Sunset of Lantonne (31 page)

It took just a few minutes for the order to be relayed back through the lines, and the golems lurched into motion. They stepped carefully at first, their every movement guided by their controllers, who were cautious about making sure they did not step on the soldiers or stomp too heavily until they were past the line of horsemen. Once the golems were past the last of the soldiers, the apprentices set them on their way, covering vast sections of the rising land with every huge stride.

“Do we call this a win for the day?” asked Commander Phillith, eyeing Therec. The old man had kept mostly to himself during the early parts of the battle, but had begun suggesting tactics in the last few hours. He was far wiser about tactics than Therec and worlds better than Dorus. “I’d like to give my boys and girls some good news.”

“Tell them whatever you want, but when those golems have done their work, take everyone back to the city,” Therec told him, nudging his horse to get it walking towards the battlefield.

Checking his saddlebags as he went, Therec found that he had enough food and water to last him a very short journey into the mountains, but it would be sparse eating during that time. He would need to be at his best if—likely when, not if—he was attacked. What he intended to do put him in almost certain danger.

“Are you sure, ambassador?” the commander asked him, eyeing the saddlebags as he rode up alongside Therec. “Traveling on your own is not something I advise in times of war.”

“As sure as I can be,” he admitted, squinting up at the steep mountainside and the top, where Altis lay. “If you would like to take my place…”

“Kiss my armored ass, necromancer. I’ll die in any battle you name, but I will not go to a slaughter.”

“I thought as much. I’ll return as swiftly as I’m able. I will either meet you on the road back to Lantonne or in the city itself.”

Therec looked around at the soldiers who were not heading back to the trebuchets or carrying the dead back to camp. Those few who were waiting for him to leave appeared not exactly malicious, but relieved. It was a welcome change from open hostility, but it was a long way from accepting him and his people. They now saw him as an unwelcome ally, but that was still more than he had expected.

With a flick of the reins, Therec set off up the road toward Altis. The early sections of the road—those parts from which he could look back and still see the faces of the soldiers—were rough but manageable, covered with deep tracks from the golems that had gone ahead of him. There were plenty of rocks strewn about from the attack and more that had fallen from the sides of the nearby foothills, but the major obstacle were the bodies of the broken zombies. Each time one groaned or reached in Therec’s direction, his horse shied away and tugged at the reins, as though reminding him that fleeing was still an option, even if likely not for long.

Within the hour, Therec passed the golems as they turned to retreat. He moved past the majority of the bodies and into sections of the road that had been untouched by the trebuchet fire. The road wound back up and into the mountains, slowly rising from the plains toward the peaks that Therec could no longer see behind the foothills.

Therec soon lost track of time as he made his way up three more switchbacks on the road. He had begun seeing more shattered rocks, and some areas of the road were so badly damaged he was forced to lead his horse on foot off the path and into the uneven woods nearby to ensure they would not have the road collapse beneath them. A single look at the sheer drop-offs where the road had been broken told him that he had no desire to get anywhere near those edges.

The daylight gradually faded as Therec moved past the last of the broken sections of the road. During one brief gap in the hills, he thought he could just barely make out the towers of Altis, but with the sun setting behind it, he could not be sure. It was still a long way away, making him wonder if his supplies would actually last him through a return trip to Lantonne.

Once the sun had fully set, the familiar chitter of animals in the woods was conspicuously absent. At first, Therec believed his horse’s footfalls were scaring off the local wildlife, but he soon realized that was not the case. Something else was out there and the animals of the region wanted nothing to do with it. His own horse whinnied and kicked occasionally, its eyes wide as it watched the woods.

Shadowy humanoid shapes skulked just off the path, turning to watch him pass. They stood in groups and lines, some bent as though their backs could no longer support them. Others lay on the ground, unable to stand, staring up at him from the edge of the trees. These were the stragglers of the army of the dead, the creatures his enemy used in defiance of any Turessian tradition. He felt pity for them, but after this much fighting, he could not let himself dwell on their fate.

Therec had spent his whole life dealing with the animated dead. He had been in charge of ten other preservers in his clan, each with around twenty ancestors to maintain. Never had he seen so many undead this close, all watching him with a hunger that made him uneasy. There was no doubt these creatures were different from the peaceful dead that filled his clan’s huts, even if the same style of magic had created them. Whatever was holding them back was absolute, keeping them from rushing in to kill him as they clearly wished to do. The animated corpses made his stomach clench, their decay bothering him far more than the fact that they were undead. To allow a corpse to be left in this condition was desecration of the memory of the dead to his people.

The horse he rode on was nearly impossible to control anymore, frantically looking between the waiting zombies. With nowhere to run, the beast pushed on as Therec directed, though he expected if an escape route presented itself, the beast would take off, with or without him.

Coming around another sharp switchback in the path, Therec yanked the reins to stop his horse. The animal was more than happy to obey, though it began looking around at the unmoving shapes in the woods for somewhere it could go in a hurry. He could barely stay on it for how hard it fought him.

Standing at the center of the road no more than ten feet ahead of him was a man…or what had once been one. Even in the near-dark before moonrise, Therec could see what appeared to be a shadowy cloud lingering over the man. The entire moving shadow had the appearance of a fire billowing around the pale standing corpse, though instead of giving off light, it consumed it.

