And then, as suddenly as the hand had seized me, it was gone. Snorri loomed over me, gripped under my armpits, and hauled me clear. If my throat hadn’t been so well lubricated with terror-sweat I suspect I would have seen it still clutched in the dead man’s fingers, red and dripping.
Snorri snatched up his axe while I sucked air through the straw that being choked had left me with. The dead man stood, still grinning amidst the butchered remains of his face, and raised his hands towards us, the wrists and forearms curiously burned, wisps of smoke still lifting from them. Snorri made to advance, but two figures tackled him from the rear. He staggered, desperate to keep his footing. Two of his victims clung to him, blood still oozing from the fatal wounds his axe had given them.
Gasping and weak, I backed away from the spearman, still on my arse, shuffling amongst the rocks, retreating before his unhurried advance. Snorri looked in trouble too, with one of the things clinging to his back, the other encircling his waist with both arms and trying to eat its way into his stomach.
“Help.” I only managed to squeak it out as a whisper. I don’t think Snorri noticed. He’d just thrown himself back against the rock wall to the next ledge, sandwiching the corpse on his back between the broadness of his shoulders and the stone. He might not have heard my cry for aid, but I heard the resulting cracking of ribs and vertebrae loud and clear.
“Mffgl.” The dead spearman tried to speak just before he fell upon me. Torn flesh and a broken jaw rendered him incomprehensible.
“Help!” I managed a touch more volume, and this time, expecting to be throttled again, I caught both the creature’s wrists. The thing’s strength was shocking, and the burned flesh slid and tore beneath my grip.
Across the way, just behind my attacker’s head, I saw Snorri butcher the corpse-man he’d crushed, not severing its head but pulverizing its neck with two quick axe blows. With the second blow a horrifying change came over my opponent. Its strength multiplied and where it had been inexorably pressing my arms back it now brushed aside any attempt at defence and sealed both hands around my bruised neck once more.
The ruined face came close to mine, dripping, tongue writhing over shattered teeth and a hideous intelligence in its eyes. Yards behind, Snorri caught the head of his last opponent in both hands and with an oath pushed it away from his side. It took all his strength, as if his enemy had also grown in power, and the scarlet mouth he tore from his hip trailed skin and strands of flesh from its jaws. Snorri drove his knee right into the thing’s face, booted it away, then pursued, raising a big rock on high to pulp its head.
Again, as if some necromantic vitality had been shared amongst the corpses and now flowed from the destroyed corpse into the last available vessel, my enemy’s strength redoubled. It stood, lifting me as if I were nothing. By rights it should have snapped my neck, but although the strength of its arms had grown, the creature’s grip actually weakened.
I looked down and where my hands fastened upon the dead skin, a blinding light burned. The white heat of a desert sun bled between my fingers, my bones just shadows in a rosy haze of pumping blood and living flesh. The dead thing crisped where I touched it. Fats bubbled, flesh burned back, exposing sinews that smouldered, then shrivelled.
I nearly let go in shock.
Snorri came running, axe recovered and ready. He whirled it in a blow towards the monstrosity’s head, but somehow it took one hand from my throat and caught the weapon beneath its blade. The haft thunked against its palm with a dull and wooden sound. Snorri struggled to pull his axe free, but though he dragged the dead man several yards, and me too, still held in its choking fingers, he couldn’t defeat the thing’s strength.
The Norseman paused, slipped his grip to the end of the axe haft and to the head, and used the weapon as a lever to twist the spearman’s wrist. Bones snapped with loud retorts, tendons gave, flesh tore. Leaving his axe in the broken hand, Snorri bore his foe to the ground and proceeded to pulp the grinning face with a large chunk of rock.
Released, I rolled clear, struggling for air. The hand that had held me now rested on two blackened arm bones jutting from the dead man’s forearm. Even now my breath wouldn’t draw. I fell into unconsciousness, reflecting rather abstractly that I’d never even known that there were two bones in a man’s forearm.
FOURTEEN
“Wake up.”
I don’t want to.
“Wake up.” A slap this time. Perhaps there had been one the first time too.
Not if I’m still on that sodding mountain. Someone had packed my throat with brambles and my chest hurt.
“Now!”