Greywolf - The Living and the Dead

Muzen vanished, and the air exploded outward in a flash of blue light. Everyone reared back as a shock wave shook the building, with those archers not blown apart hurled backwards along with their firepots. Then the blue light faded and the screaming began.

The priest of Chaac was gone, his body mixed in with the pieces of flesh splattering down onto the plaza, while wounded archers writhed on the disrupted paving stones, some with their clothes on fire. Scattered bits of flaming fire-stone littered the plaza. The priestess of Ix-Chel had been blown off her feet, but she staggered upright, assisted by a pair or archers who didn't look too steady themselves, and together they stumbled towards the company of spearmen marching towards us.

Someone from the back of their formation shouted an order. The company stopped a few paces away from the wounded archers and formed a spear wall, while a few soldiers without weapons rushed out to gather up the remaining archers alive and on their feet. The wounded were ignored. The soldiers were wearing a leather harness covered by overlapping plates of brass, making them clatter like an overturned rack of pots when they marched, and the conical helms resting on their heads had brass plates too. The brass tips on their spears gleamed like gold in the witchlight.

Kula was already racing for the door. "Titan with me, the rest of you remain here. That means you as well," he added to the boy still wearing the Greek style full helm over his head. The boy nodded as Kula ran out the door with the Ogri following, the War-leader shouting orders as their sandals scraped over the stone steps leading down.

Karl, with Lys on his shoulder, and the boy, all walked over to join me, Wysper, and Zanzabel at the window. Karl motioned towards the plaza. "With the archers pretty much out of the way, Kula's going to split the Chosen into two groups. Half to go out the front door and hold the spearmen in place while the other half goes through the kitchen and hits the flank."

Wysper grabbed my shoulder and pointed out into the darkness to our right. Oh, shite. "Karl, there's a large group of people coming straight towards us from the direction of the Ghash-Kimil temple."

Karl looked out the window and squinted. "Your eyes are better than mine. Are they the Khanda swordsmen?"

"Not unless they all got drunk while we were here. They're lurching about, and no one's wearing armor..." I peered forward as they got closer. "Some of them aren't wearing much at all, and I swear I can see bones sticking out."

"No need to be alarmed," Lys said. "Cermet has sent us reinforcements."

The first of them shambled into the light. They looked like walking corpses, most with varying degrees of rotted flesh and tattered clothing, though a few were bone held together by black sinews. Striding in front of them... It's Amazonia! She was still wearing her Artifact armor and open faced Artifact helm, but the Rune sword in her hand had gone from shiny black to grey, with intricate black runes on the blade that weren't there before. Her skin had gone grey as well, and her body under the armor was thinner than it was before, as if her flesh had somehow contracted. Her face looked like grey skin stretched taut over her skull. "Shite, what's wrong with Amazonia?"

Lys glanced at me a moment. "At my direction, Cermet gave Amazonia the opportunity to become a Shadow Knight. Obviously, she accepted."

I glared at Lys in shocked disbelief. "Are you crazy? A Shadow creature let loose in the real world won't stop killing until someone destroys it."

"Amazonia is in control of herself," Lys said, giving me a cross look. "Besides, Cermet assures me that I have a strong influence over her, so while I cannot control Amazonia as I do Cermet and Yrg, she will listen to my voice and heed me."

"If you say so." Turning back towards the plaza, Amazonia had lifted her grey Rune sword over her head and now charged towards the spearmen's flank. The dead followed her like an army ant colony on the march.

One soldier pointed in their direction and began yelling as Amazonia broke away from the swarm behind her and charged. The eight or nine soldiers on the flank pivoted in place and raggedly lowered their spears, their round shields clattering as they pulled them up, and even though the front rank kept their spears pointed towards the front, all the faces of the soldiers I could see were turned towards the group approaching them.

A few archers had retrieved their bows and, responding to orders from a man in steel armor, began to fire over the heads of the spearmen at the shambling mass. One arrow flitted towards Amazonia; she batted it away with her sword while other arrows fell among the throng, several of them stumbling as the shafts pierced them. But instead of falling, the moving corpses regained their balance and keppt lurching forward as fast as they could.

