According to the distant signal from Wayfinder-1, I was at a place where the sea floor was beginning to rise. Of course, I could not tell that from my own sensors. The bottom of the ocean was a flat plane as far as my sensors could detect – and that was not very far. It was good that Constructs could not feel claustrophobia as humanoids so often could. I do not think I would enjoy the ongoing sensation of feeling the weight of the blackness all around me, and the notion that the incredible mass of the sea could at any moment crush me like a discarded tin or kippers. It was indeed good that I could not feel that. But I was certainly ready for a change in scenery.
But the journey through the triumphant darkness had not been fruitless. I had captured high resolution images of no fewer than fifty species of deep-water fauna and several dozen varieties of chemosynthetic plant life. I now had visual records of a dozen ancient wrecks of various kinds of ships. I had seen a “black smoker” vent that was teeming with highly specialized life that could live nowhere else.
The thing I learned, too, was that the legends of terrifying creatures of the deep were patently false. This deep in the sea, and this far removed from Gai’s light, the ecosystem simply didn’t receive enough energy to sustain organisms of “monstrous” size. That was not to say that the predators were any friendlier-looking given their diminutive size The various hunter-fish and miniature sharks looked as alien as the environment in which they lived. They were well-adapted to darkness, stealth and silence. However, the largest, most terrifying predator was no bigger than a humanoid’s hand. The abyssal “giant squid” measured three inches across -- very formidable.
The Hour of the Wolf came. And although the deep darkness of the ocean was bereft of light, it was also equally bereft of spiritual decay and corruption. So I only felt a slight change as the veil of evil that draped the world for so much of the cycle withdrew for this precious hour. The pocket-sized giant squid did not notice the change. But in the blackness of the crushing depths, I felt the presence of the Architect’s thoughts in my mind.
There may be a time soon that you will have to realize fully what you have become, the Architect said in his wordless, distant way. It was true that they were not spoken words, and yet I had never failed to understand his intent.
I have become more than the sum of my directives, I thought back to him.
I know that to be true, the Architect agreed. But to fulfill your destiny and to accomplish my freedom, you will have to become fully the gift that you are.
I do not understand, I communicated.
You are a Protector, in thought word, and deed. Accept the gift as well as the responsibility, the Architect advised.
I will do as you ask, I promised.
Then it shall be as it must be, the Architect whispered in the telepathic speech.
In that soul-freezing darkness, I could sense in that moment the terrible suffering the Architect endured from his cruel prison. I felt the draining fatigue that came from his ever-renewing spiritual energy being constantly siphoned away. It occurred to me in that instant that he was not only a prisoner, but was being used as a power source. But for what purpose I could no fathom. In the depth of the Architect’s suffering, he still used what little power he had at his command to communicate with me. And he did not despair. Truly the Architect was a Being of incredible resolve.
A rending jolt and an explosive “puff” wrenched me from my communion. An hour had passed in the span of rounds and the interior cabin suddenly filled with crash foam.
“Collision detected,” the gender-neutral voice stated calmly over the truck’s audio system. “Crash foam deployed. Contacting LifeStar.”
“Cancel,” I commanded. There was even less point in attempting to use a centuries-obsolete roadside assistance program now that I was stopped at the bottom of the sea.
“That procedure is not recommended,” the disembodied voice advised.
“Understood,” I repeated. “Cancel service call.”
“Done,” the automated response module confirmed.
It took a little over twenty rounds for the crash foam to dissipate. Presumably the cushiony material took longer to dissolve because of the current cabin pressure. But at last I could see what I had hit.
Though time and corrosion had made the ship’s registry all but illegible, my math coprocessor was able to perform a reasonably confident interpolation. The luxury liner, in its prime, had been called the Winter Princess. According to my historical database, the derelict in front of me had once been part of a quartet of high-end, luxury vacation ships that catered exclusively to “premium” citizens. The ship was declared lost after a 4th intensity hurricane presumably capsized the vessel. However, it was al too apparent that the huge ship had not met with a natural demise. Instead, I could easily see that the Winter Princess had been sunk by two torpedoes amidships. Given that the respective governments of North Point and East Point had been engaged in a cold war that had lasted for decades at the time of the Winter Princess’s disappearance, I could assume that the act of mass murder was politically motivated.
