Kosar smiled. A’Meer would have spoken that way.
“Something coming toward us from the battle. Slow. Perhaps Krotes on foot, or something else.”
“Krotes on foot we can fight,” Kosar said. He squinted, still unable to see anything.
O’Lam looked at him and smiled, stroking her cheek with the tip of her sword. “Krotes on foot make me wet.” She laughed, and Kosar laughed with her. Yes, just like A’Meer!
“Whatever it is, it’ll be here soon,” Kosar said. “Who knows what else the Mages have made to come at us?” O’Lam did not answer, and Kosar guessed she was probably going over the same possibilities in her own mind.
“Perhaps the damage is already done,” Lucien said.
“Meaning?” Kosar asked. He was aware that the Shantasi warrior was paying attention to the Monk too, her face pale and grim.
“The Mages are here. This Krote army had traveled the length of Noreela. Who’s to say what has happened? Perhaps there’s not much of Noreela left.”
“Are you always so fucking upbeat, Monk?” O’Lam said.
Lucien did not answer, and Kosar looked at the fires and explosions in the distance. There was a huge conflagration to the east, and it seemed to be growing all the time. Tumblers being burned, perhaps. Or something else. He knew little, standing here in the foothills of a place where no one should go, ready to fight a foe no one had ever seen. Please, in the name of the Black, I hope you’re going to do something soon, Alishia.
But right then the prospect of success, of victory, of this endless dusk giving way to daylight, seemed so very far away.
A FEW MINUTES later, they discovered what was coming toward them from the battlefield. Refugees. They watched them stagger across the dying land, and as they came closer Kosar could see their vacant expression, eyes wiped clean by whatever terrible things they had seen.
Many of them carried weapons.
“Where do they come from?” Kosar asked. “No villages out there, not this close to Kang Kang. And they don’t look in very good shape.”
“Perhaps the Krotes brought them,” O’Lam said. “Prisoners who escaped when the tumblers attacked.”
“We should go to help them,” Kosar said, but O’Lam touched his arm.
“No. They’ll reach our front line soon. Then we’ll see how much help they need.”
They watched the shapes climbing the slope, walking on at a steady pace. And it was only as they reached the first Shantasi line that Kosar realized what was so strange. They all walked alone.
“Something’s wrong,” he said. He cupped his hands to his mouth. “Something’s wrong!”
The refugees reached the Shantasi and the attack began.
The first warriors were taken by surprise, and three fell beneath the weight of the attackers. Several more fought back, using swords and slideshocks on the first group of refugees, cutting them down and then backing away before the main body of people reached them.
The men and women they had cut down stood again-minus arms, slashed across the chest, one of them missing his head above his mouth-and continued their relentless walk.
“What in the fucking Black is that?” O’Lam said.
Kosar could only stare. The dead walked on, and it took him several more seconds to realize that the refugees wereall dead, cursed back to life and driven on as fodder to weaken the enemy. “This is only the first,” he said. “There’ll be much worse than this.”
“You’ve seen the Mages before, haven’t you?” O’Lam said. “I heard you talking with Mystic O’Gan.”
Kosar nodded. “Yes, I’ve seen them.”
“What were they like?”
“In all the world, friend, that’s the one thing you never want to know.”
The fighting had begun in earnest now, and the walking dead were starting to make their way up the hillside. There were hundreds of them, perhaps as many as a thousand, and those not immediately engaged marched on until they found an enemy to fight. There was no apparent strategy or method to their attack, but their power lay in their numbers and senselessness. If they lost one arm, they would heft a sword with another. Kosar saw a woman lose her left leg to a Shantasi throwing disc. She pulled herself upright and hopped forward once again. It would have been amusing were it not so grotesque, and he was pleased when the same warrior took off her other leg with a slideshock.
The woman fell and started pulling herself along the ground.
Many of the dead quickly lost their weapons, dropped from senseless fingers or left lodged between an unfortunate Shantasi’s bones. Yet still they came on, overpowering warriors by numbers alone. The dead did not move very quickly. They could walk but not run, turn but not leap, and the Shantasi had the advantage of Pace. But the dead were also difficult to keep down, and one mistake would cost a warrior dear.
One group of Shantasi retreated a hundred steps and hunkered down, taking bags from their shoulders, lifting flaps and directing a dark cloud of something at the walking dead. From this distance Kosar could not make out what the cloud consisted of-flies, gas? But when one of the Shantasi fired a burning arrow into its midst, the effect was staggering. The air lit up, a fireball that swallowed many of the dead and expanded dangerously close to the Shantasi lines. When the flames receded, many of the dead had fallen, burning into the ground. They still moved. Fanning the flames of their own demise.
“How much more do you have?” Kosar asked.
O’Lam did not turn to him. “Some,” she said.
Kosar shook his head. “It’s hopeless. We’re fighting magic with swords and burning flies.”
“No, we’re fighting what the Mages can make of magic. They keep it to themselves, selfish. Don’t give their army true access. That was their downfall three hundred years ago, and perhaps they’ll do the same now.”
“Perhaps?”
O’Lam shrugged. “We’ll soon see.”
Several Mourners that had come with the Shantasi army started chanting, approaching perilously close to shambling corpses and doing their best to send them down into the Black. Some succeeded; others did not. Kosar saw at least one Mourner fall, in need of chanting down himself.
When the first of the dead reached them, Kosar and Lucien stood their ground. They stayed close together in case they were rushed, and Kosar hefted the sword A’Meer had given him, sad that it would be tainted by flesh corrupted with bad magic.
“Every death for you,” he said, kissing the blade.
A man came at him, ragged and dirty and bearing a terrible dry gash across his throat. As he lunged, Kosar realized just how badly the man stank. He must have been dead for some time.
Kosar dodged aside and lashed out, lodging his sword in the man’s ribs. The man fell, turning as he did so, and the blade slipped from Kosar’s hand. He went for the sword but the man struck out. He caught Kosar across the arm and raked his nails down to his hands, ripping through the thief’s brands. Kosar screamed.
Lucien darted in and cleaved the man’s skull in two, hacking at the twitching body until it could move no more. He stood on the dead man’s back and tugged Kosar’s sword free, handing it back to the thief.
Kosar nodded his thanks and stared past the Monk. “Behind you,” he said. The Monk turned and went to work.
It was a short, vicious fight, but not very bloody. The little blood that did leak from these enemies was thick and black with corruption. Kosar recognized many of them as northerners, and from their clothing-well made, colorful-he guessed that some were from Noreela City itself. And what of that city now?
A few of them were from the Shantasi’s First Army, freshly dead and risen again. At least in death they seemed to have lost their Pace, so although the fight was a mental challenge beyond anything the Shantasi thought they would have to face, they still had the better of their dead friends.
Don’t let me see O’Gan, Kosar thought, over and over again. Please don’t let me see him. Not me, not him.
Kosar grew tired very quickly. His old wounds hurt, and he received several new ones to add to the pain. He kept a tight hold on his sword, and several times he and Lucien found themselves fighting back to back. The dead Shantasi seemed to aim for them, as though targeting the Red Monk’s cloak, and Kosar found himself fighting men and women who had been on his side a few hours earlier. Freshly dead, still they possessed ease of movement and strength in their limbs, and they retained much of their fighting skill. But they were far slower than before. He maintained his concentration and tried to keep his fear at bay, and soon the pile of body parts before him was as high as his knee.