Laurie leaped up the stairs and struck at the grinning whore, once more on her feet. Her blond head rolled past Arutha as he raced up the stairs after Jimmy and the singer.
Reaching the ground floor of the House of Willows, Arutha and his companions were greeted with the sight of soldiers struggling with more animated corpses. The horse companies had arrived, cleared the streets, and entered the building. But they, like those below, were unprepared to fight dead opponents. Outside the main door several bodies, impaled with dozens of arrows, were trying to rise. Each time one would gain its feet, a flight of bowshafts would strike it from the dark, knocking it over again.
Jimmy glanced around the room and made a leap atop a table. With an acrobat’s spring, he jumped high over a guard being strangled by a dead Nighthawk and grabbed at a wall covering. The tapestry held his weight for a moment, then the room filled with a loud tearing sound as it ripped free of its fastenings high overhead. Yards of fine cloth fell about Jimmy, and he quickly disentangled himself. He grabbed up as much cloth as he could and dragged the tapestry to the large fireplace in the main room of the brothel. He dumped it in the fireplace and then started overturning anything that would burn onto it. Within minutes flames were spreading out into the room.
Arutha shoved away a corpse and yanked down another tapestry, which he tossed to Laurie. The singer ducked as a dead assassin lunged at him, and tangled the corpse in the fabric. Quickly spinning the dead creature, Laurie wrapped it in cloth and with a kick sent it stumbling toward Jimmy. Jimmy leaped aside and let the cloth-bound thing stumble into the rapidly spreading flames, tripping it as it went past. The dead man fell into the flames and began shrieking in rage.
The heat in the room was becoming unbearable, as was the choking smoke. Laurie ran to the door and halted just before the threshold. “The Prince!” he shouted to the bowmen atop the surrounding buildings. “The Prince is coming through!”
“Hurry!” came the answering shout as an arrow knocked down a rising corpse a few feet away from Laurie.
Arutha and Jimmy came out of the firelit door, followed by a few coughing soldiers. Arutha shouted, “To me!”
At once a dozen guards were dashing across the street, past grooms brought along to hold the cavalry mounts. The stench of blood and burning bodies and the heat from the fire were causing the horses to nicker and tug at their reins as the grooms led them away.
When the guards reached Arutha, several picked up arrow-studded bodies and tossed them through the windows into the fire. The shrieks of the burning corpses filled the night.
A dead Nighthawk stumbled out the door, its left side ablaze, its arms outstretched as if to embrace Arutha. Two soldiers caught at it and hurled it back through the door into the fire, disregarding the burns they suffered as a consequence. Arutha moved from the door while soldiers denied exit to those corpses seeking to flee the inferno. He crossed the street as the most exclusive brothel in the city went up in flames. To a soldier he said, “Send word to those in the sewers to make sure nothing gets out of the basement.” The soldier saluted and ran off.
In short order the house was a tower of fire, the surrounding area lit like day. Neighboring buildings spilled their inhabitants into the street as the heat threatened to ignite the block. Arutha called for the soldiers to form bucket lines and douse buildings on both sides of the House of Willows.
Less than a half hour after the blaze began, there came a loud crash and a billowing explosion of smoke as the main floor caved in and the building collapsed. Laurie said, “So much for those things in the basement.”
Arutha’s face was set in a grim expression as he said, “Some good men remained down there.”
Jimmy had stood transfixed by the sight, his face smudged with soot and blood. Arutha placed his hand upon the boy’s shoulder. “Again, you did well.”
Jimmy could only nod. Laurie said, “I need strong drink. Gods, I’ll never get that stench out of my nose.”
Arutha said, “Let’s return to the palace. This night’s work is done.”
SIX - Reception