Ammas grimaced, holding his dagger aloft. The Dead whispered, moaned, begged to be unleashed on these horrific parodies of their own existence. The cursewright knew they would make even shorter work of these abominations than they had of the werewolf who had violated the sanctity of his temple. But he had not rested properly since then, and overuse of the salve could put a fatal strain on his body. Until the situation was beyond hope, they must rely on more traditional weapons. For the time being he wasn't worried. He knew from experience that if one could overcome the consuming terror these things evoked even in the hardiest soul, then they were not too difficult to combat.

If their numbers remained small.

The xylophone player was now upright, hammers striking at the metal bars, their chimes ringing in an ominous cheer across the tavern. The dead soldiers began to rise, the mandolin player grinning from under his belled cap, bony fingers strumming at his instrument. Some of the uniformed skeletons bore rusted weapons, but for the most part they only groped forward with yellowed claws, their jaws champing at empty air, yellowish smoke rising from the powdered remnants of their flesh. The stink of sulfur was almost unbearable, and even behind her kerchief Carala began to retch.

"Out! Out!" Ammas cried, physically dragging Carala backward but quickly losing his grip on her in the confusion.

Vos and Denisius needed no further instruction, hustling back into the corridor, where Casimir crouched at Barthim's feet as the giant tumbled rock and broken fragments of wood from the blocked passage. He was working as fast as he could, but he was too distracted to have made much headway.

Perhaps twenty yards down the corridor, just visible in the ring of Casimir's lamplight, half a dozen skeletons clad in rotted soldiers' livery staggered toward them. They did not move especially fast, but nor was it the shambling gait one might expect from a rotted corpse. Bony toes scraped against stone. The powdery clots of corruption that held them together creaked and crumbled as they advanced.

"Go!" Ammas roared to Vos and Denisius, brandishing his dagger. "They can be killed! Don't fear them! Don't wait for them to surround us!"

Denisius swallowed hard and charged, roaring, sweeping his blade in one hand and his torch in the other. Vos was right beside him, doing his best to avoid the flaring arc of Lord Marhollow's torch. Vos's sword cleaved a skull into fragments, sending the skeleton below it flying backwards, shattering on the ground, the bones twitching inside its uniform.

Denisius's blade and torch caught a ribcage between them, crushing and igniting it at the same time. The cluster of bones flailed madly on the ground rolling over and over, its uniform blazing, the clots of yellowed powder bursting into flame, destroying its fragile cohesion.

Between the two of them Denisius and his servant made short work of this cluster of skeletal warriors, reducing them to yellowed splinters. Some of these -- larger fragments like femurs or forearms -- twitched and writhed on the ground, clicking insensibly against the stone.

Ammas was not idle, having stormed into the tavern. Doors had swung open at the far end of the hearth and behind the bar. From this latter entrance staggered an enormous skeleton clad in nothing but a half-rotted apron. Clusters of wild black hair clung to the yellowed skull, and its jaw worked restlessly as it clambered atop the bar. The skymetal dagger lashed out, left and right, to Ammas's fore and backside, each stroke smashing a skeleton to flinders in a gout of blue flame, casting wild shadows upon the tavern walls. Fully half the skeletal warriors here were already destroyed, and those playing their maddened song made no indication they had any goal beyond making that unearthly music.

From the darkness of the spirit salve Ammas's eyes glared wildly. Carala was nowhere to be seen. She had vanished when Barthim had shouted for help.

Frantically his gaze roved from the tavern doors to the battle taking place behind him, the gaping portals through the Ravens' Veil ever threatening to draw his attention. They needed to find Carala and they needed that passageway opened or they were all going to die down here, torn to pieces by the remnants of the Yellow Death. For both they needed time.

In the corridor, Denisius was breathing hard, feeling bizarrely exhilarated. Vos and he had evenly split the half dozen skeletons between them, and he was wondering what his brothers would say if they could see him now, a blade in one hand and a torch in the other, a guttering fire of yellowed bones at his feet. This pleasant reverie, unfortunately, came to an abrupt and ugly end.