The truck reported mainly cosmetic damage, as we were traveling too slowly to do real harm to the Highrider. The vehicle’s diagnostics estimated a six hour repair cycle. I engaged the regeneration routine.
It was about that time that I saw faint signs of motion at the edge of the truck’s field of illumination – a lot of signs. If I was a humanoid, I could have been easily captivated by a sense of morbid curiosity. Fortunately, I was merely intensely curious as to what manner of creatures could possibly be shambling out of the two torpedo holes. It was good to be a Construct and thus not be prey to dangerous distractions.
The creatures were humanoid in general shape, and I had no doubt that they had once been the passengers and crew of the ill-fated Winter Princess. But their transformation in death and their subsequent reanimation in Undeath was both amazing and appalling. Although I could see bits and pieces of skeletal frame poking out of their bodies, their flesh had somehow converted to silt and debris. Bits of metal stuck out of their mud-like flesh, as did wire, trash, fish carcasses, shattered glass, chunks of decking, and various rusty fasteners. It was as if their bodies filled in the gaps with whatever available material was at hand as their natural skin and muscle tissue had rotted or had been consumed. In their new bodies, they seemed to constantly drop off bits and pieces of themselves, only to steep up new filler materials as they shambled toward the Highrider. I did not know if it was she sound of the impact or the glow of the headlights that had attracted them, but they were set to swarm.
I could see dozens already, and the ship had once boasted a capacity of 5,250 including passengers and crew. I didn’t like those odds.
I shifted the truck into reverse, executed a 90 degree turn, and then sped forward at maximum possible velocity. A huge cloud of silt and debris bloomed in my wake. The ruined ship was huge and as I drove around it, I saw the ghastly faces of the animate dead peering out of the port holes and balcony windows. They seemed to have a resentful malevolence and it felt as if I had accidentally awakened something truly monstrous and antithetical to life.
The Highrider whirred on into the flat darkness of the ocean floor. With any luck, the denizens of the Winter Princess would not give chase. I suppose that I would know soon enough. Tiny fish and shrimp flittered past me in obvious retreat from the dead luxury liner. The sea floor rumbled a low mournful moan, but I could not detect the source of the disturbance. Perhaps the walking dead were invoking a spell of some kind? I did not know. I had the desire to be quit of this place as quickly as possibly.
I was getting tired of darkness. I grew weary of the Undead. I wanted to be where my friends were, on the Isle of Gales, where the living lived and the dead rested peacefully. It seemed like this long night would never end.
The low rumbling persisted for the next several hours but did gradually fade from my perception. Perhaps the Highrider had out-distanced whatever nefarious thing the Undead crew had summoned. I could only hope, as I could not travel any faster than I already was. In truth, the situation was quite astonishing when examined objectively. I was a living, sentient machine driving a self-regenerating, self-powering heavy-duty pickup truck along the bottom of the ocean while being pursued by a swarm of centuries-old zombies. My life had thus far had been interesting indeed.
Although the sea remained black and cold, daylight did come to the surface world. I was thankful that I had a functioning remote link to my humanoid companions. The morning was foggy and the lighthouse towers bellowed out the warning calls to those who approached the Isle so that their navigators would not dash their ships on the rocks. It was a clean, pure mist that appeared devoid of heavy metals or radioactive isotopes. Like in the central and southern regions of North Point, the mists were essential to the ecology.
Dulgar aroused from his bed looking a lot more refreshed than Hector.
“I feel like I’ve had a frontal lobotomy,” the Paladin complained.
“It’s not my fault you challenged Darth McElvenny to a drinking contest,” Dulgar said philosophically. “It’s not like I didn’t warn you that he’s been a sailor for twenty years and masters the bottle as much as he masters the helm!”
Hector muttered something incoherent and then crushed a few white tablets into a glass of water, which then began bubbling and fizzing.
“Where I come from,” Hector grumbled, eyeing the medicinal concoction, “every act of pleasure must be purchased with an equal amount of pain.”
“How very balanced of you,” Dulgar replied wryly as the Paladin guzzled down the potion with a stricken grimace.
