Beyond the Bulwarks Read online

  For the moment.

  Anzo knelt at Skarvus’ side. The old warrior was breathing hard, his wounded foot a limp weight, his hand working feverishly at the grip of his bent, notched sword. “We don’t have much time.” Anzo nodded towards the exit. “Get out of here.”

  Skarvus met his gaze with frenzied eyes. “Never.”

  “You’re no good to us in your shape,” Anzo insisted.

  A scream echoed from the stairway leading upwards.

  Skarvus grinned, fear and pain falling away as the frenzy took hold of his whole face. Using his weapon as a crutch he levered himself to his feet. “I can hold them. My prince...your witch...they need your help!”

  “She’s not a witch.” It seemed a stupid thing to say, but Anzo’s other arguments were failing him.

  Skarvus’ smile softened. “Go to her.” He hefted up his sword gave it a shake. “Orkall favors me, lad. A hero’s finish!” He lurched towards the doorway. Heathen fell back, shouldered aside, as Skarvus hurtled by into the midst of the revenants. His blade flashed, hewing the undead in lightning patterns as he bellowed joyfully. He ceased to be the hobbled old war dog, became in those terrible instants, young again, walking among his gods.

  Gaping in shock, Heathen started forward to join him. Anzo caught him by the arm, pulled him back. “It’s his fight now, kid. We’ve only got a little time.”

  “But—” He started to tear free.

  “Don’t make a waste of his sacrifice.”

  Heathen relented and followed Anzo dashing up the other stairs. It was a steep climb up an even narrower, but equally featureless black corridor. The torch in Anzo’s hand sputtered, was burning low as purplish brilliance died. Cinders flew off to sting exposed flesh. The racket of Skarvus’ last stand faded behind them even as the din of another fight built above.

  Anzo and Heathen erupted into another rectangular chamber. Columns lined this one, too, alternating with strange, deformed sculptures that looked like figures caught halfway into the process of melting. A line of six, gold-adorned caskets lined the center of the chamber, lids cast aside. Shattered bones, jewels, and shreds of rotting linen littered the floor. One of Durrim’s men lay in a pool of blood amongst the detritus. On the far side of the room, the prince and the rest of his party cringed, cornered against a hexagonal door centered by another globe-lock mechanism.

  Shards of defeated revenants piled about their feet.

  Anzo didn’t bother to hide his relief as his eyes met Varya’s as he and Heathen hastened across the chamber. Durrim and his remaining retainers were sobbing for breath, speckled in dust, bone fragments, and blood. One of Durrim’s men was gashed and sagging against a column. Another set aside his weapon to begin tearing strips from the man’s tunic for bandages. The wound was blackening, as Skarvus’ had. Anzo had feared to examine the scratches on his arms and legs, could feel the chill of the grave in them.

  “Ambushed us...” Durrim gasped “...burst out of their boxes like—”

  “I know,” Anzo finished for him, “us, too.”

  “Skarvus and Mekkli?”

  Anzo shook his head and the Prince grimaced. He waved to the fallen warrior on the far side of the chamber. “Check Groetus.”

  “He’s dead.” Anzo took the Prince by the arm. “Skarvus may have bought us time but there are more behind us. We might have enough to—”

  Cackling, clattering, and malicious whispers hissed up the stairwell, dust beginning to purl over the top step. Heathen grimaced and patted his axe. “We’re out of time, Weasel.”

  Anzo exchanged another look with Varya and sighed. He wrenched away, readied his weapon, tired beyond the point of fear anymore. He’d told Perrenius this was a suicide assignment, but he’d figured on death at a mortal’s spearpoint, not his soul devoured in some time-forgotten crypt. “All right,” he rasped, “the doorway’s narrow. There are dozens of the things, but if we work in teams while the others rest, they’re shitty fighters.”

  “Until the sun sets,” Varya added hopelessly.

  “Well, it’s better than waiting to die!” Anzo snarled.

  She had turned away and was crouching against the door. For a moment, Anzo wondered if she was crying—broken finally and collapsing in upon herself. He stepped towards her, fury sparked, but stopped as he heard not sobs but muttering. “What?” He grabbed her by the shoulder. “What is it, Varya?”

