Bone Magic (10 page)

The undead had
arrived.

"I'm done,"
Tira whispered. It felt as if a terrible weight was sliding from
her shoulders. She had done what she was hired to do. Well, most of
it, anyway. She had brought the children back safely. If the
village itself was about to perish, well, that was hardly Tira's
fault, was it? She couldn't save the whole world.

She walked to
her horse and climbed into the saddle. The village owed her money,
but that was all right. She had her bow and her sword, and a horse
instead of a mule. She was fine.

Half the
village was looking at her. She saw a mix of expressions on their
faces, fear and hope and a strange confidence, and it came to her
that they expected her to do something. More than that, some of
them expected whatever she did to work.

Fools.

She caught
Tam's eye, and he raised an eyebrow, asking if he should get in the
saddle as well. She gave her head a tiny shake and looked away. He
had the same look of confidence as the more gullible of the
villagers. He thought there was something that could be done.

The west road
beckoned. It would take her into country she'd never seen before,
take her closer to home. The undead would be busy with the village,
so she would have a good head start.

Sari, her voice
plaintive, said "Tira, where are you going?" It felt almost strange
to be riding without her little arms wrapped around Tira's
waist.

Tira turned her
horse to the east. The undead were on foot, after all. She would
cut past them on her way out of the village, and maybe a few of
them would try to follow her. She might buy the people of Raven
Crossing a little more time.

She booted the
horse forward, and some fool villager cheered. "I'm abandoning you,
you moron," she muttered as she cleared the edge of the village.
The undead were close, very close. The people of Raven Crossing
were in a lot of trouble. She turned the horse and trotted past the
first of the undead, one of the soldiers from the palisade. She cut
it as close as she could, coming almost in reach of the sword that
dangled from his hand, but he ignored her. All of them ignored her,
marching inexorably toward the village.

It was nothing
to do with Tira. Not any more. She had the open road ahead of her,
and nothing behind her but a battle that couldn't be won.

Like the battle
at the palisade. Good men had died when they might have fled and
lived. They had stayed because of discipline, or loyalty to their
comrades, or because they wanted to give Tira a chance to escape
with the children. Now the children were going to die anyway. All
those men had achieved was to provide skilled, armed, armored
troops for the necromancer who was behind it all.

Tira reined in
her horse and watched the column of undead march into the village.
As near as she could tell, not a single person had had the sense to
run. They were gathered in a cluster in the town square, and they
were starting to organize themselves. She could see Tam calling
orders. The able-bodied men and women gathered shoulder to shoulder
with the children and the elderly behind them. People ran into
houses or outbuildings and came back carrying knives or
pitchforks.

It was pitiful
and hopeless and incredibly brave. Tira watched, unable to just
ride away, and from time to time one of the villagers would look
past the advancing nightmare and meet her eyes. They still expected
some kind of miracle from her.

"It's not my
responsibility," she said out loud. "And anyway, there's nothing I
can do. There's only one way I can help. I can ride away, and not
become one more undead soldier helping the other side."

She told
herself that, over and over, as the column of undead marched closer
and closer to the waiting villagers. Then, in the last instant
before the two groups met, she swore, hauled on the reins, and sent
her horse galloping back into the village.

Steel clashed
against steel, a man bellowed in rage, and a woman gave an agonized
scream. Tira saw a burly village man crash through the undead line,
wrapping his arms around a soldier and bowling him over. A man and
a woman sprang through the gap, each of them kneeling on one of the
soldier's arms. The woman had a cleaver and the man had an axe, and
when the soldier rose, his arms ended in stumps.

Tira ran her
horse straight at the thickest group of undead. She knew that a
good warhorse was a weapon, able to lash out with teeth and hooves
in the thick of battle. She had never been a cavalryman, and she
didn't know how to tell the horse to attack, so she charged into
the thick of the enemy and hoped for the best.

