The Thousand Names (66 page)

Then one of the creatures didn’t get out of the way in time. Winter’s wild swing bit deep into its neck with a puff of white smoke and lodged in its collarbone. Her desperate tug failed to pull the weapon free, and the monster twisted away, ripping the hilt from her hands. They were suddenly all around her, hands scrabbling for a hold wherever they could grab. Winter tried to back away, but one of the things had her by the knee, and it wrenched her leg out from under her with casual strength. The world tilted sickeningly as she was hauled off her feet, and other hands snatched at her arms before she could complete the fall.

Her one free leg kicked until it was grabbed as well, and she felt more hands scrabbling across her, grasping handfuls of fabric and twisting painfully. The things that had hold of her limbs were pulling, all in different directions. She felt something pop in her shoulder, followed by a savage spike of pain. Winter screamed.

A single shot rang out, followed by a roaring voice that she recognized as Folsom at full battlefield volume.

“No, idiots, you’ll hit him! Give them steel!”

This was accompanied by a ragged war cry from a dozen throats. Just when Winter thought her arm would actually tear from its socket, the monster let her go. The others followed, and she slumped awkwardly to the floor, curling into a protective ball. Fighting raged above her. She could hear the shouts and grunts of the Vordanai, and the malign hissing of the demons. Finally there was another voice she recognized, and someone was prodding her tender shoulder.

“Sir! Lieutenant Ihernglass!”

She opened one eye and found herself staring into a bearded face, creased with worry. “Graff?”

“He’s alive!” Graff shouted. “Someone help me!”

“Back to the square!” Folsom said, somewhere high above.

Winter found herself being lifted once again. This time she bit back the scream. Ahead was a solid wall of bayonets. It parted as they approached, then formed again behind them as the demons closed in.

WINTER

S
he never quite lost consciousness, but it was a close-run thing. There was a long stretch when everything was a blur except for the pain—the scrapes and cuts all over, the stabbing agony in her side, the protests from abused joints where the demons had tried to tear her literally limb from limb. It wasn’t fair to expect her to get up after all that, she thought. It wasn’t reasonable. She ought to be allowed to curl up in a ball, close her eyes, and just wait until it was over.

It lasted until she remembered Bobby and Feor. They’d been with her until she’d hit the wall of demons, and then she’d lost sight of them. Graff and Folsom had come charging to the rescue, but she hadn’t seen them find Bobby. Her chest suddenly tight, Winter unfolded herself with an effort and raised her head, blinking back tears.

Bobby was sitting on the flagstones nearby, with Feor beside him. The Khandarai girl had her skirt drawn up, exposing a set of vicious scratches along one leg, and the corporal was helping her with a bandage. That answered that question, anyway, but now that she was in motion Winter couldn’t bring herself to just lie down again. She dragged herself up to a sitting position and tried to speak, but managed only a faint croak.

Graff hurried to her side. He handed her a canteen, and she drank greedily, tepid water trickling down her chin and soaking her collar.

“Are you all right?” he said when she was finished.

No, I’m fucking not all right,
she wanted to say.
I was nearly torn apart by demons. What do you think?
But Graff looked pretty close to the edge himself, and in any case that would a poor way to repay him for saving her life. So she forced a shaky smile and said, “I think I’ll live.”

“Thank God. Folsom thought he saw you come in, but we couldn’t be sure until you got close. That was goddamned brave of you, charging the lot of them like that.” He paused, making it clear by his expression that by “brave” he meant “insane.”

“There were more of them coming up behind us,” Winter said. “I figured our only chance was to make it to the square.”

“Ah,” Graff said. “Well.”

“Thank you,” Winter said.

He looked embarrassed for a moment, and then his expression turned grim. “You may change your mind before long. You’re not much better off in here than out there.”

Winter took a proper look around for the first time. The company square was tiny, only ten yards to a side, leaving a small patch of flagstones in the center inhabited by the three corporals, herself, Feor, and a few wounded. Beyond that, a double line of rankers held stolidly to their lines, presenting an unbroken fence of bayonet points. She couldn’t see past the wall of blue-uniformed backs, but she could hear the hissing of the demons beyond.

“They’d bury us if they really tried a rush,” Graff said quietly. “They shy away from steel, thank God, but I don’t know why. Sticking them doesn’t seem to bother them any. But anytime we weaken the line, even a little, they go for it like we’ve rung the dinner bell. They nearly had us when Folsom and I went out to bring you back.”

