“Now I lay me down to rest, me heart still beats within me chest. Should it stop ‘fore I rise, place two coins upon me eyes.”
The tinny voice carried more than a hint of madness. Many said that to enter the Lands of the Dead, one had to be insane to begin with. Carrow had traveled the blight for more than five years, and had seen (and committed) all manner of unspeakable things. He was a tall, thin, raven-haired man with a heavily scarred face and an angry, empty socket where his left eye should have been. A slight smile twitched across his yellowed teeth as he crouched, staring into the flames with his one good eye.
“Shut it, Carrow,” growled a mound of blankets lying just outside the fire-light. Beneath the blankets lie a barrel-chested man, average height by Mar-tillan standards, but nearly as stout as a dwarf.
A well-kept mustache and long, braided goatee sprouted from his face, while unkempt brown hair spilled down his head to his shoulders. A battle-worn splint maul lay next to him.
Carrow’s head lazily swung over to look at the large man. “Jus’ a lil’ prayer for me soul’s well bein’. No ‘arm innat, now is there, Grumon?” He smiled maniacally, showing several missing teeth.
Grumon sat up and growled through gritted teeth, “There are some of us who have not, as yet, succumbed to madness. We would like to get some rest, but your damn fool chatter every night seems to get in the way of that!”
Carrow’s grin remained unchanged. There was a brief moment of silence before he opened his mouth again.
“The orcs go marchin’ two-by-two, hurrah,” he began in a sing-song voice.
Grumon scrambled to his feet, advancing menacingly on Carrow. But the thin man had leapt to his feet, a dagger in each hand before Grumon had even pulled his blankets off.
“Break your jaw I will!” roared Grumon.
“And I’ll carve me name in your liver, fat man,” said Carrow, just barely above a whisper. His smile had vanished, and all traces of mania were now replaced with a cold, sadistic malice. “Use your entrails as bait for th’ ghouls. Look me in th’ eye and tell me I’m lyin’.”
There was the distinct click of a crossbow string locking into place, followed by a deep, canine growl.
“And if either of you take another step toward one another,” came another voice near the fire,“you’ll both spend your next sunrise on a pyre.”
The other two men in the camp had roused. One was a young, blond, muscular man who was trying, unsuccessfully, to both draw his longsword and rise from his bedroll.
The man who had spoke knelt on his bedroll, holding a loaded crossbow aimed directly at Carrow’s spine. He was short and lean. His face was haggard and stubbly. Streaks of gray ran through his brown hair, which was held in a ponytail by a crude leather strap.
Standing next to him with hackles raised, was a mean-looking bull mastiff.
Carrow glanced back at the dog, then looked back at Grumon. “No worries here, Crowe. We’s jus’ havin’ a bit o’ fun, is all. No ‘arm intended, sirs, no ‘arm at all.”
Carrow grinned maniacally again, and his daggers disappeared into his sleeves. Grumon’s lip curled into a snarl. “Bloody lunatic,” he muttered as he turned back to his bedroll. Carrow returned to his spot next to the fire and lay down, curling into a fetal position.
“Think I’ll get meself some sleep, I will,” mumbled Carrow. “Keep an eye out for me, Friedrich me lad?” He chuckled to himself.
The blond man had managed to untangle himself from his bedroll and stood, belting on his longsword. Crowe unloaded his crossbow and began crawling back into his bedroll. The bull mastiff looked at him and whined inquisitively.
“Stay up if you like, I’m getting some rest,” Crowe said to the dog, who growled slightly in response. He walked over to where Friedrich was buckling his eisenfaust, a spiked gauntlet attached to a jointed plate sleeve which both protected his sword-arm and functioned as a weapon. The dog head butted his leg roughly and growled. Friedrich reached down and scratched him behind the ears.
He spoke in a deep, rich voice, “Ja, looks like we watching together again, little friend.”
They began to move the next morning as the sun brought dim light to the gloomy, overcast sky. They had been travelling across blighted plains for nearly a fortnight. They had battled undead nearly every day since crossing south from Mar-tilla. A hefty sum of gold awaited them when they returned.
A known practitioner of necromancy, illegal in the lands of Mar-tilla and Menos, had fled into the Lands of the Dead. He was wanted for the murder, and subsequent reanimation of a small family. Young Friedrich had been forced to cut down the walking corpse of a young girl. He had wept silently that night, and now carried the little girl’s bloodstained, patchwork bear in his pack, a grim reminder of the task he had committed to.
Crowe led them on, ranger-sharp eyes sensitive to the subtle trail left by fleeing quarry. By mid-morning, ruined buildings became visible against the gray horizon. Crowe stopped and allowed the others to catch up.
