In part three of the story, the sweetness of victory quickly sours for the Maedarian rebels as forces beyond their power to control begin to stir. Katrina finds herself face-to-face with a terror she could never have imagined that threatens everything the rebels worked towards, and slowly but surely, everything begins to unravel as a terrible new foe plays its withered hand.
The final part to Where the Moonlight Dances will be released on Sunday the 30th July.
Katrina paused in the cold night’s air once she was out of
the tavern. She stood in the middle of the road, looking up at the moon and
starry firmament above. Lucien, damn it, she
thought as she began to walk back towards the middle of the village, why do you have to make this about something
other than freedom? I don’t want to fight for your ego, I want to fight for my
own future. She clenched her teeth and shook her head, her fiery hair
billowing behind her in the cold night wind as she did.
The victory
celebrations were still well underway. It seemed as if the fellow who had
composed a victory ballad about the battle had re-drafted his work and found a
lute, for a song was being struck up around the central campfire. Katrina
barged her way through the thronging rebels and the few civilians who joined
them until she was at the fireside. Once there, she was surprised to see Lucien
absent. They’re singing songs about his
victory – isn’t this what he wanted?
She turned
to the closest soldier. ‘Seen Captain Lucien?’ she asked.
The fellow
shook his head. ‘Not for a time. He in the tavern?’
Katrina
shook her head and looked around. Between the crackling campfire, the drunken soldiers,
the dancing and the singing, Lucien was nowhere to be seen.
A thought suddenly
struck her. He’d gone to piss on the
imperial dead, she thought. What if
he’s trophy-hunting? What if he’s cutting off the heads of the dead soldiers
to, I don’t know, leave around the-… No, surely not. Disturbed by the
thought, she quickly turned and walked away from the fire in the middle of the
village, made her way out through the soldiers, and towards the high, wall-like
knot of long-dead trees that ringed Witherwood.
She walked
the same path she assumed Lucien would have. She even thought she could vaguely
make out some fresh prints in the churned-up grassy mud beneath her feet. They’re roughly Lucien’s size, no? And
walking quickly –long strides, with purpose.
Speeding to
a jog, Katrina made it to the edge of the trees and stopped. At her feet lay a
dead imperial soldier, his eyes wide and staring, blood dried around his nose
and mouth, a huge wound struck across his stomach. Katrina wrinkled her nose at
the filthy smell and guts pouring from the bloody orifice and looked around.
The white
moonlight caught the bone-like mass of twisting trees, making haunting shadows
of the branches and the mangled dead twisted at their roots. The bright-white
of the moon light glittered on dropped steel and fresh blood, and made dark
pools in fleshy fissures or bloodless faces even paler.
‘Lucien?’
Katrina called out, stepping over the body and into the trees. ‘Lucien, where
are you? Are you here?’
As she put
her foot down, a glint of light caught Katrina’s eye. Something was shining up
at her amidst the detritus and death at her feet, far too clean and gleaming to
be contemporary with the slaughter of hours earlier. She took a step forwards
and bent down; A sword.
There was
no blood on the fine blade, and the leather around the hilt looked as if it had
been recently re-wound. Frowning, Katrina looked around. How did this get here? she asked herself, inspecting the fine blade
and hilt.
As the wind
blew through the ancient branches above her head and the moonlight glittered
down on the sword in her hands, Katrina realised she recognised the weapon. It
was the same sword she had seen twirled and glittering in the forge-light
earlier that day, being gracefully swung and tested by a hand she knew. It was
Lucien’s sword.
Her heart
froze. Gods, no.
‘Lucien!’
she shrieked, clutching the sword in her fist. She set off at a blind run
through the bloody woods with no clue whether or not she was going the right
way. Her mind raced as her legs pounded, skipping over roots, weapons, shields,
and ruined flesh. What if there was one
alive? What if they’ve come back and ambushed us? By the Old Gods, what has
happened to him? He’d never abandon his sword!
Katrina
kept on at a run, getting deeper into the knotted mass of twisted trees that
ringed the village. With every step, the sounds of revelry from beyond the
village grew fainter, and the moonlight seemed to become more blinding, casting
its uncanny white glow on everything it could not force into shadow.
A sound;
harsh, vocal, piercing. Katrina could have screamed; she gripped Lucien’s sword
and froze, eyes spinning about her. She was completely lost in the dense line
of trees, unable to make out where she was in relation to anything else. She
could not even see the light from the village.
The sound
came again; coarse, guttural. Katrina let out a cry and looked to where the
noise had come from. Wide-eyed, she stared into the moonlit trees. Between the
corpses, the knotted, mangled roots, the blood, the weapons, the banners and
standards, standing atop the hilt of a sword stuck point-first into the soil
were two crows. Their beady-black eyes were fixed on her.
‘Birds,’
Katrina hissed, lowering the sword and breathing deeply. ‘Bloody birds.’
She shook
her head and watched as the two crows alighted and flew off into the darkness
and shadows behind them. For a few moments, Katrina was alone in the moonlight,
the spindly, femur-like branches of the blood-splattered and corpse-decorated
trees seemed to be pointing at her, she noticed; it were as if the trees were
watching her, glaring at her.
A shadow
moved.
