Crown of Three (37 page)

“Why what?” he said.

“Why . . . help . . . me?”

Gulph closed his eyes. He opened them.

“I can't help you, Nynus,” he said. “You're dying.”

Pale fingers closed on his.

“You're . . . here . . .” Nynus croaked. “That's . . . enough . . .”

“I wouldn't be anywhere else.” Gulph had to force the words out, so tight did his throat feel. Tears broke from his eyes.

Nynus's grip tightened. “But . . . why . . . ?”

Gulph's tears were flowing freely now. Something was building inside him: a sob, or perhaps a scream.

Nynus deserved to know the truth.

“I've no choice but to help you,” he said. “And I'm glad to. I'm your brother.”

T
wenty more paces and Elodie would be at the end of the floating platform of ghosts. Ahead lay the other end of the fractured bridge. Twenty more paces and she would pass smoothly onto Idilliam soil. Into the city of her birth.

The spirit shield on which she was balanced shifted beneath her feet. Fessan, walking close beside her, caught her before she fell.

“You should be farther back in the ranks,” he said. “I would not have you on the front line.”

“I wouldn't be anywhere else,” said Elodie. She wished she felt as brave as she sounded.

At her feet, the deck of shields parted and Sir Jaken poked his head through. Beside him, looking anxious, was Samial.

“You must hurry,” said Sir Jaken. The sun shone both on his cloven helmet and through it. His ghostly skin shimmered. “As long as we are holding you up, we cannot fight for you.”

“I understand,” Elodie replied.

“What?” said Fessan. “What do you understand?”

“That we're running out of time.”

The shields closed again. Elodie forced aside the fear she felt of what they might find at the other end, and stepped forward with new vigor.

Twenty paces became ten. There was an eerie movement in the swirling dust that covered the end of the bridge. A cloud within a cloud.

“Archers at the ready!” Fessan called over his shoulder.

He dropped to his knees, pulling Elodie down with him. Around and behind them, twelve rows of Trident foot soldiers followed suit, allowing the men farther back in the column to aim their bows over their heads.

An army emerged from the dust cloud. Elodie clamped her mouth shut against a cry of horror. Hearing Tarlan's report of undead warriors and a resurrected king was one thing. Seeing this mass of rotting, shambling corpses filling the broken bridge from one side to the other was quite another.

“Loose!” yelled Fessan.

A volley of arrows flew over the front line. Elodie ducked instinctively as they arced over her head. She held her breath as the arrows struck home, impaling the walking dead.

But the dead came on.

“Second wave! Loose!”

The second volley had no more effect on the oncoming corpses than the first. Bristling with ineffectual arrows, the hideous figures continued to lurch toward them, ragged lips peeled back from skeleton teeth, eye sockets burning with red fire.

“Stand!” Fessan shouted. “Let them come!”

Elodie's legs were shaking as she rose. She gripped her sword—Palenie's sword. It was impossibly heavy. Her mind was empty but for the thudding of her heart. She'd forgotten even the little she'd learned at the camp and on the road.

The ghost bridge trembled as two loping forms barreled through the Trident ranks: Graythorn and Filos, racing to take up positions on either side of Elodie. As their warm bodies pressed against her legs, she felt a surge of hope.

The air sang as the thorrods flew over her head.

“Stay close to her!” shouted Tarlan from on high.

The wolf and the tigron bared their teeth and growled in unison.
So he talks to them as well as the thorrods
, she thought.
Like I can talk to the dead.

She laid a hand on the tigron's head. Tarlan had said they were her pack too, and she felt the strength of their loyalty.

A massive figure charged through the ranks of the undead. Taller and broader than the rest, this walking corpse was dressed in the remnants of a king's robes. His hands were naked bone; the flesh of his face had shifted hideously to one side, exposing the pale shelves of his skull. His eyes blazed.

Elodie couldn't breathe.

For the first time in her life, she was face-to-face with her father.

Brutan's jaw gaped. An unearthly shriek came out.

The undead charged.

“For Toronia!” roared Fessan, raising his sword to the sun. “For Toronia!”

The battle cry rose up from the rest of Trident. Elodie held up her sword, trying to ignore the way her hands were shaking.

Brutan's undead army rushed onto the bridge of ghosts. At the last moment, those Trident soldiers still kneeling lifted the spears they'd been concealing. The first wave of corpses ran straight onto their sharp points, impaling themselves. To Elodie's horror, however, they didn't die, simply hung there with their ribs split and their arms thrashing.

At her side, Fessan swung his sword in a wide arc. Its blade cut clean through the neck of an oncoming undead warrior. The creature's head flew over the side of the ghost bridge and into the chasm. But its body came on. More men fell on it, their blades steadily taking the thing apart until it was just chunks of flesh and bone spread twitching across the deck of upturned shields.

Elodie's stomach churned with revulsion, but the ghastly sight was encouraging.

These things can be killed after all!

Summoning all her will, she brought her body under control. None of that mattered. She was here with a sword in her hand and a task before her.

If killing you means taking you apart
, she thought grimly,
then so be it. . . .

As Fessan warded off the blows from another warrior, Elodie thrust her blade at the nearest corpse. Her first strike cut off the creature's arm; her second removed its head.

A scream left her throat, whether of terror or exultation, she didn't know. As the decapitated body of the first undead warrior staggered away, a second loomed over her. She brought her blade around, instinct telling her to use the momentum of her previous thrust to guide it. At the same time, her feet danced, adjusting her balance.

