"The Red Blades have withdrawn from the west gate," he shouted back over the street. "We are positioned on the rooftops and await your order."
"The eastern defenses are lost," Horus choked up a bit, "Askalon is dead. The east gate is wide open and the southern will not hold long undefended. My forces are largely in tact and in place. Stay off the streets and try to stay hidden."
"Is that all, my lord?"
"Captain Willem will know what to do, just instruct him to head towards the center of the city."
"I will, my lord." the soldier replied, "Be safe."
The king waved as the Red Blade turned and ran back over the makeshift ramps to the western end of the city. Horus breathed deeply. "I guess we had better get started then," he said.
"What would you have us do, my lord?" one of the men asked.
"Unfortunately there isn't much we can do other than bide our time. We will stay low on the roofs so as to remain undetected when the dead flood the city. Most of the stairs have been destroyed, save for a few warehouses such as this one. We will lure the dead inside, seal the entrance and then burn them. If we get separated, remember that any building with a pulley like that," he pointed to the device holding the cabinet above the door on the ground below, "has oil placed inside of it and can be burned. Break the barrels, spread the oil, then lure the dead in, lower the barricade in front of the door and then set the building ablaze. Use the ramps to move on to the next roof," the king finished, "just make sure to pull them in behind you."
I will admit I was skeptical when the king first told us of the plan, that was until I saw it work. Within a matter of hours, the city streets were completely overrun with the dead. They slowly staggered down alleys and into buildings. We lay flat on our roof, only occasionally peaking over the edge to see what was there. Finally, the king knelt up.
"Its time," he said.
A small group of men slipped back down into the building to spread the oil. Once they returned Horus waited a few moments, and then jumped to his feet. "Now" he yelled.
Instantly the rest of us were standing - the archers with their bows drawn and aimed. They began firing down upon the dead below. The streets were thick with them, and the sharp points of the arrows bit deeply into their rotting flesh. It did not take the dead long to surround the building and soon more began appearing out of alleys and side streets and making their way towards us.
The door to the warehouse was beaten down quickly and they poured inside. I could hear them beating on the walls beneath us, trying to find a way up. A soldier to my right stood over a torch, striking his sword with a small piece of flint. After a few tries, a spark caught the reeds and the torch began to burn.
More and more of the dead pushed their way into the entrance, until finally those outside could no longer enter. Horus pulled open the trapdoor leading down into the building.
"Quickly," he said, "drop it."
The king slammed the trapdoor shut as soon as the soldier had tossed the torch in. Horus then drew his sword from its sheath and sliced at the tightly bound rope on the pulley. It snapped easily and the large cabinet suspended over the warehouse's doorway plummeted towards the ground. With a sickening crunch, it crushed two of the dead beneath and settled directly in front of the door.
The king grinned at me. "You didn't think that would work," he said.
I struggled to find a response. But before I had time to worry too much about him reading me again I noticed smoke seeping out from the other side of the building. "Smoke!" I said, pointing at it frantically. So much for saving my dignity.
Horus nodded. "Let's get off this roof. It won't be long before it collapses entirely."
We carefully pushed the ramp over the alley to the next building and dashed across, pulling it in once again behind us. We repeated the process until our small group of soldiers was several buildings away.
Once we stopped, I stared back at the warehouse. Flames leapt from its windows and thick smoke poured out from every opening. Horus was right though, I couldn't believe that had actually worked. Over the next few hours, I began to notice more and more similar fires off in other directions. The other groups were lighting their own buildings, and I suspected the Red Blades were doing much the same several blocks to the west.
For the remainder of the day, and long into the night we repeated the process, filling and then burning a handful more buildings. The dead knew where we were, they simply could not reach us. We traveled in small groups that could move quickly. Several times dead had managed to find their way onto the rooftops, but we either just avoided them entirely or pushed them back down if they numbered small enough.
It was nearing morning when they brought the catapults into the city streets. I had been fortunate enough to have been able to sleep for a few hours during the night and was now on watch with several other soldiers.
It was very dark, the only source of light being the heavily obscured fires that still raged on to the north. I could not see the dead on the streets below very well, but I knew they were there. I could hear them shuffling about the base of the building.
