Drowning at Dusk Ch. 06

The further we went, the more I questioned the wisdom of our infiltration. Given the numbers outside and the patrols we'd avoided within the fortress, the garrison likely numbered at least fifty mortal soldiers, with at least twice as many undead.

And every moment we lingered was a risk that they'd find a body we'd left behind, or stumble across us as we pressed deeper into the dark.

It wasn't long before we had to spill blood again: two sentries stood guard in a central chamber filled with broken statues. A crossbow bolt from me and an arrow from Kivessen put them down. We dragged them into a rubble-strewn room, and hoped that their comrades would chalk up their disappearance to desertion or an adjustment in the patrol schedule.

After moving the bodies, I searched through their pockets, finding two iron keys and a tattered map of the fortress. Ink circled several spots on the map, which I suspected were key locations or key spots for the patrols to check. It wasn't the evidence we were after, but I shoved it into my satchel nonetheless.

We descended a wide staircase covered in glowing mushrooms, and Kivessen cut the throat of the single guard posted at the bottom. With the corpse hidden away beneath the rubble of a collapsed portion of the staircase, we continued on until I saw candlelight flickering against a smaller hallway, and noted the murmur of muffled voices.

Creeping closer, I realized that the candlelight and the voices were coming from a gap in the ancient stone wall. I looked through; beyond was a cavernous chamber filled with battered stone tables and half-rotted wooden benches. A dozen figures sat at the only intact table, surrounded by at least twenty inert barrow-walkers. Prowling among the motionless skeletons were five ghouls: resplendent and horrific in equal measure, their bodies a hybrid of untouched flesh and rotting skin. My skin crawled with memories of the carnage that such creatures had unleashed back in that Wildwood temple.

Five ghouls, twenty skeletons, and a dozen mortal foes.

Ugly odds.

Thanks to the light from the candles and the glowing mushrooms, I could just make out Synrik's familiar face at the head of the table. He'd shaved his fine beard since the flight from Arkostead, showing off a prominent jawline marred by a few small scars and pockmarks. His hair was a bit wild and tousled, no longer as well-manicured and slicked back as it had been at Pyrewatch.

My lips curled into a sneer as I took in the faces of the others at the table: nine men, three women. I recognized none of them. Most were well-dressed, but none wore anything resembling a uniform or insignia.

"So with the latest dig under the northern tower, that brings the total to nine hundred and twelve corpses," a man in a tattered black robe said as he glanced down at a scroll.

"How many of those can actually be rendered into usable barrow-walkers?" asked an elderly woman in a frilly red dress.

"We only count them if they're usable. The bodies too broken down or damaged are inventoried elsewhere," the man with the scroll said. "But those remaining bones and bits still have their uses. We have enough for at least fifty constructs. Perhaps more, once we excavate the southern portions of the fortress and the fields beyond."

My eyes widened. Just one of those things had nearly killed me, Dazyar, and Xelari. Two had been able to stand firm against a dozen Tombflayers for a time. Fifty of the things, with support from mortal infantry and barrow-walkers could prove quite the obstacle to overcome.

"When can we expect to have the numbers necessary for the next phase?" asked a short young man with a forked, oiled beard.

"A month at most. The loss of Pyrewatch as a forward base has set us back considerably," said a tall, willowy woman wearing a dark cloak and leather armor. She cast a pointed look at Synrik. "Which Synrik has yet to answer for. Not only did we lose Pyrewatch as a potential forward base from which to deploy our forces, the exposure also removed the city watch as a potential asset."

"I think I've more than made up for that failing with all the dead I've 'recruited,'" Synrik said with a warm, easygoing smile. "Moreover, their focus will now be on securing Pyrewatch and the other outlying islands, and they won't be watching for a potential threat from Amberkeep. In fact, we may even be able to move up our timetable."

All of that was of course quite damning, and would be enough for the Lord-Protector to send a vast host to the ruined fortress, if only it were all in writing. Given that all of the evidence was hearsay and I was an untrusted assassin, Heroth wasn't going to intervene on my word alone.

I looked to the various scrolls and books splayed out on the table; a handful of those would have gone a long way towards proving what was going on.