Katrina
spun back towards where the two crows had been resting on the hilt of the
sword. Beyond them, back amidst the trees into which they had flown, the
darkness was swirling. Don’t be
ridiculous, Katrina thought as she felt a cold sweat break out on her brow
and neck, shadows can’t swirl; darkness
can’t move.
Yet they
did. Right before her. Unable to blink and move for the terrible fear that
wracked her, Katrina continued to stare into the darkness before her. And it
was moving. The longer she stared, the more convinced she was. The shadows were
shifting, but not as if a stray candle were being moved to and fro. They were
spiralling together, as if becoming one. They became a darkness which the
moonlight could not touch, and then it advanced.
It moved like a whisper, coming
from the shadows as if it were part of them. From within that blackness came a
figure which even the moonlight feared to touch. It was taller than a man, even
though it was hunched and twisted beyond imagining. It drifted slowly across
the carnage beneath it on a shadowy fog, which slowly meshed together and
became a dark, ragged, hooded robe that hung loosely around a wizened form. Two
rotten-looking arms reached from the ragged robe, at the end of each were
hands. In one skeletal, decomposing fist was a lance tipped with what looked to
Katrina like a faintly glowing flint head as long as her forearm. In the other
hand was a head.
But Katrina could not take her eyes
of the things face – or the space where its face should be. The ragged hood
that covered the creature’s head and hung low over its bent and crooked neck,
revealing only an impossibly dark shadow where the thing’s face should be.
‘No,’ Katrina whispered, ‘no, it
can’t be. Surely not…’
The thing glided towards her on its
legs and lower-body made of fog and shadow, making not a single sound as it
passed over the bodies of the fallen. Rooted with sheer terror and disbelief,
all Katrina could do was hold up Lucien’s sword.
The thing stopped ten paces away
from her, thin and tall enough to touch the very boughs, its long arms and
fingers stretched before it, as if it were frail and relied on the spear it
held for support, though Katrina could see blood on the tip of the weapon.
Slowly, it raised the head which it held in its bony, half-rotten fist and held
it out to Katrina.
‘No,’ she said in a whisper, ‘I’m
going insane; this isn’t real, this…this…’
Lucien stared back at her. His face
was pale, his hair matted where the creature gripped it with its terrible
hooked fingers. His eyes were rolled back into his head and his mouth closed,
his face splattered with blood. As Katrina watched, unsure if she was losing her
mind or if the thing before her was real, a faint, terrible green glow came
from within Lucien’s severed head, emanating from his mouth, behind his eyes,
from the terrible wound to his neck.
‘Katrina…’ the head said in
Lucien’s voice, his bloody lips and heavy tongue slipping around her name.
She broke. Screaming in terror, she
dropped Lucien’s sword and started off at a blind run through the trees. All
around her, the woods were moving. Tears left her eyes as she ran and things
started to grab at her. She watched as the corpses around her began to move,
picking up their old weapons or holding in their spilled guts where they could.
They shambled after her and she screamed and ran, utterly consumed with horror.
Before she knew it, she was out of
the trees and running wildly back towards the village. She had no idea how she
made her way out of the woods, for she could barely see through her tears of
terror and so many hands had been grabbing at her, so many mouths had been
gnashing for her, drooling bile and blood.
‘The dead walk!’ she screamed as
she ran into the middle of the village and collapsed by the fire, the breath
ripping from her lungs. ‘There’s a thing! A thing in the woods and it’s making
the dead walk! They’re alive, they’re coming for us!’
The revelry stopped. Eyes fell upon
her, the fire cracked. Then laughter.
Katrina watched helplessly as the
dozens and dozens of soldiers and peasants around the fires began to drink and
sing anew.
‘See, this is why women shouldn’t
fight,’ a deep, male voice said from somewhere on the other side of the fire.
‘Can’t keep it together like the men.’
‘Shut up, Horik, I killed more than
you earlier!’
Trembling with terror, lost for
words, Katrina’s head span. She looked left, right, behind her, everywhere she
could, trying to find someone – anyone – who would listen to her. All she saw,
though, were men and women drinking and laughing – laughing at her.
Henry,
she thought.
Scrambling to her feet, Katrina set
off at a run towards the tavern. She hurled aside anyone who got in her way as
she made a frantic run towards the stone-built building, but before she got
far, terrible screams went up from ahead of her.
Hurling aside a young peasant man
and his mug of ale, Katrina found herself facing the cart she had spotted earlier
when she had visited the tavern and the prisoners. Some of the dead she
recognised – a man who had asked her if she had a spare copper a few nights ago
was on his feet, bare aside from the shroud wrapped around him; another was a
woman, Gysela, whom she had drunk with before. They shambled from the cart,
their eyes lit by the same terrible green light that Lucien’s severed head had
given off as it spoke. Two of them had already fallen upon one of the peasants
and were clawing at him with their teeth and nails.
‘The dead walk!’ someone screamed.
‘The dead walk! To arms! To arms!’
Katrina herself was hurled aside by
someone fleeing as the whole of Whitherwood exploded into utter pandemonium.
She slipped and staggered to the floor, cracking her head against the wall of
the low home behind her. For a few moments, her entire world span and the
screams of fright that had taken over the world beyond her dazed head faded.
