Ghostwalkers (53 page)

Grey raised the trapdoor all the way and climbed out. There was a single beam running the length of the barn, with the rest of the roof sloping sharply down on either side. The beam was ten inches wide. One slip and he would plummet from the barn.

“So, don't slip,” he muttered in a voice too quiet for anyone but himself to hear.

He stood up, and despite his confident words his body swayed with fatigue and injury. Even so, he drew his Bowie knife and stepped onto the beam. It wasn't quite like walking a tightrope, but with the wind and rain it was a foolish and dangerous thing to do. He did it anyway.

Below the barn, the fight raged. He could see Jenny and Looks Away leading the fight, but it was impossible to tell who was winning. Or if “victory” was even possible with so many people already dead.

Deray had his back to him and he was nearly finished repairing the damage from the Kingdom cannon. The necromancer had a thin saber strapped to his waist but no gun. Grey saw only a few of the undead aboard. One lay on the deck, eyes glazed as he stared at the ragged red stumps where his legs had been. A second felt his way blindly along the rail; his face was a charred mask without eyes, lips, or nose.

Only the third was whole and seemed in command of himself. He stood at the wheel of the big frigate, wrestling with it to keep the ship steady in the storm winds.

“That's done it!” cried Deray as he flung down the mop. “Hard to starboard. Bring her up and around. We'll land on the far side, load as many troops as we can, and then bring them over here to finish this.”

“Aye aye,” said the dead man as he threw his weight against the wheel.

Neither of the men saw Grey coming. Neither heard him until he leaped from the end of the beam, across the shattered rail and landed with a
thump
on the deck. Then they both whirled.

The helmsman was closest, so Grey jumped at him and buried the point of the Bowie knife deep into his chest. The point struck the chunk of ghost rock and burst it into fragments of glittering black. There was a screeching sound from the stone and a louder scream from the undead as he staggered backward. As he fell, Grey tore the knife free and faced Deray.

The necromancer stood there, remarkably calm despite this invasion.

“Who
are
you?” he demanded. “Who are you to come aboard my ship? Who are you to try and turn my own servant against me? Who are you to stand in the way of the natural order of things?”

“Natural?” said Grey. “Now that's a funny damn word coming from you.”

The frigate began to move sideways, shoved by the hands of the storm winds. The sudden shift of the deck forced both men to take steps to keep their balance.

“Who are you?” repeated Deray. “Are you one of Saint's colleagues? Are you a government agent?”

“Me?” said Grey with a smile, “I'm nobody at all.”

Rain dripped from the brim of Deray's hat and ran down the length of his sheathed sword. The necromancer studied him with cold and calculating eyes. “Then what is any of this to you? Are you a mercenary? Is that it? Did these pathetic fools hire you? Did Saint or his pet savage hire you?”

“If you mean Thomas Looks Away, then yes. I work for him. He hired me to help protect this town from you and Nolan Chesterfield.”

Deray snorted. “You're not very good at your job, are you?”

“No? Ask those poor sons of bitches who were on the bridge.”

Deray began pacing across the deck, his head turned so that he watched Grey out of the corner of his eyes. He was a handsome man with intelligent eyes and a smile that was almost charming. In another time and place Grey would have guessed that he was a doctor. Or maybe a stage actor. Even a politician. He had presence and charm, despite the harshness of his words.

“What is your name?” asked the necromancer.

“Grey Torrance. You won't have heard of me.”

“No, and nor will anyone hereafter. History will not record your name either.”

Grey shrugged and turned in place so that he continued to face the man even as Deray walked in a wide circle around him. The ship shifted around now, orienting itself so that the bow pointed away from the wind. The heavy gusts pushed it toward the chasm and the rest of Deray's army. Below the keel, the sounds of screams and gunfire continued unabated. Deray waved an arm toward the rail, indicating the battle.

