The King's Blood (80 page)

His thought floundered as his eyes drifted towards the window overlooking the battlements. A few ebony backsides twisted back and forth in what was either a panic or a poorly choreographed folk dance. The General rose from the seat of near honor, his plate mostly untouched. Food was ash after taking the medicinal potions the priests insisted upon.
 

A few of the gamblers caught sight of Marciano and tried to rise quickly, but he waved them off. "No need on my account," he smiled through the pain as his rising caused the dagger's blade to bite into his side once again. It was a pain that would take more than a few empty words and a night's rest to heal. Needlessly tucking in his chair, Marciano limped towards the door to the "breakfast nook" as one of the chattier servants called it. "Lone table for the guard stuck outside in the cold" was what Marciano dubbed it.

His hand, colder than he remembered, landed upon the latch that lifted with little fuss. It was commanding it to push that brought the searing pain again. He gritted his teeth and fought through the hot lead in his side, pulling open the door to a cluster of black chickens running about as if a fox got in the hen house.

Winds whipped and tore at the few Empire banners some melodramatic sot hung from the flagpoles. Most likely one of the priests on orders from the man who refused to exit the Tower's crest. Vasska decreed all his cabinet follow him and vanished hours ago, saying he was not to be disturbed, cradling that boy's blade like a child. Marciano gripped the door rattling against the winds, and slammed it shut. This brought the chickens attention away from whatever startled them, and his guards fell back into line, a few saluting as their leader rose up to inspect them.

"Men. What seems to be the trouble?"

One of the younger ones, shit, they were all younger ones weren't they anymore, turned white as the Ostero snow and looked cautiously over his shoulder to the ground below, then snapped back to the General. Another, steadier than his companion, babbled something in a tongue Marciano was certain he'd conquered over five years ago.
 

"Right," the general said. Limping through them, he parted the guards too terrified to make sense and pierced the red land illuminated by the final steps of the sun. Shadows shifted against the stark land, like grass in a small windstorm. Man sized grass that slowly inched closer to the gates.

"The Queen's army," he cursed, questioning why he put any trust in Vasska's assessment they were crippled.

"Sir," the more coherent of the two guards tapped Marciano on the shoulder and handed a spyglass to him.

The General nodded at him, and raised the piece to his eye. At first, he got nothing but a face full of stone wall. Whipping it about fast enough to make anyone queasy, he settled upon a pair of the shadows so near they banged upon the closed gate. Their bodies rattled the metal of the portcullis, shaking it soundly. As a tactic, it made about as much sense as ramming your own soldiers upon the enemy's sword in the hope it'd get too heavy and slip from his hand.

Then a torch flared in the winds and illuminated the body of the lead man banging into the gate. It would have shown his face if he'd had one. The body, just the body, no head at all, took a few steps back and then ran forward.

"What trickery is this?!" Marciano cursed, dropping the spyglass from his eye.

"Sir, it is worse than that," the guard pointed to another body a few feet behind the main line, stumbling with the rest. Marciano raised his scope to it and bit his tongue in rage at the ebony armor marching limply beside the bodies of the rebels they slew less than a week earlier.
 

"I know what they is," the pale guard muttered, his fingers slipping over a set of beads dangling off his belt. "Can't you see it. Them eyes, never movin'. They're unblinkers."

"There's no such thing as unblinkers," is what the General should have said, but a disgusting fear strangled his tongue. Instead he muttered to himself, "Even if they gather enough force it'll be days before they get through the gate."

But the unblinkers were ahead of the General; as more approached the line, their limbs grew certain. They began to climb over top their fellows, constructing a ladder out of corpses. "Sweet merciful Argur!" Marciano muttered, "Hey!" he called down to the few guards ambling about the courtyard, "Hey!"

They looked up at their General and waved back cheerfully, just as the first body tumbled over the gate wall. It smashed to the ground like a wet sack of flour. The courtyard guards jumped at the sound and rushed over to the man who committed suicide jumping off the wall.
 

Then the broken body started to lift, the entire back sat up straight and the guards jumped away, trying to wave their swords at the invader who survived the deadly fall. One leg, then another, pulled under the body, struggling to lift it. A guard inched closer, trying to see what the broken man wanted, when a limp hand snaked forward and caught him about the throat.

It squeezed with all the force a human hand could manage, as the second guard swung upon the enemy with his sword, hacking into meat that had no give. Still the hand squeezed, the guard in his grasp choked and struggled but could find no relief. As his vision swam before him in the last gasp of oxygen, his final sight was the dead man's head lolling upon him, the eyes staring far into the future.

"Hey! Soldier!" Marciano shouted to the man still attacking the corpse with all his might. Somehow his General's commands broke through the terror of the strangling dead crowding upon his brain. His head snapped up to the man upon the balcony, "Run!"

Dropping the sword that failed to kill the man, the soldier turned tail, running for the main door. The corpse dropped his kill to the ground, finally rising on steadying legs just as one, and then another, fell from their ladder into the courtyard.
 

Marciano heard the main door slamming in place and turned from the frontal assault. "Muster every man you can find. Get them armed, get them prepped," he ordered to the two guards beside him.

"You can't kill what's already dead," the pale one mumbled, his eyes not leaving the man with the crushed larynx.
 

"We can bloody well try," Marciano said, "now go!"

He threw open the doors to the disturbingly happy scene before him and cried, "We're under attack!" The men dropped whatever they'd been eating and tried to rise, their knees banging against the tables in excitement and terror.
 

"I need one of you to find boiling oil," he ordered.

"There ain't none in the keep," someone responded back.

