Age of the Undead, page 3
part #1 of Zombicide Black Plague Series
The question went unfinished. Gaiseric’s face went pale, and his head whipped around, staring out at the hallway. Alaric felt the thief twist in his grip and in an instant found himself holding nothing except his brother’s stolen doublet. The knight was shocked by the man’s swiftness. Gaiseric slipped to the floor, but instead of running away, he dashed over to the candle and kicked it behind the altar.
“Get down, you idiot!” Gaiseric hissed at the knight. “They’re back!”
Alaric didn’t need to ask who it was the thief meant. Planting one hand on top of the altar, he vaulted over and joined Gaiseric behind it. Together, the two men peeped around the edges. Alaric still couldn’t see anything, but he thought he heard the gate creak as something brushed against the bars.
“If we stay quiet and out of sight, they’ll leave,” Gaiseric told Alaric. “I’ve been dodging them ever since I got back into the castle.”
“Got back in?” Alaric asked, but more sounds from the hallway gave him bigger concerns for the moment. From the noise, it seemed there was a considerable presence out there. He thought of what Gaiseric had said about seeing dozens of zombies when they came for him in the dungeon.
“Keep quiet,” Gaiseric whispered, gripping his dagger so tightly that his knuckles were turning white. “It means our lives. They won’t look long and if they don’t find us, they’ll go away.”
Alaric nodded his understanding. He still had questions but getting torn apart by zombies wasn’t going to answer any of them. He focused on the sounds creeping from the darkness. The clop of a bare foot against the stone floor, the creak of an oak pew as something stumbled against it, the drip of decay from rotten flesh.
The noises came closer and closer. Alaric hardly dared to draw a breath, his mind racing with the image of the zombie horde that had destroyed the army. He could picture a similar horde steadily bearing down on them in the chapel, rank after rank of animated corpses. Perhaps only inches away from him in the dark.
Gaiseric leaned down and snuffed out the candle as the sounds drew still closer. Alaric felt dread seize him as even that feeble light was extinguished. Now to his senses was borne the necrotic smell, a rancid stench of decay and corruption. He wondered again how near the zombies could be for their stink to be so overwhelming. If he dared to stretch out his hand, what would he find?
“They can’t see us any better than we can see them,” Gaiseric whispered. “They’ll leave soon when they can’t find us.”
Alaric took some reassurance from the thief’s words. After all, Gaiseric had escaped from the zombies before, had intimated he’d done so several times. The undead wouldn’t find them in the dark…
Suddenly, an eerie green luminescence exploded across the chapel, bathing everything in light.
Chapter Two
Gaiseric threw his arms across his face as green light burst across the chapel. He rubbed at his eyes, trying to clear his vision. When he could see again, he almost wished that he’d remained blind.
The aisle down the middle of the chapel was filled with zombies. Some wore shrouds, others the simple homespun clothing of peasants, but many more were in the blood-spattered livery of Baron von Mertz’s household. Villager, servant, or soldier, the undead bore the same hideous expression on their faces, a vicious admixture of hatred and hunger.
“Snap out of it!” Gaiseric snarled at Alaric. The knight was staring in horror at a zombie toward the forefront of the mob. The thief recognized the flowing gown and jeweled necklace of the Baroness, though there wasn’t enough left of her clawed face to be absolutely certain. “Snap out of it!” he growled again, pulling Alaric back. “Keep gawking and you’ll end up like her.”
The zombies shuffled forward with outstretched arms. Their groping hands were crusted over with dried blood and tatters of skin dangled from their nails. Gaiseric cringed when he saw shreds of flesh caught in their teeth as well. As he stepped back into the sanctuary itself, he spotted the source of the strange light. It was an orb about the size of his fist, a spectral globe that sputtered and flitted above the zombies. He felt a chill ripple down his spine. Black magic as well as walking corpses!
