stagnant pool, the tap-tap-tap of a deathwatch beetle looking for a mate.
And the gentle crush of a footfall.
Samar shot Kerian a glance. She nodded. Hytanthas and the other extra riders slid off the horses. Silently, they fanned out ahead of the riders. Their swords were already drawn, so not even that scrape betrayed them. Only ten feet away, they vanished into darkness. The mounted warriors waited. Periodically, each would lean forward, silently communing with his horse to keep the animal from growing impatient or chafing at the noxious atmosphere.
A scream shredded the air. They’d heard no swordplay, no twang of bowstring, just the single, sudden, heartfelt scream. Was it human or elf?
A chorus of shouts erupted in the night. The noise was accompanied by the clang of blades. Kerian lifted her sword, and the other elves followed suit. Despite pounding hearts, they went ahead at a canter. No sane rider would gallop in such darkness, with the usable trail confined to a narrow track in a treacherous mire.
They bore right around a bend and found bodies strewn across the path. Kerian swung down to the ground. The first body was indeed one of their dismounted comrades. His neck had been broken. Someone incredibly powerful had throttled him. His sword lay in his outstretched hand without a trace of blood on the steel.
Kneeling by the next corpse, Kerian rolled him over, and bolted to her feet. Turning to Samar, she flung a hand at the corpse and demanded, “Am I mad? Am I seeing things?”
Samar rode closer. He recoiled. “You’re not! It’s Jalanaris! We buried him yesterday!”
The dead fellow was one of the elves who had collapsed and died of suffocation during the crossing of the Cleft. How had he come to be here?
A total of eight lay dead. Half were dismounted riders Samar and Kerian had brought with them. The other half were comrades who’d died on the march across the Cleft. All had been strangled.
The sound of a shrill whistle sent Kerian vaulting back into the saddle. She knew that call. It was Hytanthas in distress. Flinging caution to the wind, she galloped down the path, Samar and the rest following hard on her heels.
Beyond a bubbling pool of slime, a melee was under way. The remainder of the dismounted guards stood in a circle facing outward, swords drawn. Advancing on them slowly but inexorably were pale mud-streaked figures. A guard behind Samar nocked an arrow and loosed, putting the shaft through the neck of one of the stalking figures. The impact staggered but did not stop him. He came on, arrow protruding grotesquely.
“Undead!” Samar cried. “Our own people are trying to kill us!”
Hytanthas’s party slashed at the walking corpses, rending terrible wounds in the dead flesh, but the undead elves simply kept coming. The horror of their existence was evident from their faces. Some had eyes open; others walked with unerring accuracy although both eyes were closed or clotted with dirt. Samar’s warriors hit them again and again with arrows, to no effect. They carried no weapons, for none had been buried with them, but they would grapple with any living elf within reach. When they found a living foe, they held on with such an iron grip only dismemberment stopped them.
Even hewn limb from limb, the cursed corpses twitched and heaved.
There were fifteen walking dead. With Samar’s reinforcement, the elves quickly subdued them, but Hytanthas stopped the warriors from destroying the corpses. He explained why.
“They were lying in wait for us. Our fellows didn’t fight at first. We thought we’d made a terrible mistake- buried comrades who were still living. Then they attacked! They strangled four of us before we could fathom what was going on. As soon as a revenant had killed its victim, it collapsed, lifeless at last.”
Hytanthas said he feared the curse might work the other way, that if the undead were destroyed, then their intended victims might die as well.
Surveying the still twitching limbs and torsos, Kerian had no desire to test his theory. She wondered whether the attack was a horrible by-product of Nalis Aren, or an evil spell worked against the elves. Samar didn’t care. He ordered the dismembered undead scattered so the corpses would trouble them no more.
His words sparked an idea in Kerian’s mind. She told Hytanthas to find himself a horse; they were taking a ride.
“Where are you going?” Samar asked.
“If we are troubled by our own dead, I wonder how Grayden’s army is faring behind us.”
“A worthy question, but don’t take too long in your search. Orexas won’t wait for you.”
