Akiri: Dragonbane Page 15

  Akiri snatched him up by his shoulder and shoved him up against the wall. “What is happening? Speak!”

  “The master has come. He demands his tithe.”

  “Tithe? Who is your master?”

  Ferdin cocked his head. “Yarrow, of course.”

  Akiri felt a thrill of excitement at the mention of the necromancer’s name. “What is the tithe he demands?” When Ferdin did not answer, Akiri drew his dagger and pressed it to his throat. “I do enjoy repeating myself.”

  “The people,” he stammered. “Those who do not bow before Barastyr.”

  Akiri recognized the name: a lesser minion of Xarbaal, general of the armies of the damned.

  “You have sold your soul to a demon?”

  “He doesn’t belong here, Ferdin,” an older woman on her knees moaned. She hugged a basket to her chest. “You shouldn’t have let him in.”

  Akiri ignored her. “So, what is your role in this? You lure travelers in to be killed?”

  “No. We don’t know when our master will come. But when he does, we are forbidden to interfere.”

  The now-familiar moans of the undead mingled with the terrified screams of the living out beyond the safety of the tavern. Akiri noticed a medallion hanging over the door, and saw the name of their dark god etched upon it. He should have marked it before. He cursed himself and reached up for it, but Ferdin snatched at his arm, pure fear draining the blood from his face.

  “Are you insane?” he shouted, trying desperately to stop Akiri from claiming the medallion.

  Akiri looked around the room with utter contempt.

  He grabbed Ferdin by the throat and tossed him aside. “I think it is time you met your god,” he said.

  Ferdin let out a feral cry as Akiri removed the medallion and shoved it into his pocket. Reaching to his belt, the barkeeper grabbed a small knife and scrambled to his feet.

  Akiri wouldn’t waste good steel on this lot. He caught Ferdin’s wrist and twisted the bones hard until he heard them snap. Barely had the knife clattered to the floor before the pounding of fists hammered the door, accompanied by the baleful moans and pitiful wails of the creatures on the other side.

  “What have you done?” Ferdin cried, trying to push himself to his hands and knees.

  Akiri delivered a brutal kick to the man’s gut, which doubled him over. He looked down with undisguised contempt. “Why do you fear? You pray to Barastyr, do you not? Those creatures outside are here to take you to him. Rejoice.”

  He heard pleas for mercy and prayers for salvation, all of them now directed at Mishna. He felt like telling them that Mishna would not listen. But even speaking to these people was a waste. They were wretched cowards. And they deserved their fate.

  He returned to the room where Seyla was waiting. The boy hadn’t moved a muscle. Akiri knelt beside the bed and took the medallion from his pocket. “Lean forward,” he said, and put it around the boy’s neck. Being that it clearly warded the undead away from the tavern, he hoped it would have the same effect on Seyla. But if his luck continued as it had thus far, it might just draw them to him, he thought bitterly. Or he might well have broken the magic by removing it from above the door. It either worked or it didn’t. He couldn’t waste time worrying about it. Akiri snatched his pack and slung it over his shoulder, then lifted Seyla in one arm. He left the room and headed for the back way out.

  He could hear the terrified cries coming from down the hall. Why didn’t they run?

  “Shouldn’t we help them?” Seyla asked.

  “You cannot help cowards,” he said.

  It didn’t matter one way or the other; long before they reached the back door, he heard the same incessant banging as the dead demanded entry.

  Akiri drew his sword and held it easily in his free hand. He put the boy down and told him to stand behind as he approached the door. His leg shot out, his boot striking just beside the handle, driving it hard forward. The door tore from its hasp and slammed into the face of the foul creature standing on the other side. The dead man fell in a whorish sprawl, flapping around on his back. The space where he’d stood quickly filled as several more bodies stumbled toward them.

  Akiri leapt over the body, ready to cut a path for them around to the corner of the building if need be, but the dead completely ignored them. One after another they entered the tavern, dragging their feet listlessly across the hardwood floor.

