Skulduggery Pleasant: Last Stand of Dead Men (32 page)

She looked round at Skulduggery, Vex and Saracen as they picked their way slowly through the remains of what had once been a town. Ravel, Ghastly and Shudder stood to one side. They spoke a few quiet words to each other, then stopped and looked solemn. Valkyrie didn’t want to ask a question. Asking a question would lead to an answer, which could lead to a decision, which could lead to more walking. She was quite happy to sit on this slab and rest her feet. But, while she didn’t want to ask a question, there was a question that needed to be asked.

Scowling at herself, she lifted her head. “Why have we stopped? Wolfsong can’t be that far away now. What’s so interesting about a bunch of old ruins?”

Surprisingly, it was Shudder who came forward. He stood beside her, the wind playing with his coat, but didn’t look at her. Instead, his eyes glanced at the darkening sky, then settled on the horizon.

“Night falls early here,” he said. “And the fog is coming. See it? It’s rolling down from the mountains. We don’t have long.”

Despite Ghastly’s wonderful garments, Valkyrie shivered, and reluctantly got to her feet. “Then we’d better hurry, right?”

“Hurry?” Shudder said. “To where?”

“To Wolfsong. That’s where we’re going, isn’t it?”

Shudder looked at her, his eyes gentle. “Valkyrie,” he said, “do you not think we should have come to Wolfsong by now?”

“What do you mean? It’s up the road.”

“No, Valkyrie. We are in Wolfsong. This is all that remains of the town the wraiths destroyed, one hundred years ago.”

Valkyrie paled. “No. We were in Wolfsong this morning. Wolfsong is a proper town. It has proper houses and people in it. We talked to them. We talked to Griff. We slept in its beds. We had
breakfast
.”

“We thought we had, but our bellies were fooled along with our eyes and ears. The building we were in is over there. It’s nothing but a few stones and dead grasses.”

“But Griff—”

“Griff is long dead, Valkyrie. They all are.”

he fog rolled in, down from the mountains, and they watched it come. When it hit the ruins, it rebuilt them, walls fading up from nothing, roofs and windows and doors becoming solid as the fog snaked through the narrow streets, and it brought with it people.

At first they were whispers and shadows, half-glimpsed out of the corner of Valkyrie’s eye, and then they were solid, and passing in front of her, smiling and laughing and chatting to each other. When the cold fog covered the whole town, she felt her magic dampen, and she glanced at Skulduggery.

“They don’t look like ghosts,” she said softly, her breath frosting.

“No they don’t,” he responded. He said something in French to a passing lady, who answered him and laughed, and walked on, disappearing into the gloom.

There was a scream, from up ahead.

Valkyrie ran for the source, the Dead Men all around her. There were people running, and more screams. Panic soaked into the air and spread outwards. She could feel her own nerves starting to jangle. Something big came at her and she dodged, stumbled, and a horse galloped by, and someone ran into her, tripped over her, scrambled up and ran on. Valkyrie got to her feet, looked around. The fog quenched the sounds around her, and she couldn’t see more than ten steps ahead. Her hands were freezing. She pulled her gloves from her jacket, put them on, wishing she could summon a flame to warm herself and light her way. A woman ran by, eyes wide with fear, and quickly vanished into the grey darkness.

“Skulduggery?” Valkyrie called. “Ghastly?”

Muffled cries came from somewhere to her left, and behind her in the distance there was a scream that ended as abruptly as it began. She took the stick from her back, but the sigils refused to glow. Scowling, she returned it, and pressed forward. A shape loomed in front of her, big and wide and unmoving. She put a hand to the wall and followed it round till she got to a door. It may have been a ghost door, but the wood felt just as solid as any door she’d ever seen – just as locked, too. She carried on, reached the corner. A man came running and went stumbling. He sprawled through the mud. Someone else stepped from the fog, reached down to help him up. No, not help. Those hands gripped him, either side of the face. The man screamed and the hands twisted his head all the way round. The scream died with the crack of cartilage.

Valkyrie ducked back. The thing, the wraith, so tall and grey – grey skin, grey clothes, like a person who’d had all the colour leached out of him – hadn’t even turned its head in her direction. She slid away, following the wall back the way she’d come, keeping her eyes on the corner, making sure that nothing was coming after her.

The wraith walked round the corner, its eyes shining through the dark. Valkyrie’s breath left her and she turned, scrambling into a run. She ran from mud to grass to mud again, almost into the waiting arms of another cold creature, but a hand gripped her shoulder, dragged her back.

“Other way,” Skulduggery whispered.

They ran towards gunshots, found Vex and Ravel emptying their pistols into an approaching wraith without slowing it down in the slightest. Shudder strode up behind it, thrust his sword into its back. The blade bounced off, but it made the wraith turn, and Shudder slammed the hilt into its face. The wraith caught his wrist, closing its fingers round his bare skin, and Shudder grunted in pain and fell to his knees. Ravel charged, shoving the wraith off balance while Vex pulled Shudder up again. Valkyrie glimpsed Shudder’s wrist as he stumbled past her. His flesh was red and bubbling where the wraith had touched him.

Skulduggery jumped at the wraith, both feet hitting its chest, while Vex swung his sword into the backs of its legs. The wraith toppled, landed in the mud, and Ravel picked up a rock, brought it down on its head. It made a dull thump and muck squelched, and the wraith clutched at Ravel’s ankle. Vex kicked its hand away, allowing Ravel to bring the rock down a second and third time. And a fourth. A fifth. Each time more violent than the last.

