The Ghost's Crusade

Chapter VI: Tiernan (cont)

They made their way towards the door with their backs only a foot apart. Tiernan hurled or rolled whatever furniture stood in their way at the animated corpses that shambled along after them. As soon as they reached the door he ducked inside and leveraged his shoulder against it. Drystan spun to the opposite side and let him slam it closed, then toppled a shelf full of flour and sugar in front of it just as he dodged out of the way.

For a minute he could see absolutely nothing but a powdery white haze. He sneezed violently as flour settled in his nostrils. It started to cake in his sweat and made his face feel as though it had been slathered in plaster. Considering the alternative of being clawed to death by the undead, he wasn't finding himself overly uncomfortable.

When the air finally cleared he caught sight of Akkali first. She was keeping her face wisely hidden inside her collar. When she judged the dust to have settled she pulled the coat back down and hiked her thumb over her shoulder.

The madman had literally been pinned to the oaken door of the larder. The sharpened sticks she carried jutted out of his shoulders while his hands had been pierced clean through by mismatched paring knives she had found somewhere along the way. A meat cleaver and her flat-bladed knife had been driven into the wood on either side of his head and kept his eyes looking straight at them. He struggled fitfully against the knives but only succeeded in moving his hands up and down along the blades, not pulling them out of the door.

It was disturbing how he didn't seem to be in any pain at all from it. The man was far more concerned with trying to rip himself free than crying out in what had to be an incredible amount of agony. Fanatical, even. His gray-green eyes were bulging out of his head and he looked panicked beyond the ability to maintain rational thought.

Drystan wiped his face free of flour and walked over to the man. “What's your name?”

“Name?” said the man in a hoarse voice. He began gasping for air like a fish plucked from a river. “Pretty, but useless! Out, damn you! Out out out!”

Tiernan came to stand near where Akkali perched, not quite sure what to make of the man yet. His hands and shoulders were pierced clean through but he was not bleeding as much as one might have expected. He doubted that the Enkiri had even thought about heating the metals to cauterize the wounds—not that she would have had the time to do so, either. “He was probably here when it was forged. He's completely insane.”

“A shiny one comes!” the man squealed, his eyes fixing themselves on Akkali. “The pretty things made from the strong thing. What a shiny strong thing you are! Did you come to break me? Sing to me? Sing to me!”

The Enkiri didn't seem overly thrilled with the attention. Still, she said absolutely nothing. It seemed she was content to remain with her arms crossed against her chest in the shadows of two of the larger kegs in the room, glaring down at everything as though she wished it would wither to ash before her and save her the trouble of setting the fire.

A manic giggle came from the man's throat. “Hammer! Anvil! Ash and pyre! Pile the bodies higher, higher!” Another giggle. “You know all about stacking them up, don't you, pretty shiny singing thing? Their dead, your dead,” his voice rocketed into a frantic shrieking pitch within the same breath, “DEATH TO ALL WHEN SHE RIDES FROM THE SINKING SUN!”

Drystan glanced at her, then back at Tiernan. “Are you all right?”

“I'll be better when we find the locus and disassemble the damn thing,” he muttered with a scowl. “And shut him up.”

Out of the corner of his eye Tiernan caught Akkali grinning at his discomfort. Once she noticed he was looking at her she quickly hid her smirk by turning her face away from them and pretending to concentrate on the lunatic.