“what’s all that racket about anyway?” Hector asked testily.
“Just the fog horns,” Dulgar answered, and then stood up to peer out the window of the hotel room.
The view would have been more spectacular in better weather. As it was, all I could see was the flash of the lighthouse towers and a few murky grey shapes out to sea. Presumably they were incoming ships seeking to dock in Brightfeather Harbor. Oddly enough, the three vessels did not seem to be altering their velocity but instead appeared to be cruising toward the port at flank speed. It was then that Lord Robart began pounding on the door to my companions’ room.
“Get up lads!” Robart bellowed. “The port is under attack. Someone’s cast a Port’s Bane!”
My sociological database had no record of such a thing. I quickly inquired.
It’s when a Priestess of the Calamarian summons up a couple of sunken ships full o’ zombies an’ other beasties ta attack some town they don’t like,” my liege answered. “The Undead sailors hate the livin’, lad. They hate the livin’!”
Robart said that last part with nefarious glee. I think he actually liked the prospect of chopping the denizens of the deep into small, quivering chunks. In some religions, Lord Robart would probably be considered a manifestation of the Trickster. As it was, he unsheathed Symmetrika’s Hope, whose fully revitalized light shone like a white star.
“Alright, alright!” Hector Grizzletooth muttered. “We get the idea. You want to go fight. You don’t have to ask me twice.”
“There’s the spirit, lad,” Robart agreed. “Swingin’ an axe or a sword is a good cure for any man’s hangover.”
“So you say,” the Palidan mumbled while donning his studded leather armor. His prized chainmail had sunk along with the Gerald Fitzedmond.
“Oh, and lad,” my liege uttered to the Paladin in a fatherly way, “beer and whisky’s mighty risky. Next time pick one or the other.”
The three Undead ships were nearly in port by the time Robart, Hector, Dulgar, and Vincent arrived at the docks. The weather was far too foggy for the famous Galen Air force to fly their gliders. But the militia was assembling rapidly with their swords and guns. Two Galen battle ships were closing in behind the intruders to block their retreat should they try. Battling the Undead was always more difficult that fighting the living. They had no fear, never fatigued, and were immune to pain. They could withstand a blow that would send a living man into shock or cardiac arrest. The Undead could not bleed to death. In many ways, fighting the walking dead was much like fighting a Construct. Indeed, the Undead were a lot like Constructs except fashioned from rotting flesh instead of wood, metal, or stone. But Constructs were more intelligent and did not rely on evil spells and dark powers for their animating force. Surely it was better in every way to be a Construct than a zombie.
“Did I ever tell ya that the city of Midian considers the Isle to be part of North Point?” Robart told me.
“No,” I said.
“Well,” he explained, “they never did forgive the North for the Slave Wars. Twas a thousand years ago or so, but the Calamarians won’t let it go. They pretty much run the show in South Point and stir up trouble from Midian.”
“I understand,” I said.
My historical database was very sketchy concerning the history of the East and the South. The sole entry about the Slave Wars was that the North surrendered after 37 years of war and over a million lives lost on both sides. It was impossible for the South to occupy Touch Stone from such a far distance as Midian, and the North Point government reneged on their promise to compensate the families of those torn apart by slavery. The North, always looking for cheap labor, decided to start making Undead servants to do their dirty work. But that was an entirely different story with an equally bad ending.
With a flash and a boom, the lead Undead ship fired its cannons at the port. The screaming missiles slammed into the harbor master’s office tower and blew it to bits. The cannoneers near the waterline fired back. The sterncastle on the third ship bloomed with smoke and flame. Robart loaded his tripod-mounted cannon and shot at the lead ship. The lead ship returned fire with muskets that chuffed and popped in the mist.
“Lad,” Robart asked me. “Could ye be ever so kind as ta drag a bomb over yonder ship?”
My liege indicated a box of hand grenades next to the tripod cannon. I wondered about the wisdom of storing handheld explosives in the line of fire, but it did not seem like the appropriate time to mention workplace safety. Robart pulled the timing pin from the grenade and placed it in my probe’s grappler claw. The timer would be arrested so long as my grappler applied pressure to a small toggle in the middle of the cucumber-shaped device.