I
must be dreaming, Katrina told herself as she slumped into her daze and
watched as the braver soldiers ran at the bodies now dragging themselves from
the carts. Some of the walking dead’s wounds still oozed blood and organs,
whilst others shambled forwards, ignoring now-absent limbs. They fell upon the
swords of the living with horrible, dry, guttural cries.
Regaining her senses and scrambling
to her feet, Katrina watched on in horror as the blades that pierced the flesh
of the dead did little to harm them. They continued to claw and bite, chewing
bloody holes in the throats of their victims – men and women who had previously
been their friends. Katrina looked down the road towards the barricade that
Lucien had set up that day to slow the imperials down to see a number of
peasants and soldiers alike clawing at it, trying to open the way out of the
village. As they did so, a host of dead in imperial armour, their eyes and
mouths, even some of their wounds, giving off the terrible green light. They
clumsily fell upon the unsuspecting victims below the barricade with the weapons
clutched in their swinging arms and their gnashing teeth.
Katrina turned and ran towards the
tavern. She passed two soldiers wrestling with the corpse of a particularly
large soldier, and watched in horror as the walking corpse snapped the neck of
one of the Maedarians with one hand, as if his neck were little more than a dry
twig.
As fast as she could, Katrina ran
into the tavern. She spun and bolted the door behind her and fled across the empty
and near pitch-black common room, dodged around the counter, and threw herself
down the steps into the cellar. ‘Henry!’ she screamed as she went, almost
drowned out by the chorus of chaos erupting from outside. ‘Henry, we have to
flee, we have to-…’
She arrived at the bottom of the
cellar to find the room a battlefield. She looked on, open-mouthed and
wide-eyed at the blood and guts that slicked the floor. All of those who had
been sick or dying now lay dead in their makeshift beds, their throats torn out
and their features mutilated. Their covers had been torn and their entrails had
been spread across the stone floor like bloody rushes. Empty faces stared up,
frozen in terror in their final moments.
At the far end of the room, several
figures were screaming. ‘Kat!’ Henry’s voice came, ‘by the Old Gods, Kat, help
me, help me!’
‘No! No!’ someone else was
screaming. ‘No, please no! Help!’
The five imperial prisoners were
still chained to the wall at the end of the cellar. Two of the soldiers lay
dead, their throats torn out, whilst the other, identified earlier as Karsen,
was straining against the chains that kept him clasped to the wall as he
reached forwards with his blood-spewing mouth, desperately trying to sink his
teeth into Baron Tyvilius’ jugular. Beside the baron, Inquisitor Greyseer
fought desperately with his chain, cursing and swearing as he heaved on the
bolt that kept him fastened to the wall. A pile of the imperial prisoners’
weapons and armour, as well as that of the now dead men Henry had been
treating, lay tauntingly out-of-reach from the inquisitor. Before them, though,
Henry lay in the blood drenching the floor at the end of the room, a huge,
contorted, naked figure covered in holes and torn flesh wrestling with him.
‘Kat, please! Please!’ the old man shrieked as Katrina ran towards him.
Katrina whipped her sword from its
sheath and leapt onto the gigantic, twisted, naked figure atop the old medic
whilst behind him, Baron Tyvilius let out a terrible scream. Katrina plunged
her sword through the neck of the creature, as she had done with the imperial soldiers
that day. As she went to draw it out though, its long arms shot out and struck
her legs out from under her. Katrina found herself spinning across the room,
landing heavily on the gore-drenched floor. She leapt up as quickly as she
could, jumping backwards as the creature lunged for her, swiping with its
terrible claws.
Then, Katrina saw the monstrous
being’s face. ‘No,’ she breathed, new tears in her eyes. ‘No…’
Once upon a time, it had been lovey
and friendly, and had held so much warmth and love. Now, it was a twisted mass
of cracked and bloody flesh, torn and ravaged. The eyes were still the same,
though they glowed a terrible green, and Katrina could just about make out the
various features she recognised, for the monster had grown, swollen and expanded,
but its skin had split and fissured all across its body.
‘Aldem,’ she said gently as the
enormous monster than had once been her brother rounded to face her. ‘Aldem,
it’s me. It’s Kat. It’s your sister.’
Aldem snarled, hunched on all
fours, for he was now far too tall to fit into the room. His venom-green eyes
were fixed on her, and his whole body tensed as if it were about to spring.
‘Aldem, no,’ Katrina pleaded as the
being readied itself to pounce, gnashing huge, ugly, sharp teeth between its
broken and torn lips. ‘I beg you, I beg you sweet brother, please don’t-…’
The abomination that had once been
Aldem’s body charged forwards, Katrina’s sword still sticking out of its neck.
She let out a cry – some cracked mixture of terror and heartbreak – as she
threw herself aside. She felt huge, clawed hands rend the air above her as she
dodged, and quickly spun to face the monstrous creature. Aldem came at her
again, teeth gnashing, blood and bile drooling from between his split and
rotten lips.
Katrina charged forwards and dived
between the hulking, monstrous being’s legs. The abomination stumbled forwards,
tripping, and crashed head-first into the tavern cellar’s wall. It let out a
roar that made Katrina’s ears ring, before rounding to face her again.
‘Kat!’
