“Not to mention, the enemy is a dead army, and invulnerable to the usual methods one might use in war,” Beltain observed. “How do we fight the dead? The question came up at Letheburg and someone mentioned fire—and this girl here.”
“Oh, blasted hell, yes, the dead that keep coming—don’t even begin to explain that impossibility! Any of it!” The Duke’s ringing baritone voice rose enough that the columns of passing soldiers likely heard his ranting as they quickly jogged past.
“For the short term, Your Grace, what will you do? Continue forward with us, south, and hope we do not run into the enemy head on?”
“Oh, but we will run into them head on, there is no doubt. My question is, how will you proceed then? Can this girl strike the dead down as you ride?”
“She has done so before. It’s how we broke out of Letheburg.”
The Duke looked at Percy appraisingly. “Ah-h-h, now I am sorely tempted to hold you, girl, and confiscate you on behalf of the Imperial Crown as an asset, and take you back to Court. . . .”
And as Beltain’s expression began to darken, the Duke shook his head and said, “Fortunately, I pride myself for always thinking long-term. Your immediate value may be a temptation, but your ability to bring this whole no-death situation to an end is the priority. Worry not, you are free to continue your quest—on behalf of Her Imperial Highness, naturally.” And he winked at Beltain.
Beltain and Percy both exhaled in relief. “I thank you for your understanding, Your Grace,” she said softly, while Beltain nodded.
“Never let it be said that I am not a reasonable man,” the Duke replied. “And now, what is there to do, but proceed onward? So much needs be done—the stunning things I’ve been told about the manner of fighting at the border! A handful of my men have ridden hard all night to make reports, as early as this morning, even before the enemy breached our lines—as I am only now being told of this latest calamity. Apparently, the more limbs the dead lose, the more of their humanity goes with it, and they become rather single-minded in their few remaining options—the options being, to just lie there like a wine sack or to fight with every fiber of their being, with every spark of what’s left. And yes, just as this unit commander here has mentioned, often they simply go on fighting regardless of allegiance, striking out at anyone whom they might perceive as being in their way, once they lose enough of their spirit and perspective. Or so I am told, for I am yet to see such a melee in person. Indeed, what fine fortune awaits me, eh, Chidair?” And the Duke gave a sardonic laugh.
Beltain shook his head grimly. “Oh yes, it’s a rare delight, Your Grace.”
“It is said, war is our purgatory on earth, and as such, it calls upon us,” the Duke concluded. “So, let us not waste a moment!”
They had to wait only a few minutes longer while the remainder of the retreating army passed, and the road was clear. And then they resumed their journey, moving south.
“I shall ride along with you for the moment, as I think on what to do,” admitted the Duke. “For in truth, I am at a loss. I might as well turn around and return back to the Imperial citadel and assume command of these same poor fellows as they arrive. The Silver Court was to have the Field Marshal services of the Duke Claude Rovait in command of the Rovait portion of the Morphaea military, stationed there in defense of the Emperor—while I was to handle the southern front, out here. And now that my own portion of the forces at the border and Duorma are amassing back at Court, I will be needed there likewise. However, we must know more, infinitely more, in order to gauge the extent of the damage done already. . . . I must find my King at least, and I refuse to concede that we have lost all of southern Mophaea!”
“What is that?” said Percy suddenly, pointing ahead of them at the road and the surrounding fields on both sides. “I believe, it’s them. I can now sense their death shadows.”
“Where?” Beltain cast his gaze at the white panorama ahead.
The Duke lifted his gauntlet to shield his eyes and looked also. Neither of the men was able to see any approaching army movement, however.
“Percy, there’s nothing there,” Beltain said. “Are you certain?”
Percy nodded.
“They’re there. They’re—”
And Beltain understood at last. “They’re underneath the snow!”
It was then that the white-blanketed plain in the visible distance all around them began to bubble and churn, as the surface of the land itself acquired impossible motion.