As Amazonia reached the flank, one of the soldiers thrust his spear at her face. With her blade, she smacked the bronze spearhead away before spinning along the wooden shaft, knocking the shield back as she slashed the soldier across his cheek. Her rune covered blade sheared through brass, flesh, and bone, the man dropping his spear and falling as she swung at the soldiers deeper inside the company.

The ranks were thrown into chaos, a few trying to level their spears while most clawed at the scimitars hanging at their belts, Amazonia laughing as her Rune sword flicked out, fast as a serpent's tongue. A soldier screamed as gore erupted from the remains of an eye, then she pulled another soldier in front of a thrusting spear, the man gasping as the bronze point tore through a gap in his armor and into his back. Amazonia whirled like a dust devil as the sword drew a red swath through the armored men.

Then the dead reached the spear wall. One corpse, with only ragged strips of flesh remaining on its bones, let a spear break a rib as the bronze tip pierced its chest, but then shambled unhindered up the shaft of the spear. The man dropped the spear and turned to run, but the bony corpse grabbed the spear and tripped him before whipping the spear shaft back and forth at the living soldiers, while more dead poured into the gaps. The men on the flank threw down their spears and shields before running away, the soldiers behind them doing the same as well.

The spearmen’s ordered ranks descended into a frenzied mob throwing down their weapons or hacking at each other in their desperation to flee. Standing beside me, Karl shook his head. "I've never seen a company of soldiers break this fast."

"Do you blame them?" Zanzabel gave him a frightened look. "What are we going to do if they storm the building?"

Lys snorted. "Watch and learn."

The soldiers had become a mob of armored men clanging like braying bells as they ran full out, leaving stragglers behind in their desperation to reach the Temple district's gates. Most of the dead were giving chase as Amazonia let the fleeing soldiers go. Then she looked down at a wounded man trying to crawl away and stabbed him through his armor into his back.

The soldier flailed his arms and legs a moment before going still. Amazonia ripped out the blade, looked about, and walked at a methodical pace towards the next wounded man. Standing around in tightly ordered ranks, the Chosen seemed frozen in place as Titan strode out and stopped in the same place Muzen had activated his gem. Amazonia raised her blade to stab the man beneath her as Titan yelled, "Az, hold."

She went still with the blade hovering over the wounded man's back. Amazonia looked up at Titan, then down at the man who rolled over onto his back with a pleading look on his face. She grimaced, shaking the last drops of blood from the grey blade and sheathing it, before calling out to the dead in gibberish. No, it must be a language, because they're listening. The corpses chasing the soldiers stopped and began shambling back towards us, while the few remaining behind approached her and, as they get close, began forming uneven ranks. Titan whirled around. "Lys," he snarled, the fury of an angry god of war stark upon his face, "did you change Amazonia into this Shadow Knight?"

"Cermet did," a man's voice called out from the darkness, "upon my orders." Prince Timur strode into the witchlight with his two Bloodguards and the Chaldean Wardogs in a semi-circle behind him. "The Lich explained all I needed to know about the second part of the ritual, and I commanded Az to do it. As my sworn Bloodguard, she's obligated to follow my orders."

Titan stared at him in disbelief. "Do you know what you have done?"

Even in the face of Titan's rage, Prince Timur didn't stop walking towards him as Kula joined the Ogri. Timur's eyes never left Titan's hostile gaze. "What I've done is to give us the chance be victorious in the shadow of defeat." Timur stopped a few paces away and gave Titan a defiant look. "According to Cermet, the rest of the Bukhara army is marching towards the Temple district's gates as we speak, ready to attack us now that their plot to rob us of our rightful share of the blood-corn has been crushed."

In his right hand he carried a mace, while his other had a curved sword which he pointed towards the still celebrating city, which seemed oblivious to the noise. "I've ordered the Khanda swordsmen to let the cowardly spearmen escape before taking the gates and holding them, but our three hundred will not be enough to force our way across the bridge with the carts."

"We don't need to leave the district," Kula retorted. "Greywolf may be badly hurt, but Fox can open our way to the Shadowlands."

"Not for Az," Titan snarled. "Now that she has been corrupted, even if she returns to human form, the moment she enters the Shadowlands she will revert back to the Shadow Knight she is now and will not want to return to the real world. Greywolf might be able to force her, but only if he was in good shape and only with my help." He grounded his massive sword point down on the broken paving stones. "I will not leave her behind."