It was Henry. As Katrina turned,
she saw he old man grab something from the pile of equipment belonging to the
prisoners and the dead and throw it to her. She quickly caught it, plucking it
from the air – a lance; blunt but sturdily-made.
Katrina levelled it at the thing
that was once her brother just as it charged again. She felt her arms and legs
buckle as the split and twisted, naked chest of her brother collided with the
lance. The monster let out a howl as Katrina pushed with the lance, doing everything
she could to stop it from moving. The creature was impossibly strong though,
and incredibly heavy. With a roar of effort, she slowly lifted the lance, the
muscles in her arms burning as she lifted her impaled brother off his feet and
held him aloft, glaring into his face.
He raved and snarled, clawing at
Katrina with the claws that had grown on the end of his fingers. There was
nothing but mindless hatred in his eyes, an unthinking desire to kill and
consume. Katrina felt tears leave her eyes and she continued to heave on the
lance. I’m sorry, Aldem.
An unfamiliar roar brought Katrina
back to the real world. Inquisitor Greyseer, clad in his battered and bloody
robe, came flying through the air, a longsword clutched in both his hands. With
an oath to the Divine Empress on his lips, he brought the blade down on Aldem’s
neck, cleaving through the swollen flesh and twisted bone there. ‘Light burn
you, abomination!’ he cried as Aldem’s grossly swollen head fell from his
shoulders and landed on the floor with a wet smack.
The strength went out of Katrina
and she fell, gasping and weeping. She let go of the lance upon which her
brother’s headless, and now thankfully still, corpse was still stuck, and let
it crash to the floor.
Hands were on her straight away.
‘Kat, sweet Kat, are you alright?’ Henry’s voice found her, but she could not
reply. She felt his fingers checking her for injuries, but all she could do was
weep and stare at the severed head of her dead brother. She barely noticed
Baron Tyvilius’ bloody corpse slumped against the wall, still stuck in his
chains – the headless body of the one called Karsen hanging uselessly from its
chains beside him. Blood seeped from a terrible bite-wound in the baron’s neck,
and Karsen’s vile head which lay a few paces away, was slathered in blood.
‘That was not your brother,’ a
stern voice cut through her terror. ‘That was a wight; a vile creature of death
animated from the remains of the innocent. Nothing in that creature was your
brother.’
Katrina looked up through her tears
into the hardy face of Inquisitor Greyseer. ‘The locals were right,’ she said
in a whisper. ‘There’s a thing in the woods, they call it the Lady of the
Woods. It’s a horrible thing, of shadow and mist, holding an ancient lance. It
brought the dead back, I saw it, and it made them walk!’
Greyseer’s lined face grew grave.
‘What exactly did it look like?’ he asked in his stern, unfaltering voice. ‘Try
to think, speak slowly. This is important.’
‘Tall, hunched, withered,’ Katrina
said, choking back her tears, trying not to stare at the decapitated head of
her brother just behind where Greyseer crouched. ‘It wore a robe made of shadow
and fog, and it held a spear and Captain Lucien’s head. It had no face, only
shadows and darknes, and it said nothing.’
Inquisitor Greyseer winced.
‘Empress preserve us,’ he said in a whisper.
‘What?’ Henry snapped, standing up
and looking at the inquisitor. ‘What is it?’
Inquisitor Greyseer seemed
reluctant to think for a moment; his eyes scanned the bloody floor in thought,
as if searching for something. ‘A lich,’ he said. ‘The thing you saw was a
lich.’
‘A lich?’ Katrina said through her
tear-rocked voice. ‘What’s a lich?’
Greyseer cleared his throat.
“Liches are unique in the fact they seem to retain some form of rational
thought – though it is completely twisted and warped by a hatred for all life.
They often appear in the form of a dishevelled, near-skeletal Man, dressed in a
ragged robe and holding a staff or stick of some form. They appear weak in
body, but have an uncannily apt ability with the Heathen Art, and can conjure
terrible tendrils of shadow from their rotting fingertips and whip life away
with a wave of a hand.” The inquisitor paused for a moment. “Under no
circumstances should one ever look for a fight with a lich, as their ability
with the Heathen Art renders them the most terrible and dangerous form of the
undead.”
Henry looked from Katrina to
Greyseer. ‘What was that?’ he said.
‘The entry concerning the lich from
Commander Ludwig Nicstaed’s Bestiary Written
in Blood; all inquisitors are required to memorise various passages upon
gaining their rank.’
‘And what’s the Heathen Art?’
Katrina asked.
Inquisitor Greyseer’s steely gaze
met her eyes. ‘Magic.’
Katrina swallowed. ‘What can we
do?’ she said. Above her, a particularly loud scream drifted into the cellar.
‘There has to be something we can do, no?’
Beside her, old Henry looked down
at the stern-faced Greyseer. Neither man said anything.
Katrina gestured exasperatedly. ‘So
this thing is now loose to do what it
pleases? There’s nothing we can do?’
‘We can escape,’ Inquisitor
Greyseer muttered. ‘Liches are extremely rare, girl; some say they aren’t even
of this world, that no weapon made in the World can harm them. No-one has ever
fought one and lived to tell the tale.’
Henry nodded slowly as yet another
terrible scream pierced the uncomfortably warm cellar air. ‘I am no
inquisitor,’ the older gentleman said slowly, ‘but I have heard such things
before. There are terrible tales and-…’
‘Tales don’t matter right now,
Henry!’ Katrina yelled. ‘If we can’t do anything, we have to get out of here!’
