Age of the Undead, page 27
part #1 of Zombicide Black Plague Series
Hulmul focused his mind and stretched forth his hand. Since Vasilescu was so fond of fire, he decided to give the necromancer exactly what he was dealing out. The incantation sizzled off his lips and a gout of flame shot from his hand.
Only it didn’t hurtle toward Vasilescu. Hulmul’s head reeled as he watched the flame crackle against a column several yards away from the betrayer. The wizard couldn’t understand the deviation. He’d been certain of his aim, positive the spell would slam into his enemy.
The capriciousness of magic! Hulmul refocused, this time pointing his finger and sending an arcane bolt flying at the necromancer. This time he noticed that his hand swayed at the last instant to send the attack well clear of Vasilescu.
The villain glanced back in his direction, a cruel smile on his face, then returned his attention to Gaiseric as the thief scurried to a new refuge a dozen feet farther back. The gout of magical fire Vasilescu sent chasing after the rogue singed his clothes and set them smoking.
Hulmul slumped behind the kegs and stared at his hands. What was happening? Why wasn’t he able to fight his mentor?
Movement from among the boxes had him swing around. The necromancer knew where he was now, so Hulmul didn’t have to show restraint. He readied a spell to annihilate whatever zombie dared to emerge, a receptacle for his mounting frustration. At the last second, the wizard banished the magic he was shaping into an arcane bolt. The figure that emerged from among the supplies wasn’t a zombie.
“I saw you,” Helchen said, as she scrambled over to join the wizard. “Why isn’t your magic working?”
Hulmul slapped his fists together. “I don’t know. Maybe he has some charm or talisman to protect him.”
The witch hunter stared at Hulmul, doubt in her eyes. He could understand her suspicion. A wizard who conveniently couldn’t fight against his mentor. If he were in Helchen’s position, he’d be suspicious too.
Suddenly, Helchen reached forward and tugged at Hulmul’s torn sleeve, expanding the tear and exposing his shoulder. Before he could ask her what she was doing, she posed her own question. “It has to be! It is a witchmark! He put a witchmark on you when he was tending your injuries.”
Understanding burned through Hulmul’s mind. He turned his head and rolled his shoulder. Sight of the symbol that had been branded upon his skin confirmed his fear. “A witchmark,” he snarled. He looked at Helchen. “You know what it means? The Order has used them often enough. I’m helpless to use my magic against the ones who tattooed this filth on my skin. So, this is how Vasilescu insults me,” Hulmul growled, outrage rising with each word that left his lips. He ran his fingers around the blackish mark, feeling the scaly texture of the skin it stained. “In less civilized times, a wizard would protect himself from an apprentice by placing a witchmark. Someone bearing a wizard’s witchmark is incapable of striking him with hostile magic.” He ground his teeth together. For a practitioner of magic, such a violation was obscene.
Helchen looked around the edge of the keg. “He’s sure to get Gaiseric. The rascal’s running out of places to hide.” She turned back to Hulmul. “Is there anything you can do to break Vasilescu’s hold?”
“One way,” Hulmul answered. He drew the dagger he carried from its sheath. His eyes studied Helchen. It was strange to think a witch hunter might hold him in higher regard than his old master. If that regard was enough to make him an exception to her prejudice against wizards, he’d have to hide the consequences of what he was going to ask her to do. If it wasn’t… well, then he expected she wouldn’t care about the consequences.
“You’ll have to cut away the mark,” Hulmul said, proffering her the dagger. When she took it from him, he ran his finger around the symbol. “You’ll have to work fast and cut deep,” he instructed. “If so much as a speck of it remains, you might as well leave it alone.”
“I’ll get it all,” Helchen swore. She tossed aside her hat and set the point of the blade against his skin. Hulmul fixated on his anger, at the string of betrayals and abuses Vasilescu had inflicted on him. He couldn’t let the pain overwhelm him as Helchen started cutting. He had to remain conscious.
He had work to do before the end.
•••
Helchen bound Hulmul’s arm as best she could. She was amazed the wizard had endured the brutal procedure. With time a critical factor, there hadn’t been the luxury of being delicate. She’d pressed the edge of the dagger in, then shaved away the skin, scooping out a patch of flesh several inches wide and about half an inch deep.