In the distance, I heard a deep grating. As if something very heavy were being dragged along the stone roads. Then, down the street a ways, just within my vision, I saw a bright glow. It was a flame. Frantic shouts echoed through the streets as it suddenly jerked back, and then shot out towards a building. It exploded into its target and disappeared with a deep rumble. I rushed to wake the others as I began to hear more crashes off in other directions.
In only a few moments, we had woken the rest of our group. They were groggy and still very tired but became alert quickly.
"We need to move," Horus stated, "If they're firing on other groups we have to assume that they will be firing upon us too. We're lucky we made it farther into the city than most yesterday."
"Which direction?" one of the soldiers asked, "Keep heading inward?"
The king nodded. "Yes," he said as another loud crash sounded out in the darkness. "Hopefully we'll be able to meet some of Willem's men near the center of the city. We need to move now though, that last one was much closer. Did anyone see it?"
"No, my lord." I answered, "But I think it came from the other side of the block and down a few buildings. It was very close."
Horus briefly peeked over the edge of the roof. "We can't risk torches, but we won't be able to go far or very fast without light," he observed. "We had better go now."
And we did. For the rest of the night we quietly slid our ramp over alleys or walkways and slipped across as silently as possible. We had not gone very far when a bright flame flared up near the building we'd been resting on and then smashed into the wall. The entire ground beneath us seemed to shake as the roof was brought down, collapsing inwards. I exhaled nervously and looked to the king.
"The joke is on them," he said, flashing a quick grin. "That building was going to be torn down anyway."
The morning came much too fast for my liking, and our progress slowed substantially. There still wasn't very much light penetrating the thick clouds of smoke that hovered over the city, but even in the dim glow of the rising sun we had to be much more careful when we moved.
The dead continued to demolish the city around us. Their attacks during the night had been devastating, dozens of buildings lay in complete ruin and our already meager forces had sustained heavy losses. We saw only one other group of soldiers hiding on the roofs that day, and they were too far away to communicate with.
By midday, the decision had been made to stay put until nightfall, when it was safer to move about again. To be completely honest, I don't know if the dark even affected the dead at all, it did give us a small amount of comfort though.
We decided to stop on one of the marked buildings. Something had caused the rope holding a heavy stack of wooden boards above the door to snap though, so as a trap the building was useless to us but it was nice to know that no dead could gain entrance to the ground level without first taking care of the barricade.
We were nearly to the meeting point, but there were no sign of Captain Willem or the Red Blades. Horus insisted that they'd meet us the following day but I don't think many of us really believed it.
The truth was that we were in our sixth day of battle. We had fought for nearly a week. Emotions had been high before, and there had not been much time to stop and think. While lying down on the rooftops in complete silence waiting for nightfall, there was not much to do other than think. For me, and most of the mere two score of men who remained with us, that fact began to sink in along with a realization of what would come next. We had all known it would happen, but before there had been that slim glimmer of hope that maybe, maybe we would win. But with the dead now thick among the streets our fates seemed inescapable, and though no one spoke of it, a cloak of sorrowful dread had fallen over us.
Horus knew it. He tried to keep our spirits up, making sardonic observations with that wry grin. He felt it too though, and there was nothing he could do about it.
It was nearly dusk when we heard movement from inside the building. It was faint at first, it sounded as if something had bumped the ceiling directly below us. The noise caused many of us to jump, startled. The king gestured for us to remain quiet and drew his sword, we all followed suit.
Then we heard it again, it was definitely directly beneath us. A small tuft of ash sat slightly displaced near the center of the roof. The coating was inches thick by now and a moderate sized crease had formed in it.
"Trapdoor," Horus said quietly.
I tensed as another bump deepened the crease in the ash. We all stood in silence, swords drawn and bows aimed. A short burst of wind caught a dense plume of falling ash and sent it cascading through our ranks.
Whatever came through that door was not going anywhere without a fight. My mind raced as I tried to think of a way the dead could have entered the building without us noticing. The back door had been boarded up and sealed before the evacuation and the front had been blocked for as long as we had been there. A shiver coursed through my body as I realized that the barricade was not meant to keep more dead out, but to keep whatever was beneath us in.
Another strike thumped the door from below, this one more forceful. We waited. A series of short blows followed, as if it were being rattled from beneath. After a moment, it stopped abruptly and for several long seconds there was nothing. I held my breath and leaned in closer, trying to make out any movement in the dying light.
