That was it, he thought. The clothing these people — men, women, and even a few children — wore was blackened or torn but still recognisable, and it betrayed them as being from the woodcutting villages that bordered the Sardenne. He knew these people, had spent time with their kind, and they were hard-working, rugged individuals. But now, from their empty eyes, to their emotionless expressions and the way they moved as one, they may as well have been the walking corpses he had first taken them for.
They began to move towards himself and Fitch. Each shambling figure brandished an axe, cleaver or scythe.
"What the hells?" Slowhand breathed.
The archer raised Suresight and unleashed an arrow which thudded into the chest of a man at their front. He faltered slightly but continued walking. He hadn't made a sound. Slowhand swallowed and unleashed another into a different target, with the same effect. As the group continued to advance towards them, he backed Fitch along the tunnel and loosed Suresight again and again, into hearts, necks, right between the eyes. The shambling group just kept coming.
"That will do little good, archer," Fitch said. "As you've seen for yourself, these things are no longer normal flesh and blood."
"What happened to them?"
"They have become puppets. As such, even an arrow into the brain will barely slow them."
"Whose puppets? No, forget it. You wanna tell me what can stop them?"
"I can," Fitch said after a second.
Slowhand shot him a look. The psychic manipulator was displaying his bandaged hands, clearly seeking permission to use his powers without penalty.
"Magic is the only thing that can stop them," Fitch insisted.
"Do it." Slowhand said.
Fitch raised his arms towards the group, his temples pulsing. But moments passed and there was no sign of lightning bolts or fireballs or any offensive magic at all. Not a fizzle.
"Fitch," Slowhand said, "this is no time for projectile dysfunction."
"I–I don't understand," Fitch said.
"What's to understand?" Slowhand countered. "This, Fitch, is the day the magic died."
The stick insect gave him a horrified glance. "What do we do?"
Slowhand glanced towards the approaching figures. The walking pace which they had so far adopted was turning into more of a trot.
"Run maybe?"
"For once, archer, we are in agreement."
The two of them began to pound back along the tunnel, but at the same time the pace of their pursuers increased even more, until it was almost a charge. The eerie thing was that, other than for the sound of their footfalls, they proceeded in absolute silence. There was no need for them to utter a battle cry to chill the blood because the thud, thud, thud of their relentless and accelerating progress was chilling enough. Within seconds, Slowhand and Fitch were near to being overwhelmed, and the archer pushed the manipulator to the side of the tunnel, deciding the only thing to do was to make a last stand.
He wasn't sure whether to be relieved or offended by the fact that, other than an instinctive swing of weapons from those on the group's edge, their supposed attackers passed them by. It made him sure of something else though. These things weren't interested in the two of them, they were merely in the way. The horde's purpose was to reach the cathedral.
"We have to warn them," Slowhand said, and pushed Fitch on.
Paralleling the horde's advance now, he could see the light of the warehouse sublevel and, silhouetted before it, the wagons Fitch had dodged between on his way in. There were now also a number of workers who, guided by some Eminence, were delicately loading boxes onto them, oblivious to the deadly wave heading towards their way.
Slowhand had no love for anyone of the Faith but they were people. "Get out of there!" He shouted. "Get out of there now!"
The workers looked toward the sound of his cry, and tools were instantly dropped. They stared in incomprehension, something for which Slowhand could hardly blame them, but that reaction and their position — right in the path of the horde — cost them their lives. The horde met them and they were reduced to a pile of twitching, dismembered body parts by axe and cleaver and scythe.
The carnage did not last long but it gave Slowhand and Fitch enough time to overtake the horde and burst from the tunnel, the archer shouting warnings. But the distribution centre had already been alerted by the workers' screams, and the cathedral's cloister bells were sounding a security breach.
Guards were pouring from the sublevel's barracks to take up position before the tunnel. Slowhand bundled Fitch behind their lines, amazed that he had started the day intending to kill the man and was now getting him to safety.
"Arrest this man," Fitch ordered, intercepting two of the guards. "He tried to kill me."
The guards stared at Fitch questioningly.
"The First Enemy moves. For all we know he is in league with him."
The guards faces paled at the mention of the name, but they nodded and seized Slowhand by the arms. The archer glared — that was what you got for being the good guy.
"Fitch, don't be a fool," he pleaded. "I don't know what's going on here but let me help."
"Take him," Fitch ordered, and headed for safety.
"Dammit, Fitch! Can't you see this is about more than just saving your skin!"
Slowhand's protests fell on deaf ears as the horde continued to pour from the mouth of the tunnel. The guard commander hesitated for a moment before barking orders to his men. Crossbows were loosed and fifty or more quarrels slammed into the front ranks of the horde, the archers reloading instantly to despatch a second volley. By their sheer weight of numbers the quarrels slowed the horde more than Slowhand's arrows had, but they were as ultimately ineffective at stopping them and, despite a third volley, the horde gained ground into the sublevel itself.
Ordering his crossbow men to continue firing at will, the guard commander turned to a number of robed figures who had hastily shuffled into position at the rear of the line, and with a downward sweep of his arm instructed them to deploy their defences.
Nothing happened, for the figures were shadowmages, and the magic here, too, was gone. A wave of desperation crossed the guard commander's face and, despite his evident fear, he changed tactics, breaking forward from the line and unsheathing his sword, ordering his men to follow and do the same.
It was a mistake and a massacre. Only Slowhand and Fitch had so far witnessed how the horde behaved in close combat, and it hadn't just been the utter lack of mercy with which they had mutilated the tunnel workers, it had been the way they had done so with no regard to mutilation to themselves. They didn't care, didn't feel anything, and the only way to stop them was utter dismemberment.
The cathedral guards didn't get the chance. As they ploughed on, swords raised, into the front of the horde, the grey-fleshed intruders responded in kind, their makeshift weapons all the more deadly because of the suicidal way in which they were wielded. The guard commander and first wave of his men were bloodily felled without claiming a single foe, and even those who miraculously survived the sweeping attacks died horribly moments later, torn apart. More guards joined the fray and the horde began to slaughter these, too, fighting in eerie, absolute silence. The only noise was the wet sound of butchery, and the desperate cries and screams of the dying.
"Stop!" A voice commanded suddenly.
Slowhand glanced towards its source and saw that reinforcements had arrived, summoned from the upper levels by the tolling of the cloister bells. The Anointed Lord herself — Katherine Makennon — stood at their fore.