General Report, End of Autumn IC 2401, Part 1The Viadazan TerrorBiagino was met by the Lector’s secretary as soon as he returned to the camp, to be told he was summoned to an audience with the Lector. He had been out with a small company of militia scouring the land for supplies, there encountering two Viadazans so terrified that they could barely explain themselves. They spoke, incoherently, of the fall of Viadaza, and of the dead rising to kill the living. In truth, their vocabulary was inadequate to describe the horrors they had witnessed. At the time Biagino had prayed that they were simply fooled by circumstances, and were describing events in a village, a nightmarish encounter with a scouting company from the vampire duke’s army, or maybe just repeating what some mad prophet had dreamt. Yet as soon as Biagino saw the secretary’s face he knew that the two peasants had, in their own broken way, told the truth.
The secretary was mounted, and Biagino was forced to walk quickly to keep up with him and so hear his words. “They say the enemy are everywhere – I mean all over the city. There’s no safe place left. Some of the palazzos may have kept them out, but who knows? The undead cannot get in, and those inside can’t come out. There may be one palazzo still held by the living, perhaps more. As for the rest of the city, it seems every ward and quarter has been taken, with the undead roaming in large companies, killing everyone they can find.”
Biagino could barely take it in. The crusaders had killed the vampire duke, at great cost to themselves. They had served Morr bravely in the face of a truly nightmarish foe. They had watched the remaining undead scuttling back northwards. And
still Viadaza had fallen. “What of Lord Adolfo’s men?” he asked. “Did they not attempt to defend the city?”
The secretary waved his hand dismissively. “Lord Adolfo’s men where nowhere to be seen, not alive anyway. If they did make a stand, no-one witnessed it. There was no battle like that we fought, apparently not even any defence of the walls and gates. Some amongst the walking dead looked like his marines; there were even some brutes who might once have been his ogres. But as to where Adolfo’s living men are, no-one can say.”
“How can an entire army disappear? How?” Demanded Biagino. “Did they leave the city? Did Adolfo flee south and take them with him? But no - I can’t see how he could possibly do that yet not be seen. What reports of Lord Adolfo? Is
he still alive?”
“I reckon there has been some great act of treachery,” said the secretary. “Several people reported Lord Adolfo’s assassination; one told of a monstrous fiend roaming the corridors of the grand palazzo. Maybe the soldiers were lured away, or poisoned, or otherwise duped into their own destruction? The fleet has certainly fled – the hurried departure of nearly every ship in the harbour seems to have been one of the first signs that something was amiss. Maybe the threat came from the sea, and so the sailors saw it for what it was first? One old fellow described a cabal of necromancers leading the uprising, both the raising of the dead and their capture of the city. Another told us that saboteurs led the dead in, and dug the dead up. The Lector has insisted on hearing each and every account. I believe it to be an act of penance for leaving the city.”
“No-one could fault him for leading our crusade. He did what he must do.” Biagino had been wearing a frown throughout the conversation, and now his furrowed brow felt locked in place, his head aching as a consequence. “Maybe what had happened was meant to coincide with the vampire duke’s advance on the city? And it would have done, more or less, if we hadn’t stopped him crossing the river.”
The secretary pondered a while, then spoke. “Whatever the original intention, the living dead have succeeded in taking the city, even without the duke.”
They had arrived at the Lector’s tent, where their spiritual leader was still questioning a series of witnesses who had fled the city. Before him was a bedraggled fellow, who at first sight might be taken for a country vagabond, but his rags were the remnants of city fashions and his beard had recently been trimmed in the style of the swaggering city watch. The Lector was standing, which was unusual for such a situation as this. One would expect him to be seated upon a throne, while those being examined or bringing petitions humbly stood before him. It was immediately obvious, however, that the Lector was simply too agitated to sit. He was pacing back and forth, and at this moment asking a question.
“Where did they come from?”
The raggedy man’s head twitched and Biagino caught sight of his eyes – wide and staring, as if he was still witnessing some horror right now. “Some came from the sea, my lord.”
“In boats? Ships?”
“Some, yes. I saw one rise up from the water itself, to drag itself up onto the wharf. The rope he’d been hanged with still around his neck, his belly bloated.”
“But the rest, the ones from the ships?”
“They did not sail into the harbour, but came from ships that had been docked a while. There was fighting aboard – I heard the shots, the shouting. Then a while later, they came. More came from the Sea Garden, and those hanging at the shore line were cut loose by the others.”
“Surely the guards and marines were ordered against them?”
“I don’t know. There was fighting aplenty, but I don’t know anything about orders. The dead seemed to know what they were doing. They looked to arm themselves, each and every one, and they gathered in strength by the Sea gate. Then they swarmed through into the city itself.”
“And then?” asked the Lector.
“I know not, my lord. That’s when I left.”