“Why aren’t we shooting them?”

“For one thing, I can’t spare the men to load,” Graff said. “For another, it doesn’t help much. God be good, I saw one of them keep going with a hole the size of my fist right through him. They don’t die like men, so what good is throwing lead at them?”

Winter realized for the first time that Graff was
scared
. She’d never seen him afraid before, at least not in battle. Only a thin veneer of military professionalism held him together.
And he’s a veteran.
She looked around at the steady backs of the Seventh Company with a new respect.

“We can’t stay here,” she said. “They’re just waiting us out.”

“Looks that way,” Graff said. “But that’s the trick, isn’t it? That last charge was the closest we’ve gotten to the door, and I lost two men just getting that far. If we try to push all the way to the doorway we’ll be crushed.”

Two men.
Winter’s throat closed again for a moment. Two men had died just to rescue her, Bobby, and Feor. She didn’t even know
which
two—they were just “men,” rankers, expendable assets on the strength report. She fought down an urge to ask Graff for their names.
Later. If we get out of this alive.

“Bugger all the saints with bloody rolling pins,” Winter swore. It didn’t make her feel any better. “Give me a minute.”

She crawled over to where Bobby sat beside Feor, finishing her bandage. To Winter’s surprise, the Khandarai girl’s cheeks were wet with tears. Bobby caught Winter’s eye and shook her head.

“She seems all right to me, sir,” Bobby said. “Maybe she’s just scared? When that thing grabbed you I nearly screamed the roof down.”

“You weren’t the only one,” Winter said. “Are you hurt?”

“Just scratches.”

Winter nodded and sat down on the other side of Feor. The girl looked up at her, dark eyes blinking away tears.

“Does it hurt very badly?” Winter said in Khandarai.

“No,” Feor said. “Bobby is being kind. I will be fine.”

“Then—”

“Akataer. My brother.” She gestured weakly at the side of the square. “These are his creations, the product of his
naath
. I can feel his agony.”

“Forgive me if I don’t feel sorry for him,” Winter said, more harshly than she intended. “His demons are trying to kill us.”

“They are not demons,” Feor said. “They are dead spirits, bound to their corpses and forced to serve.”

“That sounds like a demon to me,” Winter said. “How do we kill them?”

“You cannot. They have died once already. Now the body is just a . . . container. They will keep going, until . . .” She hesitated, then forged on. “Until Akataer releases them, or until he dies.”

“Wonderful. Is there anything we can use against them?” Winter tried to remember her fairy tales.
What works on demons?
“Holy water? Silver bullets? Not that we have any. Chanting scripture?”

“You do not understand,” Feor said. “They are
not
demons. Not separate entities. They are part of him, part of his
naath
. They
consume
him, little by little. I have seen him tired and weak after binding a half dozen for a day’s labor. This many?” She shook her head. “He will not recover.”

“Oh,” Winter said. Feor’s tears had stopped, and she simply looked weary. Winter felt a rising blush in her cheeks, which she tried to ignore. She opened her mouth, found she had nothing to say, and closed it again. Feor lay back against the flagstones and closed her eyes.

Folsom tapped Winter on the shoulder. She turned and clambered awkwardly to her feet, legs screaming protests. He offered her the hilt of her sword.

“One of the men picked this up,” he said.

“Thanks.” Winter sheathed it. Even her hands seemed to ache. “And thanks for coming to get me.”

He shrugged. With the immediate danger gone, the big corporal seemed to have reverted to his normal taciturn persona.

“I don’t suppose you have any brilliant ideas on how to get out of here?”

Folsom shook his head. Winter sighed and limped around the inside of the square, searching for inspiration.

The men couldn’t salute, and didn’t dare take their eyes off the monsters that waited just beyond the wall of bayonets. Nevertheless, she heard their whispers underneath the omnipresent hiss of white smoke. Every second man seemed to be reassuring his fellows now that the lieutenant was here.

“Lieutenant Ihernglass will get us out.”

“He came with more troops. Got to be.”

“The lieutenant always figures something out . . .”

Whatever reassurance her presence brought the men seemed to drain confidence from Winter in equal measure. She could
feel
the weight of their hope, their faith, stacking higher and higher on her shoulders until she wanted to collapse under the burden and simply die. She wondered briefly if this was how Captain d’Ivoire and Colonel Vhalnich felt every day.
Is there some magic formula they teach you at the War College to deal with it? Or do you just go numb eventually?
This was just a single company. She could hardly imagine what it would be like to have the entire regiment leaning on you for support.