“These are frags,” Robert explained, “so it ought ta chew up yonder zombies pretty good! Maybe not real good, but pretty good.”
I wasn’t even about to correct my liege’s grammar. The more he felt distress, the more his Western accent and speech patterns seemed to manifest. I commanded my probe to slowly fly over the battle site. The main undead ship, the Tap Dancing Folly, appeared intent on doing as much damage to the port and docked vessels as possible. The two ships taking up the rear seemed more concerned with running interference between the Folly and the three Galen navy ships. I flew closer to the Folly and saw the Captain at the wheel. His animate corpse was bloated, puffy, and covered with open wounds where scavengers had begun eating the dead flesh. And yet, the power of zombie regeneration was such that no matter how much rotted flesh dropped off or was consumed, there would always be more. His eye sockets were full of wriggling worms and blackened teeth poked through ragged holes in his cheeks. He wielded a rusted scimitar that shone with a spectral grey aura and practically reverberated with power. Though his clothes were rotted rags, I knew that somehow some measure of his rank and status would remain through the ages, and the deterioration of his uniform would never be complete. It, like the decomposing animate flesh, would continue on and on.
The Captain spoke a slurred, guttural series of commands that I did not understand. Presumably it was a Southern dialect for which I had no programming. His zombie crew, however, understood perfectly. A dozen sailors got a pair of catapults ready for launching barrels of gelled cooking fuel into the port. A successful hit would start a raging inferno that would be extremely difficult to extinguish. I lobbed the grenade at one of the two catapults. The missile landed next to the barrel and exploded a segment after impact.
Gelled fuel bloomed all over the deck of the Tap Dancing Folly, consuming four Undead sailors and utterly destroying the port-side catapult. The ragged sails caught on fire and began emitting an oily, black smoke as the flames slowly fed upon the ragged, decaying fabric.
“Tu’Chek Chah!” The Captain bellowed in rage, and apparently ordered the starboard catapult to launch. The flaming barrel hurled through the air, end over end, and landed squarely against the seaward wall of the local Velociraptor Joe’s franchise. The pub immediately transformed into a maelstrom of searing heat and blinding light. It helped matters little that the stores of alcoholic beverages and cooking oil only served to add to the conflagration. A few patrons staggered out of the bar, on fire, and writhed in agony in the street, desperately trying to extinguish the flames by rolling along the hexstones. But the nature of the gelled fuel was such that it would not be quenched until the fuel was consumed. And the half-dozen citizens died a horrible, lasting death.
I circled back to where Robart and my friends feverishly reloaded the tripod cannon. With a team of three – Robart, Hector, and Vincent – they could fire the device every other round. Dulgar had run over to the ruins of Velociraptor Joe’s and was hastily erecting mathematical wards between it and the surrounding buildings so that the fire could be contained. I grabbed another hand grenade and flew out for another pass at the Folly.
I saw the starboard catapult fire again. This time the target was a pastry shop. As before, the building erupted in a tower of flame and expelled its victims to die horrific deaths in the street. As a Construct, I had been punctured, crushed, burned, dented, and even resized. But I knew from my medical database that death by fire was one of the most horrifying ways that an organic humanoid could perish. I thought that it was better to be as I am.
As I approached the Tap Dancing Folly, the Captain spied my remote probe and barked out an unintelligible command to the dozen musket gunners. They shambled to the edge of the deck and launched their volleys of steel pellets. I wondered how it could be that the gunners had dry gunpowder when the Folly had been summoned from the deep via sorcery. Perhaps the spell made the gunpowder function too. I did not know.
What I did know, however, was that the gunners either needed more target practice or their firearms needed some extensive maintenance. While the musket balls whizzed and whistled by my probe, none of them came closer than ten feet. Before the gunners could reload, I dropped my next hand grenade and aimed it for the remaining catapult.
The grenade hit the catapult but reflected away and rolled across the deck. When it detonated, it took three of the dozen gunners with it. I returned for another explosive.
“Damn it, lad,” Robart admonished, “ye’ve got ta stop that catapult!”
“One will attempt to do so,” I agreed.