Suddenly, the wooden bolt lock splintered cleanly in half as the door was jolted open from a tremendous blast below. The trapdoor snapped back against the roof and thumped forcefully into the ash.
It was dark inside. I strained to see anything. Then I heard a curse. The dead had never cursed before. A mailed gauntlet emerged from the darkness, followed shortly by another. I watched as a large, haggard looking man in full mail armor with a heavy sword strapped across his back pulled himself onto the roof. I finally let out my breath, relieved. I could not completely make out his face, but I knew to whom it belonged. It was Captain Willem.
"Rastus!" Horus exclaimed in a hushed tone as he rushed to help pull the captain through the door. With the king's help, Willem squeezed through the trap door and collapsed back onto the roof. He did not look very well, even for Rastus. Tattered mail hung loosely around several deep cuts across his torso.
"Are you all right?" The king asked quickly, "What happened?"
"I'm fine." Rastus held up a hand. "My men..."
"Your men?" Horus replied, "What about them? Where are they?"
Just then, another set of hands appeared in the door. I looked down to see a dirty, blood streaked face squinting back up at me. It was the tall man I'd met the final night of the evacuations. I helped him up through the opening. In total, six of the Red Blades were with Willem. They were all in better shape than the captain, but not by a very wide margin.
We tended to their wounds the best we could. Unfortunately, there was not much we could do other than bind them tightly with small rags.
"Are you sure you're all right?" Horus asked the captain again, eyeing the large gashes across his chest.
Willem grunted. "They look worse than they are."
The king did not look convinced, but he let it drop. "So what happened to you? Where are the rest of your men?"
"These are the rest of my men," Willem said sourly. "They surrounded our building with catapults during the night. We got across to the next roof over but they just blew that one up too."
"But how did you get here?"
"Well after our roof collapsed, there weren't many places to go but down." He sighed, "We lost most of the men then. They fought well though, they fought very well." Rastus pointed to the tall man, "Edonus saw a hole in the rubble and we rallied around it, thinking it would be an easier position to defend..." Before he could finish, Willem erupted into a fit of coughing, specs of blood dripped from his mouth.
"Turns out it was an entrance to the aqueducts," Edonus cut in quickly, finishing for the captain. "We scouted around a bit, and the dead don't have much of a presence down there."
"Well that is a bit ironic." Horus observed, "The rotting corpses don't like the sewers. There is an entrance to them below this building then, I presume?"
Edonus nodded. "Yes, my lord. And it gets better, it's pretty much a straight shot from here to the north wall. From there we could get to the old armory."
The king grinned, gaining enthusiasm. "Its back is against the city wall, and its own walls are the thickest in Targonor next to the keep. How close will the aqueducts get us?"
"The closest we could feasibly get out would be across the street, my lord."
Horus paused a moment, considering the options. "Well," he said finally. "I still like that better than just sitting here waiting for the catapults to come."
"We thought you might." Willem coughed. "How many men do you have?" the captain asked, peering around the roof.
"Forty-eight counting you seven," the king answered. "We saw a group down this street a ways this morning though. They looked to have another two scores, at least."
"I know the group you're talking about," Willem replied grimly. "They fell in the early evening. We watched from a sewer grate. There wasn't anything we could do."
The king gazed out over the streets and shook his head. "Damn them," he said quietly.
Within a matter of minutes, we were making our way down into the building. I dropped through the trapdoor onto a creaky wooden floor and looked about nervously, I could not see much.
"Don't worry, we cleared the building." Edonus said from behind me, sensing my discomfort, "There's nothing in here."
Captain Willem led the way back to the staircase. If his wounds were bothering him, he didn't show it. The stairs themselves had been destroyed. The building was almost completely bare, even the walls had been stripped of any furnishings. Only a few barrels of oil stood near what would have been the top step. Instead, a knotted rope was tied to the banister and dangled down to the ground floor.
"That must have been hard to do in the dark," Horus quipped, eyeing the rope.
"It took a while," Rastus replied dryly.
After we had all made our way to the main floor, Willem spoke up. "The only thing separating us from the dead right now is the front door, and a stack of wood," he whispered, "Sound also carries a long ways in the aqueducts. From here on out we must be as quiet as possible."
