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‘I bet the littlest one lasts longest,’ Rike shouted, and he bellowed with laughter as if he’d said something funny. He almost slipped off then, and that shut up his laughing quick enough.
‘You want to win this game, Gog, you leave little Magog to look after himself.’ As I spoke the words a chill set the hairs standing on my neck. ‘Show me you’ve the strength to look after yourself, and maybe I’ll find something those necromancers want more than they want your scrawny soul.’
Gorgoth started up again, and the brothers followed without a word.
I walked on, rubbing the scars on my forearms where the hook-briar had started to itch at me again.
I counted a thousand steps, and I only started out of boredom, so I missed the first ten minutes of the climb. My legs turned to jelly, my armour felt as though it were made from inch-thick lead, and my feet got too clumsy to find the stairs. Brother Gains convinced Gorgoth to call a rest halt by stumbling into space, and wailing for a good ten seconds before the unseen floor convinced him to shut up.
‘All these stairs so we can reach “The Great Stair”!’ I spat a mess of phlegm after dear departed Brother Gains.
Makin flashed me a grin and wiped the sweaty curls from his eyes. ‘Maybe the necromancers will carry us up.’
‘Going to need a new cook.’ Red Kent spat after Gains.
‘Can’t anyone be worse than Gainsy.’ Fat Burlow moved only his lips. The rest of him slumped lifeless, hugging the wall. I thought it a rather poor eulogy for Gains, since Burlow seemed to put away more of the man’s culinary efforts than the rest of us put together.
‘Rike would be worse,’ I said. ‘I see him tackling an evening meal the way he approaches burning a village.’
Gains was all right. He’d carved me a bone flute once, when I first came to the brothers. On the road, we talk away our dead with a curse and a joke. If we’d not liked Gains, nobody would have made comment. I felt a little stupid for letting Gorgoth walk us so hard. I took the bitter taste of that and set an edge on it, to save for the necromancers if they wanted to test our mettle.
We found the top of the stair without losing any more brothers. Gorgoth took us through a series of many-pillared halls, echoingly empty, the ceilings so low that Rike could reach up to touch them. Wide curving ramps stepped us up from one hall to the next, each the same as the one before, dusty and empty.
The smell crept up around us, so slowly that there wasn’t a point where I could say I noticed it. The stink of death comes in many flavours, but I like to think I recognize the Reaper in all his guises.
The dust became thicker as we made our way, an inch deep in places. Here and there the occasional bone lay half-covered. Then more bones, then a skull, then three. Where the Builder-stone cracked and the waters oozed, the dust became a grey mud and flowed in miniature deltas. I pulled a skull from one such swamp. It came free with a satisfying squelch and mud poured from its sockets like syrup.
‘So where are these necromancers of yours, Gorgoth?’ I asked.
‘We make for The Great Stair. They will find us,’ he said.
‘They’ve found you.’ She slid around the pillar closest to me, a woman from the night of my imagination. She moved her body over the rough stone as if it were sheerest silk. Her voice fell on the ear like velvet, dark and rich.
Not one sword left its scabbard. The Nuban lifted his crossbow and heaved the loading lever back, bunching the heavy muscle in his arm into a black ball. The necromancer ignored him. She let the pillar go with a lover’s reluctance and turned to face me. I heard Makin suck in his breath at my side. The woman mixed supple strength with a succulence that young princes doodle into the margins of their studies. She wore only paints and ribbons, the patterns swirled across her in Celtic knots of grey on black.
When you meet her, run.
‘Well met, my lady.’ I sketched her a court bow.
Just run.
‘Gorgoth, you bring us guests as well as tribute!’ Her laughter set a tingling in my groin.
Nothing else. Just run.
She offered her hand. For a moment I hesitated.
‘And you would be?’ Her eyes, that had held only the reflection of fire, now stole the green I remembered from a distant throne-room.
‘Prince Honorous Jorg Ancrath.’ I took her hand, cool and heavy, and kissed it. ‘At your service.’ And I was.
‘Chella.’ A dark fire ran in my veins. She smiled and I felt the same smile cross my face. She stepped closer. My skin sang with the thrill of her. I breathed her in, the bitter scent of old tombs, cut with the hot tang of blood.
