The Wheel of Osheim

  I led the way as we galloped along the west bank toward the Morano Bridge. I didn’t want to lead but everyone else deferred to me as marshal and Murder proved disinclined to let any other horse go ahead even when I tried to slow him. The lane along the west bank is broad in places, even paved in some stretches, but toward the bridge a strip of hard-trodden ground served, threading between stands of bulrushes leading to the water and a tangle of briar rising to the walls of the riverside merchants’ houses. I saw figures ahead and shouted at them to clear the way.

  ‘Marshal!’ Captain Renprow hollering behind me. There was more to it lost in the thunder of hooves.

  The people ahead proved too slow, and given the option of pulling up, veering left into swampy riverbank, right into briar patch, or simply mowing down muddy peasants, I opted for the princely solution and rode on. My disregard for public safety proved prudent as the figures turned out to be bloated and slime-covered river corpses that wanted to pull me from the saddle.

  A dozen men of the Iron Hoof caught up with us as we turned onto the bridge, having taken an alternate route. Half of them looked as if they’d come straight from lunch. Lord Nester’s son still had a napkin tucked into his collar, though Young Sorren had thought to strap on a breastplate.

  ‘Iron Hoof, ho!’ I led the charge up onto to the Morano Bridge, a boyhood ambition, and we clattered to the middle of the span.

  ‘The enemy don’t appear to need bridges.’ Darin rode up beside me, having somehow joined our party unnoticed as we left the palace. ‘They’re happy enough getting wet.’

  ‘It’s me that needs the bridge.’ I stood in the stirrups, hoping that for once Murder would hold still. I never paid that much attention in our strategy and tactics classes but the one lesson that did seem to have been hammered in sufficiently deep to stick was that a commander needed to see his battlefield. When your battlefield was an entire city, in which seeing from one end of a road to the other could be difficult, that lesson came to haunt you pretty quickly. All I had to go on were brief reports now nearly an hour old. Any new intelligence not delivered by my own eyes would have to follow an increasingly long chain of directions to reach me.

  I stared out across the city of Vermillion. Innumerable rooftops, spires here and there, mansions on the rises overlooking the river, starlings wheeling on high, the great blue sky above, dashed with cloud, the air crisp with that feel it gets when the leaves are colouring as they gather their courage for the fall. Somewhere amid all that the enemy was already at work. River-dead might be easily discovered at the end of a series of wet footprints, but necromancers were harder to find. Some Drowned Isles death-worker might have taken a room at a riverside tavern and be watching us even now through his shutters.

  ‘Over there!’ Darin, his steed perilously close to the bridge balustrade, pointed downstream toward the east bank.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s still autumn and there’s hardly a chill in the air,’ he said.

  ‘So?’ I hated him sometimes.

  ‘People seem to be lighting their fires early…’

  It was true. What I’d taken for smoke rising from a number of chimneys now looked more sinister.

  ‘All that time spent seeing to our walls and the suburbs beyond might better have been spent here,’ Darin said. ‘The river’s our weakest border.’

  ‘Marshal.’ Captain Renprow pointed upstream to the west bank, saving me from having to reply. A knot of figures, tiny in the distance, struggling on a boat dock, city guard units advancing down the river path.

  Glancing to the opposite shore I saw more figures, some running away, some giving chase. Where the sun still lingered on the gabled rooftop of St Mary-on-Seleen I saw shapes moving, just three hundred yards away: the black and spidery forms of mire-ghouls clambering over the tiled roof ridge.

  ‘They’re everywhere.’ Corpses must have lain hidden under the water where the current lagged, or been drowned in the river mud, waiting for the sign to attack. I couldn’t tell their numbers – it didn’t look like a vast army of them, but they were dispersing into the heart of my city, hunting for prey, and if the Dead King had his full attention on us then each kill might add to their numbers. ‘Send word to the watch garrisons at Taggio, Saint Annes, Doux, and LeCrosse. All city guard to advance toward the Seleen in groups of not less than twenty clearing the streets as they go. All crossbow men to be deployed, with an eye to the rooftops for ghouls.’

