Shadowblood

Chapter Eight

Standing on the city walls, watching the seemingly endless ranks of the regiments form up and march out, Rik saw the bat-winged, scythe-wielding angel banners of the Seventh hang over the companies of his old comrades, and the great interlocking dragon pennons of the Ninth Heavy Cavalry fluttering above the howdahs of that regiment’s wyrms. Carts carried the components of the great siege guns. Horse teams pulled the wheeled light cannons behind them along the muddy roads.

Lord General Azaar watched the regiments stream by from a small rise overlooking the city, the same place where Rik had fought a dragon when Halim had been besieged. His general staff were with him, reviewing the troops as they passed.

Fife and drum hammered out a tune to which the units marched with impressive discipline. Along the walls the citizens of Halim lined up to watch their conquerors go. How many spies were among them, counting troops, Rik wondered?

He reckoned Azaar had ten thousand men at best, perhaps a score of siege guns, a hundred cannons. There were sorcerers too, and later there would be dragons dug out from the barrows in which they slept away the winter. Were the spies as impressed as he was, or did they think that ten thousand was a pitiful amount to muster against the Eastern hordes?

The men down there were hungry and not at all in the best of health. It had been a long hard winter and disease and constant skirmishing with rebels and the undead had taken its toll. Perhaps things might have been different if he had managed to save Kathea. Perhaps the natives would not have hated them so much and fought with such fury. That was useless thinking though. Things had not fallen out the way he had hoped. They never really did.

The camp followers were already streaming out of the city, women and children and youths, pedlars and gamblers and whores, all the flotsam and jetsam that drifted in the wake of an army on the march. There were probably as many of them as there were soldiers, and they were going to suffer more on the march. For most of them it was preferable to remaining in a city where they were hated though.

Rik felt a sense of terrible foreboding. Every step towards their eventual destination was a step further away from Talorea. Every league marched was a league that lengthened their supply line and made them more vulnerable. The East was vast, and its empty plains and ancient wastelands could swallow an army far larger than Azaar’s. This was a march from which no one might come back.

The voices in his head, quiet since Asea’s potion stupefied them, whispered words of fear, told him to run away, to seek a place of safety, to put distance between himself and this doomed expedition. Instead he drew the collar of his coat tight around his neck and headed for the postern gate through which he would join up with Asea and the army.

Sardec rode along at the head of the Foragers. His destrier was gentle as such things went, easy to control even for a cripple with one hand. He kept his gaze straight ahead and his expression stern, all too aware that he was under review by his General and the citizens of Halim. The impression they made counted in many different ways.

He fought down the urge to whistle along with the fifes and flex his fingers to the beat of the drum. He watched the backs of the infantrymen in the long columns winding ahead, making sure the regulation fifty paces was between them. If a sudden order to stop came, there would be no accidental mingling of formations.

Try as he might, despite all his efforts, he wondered where Rena was, and whether he had done the right thing. The crisis of their relationship had come on so fast, a whirlwind of words that had uprooted something that had seemed so certain for so long. He had become used to having her around, and he felt her absence the way he sometimes felt the ghost of his missing hand. It was an amputation just as much as the one that had given him his hook. A part of his life was missing, and he wanted desperately to get it back.

It was ludicrous. They were marching to war and death, and he had other things to dwell on than the absence of one human. That thought was as ineffective as a prayer spoken in a nightmare to keep the dream-monsters at bay. He could only keep riding and increase the distance between himself and his woman even as he felt her tug at the direction of his thoughts like the pole star on the needle of a compass.

“I tell you they were cheating,” said Weasel. “That’s why they drew knives and accused me.”

“I see,” said the Barbarian, not seeing, which was quite normal when it came to understanding Weasel’s explanations of why things always went wrong when he was around. His feet were as heavy as lead and his heart was not in marching this morning at all. His back felt as if something might have given way last night during his final session with Shera and Annette. He wished those damned drummers would keep quiet. His head was splitting, and his stomach was as rebellious as a province full of the Clockmaker’s dupes. “Could you go and tell Sardec to get the drummers to keep the noise down? My head is splitting.”

“Certainly,” said Weasel, “And after that I will go and ask Azaar if he can give you leave to take a nap for a few hours so you can sleep off the worst of the beer.”

“It wasn’t the beer,” said the Barbarian. “It was the roasted rat. I knew I should never have touched that bloody stew. Pigeon the innkeeper called it. Since when did pigeons have four legs?”

“It’s never the beer with you, is it? It’s always the stew.” The Barbarian glared at Weasel. As always his eyes were clear and he showed not the slightest ill-effect from the previous evening’s debauchery and brawling. How could he do that? They were the same age.

