All at once, the drumming stopped. For a heartbeat, the tunnel was horribly quiet, save for the clatter of the knights’ armor. Then came a chorus of angry shouts, punctuated by ululating howls that echoed up the tunnel. Biting his lip, Cathan glanced over at Damid.
The Seldjuki’s eyes were closed, his lips moving in silent prayer. Cathan offered a quick entreaty to the gods as well.
The smell hit them.
It was sickeningly sweet, like the attar of some terrible flower, with a meaty, greasy stench beneath: the reek of rotting flesh. Several knights choked as it clogged their nostrils, and toward the rear a squire was noisily sick. Cathan focused and held firm. He had fought Chemoshans before. He’d been expecting this, and he tightened his grip on Ebonbane as the shadows down the tunnel began to move.
The fane’s defenders wore no skull helms, wielded no sickle swords. They walked unsteadily, the scuff of feet dragging across the floor the only sound of their approach. They did not speak, growl, nor even breathe. The Chemoshans’ protectors were dead.
The stench grew unbearable as they staggered into the torchlight. They were horrible to behold, all rancid flesh and glistening bone, slack-hanging mouths and clutching, clawed hands. The Chemoshans’ rites gave the dead power to move but not to think. They were as mindless as the creatures that scuttled among the shipwrecks outside. They shambled on, seeking warm flesh, every step an affront to all that was holy.
The first of the dead was a big man who had clearly died by drowning. His flesh was swollen and blue, and there were hollows where the crabs had taken his eyes. Cathan cut him open with a stroke of his sword, slitting his belly to let his entrails slide out. The wound barely slowed the lurching horror, though, and it took a second slash from Damid to drop it, its bloated head spurting free of its shoulders and smacking against the corpse behind it. The creature went boneless, hitting the floor with a wet smack.
The second ghoul had died more violently, a gash in its throat gaping like a second smile. The cut did not bleed, nor did its arm when Damid’s scimitar took it off at the elbow leaving ragged strips of sinew behind. Cathan finished it with a thrust through its mouth, turning it as limp as a Pesaran puppet with the strings cut off.
On they came, one grisly wight after another: one with the side of its skull staved in, another with a broken spear shaft still sticking from its belly. Cathan’s eyes watered at the stink as Ebonbane rose and fell, rose and fell, in concert with Damid’s weapon. After a time, they began to tire, their blows becoming slow and clumsy, so they fell back, letting the next two knights take over the gruesome butchery.
It was one of that pair, a young knight named Sir Alarran, who became the first of the Divine Hammer’s casualties. He was fighting his fourth corpse, his blade dancing in tandem with the mace of the man beside him, when somehow the enemy got past his defenses and buffeted the side of his head with its’ fist. His helm came off, clattering against the wall, and he staggered to one knee, jabbing his sword through the corpse’s gut as he dropped. The ghoul did not fall, however. Even as the other knight rained blows down upon it, it lunged at Sir Alarran, broken yellow teeth clamping down on his forehead.
Alarran screamed. There was a sickening crunch.
A heartbeat later, the other knight’s mace struck the corpse in the ear, crushing its head to a pulp. It was too late, though. Alarran was dead. Another knight rushed forward to take his place.
The knights pressed forward. By the time the tunnel’s slope began to level, six more of their number had fallen and more than half a hundred corpses lay in their wake, hacked and crushed, a few still twitching. Finally, the numbers of the dead began to thin, and the tunnel opened out into the enormous cavern that was the Chemoshans’ fane.
The cave was vast, fifty paces across. A great, dark pool filled half of it, fed by dripping stalactites above. Firelight painted the walls, leaping from copper braziers festooned with skulls-animal and human alike. The dreaded drums towered atop the broad stumps of two broken stalagmites, and more skins hung upon the walls, stretched on wooden frames and painted with unholy sigils. Skull-helmed Chemoshans, two score and more, filled the fane, and more ghouls lurked in the shadows. On a stony outcrop above the pool was the altar itself, the huge skull of a long-dead dragon, cut open so its brainpan formed a bowl for sacrifices. Beside it, clad in midnight robes and a bear-skull headdress encrusted with scarlet and black gems, was the head of the cult, the Deathmaster.
Seeing the knights from across the cave, the high priest raised a hand-dark with blood from whatever offering he’d been preparing in the altar-and roared for his men to attack.
They obeyed, charging at Cathan and his men with sickle swords and wavy-bladed knives.
The remaining ghouls lurched behind. The knights raised their shields to repulse the charge, and for a time the cavern filled with the crash of steel against steel. The wounded and dying shouted out the names of gods both light and dark.
The knights were outnumbered, but they fought hard, and again the cultists were no match. Men died on either side, but the Divine Hammer slew three for each of their own. In time, the Chemoshans’ lines faltered, then gave way entirely.
The battle broke up, the Chemoshans’ lines unraveling into small pockets that soon fell before the knights’ swords. They died howling curses at their killers, their eyes blazing with hate. Cathan and Damid pushed past, Tithian and a half-dozen other knights on their heels as they charged the altar. Another knot of priests awaited them there, and these diehards fought even more furiously than their brethren had, desperation and fury fueling their strength. Even so, they were no match for the Hammer.
The Deathmaster had stayed by the altar, no weapon in his hand, his long-bearded face twisted into a cold sneer. There was no fear in his eyes, though his own end was surely at hand. He had made his pact with Chemosh, Cathan knew. His only desire now was to take his foes into death with him as many as he could. Cathan led his men up the steps of the fane’s makeshift dais, Ebonbane flashing red in his hand.
Smiling, the Deathmaster raised a finger to point at him.
Cathan froze, feeling the death god’s presence surge through the fane. Seconds became centuries as he watched the high priest’s eyes flare blood red, and crimson light swell around the man’s fingertips. A strange, itching heat spread across his skin, swiftly gathering into pain….
Something hit him from behind, knocking him to the ground.
Damid.
Cathan felt the Deathmaster’s spell leave him, saw his fellow knight freeze, scimitar upraised. “No!” he shouted, reaching out. “Get-”
With a sound like claws scratching slate, the crimson light around the Deathmaster’s hand became a whip, a scarlet strand that lashed out and wrapped around and around Damid. The Seldjuki screamed, dropping his sword, then shuddered as his cry rose into agony, muffled by the magical cocoon. Cathan clutched at him, but the webs burned where he touched them, and he snatched his hand back with a hiss.
For an instant, everything was still. Then the magical fibers sprang loose, and tore Sir Damid Segorro apart.
Bits of flesh spattered the stones, splashing down into the pool below. Steel armor ripped apart like tin. Red mist filled the air. Amid it all, Damid’s ghastly skeletal remains collapsed in a ruin of bone and tendon.
A mocking laugh burst from the Deathmaster’s lips as the knights stared at what remained of their fellow. Eyes blazing with madness, he reached out toward Cathan again-
— and stopped, staring at the sword that had just buried itself in his stomach.
Cathan blinked, turned, and saw Tithian. His squire no longer held his blade.
Recklessly, he had hurled it at the Deathmaster, and somehow the throw had struck true, burying the blade halfway to its quillons in the Chemoshan’s gut. It was hard to say whether he or the cult’s leader looked more surprised.