  ‘Sire!’ An Iron Hoof rider beside me, Lord Borron’s younger son. He nodded to the far end of the bridge. A dozen or so figures had started to approach.

  ‘The hell?’ At first I couldn’t make sense of it. Bloated river-men, black with slime, staggering our way with awkward steps; but city guard too, the dark red of their tabards clear, sun glinting on their helmets … those that had them.

  ‘They’re all dead.’ Darin, at my side. He was right: they weren’t fighting each other, they were advancing on us.

  ‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ I asked. ‘Ride them down. Are you lancers or milk nurses?’ To be fair none of the Iron Hoof riders actually had lances with them, but they still had the advantage of being mounted on horses bred for war.

  ‘I was just waiting to be led, Marshal Jalan.’ Darin managed a grin and gestured ‘after you’.

  ‘Ah.’ The odds were with us, but there were quite a lot of the bastards, and in war I like the odds stacked so heavily in my favour that the only danger to me is being crushed by them should they fall. ‘You see…’

  Captain Renprow came to my aid. ‘The marshal is responsible for the defence of the entire city, Prince Darin. He cannot allow himself the luxury of actual combat. It would be a disaster were he to be incapacitated.’

  ‘That’s right. Exactly right.’ I restrained myself from leaning across and hugging Renprow. ‘It kills me not to be allowed to get in there amongst them and swing my sword and whatnot, but duty is a stern mistress.’

  Darin rolled his eyes. ‘Get Martus down here with his men. It’s madness to leave them by the palace.’ With that he raised his sword overhead and bellowed, ‘For the Red Queen!’ Then, kicking in his heels, ‘Vermillion!’ And he was off, the others streaming behind him. A deafening clatter of hooves and close on ten tons of angry beast hurtled toward the Dead King’s creatures.

  I managed to stop one of the palace guards from joining the charge by dint of grabbing his shoulder and demanding that he stay. In that moment of distraction Murder very nearly escaped me to set off after Darin, but if there’s one thing I do well it’s horses and I managed to turn him.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘We need some sort of plan.’

  The man I’d held back slapped his neck, ‘Jesus!’

  ‘Not a plan,’ I said. ‘What we…’ I trailed off as he drew back his hand to reveal a small black dart sticking into the flesh just below his Adam’s apple. ‘Jesus.’ I looked around wildly and spotted the mire-ghoul responsible, now clambering over the balustrade, blowpipe in one hand.

  ‘I kept you back for exactly this kind of thing,’ I told the guard. ‘Kill it quick! Don’t worry about the dart, it’s just poison.’

  The man shot a very dark look at me from under the brim of his helm.

  ‘I mean it just makes you weak – if you hurry you can kill the ghoul before—’

  ‘Marshal … I can’t see.’ He held one hand out before his face as if needing the confirmation. His eyes really had gone dark, the whites shading grey.

  ‘Stay calm, it only lasts a few hours.’ I took his reins. Snorri had recovered from the weakness. ‘Renprow.’ I nodded to the ghoul that now had both feet on the bridge paving and was busy pushing another dart into its pipe.

  ‘Marshal.’ Renprow drew his sword and cantered toward the ghoul ten yards closer to the riverbank.

  ‘I’m fucking blind.’ The guard touched his eyes, forgetting all about princes and marshals now. His words came out slurred.

  ‘You need to stay calm,’ I said. ?
??It will get better.’

  At that the guard slid from his saddle with all the grace of a sack of oats. He landed on his head and shoulder with a rather nauseating crack and lay sprawled, his neck at an unnatural angle, one foot still in the stirrups.

  ‘That might not get better,’ I acknowledged. I glanced up the bridge toward the melee where Darin and his fellows were now laying about themselves having trampled half the foe with their charge. Another glance at my fallen comrade and I put the boot into his horse, hard as I could. The dead man’s eyes snapped open just before his horse lurched into motion and dragged him away toward my brother, head bouncing off every bump in the road.