“Listen to them,” he said. “Your employer, his friends, the rest of the town … it's all going to perish. Soon this town will not even be a footnote in anyone's register. There will be no trace of it on any map because I will redraw the maps of this world. I will wash it clean of
people
like this.” He spat the word “people” as if it was bile on his tongue. “This world has become chaotic and disordered. It no longer makes sense and at the rate it is going it will tear itself apart. When I look into the future I see more and greater wars. Not of conquest, not wars to build something that will last. Petty wars without purpose. Wars that do nothing but leave scars upon the earth and empower fools. This country—just look at what has happened to your America. After it broke away from England it showed such promise. It could have become a superior power, it should have become a new empire. One greater than Britain, greater even than Rome. And now it is fractured and divided and everyone here has gone mad.” Deray shook his head. “That is such a waste. I will create a new world and a new world order. Something nobler, better. Something—”

Grey held up a hand. “Listen, Mr. Deray, I'm sure you have a whole soliloquy rehearsed for moments like this. Shakespeare would be jealous, I have no doubt. But can we skip the rest? I don't give a hairy rat's ass about your plans. I don't care why you want to conquer the world or why you think you're entitled. On the way up here I thought I wanted to ask you those questions, but now that we're up to it, I just want to slit your goddamn throat.”

The necromancer stopped pacing, and in a much less pretentious tone said, “You are no fun at all, are you? You have no sense of drama, no appreciation for the importance of a moment like this.”

“No, I don't. As you said, I'm a nobody.” Grey raised the knife and showed it to Deray. The blade was still slick with the dark blood of the dead man he'd stabbed. “All I care about is what happens next.”

“Very well,” said Deray, and with a movement faster than the eye could see, he drew his sword. “Then let us proceed from conversation to murder.”

 

Chapter Eighty-Eight

The necromancer was fast.

So damned fast. He lunged forward with a thrust that drove straight toward Grey's heart. It was a beautifully timed movement, expertly delivered, and executed with power and speed. But Grey was waiting for it. He saw the shift of weight, the telltale alignment of posture and movement. Grey believed what he'd said when he told Deray that he was a nobody, but there was a lie even in his own admission.

He was somebody. He was a soldier. A fighter.

A warrior.

He had spent a life in combat and the slanting deck of this airship was not his first battlefield. Not even his hundredth. Grey twisted nimbly away as the saber's tip sheared through the air where his heart had been. Grey turned his left side along the blade, feeling the cold edge of it trace a burning line along his arm and back as he turned. But at the end of the turn he swung the Bowie knife around in a terrible arc and slashed the blade across Aleksander Deray's chest.

He had aimed for Deray's throat, but the man had grasped his own error and tried to evade the counterattack. The Bowie knife sliced through shirt and vest and cut into the man's skin. A line of red droplets flew into the air and was whipped away by the wind.

Deray howled and lashed out with his free hand, catching Grey across the mouth with the side of a closed fist. The blow was far more powerful than Grey had any right to expect from a normal man. The force of it sent Grey skidding across the deck toward the cabin wall. With a snarl, Deray leaped after him, slashing in a long diagonal line to try and catch his enemy between blade and wall. But Grey took the impact and went with it, shoving himself even faster and harder against the wall so that he struck and rebounded. He jumped to the right and the tip of Deray's sword scored a line through the wood.

Without pausing, both men closed in for their next attacks—Deray with another diagonal slash and Grey with a lateral cut that would have disemboweled the necromancer. However the combined speed of their attacks brought them together into a bone-jarring crash that truncated each cut. They immediately locked arms around one another to prevent a close-quarters slash, and grappling like that they went into a staggering dance across the wet deck.

It became immediately apparent that Deray's blow had not been a freak accident of angle or chance. As Grey had surmised before, he was immensely strong. It was like being wrapped by a steel band. The air was being squeezed out of his lungs and Grey could feel his bones grind. It was rare for him to fight someone substantially stronger and he knew that this level of strength could not be accounted for in any natural way.

It was twisted science.

Or, more probably, it was sorcery.

As they struggled, Deray's face was lit by a grin of delight. He was taking great pleasure in the surprise that must have registered on Grey's face. The necromancer leaned close until his lips were inches from Grey's ear.

“You are nothing, Mr. Torrance,” he said. “You are less than a nuisance. You are nothing at all.”

Grey tried to break the grip but it only tightened as they turned and stepped and fought for balance on the deck of the storm-tossed frigate.

