Stronghold (39 page)

Paul lives in Wigan, Lancashire, with his wife Cathy and his children, Eleanor and Harry.

Now read the Prologue from the next exciting
Tomes of the Dead
novel - the finest in original zombie horror fiction.

The Viking Dead

Toby Venables

Skalla sat, his hands resting on the pommel of his sword, his chin resting on his hands, staring at the pile of bodies.

The still-warm corpses steamed in the cool air of the clearing. Behind him, his black-clad men, done cleaning their weapons, stood in silence, waiting - for what, they knew not. Some, perhaps, suspected. But only Skalla knew for certain.

To his right, he heard feet shifting nervously among the damp leaves. That would be Gamli. Skalla had had his eye on him for some time, aware that he had started to lose faith in their masters. More than once he had questioned their orders. It took a brave man to do that. Or a stupid one. Skalla knew Gamli was no fool - but he also knew the man's boldness hid deeper fears. Fears that could spread, infecting the others, contaminating them with doubt. That, he could not allow. It threatened everything they had built here.

He ran his fingers through the black bristles on his chin, then up to the scar that passed through his left eye. It ran from his forehead down across his cheek, and had left the eye sightless - a milk-white, dead parody of its darker twin. He pushed at the edge of his helm, relieving the pressure on his forehead for a moment. The scar tissue itched badly today. It always did after combat - the result of the heat and sweat. Not that what had just passed could truthfully be termed 'combat'.

There had been six in all. Perhaps seven. He couldn't remember. They were the ones who had been locked up the longest, those meant to be forgotten. The ones who ran, who broke down, who refused to work, who fought back. The biggest heroes and the biggest cowards. All the same, now. They had also been kept separate all this time - well away from the various wonders and horrors that had been unfolding. That, Skalla suspected, was one of the real reasons for this little outing to the woods. True, his masters had no further desire to waste food on these lost causes. But they were also wise enough not to waste an opportunity. They would make some use of them, even in death.

And so, they had marched them to this lonely spot, shackled and at spear point, and forced them to cut logs for firewood. They had performed the tasks well, considering their chequered histories - some, almost with gratitude. Perhaps, thought Skalla, it simply felt good to have a purpose again. He had not told them they were gathering wood for their own funeral pyre.

The killing had been quick. Regrettably, the kills were not as clean as he'd hoped. There were struggles, cries, prolonged agonies, repeated blows. From the start it had not been the most straightforward task. No damage to the head or neck - that's what their masters had specified. The order had bemused Skalla's men, and in the heat of the slaughter - one could hardly dignify the killing of these unarmed, underfed wretches with the term 'battle' - he could not be sure how closely they had adhered to it. At least one had taken a glancing sword blow across the top of the head - protruding from the heap, Skalla could see his hairy, blood-matted scalp, flapped open like the lid of a chest, the yellow-white bone of the skull grinning through the gore. But it didn't matter now. It was done. It would matter again soon, though. Then they would see.

"We're done here," said a voice behind Skalla. It was Gamli. He had stepped closer to where Skalla was sitting. Clearly he was impatient to leave. Perhaps he understood more than Skalla had realised.

"We wait," said Skalla, in a monotone.

"For what?"

"Until we are sure."

"Sure?" Gamli's voice was edgy. As always, he tried to cover it with a kind of swagger. "What is there to be sure of?"

"That they're dead."

Gamli laughed emptily, his throat tight. "Why not burn them now and have done with it?"

"Are you questioning me, Gamli?" Skalla's eyes remained fixed on the corpses.

A kind of panic entered Gamli's eyes. "Not you. I would never... But the masters... There are... doubts about them." He looked around as he said this, as if expecting support from his fellows. None came.

Skalla did not move. "I pledged my sword to them," he said, "and you swore an oath of allegiance to me. You do not question one without also questioning the other."

Gamli stood motionless, robbed of speech.

"Step back into line," said Skalla.

Before he could do so, a sound came from the heap, and an arm flopped out of the tangle. The men's hands jumped to their weapons. The arm hung there, motionless - quite dead. Olvir - one of the three crossbowmen - broke the silence with a nervous laugh. "For a moment, I thought..." He was interrupted by a low groan from the centre of the heap. Skalla stood slowly, hands still upon his sword, and flexed his shoulders. It was part of his ritual before combat.

"Gas. From the bodies," said another of the men, nervously. "They can do that." Olvir began to draw and load his crossbow. The others followed suit.

