Wynn froze in confusion. The figure standing over the seaman was too tall, and his hair was dark. Even in the moonless night she caught the pale tone of his skin.
Chane turned toward her.
The moment Chane heard Wynn scream, he abandoned silence and raced toward her voice. "Wynn! Where are you?"
A loud crack sounded ahead where her voice had come from.
"Leesil?" she cried out. "I'm here! Please help- quickly!"
She had mistaken his voice. Welstiel had warned him not to reveal himself, but Chane didn't care anymore.
He opened his senses, smelling the air and feeling for life among the trees as he ran. Wynn was close enough to hear, and that was close enough to pick out her living presence in this place where anything animate was dead or undead. He felt her easily, but there were also two spots of cold emptiness he sensed near her.
He ripped through the forest's tangle and saw her.
Wynn held up the broken crossbow, blocking the saber pressing down at her. The dead man had her cowl in his free hand, and she could not pull away.
Chane rushed in, striking with his fist over the top of Wynn's head and into the corpse's face. Its grip on Wynn's cowl held. As she spun about, dragged after her attacker, Chane threw himself forward rather than fall on top of her.
A rotting stench filled his heightened sense of smell, and he gagged as he fell on the man. Chane quickly rolled to his feet, and turned to look for Wynn.
She scurried away on all fours, her cowl ripped away. Wiping dirt off her face, she stared at him blankly.
"Chane?" she whispered, and then her eyes widened as she looked down at his feet. "Chane!
The prone corpse swung its saber at his legs.
He caught the blade with his longsword and stomped on the corpse's wrist. Bone snapped under his foot, and the saber came loose. He rammed his own sword though the corpse's chest and felt the blade sink through into the earth. The thing beneath him thrashed awkwardly, even with the sword through its body, attempting to grab his leg with its free hand.
A troublesome creature. Chane wondered what it would take to put an end to this. He snatched up its saber, raising it to hack the corpse's head from its shoulders.
He heard the hiss of a blade from behind, followed by a cry of pain from Wynn. He started to turn as Wynn shouted, "Another, behind you!"
Pain pierced Chane's back. He looked down to see the point of a curved blade protruding from his rib cage. His own black fluids spread through his torn shirt and vestment. He suppressed the pain and slammed his elbow high to the rear.
He felt it crack into something mat whipped back from the blow. But the attacker behind him held on to the saber's hilt. Chane lunged forward sharply, sliding his body off the blade. Fluid loss would eventually weaken him, and he couldn't leave Wynn unprotected. As he turned around to face this new assailant, he glanced toward her and faltered for an instant.
Wynn's legs buckled under her as she dropped to her knees with a strange frown. She stared at him in bewilderment.
Blood ran out her collar down her severed sleeve.
The undead must have slashed her with its saber before running Chane through. Chane lost all awareness of his own body, and even the lingering faraway echo of pain in his torso vanished.
"Don't move!" he shouted at her.
He swung at this second corpse's neck with the saber. The dead man blocked with his own blade. Chane had no idea what it would take to put these things down. Welstiel had called them "reanimated," and Chane hoped they were as mindless as that might imply. While this creature's expression showed no self-awareness, it had enough survival instincts and lingering memory to wield its weapon.
Chane feinted, and as the creature followed, he kicked out into its knee. Its balance faltered, and he swung for its neck. It blocked again but not quickly enough. The blade bit through fetid flesh and stopped on bone. When it showed no sign of slowing, Chane dropped his weapon and lunged at it with both hands.
Before it could draw the saber back, he threw his arms around its neck, toppling it over. As they hit the ground, Chane pulled his knees up and pinned the corpse. He gripped its head and wrenched sideways.
Its head tore free in his hands.
He tossed it aside, grabbed a saber from the ground, and ran to the other corpse-now clutching at the longsword still pinning it to the ground. One hard blow was enough to sever its head, and the body ceased moving.
Chane tossed the saber aside and stumbled toward Wynn. He knelt before her, working quickly to open the blood-soaked collar.
"What are you… What are you doing?" she whispered.
Wynn's round, olive face was streaked with dirt. Her long braid had come loose and light brown hair hung down her shoulders, some of it matting in her blood.
"Be still and quiet," Chane said. "I need to see how bad the wound is."
He pulled back the left side of her robe to expose an ugly tear in the soft flesh between her shoulder and collarbone. Though the saber's tip had slashed open her sleeve, it had not cut into her arm, as well. He slipped off his vestment and cloak and tore away both his sleeves. Lying on the ground, the cloak seemed to move of its own accord. His rat crawled from the pocket and skittered off into the trees. He did not try to stop it. Folding the sleeves together for a makeshift bandage, he pressed it against the wound.
Wynn let out a cry, and Chane almost pulled away. But she could not stand to lose any more blood.
"This needs to be sewn," he said. "Where's your pack?"
She didn't answer but reached out with her right hand as if checking to make sure he was real.
"I told you to go."
Wynn looked so shattered, frightened, that Chane could not help pulling her around until her uninjured side rested against him. She went rigid at first but then shifted closer, pressing her face into the crook of his neck. He kept pressure on the bandage and felt blood soaking through to his palm as he put his other arm about her shoulders. He rocked her back and forth.
"Everything will be all right," he whispered. "I'm here."
Chapter 17
M agiere struggled to push aside what her mother's spirit had shown her. Of all the faces that passed through her mind, from Betina's, to that of the infant with its slit throat, and to Bryen's, one face wouldn't be suppressed.
Welstiel-her brother.
She pressed on through the forest, focused upon the child ghost leading her to Ubad. The undead of this place served his whims, assaulting anything he wished-except for herself, and perhaps Chap-and remained a danger to Leesil and to Wynn. The most certain way to end that threat was to find Ubad quickly and kill him.
With every step, Welstiel's face lingered in her thoughts.
Magiere looked back to check on Chap.
There was no one behind her. Even with her night sight open wide, she saw no sign of his silvery shape in the forest.
But she couldn't lose track of her guide, so she kept moving. Relief came when the dog burst from the brush to lope beside her.
As the ghost girl slipped around a tilting spruce, she hovered in the air, waiting for Magiere to catch up. The ghost shimmered and vanished as Magiere stepped into a clearing with Chap at her side.
Across the open space stood Ubad, an iron staff resting in his grip with one end upon the ground. His head turned toward her, and Magiere wondered how he was aware of her through the eyeless leather mask.
"Now we can speak alone," Ubad said.
"I didn't come to talk."
She headed straight for him without breaking stride, swinging for his head with the falchion.
Instead of gliding away, or fading out of reach as he'd done in the cavern, he leaned the staff forward to catch her blade. Steel and iron clanged sharply together, but Ubad's arm didn't give an inch under the force.