away, occasionally glancing back at Raeln with a confused look that told Raeln he was wondering how Raeln could possibly use as much as he had taken.

Raeln began shoving the swords and axes into every crack in the barricades, making sure anywhere from the gate itself to the back of the tunnel-like gap he had at least two different weapons available at all times. The spears he drove into the soft ground near the front of the barricade, standing straight up, so he could snatch them as he ran. Going to the very front of where the path narrowed under the gate itself, he propped the bow against the wagon on his left and his sword against the right, before setting up a line of arrows point-down in the dirt, ready to be grabbed and fired as needed.

“By the look of this place, I’d think you had a whole group of people helping you,” Greth said as he came up behind Raeln. “You do know it’s just me, right?”

Raeln smiled and glanced over his shoulder, then turned around as he caught a glimmer of steel in sunlight.

Greth had apparently found another person outfitting the troops and gotten his own collection of what he felt might come in handy. He wore a loose-fitting jacket of polished chain, held tight with a well-oiled leather belt. Mismatched metal plates covered his knees and shins, as well as his lower arms. The man had even managed to find a leather helmet that had been designed for wildlings, allowing his ears to poke out. Strapped to his left arm, he bore a metal-edged wooden shield and carried a sword that looked as though it had never seen a fight.

“Always wanted to dress up like a human knight as a pup,” he said, grinning. “My father thought I was insane. If I’m going to die anyway, I couldn’t help myself; it’s now or never. I’ll be the best-looking wildling corpse out here.”

“Can you even fight in that?” Raeln asked in reply, eyeing the heavy armor.

“Yeah,” Greth answered, hopping a little, then adjusting his belt. “When I didn’t show any skill with magic as a pup, my father made me carry bags of stones when I ran or sparred with the other wolves. This moves with me…much easier to carry than rocks.”

Greth then seemed to take note of what Raeln was wearing and the leather body armor lying at his feet. “Tell me you’re going to wear more than that,” he insisted. “They’ll tear you to shreds.”

“I can’t fight with more than that on and still be fast enough. I’d rather get scratched more than be weighed down and have them catch me. I fight better by myself and unburdened.”

Greth was clearly upset by that, but said nothing for a minute as he sat down near Raeln. “I hate waiting,” he muttered soon after, chuckling.

Closing his eyes again, Raeln let his muscles relax as he rested. He could wait as long as he needed to. He was ready.

Raeln felt the sun rise over the city as he meditated, warming his fur and heating the air. Hours passed, measured mostly by which direction the sun’s heat came from. Occasionally, he heard Greth shift or get up and pace, but each time the man returned to Raeln’s side to wait, though he did mutter to himself every so often.

A distant bleating call from a horn atop the walls finally announced the coming of the army, and Raeln opened his eyes part way, sighing.

“They’re coming in!” cried someone above the gate, thirty feet above Raeln’s head. “Two hours at most, maybe less!”

Raeln double-checked the location of his bow and sword, then knelt and readied himself for a long wait during which meditation was out of the question. He suspected the soldiers on the wall would be working themselves into a nervous fit the whole time they watched the enemy approaching, but he had no intention of allowing himself fear. He needed calm to fight the way he intended.

“I’ve always meant to ask,” Greth said, having noticed Raeln’s eyes open. “What’s with the sleeping sitting up thing?”

Raeln laughed. “Meditation,” he explained.

“I snore when I sleep and would probably fall over.”

“It’s not sleeping, Greth. It’s resting, so I can relax and fight better. The more tense you are when you fight, the more likely you’ll make mistakes or be too slow reacting to the enemy”

“I know that. It’s why the people up top who’ve never held a bow are going to get torn apart if the undead get past the gate. Most of us drink heavily to relax.”

“This is more than that,” Raeln continued. “When we fought in the wilderness, it was sudden and unplanned. I could be calm about fighting, but that’s different. When I have time to prepare myself, I can see what others are intending to do by their posture, letting me react before they have even committed themselves to an attack. So long as I stay ahead of my foe, they can’t hit me.”

“That makes about as much sense as all of Ilarra’s talk about magic, Raeln.”

“If we live through this, I’ll teach you. You need your anger to fight properly; I need absolute calm. Maybe you can go back and show Olis a thing or two.”

Greth grinned broadly at that, shaking his head. “You know how I said Olis ran me off? I may as well admit, the same thing we’re not talking about from last night is the reason he did that. He didn’t like my kind…ours, I guess. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to go back out there. Let him fight off the undead on his own—he’s not my problem anymore. Much as I’d love to pound his face with a rock, I’d rather leave it all behind me.”

Raeln closed his eyes again and rested his hands on his thighs. Almost immediately, Greth took his left hand. “I’ll be behind you on the wagon with my bow when they get here,” he said, squeezing Raeln’s hand. “You aren’t alone out here. Say the word and I’ll be down here at your side within a second or two. We’re getting out of this alive.”

