The Fallen World

Tatria - Part 2

     Resalintas fought for another thirty minutes, during which he was able to hypnotise another two zombie herders, sending them and their undead flocks back to attack their own encampment. He then retired from the battle to rest, but remained nearby in case another ghost or some other kind of higher undead creature turned up, something that only he could deal with. He wasn't going to waste any more of his strength on zombies, which were so easy for the enemy to replace that killing them was pointless. He intended to save himself for the real battle, to which he would return as dusk fell.

     Elsewhere, the defenders were concentrating on killing the zombherds, and after another hour those still alive had withdrawn to safety, leaving the undead horrors to fight amongst themselves. The defenders breathed a sigh of relief as they retreated back inside the wall, shutting out the carnage behind thick steel doors. Abandoning the upper walkway to the enemy while they waited for them to hack each other to pieces. It took another half an hour before all sounds of fighting had stopped, and when they cautiously peeped out again they saw that the attack was over.

     As every other time, virtually the entire surface of the walkway was covered by chopped and severed decomposing body parts, most of which were still twitching and writhing in an obscene imitation of life. Here and there one or two zombies were still more or less intact, wandering around chopping up their dismembered colleagues into still smaller parts, but looking down at the land outside thousands more zombies were still busily at work piling rubble against the wall. The ladder assault had just been a sideshow, and even now the defenders could see zombherds organizing the zombies, getting them ready for another attack, wanting to give the defenders as little time as possible to rest.

     How many of them are there? thought the old priest, gazing down at them with an expression of iron self control. At least two hundred thousand of them building the rubble piles. An equal number standing around over there, and their numbers constantly growing with every Ilandian who fall.

     He held tightly to his faith, the conviction that the invasion would be defeated, somehow, even if he didn’t survive to see it. In the meantime, though, fatigue was taking its toll on him. Those whose prayers gave the defenders the benefit of accelerated sleep could not themselves benefit from it. He decided to get a couple of hours of real sleep while he could, therefore, and began to make his way back to the storeroom where he'd laid out a couple of blankets on the floor.

     He was descending a flight of stairs down to street level and passing another unit of Lourellian shae folk on their way up to reinforce the defenders on the walkway when he was spotted by a messenger who called out his name and pushed his way through the throng towards him. The messenger, like all of them these days, was distressingly young; barely more than thirteen or fourteen by the look of him with a rash of freckles across his nose and tangly red hair peeping out from beneath his helmet. He saluted clumsily as he reached him, trembling in his boots as he confronted the formidable priest.

     “Sir,” he began in a high pitched, unbroken voice, “his excellency the High Prefect requests your immediate presence in the palace on a matter of the utmost urgency.”

     He began to tremble even more. Doubtless the news of the old priest’s arguments with the High Prefect was hot gossip all over the city and the boy was terrified to find himself between them. Resalintas resisted an impulse to offer a few words of reassurance. The young lad was doing his very best to be an adult and deserved to be treated like one. He simply gave a curt nod, therefore, and marched off into the city, leaving the boy to breathe a sigh of relief behind him.

     What could he want? he wondered as he strode through the almost empty, rubble strewn streets. If he’s finally seen the light, it’s far too late. We can’t possibly carry out Skulnya’s plan now. Most likely he’s thought of a plan to get me even further out of his hair, somewhere so far away that he’ll never hear of me again. The idea didn’t bother him, though. So long as he was somewhere where he could fight the enemy, he could do as much for the war effort there as he could in Tatria.