The screams were sudden and terrible. They cut through the stillness of the night, coming from behind them, at the rear of the troop formation. Aedan and Sylvanna wheeled their horses simultaneously, and Sylvanna’s sword sang free of its scabbard. The men in the ranks immediately behind them stopped and without hesitation instantly turned to either side, prepared to meet anything that might come up on their flanks. Their battle-seasoned instincts served them well, thought Aedan, and it was a good thing too, as became frighteningly apparent within moments.
In the darkness, Aedan could not see what was happening back at the rear of the formation, but he could see the torches there bobbing wildly and erratically, some falling to the ground as the men dropped them to engage whatever was attacking … or else fell to the ground themselves. But before Aedan could do anything, he heard rapid hoofbeats coming up behind him and an instant later saw the emperor gallop past, sword in hand, heading full speed toward the rear of the formation.
“Sire, wait!” Aedan called out, but Michael was already disappearing into the darkness. He had moved so quickly that not even Lord Korven or any of his retinue riding at the front of the formation had time to react. Aedan swore. “Go after him, you fools!” he shouted, setting spurs to his own horse.
Sylvanna was right behind him as they set off at a gallop in the emperor’s wake. And it was then that Aedan heard a sound that made his blood run cold. An unearthly, ululating, keening sound that was half moan, half cry. He had heard it once before, on a previous expedition through the Shadow World, and that time over a hundred men had died.
It was the cry of the undead.
“Aedan! Watch your flank!” Sylvanna called out from behind him as they galloped headlong after Michael. Aedan glanced to his left, since the troops were on his right, and he saw the walking corpses coming, shambling through the twisted trees like drunken specters.
Some of them were wearing battle dress … or what remained of it. Rusting armor that squeaked and scraped as they moved; battered helms, some of which were cut almost clean through where a sword had split the skull; rotting tunics beneath chain mail encrusted with rust and covered with spiderwebs; greaves covered with dirt and mud; buckled shields with faded devices on them; tattered remnants of leather shoes and flapping breeches that were little more than rags. Others wore the rotting garb of peasants, through which decayed flesh and age-browned bones were clearly visible. Decomposing faces stared at him with eyeless sockets in which worms and maggots writhed. And as if the sight of them alone were not bad enough, every one of the horrific things was armed. Those that did not bear swords or spears carried pitchforks, axes, or makeshift clubs.
They had flanked the army, perhaps even surrounded it, Aedan didn’t know, but the first attack came on the rear of their formation. Now the walking dead were pouring out of the woods on both sides of the trail. One of them came out in front of Aedan, brandishing a spear. Without slowing, Aedan raised his sword and brought it down as he passed, cutting the shambling corpse’s arm off at the shoulder. It fell writhing to the ground, but still the creature clutched at his stirrup as he went by. Aedan’s horse dragged it along for several yards before Aedan managed to kick the damned thing loose.
The army didn’t panic. That would have cost them their lives, and they all knew it. Tired as they were, they kept formation and fought the undead as they advanced. The wretched creatures moved slowly, but what they lacked in speed they made up for in relentlessness. And they could not be killed, for they were already dead. The only way to fight them was to dismember them completely, and even then they kept on coming, dragging themselves along the ground like snails. Blades rose and fell repeatedly, and tired as the troops were, they realized they could not pause in their grim work even for an instant. They had faced undead before, though not this many, and a lot of them had not survived to tell the tale.
Aedan saw the emperor. He had ridden to the rear of the formation, where the first attack occurred, and he was rallying the troops, whose formation had been broken up by the initial attack. He called out orders to the men as he laid about him with his blade, turning his horse this way and that to meet the shambling figures that came at him from all sides.
For a moment, Aedan had a memory from childhood leap unbidden to his brain. He recalled how he had tried to frighten young Prince Michael with lurid and horrifying stories of the Shadow World, spitefully hoping to give him nightmares like the ones he’d had when he was younger. And though Michael had dreamed of the Shadow World after being told those tales just before his bedtime, unlike Aedan, in his dreams, the prince had fearlessly fought the monsters and defeated them. Now, ironically and frighteningly, it was happening in real life.
And just as young Prince Michael had shown absolutely no fear in his childhood dreams, the adult emperor displayed none now. And that was precisely what alarmed Aedan as he saw him plunging his mount into the steadily advancing ranks of the undead.
Fear was a function of self-preservation, but it was an emotional response that was utterly lacking in the emperor. Courage, heightened strength and senses, regeneration, and protection from evil were all among his attributes, blood abilities that he had manifested after he had passed through puberty, and since his blood powers stemmed directly from the line of Anduiras, Michael possessed more of them than most. His blood totem was the lion, and like that noble beast, Michael possessed unrelenting courage and fearsome savagery in battle. However, his blood abilities did not render him invulnerable, though he often acted as if they did. And as Aedan saw him plowing like a juggernaut into the advancing ranks of the undead attacking the rear column of the army, his stomach tightened and fear-induced adrenalin hammered through his system.
As young Ghieste, Lord Korven, Viscount Alam, and the rest of Michael’s mounted retinue came galloping up behind Aedan and Sylvanna, Aedan raised his sword above his head and cried out, “To the emperor!”
Without hesitation, they followed him, cutting their way through the staggering, animated corpses to Michael’s side. However foolhardy Michael’s heroics may have been, thought Aedan, they had galvanized the troops. On seeing him riding to join in their defense, they rallied, and their battle cry of “Roele! Roele!” went up, echoing through the darkness. Most of the torches had been flung to the ground, since the troops could not fight and hold them at the same time. Some of them had ignited the undergrowth, which was slow to burn because of the misty damp, but it nevertheless gave Aedan an idea.
“Torch the trees!” he cried out repeatedly as he laid about him with his sword, and in moments, men not in the forefront of the fighting began throwing their torches into the woods and snatching up those which had been dropped and tossing them, as well.
With so many torches soaked in pitch flung into the woods and undergrowth, the flames began to spread despite the dampness, and it gave them light by which to see. At the same time, it provided an unexpected bonus. The undead burned.
With all their bodily fluids long since dried up, the corpses caught fire like kindling. Despite that, they kept on coming, impervious to pain, burning as they walked. Men hacked away at flaming bodies that advanced upon them, but inevitably, the corpses succumbed to the fire and collapsed to the ground.
However, they were not the only ones who fell. Aedan saw many bodies lying on the ground, and among the burning or dismembered and still writhing corpses of the undead were many of the troops. Some were badly wounded, others had been slain, and dismembered corpses gnawed at many of them. Those still alive but too injured to move screamed horribly as the flames reached them, but there was nothing to be done. There was no time or opportunity to pull them back to safety, for there was no safe ground anywhere. The formation of the troops broke up into a wild melee. The undead kept pressing forward, rank upon rank, and the soldiers of the Army of Anuire hacked away at them like men possessed.