  The medallion was working; for now at least they were invisible to the dead, or the dead were blind to them. Whichever way around the enchantment worked, it didn’t matter. The only thing that was important was that it worked.

  They rounded the side of the tavern and entered the main avenue.

  Dozens of the undead pressed up against one another, scraping and pounding at the buildings, trying to claw their way inside. He saw others wandering aimlessly. There was fresh blood on their clothes, suggesting their deaths were recent.

  From the direction of the marsh, he saw a group of merchants had formed a line and were battling desperately for their lives. Akiri felt a pang of pity. They would fall, but it wasn’t his place to save them.

  He looked for anyone wearing robes amongst their number. But saw no one who he could identify as possibly being Yarrow.

  One of the corpses passed within a few feet of them, its decaying hands outstretched as it clawed at nothing but air. It paused and turned, as though it had caught the faintest trace of their scent, but lost it. Akiri wasn’t about to take any chances. In a blur of motion, he took its head and started off at a dead run. Several of the desperate merchants tried to follow, only to be caught and hauled down by the undead pouring out of the marsh.

  He didn’t look back.

  Near the last building, Seyla let out a cry of pain. The medallion was burning red hot against his skin. Akiri snatched it from his neck and tossed it aside mere heartbeats before it erupted in flames that burned so hot the disc melted beneath them.

  It was as if a veil had been lifted. The undead saw them.

  Akiri looked back. Most of the merchants were fleeing toward a large warehouse off to the north. To his horror, those who had been slain began to rise once more, adding to the ranks of the dead.

  Akiri was about to be surrounded and vastly outnumbered. With Seyla beside him, he could not hope to fight so many without them taking the boy.

  He made the only decision he could.

  Three dead men with the perfect pale faces of fresh kills stood between him and the sanctuary of the building where the merchants had fled. On the plus side, he would have a wall to his back and other swords fighting at his side. It could have been considerably worse, given the lie of the land. Moving as fast as he could, Akiri bolted back into the village, trying to avoid the dead rather than engage with them. Even so, before he was done, two heads rolled from foul shoulders and a third corpse was all but cleaved in two through the torso.

  He reached the door.

  It was locked.

  Akiri hammered his fist against the timbers. “Let us in,” he shouted. It wasn’t like he could break it down. That would defeat his purpose.

  He heard voices, initially terrified, but the words were unintelligible. They didn’t seem to be moving, so he pounded again. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw that a pack of undead was converging on his position. He couldn’t do a head count, but it was easily three score. More.

  He was about to hammer on the door again when it opened.

  Through the crack of shadow opening onto the other side he saw a younger man, scarcely out of his teens, in ridiculously fine silks. He clutched a curved sword like it might actually help him stay alive. “Get in. Quickly!”

  Akiri entered the building, and they closed and barred the door behind him. He sat Seyla down. Eight men were huddled in a group a few feet away. Akiri looked around the interior. Hundreds of crates were stacked in neat rows, forming a long maze, and a staircase led up to a second floor. Oil lanterns hung from hooks along the wall and a desk wa
s positioned just inside the entrance.

  “Is there another way in?” he asked.

  “No idea,” replied the merchant. Of the group he appeared the calmest.

  “Check. If there is, bar it with anything you can find.” He pointed at two of the others. “You – help him.”

  They nodded, glad of someone to tell them what to do. The three men headed off, and Akiri Immediately dragged the desk in front of the door and called for men to bring the heaviest crates they could manage and start piling them up. Not that it would stop the dead indefinitely, but it was all about buying time initially. Anything that slowed them down might give them a fighting chance.

  “What should I do?” asked Seyla. His young face wore an oddly passive expression.

  “Go upstairs,” Akiri replied. “Find somewhere to hide and don’t move until I come get you.”

  This time Seyla simply nodded and took off toward the stairs.

  The enemy was at the door.

