The repeated whining lanced into my ears as the ambient blue glow emanating from the top of the room’s ceiling and from the spaces between stonework shifted to a harsh, angry red. Eggs jumped onto my shoulder as I grabbed my spear and bow. Gertha popped a coin into her mouth, and we both raced to the door.

  “Do we go up or down? This Tower seems to put us in random places.” I said, clamping my arm against my quiver to stop my arrows rattling.

  “It should take us to where we need to be!” Gertha panted as she ran.

  We threw ourselves through the door and found ourselves at the top of the stairs facing the gate. There was a deafening smash as the gate groaned inward and dust fell from the stone frame holding it. It didn’t have long with the force of the makeshift battering ram.

  “We can thin them out here, then stage a fighting retreat,” I called, slipping an arrow onto my bow.

  “The Arcuzane normally have some form of defence in place for intruders.” Gertha traced the walls with her hands as she spoke, looking up and around the room as another crash buckled the gate in. It had cracked a hole perhaps wide enough to slide an arm through, and I could see silent, determined, dead faces working in unison. Couldn’t they all work together by fertilising the ground with their corpses rather than ruining the one potential good night’s rest I had in store? First, the hams, chickens and other food were taken, then the prospect of sleep. I was thoroughly filled with petty rage, and I was glad to have the opportunity to kill something, even though my would-be victims were already dead and would likely kill us all in return.

  The gate smashed again, and this time one of the gate doors screeched and groaned, falling off one of the hinges completely. It bent inward until it lay fully horizontal, a full man’s height off the ground as it rested precariously on the hinge.

  “Well, if they could reset them for us that’d be very bloody helpful!” I called as I loosed an arrow at the first dead Zellunder to duck under the door. The arrow flew in a perfect line, hit the flagstones ten feet in front of the corpse and then skittered harmlessly between his legs. Balls, it was a lot easier to hit one of the bastard lizards; they were usually at least the size of the gate. I put another arrow on the string and immediately let fly; there were now five dead bastards in the room. This arrow hit the ground five feet in front of the group, bounced up then went through the gap between the ruined door and the largely intact one. I couldn’t have pulled that shot off if I’d tried. I hadn’t though, not really, and I’d rushed my shot. Now there were at least fifteen of the corpsewalkers in the room, and they were just standing there, silent, watching me and swaying slightly. If they’d been outside a tavern, they’d have been dead ringers for pissed String Guard.

  I took a calming breath, or as calm as I could get myself, given the situation and pulled a third arrow from my quiver, which only held twelve. I popped it onto my bow, drew, aimed for a half heartbeat, then loosed. This arrow soared through the air in a perfect arc and hit one in the middle, right in the chest, where the heart would be. It was a beautiful shot and I whooped with joy. I looked to Gertha to see if she was preparing something of her own, or perhaps had noticed my shot, but she was still rubbing the walls. Great, if we died here, at least she’d have smooth hands.

  Nothing happened after the arrow had lodged in the dead bastard; he didn’t fall, and the rest of his entourage all just turned slowly to inspect the arrow, then looked right back at me. At the same time.

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” I hissed at the Mummer. I had the distinct feeling I was being laughed at in that moment, and I resolved to desecrate the next temple of his I could get close to.

  The thirty corpses stood in a neat, uniform line of two rows. I could see Brenyl at the back right, so I loosed another arrow trying to hit him in the head. The arrow went wide, the flat of the shaft hitting one of the others in the shoulder before spinning and hitting the back wall. I stowed my bow over my shoulders, wondering why I bothered to carry the bloody thing and readied the much more reliable spear. A melee was coming, and I would want its reach.

  All of the dead looked up, and as one they exhaled in a low, long hiss. They snapped their attention on Gertha, Eggs, and me as they rolled their eyes backward to pure white. Eggs let out a ferocious, high-pitched roar, and I worked to keep my breathing calm. Gertha continued to stroke the wall.

  Then the dead charged.

  They were impossibly fast, their feet hit the ground in perfect synchronicity, and each head movement or weight shift was replicated across each of them. I had high hopes of thinning them out before we retreated, but their speed was inhuman. I needed somewhere narrow, somewhere with bottlenecks, or we’d all be dead. Fast.

  I started making my way back toward the stairs, “GERTHA, WITH ME, NOW!” I shouted. Eggs flew to the top of the stairs and began squawking, as if urging us to follow after them.

  “I have GOT IT!” Gertha shrieked in defiance, and suddenly, a green glow exploded from the section of wall she’d been caressing like an old lover. There was the sound of metal on metal as bolts loosed from sections of the ceiling and walls along the corridor. They shredded into the sides and back row of the dead, and I saw at least eight of them fall to the attack. Stone blocks fell in random sequences, but the dead reacted near instantaneously. They spread their perfect formation out, dulling the effect of the bolts, and as four fell silently into the spaces left by falling blocks, the others leapt onto walls, then back onto more stable ground. They were almost on us now.