“That doesn’t appear to be bothering it too much,” Skulduggery noted, wiping the mud from the back of his trousers. “We should probably go before it gets up.”

Ravel brought the rock down one final time, then cursed in frustration and staggered to his feet. The wraith sat up calmly. Its grey face was old and lined, devoid of expression. It started to stand.

“We’re leaving,” said Ravel, walking quickly. “We need to get out of this fog.”

As they hurried away, Valkyrie took out her mask and pulled it on. She threaded her hair through the hole in the back and fixed the other holes over her eyes and mouth. Vex glanced at her.

“Got a spare one of those?” he asked.

“Sorry.”

He shrugged. “That’s what I get for not being Ghastly’s favourite.”

They stopped suddenly as horses galloped by. A wraith clung to one, brought it crashing down somewhere in the fog ahead. Valkyrie heard its panicked whinnying, and then there was a wet sound and the whinnying stopped.

They adjusted their course. Valkyrie watched a man push his neighbour into the path of a wraith, only to stumble into another who’d been approaching from behind. Their fate was swallowed by the gloom and the fog, and only their screams escaped. They passed a woman sitting on the ground behind a stall. She looked at them fearfully as they passed, but didn’t say a word.

A shape that moved too fast to be a wraith crashed into Valkyrie from the side. Hands grabbed her, pulled her away from the others. She cried out and saw Skulduggery lunge after her, but a moment later there was a wall of fog between them.

“Your fault,” the man said into her ear. His hands were rough and he kept her moving, didn’t give her a chance to regain her footing. “What did you do to bring them back? What did you do?”

Griff’s eyes were wide and his face was pale.

As white as a ghost.

“We didn’t do anything,” Valkyrie said, tried to say, and then he flung her into the mud and stood over her, trembling with fear and rage.

“You brought them down to us. They stayed up there for a hundred years, but you brought them down to us.”

“We were here,” she said. “We were here the whole time.”

“They’re here because of you,” Griff said, eyes flickering to the shapes approaching slowly from all sides. “So I’ll give you to them.” He turned, and ran.

A wraith stepped through and Valkyrie backed away. Scalding hot fingers closed round her head from behind, tightened their grip even as she thrashed. The wraith in front closed in and she tried kicking it back, but it just took hold of her foot. And then another took her right arm, and another her left, and a fifth wraith took her other leg, and she was lifted and stretched between them, like they were going to pull her apart. She screamed, and the scream became a wail that ended in a sob. She could feel the heat through her black clothes, trying but unable to blister her flesh. The wraiths pulled harder and she felt her joints straining to hold together. Though her head was being pulled straight back, she caught sight of another wraith drifting from the gloom. Her jacket had ridden up high, her T-shirt with it, leaving her belly exposed to the cold air. The wraith splayed its hand, brought it slowly down to rest against her.

She screamed again as it burned, a tortured scream that cut through her throat. The wraith pressed harder and then there was the sound of hooves, and two horses burst from the fog, Vex and Ghastly on their backs and a rope tied between them.

The horses passed on either side and the rope hit the wraiths at chest height. Valkyrie dropped as the wraiths were taken off their feet, some of them dragged after the horses, others sprawling in the muck. Skulduggery and Saracen came straight after. Skulduggery scooped her into his arms and Saracen used a pitchfork to shove the nearest wraith back a few steps, then they ran. Valkyrie’s gloved fingertips curled into the skin around the hand-shaped burn mark on her stomach and she bit her lip to keep from crying out with every step. Skulduggery jumped over a fallen wraith and followed Saracen, barely managing to keep him in sight. They rounded a dark corner and Valkyrie heard the footsteps change from mud to a hardened surface.

Saracen stopped ahead of them, turned, looking about. “Can you hear them? Which way did they go?”

A wraith lunged from the fog and Saracen shrieked, hit the creature so hard the pitchfork handle broke in two.

“Do
not
jump out at me!” Saracen roared, driving the splintered remains of the pitchfork into the wraith’s mouth. “I
hate it
when people jump out at me!”

Galloping hooves thundered closer, and before Valkyrie knew what was happening Shudder was pulling her up on to his horse. She cried out in pain, but held on as he spurred the horse forward, and they followed the road straight through the gloom. His hands gripped the reins, his right wrist badly burnt. Seconds later, the fog thinned, and then they had the night sky above them and clear air around, and Valkyrie felt magic flood her body.

The horse beneath them wasn’t there any more, but Shudder held Valkyrie and landed smoothly, putting her back on her feet. She faced the fog that surrounded the town of Wolfsong like a great wall, and pulled the mask from her head. Beneath it, she was sweating. She stuffed the mask in her jacket and clicked her fingers. Thanks to Ghastly, that action still generated a spark even through the glove, and she held fire in one hand while the other curled protectively round her belly.

The other horses came through. The moment they passed beyond the fog they faded to nothing, and Ghastly and Vex dropped to the ground. Saracen sprinted out after them.

“Not fair,” he panted, glaring at them.

“You need the exercise,” Vex said, his hand lighting up. “Might want to get out of the way, though.”

Saracen turned, saw the wraith coming up behind him. Vex let loose with a stream of energy that caught the wraith square in the chest. It moved it back a step, but didn’t burn through. Ghastly hurled a fireball at another wraith that walked out next.

Saracen backed up beside them. “Damn it. I kind of thought they’d be confined to the fog.”

“Me, too,” Vex growled.