As they turned, Grey nearly cried out when he saw that the deck—which had only been littered by the corpses of walking dead—was now filled.

A knot of figures stood by the freely spinning wheel. Pale faces in bullet-pocked clothes.

His men.

And her.

Annabelle.

The ghosts stood watching as he was slowly being crushed. There was no expression at all on their spectral faces. The two men turned and turned, and as they spun Grey heard Deray grunt in surprise. He'd seen the ghosts, too. For just a moment, the man was distracted, staring with wrinkled brow and frown of consternation at the strange figures.

Grey took the moment, seizing the last chance he had.

He head-butted Deray, catching the man on the ear and then again on the corner of his eyebrow. It was a hard blow that exploded lights in Grey's own eyes. Deray flinched back, and that lessened the pressure by the slightest amount. Grey darted his head forward and clamped his teeth on the corded tendons on the side of Deray's neck and simultaneously brought his knee up to smash into the muscles of the man's thigh. Once, twice, again and again as he tore at the necromancer's flesh with his teeth.

Deray screamed.

He thrashed like a madman, no longer trying to crush Grey but going wild to try and escape him. Deray kicked back, catching Grey in the stomach with a sideways knee. The air whooshed from Grey's lungs and the impact knocked his teeth loose. He staggered backward, spitting blood and falling hard to the deck. Deray chased him, kicking Grey again and again, in the stomach, the chest, the face.

Grey felt his bones break. His ribs detonated like firecrackers. Bits of broken teeth clogged his throat and he collapsed sideways, dropping his knife. Deray kicked the weapon overboard and kicked Grey over and over again until Grey flopped back, bleeding and shattered.

Then Deray reeled in the opposite direction, blood boiling from a terrible wound. He dropped his sword to clamp his hands to his neck to stanch the flow of blood. From the force of the blood loss, Grey knew that he had nicked something important when he'd bitten Deray before. An artery.

Good
.
Let him bleed out like a stuck pig.

Even as he thought those words, Grey felt like he was drifting and for a moment he thought he'd fallen off the ship. But it was his consciousness that seemed to be tearing loose from his body.

I'm dying,
he thought, and he knew it to be true.

So was Deray.

The ghosts began moving toward him. Toward both of them, their eyes filled now with a strange and awful hunger.

They're coming for me
.

But they stared past him to the necromancer. Deray used one bloody hand to dig into an inner pocket. He produced a flat disk of polished ghost rock that was set in a silver frame. Strange symbols were carved into the rock and Deray began hastily muttering something over it in a language Grey had never heard.

“
Da'k gugt r'un ftaxung sha tsa't haaft shx ta'ans shas ha nax thunghiaa' shut latsuftansuaft ghu'ftg ang ta'a us ial un s'uftiasa,”
intoned the necromancer.
“Bx sha aftga' gugt I l'ax
.”

Above the ship, the storm suddenly intensified and in his delirium Gsrey thought he saw strange, vast, impossible shapes leer at him from within the depths of the clouds. Monstrous eyes glared at him from a head that was lumpy and misshapen. Instead of a mouth and chin, there were dozens of writhing tentacles that whipped within the ferocious winds. Fires, ancient and endless, ignited in those eyes, and it seemed to set fire to the whole of the sky.

“Lu'g ur ghatsat ang 'angaantha,”
roared Deray, his blood gurgling in his throat,
“haaft na su fta shx unts'ianans!”

Lightning, red as blood, slashed across the sky. Snakes of electricity crawled all over the envelope above the frigate. While behind the hideous face a vast pair of leathery wings seemed to reach outward, each one stretching for miles and filling the whole of the sky. Below, the fighting stopped and everyone screamed. Even the walking dead.

Grey used what little strength he had left to climb to his feet. He coughed and spat dark blood onto the deck, and inside his chest he could feel bones shifting in all the wrong ways. He stared at the great god of all monsters and spat at it, too. But the wind whipped it away, and the god did not even take notice of the dying gunslinger. Red lightning struck the ship and enveloped Deray, and for one mad moment Grey thought that the necromancer was somehow being consumed by his own dark magic. That fate had stepped in to rebuke the hubris of this madman.