Just outside the chapel, standing to one side of the zombie throng, was a ghoulish-looking man in a cassock-like robe. His skin was of a jaundiced hue, mottled with leprous blemishes. The face was as cruel and evil as anything Gaiseric had ever seen, making the Baron’s headsman seem as charming as a tipsy minstrel. Despite his cadaverous looks, the man’s eyes lacked the dullness of the zombies. When he caught Gaiseric’s gaze, the villain’s lips curled back in a cruel smile. The thief took a step back, wondering with a touch of panic if he’d ever stolen something from the zombie master.
“Brunon Gogol!” Alaric suddenly cried out. The knight’s eyes had strayed away from his undead mother and fastened upon the zombies’ leader. It was clear he recognized the man, and with that recognition came a surge of rage. He brandished his sword at the necromancer and Gaiseric feared he’d plunge right into the zombie horde to reach his enemy.
The thief groaned and threw himself into action. Before Alaric could commit some reckless – and doomed – gesture, Gaiseric decided to provide a more immediate conflict to draw the knight’s attention. Darting ahead of Alaric, the thief brought the heavy icon of Wotun sweeping around. The golden scales smashed into the head of an advancing zombie, cracking its skull and throwing it back into the mob.
•••
“Back!” Gaiseric shouted. “You’re never going to get to him through these zombies!” He felt an obligation to the knight. Alaric had saved him from execution, now maybe he could save his life in turn. At least he felt bound to make the effort. In Gaiseric’s peculiar ethics, it was one thing to steal and another thing to welch on a debt.
The knight glowered at the thief as he slashed his blade across a zombie’s chest. “I’ve run once already!” Alaric whipped his blade around and cleft the pate of an enemy as it grabbed at him.
“Good, then you know it’s better to live to fight when the odds aren’t a hundred to two,” the rogue grumbled, wondering why anytime he tried to do something noble it was never easy. Gaiseric hurled his makeshift cudgel into the face of the nearest zombie, causing it to stumble and trip up those following behind it. He scrambled back behind the altar and grabbed one edge. “Help me with this,” he told the knight. For an instant it looked like Alaric would refuse, but after hacking the arm from a zombie arrayed in the von Mertz livery, he swung back around and took hold of the opposite corner.
“Heave!” Gaiseric grunted. Together they were able to tip the stone altar onto its side. The weight of the top caused it to break free as it struck the floor and it went tumbling down into the undead mob, breaking bones and crushing several of the zombies as it came to rest.
Gaiseric glared up at the wan light flitting through the chapel. He’d eluded zombies elsewhere in the castle without a spectral light showing up to betray him. “We need it dark to get away,” the thief hissed. Alaric had his sword again and was thrusting at the zombies as they resumed their advance. Gaiseric glared across at the necromancer. Gogol hadn’t taken any active role in the fight, staying back while his creatures carried out his commands. “I’m betting you need to concentrate to keep that light going,” he muttered as he flipped his dagger between his hands. His fingers pinched down around the tip of the blade. “Let’s see if I’m right.”
It was a long throw, and if Gaiseric had really weighed his chances, he’d have seen how low those chances really were. Maybe worse than Alaric’s impulse to try and cut a way through the undead horde. The thief, however quick to disparage the risks someone else took, trusted in his own luck. In his profession, confidence and daring had to be instinctive rather than rational.
Instinct prevailed over reason, and he let the blade fly across the chapel. Nearly forty feet stretched between Gaiseric and his target, with both zombies and the bars of the gate providing cover for the necromancer. Despite all the impediments, Gogol’s face twisted into a mask of pain, and he threw back his head in a shriek as the dagger struck his arm. Gaiseric had a fleeting impression of the villain turning and fleeing down the corridor before the gibbous light evaporated and the chapel was plunged into darkness.
“Did you kill him?” Alaric called out.
“I was lucky, but not so lucky as that,” Gaiseric replied. He plucked at the knight’s surcoat and drew him deeper into the sanctuary. The necromancer might have retreated, but in the blackness, they could hear the zombies shuffling towards them, murderous and remorseless.
“We’re not getting out the way we came in,” the thief warned Alaric. “Fortunately, we don’t have to.” Gaiseric pressed his hand against the stained-glass window at the back of the sanctuary, running his fingers down it until he reached its base and found the corner. The catch was almost perfectly hidden, but he felt the slight depression it made. Jabbing his finger into it, he triggered the concealed spring. There was a dull thump as a panel under the window flipped open.
