Chapter 87

Soul Melange

I stare at the gently levitating broomstick. Finally! My army will take to the skies. Wights on brooms! Flotillas of witches descending from the clouds in matching robes, ebony ribbons streaming from their hats, and steel gleaming in their hands! How delightful! Janvier will never see this coming. Or rather, he might, but he certainly won’t be expecting it.

The broom quivers expectantly.

Humph. I suppose I should try it out, before others attempt to ride it? To see if it actually works. Perhaps it will just dissolve into a pile of kindling. Perhaps my weight will be too much for it to bear? My excitement is somewhat dampened by the suspicion that a lich on a broom is not an elegant thing. Flying on Elizbeth is one thing, but even Elizabeth has bone to her, more substance for me to rest on. This broom is just a stick and twigs.

Of course, there is no one here to see me fall off. Flying skirts can be sewn for the future. Extremely wide trousers that look like skirts when they hang, so that the pantaloons are kept demurely out of sight. Yes, it is plausible, like riding skirts only with a softer fabric for extra floatiness! But enough procrastination.

Perching my rear delicately on the broom, I grab the handle firmly between two hands. This is fine, although, as I suspected, it is wildly uncomfortable. Brooms were not meant to be sat on. It does not break, and it stays aloft, my toes gently brushing the forest floor. I do have to twist myself around to see where I am going. That won’t be practical if I’m a mile over a smoking city and attempting to dodge dragon fire. It would be fine for the leisurely admiration of scenery en route.

Double checking that I am alone in the blighted forest, (I am, apart from a few soulful wisps) I hop off, then sling my leg brazenly over the shaft. This is equally uncomfortable but now I am astride I can at least imagine fighting like this. One handed, for balance. This will take courage for a mortal who risks losing everything if they dash themselves on the ground.

“Alright,” I murmur to myself. “Let’s see if this works. Up!”

The broom takes off like a shooting star.

My scream shatters the quiet of the snow covered wood. Distant birds take flight in alarm. I learn several things in quick succession. The broom is fast but stupid. It does not respond if I shout commands, it ignores me if I swear, but obeys me decently well if I whisper encouragement.

‘Up’, ‘down’, ‘faster’, ‘slower’, ‘left’ and ‘right’ all seem to work although I can see it will take some getting used to. This level of thought will likely be beyond the wights’ abilities. Narrowly avoiding a collision with a stately pine, I manage to guide the broom back to the ground and exit a little abruptly into a sloppy snow pile with my skirts over my head.

Still. I am pleased. First things first. I have one broom. An army will need many more. I make haste back to Dunbarra Keep. On foot. Once there I command a team of wights out to ravage a distant grove of ash and birch, before tasking the Crafter’s Guild with broom creation.

“How many, my lady?” asks a pink faced lady in a multi coloured crocheted gown with yellow edging.

“As many as you can make before we go!” I yell, already running for the door. No doubt lots of them will get burnt to ashes by the dragons. We will need spares.

My next stop is Greater Downing and the ruling witches’ council. The change of leadership has been a success and I am pleased with the plethora of herbalists and alchemy shops that have opened in the marketplace. The mayor assures me that the town’s people are content and that the baron is not missed. I believe him, despite the amount of sweat that accrues on his forehead whenever I demand an audience.

The witches’ council is excited by the broom. Boisterous discussions break out on the viability of charms, the best way to fireproof the twigs, and the best weapons for aerial combat. I leave them arguing the pros and cons of bow and arrow versus knots and potions and retire to Downing Forest to hunt flying sprites.

I will need a goodly amount. To be effective we will need many brooms, and therefore many soul infested twigs. And those who fly them will need time to practise, which makes the job urgent. Wisps are plentiful, especially around the marshier areas at night. The imps seem to be intelligent and the word soon gets out that I am hunting them. In all honesty this just makes it more fun.

To my delight Jenkins joins me on my hunt. So it would seem that all cats can see these spirits, this strangely layered reality that coexists with our own. That explains all the times I have caught him glaring with focused energy on a patch of nothing. Or hunting sunbeams. He was staring at things I truly could not comprehend.