The dead, those without sufficient limbs to remain upright, crawled upon the earth. . . . They plowed directly forward, regardless of terrain or road, and many of them dug themselves into deep snowdrifts, and yet continued forward relentlessly, unable to feel need or pain or weariness—only a single-minded purpose.
“Surely, these are not Trovadii . . .” the Duke thought out loud. “No, I think these must be the dead who had fallen along the border earlier this morning or last night, possibly Balmue occupying forces, possibly some of our own boys, the poor bastards, trying to return home. They’ve had a head start and are thus arriving first. . . .”
“How can you tell?” Beltain said. “They are still too far to observe.”
“An assumption.” The Duke gave him a hard thoughtful look. “Men crawling will be swiftly outdistanced by men on foot or astride, unless they’ve had a long head start. Their less damaged fellows were probably given new orders, or told to wait and be absorbed by the bulk of the arriving Trovadii. These, meanwhile, are likely of no use to anyone, pitiful carcasses with hacked off limbs . . . so they simply continue waging war on their own, following their last recognizable orders, bent on their one and only final purpose—”
“Has anyone told Your Grace you’re a gruesome bastard?”
The Duke laughed and tapped Beltain along his rerebrace armor on the upper arm, with the back of his gauntlet. But his eyes remained bleak.
They had stopped riding forward meanwhile, halting their warhorses that neighed and spat in anger at being reined in. And the two knights stared at the bizarre soft approach of the confusing enemy, slow and yet inevitable, along the width of the plain.
“I believe they are not a sufficient threat to us if we ride hard forward,” said Beltain, narrowing his eyes.
“Agreed,” replied the Duke. “Shall we?”
They spurred their horses onward. Beltain lifted his long shield in position so that once again it was protecting Percy’s back. And both men drew their swords.
The powerful muscles of the ebony warhorse contracted underneath them, as the world went into motion. And alongside Jack, like molten deep red fire, galloped the blood bay. . . . Percy held on to the saddle and to the black knight’s ring armor near his belt, giving him free use of both his hands. The churning field on both sides of the road became a blur.
She could feel them, hundreds of death shadows, billowing softly, while the broken amputated bodies of the men to whom they belonged, crawled relentlessly upon the earth.
Many of them had moved onto the road, and were crawling directly in their way, underfoot. Stumps of arms and occasional hands reached up, a few attached fingers still clawing. . . .
And the two great warhorses plowed right on top of them.
The snow-covered, vaguely human lumps revealed themselves upon occasion and it was possible to catch glimpses of torn shreds of uniforms—mostly sienna brown trimmed with silver, the colors of Balmue, and occasionally the tan and teal of Morphaea. Among snowdrifts, misshapen heads breached the layers of snow, with faces stilled in their last fixed expressions before the freezing cold made them permanent; torsos moved, limbs shifted slowly like snakes. . . .
“I was correct, these abominations are not Trovadii,” cried the Duke, riding hard at the side of the black knight.
“No, they are not . . .” Beltain retorted, leaning forward into the saddle and holding Percy tight in his armored embrace. “But, look ahead!”
And as they all stared, in the distance, am
ong the hazy whiteness and beginnings of green and brown at the horizon to mark the changing nature of the terrain, there was a hint of red in motion—blood and pomegranate.
“And so . . . it begins,” mused the Duke in snatches.
“Percy!” Beltain whispered close to her ear. “Will you be ready?”
But she heard him only with one half of her awareness. The rest was consumed by the pressure of an approaching tidal wave of death—a hundred thousand death shadows upon her mind.
So thick they came!
Blood and pomegranate.
Percy closed her eyes. “Yes,” she said, “I am ready.”
But once again she lied.
Nothing could have prepared her for the onslaught. Something infinitely complex and yet misshapen, something the size of a mountain, was coming down upon her mind, blasting and pounding at her with the anvil weight of darkness and unrelieved hungry need.