Katrina had barely finished
speaking when a terrible crash shook the inn. Whipping out her shortsword, she
spun to face the stairs that led down into the cellar, trembling. Whilst Henry
staggered to the back of the room to try and find a weapon to defend himself
with, Katrina found Inquisitor Greyseer at her side, clutching his own blade,
his steely gaze set upon the stair.
‘Whatever comes down those stairs…’
he began before swallowing, setting his grim gaze, and trailing off. ‘Are you
ready, girl?’ he asked.
‘Are you ready, imperial?’ Katrina spat back.
There was another crash followed by
more screaming. The volume of the chaos erupting outside had risen; They must have broken the door down, Katrina
thought, clenching her sword to stop her hands shaking.
‘The heads are the key,’ Greyseer
said slowly as the sound of many pairs of footsteps and more screaming made it
to the top of the stairs. ‘Do the body as much damage as you can and the
essence that binds the creature will escape its form-…’
There was another scream that cut
Greyseer off. A myriad of figures tumbled down the stone stairs into the
cellar. Katrina saw the flash of green, the smear of half-dried blood, and the
desperate flailing of living arms from within a mass of undead flesh. Someone’s in there! She had barely
thought for her own safety before she charged at the twisting mass of limbs.
She grabbed, hacked, chopped and
cut. She tore at putrefied flesh with her spare hand as she grabbed and
wrestled with the glowing green-eyed undead monsters in imperial armour: one
was missing a jaw, the other still had a lance embedded in its side. The third
and final could have been unhurt if not for the tell-tale blood seeping out
from beneath his breastplate. And the
eyes. The terrible eyes.
Katrina aimed her first blow for
the creature missing its jaw but missed, her blade ringing out as it jarred off
the stone stairs. Beneath her, underneath the death-rattle moans and groans of
the undead, a voice was shrieking, desperately calling for help. She aimed a
slash and, through sheer luck more than skill, cleft the creature’s head off
its shoulders. She watched as its headless body went limp and the green glow
that had emanated from its eyes and terrible wounded mouth dissipated, like a
candle snuffed out in the wind.
Before she could stop, though,
hands were on her. She looked down to see the next creature – the one with the
bloodied breastplate – grasping her ankle with its long, grey fingers. Katrina
yelped and kicked out, but the dead monster’s grip was too strong and she
slipped, landing painfully on the floor. Suddenly, it was on top of her,
gnashing its yellowed teeth and dripping blood and bile onto her face, clawing
at her throat with its cracked, filthy nails. The thing was unimaginably heavy
– the magic that bound it and the armour it wore contributing to the crushing
weight that pressed down on her.
Katrina could neither move nor
breathe. Desperately, she scrabbled for her sword. With a scream caught
somewhere between blind terror and impossible effort, Katrina plunged her
shortsword into the creature’s chest and pushed with all her might. Slowly,
gradually, it lifted off her, though its hands still continued to claw at her
face and its terrible glowing green eyes kept staring.
There was a sudden blur of grey and
white, and suddenly Inquisitor Greyseer was standing over her, his longsword
between his fingers. ‘Burn in Her light!’ he cried, his voice booming and
rolling like a war horn as he smote down with his sword, cleaving through the
neck of the creature impaled and flailing on the end of Katrina’s sword.
Katrina closed her eyes and mouth
as a splatter of brownish-red gore slathered down from the undead creature’s
severed head and onto her face. The smell made her gag, but there was no time
to wipe herself down – Greyseer was pulling her to her feet.
Bloodied, dazed, and sticky with
terrible undead ichor, there was only one of the horrid creatures left: the one
with the spear in its side. Inquisitor Greyseer rushed forwards, cleaving his
sword in an arc, but the blade reverberated off the thick imperial plate armour
the corpse still had strapped around its unliving body.
Slowly, the realisation seemed to
dawn on the lumbering undead creature that the real threat was not posed by the
squirming figure beneath it, but rather by the three figures at its back.
Slowly, it got to its feet and turned to face Katrina, Inquisitor Greyseer, and
the old medic Henry. There was a moment of stillness as the thing, spear lodged
in its abdomen, looked from one to the next. Then, it placed its
still-gauntleted fist on the spear lodged in its flesh and pulled.
A foul human slurry slipped from
the wound, but the creature did not fall. Instead, an ethereal green light
shone from the hole left in its side. Katrina thought she might be sick, but
instead clutched her sword all the harder.
She rushed forwards. For a moment, the
monster looked off-balance. She leapt into the air, hoping to throw all her
weight and force into the stab she aimed at the middle of the creature’s
blood-splattered face, but the reeking monster span with a speed she did not
imagine the shambling horror could possess.
Yelping in pain, Katrina landed on
the stone floor. Quickly, ignoring the pain shooting through her ankle, she
span, raising her blade to block and incoming swipe or lunge. As she had
expected, a bloody spear came swinging towards her head, wielded with such
force it sent a bone-jarring vibration shivering up her arm and send her
shortsword spinning from her hand. Katrina let out another cry as she was sent
spinning away, staggered by the inhuman force of the blow.