Another fuel bomb hurled across the foggy sky and consumed a small cargo ship that hung from scaffolds in dry dock. Fortunately, there was no one aboard. But one hoped that the Captain had the boat’s insurance paid.
The Folly was still approaching the waterline and showed no interest in slowing down. It occurred to me that the Captain was going to ram to port on purpose in order to inflict as much damage as possible. The zombies manning the catapult were able to launch one more barrel before I could drop my hand grenade. This time my aim was true and the structure got torn apart from the bits of superheated metal. It did not cause a fire, however, since the gelled fuel had already launched. The bomb in question took out a garbage scow that had been filled to the brim with an entire city’s worth of trash. The burning garbage sent plumes of thick black smoke high into the air. The scow’s captain and crew quickly abandoned ship be appeared otherwise unharmed. The conflagration quickly fed upon itself as the tongues of flame lapped fifty feet into the air.
The nine remaining musket gunners fired at me. Eight missed, but the last one damaged my probe’s grappler tool. My diagnostic software estimated eleven rounds to effect regeneration. I commanded the repairs to begin. I was relieved to discover that my regenerative capabilities extended to my probe even when separated by a vast distance.
“Good work, lad,” Robart commended as my probe returned to the docks where he was stationed. “Ye won’t have a chance for another pass. That ship’s gonna bust itself on the docks on purpose.”
“What he’s trying to say is,” Vincent said, checking his revolvers, “let’s get the fornication out of here!”
While the two Undead support ships now towered in flame under the merciless barrage of the Galen navy, their primary goal – that of allowing the Tap Dancing Folly to crash into port -- was regrettably accomplished. The ship had been traveling at flank speed under the power of some magical or mathematical augmentation. The Undead captain’s face (such as it was) held the visage of murderous glee as his decaying ship slammed into the docks. Boardwalk planks snapped like toothpicks and a twenty-foot-high wave of water washed over Brightfeather’s defenders, ruining their stores of black powder.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Dulgar exclaimed from across the street where he continued to make modest headway against the conflagration.
“There’s a reason why I never bough into that who cheapass caseless ammo trend,” Vincent added, and shot two rounds at the Folly’s captain. The bullets struck true, but the entry wounds sealed over a segment later.
“Ye’ll need silver, lad,” Robart said sagely and unsheathed Symmetrika’s Hope.
“Fornication on a coin-operated rumbler bed with a one-legged strumpet!” Vincent cursed as he spun the cylinder to empty the chambers of apparently useless ammo. Like any good Gunslinger, he apparently kept a spare speed-loader filled with silver-cased ammo.
The shuffling, shambling pirate crew flopped off the Folly’s deck to engage in melee combat with the Galen militia. My estimation was that the opponent’s physical strength would be much less, but that they would be immune to pain, shock, or systemic failure due to blood loss. A living soldier could be felled with a relatively small injury to a vital area. Zombies, on the other hand, would have to be hacked to pieces. It was regrettable that I was not present in my physical body. My circular saw accessory could have efficiently dispatched the shambling dead.
The Folly’s Captain swaggered on to the ruined boardwalk, unsheathed his darkly glimmering scimitar and shouted some unintelligible challenge at Robart.
“Ye want a piece o’ me, lad,” Robart said with a predatory grin, “then come an’ get some!”
It was not the first time that I wondered whether Robart’s habit of carrying around an
“No’Kah To’bakh!” Folly’s commander retorted.
[Informational: New device profiles found (Math Coprocessor). Activate
translation mapper? [Y|N] ]
As if I was going to say no. Someday it might be worthwhile to investigate why it was that my operating system periodically “discovered” new capabilities. According to the fiction-pulps, machines had fixed abilities that never changed, but my personal experience proved otherwise again and again.
Vincent fired several rounds into a rotted sailor, which caused the for to ignite in white fire. Unlike a living enemy, the zombie kept on fighting until its body was utterly consumed.
“Damn I hate these half-breed sons of unwed, half-priced prostitutes!” Valentine cursed.
“That’s okay,” Hector said, chopping a zombie in half with his enchanted axe, “they hate you too!”
“Ya think?” The Gunslinger asked sarcastically as he blew away another hostile.