Damn it. Focus!
Her head felt like it was filled with cotton.
There’s got to be
something
.
From where she was standing, she could see the doorway, just fifty or sixty feet away. As close as that, and as distant as the moon.

If we can get there, we’re safe.
The passage was only wide enough for three or four men at a time. The Seventh Company could defend that against these creatures for hours. The problem was that sixty feet.
If we break the square, they’ll pull us down. But they’re not quick.
She had outrun them easily in the tunnel.
We just need a few seconds, really. Enough time to get past them.

And what have we got to work with?
There wasn’t much. Sixty-odd soldiers and no supplies.
The shots in their cartridge pouches, the coats on their backs, the boots on their feet.
Plus three corporals and a Khandarai
naathem
half a step away from tears.
And me.

Her eye lit on something just inside the edge of the square. It was a metal-framed lantern, scavenged from one of the wrecked carts.
They must have carried it in with them.
Now that she was looking, she could see several more, scattered where the men had dropped them.
So add a half dozen lanterns to that tally. Does that help?

A few seconds . . .

•   •   •

The hardest part was doing it all without weakening the square so much that the walking corpses would surge through. Orders had to be passed from man to man, since she didn’t dare distract them all by shouting.
Plus, who knows how much those things understand?
It was like a giant game of pass-the-story, each man telling his neighbor, with Winter following along behind to straighten out the inevitable misunderstandings.

Eventually, they had a pile of uniform jackets in the center of the square. Winter kept her own, since she was sweating enough that she didn’t trust her undershirt to conceal her properly, but everyone else was in shirtsleeves. Beside that they had a smaller pile of cartridge pouches, each a loose leather sack containing the twenty rounds of ammunition that the rankers kept on them. Bobby and Folsom were hard at work on those, while Graff helped her with the lanterns.

It seemed like hours before they were finished. Winter expected a charge the entire time, waiting for the green-eyed corpses to lose patience and simply surge into and over the bayonets to finish what they’d started. But they remained at bay, confident or just uncaring.

Finally, when everything was ready, she stood beside Folsom, facing the doorway. Graff hurried over, carrying an improvised torch in each hand, and Winter lit both with the last of her matches. He touched his torches to Bobby’s, and then to one more, which he handed to Winter.

“Okay.” Winter blew out a long breath and looked up at Folsom. “If this gets us all killed, let me just say in advance that I’m sorry.”

The big corporal grunted and hefted the cartridge pouch he held. A twist of cloth dipped in lamp oil served as a makeshift fuse. Winter gingerly touched her torch to the very end and sent up a silent prayer of thanks when the whole affair didn’t go off there and then. Once it was alight, Folsom didn’t wait. He gave the thing a heave, and it disappeared over the heads of the men in the square to fall in among the monsters.

They got two more lit and thrown. Then there was a single agonizing second of waiting, in which Winter pictured the pouches bursting when they hit the ground, or the tapers being snuffed out by the wind of their passage—

The sound of the first one going off was disappointing, more of a muffled
thud
than the massive
boom
of a cannon. It was accompanied by the merry
zip
and
zing
of lead balls ricocheting off the stone floor. After tearing open enough cartridges to mostly fill the little sack with powder, she’d stuffed musket balls in until it was nearly bursting. The idea was that it would be something like a load of canister, spraying balls in all directions. Without a musket’s barrel to channel the blast, the balls wouldn’t go far or hit hard, but she hoped it would still be enough to damage something.

Two more blasts, almost simultaneous, announced the explosion of the other two bags. The wall of green eyes in front of her thinned out as the corpses turned to see what was happening or were knocked down by the blasts. She heard someone cry out, struck by a stray ball. She’d been afraid of that, but it was too late to worry about it now.
A few seconds.

“First rank,
hold
!” she screamed, tearing her throat raw. “Second rank, past me,
charge
!”

The men had been instructed by the same chain-of-whispers method, and she was frankly surprised when they did what she wanted them to. One face of the square, the one closest to the doorway, erupted with cheers and shouts as men surged forward, leading with their bayonets. Behind them, the second rank of each of the other faces—the innermost line of the square—dropped their weapons, rushed to the center pile, and picked up a uniform jacket in each hand. They rushed past her in a body, into the gap behind the advancing men, where the creatures were just starting to turn back to face their escaping prey.