A soldier
turned to face her, his sword came up, and the horse reared. Hooves
flashed, horseshoes crashed against the steel of helmet and
breastplate, and then the horse toppled backward. Tira got her feet
clear of the stirrups just in time, landing hard on her side as the
horse crashed down beside her. The horse was up and gone in an
instant, and she lurched to her feet, trying not to damage the bow
and quiver on her back.

She had landed
on her sword, and her hip was on fire with pain. There was going to
be one hell of a bruise, in the unlikely event that she survived
this battle. She hauled the sword out of its scabbard, looking
around for a target.

Only one of the
undead was facing her. It was a soldier, his helmet dented by a
hoof, his face a gory mess. She didn't know if the damage was from
her horse or from an earlier battle, but one of his eyes was gone
and the other was partly covered by a flap of skin that hung from
his forehead. He was peering around, unable to see her, and she
took her sword in a two-handed grip and slashed for the side of his
knee.

The riposte
came with blinding speed. His sword slashed across, and she had no
chance to block. She threw herself sideways and down, and the blade
cut into her side. Her cloak took most of the force, but she felt a
hot line of pain across her ribs.

He kicked her,
and she rolled with the force of the blow, coming up on her feet.
He took a step toward her, and his injured knee gave out. She
stabbed for his remaining eye, then skipped back out of reach as he
slashed at her. She stabbed at his eye again, feeling the tip of
the sword grate against bone, then darted around him. He was blind
or incapacitated, and she had bigger problems to deal with.

She saw a man
and woman locked together, knife blade to knife blade, hands on
each other's wrists. The woman had a terrible sword wound, a hole
just under her heart and a matching exit wound in the middle of her
back. Her face was blank, while the man had his lips peeled back
from his teeth in a mix of rage and horror. Tira drew her belt
knife and dragged it across the inside of the woman's wrist,
cutting the tendons. The knife fell from her grip, and Tira stepped
past them, joining the little knot of survivors at the center of
the battle.

A man came at
her in the clumsy charge, an axe in his hand. She recognized him, a
villager now fighting for the other side. He lifted the axe high,
and she swung for his wrists, feeling the sword blade bite into
bone. She lost her grip on the sword as his hands came down. He
stood as if confused, staring at the blade jammed in the bones of
his wrists, and Tira plucked the axe from his hands. A blow to the
leg dropped him in the dirt.

A quick look
around told her the battle was hopeless. At least a quarter of the
villagers now fought alongside the undead, doing their best to
murder friends and neighbors. If anyone was going to survive, they
had to retreat, but where?

Her eyes fell
on the temple to Neris. It was big enough to hold all the
survivors, and it was at least marginally defensible.

"Fall back!"
she bellowed, and flung herself at the undead, driving a few of
them back several steps. "Head for the temple!"

The villagers
broke and ran. A burly man scooped up an old woman, slung her over
his shoulder, and fled for the temple. A woman ran with a child in
each arm, too slow to escape, and her husband ran beside her,
trying desperately to protect her with a kitchen knife. Tam joined
him, sword in hand, and they fought a frantic retreat over the
thirty or forty feet that separated them from the temple doors.

Tira tried to
fight her way toward them, but a broad-shouldered soldier came
charging at her. She threw herself at the ground in front of his
feet, wincing as his legs crashed into her back. It would be a
miracle if her bow wasn't broken yet. He tripped over her, landed
on his chest, and she sprang up, jumping over him and running after
the other survivors.

She found
herself following an undead man up the steps to the temple. She
swung her axe, hooking it over his shoulder, planted her foot
behind his heels, and hauled backward. He fell back, and she
twisted out of his way. He crashed onto the steps, and the woman
with two children started to trip. Her husband caught her and
helped her up the steps as Tam jumped over the fallen man and
stopped beside Tira.

The man Tira
had knocked down started to rise, tripping an undead man who was
about to charge up the steps. His head thumped into the wood with a
resounding crack, and the crowd of undead paused.

A
broad-shouldered man in a breastplate stood at the base of the
stairs, feet apart, a bloody sword held chest high, waiting for the
stairs to clear. His eyes were fixed on Tira, and she gulped.