“There,” he pointed to the ruined city. “Bastard’s probably holed up there. Plenty of dead to keep him company there, I would reckon.”
The bull mastiff began to growl.
“Well,” began Carrow, “at least th’ old codger’s ‘ospitable. Looks like ‘e’s sent us a welcomin’ party!”
Mounds of dirt began to stir all around the group. Steel flashed as weapons were brandished; battle-hardened men readying themselves for combat as bony claws began to rip through to the earth.
“Hume’s vengeance upon you! Come find your final death, hellspawn!” Grumon bellowed.
As a worn skull began to rise from the newly formed hole, Grumon’s maul came down on it, shattering it in an explosion of bone and dust. Friedrich’s sword flashed, as the hilt shattered teeth and the heavy eisenfaust cracked ribs. Crowe’s dog had wrestled one skeleton to the ground, while Crowe himself was fighting three at once with a long, stout quarterstaff.
Carrow hadn’t bothered to draw his blades, knowing them ineffective against solid bone. He was instead moving through the melee with the grace and agility of a trained acrobat. He tumbled past one skeleton onto his back, kicking both feet into the ribcage of another. He then rolled backward, standing up behind another skeleton, and deftly snapped its neck, pulling the lifeless skull free from the rest of the body. He cackled madly as he bashed the skull into the spine of another skeleton.
Tales of the risen dead filled even brave men with dread. Countless were the rumors of entire towns being overrun and wiped out. But these men had taken the fight to the undead, in their own domain, countless times. They did not fear death, and knew, with deadly precision, how to fight them.
Within moments, they were surrounded by swirling dust and piles of broken bone.
“Anyone injured?” asked Crowe. He was answered with silence, and nodded. “Onward, then.”
They pressed on toward the city. As they neared, Crowe stopped them, pointing out shambling, human-like shapes moving through the streets. The city was swarming with zombies.
“This is gonna be like findin’ the cute one in a dwarven brothel,” Carrow muttered. “Only with less bitin’, I’m thinkin’.”
Carrow giggled at his own joke, as Crowe pulled out a scrap of cloth. He allowed the dog to sniff it and said, “Find it.”
The dog began sniffing around as Crowe began searching himself. Grumon and Friedrich kept a nervous vigil, watching for any of the living dead that might decide to come looking for a meal. They began walking down a street, which years before may have been a main thoroughfare of the city. As they passed a decrepit building, Friedrich glanced up. The remnants of a sign on the building marked it as the Blue Griffon Inn.
“Blue Griffon Inn,” Friedrich said.
Carrow glanced at him. “I’ve ‘eard of that. Supposedly has catacombs dug ‘neath it. A smuggler’s highway, o’ sorts.”
Crowe and the dog had both stopped. “There’s just too many damned prints around here. No telling his prints from the rest of them.”
The dog was looking toward the inn, hackles raised. “Dog seems to think there’s something inside,” Friedrich observed.
“Likely to be a damned hive of walking corpses,” Grumon rumbled.
As they entered the ruined building, it became apparent that Grumon was far from accurate.
The inside of the building, aside from its decrepit state, was untouched. Crowe began looking around, and in short order had found a set of footprints leading toward the remains of the kitchen. They began searching the area.
“Over ‘ere,” said Carrow. He was standing next to a heavy table which bore a multitude of nicks and deep cuts, and brown stains of varying sizes.
“Butcher’s table, I would guess,” Grumon said.
“Ayup, ‘ave a peak at the floor ‘neath it,” Carrow replied.
They looked under, but saw nothing out of the ordinary in the wooden floor boards. Carrow cackled.
“Oy,” he giggled, “I guess there would be nothin’ there to an untrained eye. And by the looks, there’s six of ‘em gogglin’ about right now. Move this lot out me way.”
Grumon and Friedrich grabbed opposite ends of the heavy butcher table and walked it several feet away. Though it was old and weathered from age, it was still quite stout. Carrow dropped to the floor, metal instruments having leapt from his sleeves into his hands. He began inserting them into what seemed random places in the floorboards. After a few moments, a loud click resounded. He slid his hand between two boards and pulled open a trapdoor. The metal instruments had disappeared up his sleeves, and both daggers were in his hands.
“So, who wants to go first, boyo-me-lads?” he grinned.
“Off your nut, but you do have your uses don’t you?” Grumon said, shaking his head.
Inside the trapdoor, a ladder led down to a small room. Friedrich lit a torch from his pack and climbed down. The others followed him, Grumon carrying the dog. The room was filled with various boxes and barrels. When Grumon set the dog down, it walked a few feet away, sniffed the ground and growled. In one of the walls, a crude dirt tunnel had been dug, descending at an angle into the earth.
“Someone’s been here recently,” said Crowe as he examined the mouth of the tunnel, “and I’d bet it’s our man.”
