The Road to Death

7

“Move!” Kandler yelled, pushing Xalt after the others. As the warforged scrambled away, Kandler shuffled backward after him, keeping the tip of his sword pointed at the glowing creature goring his mount.

The dying horse tried to kick its assailant away, but the beast was already in too close, tearing away at the steed’s soft belly with its claws. As the horse collapsed, dead already, the glowing, blood-drenched creature rose from behind the still-hot corpse and unleashed a horrific noise from deep within its throat, something that seemed like it could only have been trapped in the belly of a demon, festering for centuries untold.

Kandler’s eyes locked with the creature, which was strangely human for all its unearthly ways. Madness danced in those pale glowing eyes, madness and a driving hunger to quench the fires of life in all it faced.

The justicar turned and sprinted away.

Kandler knew that the ghostbeast could outrun him. It and its ilk had kept pace with a galloping horse, and he wasn’t nearly so fast. All he wanted, though, was to put some distance between himself and the creature, just enough for Burch to get a clear angle.

As Kandler sprinted for the Great Circle, memories of the square he ran through came flooding into his mind. Over there, under a black awning, sat a Brelish pub—Ginty’s—at which he and Burch had shared many a drink. Esprina had come to find him there the evening after their first meeting, a happy surprise in many ways, as he’d supposed she’d be after his head.

“Duck!” Burch shouted.

Kandler dove forward, just ahead of the sound of the blood-gorged ghostbeast slavering on his heels. The shifter’s crossbow twanged, and a bolt hissed overhead. The creature tumbled to the ground, the claws on its dead hands feebly scraping the back of Kandler’s boots.

The justicar raced up to the others. “I thought I told you to keep moving,” he said, feeling angrier about it than he should.

“You’re welcome.” Burch smirked down at his old friend as he offered him a hand up onto his mount. “Don’t waste time.”

Kandler shook his head. “Two horses for five riders won’t do it,” he said.

“I can follow on foot,” Xalt volunteered.

Kandler clapped the warforged on the back. “No one gets left behind.”

Xalt shot a wary glance at the dead ghostbeast bleeding into a glowing, pale pool. “Perhaps they don’t eat warforged,” he said hopefully.

Kandler wasn’t having any of it. “We need to make a stand here.”

A series of howls, none too far away, punctuated the statement.

“Ginty’s it is,” Burch said as he pushed his steed across the square. Sallah’s horse followed close behind, with Kandler and Xalt hard on their heels.

The pub had no name on it, no sign flapping from a chain, only the red boar’s head of the Brelish coat of arms emblazoned across the center of the black awning that hung over the high, tight windows and the brightly painted red door. The boar’s head was enough to identify it as a Brelish establishment to anyone who’d ever been near Breland, and that had been enough for the founder—Old Ginty himself—and the dozen generations of descendants who’d had the place handed down to them.

In the lead, Burch leaped from the back of his horse and landed in front of the door, then wrenched it open. It was dark inside, just as it was in every part of the town.

Kandler wondered about that, why the everburning lights used throughout the city had all burnt out. He guessed it had something to do with how the Mourning had altered the land, making magic work strangely here if at all. Perhaps the lights had blazed for months after the disaster, or maybe scavengers had made off with them all. He was sure he’d never know.

Burch threw the door wide and stepped into the darkness beyond. Sallah and Brendis followed right behind, the flames on the young knight’s sword bringing some much-needed light into the place. Kandler pushed Xalt on ahead of him, doing his best to watch their back, his blade at the ready.

Just as Kandler reached for the door, another excruciating wail sounded out, this one far too close for comfort. Then the awning next to the justicar was torn to pieces as a glowing figure fell through it, shredding the fabric with its long, sharp claws as it went.

Kandler turned to face the creature, even as Burch called for him.

“Get your ass in here!” the shifter shouted.

Kandler brandished his blade at the beast. If he went for the door, the monster was close enough that it might be able to tear into him or wedge a part of itself across the threshold, keeping it open long enough for its friends to work their way in. He wasn’t prepared to let that happen.

