The Bloody Eye

1

A combination of stench and hollow percussion awoke Yddith. At first, she dreamed she was dancing to muted drums, accompanied by the gourds and bone rattles used in druid ceremonies. Then she realized there were hoofbeats in counterpoint with something else. Scrapes, knocks, clacks, clicks, bumps, thumps, and clatter vibrated through the night. It was a cacophony of bone instruments, but it was also more.

Underneath the eerie percussion was a low, pulsing murmur vacillating between a whistle and a worn organ pipe leaking air. It might have been the wind, but it seemed to offer uneven groans and whimpers in the midst of the mysterious percussion. Yddith grimaced. It might have been the wind, but the wind usually carried away the stench of the privies. Instead, this wind was permeated with the fetid, smothering perfume of decay. She had smelled nothing like this since the days of the fever.

Death!

The word fairly shouted itself within her mind and forced Yddith to sit up straight in bed, even as new sounds entered the macabre orchestration filling the air. She sensed the creak of axles and their grating protests added to her unease. Hearing the unmistakable hum of wagon wheels coming up the main road, she threw off the moth-eaten fur from her cot and glided silently to her window. Her motion blended seamlessly with the shadows.

Peering down the main road, she began piecing the images and sounds together. At the edge of town, shadowy shapes and movements shimmered into view as though the night itself was a black curtain drawing aside to reveal an artisan's masterpiece. To Yddith, however, this was no masterpiece, but rather a monstrosity. To be sure, there were horses to match the hoofbeats and wagons to match the sounds of axle and wheel, but neither horses nor drivers had flesh. A caravan of skeletons was entering the town.

Yddith watched with fascination as Orthor, the town's watchman, stepped to the middle of the road. "Halt!" he shouted. The former mercenary could assume the dignity of a foreign courtier when he swaggered to his duties. "What mean you, entering unannounced at such an ungodly hour?"

Normally, his formal speech and officious manner would have brought an amused smile to Yddith's face. Now her face froze in horror as the caravan plodded numbly forward.

Orthor held his ground as the skeletal horses stomped toward him, their deadly percussion heavy and ominous as they neared the soldier. The veteran instinctively moved between the first pair of shambling, yellowed bones and sliced through the reins. Suddenly released from control, the undead equines galloped forward insanely, eyes glowing with the embers of hell while a brimstone steam escaped their nostrils in mockery of life's breath.

Unfortunately for Orthor, the undead horses reacted to the loss of their lead team much as living horses would-by panicking. Yddith grimaced as one horse reared to smash Orthor with glowing iron hooves and the remaining three charged the guardsman. With experienced reflexes, Orthor dodged the fiery hooves and smashed his halberd into the brittle structure of the closest horse's neck. Mold and splinters showered the ground from the halberd's blow, but the undead frames of two large horses plowed over Orthor like a landslide. Yddith winced as she heard the crunching of bone and the sickening slosh of hooves embedded in Orthor's ripping flesh.

Orthor's brief scream awakened the entire town of Pergue. Lanterns and candles flickered and sputtered into light within moments of the shout, the blows, the clattering hooves, and the strangled cry of the guardsman. The entire town watched in horror as the procession plodded past the statue of St. Cuthbert to the square in the center of town. As though they, too, were statues, the mesmerized throng witnessed double doors swing outward from the black coach in the center of the caravan. The combined light from lanterns and candles was dimmed by the blood-red glow oozing from the coach.

All eyes followed the movement as a human figure in courtly garb shuffled down the creaking steps. Yddith thought she might have discerned squishing sounds rather than the echo of normal steps as the figure lumbered toward the center of town. She was certain she heard the figure's mushy trod as a red glow formed an orb about him and revealed this mysterious figure to be a zombie. She felt certain that the zombie once served as a performing bard, the practiced grace of its profession apparent even through the stumbling motions made with decaying limbs. She was doubly certain when the undead figure lisped its announcement through lips that had succumbed to rot.

Through cracked and tattered lips, the zombie proclaimed the caravan to be the Black Carnival. With cadaverous breath it declared that the troupe would perform a play called The Maiden's Blush on the following night. It paused dramatically and looked at every window in turn before continuing. In spite of muddy enunciation, the thing made clear that every townsperson would be required to attend the performance. The announcement was punctuated by a sanguine red aura that played across an assembled army of skeletal soldiers and zombie attendants.

As if the announcement had been a cue on stage, the skeletal soldiers dispersed and marched with a mixture of bone and metal percussion toward every building in the town. Yddith immediately saw their intent and threw her work dress quickly over her head. As she grabbed for her sandals, she saw that the undead army was bolstered by a squad of orcs complemented by three or four larger orc warriors riding on war boars.

Yddith rushed down the inner stair of the Boar's Tusk tavern where she worked and lived. Barefoot, she dashed out the back door, intending to run to the nearest copse of trees and escape. She was too late. The decay-crusted form of a skeletal sentry was already in position at the corner of the back wall.