  She whirled with eyes alive again with renewed hope. “There might be something.”

  “What?” Anzo glanced over his shoulder as the sounds from the stairwell built. Durrim, Heathen, and the others scrambled to the entryway to form the defense. “Varya...”

  She was turning back to the door, fingers playing about the scripts etched into the obsidian and traced in silver. “I...I need a few minutes...”

  Durrim and Heathen’s battle cries merged as one, steel singing against living corpses as the battle renewed.

  “I don’t know if we have a few minutes, Lady.”

  “I can only decipher so quickly,” she snapped. “No one has read these words in millennia and I can only manage it with magic. And then there’s the door to open...” she trailed off, words rising again as a mumble “‘Disciple, awaken me first’...that’s it!”

  Anzo shook his head hopelessly and raced to join the others.

  Durrim and another Hamrak had broken off, leaving Heathen and his other retainers to hold the door while they picked up a casket lid. Seeing their intent, Anzo dropped his weapon and torch and helped them carry it to the door. Bawling a warning, Durrim led the way forwad, the lid held between the three like a battering ram. Heathen and the others fell back as the ram was thrust into the mass of revenants. It tumbled down the stairs with a crash of splintering stone and powdered bone.

  “That got a few!” Durrim barked as he scooped up his weapon.

  Anzo reacquired his saber and chanced a look down the stairwell. Movement flickering with fangs and crusted fingernails seethed towards him. “Not enough.”

  The battle rejoined. Mortal strength and steel coupled with the bottleneck of the doorway served the defenders as well as it had Skarvus below, each push thrust back in dust clouds, squeals of release, and desecrated fragments. But strength could only hold so long against malice enduring across the ages. Durrim’s badly-gashed retainer failed first, blood loss making his guard sloppy enough for swiping claws to get through and drag him into the whirlwind of claws and fangs in a welter of gore. Heathen stepped into the man’s place and for a time he and Anzo held the revenants off side-by-side.

  Durrim relieved Anzo eventually and he sagged against an empty sarcophagus, exhausted as his sword dragged him nearly to the floor, sweat blinding him. Wiping the perspiration away, he noticed the chamber beginning to fill with purple radiance. He looked over his shoulder to see Varya standing before the door on the far side of the chamber, arms upraised, her witch’s fire bathing the portal, congealing about the bulbous locking mechanism.

  The lock gave and receded into the door, opening it with a monumental clang. She stepped into the room beyond.

  “Varya!”

  Anzo dashed across the chamber, forgetting the others and their fight. He reached the doorway too late to grab the woman before she disappeared through and had to follow, even though ever fiber of him shrilled in alarm.

  The chamber beyond was oval and shimmering. Riches piled against the walls, gold coins minted when the world was young, fabulous idols of ivory, silver, gems, armor, and weapons—a hoard to shame a king. Varya had drifted to the center of the room. Facing her, on a throne of brilliant obsidian, sat in faded finery and jagged armor plate a husk of what might have been a man. A horrendous mask fashioned to mimic a tentacled, beaked, many-eyed face out of nightmare hid any semblance of humanity.

  The figure stood up.

  The mask turned towards Anzo. Eyes from beyond any human reckoning flickered through, drilled into his soul, crumpling it as parchment in a fist then lighting it to flames that w
ould wither him to quivering ash. The chill of his injuries intensified to burning ice and an unseen weight gathered on his shoulders, his chest. He wobbled, couldn’t hold it up. He might have groaned. He might have prayed.

  “Anzo, tell the others to let the revenants—”

  The masked gaze ripped towards Varya and she crumpled to her knees with a high-pitched hiss of pain. Sweat washed across grimacing, ashen features. Her jaw quivered with effort, lips shivering to form words.

  But the grinding pressure on Anzo lifted. Raising his saber, he started towards the metal-clad figure of the Tyrant.

  “No...” Varya whined through grinding teeth. “The others...let...through...”

  The gaze of the Tyrant, the crushing grip of its eldritch malice, returned. Anzo contorted, felt as though a giant hand had clasped about his body and was squeezing...squeezing. He heard the clang of his weapon striking the floor, hadn’t noticed it dropping from his hand. He stumbled back. Sweat blinded him. His heel caught something and he fell on his buttocks in the doorway, crumpled against the cool obsidian frame.