“Everybody knows that Southern cooking is unhealthy. Not like herring porridge and boiled beets. Why does the army always choose to march when I have a bloody hangover- that’s what I want to know? There’s never a time when it doesn’t. Regular as clockwork. I have a hangover. The army marches.”

“Maybe if you did not drink so much to celebrate our impending departure, you would not have one.”

“How come you don’t? Watering your wine again, sticking to small beer? That’s unhealthy, not to mention unmanly.”

“A man needs a clear head when he’s playing hookjack. Otherwise he’ll never spot cheats.”

“Whatever you say. I think it’s because you can’t take your drink anymore.”

Weasel grinned. “Not like you, eh?”

“I can drink any man half my age under the table.”

“Particularly when you pick the table up and smack it down on their heads.”

The Barbarian grinned, remembering. “I did, didn’t I? Teach the bastard to spill my beer.”

“That it did.”

“When do you think we’ll be stopping?”

“The usual time, an hour or two before sunset so we can make camp.”

“Bloody hell, another six hours of bloody fife music and bloody drums. I hope we meet some Easterners later in the day. I’ll be in the mood for killing then.”

“Best hope you are. There’s going to be a lot of it about before we’re done.”

The Barbarian cast a glance at the crowds on the walls. As always, he suspected they were happy to see the soldiers go, the ungrateful civilian bastards. Still, they’d some good times back there. “We had some good times back there,” he said.

“You mean killing deaders and fighting sorcerers?”

“No, I mean in the taverns, with the girls and the beer.”

“You always say that. Every time we leave a place, you say that. I wish I had a copper coin for every time I have heard you say that.”

“It’s because it’s usually true.”

“You’re not often right, but this time you are.”

“Think they have decent brothels in Sardea?”

“Let’s hope we’re alive to find out.”

He did not sound too hopeful which worried the Barbarian. Weasel was smarter than he was and knew about such things.

The village was quiet as a grave, possibly because all of the people were dead. Their corpses lay in the street, bloated and sick-smelling. A few had been gnawed by feral dogs and hungry rats which had died in turn. Tamara could tell because their corpses lay nearby.

Her steed was frightened, and only the spell of calmness she had laid on its mind kept it from bolting. She could see now where all the tales about the end of the world had come from, and why they were spreading so quickly.

These people had not died easily. Their faces, such as were left, were twisted in ghastly rictuses, their eyes were wide and their limbs contorted as if by terrible muscular spasms. She covered her mouth with a perfumed handkerchief and looked at the nearest corpse.

Its skin was pale and bruised in places. A bird had plucked out an eye. She wondered if there was anyone alive in the village. They might be able to tell her something, or she might find out for herself what the disease was if she could see some symptoms. So far all the dead had been human. Few of their diseases affected Terrarchs, and she was protected by medicinal spells so she was not particularly worried about falling ill herself.

Still, there was something about this place that set her trained senses on edge. Her fingers danced through the patterns of an augury as she muttered an invocation. At first, she noticed nothing, but then she found something just on the edge of her perception, so faint that if she had not been so keyed up she would probably have missed it. There was a very, very faint trace of magic in the air.

She shook her head, puzzled, wondering what it could be. Perhaps this village had been home to a sorcerer, or perhaps some wandering mage had passed through. Maybe someone owned a basic charm, or perhaps someone had purchased a ward against the plague. Finding the source of the magic was her best chance of finding someone alive in this Light-forsaken place.

She drew her blade, unsure as to why, but trusting her instincts. She wanted to get back on the steed and leave. Something made her uneasy and she doubted it was the sight of all the dead bodies. The old weapon felt reassuringly heavy in her grasp. She extended her senses as she had been taught, looking for signs of life, of ambush, of danger.

The breeze whispered through the streets. Somewhere a shutter banged, and an unlatched door creaked in the wind. She caught the sound of movement, faint and furtive. Perhaps it was rats but it never paid to make assumptions in a situation like this.

She concentrated again on her divination and sensed the faint magic once more. She moved around an old stone building and saw a doorway before her. A crudely painted sign depicting a rampant bull hung over the door. The picture was old and flaking away from exposure to the elements. The doorway beneath it yawned like an open mouth. From it came a smell of corruption and decay. From within she sensed movement. A man moved behind the bar, perhaps seeking liquor on the shelves. Under the circumstances she could hardly blame him.

She entered the building and saw a group of men slumped over a table. A huge bald-pated bruiser was behind the bar. He moved slowly as if his limbs were twisted or broken and she wondered if he were just beginning to come down with the plague.

Even as that thought occurred to her, she realised that something was wrong, that he was the source of the magic she had detected. He turned to face her, his eyes flaring greenly, the skin peeling from his face to reveal yellowing teeth. His skin was blotched with mould and something else, and he looked as if he had been dead for quite some time.

“Hungry,” he said. Her sword swept out and took his head off. She turned to leave. This was not a place for the living.