A bar wench doesn't keep her virtue for long without being quick of wit, and Yddith's virtue was well-protected. She immediately switched to a new plan, improvising on the fly as she had done on so many occasions when tavern patrons saw her as the prize. She looked directly at the undead guard and stopped in her tracks. Immediately she began hopping in place like a little girl who desperately needed to reach the latrine. Yddith curtsied quickly to the skeleton and gave it an embarrassed smile as she grabbed herself to indicate what she had to do. She knew an animated corpse whose organs had rotted away decades before was unlikely to understand references to bodily functions, but she hoped that acting naturally would keep the skeleton from sounding an alarm.

Still dancing in place, Yddith alternated between placing her sandals on her feet and pointing toward the latrine. When the skeleton registered no response whatsoever, she shrugged and started walking slowly toward the outhouse. The empty skull of the undead creature couldn't comprehend what she was doing, but she didn't appear to be trying to escape. So, it followed.

Yddith reached the rough building in the trees, opened the door, and entered. The skeleton's bony fingers prevented her from closing the door, so she lifted her skirt and sat down. The red lights glowing dimly in the skeleton's hollow eye sockets were focused directly at her.

The girl's racing mind flashed on a remembered image and a plan took shape. An itinerant sorceress had once taught Yddith a small, magical trick behind the tavern. Yddith had since used it, rarely and when no one was looking, to tip mugs of ale into the laps of obnoxious tavern customers whose jokes and remarks grew too ribald. All it took was speaking a strange word and mimicking a small hand gesture.

Finishing her task in the outhouse, Yddith shrugged at her guard once more and stepped past it to get outside again. She motioned toward the latrine as though she expected the desiccated form to have use of it. The skeleton clacked forward, bending its empty skull to look down into the dark pit. With its attention occupied, the skeleton failed to see Yddith's hand move, though it did hear her whispered prayer to Pelor for help in what she was about to do. It failed to see the log drift off the stack of firewood behind him. The log rose above the dirt-crusted skull, then smashed downward. For a moment, the skeleton tottered as though it might tumble into the outhouse. Crushed bone burst into powder as the falling log glanced off the skull but snapped through ribs. The monster regained its balance.

"So much for magic," muttered Yddith.

With her gambit failed, she dropped all pretense and simply turned and ran into the trees. The skeleton, having been clobbered with the log and seeing its prisoner escaping, was no longer confused. It knew clearly what it must do. Unsheathing its broadsword, it stepped around the outhouse. As Yddith plunged through the trees, the skeleton pounded the flat of its sword against the rusted metal plate that served it as chest armor, raising the alarm that its voiceless throat could not.

As Yddith sped through the trees with tiny branches slapping at her face and punctuating her flight with stinging scratches, the skeleton marched at a doubled pace behind her. Where Yddith's pace let the branches perform their tattooing at will, the skeleton hacked away any brush obstructing its march.

Yddith focused on the sound of the skeleton's inexorable pursuit. Worse, she heard the occasional grunting of a boar and knew that one of the large orcs had joined the chase. At irregular intervals, she heard the skeleton pounding the flat of its sword against its armor and she knew others would be following. Worst of all, she felt herself tiring. Even the power of fear could not keep her moving all night.

"So much for running," she gasped.

Then, she recognized where she was. She was near the cliff where so many shepherds lost sheep during the spring migration. The forest grew right up to the lip of the bluff and the edge itself was obscured by heavy brush. More importantly, there was a large mulberry tree with limbs that stretched up and over the cliff. She ran directly for it, but instead of tumbling over the edge like a confused sheep, she climbed the tree and winnowed her way up into its leafy canopy.

As the skeleton marched toward her position, Yddith found herself begging for Pelor's intervention once again. She held her breath as the brittle soldier passed by. She prayed even more fervently as she heard others pass by, but gulped back fear involuntarily as she heard the war boar approaching. Remembering her sorceress mentor, Yddith recalled another trick. She picked and pulled at her cloak till she had a small ball of frayed wool yarn. She held it to the tip of her finger, spoke the power word as a harsh whisper, and blew the ball of wool in the direction where she wanted to hear the sound. All of her concentration was focused on creating the sound of a body running through the brush along the top of the cliff.

She heard the orc grunt in triumph and the hooves of the war boar pounding the dirt as her pursuer charged toward the cliff. She breathed a silent prayer of relief as the boar stumbled at the edge and plunged through the concealing brush into empty air. The magical sound invoked by Yddith was replaced by the crashing, cracking, and smashing of boar and rider tumbling to their deaths.

"Thank you, Pelor," whispered Yddith as she climbed down the mulberry tree and disappeared into the forest ahead of the skeletons who would inevitably return to investigate the noise.

Confident that she was far enough ahead of the skeletons that she could use the woods to her advantage, Yddith began weaving through the forest toward Pelor's temple. If anyone could save Pergue from this troupe of undead, it would be the priests of the benevolent sun god.

"Praise Pelor!" she intoned as she realized what she had already accomplished on behalf of her neighbors and friends.