"Pyrewatch was not your only failure," said another of the likely death mages, a muscular man wearing chainmail, with a horned helmet resting on the table in front of him. "Your scheme to turn the Deathless against Heroth failed miserably, and now they may be aware of our operation."

I flashed Terakh a brief grin over my shoulder. If only those bastards knew how aware the Deathless really were of their operation.

"The Deathless agents who came to Arkostead almost certainly died on Pyrewatch along with their mercenaries," Synrik said with a dismissive wave.

"'Almost certainly,'" the armored man growled. "So you cannot even confirm it. We already have an immense task ahead of us, one that is now far more complicated by the-"

Synrik silenced the man with a wave of his hand.

"I have brought us this far, Edmund, have I not? It was I who learned of the Deathless in the Wildwood, and who confirmed the utility of the dead here at Amberkeep and Pyrewatch. It was my silver that corrupted the watch, my plans that assailed the trade routes and unleashed panic, causing the people to doubt their Lord-Protector. All of this was my plan. My vision. You all are only here as a courtesy, and as a means to simplify my operations and make things run just a bit more smoothly."

Laughter rippled from a few of the others.

"Smoothly?" the man with the forked beard sneered. "Is that what you call this?"

"These debacles have only called further attention to us," said the woman wearing the dark cloak. "And in the end, you are the one who will take the throne and restore the monarchy to Arkostead. Other than vague promises, what is in it for us?"

Synrik's laugh echoed through the dark chamber.

"The monarchy is a means to an end. I don't care about the damned throne. I care about the chaos. Riots in the streets. The collapse of trade. Countless corpses from the inevitable backlash and civil war. More unrest in other cities, other attempts to restore old royal dynasties. Battle after battle, siege after siege. Endless corpses, endless carnage. The opportunity for each of us to conjure great armies of dead, for each us to forge new fiefdoms from the chaos."

He rose, bracing his hands against the table.

"Damn the kingdoms of old; the cause of the monarchy is but a means to an end. I care only for a new kingdom, my friends. A kingdom of death. No disease. No strife. Deathly order from the chaos."

I'd tangled with necromancers and death mages before, but no necromantic scheme I'd heard of could compare to the one Synrik had just laid out. The man was ambitious, mad, and daring.

And if we didn't pull off our mission here, the bastard just might succeed.

"You've made a few adjustments to that grand speech. I appreciate the rhetorical flourishes and the new metaphors," snarled the armored man that Synrik had called Edmund. "But it was more convincing the first time, because I was foolish enough to think you could have actually pulled off such a mad scheme. Your performance over the past week has made me re-evaluate that assessment."

Edmund rose, collecting his helmet.

"I am done with this foolishness. I will leave with the mercenaries and barrow-walkers I brought to this charade. I suggest that the rest of this council do the same. Perhaps we can salvage something from this mess, and look for better prospects elsewhere."

Four of the other necromancers rose from their seats alongside Edmund. Synrik's hand twitched, and the ghouls within the chamber all lunged.

It was over within seconds: quick, brutal slashes of those claws made short work of the defiant necromancers.

Five bodies toppled to the floor, their blood leaking onto the ancient stone.

Synrik tapped the table and looked to the man who'd announced the results from the tower excavations.

"What was the total corpse count?" Synrik asked.

"Nine hundred and twelve," the man said, without missing a beat.

"Make it nine hundred and seventeen. A few more for the legion." He cast his cold gaze across the death mages who had not abandoned his cause, and thus still drew breath. "I think we're finished here, yes?"

Some cast wary glances down to the corpses, but all of the survivors nodded or murmured their assent.

I cursed under my breath. The gap between the bricks was big enough to fit my crossbow, but not big enough to allow me to take aim and see what I was shooting at. The shot would be damned near impossible to pull off, and even I did put a bolt in the bastard's neck, the source of the bolt would have been obvious, and we'd be swarmed within seconds.

"At least we know a bit more about they're up to," Kivessen said, having listened to everything at my side.

"Shame they weren't jotting down notes to record everything they said," I murmured, then glanced back through the gap.

Most of the surviving death mages left the cavernous chamber, followed by the ghouls and most of the barrow-walkers. The only mortal to remain was the little robed man with the scrolls, who was hard at work scribbling something down on the parchment.

His solitude presented an opportunity.

I led the way down the stairs, and we waited in a shadowy side-room until the last of the footsteps passed by.

