Chapter 15a: Undead Ambush

“Walls of stone and doors of steel mean naught to the beings of the spectral world. How can thou keep out what has no substance? How can thou stop a spirit? Will you rely on ye ramparts and shields, or will ye build yerself a wall of faith?”

~Sermon of the Piet Logan

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"I’m sorry I got you into this, Sis." Marchas whispered as he gazed into the cemetery through one of the rear windows of the Temple.

Ash, Arolyn, and Wolf stood by another window whispering in hushed voices, trying to decide on the best rout through the city. Owl stood in the shadows outside the door and looked for undead.

"It’s not your fault, bro." She gave him a lopsided grin to go along with her bro reference. Teasing him for calling her Sis. She hated to be called that, but she also knew he only said it to tease her just a bit, to relieve some of the tension. "We were just at the wrong place at the wrong time."

He cocked his head, angling his eyes toward her. No hint of teasing remained in his voice, "No, I’m not talking about us being in this city, that was purely bad luck. I’m talking about getting you to leave the Palace. That might not have been one of my better ideas. I just figured...hoped that the dead had left. Found themselves something better to do. I guess I was wrong."

Though fear, her new constant companion, crawled up her back with whispy spider legs, she still kept her voice light-hearted as she replied. "Well, it’s not like it’s the first time you’ve been wrong. Hopefully it won’t be the last."

He slapped her shoulder and started laughing. "Come on, Shannai. Give me a break. I’m trying to be serious here."

"Oh, and you think I’m not."

"Shhhhhh." Ash hissed. "This isn’t one of your damned tavern parties. That sort of noise will get us all killed. So either shut it up or get the hell away from me and my men."

Shannai grabbed Marchas, squeezing his forearm, trying to calm him. They needed the help of the soldiers and the last thing she wanted to see was a confrontation between her hot tempered brother and the equally dispositional Ash.

The door creaked open just enough to allow Owl’s thin frame to slide through. Marchas sat back down with a final glare at Ash. Ash returned the glare before turning to Owl. "Did you see any of them? Is the way clear through the graveyard."

Owl glanced at Marchas, his mouth drawn up in a frown and his eyes narrowed in suspicion, before answering Ash. "Yeah, the graveyard is clear of them. I saw a few milling around outside the fence, but the weren’t tryin’ to get in or nothin’. I still don’t like the idea of goin’ through the graveyard. It just seems like that would be the last place we would want to go."

"I can’t argue with you, other than there ain’t no reason to go through the front of the Temple and walk around the outside to get to the back when all we got to do is start back here in the first place. Plus, we won’t be going through the woods, where they can hide. It’s all open in the cemetery all the way to the first block of buildings. We can see them way before they can catch us."

Owl’s mouth drew up into an arched frown, making him resemble a fish. "I see the sense of it an’ all, Ash. That don’t mean I got to like it none."

"Yeah, I don’t like it any myself."

Ash strolled to the door, motioning his men to get ready with a wave of his hand. Shannai and Marcus stood, the spidery fear lightly crawled around the base of her skull. She shivered. Marchas put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed. He would be there for her. He wouldn’t let her down.

With a last look at everyone Ash opened the door and stepped onto the rear porch of the Temple of Vaspar. The trees swayed in the wind, dark shapes dancing to the sound of the ocean breeze. The movement all around her didn’t help to shed Shannai’s fear. It would make the undead harder to spot, harder to hear. Maybe it will do the same for us, she told herself. She doubted her thoughts and tightened her grip on her bow.

The walked down the steps and onto the leaf littered ground of the cemetery. Headstones rose from the ground, crafted stones, reminding her of how death should be.

As she walked through the graveyard, near the back of the group, her imagination began to take hold. Her gaze fell to the mounds of grass-covered dirt, where bodies lay in eternal rest. Her mind began to create another scenario for those people buried beneath her feet. A scenario where mummified corpses pushed against the moldy cloth deteriorating around them, beat against the rotting lids of their coffins, trying to dig their way to the surface. In her mind she saw thin hands shoveling dirt behind them with slow determination, filthy skeletal fingers breaking through the ground. She imagined both hands coming up, pulling the undead from the ground like a baby escaping a womb, to be born again.

She almost stumbled and fell when Marchas whispered, "Are you okay?"

She nodded, looking over the graveyard and only seeing mounds highlighted in moonlight. Focus! Quit letting your imagination run away with you. This is bad enough without that.

Marchas grabbed her upper arm, bringing his forehead close to hers. His eyes questioning again, Are you okay? She answered with another quick nod and a tight-lipped smile. He gave her arm one more squeeze before releasing it. She wasn’t okay, and he knew it.

Within moments the cemetery gates stood before them. A waist high stonewall topped with spiked iron bars. Four undead stumbled back and forth before the open gate, slapping at the opening between the iron posts with pale hands, but not attempting to cross the invisible line that represented the soil of the graveyard.

Four bows sang out. An arrow fletching sprouted from each undead forehead. They fell to the ground in a bloodless pile. One twisted and twitched, a snake in its death throws.

Without slowing the guard put fresh arrows in their bows, Ash yanked his from the corpse he had shot, and walked on, towards the line of buildings across the road from the graveyard.

They had gone only halfway across the road when the blank eyed men and women began to stumble into view between the buildings. Dozens of people, the once peaceful residents of Renier, now a mindless mob of rotting flesh, their clouded eyes wide and fixed on the small group.

Ash veered toward an opening between two buildings, steering the group to one of the few alleyways that didn’t have undead pouring from it. When he got to the opening he stopped and fired his bow down the alleyway, then waved everyone on before entering the blackness between the structures.

Shannai followed him, her brother just behind her. The buildings to either side of the alley blocked the moonlight, forcing her to slow down and walk with care.

Her foot stepped on something soft. She looked down. Two silver, coin-sized circles shown at her feet, the white fletching of Ash’s arrow sticking up from a pale skull like a road sign. Her mouth opened to scream, but a rough hand slid over her mouth, arms drug her further into the alley, and then sidewise into complete darkness.