Quag Keep (21 page)

Firm in the shifting clouds of dust was a dark mass. There was a great upheaval where the ship lay. The craft might itself now be answering to some spell once laid upon it. Milo, his eyes smarting and watering to rid themselves of the fine grit, moved toward it, only to be brought up (unable to judge distance,
against what seemed a solid wall, with force enough to drive the shield back against his chest and shoulder.

The waves of dust sent surging by the rise of this barrier were subsiding, the air clearing. Now the sound of battle came far more strong. Milo slung his shield to his back, forced the blade of his sword between his teeth in his dust-coated mouth and swept his hands along the wall for some method of climbing.

To the left his gropings caught the dangling skeleton of a ladder. With a mighty effort he pulled himself toward that, wondering if the stiff rope of its sides, the wood of its doles might crumble under his weight. He knew that, strange and unnatural as it might be and surely born of some form of unnatural magic, this was no wall that had risen so summarily from the depths of the Dust Sea. Rather it must be the long-buried ship.

He gripped the ladder and fought to raise himself out of the dust, kicking it to loosen its hold on him, drawing himself up with all the strength he could muster in his straining arms. The sea sucked at him avidly, but he won on to the next handhold and the next.

His feet came free, found purchase on the ladder, so he pulled himself aloft haunted by a horror of falling back into the dry sea, there to perhaps lie entombed forever.

Somehow Milo won to the deck, out into air that he could breathe, where the mist of dust had fallen away. Wymarc stood with his back against the butt of one of the masts. The bard's harp lay at his feet while in his hand his sword made swift play, as controlled as fingers had been on the strings of his instrument, keeping at bay three attackers.

Naile, in were form, plowed fearlessly into others emerging from the hatch he had broached, his heavy boar's head flashing
with a speed seemingly unnatural to such an animal, his tusks catching and ripping up ancient mail as if age had pared it to the thinnest parchment.

While the enemy. . . .

Milo did not need the faint, musty smell of corruption that wafted towards them from that crew to know that these were liches, the Undead. Their body armor was the same color as the dust that had been their outward tomb for so long. They even wore masks of metal, having but holes for eyes and nostrils, which hung from their helmets, covering their faces.

The masks had been wrought in the form of fierce scowls, and tufts of metal, spun as fine as hairs, bearded their chins to fan outward over their mail corselets. They poured up from the hold, swords in hand—strange swords curved as to blade—which they swung with a will. And the Undead could not die.

Milo, as he reached the surface of the deck, saw Naile-boar savage one of the Undead with his tusks, breaking armor as brittle as the shell of a long-dead beetle, in fact breaking the liche almost in two. But its feet continued to stand and the torso, as it fell, still aimed a blow at its attacker.

“A
LL-LL-VAR
!” Without being aware that he had given voice to the battle cry of his youth, Milo charged at the liches that ringed Wymarc at the mast. His shield slammed into the back of one. Both armor and the dried body beneath broke. The swordsman stamped hard on an arm rising from the planking to sweep at his legs with one of the curved swords, brought down his own weapon on an angle between head and shoulder of another of the enemy advancing on Wymarc's left, while two of his fellows kept the bard busy.

Steel clanged against the breastplate edge, sheered a spread
of metal thread beard, then took the helmed head from the thing's narrow shoulders. Yet Milo must strike again and again before, with a blow from his shield, he could send the dried body blundering out of his path.

Dimly he heard shouts from the others, though Wymarc held his breath to conserve energy for the fight. Milo leaped forward to engage a second of the Undead coming up behind the mast, its curved sword held at an angle well calculated to hamstring the bard. This liche was half crouched and the swordsman slammed his shield with all his power against its bowed shoulders. Tripping over the severed arm of one of those Wymarc had earlier accounted for (an arm that still heaved with the horrible Undead power), he fell, bearing under him the liche.

He was hardly aware of a curved sword striking the planking only inches away from his head. Milo rolled away from the liche. Without waiting to rise farther than his knees, he used his shield as a battering weapon for a second, striking the thing's head and shoulders. Then looking around he saw one that had been striving to free its weapon from the nearly fossilized wood lose both arm and half the shoulder from a blow aimed by Yevele, her sword used two handed and brought down with all the force she could deliver.