We nodded our heads in understanding.
"And stay close together once we are down there," he added, "it is very dark and we cannot afford to light torches. Step carefully."
We followed him silently to the back of the building, where an opened grate revealed a sturdy ladder leading down into the darkness. I waited my turn and then began to slowly descend, carefully locating each rung with my foot before setting down. I was blind here and it terrified me. Eventually, my foot hit solid ground. The sewers were dank and much cooler than the surface.
The tunnel was narrow, but widened considerably when it met with the main sewer. I clasped the shoulder of the Red Blade in front of me to keep myself with the group. The soldier behind me did the same.
Time seemed to drag on in the darkness, especially at our slow pace. I don't know for how long we walked. Several times the tunnel opened into a larger, wider room. I could not see the walls, but could feel them expanding outwards. It left me feeling exposed and uncomfortable. Unfortunately there wasn't anything I could do about it but stay quiet and keep going.
Once, we passed almost directly under a grating to the streets above. The sun had long since sank below the horizon, leaving the surface nearly as dark as the aqueducts. Nonetheless, we could hear the dead shuffling around over our heads, and prayed that they could not hear us as well.
After what seemed like hours, the walls opened into another wide room. We continued to trudge through as silently as possible, taking slow and deliberate steps in our boots and holding our weapons close to ensure they made no unwanted noise. The darkness was impenetrable, even having been in the sewers for a fair amount of time I could still not see past my nose. Suddenly, we stopped.
I stood perfectly still, afraid to breathe. Nobody said a word. There was silence. I wanted to ask why we'd stopped, my mind was certainly coming up with plenty of reasons why on its own and none of them were very pleasant. But I remained quiet. I wasn't going to be the one who broke the silence. Then I heard it.
Walking, it was close.
At first I thought it was just one of our men, but we were walking single-file and it was coming from our side. The steps were irregular. It scuffed and sounded as if whatever it was, was dragging its feet along the hard ground. A few paces ahead of me I heard a sword slowly slide from its sheath. I desperately wanted to do the same, but was petrified to make any sort of noise.
Instead, I waited. My chest burned, I needed to breathe. Carefully, I slowly exhaled and drew in a deep breath without so much as making a sound. The steps were coming closer. They couldn't be more than a dozen feet away, ahead and to my right. Then I felt a sharp tug from the soldier behind me, before he let go of my shoulder. There was a painful cry several feet behind me. Instantly I heard more swords being drawn, quickly this time though and suddenly there was movement all around me.
"Taggart" I heard Willem's voice bark out sharply, "We need light."
There was a faint spark somewhere in front of me.
"I'm trying." I heard Edonus reply.
There were several more screams, much louder this time. I could hear the unmistakable sounds of a blade tearing into flesh. I frantically spun around, trying desperately to make out any movement. There was no one in my immediate range, yet all around me I heard the sounds of battle. Hands shaking, I drew my sword and held it guardedly in front of me, probing the darkness.
As I turned, it hit something. Before I could react my blade was slapped away violently, nearly out of my hands. I staggered back a step, falling down. I caught myself at the last moment with my free hand. It gripped tightly onto the gritty, cold ground. As I pushed myself back up I felt a sharp wisp of air blow by over my head.
I leapt forward, lunging blindly into the darkness with my long sword. With a revolting sucking noise it plunged into something in front of me. I withdrew the blade immediately and chopped it downwards in the same direction. I again felt it sink into something.
"I got it!" Edonus exclaimed from somewhere behind me as a flickering light suddenly flooded the room.
I was staring directly into the rotting face of one of the dead. Its decaying body was littered with knots and sinewy strips of ligament hung string-like, from its frame. It wore ragged remnants of ring mail and clutched a small axe tightly in one of its lifeless hands. Its eyes were sunken deeply into its skull, and were glossed over with a pearly white. The creature's mouth had rotted away completely, exposing a grotesque jaw that seemed to be locked eternally into a twisted grin.
It had a gaping wound near the center of its torso, and my sword was embedded several inches deep into its neck, separating a good deal of the head from the body. It stared at me intensely, radiating hatred. Its bony fist began to rise, bringing the axe up with it. Instinctively, I pulled my sword from its neck and summoned forth every bit of strength I had to bring my blade down upon the creature again.
