pouring from a face wound. The Barbarian half supported him while beating at corpse men with his blade. Weasel followed, moving calmly amid the chaos, pausing every now and again to stab a foe with controlled precision of a surgeon wielding a scalpel. Sardec shouted a warning as a mass of walking dead swarmed towards the men. He saw Sergeant Hef go down beneath a pile of animated corpses before he could get the rest of the Foragers to the rescue. He dragged Weasel clear himself with the Barbarian covering their retreat.
From all around came the beating of drums and the sounding of great horns. It felt as if they were surrounded by the enemy as if the great mass of undead had swept by them, and all that was left was for them to face the oncoming enemy infantry.
Sardec knew without having to be told that the battle was lost, and that surrender was not an option. The best they could hope for was to flee for their lives, and hope to fight another day.
The walking dead crashed into the Foragers. Sardec returned to the unequal battle.
Rik watched the Talorean centre collapse. There was no way that human courage could stand against that oncoming tide of corrupt flesh. The infantry did their best but were slowly overwhelmed, as the huge mass of walking corpses broke their line in many places and swirled over them.
Clouds of musket-smoke obscured the battlefield. It became harder and harder to get a sense of what was going on. Now and again the smoke would part and reveal a scene of terrible carnage, in which dead bodies moving and unmoving were intermingled. Even as he watched, he felt a surge of mystical power from the East, and the newly killed started to rise horrifically from the ground. More and more new recruits joined the Sardeans.
Down there it was chaos. Undead in the uniforms of Taloreans were turning on their former comrades, killing them before they even knew what was happening, and they in turn would join the ranks of the enemy. It was devilish and it was all but unstoppable.
Rik moved closer to Asea. He knew the risks of interrupting a sorcerer at work but he felt he had better warn her anyway. She saw him coming and nodded her head.
“I can feel it too,” she said. “Someone is exerting necromantic power all along the line of battle. I am trying to counter it but I fear that the best I can do is slow it down. Please let me be now. I must concentrate.”
The eyes of her silver mask closed. The gem on her forehead blazed brighter, she began to chant something in an alien tongue. Her words echoed strangely, booming out from her metallic lips and then seeming to twist and vanish out of the air, as if the echoed off into some strange dimension at a different angle from reality.
For a moment the strange drumbeats faltered, and the formations of the marching dead stopped, milling around like penned sheep. For a moment, hope flared in Rik’s breast, and he thought that the Taloreans might yet be able to turn the tide of battle. Then he felt the surge of evil power play across the battlefield from some point in the East. There was a brief contest of wills. Asea cried out and her eyes opened once more, this time in shock.
It seemed that she had met a power even stronger than her own. The drums took up their beat once more. The dead men pressed their advantage, and their army started to grow once more. The Talorean centre crumbled. The enemy came ever closer.
Even to Rik’s eye it was obvious that the battle was lost. The Talorean centre had gone, and not even the valiant efforts of the cavalry were going to change that. The Sardean wyrms and the undead soldiers were just too much for the horses. The cavalry officers had already come to that conclusion. They were pulling back to regroup.
Asea looked drained. Her gaze was haunted. She obviously knew as well as he did what was going to happen. He imagined that the possibility of falling into Sardean hands was even less attractive for her than it was for him.
The undead infantry were already at the foot of the hill and were beginning to make their way upward. If they were going to make a break for it, now was the time to do so. He walked over to where she stood, being careful not to break the sorcerous circle.
He took her gently by the arm. “We need to get out of here,” he said softly. “There’s nothing more to be done.”
A desperate look of denial flashed across her face to be swiftly replaced by calm. “I fear you are correct.”
The knowledge had started to percolate through the other mages. They had put down their wands and began to reverse their rituals. A few of them ran towards the tents or simply raced off to grab horses or any other means of escape. The High Command had got the message too. Azaar and his staff had ordered their servants to pack and were now mounting their destriers. Joran and his followers had already left. It was obvious that none of them were going to risk falling into the enemy’s hands if they could help it.
The Sardeans might respect the usual principles of war concerning captured officers but then again they might not. Anybody capable of unleashing the Army of the Dead might be capable of breaking the articles.
“What do you want me to do about Tamara?” Rik asked.
“Bring her with us. We may have need of her services.”
Rik was glad that he had not been given the order to kill his half sister. He was not sure he would have obeyed it.
From below came the sounds of screaming and dying. The battle was over. The killing went on. The Army of the Dead was still recruiting.
Sardec was not entirely sure how they had managed to get clear. All he could remember was running, hiding in ditches and copses of trees and fighting against the walking dead until somehow they were away looking down on the battlefield from the nearby hills, surveying what was obviously the scene of a disaster for the Talorean military.
The dead swarmed below them, numberless as an army of ants, impossible for human effort to stop. They crawled over everything. The broken batteries, the corpses of wyrms and dragons. Elemental light still flickered under the dark clouds. Exhaustion leeched his strength and he bled from a dozen small cuts. He looked at the troops. There were perhaps half a dozen soldiers, a few Foragers and some others who had joined them during the rout.
His shoulders slumped. He felt physically nauseous. Defeat hit him like a blow, more potent even than pain and fatigue. He took an inventory of his gear. He still had his sword. He had lost his pistol somewhere. He had a small pouch of dried meat and a water flask full of spirits.
He glanced at the others- the Barbarian was present, covered in gore, his head bandaged with a strip torn from someone’s tunic. Weasel pulled on his pipe. His face grimy, deep lines of fatigue and worry etched in his face, older than Sardec could ever remember him looking. Toadface was there and Handsome Jan as well but no one else he recognised. He cast his mind back. The last he remembered of Sergeant Hef was seeing the little man disappear beneath a pile of snarling biting corpses.
How had it come to this, he thought? How could the proud army of Talorea have been so comprehensively beaten? The answer seemed clear enough-sorcery and superior numbers. An army poorly supplied, worn out by plague and hunger had simply been overwhelmed by an army that had no need for sleep or food or shelter.
It was not quite that simple. The Sardeans had living warriors too, but they had been sheltered behind a wall of walking corpses. They had been fresh when they entered combat and they had not been near unmanned by the presence of the walking dead. They were allies after all, not foes.
“Sir,” said Weasel
“Yes?” Sardec realised that the humans had been talking to him for a while. He had barely noticed their voices while lost in his own thoughts.
“What do you want us to do?” Sardec fought down his sense of hopelessness. He felt like telling them to do anything they felt like, that none of it mattered now. He took a deep breath and brought the impulse under control. He was a Terrarch officer. Better was expected of him.
One step at a time, he told himself. First things first. They needed to get clear of this place and find shelter for the night. After that they could give thought to what they should do. At least he thought he was with the right men for the job. It was time for the Foragers to forage.
“Let’s get some shelter and some food,” he said, “then we will start looking for a way back to home. Back to the camp and see if we can salvage any gear.”
“The bastards beat us,” said the Barbarian. “I don’t believe it. Maybe we should have prayed Weasel.”