The wizard’s clothes were soaked in his blood. Trembling, he withdrew the books he’d saved from the vault and set them down. Hulmul glanced up at her. “Promise you won’t burn these,” he implored. “Something must be preserved.”
She didn’t like his tone. There was a fatalism there that sent an alarm through her. Her concern must have shown on her face, because Hulmul smiled and nodded.
“I can fight him now,” the wizard said. He tensed as a spasm of pain rippled through him. “I have the ability now. I just don’t know if I have the strength.”
Helchen reached under her tunic, her hand tightening about her own claim from the Order’s trove of relics. She drew it out and let Hulmul see the gruesome implement. It was a knife, several inches long and fashioned from a bone so old that it had turned to stone. Horrible, slithering letters writhed across its length, indecipherable carvings that nevertheless conveyed an impression of malevolent evil. It was far worse when you knew exactly what it was.
“Just keep his attention,” the witch hunter told him. “Let me get close enough to use this.”
“So that’s what you took from the Order’s trove.” Hulmul couldn’t take his eyes off the fossil blade but managed to nod in agreement. Helchen slipped away, creeping along the row of kegs until she was at the very edge. Vasilescu was still concentrating on Gaiseric, beckoning to his zombies to close in so the thief would have nowhere to run.
The witch hunter darted a last look back at Hulmul, then sprinted to the nearest column. She could see the cistern, its sides pitted and scored by Vasilescu’s magic. The necromancer thought he’d killed her, for before he’d shifted targets, she’d set her crossbow on the ledge of the cistern as though taking aim at the blackguard. The answering barrage of spells had obliterated the weapon and much of the cistern. Pools of water and piles of rubble lay strewn about the vicinity.
Let her stay unnoticed only a little longer. Get near enough to use the profane relic she carried. Hulmul wasn’t the only one ready to die to end Vasilescu’s evil. If defeating the traitor marked the end of her, then Helchen would count it a reasonable trade.
She could feel the excitement of the knife in her hand, the upswell of its brooding malevolence. It was known as the Dragon’s Kiss and had been found many years ago by a ranger who was exploring the shunned marshes far to the south, one Unger Ravengrave. It had lain, so the man later confessed, amid some blighted ruins half-submerged in the mud. Finding the knife had seemed so remarkable that he ignored the sinister aura it exuded and brought it back with him.
A reign of terror began months later, a trail of carnage that wove from village to town to city. Foul murders that left shriveled human husks in their wake, corpses that continued to rapidly decay even after they were found. Captain Dietrich was the one who finally tracked down the killer, running him to ground in Singerva. Ravengrave the ranger, the man who carried the Dragon’s Kiss. Under interrogation he’d revealed the awful power of the knife, how it whispered to him as he slept, filling his dreams with red visions of slaughter until he was compelled to make these visions a reality. The Dragon’s Kiss cried out for blood, and Ravengrave was incapable of denying it.
Helchen had heard about the gruesome relic while apprenticed to Dietrich. He’d described how the blade had been examined and found to possess tremendous power. Whether it could compel someone to murder or if Ravengrave had simply gone mad and imagined an outside force commanding him had never been resolved satisfactorily. The ranger had been taken in chains to lead an expedition into the cursed marshes to find the ruins. None of them had ever been seen again.
“Sometimes, you need a monster to fight a monster,” Helchen whispered, staring at the fossil blade. It was a mantra of the witch hunters, an injunction against allowing compassion to restrain them from carrying out their obligations. The same wisdom applied here. She would use the Dragon’s Kiss to kill Vasilescu. To use evil to bring good. The traitor might appreciate that irony.
Creeping toward the ruined cistern, Helchen watched as Hulmul stepped out from cover. His injured arm hung limp at his side, but he stretched out his hand and pointed at Vasilescu. A bolt of blue light sped from his finger and seared into the necromancer’s back. The villain was spun around by the impact, his robe smoking where he’d been hit.