The creature advanced towards her
on its shambling feet, its lance raised in a single hand, its glowing eyes wide
and unblinking. It gnashed its teeth and drooled pus as it came. The bloody
spear loomed over Katrina’s head. She was sure this would be how she died. To this rotting thing, she thought. Old Gods, save us.
There was a cry and Katrina looked
round to see both Henry and Inquisitor Greyseer charge at the monster. The
three figures collapsed into a sudden, brief, desperate melee with the
impossibly strong monster. Katrina scrambled to her feet, grabbed her sword,
and turned to see it was all over.
Inquisitor Greyseer’s sword still
lay in the space between the monster’s upper-head and lower jaw. His hands were
elsewhere, his form kneeling over that of Henry. ‘Girl, quickly,’ he said
through his teeth. ‘Quickly, hold this. Hold
this!’
Katrina rushed to Greyseer’s side
to find his hands clamped over Henry’s throat. Blood was bubbling out from
between his fingers, and the old man’s eyes were wide with shock and fright,
though he could not speak nor cry out for the wretched, ragged hole in his
oesophagus.
‘Henry, no!’ Katrina cried, falling
to her knees and clamping her hand over the wound. ‘Inquisitor, do something!’
The old man’s hand weakly gripped
Katrina’s wrist. His eyes met her gaze – pleading, fading.
‘Inquisitor!’ Katrina shrieked.
‘One bloody moment!’ Greyseer snapped.
Katrina turned to see Inquisitor
Greyseer tearing the sleeve of his bloodied white robe of the inquisition into
a long, strip-like bandage. A long length of the fabric came away with a loud rip.
‘Hold him! Keep holding him!’
‘I am! Hurry!’
Greyseer sprang to Katrina’s side,
makeshift bandage in hand. ‘Hands! Quickly!’
Katrina looked down at Henry, who
was still gripping her wrist. He had stopped moving. His eyes stared blankly up
at the cellar’s roof. Blood still ran over his lips and gushed from the
terrible wound in his neck, but he moved no more.
Katrina fell backwards onto her
haunches, her hands sticky with the old man’s blood. She looked at Henry’s
face; deathly pale, flecked with blood, unmoving. He seemed more surprised than
anything, his eyes were wide, his brow quirked, and his lips slightly parted.
Beside her, Inquisitor Greyseer
sighed and shook his head. ‘We need to get out of here.’
‘You can’t,’ a weak voice said from
the stairway.
Instinctively, Katrina grabbed her
sword and span. She had almost forgotten about the person who had been attacked
by the undead and dragged into the cellar. She certainly did not expect to find
herself eye-to-eye with the skinny blacksmith’s son, Welf.
His clothes were bloodied and torn,
like much of the exposed skin on his face and arms. The filth on his face was
tear-streaked, and his filthy hair, usually dusty with soot, was clumped and
matted with yet more blood and had been torn out in places. ‘They’re in the
woods. Hundreds of them,’ he said, his voice shaking.
‘Surely we have to try,’ Inquisitor
Greyseer said stiffly, getting to his feet and curling his lip.
Welf shook his head and let out a
choking cough. ‘We did,’ he said quietly. ‘Da and I both made a run for the
woods. We got past that…’ he shuddered, ‘that thing, it was too busy sucking the life out of a group of soldiers.
But the woods are crawling with the dead. Da tried to smash his way out but
there were too many and…’
Katrina winced. She had never liked
Torrin Twist-Hand, but he had been Welf’s father. ‘What can we do, then?’ she
asked hopelessly. ‘Wait?’
Inquisitor Greyseer chewed his lip
for a moment, his frown deepening. In the silence between the three people in
the cellar, surrounded by blood and bodies, the screams and yells of those
outside continued to echo. ‘I don’t know,’ he said eventually. ‘I don’t know
what we can do.’
‘We need to hide,’ Welf said, his
voice cracking and breaking, his eyes darting and desperate. ‘We can’t stop
them, there are too many, and that thing in
the hood with the spear…’ he shuddered again, choking down a sob. ‘We can’t. We
have to hide. We must.’
Katrina glared at the smith’s son
as more screams echoed through the cellar. ‘You hear that?’ she snapped as a
particularly terrible scream came from outside. ‘Can you live with yourself
having done nothing to stop that?’
Welf made no reply. His lips
wobbled and he looked at the floor. ‘Please,’ he whispered. ‘Please don’t make
me go back out there…’
Katrina looked down her nose at the
snivelling young man and clenched her teeth. ‘We can’t do nothing!’ she said despairingly. ‘These things killed Henry!
They’re slaughtering everyone else!’
‘And they’ll kill you if you go
rushing out there!’ Inquisitor Greyseer snarled, grabbing Katrina by the wrist.
‘Don’t be such a fool, girl.’
Katrina rounded on the inquisitor.
‘I risked everything fighting for what those people up there believe in; I even
risked my own neck for the villagers here, and now they’re being wiped out by
some monster!’
Inquisitor Greyseer glared at Katrina.
‘Do what you will,’ he snapped, before folding his arms and glaring at her.
Katrina held his glare for a few
moments before placing her hand on the pommel of her sword, turning around, and
marching up the stairs out of the cellar. She pushed past Welf as she went; the
young man was still snivelling.