My undead cat soon proves himself to be an agile and ferocious hunter of little spirits. I only turn my back for a moment and there he is with an imp dangling from his jaw. Its face is bloodied and it is shaking one tiny fist at me. I put it out of its misery and it joins its fellows on the twig pile. With Jenkin’s to help my soul harvesting goes much faster. Together we stalk the gloaming under the chilly boughs and soon come back with baskets of soul gems.

Things are coming together.

The brooms are ready, and people, dead and alive, are training on them. The siege weapons are likewise ready, although I think I can still make some improvements. And the tunnel is being dug to extract my beautiful machines of war, although progress is painfully slow.

I burn off some anxious energy by putting souls into various pieces of siege weaponry with some interesting effects. The siege weapons do not fly but I can make them lighter, and I can make them stronger. It is a little like baking. Wild, creative baking without a recipe. I am, in effect, creating soul blancmanges. A little like my little monster constructs, some souls work in harmony while others get on like curdled milk. Just like they did when they were alive.

The catapults with harmonious souls load faster, shoot more accurately and are less prone to damage. The souls in conflict… it is like a haunting. Perhaps this is how poltergeists come to be? Trapped and unhappy they do what they can to spread their torment; ropes snap, gears jam and payloads fall on people’s heads. I remove these souls hastily, after complaints from the Thomlinson’s draugrs, although I fill my notebooks with copious notes and diagrams.

I had considered using bone as a construction material but in the end they are just too brittle. Even enormous bones sourced from monsters would not be strong enough to withstand the pressures of the winding cogs and shifting beams, although they might perhaps be easier to enchant. Thomlinson will not allow me to get too decorative with the siege weapons either. He claims decorative femurs will get in the way of practicality and function. He may have a point but I think he underestimates the psychological effect of good design. After some wrangling I am allowed to add a few corpse parts.

Now each catapult and trebuchet come with matching rows of skeletons, each welded to the frames by their spines, and each equipped with bows and arrows.

“Built in defence,” I say.

“Hmm,” says Thomlinson, but I can see he is coming round.

The decorative skellies are fiercely protective of their assigned siege weapons and annoyingly talkative. Nothing goes wrong that they do not see. Once we are on the battlefield I’m sure they will be just as diligent and hopefully useful. In the meantime they are very pretty.

I turn my thoughts towards transportation.

My current plan is to split my army in the approach. The siege weapons, a large contingent of wights and draugr, and the more robust little monsters will float down the river on custom built vessels, and ship themselves out to sea. The refugee dockworkers from Fairhaven have been more than happy to set to work shipbuilding, especially if it means they might soon return to their homes.

This army will approach Fairhaven from the water. Hopefully from the seabed. Hopefully unseen until it is too late. Hopefully. None of them need to breathe after all and it will make manoeuvring the giant structures easier. The rest of my army - the humans, the flying parts, and anything that needs to stay dry, will approach from the land. I will lead the aerial attack, while Timothy, my void knight, will lead the seabed invasion.

The plan is to move quickly, giving Janvier little warning of our arrival.

I am middlingly pleased with this plan.

The boats might be ready but getting the siege engines through Downing Forest, and then out of the water at Fairhaven might be problematic. They are big and they are heavy. Even with the soul infused wood they are unwieldy. After watching Thomlinson and his helpers grease the wheels, pushing and shoving to move a particularly large tower while the skellies shout and jeer, I decide I need to make something to help. Wight horses? Hard to come by in numbers. I think I can do better.

My crafting pile is running low but this is a fantastic way to use up the remaining body parts I have accumulated over the last months. Time is ticking, I am impatient for war. There is no time for delicate stitching. Using whatever is to hand I sew parts into the grisly corpse equivalent of a ball of yarn. Legs and arms on the outside, it is a mad, tangled pile of parts held together with twine and thread and sinew. Unlike a ball of yarn it is substantial, taller than me and twice as wide.

Once completed, the grotesque monster rolls along like a mad god’s toy, trailing foetid chunks of rotting flesh. The bones are strong. Excellent! I make another, then another, carrying on until I have used everything up.

One such corpse ball is well able to haul a medium sized catapult. Two manage the biggest siege tower with ease.

At last we are ready to go. With the skeleton decorations cheering and singing, the siege engines slide up and out of the castle’s underbelly and out in the bright moonlight.