Cobweb Empire (22 page)

But, it occurred to her, it did not matter
what the city soldiers thought. They were too far back to offer
proper assistance, even if they understood what was going on
below.

Percy held on for dear life, cringing away,
wanting to make herself small. . . . Oh, how she
wanted to squeeze her eyes shut and hide her face in his chest! But
there was only the cold hard armor, and she felt the endless
pull, pull, pull
tearing apart her mind.

Meanwhile, the physical world was in
chaos. . . .

Shapes of once-living men fell upon them,
hands clawing at the sides, crawling up at the flanks of the
warhorse, for they had massed in numbers and grown thick like an
ocean. Thus, inevitably the charger had to slow down, for it was
impossible to move any faster through an endless thicket of human
walls wrought of the dead.

The warhorse advanced, moving through
churning black molasses, screaming in fury.

Beltain swung his blade like a scythe
through the limbs, blocking their deadly bludgeoning strikes with
his shield, hacking and cutting off arms, fingers, kicking away
others that had reached for them—reached for
her
.

And then the
thing
that was building,
the pressure, the pull—something burst inside Percy.

A dead man touched her by the knee, grabbing
her in an attempt to pull her down, and it acted as a catalyst
inside her mind.

The black churning power rose up in an
avalanche, and her head rang with it. A thousand cathedral bells
were insufficient to fill her with their rumbling force to match
what was inside her, and what exploded forth at one dead man’s
touch.

Beltain cried out, because even he could
feel it, something happening all around
them. . . .

Percy opened her eyes wide, and she reached
out to the death-shadows—all the infinity of them—like a great
spider casting forth a web of
self
, feeling in one fractured
moment the unique
death
of every man for leagues around.

And each death she felt, she
took
with her mind, handled it with a myriad fingers of power, and she
held
them all, like marionettes on infinite strings in the
palm of her hand. In the holding, she could tell apart each entity
from the other—delicate individual threads of gossamer death, each
one a billowing shadow on the other end, connected to her through
the invisible string of her churning
force. . . .

Some of them had been lonely, immediately
clinging to her metaphysical lifeline with bottomless hunger.
Others struggled like flies in her arachnid grasp. A few regarded
her in slavish resignation.

All she had to do was
pull
, and they
would all come to her, or come to do whatever was her bidding.

One of the death shadows in the distance she
recognized somehow, as belonging to the man called Ian Chidair,
Duke Hoarfrost. How she knew, she was uncertain—maybe because he
was Beltain’s father and she could feel the common signature of
their blood—but he was the strongest one among them. Like a great
stinging wasp caught in her net, he struggled wildly, enraged by
her control over him.

With a mere flick of my mind, I can take
them all unto me. . . .

And yet, Percy paused, seared into a moment
of timeless impossibility.

A choice to wield infinite power was before
her.

Was it hers to take?

Take us all!

The temptation was before her, sweet, thick
darkness—oh, to take it all unto her, to take their ghosts and
suspended soul sparks, their very oblivion and make it
hers
,
and together with it all to gently sink. . . .

Dissolution of will.

To do that would require
all of
her
.

And Percy exhaled suddenly, while a strange
deafening serenity came to her. She loosened the web of power with
her mind, so that the outer edges of her touch, the pulsing threads
of connection near the horizon were gently released, while the ones
closest to her she still held, like a weaver differentiating the
colors of string, based on their proximity.

And calling upon the weaver, she became
Arachne, and she pulled subtle individual puppet strings unto
herself and into their personal final silence.

In a radius of about twenty feet in their
immediate surroundings, she
took
each dead man and his
death-shadow, and she pulled them together without any physical
contact, except for the one dead man still clutching at her knee.
She glanced at each one and touched them with her thought; guided
each one of the individual billowing essences of death into their
own physical vessels, forcing them down and inward. The dead men
she chose collapsed in a small perimeter around them, mannequin
bodies piling like logs and growing still and inanimate.

The anonymous dead soldier at her knee let
go and immediately slipped away underneath the feet of the
warhorse.

“Dear God! Are you doing this?” Beltain
exclaimed, breathing hard, pausing his sword strikes, for the way
before them was suddenly clear—a narrow path just enough for a
horse to advance.

“Yes!” cried Percy, and her vision swam with
the intensity of her focus, and the inexplicable welling of tears.
“Ride!”

“Well done, girl!” Beltain’s hoarse-voiced
response was filled with grim exuberance, and he spurred Jack
onward.

They picked up the pace once more and
started to move forward over piling bodies, faster and faster,
until they were again in a gallop. Percy cut a swathe before them,
clearing the way, making each man connect with his death in a
split-second embrace as soon as she glanced at him.

Her head was growing heavier and heavier,
becoming an anvil of power, and she had the strange sensation that
she could barely maintain it on her shoulders. She was stuck in a
loop, performing a
function
—her eyes did not stop to blink,
but instantaneously fixed the details of each man-shape coming
toward them in the field, and her mind methodically executed the
final act.

Barreling forward, they thus advanced
several hundred feet, and the pressing onslaught of dead men around
them rarified. It was apparent they had at last passed the bulk of
the dead army and emerged on the other side into the empty
snow-covered fields around Letheburg.

Bodies rendered suddenly lifeless continued
to fall on both sides of the warhorse, but there were fewer and
fewer of them, and they no longer held an immediate threat of
physical contact. A small number of dead stragglers continued to
turn their way, but now Percy did not bother to reach for them with
her killing
thought
. She swayed, having fallen against the
iron breastplate of the knight, and the dark ocean of power in her
mind was clouding her vision. . . .