‘The little one first, Gorgoth,’ she said, without taking her eyes from mine.
From the corner of my eye I saw Gorgoth take Gog in the hugeness of his hand.
The air became suddenly icy. The sound came of rock grinding on rock, setting my teeth on edge. The hall itself seemed to let forth a sigh of release, and with that exhalation mists swirled up among us, wraiths finding momentary form in the pale coils. I felt my finger freeze in the muck within the skull that dangled in my grasp.
The scraping ceased as bones found their partners. First one skeleton rose in a complex ballet of inter-articulation, then the next. The mists bound each bone in a spectral mockery of flesh.
I saw Gog explode into a fit of thrashing and writhing within Gorgoth’s implacable grip. Little Magog stood his ground as the first skeleton advanced on him. Gog was too far gone in his rage to demand release. The roar that came from him sounded comical, so high-pitched and thick with fury.
The necromancer slipped her arm around me. I can’t tell you how it felt. We turned to watch Magog fight.
The leucrota child reached up to the skeleton’s knee, no higher. He saw his moment, or rather, thought he did, and threw himself forward. You can’t expect much from a five year-old. The undead caught him in bony fingers and threw him carelessly against a pillar. Magog hit hard, leaving it bloody. He didn’t cry though. He struggled to get up as the second skeleton stepped toward him. A flap of the child’s pretty skin hung away from the red flesh of his shoulder.
I looked away. Even with Chella’s softness pressed to me, this sport tasted sour in ways I didn’t understand. My eyes found Gog, still fighting in Gorgoth’s fists. Gorgoth had both hands on the child now, though I doubted even I could fight out of his single grip. I hadn’t imagined strength like that could lie in so small a thing.
The skeleton had Magog in one hand, two bone fingers of the other hand ready to drive through his eyes.
It seemed to me that a storm rose, though maybe it rose just in me, a storm lashing a moonless night and showing the world in lightning slices. A child’s voice howled in my head and would not quiet though I cursed it to silence. Every fibre of me strained to move – and no part of me so much as twitched. Hooks held me. There in the cradle of the necromancer’s arms I watched the skeletal fingers plunge toward the black pools of the leucrota’s eyes.
When the hand exploded I was as surprised as anyone. A big crossbow bolt will do that to a hand. The Nuban turned his face toward me, away from the sights of his bow. I saw the white crescent of his smile and my limbs were free. I swung my arm up, sharp and hard. The skull in my hand hit the necromancer’s face with a most satisfying crunch.
Whoever made the Nuban must have fashioned him from bedrock. I never knew a man more solid. He held his words close. Few among the brothers sought his counsel, men upon the road have little use for conscience, and although he never judged, the Nuban carried judgement with him.
30
I cleared scabbard and followed the arc of my family blade to face the necromancer. It’s one of those swords they say can make the wind bleed. Appropriately the edge found only empty air, which hissed as if cut.
The necromancer fell back too swiftly for me to reach. The skull had taken her by surprise, but I didn’t think I’d catch her again so easily.
I guess the skull hit her in the bridge of the nose, because that’s where the mess was. No blood, but a dark stain and a writhing of the flesh as though a hundred worms wriggled, one over another.
For the most part the brothers still stood in the daze that had held me. The Nuban worked to load another bolt into his crossbow. Makin half-drew his sword. Gorgoth let go of Gog.
The necromancer took a breath, like a rasp drawn over ironwork, rattling in her throat. ‘That,’ she said, ‘was a mistake.’
‘So sorry!’ I kept my voice cheerful and lunged at her. She slipped around the pillar, leaving me to skewer the stonework.
Gog hurled himself bodily at Magog, and tore his little brother from the skeleton’s one-handed grip. I caught a glimpse of pale finger-marks on the child’s neck.
I moved around the pillar with a little caution, only to find the necromancer had somehow slipped back to a further pillar, five yards off.
‘I’m very particular about who I allow to place spells on me,’ I said, turning and aiming a swift kick at Rike. He’s hard to miss. ‘Come on, Rikey! Up and at ’em!’