"We have to be quick," I murmured to the others. "The barrow-walkers in there will almost certainly activate when we barge in. A storm of arrows, then we close the gap, get to that man and his scrolls. Something in there has to be of use. Then we run."

Terakh stowed his greatsword and withdrew two throwing axes, Kivessen notched another arrow, and I readied my crossbow. Together we moved to the large doorway. After a brief pause to ensure there were no other voices from within, I eased the door open.

The robed man's head twitched slightly in my direction, but he did not look up from his scrolls.

"Good. Someone needs to drag these bodies down to the ritual chamber," he said, apparently thinking we were just another patrol.

I raised my crossbow and pulled the trigger. The bolt took him in the back of the head, and his face thudded against the stone. Kivessen's arrow left his bow a moment later, slicing through a barrow-walker's bony neck the moment its head lurched towards the door.

Both of Terakh's axes spun through the air and tore into the chest of a second creature. Dropping my crossbow, I sprinted forward, drawing and slashing with my curved blade in one elegant motion. The others followed, with Terakh fighting with his fists rather than waste time going for his greatsword. He grabbed one barrow-walker by the ribs and shattered its skull against a stone table, and Kivessen's knives slashed and sliced, taking down the last two.

I was certain the clanging of their bony bodies would be enough to raise the alarm, so I shoved the dead man's body aside, snatched up the blood-spattered scrolls, and shoved them into my belt. Kivessen knelt beside Edmund's corpse and tore a satchel from his belt.

A voice called out from the hall.

"Go!" I hissed.

After I collected my crossbow, we burst back out into the hall, right into a squad of patrolling mercenaries. One shouted with alarm, and the next let out a choked gasp as Kivessen's knife found his eye. Terakh unleashed his massive blade, chopping one man nearly in two by the time I joined the fray.

Four of them died before they even had a chance to go for their weapons, and the last poor bastard had time for one scream and a clumsy thrust of his short-sword before Terakh ran him through. We sprinted back the way we came, blood dripping from our weapons.

We bounded up the stairs, and encountered another patrol of mortals and barrow-walkers coming down the other hall towards us. Rather than stand and fight, we continued our mad dash up the staircase, though Kivessen slowed his retreat to pepper the incoming mercenaries with arrows. Wails of pain echoed down the tunnel, and we burst back into the main hallway that ran through the fortress.

Ahead of us loomed the doorway that led into the courtyard, which was now surely filled with confused mercenaries and freshly-awoken undead.

"Need another way out," I hissed.

Shouts came through the door, and Terakh grunted with effort and grabbed a spear from a dead sentry and used it to block the door, sealing it from within.

"I smelled wind a few paces back," Kivessen said. "Maybe another staircase."

Something thudded into the door from the other side. More shouts rose from the staircase at the end of the hall behind us: six guards, four undead, with more shadowy shapes coming up from behind them. The distant, chittering laughter of ghouls chilled my blood.

Kivessen shot on the move, unleashing arrow after arrow as he led the way back towards the potential escape route. We dashed into one of the half-crumbled rooms, and spotted a narrow gap in the ceiling above.

"You two first," I said, flicking my finger over the fury-rune.

Terakh opened his mouth to argue, then saw my muscles tremble with the magic of the rune, and flashed me a grin. Up he went, squirming through the gap.

The first guard sprinted around the corner, stumbling against a piece of shattered stone. Before he could right himself, I darted forward and cut him down, his flesh parting easily before ancient elven steel and the strength of the fury-rune.

More followed. More died.

My blade moved in wide sweeps, cutting mercenaries down and keeping the others at bay while I used the close confines of the doorway to my advantage. Kivessen shot three arrows over my shoulder, each one finding a target, before he scrambled up after Terakh.

Once through the gap, Kivessen continued to support me, sending an arrow into the gaping mouth of a barrow-walker, and then another into the arm of a mercenary. The wound threw off the mercenary's sword-thrust, allowing me to chop at his leg, sending him stumbling back. I kicked at the wounded leg, using his maimed body as an obstacle to jam up the doorway and slow the others.

The distinctive howls of ghouls filled the dark fortress. Mercenaries dove out of the way to allow the creatures past.