She blinked, letting go of the infernal
focus, allowing her eyelids to relax at last, feeling nausea rising
in her gut. Her extremities had gone numb, while her limbs felt
leaden with weakness. She slipped forward, to the side—she no
longer knew—and again the world was tilting while the moon overhead
slipped forth from the clouds yet again, filling her vision with
soothing silver, while all the world’s cathedral bells tolled in
her mind.

“It’s over. . . .” The black
knight’s deep voice sounded in her ear. “You did it, Percy, you
kept us alive, as I knew you would. . . .”

“How—” she began, but her lips were dry and
lacking sensation, like cotton. “How did you . . .
know?”

“Hush now,” he replied, and she felt an iron
gauntlet holding her up, then gently repositioning her against his
armored chest.

“South . . .” whispered Percy
with her last strength. “Please . . . keep going
south!”

And then she sank into unconsciousness.

B
eltain watched
with rising concern the very pale, sickly face of the girl lying
back against his chest, her head wrapped in her familiar woolen
shawl lolling against his plate armor. She had slipped away in a
peculiar faint, moments after what must have been a feat of
impossible power, because her normally rounded, puffy cheeks and
reddened nose appeared grey and lifeless somehow, as though she had
been sapped of all energy.

They now rode hard through the open field,
headed in the vague direction where, he knew, lay the main road
leading south. But Beltain was not sure if to proceed forward this
night was a rational choice under the circumstances.

The wind was picking up around them, biting
in fierce icy gusts, and the overcast thickened, while the moon
started to sink lower on the black horizon. Snowfall was expected,
and soon the flakes would start coming down, amid dropping
temperatures.

He was afraid she might not make it through
such a night—not like this, open to the elements, and not in such a
weakened state. In truth he barely understood what was wrong with
her, why she had lost consciousness, except that on some level in
his gut he knew it had to do with the unnatural power.

His plan had been headstrong and, in
hindsight, part-insanity. The Infanta had agreed and given him her
honorable orders to take the girl onward against the will of the
King of Lethe, and Grial had figured out the clever details of
removing her from the Palace, and a way out of Letheburg.

The rest of it—the part that consisted of
getting her past the dead army—was entirely his. And Beltain, the
madman, had thought his berserker prowess would be enough to cut
through their ranks and to deliver her safely back on the road.
However, the moment they came out through the breach in the missing
section of wall, and he actually saw the extent of the enemy army,
their sheer numbers, a cold grim feeling came to settle upon
him.

No, he was not afraid—fear had never been
his weakness. But he was on some level a realist, and guilt at his
own hubris manifested itself. What he saw before them was a
hopeless thing.

Still, he had spurred Jack forward, taking
all of them into certain death—rather, there would be no death,
only mortal damage to their bodies, and ultimately pain and horror
of becoming undead. Was it his pride alone that allowed him to take
such a terrible risk? Or had he known on some level that Percy,
this strange girl with her fat cheeks and pensive eyes and
nondescript peasant looks, would manage to do something
miraculous?

Beltain frowned, angry at himself, at his
own willingness to take that risk. And as the devious moon once
again disappeared in the haze overhead, he made a firm decision.
They would stop for the night, and he would seek them shelter.

Because he could not bear to have her die in
the storm. . . .

And thus, Beltain strained his gaze in all
directions about them, and not too far away he noted the dark
specks of possible settlements against the white snow.

There, he directed Jack, and they flew
onward, riding on their last reserves, a solitary moving object in
the plain. They had left all the dead behind them, and Letheburg
also.

As they approached the outlying buildings,
the structures resolved themselves into a medium sized farmhouse
with several lesser buildings, sheds and barns. The houses were
half-buried in snow, thatched roofs gleaming pristine white, and
there was no smoke in the chimney, and no watchdogs to bark at
their approach.

Beltain guessed that the place was
abandoned, most likely recently, since every living soul in the
neighborhood for leagues around had fled from the onslaught of the
dead converging upon Letheburg—either the residents of this
homestead were safely ensconced inside the city walls, or they had
fled as far away as possible.

The black knight stopped his warhorse before
the farmhouse. He dismounted, then carefully took hold of the limp
girl and lifted her from the saddle. He carried her in his arms
with ease, kicking in the front door open with his metal boot.
Fortunately it was not latched. Inside was icy cold and dark—but at
least there was no wind here, and no snow would fall. .
. .

He took care not to stumble against pieces
of furniture in the room, and then found, mostly by touch, a flat
piece that was either a cot or a bench, and gently lowered Percy to
lie upon it.

Percy was still unconscious. He threw off
his gauntlets, and it was freezing cold. First he located the
fireplace, added a log, and by touch managed to find flints and
start a fire in the hearth. The small feeble fire blazed forth in
an angry hiss and immediately illuminated a simple peasant living
room, furnished with a wooden table and two long benches on either
side—one of which was where he had deposited Percy. In the corner
was a low-to-the-ground wooden plank bed covered by a thick
straw-filled mattress and faded quilt blanket. A few pantry shelves
lined up against one wall, and a tiny dark icon of the Mother of
God sat mournfully on a corner shelf.

“Girl! Percy . . .” he
whispered, leaning over her, and touched her very cool
forehead.

She did not respond. Frowning, he watched
the shallow rise and fall of her chest. At least she
breathed. . . .

Outside, his warhorse whinnied and made
troubled noises, but Beltain steadily ignored him. Normally his
horse would have been his first concern, but now, it was slipping
to the back of his mind. Everything was slipping to the
back. . . . He was suddenly numb, useless somehow, having
grown abysmally still, mesmerized, looking down at Percy, plagued
with indecision.

A few breaths later, with utmost gentleness
he again took hold of her, and carried her bodily, this time to the
low bed in the corner, and deposited her on top of the
quilt-covered mattress. Her head lolled to the side, and he
adjusted her loosened shawl around her, again placing his fingers,
then large palm, against her icy forehead and cheeks.