Prince Volant stared at Aurun. ‘You have to call them back.’
A bell clanged, up on one of the towers.
‘Too late,’ muttered Volant, sounding dazed.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Aurun. ‘Too late? Too late for what?’
The prince ignored him, stomping over to the walls and leaning out into the night.
A hush fell over the lines of knights as they all peered out into the darkness, straining to see what had triggered the alarm.
The bell clanged again, followed by another further down the wall, then dozens more followed suit, until the whole fortress rang to the sound of the alarm.
‘The sea is moving,’ muttered Corsos, confused. The black waves had started to ripple and surge for miles in every direction. ‘How? The Eventide is solid. How can it move like a normal sea?’
‘It’s not the sea,’ replied Volant.
‘What do you…?’ Aurun’s words trailed off as he understood. The entire ocean, every mile of the Eventide, was swarming with crowds. Thousands of mordants were surging through the darkness.
‘They’re not using the wynds,’ breathed Corsos, gripping his bone staff as though he were about to collapse. ‘They’re crossing the sea.’
‘How?’ cried Aurun as the dark legions poured past the gatehouses like an oil slick. ‘It is impossible to walk on the Eventide!’
‘Why?’ said Prince Volant, sounding calm again despite the horror of the scene below.
‘Because it means madness. No one can touch the Eventide without losing their mind.’
‘How do you break a mind that has already been shattered?’
Aurun stared, trying to make sense of the numbers, but the prince climbed up a few steps, making himself look even more like a giant, and raised his scythe high into the air. ‘The ancestors are with us!’ he cried, his voice magnified somehow, so that every soldier and knight on the walls turned to face him. ‘They’re in our hearts! In our blades! Every generation of Erebid is on these walls. Those godless creatures have no idea what they’re about to face. I came here because this is where the war will be won!’
The prince’s voice boomed with such conviction that Aurun almost found himself believing him, even though he knew the prince had only come to order a retreat.
‘Here is where we make our stand!’ roared the prince. ‘Today we end this sacrilege. Today we drive the mordants out!’
The soldiers on the walls raised their scythes and howled, full of righteous fury, their fear forgotten.
Aurun remained silent. As the knights revelled in the glory of fighting with their prince, Aurun watched the gatehouse half a mile away vanishing under a tsunami of grey, feral bodies.
‘Look at them,’ he whispered, staring at the tides of ghouls rushing towards them.
‘Look at him,’ said Corsos, nodding at the prince.
Volant had returned to his skeleton steed and climbed up into the saddle. He looked like a figure from legend, head thrown back and scythe raised as his mount reared beneath him.
‘Gravesward, to war!’ he roared as the skeleton pounded its fleshless wings and launched him into the sky.
All along the wall, Volant’s honour guard drove their steeds from the fortress, gliding out into the darkness, pennants snapping.
The skeleton mounts looped in formation, like a single, mountainous serpent, then dived, plunging towards the wynd and the battle at the gatehouse.
Aurun shook his head, awed by the sight. Then he stood up straight, dusted down his armour and began marching through the lines of knights. His initial shock was fading. Nothing had changed. They were prepared for this. ‘Ready the ballistae!’ he cried, waving his scythe at the towers that punctuated the walls. War machines rumbled into view – huge iron bolt-throwers decorated with wings of bone, designed to resemble the moths that circled constantly overhead.
‘Load the barrels!’ he called, and huge, smoking vats of oil were ratcheted up into place on the walls.
‘Archers take aim!’ Hundreds of bowmen rushed past the knights and readied their weapons, targeting the crowds surging towards the walls.
Aurun was ashamed of how he had hesitated at the sight of the mordants. The Morn-Prince had taken to the air with bravery and determination, despite the fact that he had never intended to make his stand here. None of this was as Volant had intended, but he had rallied the men with as much confidence as if this had been planned months ago. Aurun resolved to do the same. As he strode back and forth, howling his orders, his determination grew. The Unburied could not be moved, but neither would they be abandoned.
Corsos stumbled after him, gripping his bone staff. He had just opened his mouth to say something when he halted and peered out into the darkness.
The battle at the gatehouse was raging, a clamour echoing across the Eventide, but Corsos frowned and put a hand to his ear. ‘What is that?’ he cried.
Aurun paused to listen. ‘What?’ All he could hear was the din of battle and the sound of the bells ringing behind him.
Corsos held up a finger to silence him, still listening intently.
Then Aurun heard it – a thin, ululating shriek.
‘What is that?’ he muttered.
A captain rushed over to him, asking for clarity on his orders. Aurun answered his question, and by the time the captain had gone, the shriek was much clearer. It was quickly getting louder, and something about it caused Aurun’s blood to cool. It was like dozens of tormented voices screaming in concert.
He shrugged and tried to ignore the sound as he saw that the mordants not attacking the gatehouse had now reached the foot of the fortress walls and were starting to climb up its twisting, claw-like buttresses.
‘On my order!’ he cried to the archers.
The mordants moved with unbelievable speed, scrambling up the walls like spiders bursting from an egg, swarming towards them with no need of ropes or hooks. The sight of them filled Aurun with revulsion. They were beings without souls. Men without minds. Vessels for a grotesque hunger and nothing else. He held his hatred in check, keeping his hand raised until he was sure they would be easy targets. Then he swept his hand down and launched hell.
A storm of arrows sliced into the mordants, tearing through their sagging flesh and ripping them away from the walls. Dozens tumbled back through the air, trailing arcs of blood and crashing into the mob below.
As the archers loosed wave after wave of arrows, the screaming sound grew so loud that some of them started to miss their marks, wincing and cursing as they shot.
‘There!’ said Corsos, pointing into the distance.
A shape was rushing through the clouds towards the fortress, a grotesque parody of the prince’s skeleton steed. Rather than an elegant serpent of gleaming bones, it was an ugly, snub-faced thing, with ragged, fleshy wings and scraps of intestine trailing from its butchered chest. It looked like the carcass of an enormous bat, and its mouth was open, revealing long, cruel incisors and filling the air with that hideous shriek.
As the sound grew in volume, Aurun’s head started to pound and he became gripped by an overwhelming sense of dread. His heart hammered in his chest, and his hands began to shake.
‘A terrorgheist,’ gasped Corsos.
Aurun shook his head, trying to escape the sound. ‘A what?’
‘It will send us mad!’ cried Corsos, covering his ears. ‘The sound will send us mad!’
Aurun looked across the wall and saw that some of the archers had staggered away from the battlements, shaking their heads and dropping their longbows. Even the lines of Gravesward standing behind them were lowering their scythes, gripping their heads and cursing.
‘Block your ears!’ shouted Aurun. He grabbed some dust from the ground, spat in it and jammed it in his ears, waving for his men to do the same. ‘Block out the noise!’