The void itself had arrived—an empty place that needed to be filled . . . with the rest of the world.
The Trovadii came.
But first, came their drums. The dead had no heartbeat, but it was provided for them by the rhythmic pulse of wood against taut animal skins. The drums gave their movement structure and cohesion and a marching rhythm. And since they had no blood, they were clad in it—pomegranate uniforms of the color that was closest to the thing that once flowed in their veins. And now these were also stained with the juices of themselves and others.
The horizon became a red line. In the winter sun the red was a fiery shade against the predominant whiteness of the landscape, and as the formations and squares and columns came closer, the immortal symmetry of their motion was a thing of beauty.
Infantry was displaced by ranks of cavalry, then repeating, again and again. Formations advanced in a sea of pikes held with points forward in the charge position, with unwavering hands that felt no weariness and could thus maintain the position indefinitely.
But not all of them came in ordered units. Some cavalry companies rode haphazardly, dead men mounted upon dead lumbering beasts that could not move with the grace of the living no matter how they tried. They scattered over the fields unevenly like approaching wild herds, moving in bright red flashes of metal and color.
“May God give us strength!” exclaimed the Duke of Plaimes, and raised his sword. Within moments, they would clash head on with the first of the enemy, a sparse line of runners and mounted cavalrymen.
“Hold on tight, Percy!” Beltain said through his teeth, and drew her even closer in the metal embrace of his immense arms and shield. . . .
The Trovadii were upon them.
Beltain held his sword at the ready and in seconds the first rider passed him, while the next clashed against his sword. Beltain’s arm held, and the rider was pulled down halfway out of his saddle by the impact with the black knight’s unshakable force. There was but an instant to see the dead man’s pale bloodless face, and then they were past him and riding onward. . . .
Percy heard the Duke striking another approaching rider, and the clash of his sword against the other’s, and then the dead man’s severed arm came flying down, under the feet of the horses.
Percy took a deep breath and allowed herself to exhale softly in order to gain a steady focus. She then reached out with her death sense to a perimeter of about thirty feet around them, casting a bubble of awareness, and taking hold of whatever came within that sphere, picking up the closest energy threads, and then snapping them.
The dead around them—those within the short perimeter—started to fall.
“Is she doing this?” the Duke cried, riding slightly ahead of them and turning around to glance momentarily at Beltain and Percy.
“Yes!” Beltain glanced at Percy’s strangely blank face, inches away from his own. “Now, simply look ahead and treat the oncoming as obstacles. Anything that falls, ride around them! Do not bother to engage!”
“Understood!” And the Duke leaned forward into the saddle and flew like the wind, meandering out of the way when necessary, as great oncoming warhorses and cavarlymen slid off their saddles like limp sacks and occasionally fell down directly in his path.
Percy’s head was ringing.
Soon, all the dead became aware of her, and they came like bees at honey. She could feel them turning inward from all directions, breaking ranks, and simply approaching their moving position.
“This is not good,” the Duke gasped, again readying his sword.
“No, it is not—but nothing is to be done,” replied Beltain. “She can only do so much before she collapses.”
It seemed they were now swimming through a sparse forest of the pomegranate uniforms.
At one point, Percy saw a large column of pikemen directly in their way, and she cast her mental net wider, so that the entire formation collapsed before they even reached the first bristling row of pole weapons directed at them.
The Duke and Beltain both pulled up their horses sharply, since it was unsafe to ride through the bristling mountain of the piled dead and their sharp weapons. And so they rode around, warhorses carefully stepping over steel poles and corpses. . . .
“How much longer is this infernal army?” Beltain muttered.
“Indeed!” the Duke threw back at him. “We are making rather better progress than I dreamed, but I think we have quite a ways to go—”
And as Percy heard their exchange, in that same moment, she felt something ahead, just half a mile in the distance. It was something out of the ordinary, something new.
Not more of the dead, but a living entity approaching.