  “Let it go,” Varya was pleading. “The world has gone on without you. Let it...” She trailed off with a squeek of agony. The Tyrant took a step down from its throne, took another, its gauntleted hand stretching towards her.

  Again, Anzo felt the release of the creature’s attention off him. Breath returned. He could hardly move, the grave chill writhing through his bones. But strength warmed behind it. He twisted, used the doorway to pull himself halfway out into the antechamber beyond. Another breath brought fire back into his guts and the energy for a voice.

  “Heathen!”

  At the stairwell, Heathen and the others fought on. The giant stepped out of the melee at Anzo’s call and looked his way, shocked at first to see the open door, frightened when he noted Anzo’s state and Varya’s absence. He started towards him.

  “Let them through!”

  Heathen blinked. Durrim, broken off momentarily from the struggle, looked over his shoulder with a stunned expression.

  “Fools!” He grimaced as the Tyrant’s power hit him anew. “Let the bastards in!”

  It happened more from exhaustion than Anzo’s command. One of Durrim’s retainers faltered and suddenly the revenants were pouring through. But their teeth and talons no longer sought the flesh of the intruders. The skeletal mob clambered with squeals and soul-rending laughter past the mortals without interest, surging towards the doorway to the Tyrant’s inner sanctum.

  Anzo let himself collapse to the floor, folding his head over his arms and waiting for worse than death. The living dead passed over him in a flood of stomping bones and icy caresses. He pinched his eyes shut, tried to push it all away. In the Tyrant’s chamber a great scream rose, carried with it the lament of a world long-lost, long-destroyed.

  Hands warm with life gripped his shoulder. He thrashed in the embrace, momentarily insane with terror. Varya’s face stared through the fog of madness. “Come,” she whispered. “Don’t look.”

  But he couldn’t help it. The revenants charged over piles of treasure, crashed amongst the finery to find weapons or anything to use as a weapon. The Tyrant spun about as they encircled him. Withered corpse figures blurred, seemed almost to be men again, a scene playing out before Anzo of long ago, a tragedy like the plays the Aurridians so loved. The mob had come for the Tyrant, come seeking payment for an eternity of crimes.

  “It was all on the walls,” Varya said, giving up on dragging him free, settling down beside him instead. “It was in the writings. These things, these creatures, were the Tyrant’s priests, slain by his followers to accompany him into the future. He would have been the last to die, by his own hand, perishing with words of sorcery on his lips, words that would quicken him when the time was right. The Tyrant was to be resurrected first and his minions after to serve him.” She shivered and sagged against Anzo. “But something must have gone wrong. None of them slept. Their souls have been trapped, tied to mouldering bodies for thousands of years.”

  With a collective hiss the revenants fell upon the Tyrant. Dust flickering with sorcery billowed as bony limbs flailed and fell over and over again. The Tyrant disappeared under the press, armored form tossing, shrieking, smashing its attackers as they ripped at it. The mob crushed inward, writhing, cackling, and convulsing.

  “I told you revenants seek vengeance on their killer,” Varya said. “They have found him here.”

  The melee climaxed in a flurry of blows then ceased. One of the revenants took to the throne and raised the rent, detached mask of the Tyrant high to the unholy, baying acclaim of the mob. At the periphery of the crowd, living dead were quivering, were suddenly collapsing into piles on the floor. Plumes of witch-light jetted into the air to dissipate from each. A prolonged sigh of final release rushed through the chamber, carried from one revenant to another until at last all lay in a jumbled, steaming pile at the foot of the Tyrant’s throne.

  The Tyrant’s mask crowned it, cold and still as the end of time.

  “What...?” Heathen stood behind the tangle of Anzo and Varya in the doorway. Durrim and the survivors crowded behind him. “What was...that?”

  “Vengeance has been served,” Varya replied. “We just had to show them the way.”

  “Good for them,” Durrim snorted humorlessly. “Where does that leave us?”

  Anzo let his gaze play about the Tyrant’s sanctum, lingering on heaps of treasure. He smiled and pointed to direct the others’ attention.

  “I think that should be obvious.”