From deep within the pile came a weird, semi-human grunt, and the whole tangle suddenly shifted. As one, the men drew swords and raised crossbows. The uppermost body - a skinny man, whose abdomen was split open, and whose right arm had been all but severed - slithered from the top of the heap. The hand that had loosed itself from the pile twitched, its fingers beginning to straighten.

"It's beginning..." said Skalla. The first hollow moan repeated itself - to be joined by two more in a kind of desolate, mindless chorus. As they watched in horror, dead limbs moved, arms flailed and grasped, lifeless eyes flicked open.

"This can't be happening." said Gamli. From the heap, one of the men - a solid, muscular fellow who had taken two crossbow bolts through the chest, one of which had pinned his right hand to his sternum - staggered unsteadily to his feet. For a moment he seemed to sniff the air, then turned and lurched towards them.

Skalla spat on his palms and raised his sword. "Aim for the heads," he said, and swung his blade with all his strength at the dead man's neck. It sliced clean through, knocking the attacker off his feet and sending his head bowling into the bushes. Already two more were on their feet - the skinny man, his right arm hanging by a sinew, his glistening guts dangling between his legs, and the scalped man, his hair flapping absurdly to one side like a piece of bearskin, who Skalla could now see had been killed by a heavy sword blow to the left side of his chest, the upper and lower parts sliding past each other gruesomely with each lurching step. A crossbow bolt hit the skinny man in the shoulder, spinning him round. "In the head!" called Skalla. As the skinny man resumed his steady progress a second bolt thudded into his eye, knocking him flat. A third flew uselessly past the scalped man's ear. His arms reached out, grasping at Skalla, as another three grotesque figures rose stiffly behind him.

The rest of Skalla's men, momentarily mesmerised by the scene unfolding before them, now threw themselves into the fight. Gamli stepped forward first, grasping the scalped man's outstretched arm and hurling him to the floor. Drawing a cavalry axe from his belt, he flipped it around and, with one blow, drove its long spike through the exposed skull. As his other men hacked mercilessly at two of the remaining ghouls, Skalla advanced to finish off the third - a once fat man with folds of saggy skin beneath his ragged, filthy tunic. Skalla recognised the stab wounds in his chest - wounds that he himself had delivered with his knife. The fat man's left arm - bloody and slashed where he had attempted to defend himself from Skalla's blade - waved before him, his right, bloodier still, hanging crippled and useless by his side. Skalla raised his sword steadily, waiting for the right moment. The man's hand, formed into a claw, swayed and snatched at Skalla, his jaws opening and closing like those of an idiot child, dribbling bloody drool down his chest. But as Skalla began to swing, something pulled him off balance. He stumbled and fell, his foot caught. When he looked down, he understood. The seventh prisoner - his spinal cord severed, his legs useless - had dragged himself along the forest floor, and now, bearing his teeth, Skalla's ankle gripped in both hands, was biting on his leather boot. Skalla recoiled in disgust, kicking at the ghoul's slavering, gap-toothed mouth, but the tenacious grip held, and over him now loomed the fat man, moaning and clawing at his face. Too close for an effective blow, Skalla abandoned his sword and scrabbled for his knife but, before he had time to draw it, another sword blade was driven hard into the fat man's mouth, sending him choking and tottering backwards, his teeth grinding horribly against its metal edge. It was Gamli's sword. Skalla regained his feet, took up his own sword once more and brought it down with a crashing blow, cleaving the skull of the crawling man in two. He gave a nod of acknowledgement to Gamli, and scraped the man's brains off his boot with the point of his blade.

It was over. And his men, thankfully, had escaped unscathed.

"So it's true," said Gamli, surveying the carnage that surrounded them. "Our worst fear has come true."

Skalla ignored him, wiping clean and sheathing his sword as he hunted around for the head of the first of the undead men. He would take that back to his masters.

"I'm sorry," said Gamli, bowing his head. Skalla turned to face him. "I will not question you again."

"No," said Skalla. "You will not." And without blinking he stabbed Gamli in the side of the throat with his knife, severing both carotid arteries, before pulling the blade forward through his windpipe. Gamli collapsed in an eruption of blood, his last cry turned to a choked gurgle of air bubbling and frothing from his neck.

As he pumped crimson onto the forest floor, a contorted expression of disbelief frozen upon his face, Skalla looked upon him for the last time. "I did not kill you before only because I needed your sword," he said matter-of-factly, and stepped over the body. The other men drew back perceptibly as he approached. He scanned their faces one at a time, then sheathed his knife.

"Burn them," said Skalla, the still-living Gamli convulsing behind him. "All of them."