“Drop to your belly and follow me.” Gaiseric suited action to words. He felt like some sort of enormous lizard as he scrambled through the opening. The scrape of armor against the floor told him that Alaric was close behind. The thief pressed himself against one of the walls to let the knight pass, but in the cramped confines, it was too tight a fit. He muttered a curse against all armorers and his own lack of foresight. If he’d known Alaric would block the passage, he’d have had him go first. He shot a bitter look at his companion.
The knight gave Gaiseric a stern look of his own. “How did you know about that door?” Alaric demanded.
Gaiseric could sympathize with the knight’s frustration. He’d grown up in the castle without ever knowing about the secret passage. Alaric wouldn’t appreciate learning it had cost the thief only a few cups of ale to pry the information from a clergyman who’d been dismissed by the Baron. At the moment, however, the important thing was to make use of the other half of the secret. And that meant getting back to the opening. “I could tell you, but if I don’t shut that door, it won’t do either of us much good.”
Alaric shifted his body and tried to press up against the far wall. The passage was cramped, too low to do anything but crawl and not much wider. Gaiseric had experience contorting his body to get through narrow spaces, but he couldn’t recall any conditions more cramped than trying to squeeze past the armored knight. The sounds of the zombies back in the chapel gave him ample reason to try. If he didn’t get back to the panel and close it, the undead would be scurrying after them.
“It’s not going to work,” Alaric hissed at Gaiseric, shoving the thief down the passage. “It’s too narrow for both of us. Tell me what to do and I’ll close the door.”
Gaiseric frowned at the suggestion. “You’ll never find it in the dark. You’d probably get stuck.” The noise of the zombies as they stalked around the toppled altar echoed into the passage. There wasn’t time to waste. Fumbling at his belt, he retrieved the tinderbox he’d salvaged from the lamplighter’s room. Soon he had another taper lit, the flame casting a hellish flicker across the confined space. “Take this and look for…”
•••
Alaric took the taper, but as the knight turned, Gaiseric could see past him. “Keep back!” the thief hissed in warning, his hand clutching Alaric’s shoulder.
The knight recoiled when he saw what had alarmed Gaiseric. At the mouth of the passage, the gnawed face of a cook glared down at them. The zombie stretched its claws toward Alaric, its fingers sliding down his boots. The creature was unable to push deeper into the passage because another zombie was trying to squeeze past it and both undead were caught in the opening.
“So much for that.” Alaric shuddered, drawing his feet away from the zombie’s grasping fingers. “Wherever this tunnel goes, we’d better start. I wouldn’t count on them being jammed up for too long.”
Gaiseric could see the revolting reason for the last statement. As the zombies strained against each other, where their rotten bodies rubbed together, they sloughed away ribbons of flesh. By grisly attrition, they’d eventually squeeze through.
Gaiseric lit another taper. “The passage gets bigger in about a hundred feet,” he told Alaric. Crawling on elbows and knees, the two men squirmed through the musty tunnel. After a few yards another passage connected to it from the right. “There’s a whole network of these running through your castle. It would be easy to get lost in them.”
“I knew about some of these passages, though never one that led from the chapel,” Alaric said, surprising Gaiseric. “My governess warned against playing in them when I was a child. Of course, my sister and I did anyway after we found a few of the entrances. We used wax shavings to find our way back. My sister tried breadcrusts once but got lost exploring after rats gobbled them up. I managed to find her after mother started to panic when she’d been gone too long.” While the knight spoke, his voice grew melancholy and wistful. It was easy to tell he was thinking of his slaughtered family and how some of them at least had joined the undead.
Gaiseric could appreciate the bittersweet pangs such memories provoked once the people who’d helped make them were gone. He’d lost his own siblings the winter after his rustler father was hanged. Recollections of childhood frolics inevitably collapsed into the image of burying their starved bodies in the snow. After so many years, the pain was a dull ache now. He imagined the knight’s was much worse since he’d only just lost his family.