She found the common room of the
tavern in chaos. The few greasy benches and stools on the bloody rush-covered
floor had been overturned, and a number of bodies were strewn amongst them.
Katrina did not stop to see if they were friend or foe, and hurried towards the
shattered wooden door that led out on to the road. She hesitated as a chorus of
screaming erupted from outside, but clutched her sword and stepped out into the
street.
The half-light of the moon fell
like a translucent snow upon the devastation that had been wrought upon
Witherwood. Two thatched houses were alight, great fingers of flame scrabbling
desperately towards the pitch-black sky above. The muddy road that ran through
the village was littered with corpses – both of the living and the undead. Over
them stepped dozens upon dozens of the dead, their eyes and wounds glowing with
the eerie, phantom green.
But over them all, manifesting
between the flames of the burning houses, rose the lich. It seemed both taller
and broader than it had done earlier, and the fire and flames that licked
around it did not so much as mark the bare, putrefied flesh of its arms. Its
spear, with its green, flint-like head, was drenched in blood. The light and
shadow cast of the fire made terrible shadows of the fresh corpse in the lich’s
free fist.
As Katrina stood, her eyes fixed on
the horrid, hooded creature that seemed to be hovering amongst the flames of
the village, she felt its gaze turn towards her. Its featureless face, hidden
entirely by the shadow of its ragged hood, stared through the darkness and
carnage that swept the village. Katrina felt a terrible chill come over her,
but did not drop her gaze.
Suddenly, she heard a roar followed
by the clash of steel on steel. Katrina looked down the road, past the
shambling corpses, and towards the village centre where the large bonfire was
still burning. She could see frantic shadows moving, the gleam of weapons in
firelight, and the yelling of frantic voices. People, she thought. They
need help.
Gritting her teeth, Katrina looked
at the wall of shambling undead monsters before her, blocking her passage to
the centre of Witherwood. Through their silhouettes lay her goal: the middle of
the village. Katrina took a breath to calm her nerves. She had seen how fast
the undead were capable of moving when the spear-wielding corpse had attacked
her. She had been slow. Underestimating;
arrogant. This time she would not be.
She drew her shortsword, flexed her fingers,
and charged.
Her goal was not slaughter; Katrina
knew if she got distracted by dismembering the dead that she would be overrun
and torn to pieces. There were far more of them than there were of her, and they
could be quick. I have to be quicker.
Her first blow was driven through
the spine of a fallen Maedarian soldier. She did not stop, battering the undead
creature to the floor and continuing her run. Her second strike ripped the jaw
from a semi-naked imperial carcass riddled with arrows. The thing swung at her,
but its grey fists arced wide. She sprang away and kept running.
She swept about her with her sword
as she ran through the pressing throng of corpses. Terrible green eyes and
leering mouths swirled before her as she ran and slashed at the pressing wall
of unliving flesh before her. The terrible creatures grabbed for her free arm
as she attacked, but time and again wrenched it away until the muscles in her
shoulder and elbow screamed. When they clutched at her long, fire-red hair, she
slashed at their hands, her hair falling away in gory clumps. Katrina kept
running, kept swinging, and kept fighting.
Suddenly, flesh was replaced by
firelight, and Katrina fell face-first through the last line of corpses and
into the glowing firelight of the square. Hands were upon her before she could
look up, and she screamed, slashing wildly with her sword. A vice-like hand
grabbed her wrist, though, and her slashing was stilled.
‘Damnit, girl, stop!’ a deep voice snarled as Katrina felt herself being dragged
towards the fire, bumping and bouncing over detritus and debris as she went. ‘Stop
before you give ‘em something else to bring back!’
Eyes wide, Katrina looked up into
the weathered, mean face of Torrin Twist-Hand. The big smith was surrounded by
exhausted, harrowed faces: Maedarian rebels clutching swords and a few peasants
with pitchforks in their fists. The smith had a huge, bloody mallet in his belt
and his only hand clamped around Katrina’s sword-arm. His ear had been torn off
and his face was slathered in blood, and his balding scalp sported a bloody
wound made by a sword. His lips were split, his eyes blackened, and his clothes
slathered in blood. She would have thought him one of the undead given the
state of him, if it were not for his normal, non-glowing eyes.
‘Torrin?’ Katrina gasped, yanking
at her arm. ‘Welf said you were dead!’
The big smith heaved Katrina to her
feet and let go of her arm. ‘He would’ve,’ he grunted and spat out a glob of
blood. ‘Bastard things almost got me.’
Katrina looked around. There were
perhaps fifty people in the village centre, clustered around the huge bonfire.
Some brandished swords and axes, whilst others wielded tools and whatever else
they had been able to get their hands on. They had fortified their position
with everything from overturned wagons, broken barrels, and dead cattle,
amongst which the defenders lurked, pouncing on the dead that advanced,
smashing them to pieces with any item they could: sticks, stones, hammers, and
axes.
The undead seemed reluctant to
advance, even though they drastically outnumbered the living in the centre of
the village. The ramshackle obstacle-course of junk that ringed the fire was
keeping them occupied and disorganised long enough for the last survivors to
rally.
‘I don’t actually believe the
soddin’ tales were true!’ the smith snarled, checking Katrina over for injuries
once they were well behind the defensive barricades. ‘Lady o’ the Woods my arse
– yet here she is, in all ‘er rotten glory!’