  A thud and the sound of a struggle returned my attention to Renprow and the ghoul. Somehow the thing had pulled him from his saddle, earning a slash in its side but now wrestling with the captain on the floor. Both had knives out, the captain’s a long clean piece of steel, the ghoul’s a curved and wicked-looking blade as darkly stained as its hide.

  ‘Come on, Captain!’ I offered moral support from Murder’s back. Despite its wiry nature the ghoul seemed possessed of remarkable strength, its knife moving inexorably toward Renprow’s neck against all the man’s best efforts to stop it. ‘Ah hell.’ I slipped from the saddle and drew Edris Dean’s sword. A moment presented itself so I hurried forward, and swung at the back of the ghoul’s neck – not much more than dropping my arm really – with a blade that sharp and heavy I assumed anything more would risk decapitating the thing and carrying on through to the man beneath.

  Actually it turns out that necks are tough as hell. My blade thudded in half an inch or so, becoming lodged in the ghoul’s bony spine. Even so, between my wrenching it free and Renprow taking advantage to stab the creature repeatedly in the liver, we managed to triumph. The captain rolled to all fours then staggered to his feet, covered in filthy blood, while I looked over the balustrade and rapidly pulled my head back.

  ‘Go get stones from the riverbank. Big ones!’

  ‘What?’ Renprow looked up from an inspection of his gore-spattered tunic.

  ‘Big ones! Run!’

  I risked a foolish glance back over the side and a ghoul dart nearly parted my hair for me. The bridge support was black with the things. Four, five, half a dozen? It was hard to tell as they clambered over each other, dripping, near naked, yet having no problem finding their grip.

  I stood mid-span, aware that ghouls could climb up either side equally well. The sounds of combat still came from the far end. I couldn’t risk a glance to see how Darin and the others were faring.

  The first glimpse of the ghoul’s blowpipe looked like a black stick poking up between the stone pillars of the balustrade. I ran, dived, slid and ended up with my sword driven into the ghoul’s eye socket as he raised his head to blow his dart. The creature fell away without a sound, nearly taking my blade with it.

  By the time I made it across to the other side Renprow was closing on me, showing a decent turn of pace for a man burdened with four or five good-sized river stones.

  ‘Take the other side.’ I dropped my sword and took the topmost of the stones with newfound respect for the small man’s strength – the thing weighed a ton.

  ‘Marshal.’ Renprow panted, letting another rock fall before lugging the rest to where I’d just killed the last ghoul.

  Whatever venom the creatures coated their darts with proved remarkably water-resistant but coming from the marshes of Brettan that didn’t seem too surprising. Just depressing. Advancing on the balustrade, I had few illusions about my fate if one of those darts hit me. I would have been running away but for the fact that my best chance lay in getting them while they were climbing rather than trying to dodge their missiles whilst sprinting down the bridge.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ I made a big last stride and managed to place my foot on top of the next blowpipe to edge into view.

  With a grunt of effort I hefted the stone over the edge and, without looking over, let it drop onto the ghoul whose pipe I’d pinned. With even a modicum of luck it would strip several more of the creatures from the bridge support on its way down. As quickly as I could manage I grabbed the second stone and repeated the process a few feet to the right. There were no satisfying wails of despair or shrieks of agony, but the meaty thuds and accompanying splashes sounded promising.

  ‘Got them, Marshal!’ Renprow called over.

  More men were approaching the bridge along the Morano Way, the route the Iron Hoof riders had taken. Soldiers, definitely the alive kind rather than the walking dead kind, filled the road from side to side, marching abreast, all in shadow, the sun gleaming only on the rooftops now.

  ‘Check my side.’ I waved Renprow absently across the width of the bridge and started walking toward the advancing troops. By the time I got to the end of the bridge I could see Martus, four ranks back upon his horse, resplendent in breastplate, conical helm with faceguard and an aventail of chainmail spreading across his shoulders.

  The sight of Martus and his army at least filled the citizenry with enough confidence for a few to open their windows and lean out to cheer whilst the men marched below. For my part I felt only a sense of nagging unease, which floated upon a sea of primal fear. I hadn’t wanted the marshal’s sash in the first place and it was beginning to look more like a noose by the minute.