This entity was a fixed point.
A perfectly opaque mental wall arose, between Percy and this other. It grew softly and then, like an outreaching finger of energy, Percy felt the exploratory touch upon her mind, and with a snap, there was made a connection.
It was as if someone on the other end had reached out to her in the same manner she reached out to the dead. And this someone now gently caught and held her own thread of living energy, tugging it expertly, feeling its reach and resonance . . .
Percy gasped. And then she let go of the dead and their shadows in their vicinity.
“Percy! What happened?” Beltain exclaimed, and in the same instant he had to engage his sword and shield and to deflect the very real and deadly attack of an animated dead knight who did not simply fall before him but swung a sharp-ended morning star and flail. There was a resounding crash. . . .
“Merde!” the Duke of Plaimes cried, and swung his sword also, barely missing being skewered in the neck by a short lance in the hands of a mounted Trovadii knight.
“I am sorry!” Percy cried, “I don’t know what’s happening! There is someone out there, someone living! And this person has just touched me in the same manner that I touch the dead!”
“What?”
“I don’t know! Let me try again!” And Percy cast her mind forward fiercely, and pulled herself back and out of the mental grasp of the other, letting her thoughts move like slippery fish past the ethereal net of this new unknown force. In the span of a breath she was free, feeling the unknown entity’s hold upon her loosen, and then she reached around and struck back, sending her own thoughts like arrows in the direction of the entity.
And in the doing so, Percy suddenly felt and saw her.
Across half a mile, within her mind’s eye, Percy saw the woman, dressed in the same color as her army, seated within a gilded carriage, swiftly moving with the Trovadii forces all around her.
The woman was a stately swan, beautiful in the same unearthly way that beauty can be attributed to seasons, or the wind, or the dream fabric of the starless night.
And she was cruel and cold and devastating.
Her face, an exquisite perfection, her hair, the auburn dawn.
Her eyes, bright vivid blue, with the sharp ethereal clarity of the same winter sky that now rose up above them. These eyes were now trained upon Percy, their gaze piercing her in her own vi
sion, following her.
“I just saw her . . . it is the Sovereign!” Percy whispered in disbelief. “I don’t know how I know who she is, but it is she who had touched me, and she knows me now. She is coming!”
And as Percy continued thus, watching in a strange dream state of double vision, the woman in her mind’s eye also continued looking at her.
And then she smiled.
Percy drew back into her own body with a snap, and vaguely heard—as from a distance, or through thick layers of cotton in her ears—the harsh sounds of Beltain and the Duke fighting the attacking dead all around them. She had lost her grasp upon the dead . . . and the three of them were now surrounded by a thicket of soldiers in pomegranate red.
Percy shuddered, feeling abysmal weakness, feeling her extremities burning with debilitating cold, a precursor to shock. Despite this, she again cast forth her killing force, and started gathering the threads of the billowing death shadows around them.
The dead started to collapse once more. Their way was clear.
“Ride!” cried the Duke. “Ride, and do not stop for anything!”
And Beltain squeezed Percy in the protective metal cradle of his arms, and burst forward.
They flew straight ahead through the uneven snow terrain of the field, dodging oncoming enemy figures. They had lost the road some time ago, and it did not matter.
At some point, as Percy allowed her concentration to slip for one second, she turned her head to the right and saw, on a distant road to her right, the actual golden regal carriage from her vision of just moments ago, driven by a team of flesh-and-blood living horses and surrounded by an honor guard of the dead, in blood colors.
They came together in two parallel lines, then passed in opposite directions. . . . And it seemed for an instant that the occupant of the carriage turned her head and gazed out of the window at Percy riding hard past her.
“Yes, that was indeed the accursed Sovereign of the Domain,” cried the Duke. “She is known to ride on campaigns behind her military. And it is a minor blessing! For it means that most of the Trovadii army is beyond us now, and headed north toward the Silver Court.”