2 Defiler of Tombs (14 page)

“What do you expect me to do about it?”

“Be ready. If the undead come out of their tombs then the Twins will not be able to protect you.”

“That’s what you are for then, isn’t it? Or so I have always heard about Guardians.”

“If the necromancer finds what he’s looking for I’ll be dead.”

“You are a cheerful bastard, aren’t you?” He looked at Kormak long and hard, considering. “You mean it don’t you? This is a genuine warning.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Then I thank you for it but I don’t think you’ll find too many people here prepared to pay too much attention. Not until it’s too late.”

“Just so you know and you’re ready to run or to fight.”

“I’m usually both.”

“And Shade, be careful of the Twins, one of them may not be too friendly for much longer.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.”

“Then I shall bid you goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Guardian.” Kormak left him looking thoughtful.

It was a chill morning. It had not taken them long to gather the supplies and pack them. Brandon yawned. He had spent a good part of the night awake with a pen in his hand, composing a message to his wife with all the concentration of a man who suspected it might be his last letter. It was with Javier now and the Tinkers would be heading south with it that day. They were already packing their stuff into the caravan. Clearly they took Kormak’s warning seriously, even if no one else did.

Kormak looked at his companions and tried to think of what he might have missed. He wished for a company of knights but it was just going to have to be the four of them and the wolf. He glanced up at the Keep. It looked dank and wet in the grey morning light. Green moss clung to its walls and the slopes of the rock on which it stood. It was cold and silent. No smoke rose from it. There were no chimneys. It might have been long abandoned for all the signs of life it showed. Somewhere beneath it, Tarina and her brother sheltered from the Sun. He rubbed the scab on his neck and thought about the night before. It was not the first such encounter he had known with one of the Old Ones. He wondered if it would be the last.

“Make sure you’ve all got enough food, and make sure your water bottles are full. Once we’re in the Cursed Lands, we’ll eat and drink nothing local,” Kormak said.

“You afraid of being cursed, Guardian?” Lucas asked. He was trying to make it sound as if it was a joke but there was real curiosity in his eye.

“The Shadow has seeped into the soil and the land. It will be in the wells, it will be in the grass that the beasts eat. It will be in their flesh. If we drink the water and eat the flesh it will seep into ours.”

“I thought you had amulets that protected you against such things,” Brandon said. Kormak pulled a small amulet with a white crystal set in the middle from beneath his tunic.

“I do,” Kormak said. He looked at the amulet. The wraithstone was still mostly white, showing it could still absorb the taint of Shadow. It did not need replaced yet. “You don’t. Still want to come?”

“I have prepared some protective charms,” said Aisha, producing some small wraithstones inscribed with an Elder Sign. She handed one to Brandon and Lucas, and then put one around Shae's neck, attached by a small leather thong. “They should protect our bodies and our spirits from the worst effects of the corruption, but what Sir Kormak says is still true though. We should eat and drink the stuff of the Cursed Lands only in the direst of emergencies, and not even then if we can avoid it. The stuff of the Shadow is a poison for body and soul and it blights the lands to the north of us.”

“Thank you,” said Lucas, his fist closing around the amulet. “I will keep this within my jerkin for as long as we pass through the remnants of Kharon.” He suited actions to words and did so.

Brandon looked at the amulet as if considering throwing it away, but he did not. Instead he placed it within his purse and put his purse back inside his breastplate over his heart.

“You didn’t see that,” he told Lucas.

“Worried I’ll steal your gold while you sleep?” The hill-man asked.

“No, I am worried you’ll steal my amulet,” said Brandon.

A cold wind blew out of the north. Grey clouds filled the sky. Drizzle turned the streets to mud. Lots of strangers watched them with eyes that showed only hostility or indifference. He wondered if his warnings would have any effect. In most places a Guardian would be believed but this was an odd little town. The locals were outcasts. Maybe they felt the Twins would protect them. Maybe the Twins would but in their place he would not have relied on it.

On the other hand, where were these people going to go? None of them looked as if they had a place to return to in the south. Most of them looked poor and hungry and hopeless. No one would prospect in the Barrow Hills if he had any other choice in life, Kormak suspected. No one would come here if he had any better place to be.