The creature stared at Kandler for a moment before screeching at him. Close enough that the thing’s spittle landed on his arm, Kandler could see that the thing had once been human. Its glowing skin was so thin now, though, that he could see through it to the muscles and bones beneath. Where it had once had fingernails, it now had six-inch claws made of the same translucent material as its flesh. Its teeth were longer and sharper than he could have thought possible in a living creature, but perhaps it wasn’t living.

Before Kandler could react to the ghostbeast’s challenge, Sallah stepped in front of him, holding up a small silver charm fashioned in the form of a blazing flame, the icon of her religion’s mysterious, burning god.

“Get back, you unholy beast!” the lady knight said, holding the holy symbol before her as if it were a shield.

The creature stared at the wrought silver flame for a moment, then threw back its glowing head and laughed, exposing all of its terrifying teeth. It hauled back into a crouch so that it could leap at Sallah and rip her flame-haired head from her shoulders.

As the thing made its move, Kandler shifted to a two-handed grip on his blade and brought it slicing down at the creature. The edge cleaved through the creature’s shoulder and chest, knocking it wide of Sallah. It landed next to Ginty’s façade instead, its glowing blood pumping from it as it expired.

Two more screams sounded from the far side of the square as a pair of the dying thing’s kin leaped down from the rooftops, ready for mayhem. Kandler swung around his sword, dripping with luminescent fluids, ready to take them on too. Other wails sounded nearby, far too many.

“Get in here!” Sallah said. She grabbed Kandler by the arm and hauled him into the pub after her.

Burch slammed the door shut as Kandler tumbled into the place, then threw fast a thick, oaken bar behind it.

Ginty’s was just as Kandler had remembered it, although he’d rarely seen it as empty as this. The dark polished paneling and tables reminded him of some of his favorite haunts back home, places he’d practically grown up in. Ginty’s had always been authentic, importing Brelish ales, stouts, and whiskies by the keg and cask, brought in weekly by lightning rail, and serving lousy Brelish meals to go with them.

One thing that struck Kandler was the lack of bodies. He’d seen them throughout the Mournland and even throughout Metrol. When the Mourning happened, hundreds of thousands of people died right where they stood. With the thick mists surrounding the place, keeping most people out, there had been precious few people to deal with the corpses littering the landscape. Even fewer of those had bothered to try. The task was just too monumental. In a sense, the Mournland’s mists formed the grave in which all of those people were buried.

Kandler had seen fewer bodies in Metrol than he’d expected. He suspected that scavengers and creatures like the ghostbeasts had moved many of them out of the way or even eaten them. Here in Ginty’s, though, he didn’t see a trace of a single body, nor even the patina of dust that should have been there.

He had no time to think more on that.

“The back door!” Kandler said.

“Xalt’s on it,” Burch said. “Brendis has the windows.”

The young knight had already shuttered three of the four sets of small, glazed panes. As he reached for the fourth, a frantic, glowing figure hurled itself through the wood and glass, sending it and Brendis flying back into the pub. The thing caught halfway into the pub, the shards of glass left in the window frame stabbing into its gut. It wailed in pain and anger.

Trapped within the cozy confines of the pub’s main room, the sound hurt Kandler’s ears worse than ever. He gritted his teeth and stabbed his sword straight into the screeching thing’s face as it flailed about. The blade caught it below its chin and slid into the thing’s chest, catching on its spine.

With another push, Kandler shoved the dead creature back out of the window, blood spurting after it as it cascaded to the cobblestone square outside. Sallah and Burch slammed the shutters closed and barred them, sealing the place tight.

Outside, a chorus of frustrated wails railed against Ginty’s façade.

Xalt came stomping up from the back room. “The rear is secured,” he said plainly.

“What do we do now?” Sallah asked. She flexed her hands in frustration, and Kandler could tell she ached to fill them with a sword.

Kandler glanced about the place, then walked over and sat on the same barstool he’d used a hundred times before. That had been in another life, one lived in the dying days of the Last War, before anyone had ever conceived of something like the Mournland, before Kandler had taken an elf wife and become a father to her daughter too.

Forever ago, he thought, looking deep into Sallah’s emerald eyes.

“Now,” he said, “we wait.”