Vos struck him hard on the shoulder, pointing down the corridor with the end of his sword. At least a dozen more of the things were straggling toward them, and horribly thin shadows were clambering from the blocked passages on the upper story galleries, clawing and climbing over balcony rails and tumbling to the ground, rising up with their gleaming yellow eyesockets and silently screaming jaws.

"Lord Marhollow!" cried Ammas. Denisius whirled around. Yellowish powder had sullied the cursewright's black robes, and the sooty substance on his face made him look madder than ever. "Set a fire! Burn their clothes! They'll retreat from flames!"

Vos, at least, followed this advice immediately. The scattered bones and ragged clothing he gathered together, kicking them onto the burning pile, which had already begun to gutter. Denisius blinked, but after a moment he mastered himself and thrust the torch into the piles Vos had begun to gather. The flames leapt up high, illuminating what seemed to be a cohort of the skeletal things. Most wore the antique livery, but some wore peasants' clothes, or clerical habits. One was clad in soft gray robes, rotted almost to rags, which Ammas recognized as the habiliment of the arcane healers.

At the moment, however, Ammas was far too preoccupied with the silent inhabitants of the abandoned tavern. The aproned barkeep's skeleton shuffled toward him, catching his chest in its clawed fingers, tearing through his robes and shirt, bloodying his chest. Blue fire struck from the edge of the skymetal dagger, throwing the skeleton backwards, smashing against the wall.

Barthim sweated and cursed, pulling aside shattered tables and doors, grunting as he hauled gigantic pieces of stone. Casimir threw aside the fragments he could lift and rolled away those he could not. They had cleared a passage through the rubble, but even Casimir would have to crawl to use it.

Down the corridor, the skeletons continued to advance, drawing away from the flames, sidestepping it the way water will flow through a dam's sluices. Vos waved for Denisius to go to the left hand side while he handled the right, each of them smashing through a few more of the terrible things, Denisius throwing more onto the fire. Soon they had built a wall of flame, leaping all the way to the third story galleries, soot blackening the stone. The smoke that rose from the flames was as yellow as it was black, and the stink of sulfur was so overwhelming Denisius's head was spinning. He threw the torch aside and began elbowing sweat from his forehead.

Bony fingers wrapped around his throat, hard and unyielding, immediately severing his air. Gasping he fell to his knees, eyes bulging, desperately looking for Vos or Ammas. But Vos was busily struggling against his own clutch of skeletons, and Ammas was nowhere to be seen. Barthim and Casimir were frantically digging their tunnel, and were too far away to help in any event.

Black flowers bloomed before his eyes. Rotted teeth scraped over his ear, threatening to bite it off until he thrust one hand backward, catching the skull in the eyesockets and twisting it back. Whatever lit its eyes hurt, his fingers burning as if he had thrust them into a fire. With a strangled cry Denisius surged forward, plunging into the wall of flame, collapsing to his back, smashing the skeleton on his back to pieces, the grasping thing already afire. His own clothes were smoldering, but with a roll he extinguished them before they could actually burst into flames. Panting, drenched with sweat, he held his fingers up to his eyes. Angry blisters were already rising where he had touched the thing's eyesockets. "Vos," he gasped, "Vos, quickly!"

His manservant strode toward him, his sword crusted with yellowed bonemeal, his clothing torn from grasping claws. The flames leapt higher, providing a respite from the assault. Just beyond their corona Denisius could see rows of the creatures, hesitating. They did not hold their bony hands up to shield their faces, nor of course could any expression be read on those skinless visages, but there was something almost like fear in the way they held back. "Milord?" Vos asked, breathless.

"There are -- there are hundreds -- beyond the fire -- "

Vos nodded grimly, squinting his eyes as he tried to look past the flames. "Kyrantine's Wall would have had an enormous garrison in its heyday, probably in the thousands. And who knows how many took refuge here when the Yellow Death struck?"

"Thousands," Denisius whispered, staring horrorstruck into the fires.