Then he looked
down. Lina popped through the gap between his knees, sprang halfway
up the steps, ducked under a grasping hand, and leaped for the
temple door. She fell face-first on the steps, an undead man's hand
tight around her ankle, and Tira threw her axe. It sailed past the
little girl, missing her by inches, and thunked into flesh as Tam
reached down, grabbed Lina's wrist, and yanked.

She seemed to
fly into his arms, and the two of them stumbled backward and into
the temple. Tira was so close behind them that she tripped on Tam's
feet, and a pair of villagers slammed the temple doors shut behind
her.

Tira picked
herself up off of the floor and took a moment to catch her breath.
The retreat had been ugly. Not much more than half of the village
remained alive. A couple of big men held the door. They had their
work cut out for them. The temple doors opened outward, and they
didn't lock. As Tira watched, the doors shook as someone banged on
them from outside. Then the undead started yanking on the door
handles, and the villagers braced themselves, pulling back.

The temple was
roughly circular, with a balcony at the front where a priest would
stand to lead prayers. There were four sets of windows evenly
spaced around the walls, and Tam was already assigning people to
watch them. There was one old woman and five small children in the
center of the temple. Two men held the doors, and three more men
and five women guarded the windows, two at each. Mikail and a girl
the same age held knives and joined the defenders at a couple of
windows. Shadows appeared outside the glass at two different
windows. The undead were spreading, surrounding the temple.

Tira joined the
old woman in the middle of the temple. "Take the children up to the
balcony," she said. "It's the next place we'll retreat to."

The woman
nodded, picked up the smallest child, and headed for the staircase.
The stairs were fairly narrow. A couple of people with swords would
be able to put up a good defense.

Not that it
would matter. The undead were going to get in, and they were going
to overwhelm the defenders. If they couldn't reach the balcony,
they would fire the building. It was hopeless.

Fire
.

Tira toyed with
the beginning of an idea. It was a mad idea, but every sane idea
led to certain death. This plan might lead to her being burned
alive, but at least that would be the end of it. Her body would
never be a necromancer's puppet.

A window broke
and hands reached in. Knives flashed, and fingers littered the
floor. These villagers might not be bright, but they didn't lack
for courage and determination, and Tira made her decision. If there
was a ghost of a chance of saving a few of them, she had to take
it.

A pair of
cabinets stood at the back of the temple, and she threw them open.
The cabinets held a variety of supplies, like candles and strikers,
wine and cups, and robes of bright green. There was also a lamp,
and a jar of lamp oil. Tira walked around the perimeter of the
room, splashing oil on the walls. Then she poured a trail of oil
across the floor, stopping just below the edge of the balcony. She
cut a chunk of cloth from a curtain and used it to mop up the last
of the oil. Then she took a striker and headed up the stairs.

The children
were huddled in the back corner of the balcony, the old woman
singing to them in a soft, low voice. Tira ignored them. There was
a small window at the back of the balcony. Tira pushed it open and
looked out. The grass was ten feet below. It would be rough on the
old woman, but survivable.

"Tam," she
called, "I need you up here." As he started toward her she added,
"Oh, and bring one of those curtains with you."

She outlined
her plan quickly. He looked horrified, but he didn't argue, just
nodded. He ran back downstairs as she climbed through the window,
hung for a moment from the sill by her fingertips, and dropped to
the grass. For a moment there was no one in sight. She headed
around the building at a run, hearing the urgent thump of feet as
the survivors inside fled up the stairs. She saw the undead
clambering in through the windows. They didn't notice her as she
raced past.

She reached the
stairs in time to see the last of the undead push inside. The steps
were littered with fallen weapons, and she chose a sword. She
pushed the doors shut and slid the blade of the sword through the
handles, blocking it. It seemed inadequate, so she ran to a body on
the grass. It was a village man, and she stripped off his
suspenders and ran back to the temple.