Javier and the other Tinkers came over and bowed to Aisha then to Kormak then to the others. Javier looked at Aisha, bowed again and said, “Lady Aisha. I trust this cancels our debt to you.”

Aisha nodded. “When you deliver your messages, you will have fulfilled all the obligations our ancient treaty placed on you. You may go with honour.”

The old man bowed to her a last time, then stomped back to his wagon. Kormak could not help but notice she had said messages. He wondered who Aisha could be communicating with then pushed the thought aside. It would not make too much difference now.

He drew his cloak tight against the rain, cinched his bags and swung himself up into the saddle. The others did the same. The Tinkers waved farewell.

Sensing other eyes on him, Kormak turned and saw Shade and his ogreish friend studying them from the verandah of the tavern. The dark man raised a hand in an ironic salute. Kormak returned it, unsmiling then heeled his horse northwards towards the waiting hills.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“DOES IT EVER stop raining up here?” Sir Brandon asked, squinting into the downpour. Visibility was low and was getting poorer as the afternoon wore on. It would soon be dark as night even though it was still hours before sunset. Brandon kept glancing over his shoulder, in the direction of Elderdale as if he regretted leaving the town and heading north.

“When it snows,” Lucas said. Rain ran down his lean face and dripped off his stringy, drooping moustache. He no longer held his bow ready. He was keeping it wrapped and out of the wet. His hand toyed with the hilt of his long-bladed knife instead. “You sure this is the way the Old One told you, Guardian?”

“It’s the only road I see running through these hills,” said Kormak. It was truly a road. Flat stones had been set in the earth like a mosaic over which the horses walked. It was not muddy at least; it was not even particularly slippery for the mounts, which seemed unnatural. Along the route, tall markers inscribed with odd runes lined the path. Lucas saw Kormak looking at one. It depicted a grinning skull inside a lunar orb.

“Symbols of the men of Kharon,” he said. “I’ve seen them before. You find them scattered all over the hills.”

He spat on the ground. His spittle disappeared in the rain then he looked away and shivered and Kormak was certain it was not because of the cold.

“You don’t like this place, do you?” Kormak said.

Lucas gave a short bitter laugh. “You have a gift for understatement. I’ve not been easy since we got north of Elderdale. This is the worst bit of the Hills, on the edge of the Cursed Lands, all the old stories agree on that. You know there’s only one thing about this makes me happy.”

“What would that be?” Kormak asked.

“The soft southern bastards we’re chasing must like the rain and the cold even less than I do.”

He returned to peering ahead as if somehow he could see through the grey downpour if only he looked hard enough. “What you think we’re going to find?” he asked, looking at Kormak sidelong. “When we get there I mean.”

“I don’t know,” said Kormak. “Nothing good.”

“They say the Defiler had ten king’s ransoms in treasure buried with him.”

“Is that why you came?”

“The thought did not discourage me.”

“If we find any gold that’s not tainted we’ll split it.”

“They say spending gets rid of the taint on gold.”

“No, it doesn’t. Not if the Shadow has seeped into it.”

“I know, Guardian. It was a joke. You can’t grow up in these hills without hearing about that. There’s a lot of stuff you can’t grow up without hearing.”

“Like what?”

“Like don’t stray too near a barrow after dark. People disappear when they do, you know, even when the barrows are closed. They just vanish, no one knows what happened to them. They say they were dragged down by the wights. You think that’s possible?”

“I’ve seen stranger things.”

“I’ll bet you have. You ever seen dead men walking, afore now, I mean?”

Kormak nodded.

“It’s kind of reassuring that you’re still here then.” He fell silent and they rode on through the rain. All around them the hills loomed. Huge boulders looked like toppled standing stones. Maybe they were.

They found shelter for the night off the road. Large rocks surrounded them. They arranged smaller rocks to form a barrier and a windbreak and they built a fire. It was getting colder the further they progressed into the hills but at least the rain had stopped. Overhead stars twinkled in the sky and the moon’s face was visible through a gap in the scudding clouds. Kormak studied his companions by the fire’s light. Mostly they looked shadowy. The wolf’s eyes reflected the flames oddly. One corner of the sky was greenishly lit by the fires of the Great Comet.