  He heard them moving about. It was no longer random or listless; there was a purpose to it. There were several windows along the front and sides of the building, but mercifully they were more than ten feet above the ground and out of easy reach.

  The three men returned a couple of minutes later, their faces covered in sweat and hair plastered flat to their scalps. They were breathing heavily, obviously stressed by the exertion of barricading the door.

  “It’s done,” the colorfully dressed merchant assured him. “It will take a small army to break through.”

  A pity they have one, Akiri thought.

  “Line up here,” he ordered, indicating an area a few feet from the front entrance. “When they come through, you have to take their heads. No hesitation. It’s the only way to stop them. The head has to come off completely or they will keep coming.”

  The wall shook in response to the dozens of relentlessly pounding fists. He saw a chink of light around the frame of the door as the wood heaved under the pressure of the assault. It wouldn’t hold for long.

  Several of the men wept openly. The others trembled and shuffled their feet nervously. These men were definitely not warriors. But he had seen this before in new recruits. He had always left encouragement to the generals and commanders of the regular army. In the Dul’Buhar, he had no need for bolstering courage. But many times he had witnessed men find heart through the words of their leader.

  “I know you are frightened,” he said. “And I know you think there is no hope. But I have been in countless battles and seen men overcome far greater odds. If you hold on to your courage, you will live to tell this tale to your children. The ruin of man beats down the door. Show the gods that you are worthy of song and send these beasts back to the hell from which they came.” He placed his hand firmly on the young merchant’s shoulder and grinned. “And if death does find you, die like men…with valor and honor. And I will see you in the Halls of Gorgaroth, where the brave live forever, and we will drink many toasts to our deeds.”

  Several of the older men bowed their heads in silent prayer. The rest seemed to find a measure of courage.

  The young merchant smiled. “I supposed this is as good a way to die as any. But as I pray to Mishna and not the Acharian war god, I’m afraid you will have to toast in my absence. But perhaps she will allow me to visit.”

  Akiri laughed. “Perhaps.”

  The banging on the walls ceased and the silence that followed was eerie in its absoluteness. Then the scrape of wood on stone betrayed them; the desk and crates were being shoved back by the sheer weight of their attackers. Rasping snarls and bone-chilling groans filled the confines of the warehouse. The sounds chilled blood and soul.

  Akiri stepped into the gap to take the first groping hand off at the wrist as the dead man tried to clutch at anything within its grasp. The blade sheered through bone easily. Inside the warehouse was absolutely still, but outside the screeching cries of the undead were deafening. The noise was unlike any battlefield he’d fought upon. It seemed to come from everywhere.

  And that was when he realized what was happening: they’d breached the rear door. The dead were coming at them from all sides.

  He spun on his heels only to see half a dozen more walking corpses shuffling mindlessly forward. They carried all manner of weapons, makeshift ones as well as blades. He was sure he’d seen a couple of them arguing with traders earlier in the day.

  One of the merchants found his courage and charged unthinking and unflinching at the line of the dead and let loose a flurry of vicious and undisciplined strikes. He landed three blows, to arms and torso, missing the vital one to the neck. Before he could land a fourth, he was pulled down. As he fell, the dead man sank bony fingers into his eyes, blinding him. His screams echoed throughout the warehouse.

  Akiri entered the fray, facing the new threat. There was no time for inspiring words now. He took one head with a clean blow, a sword arm with a much messier one.

  But it was pointless. In a matter of heartbeats, he was on the defensive, outnumbered, out-maneuvered, and out-muscled. These dead weren’t the slow rotten creatures of the mountain, they were more akin to the fell beast Cammaric had become – both strong and swift, swifter possibly than they had been in life, stronger almost certainly.

  At his back, he heard that the courage of the merchants had not held. They wailed and begged, pleading with the dead for their lives, offering gold, offering anything and everything they thought might save them, but the crates kept scraping back across the hard ground, and the dead were coming inside. No amount of begging would change that.

