The Wheel of Osheim (The Red Queen's War 3)

The dead men came from the church. The great oak doors slammed open on their scrolling hinges of black iron, and bursting from the inky interior came the corpses of two priests, three young novices behind them. Swift as the quickened dead at the city walls they saw me immediately and started to sprint. I glanced at the sword in my hand, the image of Darin’s child in my mind, and for a moment I held my ground.

The thing that followed in the clerics’ wake had been a man once— a huge one. A necromancer must have been at work on it for hours, perhaps hidden away in the crypts beneath the church. How long had death-sworn been waiting within Grandmother’s walls? A week, a month, years? Hidden in plain sight, no doubt. Maybe even as one of Father’s servants or guards, maybe the serving maid who had brought hot water for my bath . . .

Slamming my sword into its scabbard once again, I turned on a heel and ran for my life. The man must have stood taller than Snorri in life and near as broad. Now he wore additional muscle, heaped atop his own, the raw meat of other men somehow tied into his own flesh and bone. The glistening red slabs over his arms looked like both the thigh muscles of a grown man.

All of them ran swift and silent, the only wailing coming from me as I rocketed by the Adam Barracks, keeping well clear of any doors for fear of what might burst out of them as I passed.

My main rule of running, after “don’t stop” and “go faster” is “go high or go to ground.” Hiding is always good, unless you’ve got somewhere you really need to be, but if you can’t hide—go up. I’ve occasionally met a runner whose foot speed exceeds my own, but I’ve yet to meet one whose eagerness to catch me exceeds my eagerness to escape. Once I get to the rooftops I inevitably find a leap that my pursuer is not prepared to make, or a ledge along which they are not prepared to run. As always, it helps to know your ground, and fortunately the palace had been my playground for years.

I skittered around the back of the barracks block, hopping at the extremity of the turn, and spotted a cartload of water barrels standing close to the outer wall. I made directly for it. The sound of pounding feet behind me told me my pursuers were just as fast as I’d feared.

The stays of the cart provided a ramp and at the top I vaulted onto the tall stack of barrels. The walkway around the outer wall is supported at regular intervals by square beams which stand up from the ground rather than being braced lower down the wall as they would be if it were taller. Halfway up each beam are two brackets for torch or lantern, one to a side. I leapt toward the nearest beam, aiming a kick at it, my foot hitting just above the bracket. Kicking off as I started to slide, I boosted myself up and leapt at full stretch for the edge of the walkway, making it by fingertips, and hung, gasping and dangling. Given that the walkway stands about sixteen foot off the ground my feet were at a tempting height for any dead man down below wanting to jump up and grab my ankles.

“Fortunately” the corpses running me down had followed my path. The first priest threw himself off the barrels, his face twisted with awful silent rage. I tried to swing out of his path. Fingernails scraped my side as he shot past me, his priests’ robes fluttering like the wings of some great crow. I hauled myself up as the second priest leapt. It’s no easy thing to gain a ledge that only your fingertips have hold on, but terror lent me strength. I drew my chin level and swung a foot up onto the parapet. Somehow fear propelled the rest of me over the lip. The second priest brushed the sole of my trailing boot as he passed by on his short trip to the flagstoned yard.

I took off at speed, preparing to congratulate myself, when a glance back—seldom advisable when running along a narrow walkway lit only by the light of the moon—revealed the white-robed form of a novice half on the walkway, boosting himself up with both arms.

“How . . .” Then I saw. Revealed by the curve of the wall I could just make out the huge form of the giant, balanced on the cart and already lifting a second novice toward the parapet. Cleverer dead men than any I’d yet encountered!

I ran counter-clockwise, up over the deserted gatehouse. An ancient scorpion sits toward the front gatehouse wall and for a moment I considered wrestling it round and skewering my pursuers. Sanity prevailed—it would take four men five minutes to do the job, and in any event a spear through the chest might not make a noticeable difference to the corpses chasing me. Instead I sprinted on and out the other side.

The roaring of a great wind or fire turned my head as I ran. Over the wall I could see the streets leading away from the palace and, despite my extremity, something caught my eye. A gyre of dust and rags scoured its way over the broad, empty space before the palace. Like the rag-a-maul I’d seen on my ride from the Appan Gate this one had hollowed and hag-ridden victims around its margins, but that one had been little bigger than a man and had just a couple of possessed in thrall to it. This whirlwind blew taller than the gatehouse, the moonlight glittering on broken glass braided through its storm-cone, and scores of citizens, torn and flayed, wandered about it, bright-eyed, their riders visible as faint and ghostly forms upon each back, devilish and horrific in their variety.