Rike came to with a wordless howl of complaint, somewhere between disturbed walrus and bear-prodded-out-of-hibernation. Just in front of him the two skeletons bent to reach for the leucrota brothers, still a tangle of limbs on the dusty floor. Rike loomed over both of the undead, and took a skull in each hand. He wrenched them together in a clap that reduced the pair to shards.
Roaring unintelligibly, he shook his hands. ‘Cold!’ He graduated to words. ‘Fecking freezing!’
I turned to the necromancer, some witticism ready on my tongue. The taunt died where it sat. Her whole face writhed now. The flesh lay shrunken on her limbs, pulsing sporadically. The body that seduced my eyes now held all the allure of a famine-corpse. She held me with a dark gaze, glittering in rotting slaughter. She laughed and her laughter came as the sound of wet rags flapping at the wind.
The brothers stood with me now. Gorgoth made no move, keeping his place. The little leucrotas crouched together in the shadows.
‘We’re many, and you’re one, my lady. And a damned ugly one at that. So you’d best step aside and let us past,’ I said. Somehow I didn’t think she was going to, but nothing ventured nothing gained, as they say.
That worm-flesh of hers crawled into a smile so wide I could see her jawbones past the hinge-point. For a second her face rippled and we saw Gains there, screaming as he fell.
‘The dead are many, child,’ she said. ‘I’ll let you pass – into their realm.’
The temperature fell, and kept falling, like there was no bottom for it to hit. It went from uncomfortable, to painful, to plain stupid in no time at all. And the noise. The awful grinding as the skeletons built themselves from pieces and wrapped themselves in the spirit-mist that rose around us. A sound to make you want to pull your teeth out. The torch in Makin’s hand gave up its struggle against the cold and guttered out.
The mist hid all but our nearest neighbours. The skeletons came at us slowly, as if in a dream. If not for the fire of Gorgoth’s torch we’d have been left in utter darkness.
I swung my sword at the first attacker. The hilt felt frozen onto my hand, but I wasn’t inclined to drop it in any case. I needed the exercise to keep warm. The skeleton disintegrated into a shower of brittle bone. I had no time to cheer before the next came lurching out of the fog.
We fell to the fight, and time left us. We hung in a freezing limbo where only the shattering of bone and the rise and fall of swords held meaning. Every time I cut ghost-flesh it seemed that the cold bit a little deeper into me. The sword grew heavy in my hand until it felt as if they’d fashioned it from lead.
I saw Roddat die. A skeleton caught him with his guard down. Bony fingers found either side of his head and a whiteness spread from them; the living flesh dying where the ghost flesh touched. He was a weasel, was Roddat, but I took a pleasure in cutting in half the dead thing that killed him. Behind me someone screamed. Sounded like Brother Jobe. It wasn’t the kind of scream you get up from.
Makin found his way to my side, frost on his breastplate, blue in his lips. ‘They just keep coming.’
I could hear a roaring behind us. The mist seemed to swallow sound, but the roaring ripped on through.
‘Rike?’ I had to shout to be heard above it.
‘Gorgoth! You want to see him fight. He’s a monster!’ Makin shouted.
I had to smile at that.
They just kept coming. More and more, rank by rank, out of the dark. Somebody died beside me. I couldn’t tell you who.
We must have smashed two hundred of the bastards and still they kept coming.
My sword got caught in the ribs of the skeleton I’d swung at. Not enough force in the blow. Makin shattered its neck with a flat swing.
‘Thanks.’ The word came out blunt, through numb lips.
I’m not going to die here. I kept running the thought through my head. It held less conviction each time. I’m not going to die here. I felt too cold to think. Not going to die here. Swing low to cut off those reaching hands. These bastards don’t even feel it. The bitch felt it though, when I broke her face.
The bitch.
When in doubt, let your hate lead you. Normally I’d reject that advice. It makes a man predictable. But there, in that miserable hall of bones, I was past caring. Hate was all I had to keep me warm. I cut a skeleton down and lunged past.
‘Jorg!’ I heard Makin’s startled shout behind me, then the darkness took my sight and the mist threw a thick blanket over the crash of battle.