Raeln smiled at Greth, clinging to his hand for a moment before letting go. “Concentrate on the fight, not protecting me,” Raeln warned him. “We need to hold this gate, even if I die. All that matters is keeping the undead moving through this one opening so they don’t pile up at the walls and climb over them or tear them down. Promise me that if I fall, you won’t do anything stupid.”

“Why would I promise that? I do stupid things all the time.”

Before Raeln could say anything more, Greth got up and moved to the back of one of the wagons and picked up a bow and a huge bundle of arrows. He set his shield and sword aside on the ground at the base of the wagon. Then, he climbed up on top of the wagon so he was high enough Raeln could barely have grabbed at his ankle. He waited, watching through the partially open gate with fear in his eyes but determination on his face.

Near where Greth waited, a group of dwarven youths had gathered with axes. They were too young to fight at the walls, but they seemed determined to stay close and help however they could and kept peeking around the ends of the wagons at Raeln. Raeln watched them in turn, wondering if he would have to watch children die as part of this fight.

With effort, Raeln slowed his rapidly beating heart and uneven breathing, relaxing once again. After he was sure he was entirely calm, he pulled on the leather tunic. He looked out the gate and up the road, and he could distantly see a wall of shambling bodies marching steadily toward him into the farthest buildings of the outer city. It would not be long.

Screams erupted a minute later from beyond the gate as those who had stayed outside the walls were found in their homes and butchered. Raeln could hear faint sounds of battle out there, but the undead on the road were all he could see. Whoever had attempted to defend their homes were already dead, and there was nothing he or anyone else could do about it.

“Brace yourselves!” came another cry from the wall.

The undead were close now, picking up the pace as they spotted him. The leading corpses accelerated to a limping run, reaching out toward him and opening their mouths in anticipation of digging their rotten teeth into his flesh. As he had hoped, they did not look up at the soldiers on the wall or for another way into the city. They saw only Raeln, sitting in the middle of the road into Lantonne. A hundred undead knew he was in their path and raced to be the one to take him down. For them, there seemed to be nothing else.

“Hold your fire!” shouted Phillith somewhere nearby, though Raeln could not pinpoint where the man was. “Wait…wait…wait…”

The undead were nearly to the gate, tripping over one another as they pressed together, trying to line up with the narrow entrance to the city and the wildling just inside.

“Fire!”

Arrows fell like rain on the undead, impacting with soft thumps but never so much as slowing the vast numbers. A few zombies were hit in the heads or legs, knocking them over, where they were trampled by their fellows.

An arrow whizzed past Raeln’s ear from where Greth had positioned himself as the first zombies reached the gate, taking the lead creature off its feet as the bolt slammed into its mouth. Standing, Raeln grabbed his bow and began firing without thinking at all. He felt entirely at peace as he drew one arrow after another, hitting five of the zombies in the heads and chests in a row before they got to within range of hand-to-hand weapons. Two of them went down and stayed down, though Raeln could not be sure if that was from being crushed under their companions or a well-placed shot.

Soon they were too close for Raeln to keep shooting, even though Greth’s arrows continued to fly past him, a little closer than he was comfortable with. He threw his own bow aside, sweeping away the arrows he had placed nearby with his foot. Grabbing the first spear, Raeln hurriedly planted it, using his weight on the shaft and the butt-end in the ground to keep it from moving as the lead zombie crashed into the weapon, impaling itself. He backed away a step as two more zombies drove themselves onto the same spear. He repeated this process with the second spear, driving it into another pair of zombies.

Once they were speared, the zombies clawed and flailed, doing more damage to each other in trying to get off of the weapon than to anything else. The two different groups that had become entangled did much of Raeln’s work for him, keeping the rest of the horde from even entering the narrow path.

This scenario was one Raeln had realized might happen, creating a bottleneck that would have been a blessing against any other foe. With the undead, he actually needed them to keep coming or they would forget he was there and try to climb the walls. He had to keep the path clear and not risk taking any breaks, for a while at least.

Slapping aside the hands of the zombies struggling with the first spear, Raeln grabbed the weapon and swung it toward the back of the wagons, the zombies still stuck on it. They tumbled and fell near Greth’s vantage point, where the dwarves suddenly leapt out and began hacking the bodies apart. They kicked and rolled the remains away to keep the road clear, then shouted for Raeln to keep going, cheering as though this were something they saw every day.

Scooping up his sword and an axe, Raeln rushed the second group of zombies he had speared. He swept the axe low, taking one off at the knee, then drove the sword through the hand of another before it could grab him. Kicking the legs out from under another of the three, he shoved them toward the dwarves, who gleefully hacked at them, while Greth continued firing arrows into the group of zombies to slow them down.

Raeln had the path open again and the zombies wasted no time rushing the gap, led by two running faster than the rest: a wildling deer that had only one arm and a nearly skeletal orcish corpse.

Darting into the lead zombies in an effort to slow their charge, Raeln narrowly avoided getting impaled on the deer’s antlers and danced between them, delivering deep wounds with both of his weapons that would have crippled or killed a living opponent. At best, the zombies fell or stared stupidly at severed limbs before trying to grab at him with whatever fingers or teeth they had left.