“Your dog no longer!” Hulmul shouted. Before Vasilescu could fully recover from his surprise, Hulmul forced his injured arm into motion. His hands curled into a pattern Helchen recognized. A blast of frost surged toward the necromancer.
Vasilescu recognized the spell as well. He quickly gestured with his hand, calling up a gout of fire and hurling it toward his former pupil. Flame and ice met in a searing collision. Steam rippled away from the sorcerous impact, each spell annihilating the other.
“Fool! My leash is still about your neck!” Vasilescu snarled. Helchen’s hair swirled around her head as the villain conjured a fearsome tempest and sent it blowing down upon Hulmul. She saw the wizard strain to call up his own howling wind and set it striving against that invoked by his enemy. The two men strained against one other, each pouring his will into the gale. Helchen thought she could see a distortion where the spells collided. It seemed the point of conflict was slowly inching nearer to Hulmul. She could see the toll his magic was taking on the wizard. His visage had become as white as a sheet and the cut on his arm was bleeding fiercely.
There wouldn’t be another chance. Though she’d hoped to get closer to Vasilescu before making her attack, Helchen abandoned the urge to caution. She lunged up from the rubble and charged toward the traitor.
Intent upon Hulmul, Vasilescu only noticed Helchen when she was a few feet away. The necromancer spun around, banishing the gale he’d called up. The witch hunter felt the air around her turn cold, felt ice forming on her armor and clothes.
Had Vasilescu been speedier, the witch hunter would have frozen solid, but the villain never had the chance to finish his conjuring. The Dragon’s Kiss rasped across his chest, the fossil blade ripping through his robes and tearing into his flesh. Blood spurted across Helchen, sizzling as it splashed the frost forming around her.
Vasilescu’s eyes were wide with horror when he saw the weapon Helchen held. “No… the Darkness shall not have me!” he moaned. He seemed to recognize both the blade and the power it possessed.
The necromancer set his hands against his wound. Helchen saw him try to work some sort of healing magic to stave off the force now tearing through his body. She stopped his conjuring with a second slash of the Dragon’s Kiss, severing one of his hands.
Vasilescu staggered back and wailed in terror. The knife’s destructive power now manifested in full. The traitor’s body shriveled, flesh and muscle drying out until they were naught but a thin veneer covering his bones. His face fell in, curling around the contours of his skull. His eyes shrunk into hard beads of leathery tissue. The necromancer’s screams trailed away into a shallow rasp.
Helchen felt sickened by the sight, but could not deny a sense of elation when the desiccated shell dropped to the floor. Life evaporated from the necromancer’s body. The remains twitched and tried to rise. In drawing on the dark powers, Vasilescu was contaminated even more completely than scavenging crows and rats. In death his corpse tried to reanimate, but the effort only brought it to complete destruction. The zombified husk set its palm against the ground and tried to raise itself, but the withered arm shattered under the weight of its body. The corpse crashed back to the floor and rapidly crumbled to dust.
“Evil used to bring good.” Helchen mocked the residue of Vasilescu’s body. She looked at the fossil knife. She wanted to cast it away, to send the foul thing skittering away into the dark. Instead, she hid it beneath her armor once more.
Maybe she would need its terrible power again. Marduum forgive her.
Helchen turned away and glanced back at Hulmul. The wizard gave her a weary wave, then sagged against one of the kegs. She started toward him, but a cry from Gaiseric turned her back around. The thief had his back against a pillar, five zombies closing in on him. Setting aside her concern for the wizard, Helchen hefted her mace and hastened to Gaiseric’s aid.
Between the two of them, Helchen and Gaiseric were able to vanquish the zombies without injury to themselves, though there was a nasty moment when one of the walkers got a choking grip on the rogue’s neck. Even when the corpse’s arm was severed, the dead hand retained its throttling clutch. Helchen had to break the fingers to finally remove it.
The moment the zombies were destroyed, Helchen and Gaiseric hurried back to Hulmul. The wizard was lying on the floor, his breathing reduced to shallow gasps. His pallor was such now that the zombies they’d recently fought looked more vital.