"Come on!" Kivessen shouted, and loosed one of his specialized ghoul-slaying arrows. The missile skimmed over the rotted flesh of a ghoul's chest, then fragmented and sent a storm of razor-sharp metal through the other patches of its skin.

As the ghoul reeled and gurgled, I finished it off with a slash to the throat, and two more arrows rained down, tearing apart the other ghouls that had just rushed into the chamber. Mercenaries swarmed in after them, leaping over the twitching, shrieking creatures.

I seized my moment, swinging wildly once more and darting backwards into the room. A spear jutted through the doorway, skimming over my jaw. A throwing knife punched into my leather armor, and I felt barest pinprick of steel against my stomach.

My free hand reached up, clasped Kivessen's. Terakh grabbed me by the shoulder and tugged with all of his might, yanking me up and into another room on the second floor of the castle.

"Up, next floor!" a mercenary shouted from down below.

With a howl, Terakh slammed his shoulder into the dusty wall, knocking a brick loose. My muscles still roaring from the fury-rune, I leaned in to help him, and within half a minute we'd cleared away a gap big enough to squeeze through.

And just in time; footsteps thundered down the hall outside.

About twenty feet below the gap was the northern side of the courtyard, shrouded in shadow.

Kivessen leaped first, landing with nary a sound. Terakh soon followed, cursed, and rolled a bit. The jump was damned easy for me on account of the fury-rune, and I felt only the barest pressure in my ankles as I landed, then tucked and rolled.

A face appeared in the gap behind me: Kivessen sent an arrow at the sentry, and was rewarded with a blood-curdling scream.

We took off, sprinting through the foliage and underbrush as the fortress continued to erupt in alarm. The howl of a cryptwolf sent a chill through my bones.

Cursing and growling with pain and irritation as branches slashed at us, we burst free from the underbrush and raced up the ridge where I'd killed those sentries. Another howl echoed from behind me, a bit further away than the first one.

Hoping that the fading howls meant they'd lost our trail, I continued my mad dash down the slope.

In the haze inflicted by the fight and the fury-rune, I'd forgotten where we'd stashed the boat. Panic fluttered for a moment, until Kivessen tapped me on the shoulder and directed me to its hiding place.

A minute later, as the magic of the rune fled my muscles, we pushed the rowboat to sea.

We rowed for our lives, limbs straining against the churning water, ignoring the aches and pains of the battle and our flight. Movement flickered against the top of the ridge behind us, followed by the bleating of a horn.

Realizing that I still had no idea where they'd docked the ship that Synrik had used to escape Pyrewatch, I rowed all the harder, fearing that they might be able to catch us out at sea if Synrik's sailors were warned soon enough.

TheLover's Laugh came into view: a beautiful sight upon the moonlit seas. I shouted and waved, and we rowed in so recklessly that we nearly rammed the vessel with the rowboat.

Kivessen made it up the netting first, and before Terakh and I had even joined him on the deck, the captain was bellowing at the crew to prepare to sail to the south. Given that the ship was already pointed southward in preparation for just such a retreat, it was only a matter of moments before we were underway.

I breathed a long, trembling sigh of relief and flopped onto the deck, resting my back against the railing as the crew tended to the sails and rigging.

As the adrenaline fled my limbs, as the aches and pains from the fight set in, I pulled the blood-spattered scrolls and papers from my belt. If my soul had still been bound to Venkaya, I'd have offered a hundred prayers.

"This had better be worth it," I muttered.

Joy destroyed those doubts within moments.

Within my grasp was a detailed accounting of corpses within Amberkeep, along with instructions on how to best reanimate them. There was also a map with the most prominent sites to dig for corpses, and an older map from a book about the great battle at Amberkeep, which Synrik had seemingly used as a guide for his excavation efforts. The last few pages contained lists of alchemical ingredients for the preparation of undead constructs.

While none of the pages actually gave any names or explained their grander ambitions, it would be more than enough to prove that something hellish and nefarious was underway at Amberkeep.

Within a week, a force of the Lord-Protector's best knights could be on their way. Synrik would join the long list of people who'd died at Amberkeep, and Xelari would be safe.

I could have wept.

Instead I laughed, the musical joy echoing across the sparkling sea. Terakh cocked his head and grabbed the documents, and grinned wolfishly at what we'd uncovered.