Oh it was black out there. So dark as to reach inside you and rip out all memory of colour. I swung my sword a few times, broke some bones, carved air for a while, then hit a pillar which shook the damn thing out of my frozen grip. I hunted my sword frantically, with hands too numb to find my face. Gradually it came to me that I was free of the skeletons. No bone fingers sought me in the night. Without sword or direction I stumbled on.
The bitch. She’d be somewhere near. Surely. Waiting to trap our souls as we died. Waiting to feed.
I stopped and stood as still as my shivering would let me. The necromancer had lifted the veil. Just like the Nuban said, she had lifted the veil between the worlds and the dead were coming through. If I stopped her, they’d stop coming. I listened, listened deep, to a silence as velvet as the dark. I held more still, straining for her, tight and focused.
‘Cloves.’ My lips formed the word. I wrinkled my nose. Oil of cloves? The scent drew me on. It hung fainter than faint but, with nothing to fight against, it held me. I let it carry me forward, swaying, turning, seeking the source.
My hands found a narrow doorway and I stepped through into a chamber lit by the flickers of a dropped torch.
I understood the scent. The Nuban’s crossbow lay a foot from the torch, dropped carelessly, the cable drawn but the bolt spilled to the stones. He’d broken from the brothers to hunt her. Beaten me to the chase.
‘Necromancer,’ I said.
She stood at the mouth of one of the Builders’ shafts. The square maw filled the rear of the chamber behind her and the feeble light could not plumb its depths. She held the Nuban before her, holding his head to one side and her mouth to the straining cables of his neck. I could see the tension in his thick arms, but his fingers curled useless by his sides and his broadsword lay at his feet, hilt jutting into space over the edge of the shaft.
The necromancer lifted her face from the Nuban’s neck. Blood dripped from her teeth. Whatever strength she gleaned from it had restored her looks. The blood ran over full lips and down a perfect throat.
‘You sent such a fresh one to hunt me down, Prince Jorg,’ she said. ‘Mmmm, flavoured with heathen spices. I thank you.’
I knelt and picked up the Nuban’s bow. The weight of it always surprised me. I set the bolt in place. She moved to use him as a shield, her heels to the pit.
‘You’re cold, my prince,’ she said. The sudden music of her voice caught me off guard. It ran deep, rich with complexity. ‘I could warm you.’
My tired body thrilled with the dark melody of her. It took the memory of Gains’s face crawling across her worm-flesh to stop me rising to her call. I lifted the bow. I knew I couldn’t hold it for long.
‘It’s grave-cold that’s in you.’ Her voice became an angry hiss. ‘It will kill you.’
She smiled at me over the Nuban’s shoulder, enjoying his helplessness. ‘You’re trembling, Jorg. Put the bow down. You probably couldn’t even hit your friend here, let alone me.’
It felt so tempting. Put the bow down.
‘He’s not my friend,’ I said.
She shook her head. ‘He’d die for you. I can taste it in his blood.’
‘You’re playing the wrong game with me, dead-thing.’ I raised the bow and sighted it. The tremor in my arms kept the aim-point jumping. Any worse and the bolt would have shaken from its groove.
She laughed at me. ‘I can see the ties that bind the living. You only have two friends, Prince Jorg. You’re as bound to this sweet-blooded man as any son to his father.’
Sacrifice.
She set her fingers to the red holes in the Nuban’s neck. ‘Let me have the others. Let me take their life-juice, and you and him, you can stay with me. You can help me harvest the leucrota. There are several tribes, some of them quite fractious. There are other necromancers against whom a living ally, one as sharp as you, would be most useful.’
Play the game.
She smiled, and that dark fire lit in me again. ‘I like you, Prince. We can rule under the mountain, together.’ Sex dripped off her words. Not that pallid roll in the sheets that Sally surrendered, but something potent, unseen, and consuming. She offered me a draw. Life, power, and command. But in her service.
Play to win.
The Nuban’s eyes were on mine. For the first time ever, I could read what he held there. I could have taken anything else. I could have taken hatred, or fear, or pleading. But he forgave me.