Beside the corpse was one of Lantonne’s golems, standing perfectly still with one metal fist held over the undead as though it had frozen mid-swing. As soon as Therec stopped his horse, the undead motioned towards the golem and it backed away obediently, clearing the road.

As Therec approached, his horse bucked again, throwing him backwards to the ground. He tried his best to roll with the landing, but the uneven road and rock-strewn terrain tore into his robes and the flesh beneath. Sliding to a stop, Therec watched helplessly as the horse ran into the woods, followed seconds later by the animal’s screams as the waiting undead in the forest descended on it.

Therec brushed the pebbles from his arms and sat up, finding that the single creature in the road was walking toward him. Raising a hand toward the undead, Therec prepared to defend himself, not really knowing if he could even do anything to help himself. Whatever the creature was, Therec had never seen anything quite like it. If it could stop a golem, it was far stronger than he was.

The shadowed corpse stopped several steps from Therec, though its rictus grin widened as though it was resisting the urge to run at him. Slowly, the black cloud that lingered around the corpse descended into the creature’s body and its posture relaxed. The shadowy cloud had nearly vanished into the undead when it blinked and its eyes took on a faint red glow. Shaking its head, the creature looked around as if trying to remember where it was.

“Ah, my esteemed guest,” the pale corpse said as it noticed Therec lying in front of it. Its voice was thick, as though the decay in its jaw limited the speaking ability of whatever was controlling it. “I had wondered how long it would be before you came to see me. This shell has been waiting for some time. I left him out here for you. Please, follow this humble servant.”

Without any hint of the anger and hostility that had existed a moment earlier, the corpse spun gracefully on a rotted boot heel, then set off toward Altis. It stopped after a few dozen steps, turning part ways to stare back at Therec. “Hurry along, Therec,” it told him, smiling as best it could with the decay that marred much of its face. “I cannot control every action of all these undead. If you stay behind, my ability to keep you alive will be greatly diminished. Sooner or later, one of them will find you too enticing to not attack. If your concern is for the golem, trust that I will send others to fetch it. I may already have a purpose in mind for it.”

At a total loss for words, Therec got up. Burning scuffs filled with gravel covered much of the skin of his shoulders and one leg, but he ignored the pain and limped after the creature that waited near a turn in the road. As he went, he funneled a small fraction of his strength into magic that gradually mended his wounds as he walked, easing his pain and smoothing his gait. By the time he had fallen into step behind the strange corpse, his shoulders and leg felt no more battered than if he had worn rough fabric for a day.

The undead led the way, soon diverting from the main road to a narrow trail through the deep woods of the mountains. This new path was steep and caused Therec to slip often, but it took a relatively direct route toward the city, cutting across several of the road’s switchbacks. Whereas a wagon or horse would have never made it up the rocky trail, for a pair of humans it was considerably faster and would have been easy for Therec to miss on his own, especially in the dark with hostile undead filling the woods.

At that thought, Therec looked around for the shapes he had seen among the trees. Occasionally, he thought he saw one or more, but the zombies stood so still the dark made them blend perfectly with the trees lining the road. Not seeing where they were definitely made Therec more nervous than he had been.

The red-eyed corpse pushed them at a brutal pace, rarely checking to see if Therec could keep up with it. By the time they reached the last section of road that led directly into the city, Therec was panting and barely able to hear his own footsteps over the pounding of his heart. Thankfully, the creature stopped at that point, giving him time to catch his breath and evaluate the city before them.

Therec had believed Lantonne to be a wonder in these lands, comparing it often in his mind with the small and often temporary villages of the Turessian people. Aside from old temples and ancient crypts where wisdom of the long-dead was kept, those from Turessi did little in the way of building permanent structures.

Lantonne had been awe-inspiring to Therec, and he had believed during his arrival that his masters had sent him there to collect information about how the southerners managed to build and maintain such a vast city.

Now Therec faced a city just as wondrous—perhaps more so when he thought about people building such a place so far up in the mountains, where many resources were unavailable and breathing would have been difficult for the slaves that constructed those walls.

The city lay nestled between the twin mountain peaks, its high walls rising far over the road. Sheer cliffs lined much of the mountains on either side of the city, providing no clear way to attack without coming straight up the road toward it. Past the walls, Therec saw four towers that rose nearly as high as the mountains on either side.

Unlike Lantonne, Altis appeared to entirely house its nearby population within the walls, judging by the lack of any village outside. To allow for such pedestrian traffic, he spotted smaller gates set into the walls. The larger main gates beside them were closed and heavy portcullises were down, preventing entry by anything that could not fit through the smaller doors single-file.

Along the battlements far overhead, Therec saw dozens of shapes leaning forward over the wall to watch him approach. With each step closer, he could make out the dark empty eye sockets of the watchers more clearly, and soon even saw that some of the creatures held large stones at the edge of the wall, waiting for a cue to drop them on an attacker.

Without warning, the corpse that led Therec to the edge of the city collapsed with a sigh. For the briefest moment, Therec thought he saw the dark cloud leave the body and drift toward the city walls. Whether what he saw was true or not, the creature’s eyes stared blankly, the glow gone.

Therec stayed where he was, studying the kill zone at the base of the wall. He looked around the area for any indication of anyone who had come before. Aside from some darker sections of dirt that could have been the remnants of bloodstains, he could not be sure of much. If there had been fallen stones, they had been removed.