Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon (21 page)

“In a group like this, such troubles are fated,” Gullik said when they were all together again. “I’ve seen it happen before. Our differences are too great. Sooner or later we turn on each other.”

“Riona and Ember are crusaders for the Vigil,” Dougal said. “Despite their cultures, they should be able to work together.” He sighed. “And remember, Riona and I are both come from Ebonhawke.”

“I spoke not of cultures but of differences,” said Gullik. “Between you two I sense a gulf the size of the sea.”

Dougal glanced back at the grinning norn and couldn’t help cracking a smile himself. “Gullik, my friend, you are wiser than you look.”

“That’s an exceedingly low threshold,” Kranxx said from the head of the procession.

They walked in silence after that, following the tunnel through a series of switchbacks that brought them lower and lower through the side of the mountain. The muck got thicker and deeper, and the smell—if possible—got worse as they went.

Dougal tried not to think about how far they’d gone or how much farther they might have to go. He just focused his vision on the glowing rock hanging from the pole on Kranxx’s back, and trudged on. Every now
and then, he saw another tunnel head up and away from the sewer. Some of these were clean and dry, while others added their own small tributaries of filth to the mainstream.

When Kranxx reached a large intersection where a dry tunnel sloped down to where they were, he signaled to stop, and the others gathered closer behind him. Riona put her lantern down on the floor.

“We should rest,” the old asura said. “This is the last place for a break before we reach the end of the line, and it’s a bit of a haul from here to there.”

As the words left Kranxx’s lips, a line of torches burst into flame up the dry tunnel. Dougal put up an arm to shade his eyes against the light and gaped at the squad of Ebon Vanguard forming a solid phalanx in that tunnel. Two of the guards they’d run into at the asura gate stood at the head of the ranks.

The male officer, Lieutenant Stafford, raised his blade and shouted, “
This
is the end of the line for you! Cast down your weapons and surrender—now!”

“Hang on,” Dougal said. “We can explain.” Already he was trying to concoct a half-believable story that would buy enough time for the others to plan a break. He knew that there was little chance anyone would stop to listen to him, but he had to try.

‘Lieutenant!” said one of the Vanguard. “The charr is free! And it has weapons!”

“Fire at will!” shouted the officer, wide-eyed and red-faced. “Then close to melee! Leave no survivors!”

The guardsmen in the front of the phalanx dropped to one knee, revealing a second line behind them with
muskets drawn. Dougal had time to curse and drop into a crouch as the breeches sparked and their tunnel was filled with noise and the smell of powder. Even as the bullets sang among them, the Vanguard dropped their muskets and pulled out their blades to join their fellows in a charge.

As the Ebon Vanguard raced toward them, Dougal found he had drawn his sword without noticing. Alongside him the others were recovering and preparing for the assault. Riona drew her slender blade. Killeen wove her hands in an intricate pattern. Kranxx, formerly in the lead, now faded back behind the others, dropped his pack, and started rummaging around in it. Ember had been the apparent target of the musket balls, and parts of her fur were smoking from several near misses. She extended her claws with a snarl and reared back to spring at their assailants.

Yet, before anyone else could react, Gullik let out a guttural roar, his flesh becoming thick and hairy, his face extending into a fuzzy, tooth-filled muzzle. Both attackers and defenders hesitated for a moment at the sight.

Of course, Dougal realized, Gullik would be able to take the form of a totem animal, and that form would be a bear’s, just as his cousin’s was a snow leopard.

The bear-Gullik dipped both of his massive paws into the sludge swirling around his thighs, then swung them forward like giant scoops, flinging their fetid contents over his companions’ heads at the charging Vanguard. The guards howled in protest, blinded by the muck, their footing suddenly made treacherous by the
sludge.

Ember leaped forward and gutted the lieutenant with a single slash of her claws. The man fell forward, gurgling blood. The charr moved past him and dove into the rear ranks of the guards rushing at them.