Ingrge, his green-brown forest garb standing out here as a bright color, waded into the mélé beyond. No arrow, not even one poisoned by the secret potions of the western hunters, could bring death to those already dead. So the elf had dropped his bow and was using his sword. Above all other sound, arose ever the terrible battle cry of Naile who charged again and again, blood dripping now from his thickly bristled shoulders,
shreds of dried skin, bits of time-eaten metal and brittle bone falling from his tusks as he stamped and gored.

Something caught at Milo's heel. A head, or the travesty of a head sheared from a body, freed of the grotesque mask, lips long since completely dried away, snapped its teeth in open menace. The swordsman kicked out, sickened. Under the force of his blow that disembodied head spun around, was gone. Milo's shield was already up to meet another rush from the two that had been the last to climb into the air.

“A
YY-YY-YY-YY-YY-YY
!” The were-boar turned in a circle, striving to free himself from the weight of one of the Undead. The thing had either lost or discarded its concealing helm. Its jaws were set in Naile's hind leg and there it gnawed with mindless ferocity at the tough flesh. Then, down through the air swept a sword serrated with wicked points of quartz, smashing the bodiless head into a shattered ruin. Gulth staggered on a step or two. Naile, with a last furious shake of his leg, wheeled away from the lizardman to hunt fresh prey. He charged again, and again, not at new attackers now, but stamping and lowering his great head to catch and toss aloft fragments of the Undead. Though there was still movement among the fallen, arms that strove to raise aloft swords, mouths that snapped, legs fighting to rise only to continually fall back again, none of those that had been imprisoned in the ship stood whole or ready to move against the adventurers.

Wymarc's arm hung limply against his side, blood dribbling sluggishly from ripped mail near his shoulder. Ingrge knelt well away from the mass Naile still stamped, using the blade of his sword to force apart jaws that had closed upon his ankle, with
better luck than those that had earlier threatened Milo. Gulth leaned against the second mast. His snouted head was sunk upon his breast and he kept on his feet only by his hold on the mast and the fact that his sword, point down on the deck, gave him support.

The were-boar, having reduced to shreds and shards all the fallen, shimmered. Naile Fangtooth stood there in human form, breathing hard, some of the beast's red glare still in his eyes, wincing, as he moved, from a wound on his flank.

He drew a couple of deep breaths, but it was Wymarc, nursing his slashed arm against him, who spoke first.

“There are never guardians without that which they must guard. What is it, I wonder, that these were set here to protect?”

Yevele had withdrawn to the edge of the deck, wiping her sword blade over and over with a corner of her cloak, then deliberately cutting off the portion of the cloth that had touched the steel and discarding it among the mass of broken bodies and armor.

“They were near the end of the spell that bound them so,” she said, not looking at what lay there. “Else they would have given us a far greater battle—”

“Or, perhaps”—Milo looked to the bracelet—“we have indeed learned a little of what Hystaspes told us could be done. Did you also will the aid of fortune in this?”

There was a murmur from the rest—mutual agreement. It would seem that they had perhaps changed in a little by their concentrated wills the roll of those dice which marked their ability to continue to exist.

Up from the open hatch spiraled Afreeta. She wheeled around Naile, uttering small cries into which imagination might
read some measure of distress as she hovered on the level of his leg wound. The berserker gave a gruff sound which might almost have been a laugh.

“Now, then, my lady. I have taken worse. Yes, many times over. Also”—his laugh grew—“do we not have a healer-of-wounds with us?” He waved a hand to the bulwarks of the raised ship where Deav Dyne once more cradled his beads, the cleric's lips moving with inaudible, but none the less, meant-to-be-potent prayer. “However, what have we uncovered here, besides the spells of some wizard? As the bard has said, guardians do not guard without good reason.” Limping, the berserker made his way to the edge of the hatch that had been pushed back to allow the exit of the liche defenders.

