ground the men dashed back and forth in search of beams and stones to pile up against the gate itself and already a small mountain of debris obscured the armored doors and steel portcullis.
Vlad dropped from his saddle, drew his bright shining seireiken, and started barking orders at the archers. The Vlachians leapt from their horses and charged up the stone stairs to the top of the wall where they shouldered their way in and among the Hellans and let loose a fresh torrent of arrows.
Omar watched Vlad waving his gleaming sword about for a minute, and then the Aegyptian slipped into the shadows and headed down the dark road along the wall. It took him several minutes to get away from the chaos of the gate houses, away from the soldiers, but he found a quiet stretch of road and a small iron stair that spiraled up to the top of the wall. The stair was locked behind a rusty steel door, but a sharp blow from his seireiken shattered the lock and Omar jogged up the creaking steps.
At the top of the wall, he could see for miles over the dark hills of Thrace where the snow lay in thin icy sheets and the half-dead olive arbors shivered like naked skeletons in the winter wind. And all the way down the long dark road from the distant hills to the north gate of Constantia marched the army of the dead.
The pale bodies, clothed in rags and dirt and ice, strode down the highway on stiff legs clutching broken sticks and jagged rocks in their cold blue hands. And here and there, Omar saw the flash of steel as the starlight played on the swords that the deathless ones had taken from the fallen soldiers at Saray.
My God. There really are hundreds of them. Thousands of them.
The Vlachian arrows rained down on the walking corpses, but precious few of the dead actually fell to the ground. Most of them just staggered on, bristling with arrow shafts. A thick knot of the frozen bodies was already pressed up against the gate, and it was growing thicker with each passing moment.
It’s hard to imagine how these creatures could possibly breach a defended wall like this, but still, better safe than sorry.
Omar shuffled along the top of the wall, picking through the discarded tools and weapons on the narrow walkway. Under a tarp he found a coil of rope, one frayed and stiff with frost. He pulled it out and tied the end around the railing of the iron stairs, and threw the coil over the wall.
“There are easier ways to die, old man,” a woman said.
Omar smiled, but didn’t look up. “For people like us, there are no easy ways to die.”
Boots clacked softly on the wall to his right. He turned and saw Nadira lean out over the wall to look at the army of the dead. “I could take your head.”
Omar made a sour face. “There’s no guarantee that would kill me. I know from personal experience that whole limbs can grow back in less than a day. I’d hate to find out how long it takes to grow a new head.”
Nadira jerked her chin at the pale corpses below. “What are they so worked up about?”
“Who knows? Their tongues are all frozen,” Omar said. “And frankly I don’t care. I just don’t want to see this lovely city overrun with filthy dead people.”
“Such a romantic.”
“You’re one to talk. How does a nun become a soldier, by the way?”
She peered at him from her perch down the wall. “You stop being a nun in small steps, bit by bit, as your faith wanes and your heart turns to wood. But you become a soldier all at once, in a moment of steel and blood.”
Omar grunted. “You’ll have to tell me more about that some time.”
“I doubt it.”
“Yes, well, either way, I need to go down there and make some sense of all this. Care to join me?”
“Not particularly.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because I’d rather kill these things here in Hellas than wait until they cross the Strait and start moving south toward Damascus.”
Omar smiled. “Ah, Damascus, home of the fabled Damascena. You see? You’re a sentimental old fool, too.”
She didn’t answer.
With a weary sigh, Omar climbed up onto the wall, grabbed hold of the rough rope, and began climbing down toward the ground. It was farther than it looked, and the shadows made it hard to guess where the ground actually was, so when he finally reached the bottom it was both a relief and a surprise.
“Took you long enough.”
He frowned at her as she stepped out of the shadow of the wall. “You just jumped, didn’t you?”
“Why not? A broken leg, a broken neck? It only hurts for a moment. Come on, old timer, let’s see if you’ve learned how to use that shiny knife of yours yet.” Nadira strode past him, her boots crunching through the icy snow toward the road and the shambling press of cold bodies full of arrows.
Omar followed in no particular hurry. He took the moment to look at her more closely. Nothing about her face had changed except the dirt, and the short hair. He leaned his head to one side.
Funny that we can cut our hair without it instantly growing back to the same length. Perhaps it’s because hair isn’t truly alive anymore.
She wore ancient Damascus armor, pitted and dented and missing strips and chunks of steel here and there. Beneath it was a much newer Eranian uniform, blue and white, though thoroughly stained with old blood and new filth. She drew her saber and let the slender curving blade rest on her shoulder as she stomped over the broken ground and through the dead grasses toward the road. Her blade was common steel, but expertly forged by the masters in Damascus and stamped with the telltale veins and marbling and etching that proclaimed the excellence of the weapon.
My seireiken could reduce it to melted slag simply by touching it. All of that skill, all of that work, all of that beauty reduced to hideous waste without any effort at all.
The story of my life.
He followed her and his attention drifted away from the woman’s armored backside to the thousands of corpses groaning and gasping as they shuffled down the road toward the gate. The arrows still flew fast and thick, pelting the half-frozen bodies and the road, thumping with a murderous rhythm.
This is the strangest battlefield I have ever seen. No shouting, no waving weapons, no flags or standards, no trumpets, no leaders. Just a mob of peasants who are already dead but can’t quite slip free of their frozen flesh.
Omar wrapped his fingers around the grip of his seireiken. The woven shark skin of the handle was cold and smooth, worn by centuries of use. Instantly, as he touched his weapon, a sea of faces appeared around him floating in the darkness, the faces of the dead, the faces of the souls who rested inside the blade of the seireiken.
It took some small effort of will to keep the thousands of ghosts at arm’s length. They were all so hungry for attention, so eager to be spoken to, to have their knowledge valued once again as it had been in life. But Omar had spoken with them all, and while many still had some wisdom to offer, many of them were simply too old and too primitive to be of much use anymore.
The dim shade of Ito Daisuke appeared at Omar’s side, walking silently over the icy snow. “More demons?” the samurai asked.
“Corpses,” Omar answered quietly so that Nadira would not hear him talking to himself. “Dead bodies with souls still clinging to them, driving them across the land.”
“Why here?” Daisuke glanced up at the dark walls of Constantia. “Why would the dead all want to come here?”
“I don’t know. Most of them are just farmers and laborers from Thrace and Vlachia and Raska, I suppose. There’s no reason for them to all come south. Most of them would never have come here in life. And the warmer air during the day would only threaten to melt the aether in their blood and let their souls slip free.”
“Maybe that’s it then. They seek the warmth that will set them free.”
“Maybe.” Omar frowned. “But if they only wanted warmth, they could find that at any simple farmer’s hearth. There’s no need to march across the country. And why attack people? Why slaughter soldiers?”
“I cannot say. The demons of Nippon may be foul and hideous, but they are often of noble blood with noble goals. I haven’t seen such mindless creatures as these before.” Daisuke sighed. “The moon has risen. So beautiful, so serene. A white blade in the sea of stars. Silent. Simple. Perfect.”
Omar nodded. “I’m going to need your help here in a moment. Can you slaughter an army for me?”