“Ye might get the job done faster if ye stop talking about it and worry more about doin’ it,” Robart said in-between sword blows with the enemy captain.
Unlike the common zombies of the Tap Dancing Folly, the pirate Captain retained the full flexibility and reflexes of a living man. My combat subroutine identified him as a high-level threat because he was agile, had no pain receptors, was proficient in combat, and carried an enhanced weapon. The ancient enemy fought like he still had something to fight for, and I found that even more dangerous. The combatants’ swords clanged like huge tower bells when they impacted. White-hot sparks flew off both weapons, and the bits of super-heated metal started even more fires. It didn’t take more than a round for the militia to clear a twenty-foot space around the two combatants. It occurred to me that enchanted weapons must have regenerative capabilities like Constructs, as the weapons in question never dulled and the chips in the blades never remained after combat.
“Po’Kor timmot juna nokk!” The Folly’s Captain gloated and forced my liege into a slow retreat across the docks.
“Ye don’t say,” Robart taunted as he desperately parried his enemy’s onslaught.
Vincent shot two more zombies and then flew into the air so that he could reload without being stuck with his foes’ rusty swords. His attempt at evasion was met with a hail of musket fire.
“Crap!” Valentine cursed as his wings got punctured by three steel rounds. The Fey dropped out of the sky and crunched to the buckled boardwalk in a bleeding heap. Fey bled clear, but I could see streamers of thick translucent fluid gushing from the wounds. Vincent shot at the trio of musket-wielding zombies that subsequently erupted in white-hot all-consuming fire.
Hector swung his axe and chopped the leg off another zombie, which subsequently crawled along the gore-strewn docks in search of easier prey. He was bleeding from a half-dozen minor lacerations but that didn’t seem to even distract him from the task at hand. Dulgar finished extinguishing the fire that had consumed most of the garbage scow. He had prevented the fire from spreading to the dry dock facility as well.
Robart was in slow retreat from the Folly’s leader. While my liege had been wise to give up hard drink and resume his combat training, he still fought a foe that was tireless and accurate. The pirate Captain’s enchanted sword cut a deep gash in Robart’s left arm when he was slow to parry. It wouldn’t have been enough to penetrate my liege’s armor, but he had not had time to don his armor.
“Po’Kor naton tokk!” The pirate gloated.
“Muzzle it,” Robart said, and slashed off the pirate’s right ear lobe. The ornately jeweled ear ring clattered to the ground.
“Frank,” Robart ordered, “after I kill this jackass, I’m keepin’ the ear ring as a trophy.”
I hoped it worked out that way. Robart had been pushed back nearly a hundred feet and was close to where the Gaelic Knot stood in dry dock. It was at this point that the drowned men from the other two burned pirate ships staggered to shore. Of course they would walk to shore, I realized. Zombies cannot drown, and these specimens fought with the mindless determination so common with their ilk.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Hector said, looking at an incoming wave of several hundred walking corpses. “You should feel lucky you can’t smell things, Frank! Smells like a friggin’ charnel house!”
I agreed with the Paladin in this instance.
“That was rhetorical, bud,” Hector added as he dismembered another zombie pirate. Like Robart’s angel-sword, the consecrated axe the Dwarf used seemed neigh unto indestructible.
With the fires under control, Dulgar summoned a monofilament star that cut through the wind at his command. The two-dimensional blade was a bane to Constructs, but apparently the walking dead fared no better. The first pass from the nearly invisible weapon cleaved the head from a zombie’s shoulders with surgical precision. Black goo spewed from the neck and the decapitated sailor lurched a few more steps before collapsing to the gore-stained docks.
Robart and the pirate leader hacked about with grim fury. My liege took two more shallow cuts, one on his upper arm and one along his abdomen. Neither injury was even remotely fatal, but I had the suspicion that the pirate captain could finish Robart off at any time. He was, indeed, toying with his prey. Robart’s back was almost against the side of the Gaelic Knot when the Dark Lord peered over the side and yelled, “Hey asshole! Ready for round two?”
My sociological database indicated that Dark Lord was making a fisticuffs metaphor. My estimation would make this the fifth or sixth round perhaps.