  Book II

  Tide of Darkness

  Chapter Nine

  Chieftains and Kings

  Anzo scowled across the parade ground of Caerigoth at the formation. Fifty Hamrak waited for him behind a wall of shields locked rim-to-rim, their front-rank kneeling and the rear on their feet. Hundreds more ringed the grounds, warriors awaiting their turn, Hamrak dependants watching the spectacle. A festive atmosphere belied the martial scene, Caerigoth churned with preparations for feasting and celebration in honor of guests expected at any time, woody redolence of cooking fires, rattle of tables being dragged out, din of children chattering about the heels of gossiping mothers, rumble of men appraising or mocking Anzo’s drill work.

  Not too bad, Anzo mused as he eyed the formation. It wasn’t the rigid, scaly beast-like block of an Imperial shieldwall. For one, the smaller Vhurrian shields of stretched hide and scarred wood—more like oversized bucklers—did not mesh the way Aurid fabricae-issue shields designed to the task would. But the simmering glares of impatient Hamraks gave it a menace the cool discipline of Legionnaires could not boast.

  Anzo’s disdain twisted wickedly into a smile and he strode towards them, handling his saber loosely. Heathen prowled at his left. Garkor, one of the survivors from the ruins of the Elder Tyrant, stood at his right with a bow and a knocked arrow. Anzo nodded to the man. “Give them a taste.”

  With a smirk, Garkor brought up his weapon and loosed. The arrow snapped from the string into the locked shields. Instinctively, and a moment too late, the formation tightened in upon itself. The fletching of the arrow quivered just above the boss of the nearest Hamrak’s shield. Others had similar adornment. Anzo had been toying with them for the better part of an hour. Curses played amongst the beleaguered men. Laughter beat from the watching crowd.

  But they held. They’re getting better.

  Anzo sped up his pace, Heathen falling deliberately behind. He angled to the left, met stares burning from chance parts in the formation, and then sidestepped back towards the center. They hated this, he knew, sweltering in their helms, bodies packed tight under a fiery, late autumn sun that had made the harvest outside Caerigoth’s walls humid, sticky work. More, many despised the drills for cowardice, the weak-willed games of an outsider. The Hamrak way—the Vhurrian way—was advance slowly, deliberately until closing with the enemy, followed by the charge and the frenzied, bloody blur of Orkall’s Test. Orkall didn’t want hi
s warriors to wait in lines, didn’t insist on discipline; he demanded valor.

  But bravery without brains is death—as I’m about to remind them. Anzo launched for the heart of the shieldwall.

  The Hamrak clenched together as Anzo hit, his boot lashing upward to slam against the shield of the kneeling man in the middle. The warrior cursed, staggered backwards onto his buttocks, but the wall remained together, a hedge that one man’s violence could dent but not break.

  The line to Anzo’s left splintered, as he knew it might, a huge, young Hamrak bawling as he stomped over the man kneeling in front of him and came at Anzo, axe held high. Anzo backpedalled before him, eyes not on the attack but on the rupture in the formation. Idiot.

  Heathen swept in from the left, a kick blurring into the Hamrak’s midsection. The man folded with a huff of air blasted from lungs. The warrior he’d clambered over started to rise but Heathen was there, boot smashing down hard enough to drive his helm gouging into the dirt.

  The wall to Heathen’s right churned, the line coming apart, another man lunging for the giant youth. Anzo kicked the Hamrak he’d already tested as he started to rise, put him fully onto his back and tripping up the warriors behind him. The man driving towards Heathen stumbled. He recovered his feet only to find Anzo’s saber hovering under his chin.

  The Hamrak wall—what remained of it—froze as a group. Dust whirled in the air. The warrior on the edge of Anzo’s sword shrank back, the sword following, teasing the stubble of his throat. From the boundary of the parade ground someone laughed. Thin clapping began, spread to the rest of the crowd in a surfwall of laughter, jeers, and grudging appreciation.

  “Fools!” Anzo snarled as the formation eased and the men pulled themselves apart to receive what was by now an expected tirade. “You might have killed the two of us, yes, but if there had been warriors behind us, they would have been piling through that gap, gutting the men to either side. Know this, if your dim brains remember nothing else: break the line and every one of you dies!”