“It’s much brighter tonight,” said Brandon. “Why do you think that is?”

“It is a sign that evil times are coming,” said Lucas.

“You can never go wrong with a prophesy like that,” said Kormak. “Evil times are always coming.”

“Then those who say that are pretty much always right,” Lucas responded.

Kormak rose and moving away from the fire, he went up to the low barrier and stared out into the darkness. He did not want to ruin his night vision by looking too long at the flames. He could hear the other’s talking. It was reassuring just to hear voices in the cold of the Barrow Hills night.

“That is a bet you would win. I think...” Lucas’s words were cut off by a long, hideous undulating cry. It echoed through the cold night air. The horses whinnied in fear and Kormak was glad they were corralled by the barrier. Brandon rose to gentle the steeds.

“What in the Sun’s Light was that?” he asked.

“A ghoul,” said Lucas. “Nasty bastards. These hills are full of them. It’s probably caught our scent or the scent of the horses. They love the flesh of man or horse, providing it has rotted long enough.

“They say armies of them roamed the hills after the Defiler’s Curse,” said Aisha.

“Plenty of rotting bodies for them then, I suppose” said Lucas.

“It sounds like a damned soul howling in torment,” said Brandon.

“I would not know, Sunlander. I have never heard any of those. I’ve heard these before though. We should be safe enough in a group like this providing there’s not a big pack of them.”

As if to mock his words, more howling erupted from the hills around them, echoing all the valleys. Brandon’s hand reached for his sword. Lucas picked up his bow.

“Best build up the fire,” Kormak said. “Just in case.”

He clambered up onto a large boulder and squatted there so that he could get a better view of their surroundings. He thought that he could see a group of shadowy figures moving across the valley. They were about the size of men but something about their posture told him they were not. As he watched they began to lope closer. They were lean and long limbed and moved from upright to running on all fours quite easily.

Kormak felt someone else climbing beside him. Lucas joined him. He grinned and said, “Ghouls all right, a hunting pack and we’re in their territory.”

Casually he strung his bow and selected an arrow. He sighted at one of the pack and pulled. His arrow whizzed into the night. One of the ghouls made a sound like a dog whose tail has been trod on only much louder. The rest of the pack came on at greater speed.

Kormak watched the ghouls lope closer. Lucas fired another arrow. It took one through the heart and knocked it over. It began to scrabble to its feet once more. Kormak was reminded of the hill-man’s encounter with the strangers they were pursuing. The ghouls had the same kind of resilience to mortal weapons. Kormak drew his blade. He was used to fighting such foes and it was rare to find anything that dwarf-forged steel could not cut.

As the first ghoul reached them, it sprang, a weird cavorting leap that brought it crashing down on the top of the rock. It was a jump no mortal man could have made. Kormak struck, a clean blow that separated the monster’s head from its shoulders. The flesh sizzled where he cut, and drops of black fluid, more like melted flesh than blood, dripped. The headless body moved on, crashing down next to their companions.

Lucas fired again. This time his arrow pinned a ghoul’s foot to the ground. Kormak leapt down amid the pack of monsters. His blade flashed left and right and two more of the creatures fell. A clawed hand grasped his arm before he could react. Strange charnel breath-fumes hit him. He felt dizzy for a moment and expelled all the air from his lungs in case of poison. A grey flash came out of the gloom and the ghoul toppled as Shae ripped at his throat. Its claws tore free from Kormak’s arm, leaving great gauges in the leather of his jerkin and drawing blood from the muscles of his bicep.

Ignoring the pain, Kormak stepped forward, blade flickering out. The runes on it glowed now and the ghouls’ yelps held a panicked quality. This was not what they had been expecting from their prey at all. A bull-like bellow ripped through the air and Brandon charged into the fray wielding his greatsword two handed. It tore through even the unnaturally resilient rubbery flesh of the ghouls. Another arrow flashed out of the night. This time it took a ghoul through the eye. It was either a fantastically skilful or a fantastically lucky shot under the circumstances.