Chapter Thirty-Seven
The Cave
Davin’s sword almost leapt into his hands. He saw Maerillus draw his, too. Davin held his blade in low defensive stance, Maerillus held his high and aggressively. Bug screamed again.
“Niam! Niam!” she cried out in a voice that could have frozen a fire at full blaze.
Davin spun around, praying that she was wrong, and his heart filled with dread as he did. Standing in the entrance behind them, silhouetted by the light pouring in from outside crouched a partly human, partly vulpine form. Scythe-like claws tipped impossibly long arms. The beast had an elongated snout with tusks curling up from its lower jaw, and it was panting like an old mountain lion hungry and desperate for food.
The air within the cave became thick with the putrid stench of rotting meat. Filthy, tattered clothing still clung in places to the creature’s frame, and Davin recognized it immediately.
“Jalt!” he called out, hoping to distract it, but the thing’s eyes continued to focus on Bug. White frothy drool ringed the best’s mouth. It was too far-gone now to respond. Niam lifted his staff and twirled it around furiously as he sprung between the trall and bug, letting out a savage cry of rage. “You stay away from her!”
The trall snarled, but Niam was undeterred. He drove toward it, jabbing the end of his weapon in its face, causing the thing to back away, snapping with bared teeth at the staff, trying to grab it in its maw to shake it loose from Niam’s grip.
Davin wasted no time, pushing Bug to the safest spot in the cave, praying that nothing else set its sights on her. He then leapt toward the first undead creature that emerged from the opening, refusing to give it time to rise. “Go for its head!” he yelled to Maerillus. When his weapon struck the copse, the force of the blow travelled all the way up to his shoulder.
Maerillus swiftly liberated the thing’s head from its body, and moved in two graceful steps to the next target, where he brought his blade down across the abomination’s neck, severing it. The head rolled like a ball across the cave floor in a macabre game of nine-o-pins.
Two came out at the same time, brainlessly clawing at one another as they groped themselves like passionless lovers. White bone protruded through the fingertips of both corpses where they had worn away the bloodless flesh clawing at the cold rock. This was what they had heard scraping at the wall from the other side.
Backing off, Davin allowed the things to come forward. He wanted to get them into the open, to destroy every last one of them. In order to do that, he couldn’t allow the bodies to pile up at the entrance. More came pouring through the opening. Davin took out one with a sideswiping blow. Maerillus pushed another to the wall and drew his blade across its neck in a clean slice. The blade only managed to partially decapitate the thing. Its head fell backward, held to the body by a dry flap of tough skin and muscle. All force animating the cadaver fled, and it collapsed like a sack of old root vegetables.
Davin danced back just in time to avoid the outstretched hand of a corpse that had wormed its way across the ground like a drying leech. Maerillus grunted. He fought off two at the same time. As one tried to get an arm around his middle, he slipped out of its grasp before it could crush him in its powerful grip. Davin moved in and brought his sword down on the thing in a powerful arc, cleaving its head in two. Then, he spun around and took out the other one’s leg by severing its tendon below the knee. The thing collapsed and began trying to regain its footing. At the same time, the lifeless husk of woman hitched toward Maerillus. She wore a filthy smock now stuck to her body by fluids that had long ago leaked out of her and then dried. His nose crinkled in disgust. He kicked her corpse, tripping it over the abomination lamed by Davin.
Maerillus was on the woman’s corpse in an instant. He stepped on the thing’s back to keep it still. Snarling in disgust, he levered his blade beneath the corpse’s neck, savagely drawing it up and to the side.
Davin dispatched the last one as it still tried to pick itself up with one working leg. “You think that’s all of them?” he growled.
Maerillus rasped, “No idea!”
From the corner, Bug squeaked, “Niam!”
Davin cursed. His friend was outside with the worst threat facing them. “I’m on it Madeline!” he said quickly and sprinted to the entrance. As he ran, he heard Maerillus warning her to keep away from the corpses.
Davin emerged into the waning afternoon light. Above them the setting sun painted a bloody tableau across the sky. And in front of him, Niam pulled back just in time to avoid being gutted by a furious sweep of the trall’s long arm. With a terrified yell, he brought his staff down in a series of one-two strikes across the trall’s body.
The creature let out a high-pitched cry that sounded disturbingly human. When it flinched, Niam used the reaction as a chance to move in and launch a crippling blow at its jaw.
He miscalculated the angle of attack.
The bottom of his staff sailed harmlessly past its head. The trall’s eyes narrowed in pure hatred and it leapt at Niam, raking his leg with a wicked blow that took his feet out from under him. Niam screamed and went sprawling across the ground.
The monster jumped, and Niam barely managed to roll out of its way. Hooked claws dug into his coat, nearly ripping the fabric from his body.
Davin rushed into the fray before beast had a chance to mangle his friend. The trall looked up and growled. A mane of bristling hair stood at the back of its neck like the stiff quills of an angry porcupine. “Come on you stinking sac of guts! Come at me!” Davin screamed, waving his sword in its face. Backpedaling each time the thing lunged, Davin yelled, “That’s right, pay attention to me!” He desperately needed to distract it, so he taunted it, drawing it farther and farther away from Niam, who scrabbled across the rock to a more defensible position.
A trail of blood followed Niam as he pulled himself up on a rock. The sight terrified Davin. The new jolt of fear caused the power flowing through his body to suddenly dissipate. His gift evaporated. Now only fear remained, but Davin couldn’t let up. Gritting his teeth, he drove the monster back to gain enough space to shout in a panicky voice, “You okay Niam?”
