“Those aren’t the baron’s,” Gredchen said simply.
“Ah. Must be the spoils of war for our friend Rivven Cairn and her highlord masters. Theo, maybe you should poke your head around the corner of that entrance and see what’s what.”
Theodenes gave the sellsword a scathing look. He placed his torch into a bracket on a nearby horse stall and strolled over to the large wooden gates. He pushed one of them just slightly ajar, enough to stick his nose through and get a good look at the hallway outside.
Gredchen cried, “Watch out!” and Vanderjack spun around, almost dropping the wineskin. He followed her pointing finger toward the dirt-filled troughs, which were only about a dozen feet away from the gnome. Bodies, still somewhat caked with soil and dirt, had sat up from underneath a cover of earth with their pasty white features bearing expressions of utmost malice.
Vanderjack’s hands gripped the iron bar tightly. It was about seven feet long, so it would make a handy quarterstaff, but it wasn’t Lifecleaver. That knot in his stomach turned and throbbed. He looked around and saw only the gnome, the baron’s aide, and the four figures pulling themselves into standing positions from their troughs-no ghosts, no Sword Chorus.
The gnome dropped into a rudimentary fighting stance of his own. With no weapon, he raised his fists in a show of bravado, but Vanderjack had the feeling that anything that had at one time been dead and was moving around would not be intimidated by a gnome. Theo needed help.
Vanderjack sprang forward, charging across the stable’s main floor toward the stalls that housed the troughs. But he didn’t feel strong, he felt overwhelmed by the smell and the odds. He thought he might throw up.
The corpses, exposed once they had climbed fully out of the dirt, were remarkably well preserved. These weren’t mindless undead, the kind of thing a necromancer animates to perform his household chores. They were definitely intelligent, with empty eyes that seemed to emanate wickedness and tongues that slavered from their rictus grins, barbed and wormlike.
“Ghouls!” screamed Gredchen. “Like those in Willik!”
“Why didn’t you mention ghouls before?” Vanderjack said, choking down the rising bile and bringing the iron bar around in a wide swing. He aimed it at the nearest ghouls’ legs.
“Back then I had a shovel, and Theo had his multipurpose polearm,” she said, climbing up onto a crate and looking for something to use as a weapon herself. “And I didn’t think it was going to be a trend.”
“Seriously, no mention at all?” Vanderjack knocked the ghoul off its perch on the edge of the trough, but it tumbled over and over in the air and landed on the balls of its feet, hunched over like a gargoyle or a feral cat.
Theodenes threw a couple of experimental punches at the ghoul that had closed on him. His first left hook was cautious. The follow-up right into the ghoul’s midsection was more confident. That punch set the ghoul back a step, more surprised than anything else, and it hissed.
“Just a quick ‘Rivven had some ghouls’ … something like that would have been fine.” Vanderjack raised the iron bar to fend off the ghoul’s nails as it lunged forward to scratch at his face. He withdrew one or two steps and looked quickly to his left, then his right. He knew there were at least two other ghouls somewhere in the stables. They had leaped away from their troughs. Not knowing where everything was made sweat bead across his back, his face, and on his forearms.
Gredchen leaped upward, grabbed one of the long wooden beams that crossed the room, and pulled up onto it. There she found a loose board hanging from the sloping wooden roof of a horse’s stall and grabbed it up, eyeing the room below warily.
“Really, I could have used a little warning about the ghouls,” Vanderjack muttered, spinning the iron bar in his hands. He aimed one end fiercely at the ghoul before him, driving it into the creature’s face. It left a nasty dent, and the ghoul hissed and rasped, twitching.
The gnome shot the sellsword an exasperated look but was busy trying to lay blows upon the ghoul, which was equally busy scratching and raking at Theo’s face. Theodenes was an excellent pole fighter but a poor pugilist. The diseased scratch of a ghoul often sent the ghoul’s victim into shock or paralysis; Theo’s arms and legs looked as if they were already becoming stiff and ungainly.
Thinking quickly, Vanderjack shouted, “Heads up, Theo!” and threw the iron bar in the gnome’s direction. Theodenes nimbly caught the bar and immediately pushed his opponent back, extending the distance between them and delivering a series of well-placed blows to the ghoul’s head.
Of course, that left Vanderjack needing another weapon of his own. Spying the still-burning torch Theo had left behind, the sellsword darted over to the horse stall it was mounted on and tore it from the bracket. His ghoul opponent was still jerking spasmodically where he’d left it.
“Ackal’s Teeth,” Vanderjack cursed. “Where are the others?” He waved the torch in front of him, unable to see any of the other creatures. He glanced up at Gredchen, who shrugged, just as mystified as he was. Then at the same moment, one ghoul leaped from behind a stack of crates at him as its companion scaled the wall and jumped across to the wooden beam Gredchen was standing on. Both ghouls hissed, their long barbed tongues snaking out to taste the air, as they advanced.
“So why is Rivven Cairn keeping these things here?” Vanderjack called. “Ghouls hang around necromancers. Isn’t fire her thing?” He lunged forth with the torch, searing ghoul-flesh and causing the creature to recoil.
“My guess is she inherited them from the ogre shaman in Willik,” Gredchen called back, swinging the wooden board at her own ghoulish opponent. The ghoul crawled up onto the ceiling, claws allowing it to cling to the wood as if it were an insect. It grasped and reached toward the baron’s aide in an effort to knock her from her perch.
Meanwhile, Theo had delivered a final crushing blow to his ghoul, but the paralyzing toxin in the creature’s claws finally overcame him. His muscles had grown rigid, and his fingers were stuck as if in a rictus; the iron bar dropped to the floor, and he followed soon after.
Vanderjack cursed to see the gnome topple and drove the burning brand into his ghoul opponent’s face. It screamed, darted forward with its head smoking, and knocked Vanderjack over onto his back. The sellsword turned away his own face as the ghoul smoldered and expired on top of him. If that didn’t make him throw up, nothing would.
“Are you quite done with that one?” Gredchen yelled at the top of her lungs. “Because I could use a little help!” Vanderjack pushed the ghoul aside and looked up to see the baron’s aide clinging to the beam by one hand. The last remaining ghoul was tugging at the wooden board in her other hand, shrieking.
“Let go!” Vanderjack said, climbing to his feet. His head was hurting again; he must have hit it again, reopened the old wound. “Just drop!”
Gredchen did so. She fell to the floor of the stable, landing with a heavy thump on a pile of old horse blankets stacked on a crate. The crate flew apart with the sudden weight; the wind was knocked out of Gredchen’s lungs.
With nobody on the other end of the wooden board, the ghoul fell backward, dropping from the support beams and smashing through the rotting wooden roof of the horse stall below. As it fell out of sight, Vanderjack heard a disquieting crunch.
The sellsword staggered over to help Gredchen up, and as she dusted herself off, he went to investigate what had happened to the last ghoul. Opening the stall door, he saw that it had fallen on the rusty prongs of a hay fork, carelessly left point up within the stall.
“Couldn’t happen to a better undead,” Vanderjack muttered and let the stall doors swing back shut.
“He’s completely immobile,” Gredchen said as the sellsword came back over to where the baron’s aide was cradling the little gnome in her arms. “I don’t know anything about ghoul paralysis. Is it permanent?”