As he ran, Veliger could not stop thinking about Meraspis’ ruined hand. How could weather do such a thing? Where had that storm come from?
Veliger had not gone far down the wynd when he heard the sound he had been dreading – the same ominous hiss he had heard earlier. Bones were falling across the Eventide again, filling the darkness with noise. He staggered to a halt, shaking his head and cursing. There was no way he could reach the Barren Points without the storm overtaking him. And what if his armour did not hold?
As he looked back at the fortress, he let out a horrified cry. A shadow had engulfed his home. The vast, curved surface of the Twelfth Prominent looked stained – as though someone had poured ink over its battlements.
Veliger stared harder and saw that the darkness was a heaving mass of smaller shapes – men, robed in shadow, flooding over the Eventide and climbing up the walls of the fortress like vermin. It was an attack. The idea was even more shocking than the bone rain. The prominents had not been attacked within living memory. The invaders were crossing the surface of the Eventide as though it were harmless. How could that be? The dead waves were lethal. No one could touch them and keep their sanity intact. Who were these people?
Veliger stumbled back the way he had come, dazed and muttering as the bone storm rushed towards him through the darkness.
He broke into a run, but it seemed agonisingly slow. With every step, the rain rushed towards him, crashing over the Eventide and rattling across the wynd.
He reached the end of the bridge and raced up the steps and through the fortress gates, dashing under the first roof he came to.
As he stood there, trying to catch his breath, the light blazed brighter, dazzling him. His eyes adjusted to the glare after a few seconds, and he saw a familiar figure sprinting towards him across the square.
‘Meraspis!’ he cried out, lowering his scythe.
The man crashed into him, sending them both toppling back down the steps.
Veliger rolled clear and leapt back onto his feet, moving with an agility borne of years of training.
‘What are you doing, Meraspis, have you–?’ His words died in his mouth as the man turned to face him. It was not Meraspis. It was a hunched, slavering wretch, a stooped horror with wild, staring eyes, whipcord limbs and flesh sagging from its bones. It looked like an animated cadaver. It was trembling and palsied, and its flesh was a dark, mottled grey, but it lunged at Veliger with shocking speed.
Veliger stepped back, moving without thought, led by the precepts of his training. His scythe flashed twice, slicing through the creature’s torso, and it slapped to the floor in two halves.
Veliger staggered away, shaking his head, staring at the butchered corpse. ‘What was that?’
With a shuddering groan, the corpse’s upper half jerked into motion and began crawling towards Veliger, dragging itself with its hands, trailing innards, its eyes still rolling.
‘Shroud!’ cried Veliger, hacking furiously at the thing until it collapsed and finally lay still.
Veliger’s relief was quickly replaced by a rush of horror. When he had looked back from the wynd, he had seen dozens of figures. What if they were all like this?
He gripped his scythe tighter and ran on, muttering in confusion.
Before he was halfway up the steps, the shadows began to shift and roll, rising up and gathering to block his way. Dozens of figures lurched towards him, their heads twitching and their breath coming in ragged gasps. They all resembled age-blackened corpses, shivering and frantic as they locked their blank, yellow gazes on him. Some clutched splinters of bone or fragments of broken weapons.
‘Mordants,’ whispered Veliger, feeling as though he were in a dream. He had heard tales of corpse-eaters but had never seen them first-hand. One or two occasionally sniffed their way into the prominents, but he had never heard of them attacking in these kinds of numbers. As Veliger looked at the tide of darkness gathering around him, he guessed that there must be hundreds of them clambering over the walls.
The mordants rushed towards him without a sound, twitching and juddering. They were like dumb animals that had taken human form.
Veliger staggered backwards, unbalanced by the ferocity of the assault, trying to stay calm, scything through the throng, filling the air with dark, treacly blood.
He charged up the steps, hacking and lunging and trying to break through the crush, but it was useless. The flesh-eaters forced him back until he lost his footing, nearly beheading himself in the process.
He leapt to his feet, hacked down more of the mordants and backed away, crying out in shock and anger.
The walls of the fortress burned brighter, scattering shadows across the square.
Several mordants broke from the main group and loped towards the wynd, their mindless gaze locked on the distant lights of Lord Aurun’s fortress.
‘No!’ shouted Veliger, backing towards the bridge. ‘You will not taint the Barren Points!’
The crowd rushed towards him. The prominent was now shining so brightly he could barely see.
He turned on his heel and raced back towards the bridge, barring the entrance to the wynd. He would not let the mordants go any further into the princedom.
Then the light of the fortress failed, plunging him into darkness.
Veliger could see nothing but an after-image of the walls, burned across his vision.
He heard breathing all around him in the dark – ragged, hoarse gasps, approaching from every direction.
There was a drum of rushing feet as the mordants attacked.
Veliger hefted his scythe back and forth, cutting down shapes he could not see, thudding the blade into thrashing limbs.
Hands clawed at his back and face, tearing at his armour, pulling him down.
Pain erupted across his body, and he heard the storm wash across the square, punching bones through his armour and skin.
Blood rushed into his eyes and he fell, crushed by the weight of bodies, howling in agony.
Your Celestial Highnesses,
I doubt very much that these missives will get further than the next ditch, but I feel duty-bound to make the attempt. Besides, it gives me solace to fantasise that, somewhere out there, beyond these grey doldrums, an educated soul is following my adventures and sympathising with the absurdity of my situation.
Despite the horrific nature of our departure from Slain Peak, I am still in the company of the doom-seeking Slayer. I am as surprised as anyone by this turn of events. Enduring his company is an achievement far surpassing any of the trials I endured in the Murder Temples. Forgive my self-pitying tone, your highnesses, but you cannot imagine a poorer travelling companion. He persists with his pompous claims of belonging to another, older, superior realm of existence, and the longer I spend in his company, the more I wonder if he might actually be right. It does not take a great leap of imagination to picture him crawling from some long-forgotten netherworld. He’s a boor and an ignoramus, and he’s prone to the most bewildering vacillations of temper.
During our passage across the Dwindlesea (see my previous report) he became infuriatingly enthused – deranged, in fact – howling at the oarsmen every time they faltered, obsessed with the idea of finding Nagash, genuinely seeming to believe he would find the God of Death waiting patiently for him on the next stretch of coast. Then, after we moored at Hopetide and found no such deity, he sank into an ale-steeped sulk, the like of which you can’t imagine. So I now find myself languishing in a squalid hole called Klemp while the Slayer tries to drink himself to death. There’s no sign of him dying, more’s the pity, but that hasn’t deterred him from making several valiant attempts. Rest assured, your highnesses, I will endure whatever indignities he throws my way and stay close to him at all times. The Rune of Blackhammer is still safe, secured on his corpulent person, and one way or another, I will bring it to you. The trust you placed in me was not misguided.