Olive climbed back out of the carriage’s front window, laden with two heavy sacks. “Give me a hand up to the roof,” she said.
“What about Mother Lleddew?” Giogi asked.
“She’s got some protection of her own. The undead aren’t bothering her,” Olive huffed. She took a swing at an overzealous zombie with one of the sacks and knocked the monster off its perch on the front carriage wheel. “They’re coming after younger prey now—namely us. Give me a boost.”
Giogi hefted Olive onto the top of the carriage. The halfling pulled the sling out of her garter and grabbed a handful of ammo pilfered from Uncle Drone’s memorial feast. She loaded a golden apple into her sling and whipped it around.
“Have some apple sauce!” she yelled, loosing the fruit down on the crowd of zombies. “Go on, get out of here.”
The ripe apple caught an undead square in the forehead, and it toppled backward. By the time it hit the ground, two more apples were zinging with halfling accuracy through the ranks of the undead. Those monsters that came close enough to climb the coach were met by Giogi’s merciless foil.
The nobleman parried their clawlike hands and stabbed at them fiercely. Their lack of self-preservation appalled him. At the same time, he worried about his own preservation. Just how long will this magic potion last? he wondered as sweat began breaking out on his forehead. Will I be able to tell right away?
Giogi glanced toward the temple, but Mother Lleddew had abandoned her defense of the stairs. She was heading toward the carriage, wading through the crowd of zombies, jostling them as she went. The creatures paid no more attention to her than they did to each other.
“Giogi! Look out!” Olive cried, snapping an apple at a ghoul that had managed to climb up to the driver’s seat. The red missile splattered in the middle of the undead’s shredded face, but the ghoul kept coming. A hissing snarl escaped its torn lips and the ghoul leaped on Giogi.
In a moment, the creature had Giogi bent backward, its claws securely fastened on the noble’s shoulders. A paralyzing coldness crept from the ghoul’s fingers, and Giogi felt himself go numb. His foil fell from his unfeeling fingers and clattered to the driver’s seat. The ghoul’s ruined mouth smiled and opened, displaying a row of fanglike teeth.
Olive ran across the carriage roof and kicked the monster in the head before it managed to sink its teeth into Giogi’s throat. The ghoul loosed its grip, but Giogi was unable to move to balance himself, and he toppled from the driver’s seat into the zombie horde below.
A collective “Ah!” of undead delight issued from the mouths of nearby zombies. They fell on top of the man and began pummeling him with their corpse-white hands.
Olive screamed and began pelting the zombies below with apples thrown by hand. A few fell back, but more took their place. The halfling was just wondering if it would be worth risking her life to jump down on top of the fray when something grabbed her ankle.
Olive twisted around. The ghoul who had paralyzed Giogioni had not fallen over with the nobleman. Now the monster was dragging Olive toward the edge of the carriage roof.
“Let me go, you ghoul!” Olive shouted, reaching frantically for the dagger she kept up her sleeve. The ghoul laughed until Olive slashed off its hand at the wrist. She jerked her leg back and gave the undead another kick—sending it into the hordes below. She poked with her dagger at the fingers of the dismembered hand until it fell away from her ankle.
On the ground below, Giogi was wondering if the potion had already worn off. The fists of the zombies rained down on him in a torrent. He could never recall hurting so badly in his life, and the paralyzation was like a nightmare. The worst part, though, was his inability to breathe.
One of the zombies had enough sense left in its undead brain to throttle him. It knelt beside him and gripped his neck in the bony vise of its fingers. The other zombies pulled back and watched their compatriot choke the noble. Dark spots danced in front of Giogi’s eyes. Somewhere in the distance, Olive shouted.
Something warm touched Giogi on the face. The warmth spread downward to his torso and then to his arms and legs. In a moment, he felt his muscles relax, and in another, he could move again. He brought a fist up sharply in the face of the zombie who was choking him. The creature fell backward from the sudden assault. The noble kicked and pounded and stabbed at the zombies who tried to close on top him. Strong hands, warm and living, latched about his arm and helped him to his feet.
Mother Lleddew stood beside him. “Get back up on the carriage and take the reins,” she ordered, “I’ll clear a path for you to turn around.”
Looking up, Giogi saw Olive squaring off with a noseless zombie on the drivers seat. Giogi plucked his foil up from the seat. Leaping up the carriage step, he thrust his weapon into the zombie’s back. The creature crumpled. Giogi withdrew the foil and pushed the zombie from the carriage. The noble took his place on the driver’s seat.
“Better hold on, Mistress Ruskettle,” he warned Olive. “We’ll be moving soon.”
Mother Lleddew moved forward toward the horses, whispering and patting them comfortingly. The ghouls drew back from her. The zombies remained all around both her and the horses, though they did not attack. Slowly the woman spoke into the lead mare’s ear, and the horse rose from its knees, pulling its companion to its feet as well.
The priestess placed herself in front of the lead right horse and began muttering loudly. The zombies suddenly noticed her presence and began crushing in on her, trying to drive her under the mass of bodies. Mother Lleddew held up a platinum engraving of Selûne’s sign and cried out, “Return thou to dust!”
The engraving glowed, and the zombies in the carriage’s path ignited with a mystic blue fire. In another moment, they’d crumbled to gray ash.
Mother Lleddew stepped aside and smacked the lead horse’s rump. It charged forward. More zombies rushed to fill the gap left by those the priestess had disintegrated, but the horses trampled over them. The priestess grabbed hold of the carriage door as it shot past. The carriage shifted precariously from her weight until she managed to scramble up to the roof.
For a bulky old priestess, she’s pretty spry, Olive thought, clutching the back of the driver’s seat.
The carriage shot across the meadow toward the temple, the horses trampling undead and the carriage wheels crushing them. Giogi yelled and steered the horses so the carriage made a wide turn back in the direction of the road.
Overhead, the great carrion birds wheeled beneath the shadowy, solitary cloud. “You, halfling,” Lleddew called, pulling from her shift pocket a fragile glass vial of clear liquid and tossing it to Olive, “try this.”
“Holy water?” Olive guessed.
“Yes. Don’t bother with anything on the ground. Get one of the vultures in the air.”
“The vultures?”
“Yes. They’re undead as well.”
A vulture swooped overhead with a ghoul in its claws. Olive shot at it as it banked toward them. The vial of water smashed into the vulture’s wing. The bird dropped its cargo as its wing burst into smoke. It crashed to the ground, smashing several zombies beneath it.
“Nice! Got any more?” Olive asked with delight.
Mother Lleddew handed her another vial and Olive loaded it into her sling. The carriage pulled out of the hilltop clearing and into the light cover of the trees.
Olive hit a second undead vulture with a holy water missile. The bony creature broke up in the air and crashed into the temple pillars. It lay still, but in the temple behind it something else moved.
Olive’s mouth fell open as she caught sight of what caused the movement. “There’s a girl back there!” she gasped.