Milo glanced at Deav Dyne, the one among them best trained to pick up any emanation of Chaos, or perhaps of some other evil even older than men now living could guess. But the cleric's eyes were fast closed, he must be concentrating upon his own petitions. The swordsman went after the berserker. Even Yevele had picked a way to that opening, avoiding the noisome litter on the deck.

The faint stench of corruption was stronger here. Ingrge snapped his firestone and caught up a bit of ancient rag to bind about an arrow shaft. He did not use his bow, but rather sent the small flame down as a hand-thrown dart. It stuck into a chest, burning brightly enough to let them see that nothing now moved there.

What they looked into was a well, over which reached, fore and aft, a walkway. On either side of it were wedged great stoppered jars, plus a few chests piled one upon the other. Afreeta fluttered down to perch on the sealed lid of one of those mantall
jars, pecking away at it between intervals of hissing. For the third time Naile laughed.

“She has found us what we asked of her. Down there lies something drinkable.”

Milo could hardly believe that countless centuries might have left any water unevaporated. He swung over and down, making his way cautiously toward the jar Afreeta indicated, alert to any sound from out of the dark which might signal that all the liches had not yet come forth to fight. Reluctantly he sheathed his sword, used his dagger to pick at the black sealing stuff on the jar which was near iron-hard. At last, using the blade as a chisel and the pommel of his sword as a hammer, he broke loose a first small chunk. Once that was free the rest flaked into a dust Milo could brush away.

He levered up the lid.

“What have we then?” Naile demanded as the swordsman leaned over to sniff at the contents. “Wine of the gods?”

The smell was faint but the jar was full to within two fingers' breadth of the top. Milo wiped a finger on his breeches and lowered it. Wet and thin—not like something that had begun to solidify. He drew forth his finger, holding it close to his nose. The skin was pink, as if flushed by blood. But the smell that came to his nostrils was not unpleasant.

“Not water, but liquid,” he reported to those above. Afreeta clung to the lip of the jar and sent her spade-tipped tongue within, to lick and lick again at its contents. An object dangled down to swing within Milo's reach. He recognized one of the smaller bottles that had been fastened to their saddles.

“Give me a sample!” Naile boomed from above.

Obediently the swordsman wiped off the outer skin of the
bottle, pushed it deep enough into the container so that a wave of liquid was sent gurgling into the bottle. Then he allowed it to swing aloft.

Prying loose the burning arrow he trod carefully along the runway of the hold. There were at least fifty of the great jars, all sealed and wedged upright, as if their one-time owners were determined they would not leave their racks before the ship came to harbor once more.

The chests were less well protected against the ravages of time. He threw open two, to expose masses of ill-smelling stuff that might have either been food or material now near rotted into slime. Of the liches or where they had been during their imprisonment here he could see no sign. He had no wish to move far from the promise of escape the open hatch gave.

When Milo swung up, via a helping rope of two capes twisted together, he found Deav Dyne with his healing potions. Wymarc's arm was already bound, and the bard held his hand out before him, flexing his fingers one after the other to test their suppleness. Ingrge and Yevele, portions of material wrapped about their noses and mouths, were using the sweep of their swords and Yevele's shield to push from the deck, over into the dust, the remains of the spectre force.

Gulth squatted by the far mast. His quartz-studded weapon lay across his knees, and he had bowed his head on his folded arms, as if he had withdrawn into some inner misery. Naile lay on the deck, his hairy thigh exposed. Into his wound Deav Dyne was dribbling some of the liquid from the newly opened jar below.

“Ha, swordsman.” Naile hailed Milo. “It would seem these dead men had something to fight for after all.” He took the flask
from the cleric's hand and allowed a goodly portion to pour from its spout into his mouth. Deav Dyne gave one of his narrow, grudging smiles.

“If I be not mistaken, today we have found a treasure here. This is the fabled Wine of Pardos, that which heals the body, sharpens the wits, was the delight of the Emperors of Kalastro in the days before the Southern Mountains breathed forth the plague of fire. But,” now Deav Dyne's smile faded, “we have troubled something that may have been a balance in this land and who knows what will come of that?”