Metahumans vs the Undead: A Superhero vs Zombie Anthology (7 page)

Had the lord abbot travelled the road to
Altondale
he would have met many people only too willing to tell him the nature of the trouble that had driven them from their homes. He would not have believed any of them. By the time Old Jack reached the village he had heard their stories many times. Three things led him to accept what the villagers had to say. First, his military experience had taught him never to dismiss intelligence out of hand, whatever its source. Second, he had heard similar reports before, while returning from the Holy Land. Third, and most important, all of the testimonies he had heard that day were, in their essentials, the same.

Almost twenty years ago, an elderly villager died with no heir save his equally elderly wife. She struck a deal with another small landholder to take over the half-virgate of land her husband had farmed; in return he would maintain her tiny house in good repair, and provide her with three and a half quarters of mixed grains every year for the rest of her life. The villagers had thought these terms fair. The man would become one of the larger landholders in the manor, although he would see very little return from the newly-acquired half-virgate while the woman was still alive. She, in return, would be adequately provided for and could enjoy a life of relative leisure for the few years remaining to her.

But the woman had not died; indeed, she thrived. Over time, the villagers came to believe the woman was occupying her time with the study of the black arts, and was by such means unnaturally prolonging her life.

Eventually she outlived the man who’d struck the bargain with her. His eldest son, upon inheriting his father’s holdings, refused to honour his father’s side of the agreement any longer. He also kept the land, maintaining it had been paid for many times over.

The woman took her case to the manorial court, but by this time the villagers feared her. Not only did the jurors find against the woman, they declared she was no longer welcome in the village. The shocked and angry crone gathered her few portable belongings and left, but not before she cursed those responsible for her sudden change in fortune.

A day later the young man was bitten by a rat. He soon developed a strange sickness, and despite the best efforts of his family, he died. The villagers buried him in the churchyard the next day.

That night, he rose from the grave and commenced attacking the villagers, paying special attention to the twelve jurors of the manor court. The villagers defended themselves with their staves and scythes and pitchforks, but to no avail. Although slow and clumsy, the revenant managed to catch a handful of villagers who had fallen, allowed themselves to be cornered, or gotten too close. One he killed and ate, or ate and killed; the villagers were not unanimous on that point. The others survived, albeit with bite wounds. As dawn approached the revenant shambled off into the darkness of the forest.

The revenant’s victims did not live for long. The villagers held more funerals and more burials that day. Shortly after nightfall, the newly dead clawed their way out of their graves and joined the original revenant in his hunt for villagers. The women and children took refuge in the tower that was the village’s only fortification, while the men renewed the fight against the revenants. The result was another half-dozen men bitten.

At daybreak the villagers, who by this time realized they were outmatched, sent their fastest runner for help.

Two days and four more deaths later Sir Hugh arrived, confident that he and the handful of infantry he’d brought with him could abate whatever nuisance the villagers were on about. The villagers buried their dead, this time under heavy stones.

That night all the village menfolk joined the fight. Sir Hugh, as befit his station, led the charge, flanked by his soldiers, with the villagers right behind them.

Both the soldiers and the villagers took courage from Sir Hugh’s presence, which only served to increase their casualties. For his part, Sir Hugh managed to destroy two of the monsters by beheading them. Eventually he was brought down by sheer weight of numbers, and the villagers broke and ran. He continued to struggle for a time, but one of the revenants bit him through the leather palm of one of his gauntlets. After a while he stopped moving, having been rendered either unconscious or dead.

The next day was cloudy and dark, and the villagers feared to leave the safety of the tower. When the growing ranks of the undead staggered off at the end of the following night, Sir Hugh and his soldiers were among them.

When the villagers finally emerged the following day the revenants Sir Hugh had dispatched two nights earlier still lay where they had fallen, the other revenants having shown no interest in their nutritive value. Since burial in graves under heavy stones had not worked, the villagers decided to burn them. The remains had taken fire easily and burned completely, leaving only ashes.

For the next several nights the few remaining villagers barricaded themselves in the tower, but when no more help was forthcoming they decided to abandon the village.

Old Jack pushed the pace and arrived in the empty village in mid-afternoon. He first inspected the tithe-barn to see what of the Church’s goods and supplies were on hand. Then he went through the modest manor house where the lord abbot’s steward stayed during his annual visit. There he found a cache of weapons, from which he selected a sword, two longbows, and a goodly supply of arrows.

He then looked at the tower, and liked what he saw. It was a narrow cylindrical stone structure built on high ground behind the village, essentially a defensible watchtower. Its large double door of thick oak planks was provided with a stout beam that could be placed across it to keep it closed, fitting into brackets carved out of the inside wall of the tower. A wooden stairway, solid-looking but with no railing, climbed in a tight spiral through two intermediate floors of pine supported on wide oak beams to the topmost level, from which a garrison could defend the battlements.

He used the cart to ferry supplies from the tithe-barn. After removing his sword, dagger, and shield from their compartment, he unhitched the horse from the cart and brought both into the tower. There was just enough room for them without blocking the door or the stairway. Then he set himself to preparing for battle.