Wotan's blood, I hate Timur when he smirks. "Which is why she will lead the dead into Bukhara and overwhelm the army, causing a panic as they sweep through the city." He raised his mace over his head. "We will bring Bukhara to her knees and take from her all we can carry off."

Kula shook his head. "This is not honorable."

"Honorable?" Timur's lips curled back in a snarl. "The Sasnayams were prepared to send thousands of the dead over the bridge and across the plains to attack our encampment."

Kula reared back. "You're sure of this?"

"Cermet confirmed it. War-leader, this is the only way to give my father's dream of creating a kingdom on the edge of the Sasnayam's empire a chance to grow and bear fruit."

"The false priest admitted they didn't want that to happen, when they asked us to surrender. You would do this for your father?"

"I think the idea's foolish," Timur growled, "and I plan to fight it any way I can. Yet I will never rebel against my father or stain his honor while he's alive." He looked up at Titan. "Once this raid's over and Bukhara's been sacked, Amazonia will return to her normal self and I'll never ask her to do this again."

"Believe that if you will," Titan growled, "but I know this will only be the beginning. Kings and princes grow drunk on power, and Amazonia's abilities will be like handing a drunkard the key to the wine shoppe." Timur opened his mouth but Titan cut him off. "Do you think you are the first prince I have seen descend down this shadowed path?" He bent down to put his face near Timur's. "You have no idea what this could do to Amazonia."

"And yet you said nothing." Titan raised back up again, towering over the rest of them as Dancer stepped out from behind Timur. "Apologies for speaking, my prince, but Titan was there when Jhadra made Domina a Reaver Knight. He could've warned her, warned us, about the second ritual or how much these tattoos would change us, but he remained silent."

Titan's eyes narrowed. "Had I known the Sasnayams were harboring Necromancers, I would have told Lord Paulus what I knew and stopped the ritual from taking place. All I wanted was for Az to regain her freedom."

"Liar," Dancer snarled, his expression black as the Artifact spear in his hand. "It's your own freedom you wanted. You're so caught up in your noble ideas, that after you raped Domina so hard you almost killed her, you couldn't leave the arena until she did."

"I was in rut," Titan snarled as the two women behind me gasped, "and she knew exactly what would happen. On the arena sands I paid her and Lord Paulus both, many times over, for what I did. I could have left anytime I wanted. But I remained a part of the Ludus for her sake, and no other reason." He raised the sword and stabbed it towards Dancer's face. "Do not push me any farther on this, Io, or the tattoo you bear may need to find itself a new home."

"The man you knew as Io is dead," Dancer said, "and her Wardogs are the only ones who truly care about her." The other five and Fox, standing next to Wysper, voiced their agreement as Dancer waved his free hand about. "Why do you care about saving the world from evil anyway, when the world's ready to jump right into it with both feet?"

"Enough," Kula growled before Titan could answer. "We are wasting time. Prince Timur, how many of these walking corpses can you bring onto the fighting field?"

"Cermet tells me a thousand, give or take, but as one is hacked apart or runs out of the Shadow mana she provides to make them become active, she'll just raise more so long as she remains near the dead tree where she's drawing power from. The charnel pits are actually caverns beneath the temple where these evil priests have been throwing bodies since anyone can remember, so corpses aren't a problem either."

Kula grimaced. "This will be an evil victory, but our enemies leave us no choice."

Titan rumbled, "There is always a choice."

"Is there, and still attain victory? I don't see it. Were the Shadow-walker Greywolf not hurt," Amazonia jumping as if poked with a stick and looking up at me, "I would find a way to get you and her over the walls." Her eyes narrowed and she took off at a run towards the front door as Kula continued, "But I don't trust the other one to..."

I lost what he was saying as terror gripped me. I rose to my feet...

And collapsed face forward, only Wysper's gentle hands keeping me from smacking my head on the floor. "Greywolf?"

I struggled to my hands and knees as the slap of leather sandals on stone grew louder. "I need to get my katana and defend myself before she gets here."

Karl shook his head as I fell back to a sitting position. "Right now you couldn't fight your way out of a straw basket, let alone Amazonia. I don't understand-"

He broke off as Amazonia appeared with the grey Rune sword in her hand. "Shadow-walker," she hissed, "your death comes."

She stalked forward with the rictus of a smile on her grey face.