Riona stepped up and clashed blades with the female officer from the gate. “This is the queen’s business!” Riona shouted, her voice almost pleading. “I demand you stand down!” Instead of answering, the Vanguard warded off Riona’s initial blow and then followed it with a brutal riposte that clanged off the side of the crusader’s helmet.

One of the Vanguard slipped past Ember and tried to run Dougal through, but Dougal parried him easily. The guard’s sword seemed to slip along the oily surface of Dougal’s blade until it smacked into the steel cross-guard. Still, the way the man kept his balance and blocked Dougal’s counterblow told Dougal he was in for a real fight.

Behind him, Dougal heard Killeen finish her spell. For a moment nothing happened, and he thought that perhaps she’d panicked and failed to make the incantation work or been interrupted by a stray blow. Then he heard squeaking in the distance, coming toward them from everywhere up and down the tunnels, and moving fast.

The guards heard it, too, and those who weren’t directly engaged in the fight backed off, their swords at the ready, their eyes darting in all directions as they hunted for the source of the noise. The squeaking grew louder and higher, and the guards grew more and more
anxious. One of them bellowed in frustration, his cry mixing with the rising squeaks.

The rats came scurrying from all around them, some wet and dripping with sludge, others dry as bone. Their eyes glittered red in the lights that Kranxx and the Vanguard still bore. They sounded hungry.

The guard who had screamed charged into the wave of rats, swinging his sword wildly. It clanged against the masonry rather than flesh, and then the rats swarmed over him. In an instant, they covered him from head to toe and began to tear him into tiny pieces.

While the first guard screamed in pain and terror, a pair of his fellows leaped to help him. The mass of rat flesh expanded to draw them in, and they began hollering for help too. In mere moments, the pleas stopped, and the guards collapsed under the weight of the murderous rats on top of them.

By this time Gullik had stormed into the dry tunnel. He had returned to his nornish form and now lashed out with his axe, left and right, and where it swung, men fell like saplings.

Dougal realized the guard he had battled would soon be the last of the Vanguard standing, but that didn’t make the man any less determined to kill him. Dougal pressed the man hard, and when Gullik’s axe sent a severed head sailing over his shoulder to bounce off the guard’s helmet, Dougal took advantage of the distraction to backhand the guard off his feet.

The guard sprawled back against the side of the tunnel, and Dougal had the tip of his ebon sword under the man’s unprotected chin before he could recover. The
man froze, and Dougal looked into his terrified eyes and said, “Give up.”

Knowing that he had no other option, the guard let go of his sword, and it clattered on the tunnel’s floor. A moment later, Gullik’s axe flew past Dougal’s side to bury itself in the man’s neck.

Dougal grabbed the guard to see if he could save him, but the man was already dead. Dougal spun to see the norn coming toward him to collect his axe.

“You stupid—” Dougal bit his tongue in an effort to control his fury. He was angrier at the norn than he’d been with the guard who’d been trying to kill him. “You didn’t need to do that!”

Gullik smiled at him grimly. “And you, good fellow, are welcome! It’s not every day I get to save a human’s life.”

Dougal gripped his sword so hard, he felt like his knuckles might pop out of his skin. “He surrendered!”

“He and his friends meant to kill us. They fired on us. They charged us, blades bared. This one chose his fate.” The norn clapped Dougal on the back. “If it makes you feel better, I will speak well of him when I tell this part of my saga. And of the others as well.”

Dougal surveyed the tunnel. The cooling corpses of the black-and-gold-uniformed guards who’d ambushed them littered the ground, their blood running down the tunnel that had brought them from the world above to spill into the river of sludge and be carried away. Most
of the rats had run off as quickly as they’d come, but a few still nibbled on the bodies of the guards they’d killed.