Hulmul pushed Helchen away when she crouched down and tried to minister to him. “There’s nothing to be done,” he told her. “The witchmark…”
“I cut it away,” Helchen said. “It’s gone.” She was surprised to hear the catch in her voice. Fear for a wizard’s life was the last thing a witch hunter expected to feel.
“The mark on the skin restrains,” Hulmul said. “The mark on the soul binds. Vasilescu didn’t lie. His leash was still upon me.”
Sickness boiled inside the witch hunter when she heard Hulmul speak. She’d been unaware of that aspect of witchmarks, that their restraint went beyond the merely physical. But the wizard had known, and he’d defied its power anyway. Helchen motioned to Gaiseric. “Help me! We’ll get him help!” The thief bent down to help her lift the wizard, but Hulmul shook his head.
“There’s no help for me. I perish with Vasilescu.” The wizard managed a thin smile. “I’m surprised I’ve lingered this long.” The smile faded and he gripped Helchen’s arm. “The books! If you’d help me, see that they’re preserved. Not in a witch hunter’s vault, but somewhere they can be studied. Somewhere they can bring some good into the world.”
Hulmul slumped back against the kegs. Helchen could see the last flicker of life drain out of him. She leaned in and closed his sightless eyes. Part of her was shocked that she felt sorrow for any wizard, but another part of her saw him as a hero, someone who’d sacrificed himself for the sake of others. Even a witch hunter could mourn a hero.
“Gaiseric, you’ll find the books he was talking about over there,” Helchen said, waving her hand.
The thief hesitated. “What are you going to do?”
Helchen stood up and raised her mace. “What has to be done,” she answered. She felt sick as she brought the bludgeon crunching down into Hulmul’s skull. She quickly turned away when the deed was done.
“Let’s see if anyone else survived,” she told Gaiseric. “Let’s see how much our victory has cost us.”
Epilogue
Vasilescu’s study had been appropriated by Alaric and his companions to hold a hasty conference. The room was more cramped than the knight would have liked, overstuffed with shelves of books and racks of scrolls, but Helchen had insisted on securing the place until she’d had a chance to go through and evaluate its contents. The witch hunter’s discretion actually surprised him. He’d expected her to simply burn everything after learning that the wizard was, in truth, a necromancer.
“We’ve the run of the tower now, for what that’s worth,” Gaiseric said. The thief lounged in a high-backed chair with his feet propped up on the desk at the center of the room. “If taking responsibility for a few hundred refugees is your thing, that is.”
Alaric limped around the desk and gave Gaiseric a stern look. “You think we should abandon them and leave Singerva?” The knight rapped the top of the desk with his finger. “This is a defensible position. We can hold it until help comes.” He was angry at himself because of the lure Gaiseric’s suggestion presented. He didn’t want to stay in the tower. What he wanted was to set out and hunt down Gogol… wherever that trail might take him.
Yet, what he needed to do went against that desire. The survivors had to have the help and guidance of someone with a sense of tactics and strategy. Someone they’d accept as a leader and follow in a crisis. Among his small group, he was the only one suited to the task. Much as he didn’t want the role.
“If help comes,” Ursola interjected. She rubbed at the bandage that covered the half of her face that bore the bites and scratches of rats. “From what you say, the province, even the whole kingdom could be as bad off as Singerva is.”
Helchen set down the book she’d been leafing through. Alaric noted that it had joined the pile that contained Arnault Kramm’s tome. The pile that would be destroyed. “There will be other survivors,” she insisted. “The reach of the necromancers can’t be so complete. Nor do I think they are as unified of purpose as they might seem. Vasilescu has stores below that could sustain an entire army for months. He certainly didn’t gather that for his zombies.”
Alaric took up the point she raised. “From what Vasilescu’s surviving servants tell us, their master intended to set himself up as lord of Singerva. King of his own petty kingdom.”
“Der goofz whot scrapin’ fer der heel,” Ratbag grumbled. The orc’s injuries were so numerous he was wrapped nearly from head to toe in bandages. “Yer otta bump ’em. Der whol caboodle.”
“He thinks anyone who worked for Vasilescu isn’t to be trusted and should…” Gaiseric finished the translation by drawing his finger across his throat.
