“Take the other side.” I dropped my sword and took the topmost of the stones with newfound respect for the small man’s strength—the thing weighed a ton.
“Marshal.” Renprow panted, letting another rock fall before lugging the rest to where I’d just killed the last ghoul.
Whatever venom the creatures coated their darts with proved remarkably water-resistant but coming from the marshes of Brettan that didn’t seem too surprising. Just depressing. Advancing on the balustrade, I had few illusions about my fate if one of those darts hit me. I would have been running away but for the fact that my best chance lay in getting them while they were climbing rather than trying to dodge their missiles whilst sprinting down the bridge.
“I don’t think so.” I made a big last stride and managed to place my foot on top of the next blowpipe to edge into view.
With a grunt of effort I hefted the stone over the edge and, without looking over, let it drop onto the ghoul whose pipe I’d pinned. With even a modicum of luck it would strip several more of the creatures from the bridge support on its way down. As quickly as I could manage I grabbed the second stone and repeated the process a few feet to the right. There were no satisfying wails of despair or shrieks of agony, but the meaty thuds and accompanying splashes sounded promising.
“Got them, Marshal!” Renprow called over.
More men were approaching the bridge along the Morano Way, the route the Iron Hoof riders had taken. Soldiers, definitely the alive kind rather than the walking dead kind, filled the road from side to side, marching abreast, all in shadow, the sun gleaming only on the rooftops now.
“Check my side.” I waved Renprow absently across the width of the bridge and started walking toward the advancing troops. By the time I got to the end of the bridge I could see Martus, four ranks back upon his horse, resplendent in breastplate, conical helm with faceguard and an aventail of chainmail spreading across his shoulders.
The sight of Martus and his army at least filled the citizenry with enough confidence for a few to open their windows and lean out to cheer whilst the men marched below. For my part I felt only a sense of nagging unease, which floated upon a sea of primal fear. I hadn’t wanted the marshal’s sash in the first place and it was beginning to look more like a noose by the minute.
Martus came to a halt fifty yards from the bridge with his soldiers streaming out to either side of him, heading in both directions along the bank.
“I left orders for you to stay at the palace!” I shouted, advancing on him.
“A good thing I ignored you!” He lifted his faceplate so he could bellow to full effect. “We’ve got a dozen or more incursions along both banks. Got to stamp these things out before they take hold. Like a plague these dead men. One makes the next and so on—”
“I’m the fucking marshal and you obey my orders!” I felt slightly foolish shouting up at him on the back of his stallion but I wasn’t about to lose command to him, even if our audience were common foot soldiers.
Captain Renprow rode up behind me, leading Murder. Darin overtook him at the last, a good number of the men with him, battered, goresplatted, but largely in one piece.
“You’re to follow my orders, Martus,” I said, not shouting now but loud enough for everyone to hear. “Or I’ll see you hang.”
“Hanging seems unlikely.” Darin rode in between Martus and me, cutting off our brother’s reply. “A week in the dungeons on the other hand . . .” He looked meaningfully at Martus, then glanced past him and frowned. “What’s that?”
“Red smoke.” I followed his gaze. “Shit. The walls.” Red smoke had been my proudest instigation. Each wall tower now had a stock of a dozen paper-wrapped fire-powders that gave off copious red smoke when lit, the idea being that any emergency could be signalled swiftly across Vermillion in this manner, faster than messengers and with a longer reach than bells amid the cacophony of the city. As an added bonus the rare salts used in the fire-powder’s manufacture were costly and dug from the Crptipa mines, leading to a nice profit that would come directly back to my pocket. Right now though, seeing a seven-tailed bank of red smoke rising from the towers of the east quarter, I would gladly have forgone all and any income resulting from the need to restock fire-powder.
“You’re not making any sense . . . Marshal.” Martus looked back at the smoke over the heads of his troops.
“We’ve got half the city watch and two thousand troops chasing less than two hundred dead along the riverbanks. Meanwhile at our city wall seven tower captains have seen something that made them scared enough to light the emergency signal . . .” Each tower stood sixty foot high, crenellated like a fortress and manned by a garrison of twenty-five with room for a hundred. I really didn’t want to know what would be enough to cause seven of them to call for help at the same time. “This isn’t the assault—this is the diversion!”
THIRTEEN
“I hope to God Grandmother named you marshal for a good reason.” Darin joined me atop the leftmost of the two towers flanking the Appan Gate, his voice awestruck. “Most of our cousins thought it was a joke.”
“Most?”
“The rest thought it was a punishment.”
We looked out across Vermillion’s overspill, the extended city reaching half a mile from the walls, still further where it followed the Appan Way, as if desperate to wring a few more coins out of any traveller so foolish as to leave. Dead people crowded the space before the gates— men, women, children—the grey and flaking dead in the filthy remains of their grave-clothes; the fresh dead, still scarlet with their murder, a silent throng stretching out around the walls, back along the main road, pressed tight in the alleys between houses.
Even sixty feet up with a light breeze the stench proved invasive, tearing at the back of my throat, stinging my eyes. More than a few meals had been splattered down the wall. The sight and smell of your first walking dead is apt to do that to you.
“I gave standing orders for no archery.” This to Renprow, the gore drying on him now after our hurried ride from the bridge. A good number of the dead closest to the Appan Gate sported two, three, sometimes five arrows, jutting from arms and chests—an elderly woman had one in her eye. “It’s a waste.”
“I’ll send out the order again, Marshal. It’s hard for the men not to shoot when the enemy advances on their positions.”
I waved Renprow away. Soldiers of the wall guard packed the tower-top, men of middling years in the main, many thick-waisted and gone to grey, thinking to pace away their remaining years peacefully on the walls of the capital. The primary duty of a Vermillion wall guard is spotting fires. Apart from that they’re basically a mobile reserve to the city guard and the only excitement they ever see is when they are called upon to descend into the city to back up their thinly stretched brothers in city red.
“Move!” Behind me Martus elbowed his way through the guard, blaring at any who didn’t shift quick enough. “Get out of my way! I’m a bloody prince. I’ll—Dear God . . .” Martus faltered in mid-bluster, squinting out across the dead horde against the setting sun. “Dear God.” He grew pale. “I’ve never seen anything like . . . that.”
“I have.” I leaned out, hands on the battlements to support me. “I’ve seen worse.” And in that moment I realized that while fear ran through me from head to toe, it wasn’t the debilitating terror I’d known on so many other occasions. I thought then that maybe I knew why Grandmother had chosen me. “I’ve seen Hell.” I raised my voice. “I’ve seen Hell and this isn’t it. We’re the Red Queen’s men and we’ve all of Vermillion at our backs. A bunch of shuffling corpses isn’t going to take it from us!”