“But you never knew about the secret door in the chapel?” Gaiseric repeated as they went on, trying to refocus Alaric on something else. “This castle has stood here a long time. The Baron expanded it, but so did his predecessors. Each time they added something new they’d cover up something old. It stands to reason some things would be forgotten.”
“Just see that you haven’t forgotten where we’re going,” Alaric advised, a sense of authority stealing back into his manner.
“It’s a bad thief who doesn’t know all the ways in and out of somewhere he’s going to rob,” Gaiseric assured him. He didn’t turn to look, but he could feel the knight scowling at him. That was good, it would keep Alaric focused. “Pride isn’t exclusive to the nobility, you know. Anyone can take pride in their craft. A dwarf makes a magnificent jewel, an elf carves a splendid longbow, or a thief finds a way to pilfer for a wealthy and well-guarded prospect. Pride all around.”
“The wolf howls about bringing down the ewe,” Alaric shot back. “That makes him easy for the wolfhunter to find.”
This time Gaiseric did turn his head. “When the forest’s on fire, I’d think the wolfhunter has more pressing concerns than bothering with a wolf.”
Conversation fell away as the pair reached the spot where the passage became wide enough to stand. Gaiseric felt relieved to be in the open again, but Alaric positively exulted in being able to stretch out. The knight was a big man, just straying into his third decade. His hair was cut close to his scalp, a deep brown in color. His eyes were a light blue, sharp as two chips of ice. His features were firm, with a knife-like nose and a squared jaw. Gaiseric could see the steel mail shining from rents in Alaric’s surcoat. This heavy garment was ragged and weathered, stained by blood and mud to such a degree that the original blue was completely obscured in many places. Across the breast was emblazoned the coat of arms of von Mertz, a white field with a black dragon transfixed by a red lance. Gaiseric could see the same heraldry repeated in the pommel of Alaric’s longsword.
“I see now why you thought you could fight your way through to that necromancer,” Gaiseric said. “You put the lie to my notion that nobles prefer to let commoners do their fighting for them.”
Alaric glanced at his sword and the rancid blood that stained it. “A knight holds his land because he’s willing to defend it. That’s what bestows the rectitude to exact taxes from those who live on that land. Only a blackguard holds that obligation cheaply.” His eyes took on a bitter quality. “There were no blackguards who rode out with High Marshal Konreid. If twenty of us rode away from that massacre, I would call it miraculous.”
Gaiseric gazed at the knight in shock. “The king’s army is dead?” The words felt unreal even as he spoke them.
“Most of it,” Alaric answered. “We forgot the hard lessons learned fighting orcs on the frontier. We let contempt of the enemy make us underestimate the adversary. We walked into a trap… and there was no hidden door to provide our escape.”
The thief shivered as he listened to Alaric relate the disaster to him. Perhaps because he spent so much time trying to elude them, Gaiseric had imagined the royal forces as an unbeatable juggernaut. To learn otherwise shook him to the core. A stray sound from the passage they’d just emerged from spun him around, his eyes wide with fright.
“They’re still following,” he declared. “We’ve got to get moving.” He gestured to the tunnel ahead of them. The close-set blocks that formed its walls dripped with slime and the cobwebs were thick on the vaulted ceiling, but at least there was no evidence of zombies here.
“I’m staying,” Alaric said. He set down his taper and turned to face the passage. “I can kill each one of them as they crawl out.”
Gaiseric looked at the man in disbelief. “And what happens when you tire? What happens if one does manage to get past you? You saw how many there were in the chapel, and who knows how many more are scattered through the castle!”
Alaric’s face was grim, set with a cold fury that was terrible to see. “These aren’t part of the horde the army fought. Someone else brought this blight to my home. That someone is Brunon Gogol.”
“I know you want revenge, but this is throwing away your life,” Gaiseric objected.
“If it means punishing Gogol, then I’ll pay that price.” Alaric champed his teeth together. A pained note crept into his voice. “It’s my fault. Three years ago, my father’s men caught Gogol practicing sorcery. I convinced the Baron to be lenient. Exile instead of execution.” He gestured with the longsword at the passage and the noises emanating from it. “This is how the fiend repays that mercy.”