His warning ended with a grunt. A severed arm had crawled across the boggy soil and fastened itself to Samar’s ankle. He kicked it loose and flung it far out into the mire. Hytanthas protested his callousness. Kerian told the young warrior to get to his horse.
Leaning close to Samar, she muttered, “You’d best take care of those warriors who fell tonight too.” They couldn’t risk allowing the four who had died to return as undead. Their remains must be scattered.
“Dirty business,” Samar muttered, grimacing.
Kerian pulled a small leather-wrapped package from her waist pouch and handed it to him. It contained the venom Chathendor had collected from the giant serpent. Viper poison paralyzed the limbs and destroyed flesh. Perhaps a dose would protect the brave, lost warriors from whatever malevolent influence was disturbing the sleep of the dead.
“Don’t wait for us,” Kerian said. “We’ll be back as soon as we learn what we can.”
The two elves rode off into the dark. They had no idea how far back the human army might be. They proceeded at a trot. Kerian was so exhausted she felt as though she wore the heavy chains of slavery again. She’d been awake and on her feet (or in the saddle) for-how long had it been? Two days? Three? She’d fought a monstrous serpent to the death. At least Hytanthas had the benefit of rest during their journey.
“Commander!” Hytanthas’s hiss jerked her upright. She’d actually dozed in the saddle.
Hytanthas took over the lead. A few more miles and he reined up sharply. “Do you hear?”
The metallic clash of combat was unmistakable. It had to be Grayden’s bandits. Who else would be abroad in the Cleft?
They continued more slowly. Shouts and screams could be heard, and beyond a mossy knoll they spied flickering light. The elves had forbidden fire in their caravan to conceal their position. Until that moment, so had the humans. Dismounting, Kerian told Hytanthas to hold her reins while she took a closer look.
“Let me go,” he urged. “You’re done in.”
“I’m not that far gone.”
In truth, she wanted to spare him what might lie ahead. For all her disagreements with him, Kerian felt protective of Hytanthas, as she did all the young warriors under her command. His brief brush with the undead had shaken him badly.
She dropped into a crouch and moved toward a right-angle bend in the path. On the west side of the trail was a broad mire that stretched all the way to the lake itself. The elves had lost two Bianost townsfolk in it, plus a horse they could ill afford to spare. Kerian skirted the mire’s edge. The path had been rising slightly. She dropped nearly prone and inched forward to peer over the crest. The scene she beheld was drawn straight out of the Abyss.
Slightly below her was a bowl-shaped ravine containing a small pool of stagnant water. The firm trail the elves had scouted circled the rim of the bowl. Arrayed around the pool were several hundred bandit soldiers. Many brandished torches and all wielded pikes, but it wasn’t Silvanesti cavalry they faced. A swarm of pale, half-naked bodies moved slowly yet inevitably forward. Scores of corpses littered the ground around the bandits’ circle, some newly killed and bloody, others undead who’d perished at last after killing a victim. Horses whinnied and struck out with their hooves, terrified. Some of them had blundered into the mire on the other side of the path and were slowly sinking to their doom. They struggled, teeth bared, but the bog had an unbreakable grip. Alongside the dying animals were the banners and helmets of their riders. When a horse got stuck, its rider tried to get off and was dragged down. The weight of their armor sank them fast.
An undead attacker, missing an arm, its face and chest mutilated by sword cuts and arrows, would sidle forward or sideways, trying to unite in deadly embrace with a living victim. If it succeeded, it dragged its prey away from the rest and fell on him with grasping hands. The victim screamed for help, but none dared leave the circle’s minimal protection. If Gathan Grayden didn’t arrive soon, his vanguard would not survive the night.
Kerian slid backward. As she twisted round to stand, she. beheld a pallid human looming over her. She drew in her breath sharply. Mud filled the man’s mouth and matted his red beard. Both eyes were coated, but he turned unerringly toward Kerian as she rolled aside. Her hand fell on her sword hilt, but she did not draw. The undead man