‘It’s not the Lady,’ Katrina said,
slapping the smith’s hands away and glancing around herself to make sure no
corpses had managed to slip through the meagre spread of defences around the
uncomfortably hot bonfire. There were women and children clustered around her
too, along with a few wounded men and women to whom the villagers desperately
attended, applying makeshift tourniquets and bandages to bloody wounds. ‘It’s a
lich, Inquisitor Greyseer said so.’
The smith spat. ‘An’ you believe
this bloody imperial?’ he sneered. ‘They never understood our ways or our
beliefs. If he ain’t out ‘ere tryin’ to kill it with us, then I ‘ope he dies.’
Katrina glared at the smith.
‘That’s not helpful,’ she snapped.
Silence fell between the two
figures for a moment whilst the handful of living defenders around them took
swift jabs at the ever-thickening wall of undead ringing the bonfire. It was
only then Katrina realised there were women and children clustered with their
faces towards the flames, weeping and pleading with one-another and the gods to
preserve them. A few of them were treating a small group of wounded young men,
doing everything they could to stop their terrible wounds from bleeding, though
even as Katrina watched on helplessly, two of them slipped away.
‘It’s playin’ with us,’ Torrin
snarled, appearing suddenly beside Katrina, his battered face turned towards
the Lich that lurked towards the edge of the village. ‘It’s not interested in
killin’ us all yet. It wants to break us first – to make us think there’s hope,
then snatch it away.’
Katrina looked at the ring of
walking corpses clustered around the bonfire, surrounding the last few living
in Witherwood. One or two advanced, swiping at the living, who always quickly
leapt forwards to drive them back. A few even fell – Katrina watched as a
farmer armed with a hoe struck a bloody imperial monster clean in the throat
and took its head off. He and two other men with him cheered as he did, daring
the corpses to advance and try again.
‘Then what do we do?’ Katrina said,
turning to the big smith. ‘We can try and cut our way out or-…’
The smith shook his head and took
the bloody hammer from his belt. ‘Won’t work. Not everyone ‘ere fights like
you,’ he said. ‘More of us’ll be slaughtered tyrin’ to force our way out. If
only there were a way to kill that thing,’
the smith snarled, gesturing at the monster looming through the flames that
were spreading through the village.
Torrin had barely finished speaking
when the undead took up a terrible, dry-mouthed chant. They began to howl and
leer through their cold, pale lips, spitting blood and gnashing on their
tongues. Their green eyes seemed to flash and glow brighter, and another
terrible wind blew over the village.
Katrina found her eyes drawn past
the gnashing dead towards the lich still lurked on the edge of the village. It
seemed to have risen up into the air, and was holding its spear high into the
air. The green, flint-like blade at the end of the crude, stick-like shaft
flashed in the moonlight.
‘What’s it doing?’ Katrina said,
turning towards Torrin Twist-Hand.
The smith’s mouth hung open, his
eyes wide. ‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘It’s not done this before.’
There was a blinding flash. Katrina
could not tell if it came from the flames around the lich, the moon above it,
or the spear in its hand, for she spun and covered her eyes to stop herself
being dazzled. She was the first to recover, and spun about, clutching her
sword, expecting the dead to charge at any moment.
Instead, a chilling scream came
from behind her. She span to see the two dead men by the fire clawing at one of
the women who had been treating the wounded. Some of the others were
desperately trying to pull the undead off her, but to no avail. Behind them, a
small group of children had begun screaming.
With a defiant cry, Katrina
charged, her sword sang. One head fell and her second strike drove the blade of
the sword into the eye-socket of the second creature. It thrashed around,
letting go of the woman it held to try and grab Katrina. She twisted her blade,
whipped it out, and struck the creature in the neck once, twice, three times
before the head fell away. The green glow dissipated from the corpse’s eyes,
and it was still once more.
Katrina turned, looking towards the
young woman she had saved, but her eyes never found her and no words left her
lips. Wide-eyed and staring with horror, she gawked back into the village,
bathed orange-white in fire and moonlight. The lich held its weapon high, the
moon gleaming through the forearm-length, shimmering green stone-like blade. Below
it, the corpses of the living slain by the dead began to spasm and stir.
Slowly, their eyes began to glow, their wounds shone, and they rose to their
feet.
‘No!’ Katrina heard Torrin cry.
‘No! Not more!’
Katrina took a long, slow breath
and clutched her sword, looking from the once again advancing press of undead
flesh to the lich which stood, towering over them all. It was drifting
forwards, slowly moving through its horde of mindless soldiers. There has to be something we can do, she
thought. The Old Gods surely wouldn’t
allow something not of this world to exist without a way of it being bested…surely…
The slaughter began.
The undead moved with a single
mind, directed by the lich’s staff. They surged forwards, overwhelming the last
of the living in a single wave of greyish, rancid flesh. Katrina found herself
standing over the screaming women and children around the fire trying
desperately to think of something. Anything.
Her eyes widened. ‘Not of this
world,’ she whispered, staring through the flames. ‘The spear it carries. Not
of this world.’
‘Torrin!’
Clasping her sword and clenching
her teeth, Katrina ran into the thick wall of green-eyed death.