The crippled skulker rushed in with a grating hiss, guttural and full of madness.
Sorhkafare rolled to the tent's far side and pulled his war knife. His attacker fell upon the empty bedroll. As the man turned upon the blanket, Sorhkafare drove his blade down.
It sank through the man's dark-skinned neck above the armor's collar, and he slumped, limp.
Sorhkafare rushed from the tent. He searched the night camp for any officer to chastise over the failure of the perimeter watch. The few remaining cries died away one by one.
The nearest fire had been doused, and only smoking embers remained. Many of the torches were gone, and darkness had thickened in the camp. The moon was not yet high enough for his elven eyes, but he thought he saw figures moving quickly from tent to tent. Now and thencame strange muffled sounds or a short cry.
"Sorhkafare… where were you?"
A figure approached, slow and purposeful, between the rows of tents.He knew that voice. It grated upon his nerves every time the man spoke.
Kжdmon, commander of the humans among Sorhkafare's forces-or what were left of them.
Sorhkafare had no strength for another argument. It was always Kжdmon who challenged him. He pushed his men too hard and kept demanding night strikes after his people had marched all day.
Kжdmon drew closer, and Sorhkafare saw the dark rents in the tall man's chain armor. He had not bothered to remove it, but Sorhkafare could not blame him. There was no point in doing so, as they would only ride hard with the dawn, either in flight or to face an endless enemy once more.
Someone stepped from a tent beyond Kжdmon, dragging a body.
Sorhkafare had no more sorrow to spare for those who succumbed to wounds. But the shadowed figure dropped the body in the dirt and turned away to the next tent.
"Didn't you see them come?" Kжdmon said. "Did you not hear us cry for help as the sun dropped below the hills? Or was it only your own kind… your wounded that you culled from the dead today?"
Sorhkafare turned his eyes back to Ksedmon. He barely made out the man's long face and square jaw below a wide mouth.
"What venom do you spit now?" he answered. "We left no one who had even a single breath in them! All were carried in, even those with no hope to see tomorrow."
The man's ugly square jaw was covered in a few days' growth of beard. Stubble on his neck looked darker still. His steel coif and its chain drape were gone, exposing lank black hair hanging around his light-skinned face. His bloodthirsty human eyes glittered.
"You didn't bring me," Kжdmon hissed back and his words grew awkward as if he had difficulty speaking. "I still breathed when they crept across the dead, looking for those you forgot… when the sun vanished from sight."
A dark patch at Kжdmon's throat glistened as he stepped to within a spear's reach.
Sorhkafare stepped back.
A gaping wound in the side of Kжdmon's neck had covered his throat in blood mixed with some black viscous fluid. His lips and teeth looked stained as well.
Kжdmon's eyes were as colorless as his pallid skin.
"I can't stop myself… they won't let me stop."
Kжdmon shook with clenched muscles as his crystal eyes scrunched closed for an instant. He took a jerking step. All tense resistance vanished, and he charged with open hands.
Sorhkafare set himself but did not raise his knife.
Kжdmon had seen too much in these long years of battle. They all had. The man's mind finally broke under the strain. No matter their differences, he was an ally who had fought hard beside Sorhkafare's own people. Kжdmon had lost his own father when their settlement was overrun before alliance forces arrived to defend it. But still the man fought on, and his loyalty had never wavered.
Sorhkafare sidestepped, ready to slap away Kжdmon's grasp. He barely drew back his hand before Kжdmon's grip latched around his throat.Too sudden and too quick for a wounded man.
Kжdmon closed his fingers.
Sorhkafare could not breathe. He tried to break the man's grip. Kжdmon's features twisted in agony as his mouth opened.
"Don't fight," he whispered. "Please don't make me… make you suffer."
Sorhkafare almost stopped fighting for air.
Within Kжdmon's mouth he saw malformed teeth stained with blood.A human mouth with sharpened fangs like a dog or short-snouted goblin. He slashed the knife across the back of Kжdmon's forearm, but the man did not even flinch.
Sorhkafare's chest convulsed, trying to get air, and his sight began to dim. He rammed the blade into the side of Kжdmon's neck.
Kжdmon's head snapped sideways under the blow. He gagged once before his face turned back, now little more than a blurred oval of white in Sorhkafare's waning sight.
"It won't help," Kжdmon sobbed. "I'm sorry… it never does."
Air seeped in through Sorhkafare's nose.
He heaved, filling up his lungs, then gagged and coughed as he tried to suck more air. He lay on his side upon the ground, not even knowing he had fallen. A blurred form appeared above him and reached down. Sorhkafare twisted away in panic.
"Get up, sir!" it said, and the words were in his ownElvish tongue. "The horses have been slaughtered… we must run!"
Vision cleared, and Sorhkafare saw one of his commanders. Snahacroe reached down for him, but Sorhkafare only looked about for Kжdmon.
The man lay crumpled on his side, off to the left. The shaft of an elven spear rose from his torso. Its silvery tip protruded from Kжdmon's rib cage, and black fluids ran from the bright metal to the ground.
Sorhkafare stared at the gaping wound, not truly aware of Snahacroe until his kinsman pulled at him, trying to make him follow.
Kжdmon rolled onto his face and braced his hands upon the ground. He pushed up and lifted his head. Snahacroe halted in shock to look at the human.
Ksedmon began to shake. Once more his whole body seemed to clench. His fingers bit into the earth as if he sought to hold on to it and keep from rising.
"Run," he whimpered.
Sorhkafare still hesitated. The man could not be alive. The spear point dripped more black fluid from his body and the same ran from the knife wound in his neck. The broken stream of fluid vanished as it struck the earth, but Sorhkafare heard the slow patter continue.
"Run… while you can!" Kжdmon shouted.
Snahacroe wrenched Sorhkafare around and they fled.
Grim silhouettes closed in behind them with pounding feet. The more that came, the more Sorhkafare saw one here and there from the ranks of both sides that day in battle. Their faces seemed too pallid in the dark.
All around were figures with glittering eyes.
Sorhkafare…
The name clung to Magiere's thoughts like her own, as she came slowly back to consciousness.
"Sgailsheilleache, hold off!"
It was Brot'an's voice, but Magiere only saw moving blurs around her. She felt and smelled moss against her face.
She began panting hard.
"She is unnatural," Sgaile snapped."Undead… in our forest!"
"No," Brot'an barked. "She is something else. Now do as I say!"
Magiere took three rapid breaths before her thoughts cleared in realization.
Brot'an had never told the others about what he had seen of her in Dar-mouth's crypt. He had kept her secret.
It didn't matter anymore. She'd lost all control, and they'd all seen her.
Magiere's sight cleared slowly. She lay on her side, one hand limp upon the moss before her face. There was blood on her fingernails.
But her hand was not long-boned and tan as it had been in the dream… the vision… whatever she should call the sights and sounds that had taken her. She saw only her own pale hand, not that of the elven man she had become… Sorhkafare.
Why? She hadn't touched the remains of any victim, trying to see through the eyes of its undead killer at the moment of death.