“Just finish this thing,” Niam moaned.
Davin knew he was going to have to do something to bring this to a terminally quick end. Niam was hurt and Maerillus might still be in trouble. They were too divided and Davin couldn’t put an arrow through the trall’s head. The last thing he wanted to do was to get inside of its reach. He knew the thing would rip his guts out if he did.
Then he suddenly realized where they were.
“Come on!” he bellowed. “Come on Jalt! I never liked you as a person and the only difference now is that you smell better!”
The trall’s lips rippled in fury. It only had eyes for Davin, and a primal anger rolled off of the thing like heat from a smith’s forge. That was exactly what Davin counted on. He launched himself at it, allowing one more long-armed sweep to whistle past his face. Then, instead of backing away, he darted inside of the beast’s reach and brought his sword up in a well-timed uppercut that sliced shallowly into the thing’s flesh just above its elbow.
The trall screamed in fury, retreating quickly. As it stepped backward, never taking its eyes off of Davin, he continued to press it, meeting its swipes with the cutting edge of his blade. The monster’s face stretched back in pain and blind rage. Beneath its lips, rows of teeth extended, coated with a murderous froth. That was when Davin made his final move. He ran at the trall, counting on the thing’s instinctive reactions. He wasn’t disappointed.
The trall instinctively leapt back . . . back and over the rock’s edge, where it plummeted forty feet down, bouncing limply across the rocks below in impacts that made Davin wince even as his heart beat triumph
antly.
Quickly, Davin bent and picked up a heavy, oblong stone. He hefted it into the air over his head and threw it down to where the trall lay sprawled but still alive, and watched with murderous satisfaction as the rock landed on the monster’s squirming form with an audible crunch.
The trall jerked once and moved no more.
Davin made his way back to Niam and was relieved to see that there wasn’t as much blood as he feared.
“It’s not too bad,” Niam told him. “Lucky for me Jalt had bad aim.”
Davin took Niam’s hand and helped him up. His smaller friend winced as he slowly put his weight on the leg. “Climbing up’s going to hurt,” he muttered.
When they emerged into the cave, Maerillus was checking the bodies of the undead he had dispatched. Only one more had crawled out of the darkness, and its head lay several inches from its body. “I think this may be it,” he said grimly.
“We’ve got to check and see,” Niam said distastefully. “I saw something else within the cavern on the other side.”
Maer nodded his head. “We can make a couple of torches that might burn long enough to have a short look inside.’
While Maerillus worked quickly to set up the fire, Niam pulled Bug aside to soothe her frazzled nerves. Davin looked down at the corpses. More women than men lay across the cave floor, and most of them had tattoos inked into their leathery skin at various places along their bodies. He could only guess at the significance of this.
After Niam lit his torch he took a deep breath and bent over, disappearing into the opening. Davin followed closely with his blade ready. The short passage opened up into a larger blackness, and Davin could tell by the echo that they had stumbled onto something big.
“How big is this place?” Davin wondered aloud.
“I can just make out several branches ahead,” Niam said, moving father into the bedrock beneath the hillside.
Davin saw where the edge of the firelight kissed the rock. In places around them the stone overhead wept fat tears, which formed small pools, pellucid and clear as the finest crystal or glass. The rock ahead sank into itself where passages pushed farther into the distant darkness. Davin heard the crunch of feet moving over wet gravel.
“Movement!”
“I heard it too,” Niam told him. His voice grew weary and dropped an octave. “And I see them. They’re the walking dead.”
Both he and Niam began backing out toward the entrance, which was good, because the torches were almost spent. They turned and Davin allowed Niam to exit first. Ahead of them, the sound of footsteps moving in the inky blackness brought death and the dead inexorably nearer. Davin turned and bent to make his way into the light. Once he was there, he joined with Niam and Maerillus to push the stone seal back.
Maerillus exclaimed once the thing grated back into place. “What did you see in there?”
After Niam and Davin told him, Maerillus whistled uncomfortably. “Where do you suppose the passages lead?”
“Those go in the direction we travelled,” he said.
“Toward my family’s estate,” Maerillus frowned.
“And Joachim’s . . . and Kreeth’s,” Niam said.
“Where are all of those bodies coming from?” Niam complained. “I mean, if they all were taken from the Lake Valleys, people would notice . . . wouldn’t they?”
“Yes,” Maerillus said. “They would. Unless the sorcerer can animate bodies after they have died.”
Both Davin and Maerillus looked at Niam as if they thought he had an answer. “That’s one for Kine to say.”
“Most of the corpses we took down were women, and none of them had anything that might identify them beyond tattoos on their hands and arms.”
“Tattoos?” Maerillus’s voice held an inkling of an idea.
Davin took him to the closest female’s headless cadaver, where he looked down and said, “See, on the hand?” Then, looking at the damage his blade had done, he mumbled, “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep anytime soon—if ever again.”
Maerillus bent to examine the small symbol drawn in blue ink into her skin. “I know what these are,” he said solemnly. “This tattoo is the mark of a sailor’s woman.”
“She was married to a sailor?” Niam asked.
Maerillus’s laugh held no humor. “No. Think of her as property that belongs to the sailor’s guild. She was a pleasure maid.”
From behind them, Bug spoke up in a worried voice, “It’s going to be dark, soon.”
“You’re right,” Niam told her. “And we’ll be going shortly.”