  Martus came to a halt fifty yards from the bridge with his soldiers streaming out to either side of him, heading in both directions along the bank.

  ‘I left orders for you to stay at the palace!’ I shouted, advancing on him.

  ‘A good thing I ignored you!’ He lifted his faceplate so he could bellow to full effect. ‘We’ve got a dozen or more incursions along both banks. Got to stamp these things out before they take hold. Like a plague these dead men. One makes the next and so on—’

  ‘I’m the fucking marshal and you obey my orders!’ I felt slightly foolish shouting up at him on the back of his stallion but I wasn’t about to lose command to him, even if our audience were common foot soldiers.

  Captain Renprow rode up behind me, leading Murder. Darin overtook him at the last, a good number of the men with him, battered, gore-splatted, but largely in one piece.

  ‘You’re to follow my orders, Martus,’ I said, not shouting now but loud enough for everyone to hear. ‘Or I’ll see you hang.’

  ‘Hanging seems unlikely.’ Darin rode in between Martus and me, cutting off our brother’s reply. ‘A week in the dungeons on the other hand…’ He looked meaningfully at Martus, then glanced past him and frowned. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Red smoke.’ I followed his gaze. ‘Shit. The walls.’ Red smoke had been my proudest instigation. Each wall tower now had a stock of a dozen paper-wrapped fire-powders that gave off copious red smoke when lit, the idea being that any emergency could be signalled swiftly across Vermillion in this manner, faster than messengers and with a longer reach than bells amid the cacophony of the city. As an added bonus the rare salts used in the fire-powder’s manufacture were costly and dug from the Crptipa mines, leading to a nice profit that would come directly back to my pocket. Right now though, seeing a seven-tailed bank of red smoke rising from the towers of the east quarter, I would gladly have forgone all and any income resulting from the need to restock fire-powder.

  ‘You’re not making any sense … Marshal.’ Martus looked back at the smoke over the heads of his troops.

  ‘We’ve got half the city watch and two thousand troops chasing less than two hundred dead along the riverbanks. Meanwhile at our city wall seven tower captains have seen something that made them scared enough to light the emergency signal…’ Each tower stood sixty foot high, crenellated like a fortress and manned by a garrison of twenty-five with room for a hundred. I really didn’t want to know what would be enough to cause seven of them to call for help at the same time. ‘This isn’t the assault – this is the diversion!’

  13

  ‘I hope to God Grandmother named you marshal for a good reason.?
?? Darin joined me atop the leftmost of the two towers flanking the Appan Gate, his voice awestruck. ‘Most of our cousins thought it was a joke.’

  ‘Most?’

  ‘The rest thought it was a punishment.’

  We looked out across Vermillion’s overspill, the extended city reaching half a mile from the walls, still further where it followed the Appan Way, as if desperate to wring a few more coins out of any traveller so foolish as to leave. Dead people crowded the space before the gates – men, women, children – the grey and flaking dead in the filthy remains of their grave-clothes; the fresh dead, still scarlet with their murder, a silent throng stretching out around the walls, back along the main road, pressed tight in the alleys between houses.

  Even sixty feet up with a light breeze the stench proved invasive, tearing at the back of my throat, stinging my eyes. More than a few meals had been splattered down the wall. The sight and smell of your first walking dead is apt to do that to you.

  ‘I gave standing orders for no archery.’ This to Renprow, the gore drying on him now after our hurried ride from the bridge. A good number of the dead closest to the Appan Gate sported two, three, sometimes five arrows, jutting from arms and chests – an elderly woman had one in her eye. ‘It’s a waste.’

  ‘I’ll send out the order again, Marshal. It’s hard for the men not to shoot when the enemy advances on their positions.’

  I waved Renprow away. Soldiers of the wall guard packed the tower-top, men of middling years in the main, many thick-waisted and gone to grey, thinking to pace away their remaining years peacefully on the walls of the capital. The primary duty of a Vermillion wall guard is spotting fires. Apart from that they’re basically a mobile reserve to the city guard and the only excitement they ever see is when they are called upon to descend into the city to back up their thinly stretched brothers in city red.