“
There is a thing,”
Palenie had told her on the march. “
We call it ‘battle rage
.'”

“
So you feel angry when you fight?”
Elodie had asked.

“
It is beyond anger,”
Palenie had replied. “
Anger is red.”

“
Red? Then what color is this ‘battle rage'?”

“
It is white.”

At last Elodie understood what her friend had meant. As her blade connected with her latest foe, a pure, clean fury coursed through her veins. As her enemy's head tumbled, it filled her with something brighter than the sun, and far beyond any ordinary rage.

It filled her with white.

By now the front ranks of both armies were locked together in close combat. Elodie's ears filled with the overwhelming percussion of metal clashing on metal, with the screams of injured men, the hollow shrieks of the undead. Brutan was clearly visible over the sea of heads: a mighty bellowing monster using his broadsword like a scythe, cutting through everyone who stood before him.

Let him come!

“Look out!” The foot soldier beside Elodie grabbed her shoulder and pressed her down, just as a bloodied blade sliced the air above her head. The soldier jabbed his sword into the belly of her attacker, but not before the undead warrior's flayed fingers had closed around his throat. With inhuman strength, the awful creature lifted the man bodily off the ground and hurled him into the abyss.

The corpse bore down on Elodie, its teeth chattering. She tried to bring her sword to bear on it, but the very shove that had saved her made her lose her grip on its hilt.

Weaponless, she screamed.

With a flash of blue-and-white fur, Filos leaped past Elodie and buried her teeth in the corpse's throat. Biting down, the tigron worried at the creature's neck until its head hung loose like a rotten melon. At the same time, Graythorn bit deep into its ankles. As Filos released her hold, the undead warrior went down like a felled tree.

From a gap between the ghostly shields, a sword like molten silver finished what the tigron had begun, removing the thing's head with a single, clean swipe.

“Thank you!” Elodie picked up her sword, not caring if the animals had understood her.

But even as she started beating her way forward again, she saw more of the Trident soldiers thrown into the chasm, just like the man who'd saved her life. Slashing an undead warrior aside, she saw once more the junction where the ghost bridge met the real one.

It was farther away than before.

They're beating us back!

Tarlan flew past on his thorrod steed. The three birds had been attacking the enemy's rear guard, attempting to relieve the pressure at the front. Now they returned to where the fighting was most fierce.

“Do what they do!” Elodie yelled to Tarlan as Theeta swooped down. “Send them into the chasm!”

Tarlan nodded his understanding. Reaching the lowest point of her dive, Theeta grabbed an undead warrior in each claw, snatching up the living corpses as an owl might pluck a pair of mice from the ground. With a smooth movement, the giant bird flung them far out into empty space. Elodie watched with fierce approval as they fell dwindling into the canyon depths.

They couldn't be killed. But they could be thrown aside.

Brutan bellowed his rage at this new attack. To Elodie's shock, the undead king's voice was very loud: He was much closer than she'd realized. Slicing her sword through the neck of another enemy, she turned to see the undead king just a few paces away. His hand was closed around the neck of a Trident soldier, who hung limp in his attacker's clutches. Elodie waited for Brutan to throw him over the edge of the bridge, just like all the others.

Instead, the undead king held on.

With mounting revulsion, Elodie watched as the Trident soldier's eyes sank into his skull. His skin turned black and peeled away from his flesh. The color leached out of his green uniform and the cloth turned to rags.

In the creature's empty eye sockets, red flames flickered into life.

Brutan released his new recruit. At once, the undead Trident soldier rushed at Elodie, screeching through the ragged hole where its mouth had been. The thing swung its blade and Elodie ducked. Recovering herself, she spun and brought up her shield, ramming it hard into the creature's belly. Using all her strength, she shoved the undead soldier toward the edge of the ghost bridge. A cloud of red and gold fell around her as she pushed: her own hair, severed by the blow that had nearly taken off her head.

Just as she thought her strength was giving out, Filos and Graythorn were at her side. As if they knew what she was trying to do, the two animals thrust their heads against the undead soldier's legs. Together, the three of them finally succeeded in propelling the creature into the chasm.

Catching her breath, Elodie tried to look back over the battlefield. All she could see was a confused mass of swords and bodies grappling endlessly in the dust. She clambered onto a pile of Idilliam helmets to get a better view.

It was worse than she'd feared. Trident had been pushed back to the midpoint of the ghost bridge. The army of undead continued to stream out from Idilliam, a never-ending flood of living corpses. Everywhere she looked, men were falling. And every man that fell meant another undead warrior to swell Brutan's ranks still further.

We can't win this
, she thought desperately.

“Get down!” It was Tarlan, bringing Theeta into a hovering position just above her head. “Don't make yourself a target!”

“It's hopeless!” Elodie shouted. “There are too many of them.”

“That's exactly what I told Fessan! But he wouldn't listen!”

Elodie ignored his reproach, just as she'd ignored his warning to keep her head down. “We have to fall back.”

“At least we agree on one thing.”

The helmets Elodie was standing on shifted beneath her feet. She remembered how fragile the spectral bridge was.

And, as she planted her feet firmly again, how strong.

“Tarlan!” she exclaimed. “You're right!”

Forcing her way back through the Trident ranks, she located Fessan. The young man was splattered with blood from head to toe, but, apart from a few scratches, none of it appeared to be his own.

“We have to retreat!” Elodie shouted over the noise of the battle.

Fessan shook his head. “This was our only chance.”

“Listen to her!” called Tarlan, bringing Theeta in over their heads. “The battle is lost!”