Every one of his compatriots seemed fine. The hail of bullets had ripped smoking channels through Ember’s orange fur but not her flesh. She wiped the blood from her claws, while Gullik did the same with his axe. Killeen leaned over one of the rat-eaten guards, examining him closely. Riona knelt on one knee, staring down in abject horror at the woman she’d been battling. From the amount of the female officer’s face that was missing, Dougal guessed that Ember had helped dispatch her.

Kranxx stood in front of his open pack, a bottle of bright blue fluid in his hand. “Anybody hurt?” he asked. “I’ve got a healing potion right here. I made it myself, and I’m eager to see how it turned out.”

The asura’s face fell when no one tried to claim his offered potion. “Anyone? Ember? No? All right, then.” He rewrapped the potion and placed it back in his pack. “I’ll just save it for later.”

Dougal kicked the rats off the fallen guards, and they scampered away. Killeen noticed him shooing them away and blushed, turning a deeper shade of green.

“It’s rare that I get to examine deaths this fresh,” she said.

Dougal nodded, then sheathed his blade and put his head in his hands. He heard Killeen start to mutter something, but he ignored it. He needed to shut it all out for a minute.

“The Ebon Vanguard is the law in this city,” Dougal
said, to himself more than anyone else. “And we just killed them.”

“Then it is good that we’re leaving,” said Ember. She arched her back and cracked her knuckles. “And better that we are not coming back.”

Riona put a hand on Dougal’s shoulder as he walked back toward the sewage tunnel. “I know,” she said. Her voice was soft and low, but her eyes were wide and troubled: mirrors of Dougal’s own. “They fired on us first. We had to defend ourselves.” Unspoken was the question,
If you had listened to me—if Ember had been kept in her chains—could this have been avoided?

Dougal grimaced as he looked down at the ruined corpse of the man he’d been fighting. He was younger than Dougal, but a stranger. If Dougal hadn’t left Ebonhawke, they might have served together in the Vanguard. Now the man was dead, and although Dougal’s hand hadn’t been the one that had killed him, he still felt at fault.

“We need to keep moving,” Ember said, heading for the dirty stream once more. “I doubt they came down here without telling anyone. There may be other patrols, and even if not, they will come looking for these people soon.”

Dougal was less worried about getting away from the Vanguard now than he was about watching any more of them die. He glanced back up from the intersection and saw a guard—the woman who Riona had been fighting—back on her feet. She stood before the sylvari, who was now bathed in a greenish, necromantic glow.

“Killeen!” Dougal shouted.

The sylvari turned and flashed him a proud smile, then gestured at the guard to show Dougal her handiwork.

The creature had once been one of their foes but was now a bloodstained wreck, one arm shredded and the other obviously dislocated but still holding her sword in a literal death grip. The left side of her face had been torn from her skull, and the skin that remained was as pale as dried bone. Her eyes lolled about in her head as she moved, unseeing and unfocused, twitching with drained life.

Killeen had used her death magic. She had made the body walk again.

Killeen! Stop it!” Dougal said. “Let her go! Now!”

The ferocity of his revulsion stunned him, but he could not deny it. He’d seen the sylvari use her magics to animate corpses before, but not with someone so freshly dead, and not with a fallen member of the Ebon Vanguard.

Killeen’s brow crinkled with concern. “What is it?” she said, examining the walking corpse. “Are her eyes falling out or something? I miss things like that sometimes.”

Killeen’s sincerity nearly deflated Dougal’s anger. When he spoke again, he struggled to keep his words measured and his tone even. “Killeen,” he said, “could you please let that woman rest in peace?”

“Why? Don’t you think she’ll make a good— Oh!” The sylvari clapped a hand to her forehead. When she pulled it away, regret twisted her face into a rueful frown. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t even think about how that might offend you.”

“It’s all right,” Dougal finally said. “Just let her go.”

“No!” said Kranxx. He raced forward, peering up at the walking corpse from below. “Don’t do that. She’s perfect just the way she is.”

“Dougal’s right,” said Riona, who looked just as distressed as Dougal felt. “This is beyond the pale. The guardswoman was just trying to do her job.”