The pirate captain pointed his grey sword at the Dark Lord and unleashed a sizzling bolt of electricity. The Dark Lord dodged the attack but it set one of the sails on fire.
“Yeah, you’ll pay,” the Dark Lord confirmed and jumped over the side to land on the boardwalk with a brutal crunch. Such a jump would have crippled an ordinary human, but the captain of the Gaelic Knot was one of the Immortals – like the Professor. He could be killed, certainly, but would never perish from disease or age, and only severe injury could kill him. The crunch wasn’t caused by his bones breaking, but rather the wooden planks breaking underfoot.
“Have at him,” Robart said to the Dark Lord.
I noticed that the captain had bathed and shaved. His leather armor was once again clean and his silver knot belt buckle had been polished to a high luster. He still wore his signature mask, and so it was hard to judge the pirate hunter’s expression. But he seemed to have regained his former countenance. Perhaps he had at last come to terms with Jewell’s departure from this realm of existence.
Instead of a single sword or axe, the pirate hunter wore two bladed gauntlets that had the effect of making foot-long razors become an extension of his hands. The Dark Lord began a rhythmic tap dance and wind swirled around him.
“You want a piece of me?” The Dark Lord taunted, “then come and get some!”
The Folly’s Captain lunged at the Dark Lord, aiming for the heart, but the pirate hunter dodged with speed that I would have associated with a Fey or Changeling, not a Human. Perhaps the tap dance wind-effect quickened the Dark Lord’s movements. The enemy swung twice and the Dark Lord easily parried the blows. Then the Dark Lord went on the defensive with a flurry of slashes with his gauntlet blades. The pirate leader stepped back under the barrage. The Dark Lord kept on slashing with a tightly controlled rage that burned like a laser. He nicked the pirate here and there with his extension knives and the zombie captain’s wounds lit up with white fire. It occurred to me that the Dark Lord was toying with the pirate captain in the same manner that the pirate had been playing cat-and-mouse with Robart. It was a dangerous game in my estimation.
“Cha’narg Ha’k!” The Undead captain bellowed.
I doubted it was a plea for mercy, but my math coprocessor did not have enough of a vocabulary sample to begin a translation table.
“Go to the Inferno!” The Dark Lord responded and jabbed the captain in the abdomen. The new wounds caught on fire as well.
The pirate captain staggered back as the fire in his belly consumed him from the inside-out. The Dark Lord slashed again, carving a flaming arc across the pirate’s face. As the pirate staggered back, the Dark Lord impaled his enemy’s throat. Then he slashed the pirate’s rib cage. Fire spread out from the half-dozen wounds and sparks flew outward from the body. It was brutal and savage.
“Kill you!” The Dark Lord screamed and plunged his wrist blade deep into the Folly Captain’s chest. The blade protruded out of his back and erupted in a silver conflagration.
The Captain of the Tap Dancing Folly stumbled back a few steps unsteadily and then fell backward onto the blood strewn boardwalk. Then, in a huge puff of sparks, the captain disintegrated into ash.
Without their leader, the Undead horde lost coordination and simply attacked any moving target without concern for strategy or tactic. They were easily picked off by the Galen militia. It was three hours later when the last of the zombie stragglers were finally put to final rest.
“Nice piece o’ fighting,” Robart told the Dark Lord.
“You didn’t do so bad yourself,” the Captain replied. “I knew him when he was alive. He was a real blood-drinking, Calamarain-worshiping, sell-sword and cut-throat. But those just his good points. Him turning Undead didn’t make him any mellower.”
“Not so as ye’d notice,” Robart opined.
“I told him the last time I killed him that he’d better never come back,” the Dark Lord continued. “He didn’t listen.”
“Uh huh,” Dulgar said.
The rest of the day was significantly less exciting. Hector
and Dulgar helped with repairing damage to some of
the buildings that hadn’t been consumed by flame-catapult. Then the clergy came
and took away the many dead – over a hundred in all. It was the “after” that
always got left out of the fiction-pulps. But what I saw was the weeping of
widows who identified the dead and the children who had to say a
forever-goodbye to a mother or father. The port city survived the onslaught,
but victory came with a steep price.