  “KEEP GOING, GERTHA!” I called out, and I positioned myself by the one stone block leading to our side of the corridor; the rest had fallen away and provided me with the very bottleneck I’d just been wishing for. Bless the Godbody’s ample arse for that particular favour.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  The first running corpse got close and I swept my spear at his legs, the impact vibrating up my arms, but I was rewarded with the sight of it toppling into a deep void beneath the stonework that made me feel nauseous to look at. A second approached and I swept for the legs again, but this one anticipated the move and jumped harmlessly over my strike. I pulled my spear back and thrust upward, piercing it in its white eye. It slumped, and I pulled the blade out and thrust again at a third attacker as my twice-dead victim followed after the first with flailing arms into the black. The third attacker grabbed onto the haft of my spear just before the tip went into its eye. Just as the blade penetrated the eyeball, the corpse threw itself off into the yawning chasm at the side, threatening to take me with it. Cursing, I had to drop my spear, and the last I saw of it was the shaft bouncing off the wall before tumbling down.

  I liked that spear, I’d stabbed a Lindwyrm with it.

  I drew my sword and, in the same movement, severed the top of the head of another corpse, which crumpled where it stood. Just over half of the dead had been killed. I was beginning to think we might just get out of this when the dead suddenly stopped. I raised an eyebrow. I was ready to keep up the butchering; I’d just got my blade out after all. Maybe this lot were smarter than they looked.

  “They know we have them beat Gertha,” I smirked

  “Join”

  “With”

  “Us”

  Three of them opened their mouths at the same time, a single word escaping each of their black, ruined mouths. Their voices sounded like the hiss of a viper or the rasp of a file on a tooth. The noise made me shudder despite my wish not to show weakness. The smirk evaporated from my face like morning dew in the sunlight.

  “You can bloody talk? Then why are you attacking us?” I shouted, waving my sword in the air.

  “You”

  “Must”

  “Join”

  “All”

  “Will

  “In”

  “The”

  “End”

  The dead watched us with those dead eyes, and as Gertha approached just behind my shoulder, they all followed her with those perfectly synchronous movements. They even blinked at the same time.

  “Begone from this place, it is not your domain!” Gertha said, her voice full of authority as it reverberated from the walls, from our very minds.

  “Little”

  “Witch”

  “You”

  “Lack”

  “Power”

  “I serve the Pantheon Bonded, there is no greater power,” Gertha stated. A gust of wind started blowing from all around us, curling around my feet and tousling the hair that remained on the dead.

  Eggs squeaked as they were gently picked from the ground, and the Wyvern flapped their wings to stay stable.

  “There”

  “Is”

  “And”

  “It’s…”

  Two of the dead started gathering around Brenyl. I watched in horror as they pushed against each other, cheekbones ground on cheekbones, and teeth clicked against exposed skull or arm bones. The other twelve dead started pushing and straining against the two and Brenyl as their bones snapped and a mixture of blood and flesh sloughed onto the floor and the dead around them. The smell was obscene, like a sweet rotten pork and shite mixed and just left to fester. I gagged, and I heard Gertha gasp in shock.

  I couldn’t look away. The twelve now knelt over the fleshy pile in the middle of them all and then parted.

  “MINE!”

  A figure rose out of the viscera; it was a malformed, fleshy lump. It had a fusion of three misaligned, broken faces locked into a wailing yawn thanks to broken jaws. Multiple pairs of arms twitched and jerked as legs of different sizes dragged it forward, dragging a train of intestines on the ground behind it. It gurgled as it breathed, and the hacking sound reverberated off the stone walls and filled my head to bursting. I vomited between my legs and fought to stay on my feet. I could barely look at it.

  Gertha snarled, and she launched a sudden mote of fire toward the undead. As the flames shot past my head, I heard the sounds of screaming women and children. Underneath those sounds, I could also make out the same discordant sobbing I’d first heard when we battled the Lindwyrm.

  The malformed figure’s three right arms rose up and easily flicked the mote of fire away against the wall. It instantly ignited and the flames seemed to sprint out in all directions, lighting the floor, ceiling and travelling to the other wall. Its left arms moved in a circle, and the more it moved its arms, the brighter and hotter the flames burned.

  “Give us Humanity’s salvation!” The figure wheezed.

  “TULLEN! RUN!” Gertha shouted as she turned heel and sprinted toward the stairs.

  I looked back at the malformed figure, and three pairs of white, bloodshot eyes stared back at me. I couldn’t pull myself away from looking into them. If I could just look deeper, I would find the answers to everything, anything I ever wanted to know and all the things I needed to.

  “Where the dead lurk, so do we; we will never relent.” It whispered, the noise still somehow reaching my ears.

  Eggs had flown to my shoulder and nipped my ear, snapping me out of the strange staring match. I turned and ran after Gertha.

  I don't think there's ever anything wrong with tactical withdrawals, but this time, I was very much just running away.