A Shout for the Dead (94 page)

Soldiers were gathering on the half of the fort roof still standing. The steps up to it were cracked but had not fallen and its stability had kept the wall standing for another forty yards north. South, it was a gaping mess where no one moved. Below them, dead Conquord legionaries were picking themselves up and moving off west. Shambling, clinging onto weapons with broken hands, pulling themselves over razor-sharp debris if they could not walk. Tragic sights in every direction. It was best not to look, nor to think.

Roberto felt a hand on his shoulder and turned from the scenes.

'Want to give me one of those?'

'What are you going to do, Julius, drop it on my head?' Roberto chuckled and passed him a flask. 'Send them back to God, Speaker Barias.'

'As many as I can.'

Barias was in a state of shock and the dust still covering his face accentuated his condition, but his eyes were focused and that was good enough.

‘I
might even end up being glad I saved you,' said Roberto.
‘I
'll put in a good word with my mother when we get back. So long as you don't still want me burned.'

'Perhaps a clean slate is a good place to start,' said Barias.

Roberto nodded, smiling.
‘I
can live with that.'

'Roberto.'

Davarov's voice held surprise. Roberto looked out into Atreska. The dead had stopped. The tide had ceased to flow in. They stood ten yards from the walls now, stretched back a hundred, and north and south, covered many hundreds more.

'The odds aren't too great,' said Roberto.

Davarov bounced his flask again. 'We can even it up a little.'

'Wait for them to move.'

Soldiers lined the wall, the steps and the causeway. More stood the other side of fallen stone with rock and spear in hand. Anything that might keep the dead at bay when they came. Abruptly, the face of every fallen man and woman turned towards the fort. Mired in slime, cut and damaged but staring right up at the roof. Mouths opened.

'Del Aglios.'

Roberto stumbled back and sat down hard, clutching his flask to him. His name, from ten thousand dead mouths. It shuddered through him like the wave through the stone of the barrier.

'What in the Omniscient's glory was that?' he said.

'Del Aglios.'

The words ripped through him, tearing the heart from him. The living let slip their courage just a little. Roberto got shakily to his feet and looked out over the mass of the dead. Their faces still towards him. Roberto breathed in deeply, dragging his will back within him. Yet still he could not shake that sound from his mind.

'That bastard,' he said. 'He can see me through their eyes. How can he do that? He can see me.'

'Yeah? Well here's something else for him to have a look at.' Davarov cocked his arm and hurled his flask down on the dead. 'Swallow that, you gutless bastard.'

The flask struck an Atreskan breastplate and exploded. Shards of metal carved through the surrounding dead. The force of the explosion battered out in an oval, shearing dead from their feet, tearing limbs from bodies, decapitating. Rending flesh. Thirty disappeared in a welter of blood, shattered armour, skin and bone.

'Conquord!' roared Davarov. 'Let them come and hack them down.'

Julius and Harban launched their flasks. Behind Roberto, an engineer was trying to relight a pitch barrel that smouldered on. Detonations rattled debris against the broken walls. Roberto hurled his flask down. Dead were obliterated in the force of the blast.

if you want me, Gorian, you'll have to come up and get me.' Roberto bent down to the crate to grab another flask. 'Let's use these while we still can.'

The dead moved forwards.

it's up to you, Paul. Again.'

Ocenii squad seven held the dock at the base of the south fort. When the fires had died, the dead had moved to shore across charred planking, or landed from Tsardon vessels driving through choking smoke to strike the dock. The fort artillery pounded down on the enemy within the harbour, battering triremes to the bottom of the dock. Hundreds had perished in flames but still they came and the courage of the ordinary soldier was beginning to falter.

More ships were coming through the harbour mouth. Dead who had gone down with theit ships were beginning to emerge and climb the metal ladders that littered the sheer wall of the harbour side. Sights none had thought to see. For some it was too much. As many turned to run as the dead who forced their way on to dry land. Hundreds.

Kashilli lifted up a dead and broke his back across his knee. He threw the corpse aside, picked up his hammer and brought it down on top of a dead skull. The head disappeared in a spatter of bone and gore. The body jerked and twitched, driven to the ground under the sheer force of the blow. Kashilli kicked the body into the water. Thirty more were coming to take his place.

'Come on then.' He beckoned them to him. 'One or all, it makes no odds to me.'

Next to him, Iliev was a counterpoint to Kashilli's brutal strength. He balanced and pivoted, planting a kick into the midriff of a Gesternan militia man. He was catapulted backwards, taking two more with him to fall back into the water. In the half pace of space he had, Iliev moved, dropped low and whipped his blacksmith's hammer into the knees of the next dead, smashing one kneecap. The dead crumpled on the broken limb. Iliev darted back and brought his axe down on the dead's lower back, sending his legs into brief spasm before they were still.

A gasp ran the length and breadth of the dock. Iliev paused to take stock. Every single one of the dead had stopped moving, frozen in their next act. Kashilli laughed and crushed his hammer into the side of one and through the back of another who had stumbled. He made to move into the pack of standing dead but Iliev's shout stalled him.

Iliev stared into the eyes of the dead in front of him. They peered from a face thirty days decayed. Flesh had rotted on his face. Maggots crawled in his skin. The smell of him was eye-watering but Iliev had grown used to that. Those eyes should be hollow spaces but remained. And they showed Iliev a moment's confusion followed by a lifetime of pain.

The dead's mouth opened. And his voice was joined by all the others in a juddering shout. Bodies jerked and shuddered. Mould burst out on their bodies, ran the length of their legs and began to bleed into the concrete of the harbour.