The Lector waved the man away without even looking at him, and another witness was brought before him, this time a young woman. Her skirts were so filthy she looked to have waded through a mire.
Of course she had, thought Biagino.
What would one not be willing to suffer to escape the clutches of an army of walking corpses?“My lord, this girl is from the eastern quarter,” said the priest who had ushered her forward, “She saw a pack of ghouls.”
“Ghouls,” repeated the Lector, spitting the word out. “Where exactly did you see them?”
The girl did not hesitate. “I saw them first in the graveyard on the Colle Orientale, my lord. I can see it from my chamber window. Later, when I ran away, they were everywhere. Everyone was screaming, men and boys were fighting, dying, then … then fighting again. If everyone hadn’t been fighting, the creatures would have seen me.”
She spoke quickly, almost keenly, perhaps needing hoping to expunge some of the horror by reporting what she had seen. It was obvious to Biagino that the Lector had not heard her last words, but was instead mulling his next questions. “What exactly did you see? Who commanded them?”
“The ones I saw in the Garden of Morr were half naked, horrible. They had pale flesh, black lips, sharp teeth, and were dressed only in rags. No-one commanded them, my lord. Like a pack of savage dogs they were, not soldiers, not men. When they came to the garden there was no one to stop them. More and more came, clambering over the walls …
… until the garden swarmed with them. They tore at the gates, at the doors of the crypts. They wanted the corpses. I watched them.” Here she hesitated for a moment. “Just watched - too afraid to leave my house. It wasn’t only me. I think everyone was, at first anyway. When they’d dragged out all the bones they could find in the crypts, they set about the graves. I swear I saw a hand reach up out of the soil, and one of them fiends ran over to it to tug at it.”
“Others scratched at the soil, digging with their hands until they could pull the coffins up and out. Bent and twisted they might have been, but either they were awful strong or some enchantment lay on the ground. It seemed to part for them, as if it wanted to yield its crop of bones. Then … it was hard to look but I could not turn away … they chewed on the bones. I could hear them sucking out the rotten marrow. Other corpses came out of the ground moving of their own accord, the worms still feasting on their corrupted flesh, and these they allowed to walk away.”
“Still other grisly remains they piled up in one corner, snarling and snatching at each other as they did so.”
“The stench was horrid, my lord. The whole city smells like that now. You’ll know it if the wind changes.”
The Lector’s face registered disgust.
Perhaps, thought Biagino,
he remembers the foul miasma we all breathed in the battle? The girl was led away to be replaced by yet another refugee, an old, bent, grey-bearded man, who must surely have been helped to leave the city for it was plain he could not have run away himself.
“This man saw that which came from the crypts,” the priest by his side announced.
“Which crypts?” asked the Lector. He looked doubtful and Biagino knew why. The city’s ancient crypts were protected by powerful wards - locked by decades of prayer so that Morr’s hand alone held the key.
The old man coughed to clear his throat – a rather long business that might have annoyed or bemused those present were they not so concerned to hear what he had to say. Finally he spoke. “’Twas the old crypt by Le Panche, my lord. My companions left me near there while they searched to find a safe passage for us all.”
“Le Panche?” said the Lector. “So, not within the city bounds. Go on.”
The old man coughed again, not taking so long this time. “I heard a clattering from inside and thought to look through the bars. My eyes are not what they used to be, though, my lord, so I couldn’t see much. Then there it was, in the deepest of shadows - a face.”
“It seemed like a statue, except that it was looking at me. Well, the bars were iron – good and strong – so I was not afraid, and I wanted a better look. My companions had left a lantern hanging from the branch of a tree so that they could more easily find me again. So I took it and shined the light down the steps.”
He stopped, as if he were merely telling a bed time story to a child, and intending to create suspense. Once again, no-one complained, they merely wanted to know what he saw and cared not a jot how he told them.
“Then I saw them. Three there were and not statues but bones. The foremost wore a helm and held a shield before him, his lower jaw gone, his upper resting on the rim of his shield. The one behind carried a staff and made as if to shout at me. Of course, there was no sound. The third I couldn’t really see that well, and nor did I want to. I left them there, behind the bars, and I pray to Morr, my lord, that they are still there.”
Biagino had heard enough. Ghouls, zombies, skeletons: it was the Battle of Pontremola all over again, but this time engulfing Viadaza, and the undead had won. He felt sick. It was not fear that made him so, however, but frustration and doubt. Had he not done all he could to serve both Morr and Tilea? He had raised an army and fought a mighty foe. Yet all for nothing, for now the undead were both north and south of them, and the army was broken and dispersed. He had lost his home, the Ebinans had lost theirs, and now the Viadazans too. Would the whole of Tilea succumb to this wickedness? Had Morr given them victory, hard won as it was, only to abandon them now?