  Akiri rolled with what could have been a killing blow and planted his shoulder into the foe, unbalanced from his wild swing, and lifted him from his feet. Akiri sent the corpse flailing into another as he snatched up one of the lanterns and ran for the stairs. He looked back to see that only the young merchant fought on, but was moments from being overcome. He was beyond aid.

  A meat cleaver slammed into the wall beside his head, missing its mark by inches. He didn’t slow down. Halfway up the stairs, he turned and smashed the lantern, dousing the wooden risers in oil and flame.

  “Seyla!” he shouted, the moment he reached the top.

  The gallery up here was mostly empty space. He saw a few pieces of old disused, broken furniture scattered across the floor and a pile of empty bottles. Seyla was little more than a dark shadow huddled in the far corner beneath a window.

  The boy didn’t move.

  The screams of the dying were drowned out by the moans of the undead. He had no idea if the fire would hold them back – or if they’d be able to escape before it brought the whole building down, taking Seyla and Akiri along with it.

  Deep in the primitive hindbrain of his mind he felt something, a thrill, like air streaming through his wings, and forgot for a split second that he didn’t have wings. In that moment, he almost thanked the gods for the first time in his life. Kyra was circling high above the town. Akiri closed his eyes, and in a rush, saw what she was seeing. It was terrifying: a large mass of the undead surrounded the warehouse. There must have been three hundred or more, climbing over one another to come in through every window and door.

  She circled, frustrated that she lacked the size and strength to carry him to safety. He tried to calm her. He had an idea, but he needed her to trust him.

  Akiri scanned the debris until he found what he was looking for: a small wooden armchair. He placed it in the center of the room and stripped off his shirt, wrapping the fabric around his right hand. Smoke rose from the stairwell. He couldn’t believe he was even contemplating what he was about to do. Akiri stood on the stair and began punching up into the panels of the ceiling with all his strength. The problem was he couldn’t get the leverage he needed to do proper damage.

  He was running out of time.

  “Akiri!” Seyla shrieked.

  From the stairs, two flaming figures approached.

  They only made it a half a dozen steps before their bloated
corpses combusted into a ball of intense white fire.

  The heat drove Akiri back. He crossed the floor to where Seyla had curled up into a fetal ball.

  “Get up,” he said, no time for niceties. He opened the window, and when Seyla still hadn’t moved, snatched his wrist and hauled him to his feet. I need your help, he called out to Kyra.

  She swept low across the rooftops, desperation and fear hammering away through their bond.

  Another dead man made it to the top of the stairs, rags ablaze, and again he was engulfed in a mass of white flames before he was halfway across the floor. The heat was unbearable.

  Akiri picked the boy up and thrust him from the window.

  Seyla kicked and cried out, grabbing for the frame, but Akiri held him fast.

  A few seconds later Kyra swooped down, and for a long moment beat her wings hard to hover in place as she reached out to wrap her back talons around the boy’s shoulders. There would be wounds, but wounds were a damn sight better than death. “Fly!” he urged, and in no time, she was high above the turmoil, the boy safe in her grasp.

  Akiri looked down. Below, the streets around the warehouse were empty, meaning the dead had to be inside with him. There was no way the merchants could have withstood so many, so now it was all about ending this on his terms. He could feel the heat rising. The flames engulfed the room and spread out across the ceiling, rippling and spewing black smoke into the sky. The entire frame of the building shook. More undead were consumed on the stairs and down below, burning white hot as they blazed their way into a genuine afterlife. He had no idea what was happening, but wasn’t about to complain as long as he was the one benefiting from the bizarre combustion.

  The earth was packed hard. But there was no time to dwell on the consequences. Akiri gritted his teeth and launched himself out of the window, arms and legs windmilling as he desperately tried to claw his way through the air and land well away from the burning building.

  He came down hard, gravity no friend of a falling man. The moment his boot struck the dirt, he tucked into a roll, and came out of it hurting from taking the brunt of the impact on his damaged shoulder. But he’d survived worse. And would survive worse still.