My long sword ripped through what little remained of the neck and removed a sizeable portion of the shoulder as its head casually twisted, then rolled down off its back. In a stunned disbelief, I quickly stepped out of the way as the rest of the body toppled forward onto the ground.
I whirled around. The room was thick with the dead. At least a dozen of our men had already fallen, and lay still on the cold ground. With the light, it became plainly evident that we were outnumbered, the dead funneled in from two small side tunnels faster than we could cut them down. All around me, our men fought fiercely.
Then the light suddenly dimmed, I looked back towards Edonus. He had dropped the torch and had a stunned look on his face. He stared down wide-eyed at the blade protruding from his chest and fell to his knees, one of the dead stood behind him menacingly. Immediately, Willem was there. With his large sword, he tore into the creature savagely, lobbing off both its head and an arm before it crumbled to the ground.
"We can't win this." Horus shouted, "We must find a way out."
I scanned the room. It was large and had four exits, one on each wall. The two smaller tunnels on the sides we both clogged with the dead and going back the way we came wasn't really an option. That only left us with one choice.
I dashed to where Edonus had fallen and picked up the torch. I pointed it towards the hallway leading to the north.
"We've got to go this way." I called out as I felt something jab painfully into my leg. I looked down to see one of the dead on the ground. It had been severed in two at the abdomen and was dragging itself towards me. Its frigid hand gripped my lower leg tightly, squeezing with a surprising strength. I jerked my leg backwards, but was unable to break its hold.
Another appeared to my right. It lurched towards me in a deathly silence. I waved my sword at it, trying to keep it at bay, but it had no effect. It drew closer as the other slowly pulled itself onto me, reaching upwards towards my throat. Then I heard Horus' voice.
"You can't kill Pepran," he said matter-of-factly, as a sword blade suddenly split the dead latched onto me's skull into two from behind, "He's got the torch."
The creature wilted off me and back onto the ground. The king flashed me a quick grin, and then turned his attention towards the dead to my right. In a few slices, he had separated the fiend from its head. He kicked the body backwards as it fell away into the darkness.
Horus looked back to me. "Quickly," he said, "go."
Without hesitation, I took off towards the northern tunnel, jumping over the corpses of both the dead and our soldiers alike. A small number of our men were already at the entrance, they were in formation around Willem and fought back any of the dead who attempted to get past. They parted briefly and I rushed through them, with a few other men directly behind me.
I turned to see the dead tightening their grip on the room. Only a few soldiers remained separated from our group and they were falling quickly. A wave of the dead surged forward out of the side tunnels. They spilled into the room, forcing any remaining combatants towards the center. Willem and the others struggled to keep them back.
I heard Horus curse loudly from somewhere in the fray. Two of the dead were suddenly sent sprawling into the wall as the king emerged from the crowd perhaps a dozen paces to our left, he was wounded. The dead were filling in around him quickly. He looked back at us and frowned.
"This is a bit of a mess," he shouted to us as he beat away several attacks.
The horde pressed in on us tightly, we were losing ground, slowly being forced back into the tunnel. The king was almost out of sight.
"My lord," Willem called out as the man next to him fell to one of the dead's attacks, "Hold on."
Horus' back hit the wall. He parried several blows, then I lost sight of him. I heard a scream and pushed forward into the line, swinging my sword wildly in front of me. I caught view of him again. A spear was lodged wickedly in his upper torso, a look of anguish spread across his face as he tried to pull it free while fighting off the attacks. With a violent jerk, he ripped it from his chest and plunged it into the skull of the nearest undead.
"Go," he roared. "Go now!"
Willem cursed loudly and barked an order. The soldiers began to fall back into the tunnel. A wave of sickening nausea swept through me. "We can't just leave him!" I yelled, trying to push forward.
Rastus turned, forcing me back and locked his gaze onto mine. "There's nothing we can do for him now. Don't be a fool. Run."
I stood there shaking, I wanted to cry.
"Run!" Willem said this time, there was a dangerous edge to his voice.
With a sinking dread in my stomach, I turned back into the tunnel and began to run. The soldiers broke off their combat and raced after me. The flickering torchlight danced along the walls as we left the dead, and Horus, trailing behind in the darkness.