Marciano paced, trying to steady his jangling nerves at the idea of being attacked by the corpses of his own men, "Then find something, anything that burns. I don't give a shit if it's this morning's spackle oatmeal."

"Sir?" The men didn't move, registering the terror in their General's face. This was a man who faced down a pair of Dunlaw assassins wearing nothing but a towel and armed with a straight razor. To see him shaken was to break every man there.

"Go!" he ordered, pointing towards the door. The men scattered, afraid to look back. There was no way, no time to explain to his men that they'd be fighting unblinkers. Gods, how...

He squared his shoulders, anything that can die once can damn well die again. They'd find a way and they'd tell tales of this for decades to come. Marciano stalked across the small hall to the stairs, when a blast shook the entire tower. Feet failed to find purchase and he stumbled hard into a candle alcove. The ringing ricocheted through the stairwell, every stone echoing a piece back. His vision blurred and for a second he could taste purple.
 

As soon as the moment came, it passed. The ringing faded to nothing and the world slipped back into focus. Marciano dashed back to the balcony, his eyes hunting over the unblinkers -- now numbered in the dozens -- pacing below, trying to claw and bash their way into the door. Then a strange light pulled his eyes heavenward. Craning his neck out over the edge, he struggled to find the Tower's crest and a haunting purple light blazed from every window in the observation tower.

"Vasska," he muttered. It had to be him, the one behind walking dead and shaking towers. Unsheathing his blade, he climbed up the stairs while the rest of his platoon raced down, trying to barricade the buckling door. The Emperor had much to answer for that night.

"Behind you," the voice called cryptically from the shadows as a blade sliced across an unguarded throat and tossed the body down the stairs.

"Oi! Watch it!" Kynton hollered up as the heavy corpse smacked into his rising head from below the assassin. "Do you have to kill every person we pass?"

Taban grinned, "I suppose not. I could let a few get past to you if you'd prefer."

Kynton opened his mouth and shut it, climbing overtop the third guard they passed. "Far be it for me to tell you how to do your job."

Taban placed his ear against the wall and held up a finger to silence the priest. He got a glower, but merciful silence. "Your Albrant is doing his job as well, the hornet's nest has burst. We should hurry."

"We must be near the top," Aldrin muttered, coming to a stop above the corpse whose eyes he feared to look into.

"How do you know, oh King, my King?" Kynton asked.

"He's been counting the floors," Taban said to the priest, "and he is correct. Another flight and a half."

"We should strategize," Aldrin said, closing his eyes in thought.

"I believe we shall open the door and kill everyone inside, yes?" the assassin said bluntly. "Not much to strategize when attacking a room you have never been in."

The boy King looked down at the two women climbing together beside each other. Isa was a bit slower on the stairs, unable to skip a few at a time the way the lanky ones could. Ciara moved with her, as if in a haze. Her eyes trailed across the corpse, but didn't register it.
 

"What are you waiting for," the witch huffed, waving her hand about as if she weren't the one holding them up.

Kynton cracked a dangerous smile, but Taban cut him off, in no mood for the delay. "Nothing, come priest." And he turned back to the stairs, flying towards the top with the priest trailing behind. Isa cursed their over extended limbs and inched past Aldrin, muttering under her breath. She seemed to be taking as much of her time getting to the top as she could.

Aldrin glanced over at the girl who'd lost not just her past but possibly her future. She was watching the corpse still bleeding across the stairs.
 

"I could have slain him," her voice trilled across the cramped staircase. Aldrin looked down at the body and knew she didn't mean the nondescript guard. "Sliced right into his meat and let it come pouring out like a pigs."

He walled up those memories of his brother so fresh he could still taste them, but dared not open his mouth for fear it'd all come gushing free. Ciara decided to do the talking for the both of them.

"I've done it before. There was a merc, an ugly troll of a man, and we were warned, oh we were all warned, don't be alone with him. But he caught me in the barn, tending to the few horses after the twins had knocked off early. I shouldn't have done it," she was shaking now, her hands rising as she mimicked the stab of her dagger into the never forgotten merc's exposed belly.
 

Her head hung as she whispered to the thin air, "Can a good person do bad things? Does anything justify the means?"

Aldrin grabbed both his hands around her invisible dagger and crumpled it as he cupped her hands. He wanted to ask her the same thing, but he knew that was one confession he could never make. Instead, he sighed and said, "I suppose we could ask Kynton."

She snorted at that, a cruel one, "The gods care little for what we do scurrying beneath their feet."

"Probably why we're more concerned with what our fellow scurriers think."

"There's a scholar hiding beneath that crown," she said, and smiled sadly.
 

"Oh Princeling!" Kynton's voice called down the stairs, "the party cannot start without its guest of honor!"

Aldrin scowled, but he was right. Unpleasant noises broke from the stairs below as feet trampled back and forth across floors previously silent. If they dallied much longer they risked capture. He nodded to Ciara and she grabbed the wall, rising up after the others. The king turned to follow, failing to notice the dead guard's leg beginning to twitch.

Taban had half his torso pressed against a wooden door in the ceiling, counting the footsteps above him. Or trying to, as he lost his place every time the cursed priest opened his gob. After the third occurrence, he stopped bothering and looked down from his perch at the witch glowing enough they didn't require a torch. Not a heartening omen.
 

Aldrin finally appeared upon the stairs, pushing past the priest and witch each leaning to the sides. He nodded at the assassin who in turn nodded back. "Gird yourself," Taban ordered. With as much force as he could muster, the assassin threw open the attic doors and dashed through.