They walked single-file down the small tunnel, Friedrich leading the way with the torch and Grumon bringing up the rear. They walked for several minutes when Carrow, who had been walking behind Friedrich, stopped.
“Oy,” he began, “you blokes ‘ear somethin?”
“Shut it, fool,” Grumon whispered, “you want to announce…”
His response was cut short as a skeletal arm burst from the tunnel wall and seized him by the throat. As he wrestled with it, more arms began to rip through the dirt, groping for them. The cramped tunnel afforded them little fighting room. Arms on opposite sides of the tunnel had grabbed Carrow by the wrists, and were trying to pull him in half. Crowe’s staff had been grabbed by several arms and snapped. He was too busy to notice, as he was trying to shield the dog with his own body.
Carrow groaned in agony as he tried to pry himself free. One of the arms holding him shattered as Friedrich’s eisenfaust smashed through it. Carrow managed to free his other hand, tumbled between Friedrich’s legs, and dashed down the tunnel. Friedrich grabbed Crowe and the dog, forcing both down the hallway. He battered his way toward Grumon, who was now grappled by several arms.
Suddenly, an arm shot out of the wall, grabbing Friedrich’s ear. He howled in pain as the arm ripped the ear from his head in a spray of blood. He staggered backward, barely avoiding several more groping arms.
“Run, boy! Go…now!” grunted Grumon, whose face had started turning purple. The arms were strangling him. Friedrich held a hand to the bloody stump of his ear, and made as though to re-enter Grumon’s fight. One of the arms around Grumon’s neck dug clawed fingers into his skin and ripped a large chunk out of his throat.
“GO!” he gurgled at Friedrich, as even more hands grabbed at him from the walls. Crowe had regained his feet and placed a hand on Friedrich’s arm.
“Come on…” he began, but was cut short as a skeletal fist punched him hard across the temple.
Steeling himself, Friedrich grabbed the smaller man and began to force his way down the tunnel. As they moved, Friedrich saw his fallen pack being ripped apart by skeletal arms. Passing over it, he quickly reached down and grabbed the patchwork bear from the pile of equipment. As he shouldered his way down the dim tunnel, out of the torchlight, the sounds of struggle behind him ceased.
Ten minutes had passed. Carrow had emerged from the end of the tunnel. Blind in the darkness, he crept silently, close to the ground. He could tell he was in a larger room. From somewhere above, water dripped into a pool. From somewhere in the distance came a low moan, which he determined could be chanting, or a pack of walking corpses.
Where was that great buffoon with the torch? As he crept forward, his foot came to rest on something soft. Without pausing, he withdrew his foot and plunged both daggers in. They slid in with a sickening squelch. The darkness was pressing around him, the dripping water pierced his brain. The daggers stabbed in, again and again. Something warm and wet sprayed his hands and face. He cackled
Where was that idiot with the torch? Had there been torchlight, Carrow would have noticed his vision go black. As his daggers stuck in one final time, the hilts slid from slick hands. He fell backward, smashing his head on a rock. The gash it left might have caused him excruciating pain, had his whole body not gone numb.
Where is that damned torch? His eye rolled into the back of his head, lid wide open. A maniacal grin fixed itself permanently on his mouth as life faded into oblivion.
Torchlight dimly illuminated the cavern. Friedrich walked forward into the gloom, torch in one hand and his other arm supporting Crowe. The blow to his head had left Crowe dazed, but conscious.
“No,” said Crowe sharply, placing a hand on his aching head, “that’s corpse fungus. Fool got himself covered in slime. He’d have been dead in moments.”
Friedrich looked toward the echoing sound of dripping water. Vaguely at the edge of the torchlight he could make out the bank of what he thought was a lake. The gray carpet of corpse fungus stretched out before them all the way to the lake.
“Then how do we get across? Our quarry came this way, how did he get through?”
Crowe squatted and looked around. He glanced back at the dog, who sat in the tunnel, refusing to come any closer. “There are tracks. Seem to go through the mushrooms toward the lake. I would think we’ll be okay if we move slowly and don’t disturb the fungus very much.”
“What about him?” asked Friedrich, nodding at the dog.
“I wouldn’t chance it, but I don’t think he would anyway.”
The dog stood and growled slightly.
“Go, friend,” Crowe said softly. “I’ll see you again.”
The dog whined slightly, then barked. He turned to Friedrich and growled before turning back down the tunnel at a trot. Crowe stood and looked grimly at Friedrich.
“On then,” he said.
They moved slowly through the fungus. The mushrooms shivered slightly when they were disturbed even slightly. Though it was only thirty yards or so, it took them nearly twenty minutes to reach the water’s edge.