'Back, back!' ordered Iliev.

Squad seven responded. Out in the harbour, the sounds of timbers creaking dragged his attention to the enemy ships. He heard splintering but for a moment, could see nothing.

'There!'

Kashilli was pointing to where green had sprouted on the hull of a trireme rammed on the harbour. It raced across timber and deck, clawed up mast and over sail. The canvas dripped, rotted to nothing in an instant. Everything the mould and moss touched decayed. Ships began to sink, to break apart. The squealing of nails pulling out of wood echoed across the harbour.

There was a scattering of cheers but Iliev knew this was not victory.

'This is a weapon. Back. Back off fast.'

He glanced to his left along the harbour. A dead reached out and gripped the arm of a distracted legionary. Mould and disease poured over his body, engulfing him- in a cloying mass of sick green and brown. He screamed until the mould reached his mouth, eyes and covered his heart. And then he turned on his friends.

'Go, go!' said Iliev, urging them back towards the fort. 'Don't let them touch you.'

Iliev felt fear. For perhaps the first time in his life. It was an ugly, uncomfortable emotion. Legionaries and harbour guard were dying under rampant disease. The dockside was clearing, those who had seen the new attack not pausing to wonder if they could combat it. Panic moved faster than the mould. There was a stampede out through the yards and into the streets beyond. The sounds of fighting and dying had been replaced by the harsh sounds of terror and the drumming of thousands of feet.

Squad seven stormed into the castle courtyard and up the slope towards the roof. Iliev ran in behind them barking at scared guardsmen to close the gates, an order they were only too happy to follow. The Ocenii spilled onto the roof. The artillery had fallen silent. Iliev joined Vasselis and Stertius at the wall overlooking the harbour. The wall was crowded with engineers and guards. None could find a word. None acknowledged his arrival.

It was a scene from the worst images painted by the Order's artists depicting a world fallen from the Omniscient's grace. The water had been reduced to a muddy pool of rotten timber and algae, spreading slowly out of the harbour mouth. A fine mist of spores rose from whatever had sprung up there.

Dead men were still pulling themselves up the ladders and on to the docks where hundred upon hundred now stood unmolested. No artillery could reach them there. From their feet, the mould spread out slowly, never reaching too far ahead. But far enough that only a sarissa would be long enough to do damage. They were leaving the dockside which was tainted an unhealthy green. It covered cobbles, grew along cracks and extended its fingers a short distance up the outside of the fort.

Ahead of them, the living ran to they knew not where. Flags were waving at the north and south gates. Both were breached. Iliev did not raise a flicker of surprise. Civilian and soldier poured away from the dead. They would not stand. The battle was as good as lost.

'We have to get to the palace,' said Vasselis.

Iliev turned to him, saw the paper in his hand. 'Why?'

'Because that's where the young Ascendants are. And Hesther says they have a plan.'

'There's no escape,' said Stertius, gesturing to the putrefaction on the dock. 'Touch that and you're history.'

Kashilli was already moving to the sea wall. Iliev saw him and gestured Vasselis and Stertius to walk with squad seven.

'Lucky I've got a boat then, isn't it?'

Chapter Sixty-Five

859th cycle of God, 12th day of Genasfall

'Forty stroke constant, Ocenii. Like you're outrunning a tidal wave.'

Iliev's orders carried over the flowing strokes of seven's oarsmen. Marines in harmony and in a desperate rush. They had pushed away from the fort into clear water, beaten a route around a narrow headland and were powering into the south beach where the dead had landed. It wasn't a place you could land an invasion fleet but a small force had all the room they needed. Not a man moved on any of the twelve ships canted over on the coast. Gangplanks were empty, decks clear. Sails flapped idly in a gentle breeze. The sand and pebbles were clear of mould. Iliev had thought they might be.

Sitting aft with him, Stertius and Vasselis gripped hard to the gunwales. Kashilli was taking great heart from their discomfort. A spiked corsair in full flow was a sight to behold and an exciting but very unstable place to be. The two landborn were in awe of the speed and in fear of their lives. And Kashilli moved his marines up and down the centre to give the corsair a little slap and roll before Iliev told him to stow it.

Even in the face of annihilation, Kashilli was unbowed. He stood at the prow now, one foot on the spike and his fist pumping the air, daring the dead to come to him and face him. Dead or alive, it was not something Iliev would willingly choose to do.

'Hard up the beach, skipper,' urged Kashilli. 'Let's hit it running.'

Iliev looked down on Vasselis who had gone a shade paler, if that was possible.

'I think not on this occasion, Kashilli. Soft landing. Back to fifteen stroke, lift on my command.' 'Aye, skipper,' said the stroke.

The corsair began to slow. Kashilli moved away from the spike as it settled naturally closer to the waterline.

'Would have been an experience, Marshal,' he said.

'And probably my last, Trierarch Kashilli. But thank you for the offer.'

'Ship oars,' said Iliev.

The thirteen sets came to the vertical. The corsair ground up the beach, juddering to a halt just a little too fast for the landborn's comfort.

'Marines, let's stow and run,' ordered Kashilli. 'Guard our guests and watch for the sludge.'

'How far to the hill from here?' asked Iliev.

The squad dispersed into a defensive curve, eyes on the path away and the silent enemy ships.

'Two miles, no more. This is the closest gate,' said Vasselis. 'But we don't want to take the main streets or we'll be knee-deep in Kashilli's sludge. Any ideas?'

'I was born here,' said Stertius. 'I'll get us there in front of them all if I can.'