“The tracks disappear into the water,” Crowe observed.
“I would not want to be finding out what is in this water, living or not,” Friedrich rumbled.
“Nor would I,” replied Crowe. “We’ll have to move along the bank.”
As they started down the bank, the water began to bubble. Crowe drew a khukri from his boot, and Friedrich’s longsword was already in his iron-clad hand. And suddenly, the lake was alive with water-bloated corpses. Water logged zombies dredged through the shallows toward fresh, living meat on the bank. As they readied themselves for the fight, Crowe glanced behind them toward the field of fungus. More walking corpses were closing in behind them.
“Friedrich, we’re being ambushed!”
Friedrich glanced back fleetingly before swinging his blade and severing the head of a bloated zombie. They moved back-to-back, fighting for their lives in the middle of a maelstrom of undead.
There was a brief flash of light across the lake. Brief, but enough for Friedrich to see that there was a small island in the center.
“There! We have to go across the water!” he bellowed.
Crowe buried his khukri underneath a zombie’s chin toward its derelict brain. He glanced behind him, to where Friedrich was pointing. “Where?”
Friedrich swung his metal-bound fist brutally into the head of the next zombie, which exploded like an over-ripe melon. “An island, in the middle of the lake! Go, now!”
Friedrich barreled into the water, knocking aside several zombies. Crowe dived in behind him, both men swimming with fervor. Hands grabbed hold of Crowe’s legs, trying to drag him under the black water. His roar was cut to a gurgle as water flooded into his mouth. The khukri blade slashed through a ragged wrist, but more hands were grabbing.
“No!” bellowed Friedrich. He swung around, kicking hard off of a nearby zombie. He thrust his sword into one of the zombies that were holding on to Crowe. Claws dug into his arms and he lost hold of the hilt. Crowe’s blade was darting madly, trying to free himself, trying to allow himself a mouthful of air. Friedrich grabbed for him, but rotting arms wrapped around his head from behind. He punched wildly behind him, trying to find his attacker. His heavy fist punched through a throat, and his fingers closed around spine. He wrenched himself free of the corpse, and suddenly everything was still. Crowe was gone.
Rage boiled within him. Another friend dead, and nothing he could have done to prevent it.
Friedrich reminded himself of his mission, and began ripping his way through the water with ferocity.
He dragged himself ashore and collapsed to his knees. Blood throbbed through his veins, behind his eyes.
Dim light suddenly spilled over him, and sound came to his ears. It was the sound of laughter.
Mad laughter, not entirely unlike Carrow’s filled the cavern. It echoed through the air, off the water, through Friedrich’s mind. He stood and looked to the source of the cackling.
There stood a man, wild-eyed, with unkempt gray hair. His robes, once white, were stained with blood, dirt, and grime. One of his eyes was blue, the other green. The laughter passed over teeth that were rotted, broken, hideous. In one hand, a dim, bluish orb cast a deathly glow over the area.
There was a distinct twang, and Friedrich noticed a crossbow in the man’s other hand.
Pain exploded across his chest, and Friedrich collapsed once again to his knees. He looked down to see a crossbow bolt protruding from where his heart feebly beat in his chest. He fell forward, barely catching himself on his hands. His whole body felt weak. Laughter again rose and filled his ears.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” cackled the necromancer. “It appears you won’t be returning to collect your bag of gold.” He approached Friedrich’s shuddering form. Friedrich’s vision swam. He felt the end coming. A small object fell out of his breastplate. His vision was blurry, out of focus. He desperately tried to concentrate on the object. Finally, it came into focus. A small, ragged, patchwork bear.
“My, you are a large specimen. Much better than the farmer and his family,” cackled the necromancer.
Something exploded in his brain. Adrenaline surged through his veins. Rage exploded within him, coursed through his body, exiting from his mouth in the form of a primal howl. He was on his feet, metal-clad fist gripped firmly around the throat of the cackling man before him.
“Wha-what’s it matter, boy?” spluttered the necromancer. “You will be dead in moments. Your gold will lie unclaimed and for what? A dead farmer? A dirt-faced little girl?”
The metal fist squeezed, and the necromancer’s eyes bulged.
“I…never wanted…the money,” Friedrich grunted. “And that…dirt-faced girl…was my sister.”
His muscles twitched, and there was a sickening, gurgling, crunch. Blood poured from the necromancer’s mouth, and he laughed no more. Friedrich collapsed to the ground, breath coming in rasping, ragged gasps.
His vision swam, and the adrenaline passed from his veins. A numbing cold was spreading up from his toes. He blinked tears from his eyes, vision focusing again on the tattered bear.
“And now, dear sister,” he whispered, “you may sleep. Rest, Illyiana…rest.”
Golden
