The Northern Approach Read online

“Yes, in fact it would be,” offered On’esquin, eyeing the food skeptically. “It would not hurt me…not anymore. This was not how he turned us in times past. Things have changed.”

  Lifting the apple to his nose, Raeln felt foolish as he sniffed it under tense watch by the others. It honestly smelled like an apple and little else. Shrugging, he put that aside and picked up a piece of meat and sniffed that, finding little there that he would not have expected. He was ready to tell Yoska to stop worrying when he picked up the fish and almost immediately gagged as a bitter aroma rose off it. Now that he was paying attention, the scent was definitely unmistakable and would have hinted at meat going bad if it were a little more rank. In the fish, it seemed to linger as though it was not the fish itself, but something on or in it.

  “The beef is safe,” Raeln told them, hurling the fish and several others that had come from the same crate into the darkness. “Anything from the front rows of crates might be tainted. Stick to the older supplies.”

  Yoska nodded grimly and picked up some of the meat, eyeing it with suspicion until Raeln took a bite of his own. “Was probably last shipment they brought down before whatever happened. Does make sense.”

  The three ate quietly for a while, gingerly nibbling at the various foods until they were surer of themselves. Once they were done, On’esquin had offered to take the first watch, as he admitted that he did not require sleep often. Neither Raeln nor Yoska had argued that and within the hour they had bedded down to rest.

  When Raeln did wake, he felt far better than he had in a long time. The consistent temperature of the caves lended itself to sleeping soundly, which had been something eluding him for months in the wilderness. His muscles still hurt from hiking so long, but the aches had faded considerably.

  Looking around without getting up, Raeln took a minute to get an idea of where he was, as he had grown accustomed to pre-dawn light overhead when he woke. The near-dark of the warehouse with its faint magical lights high overhead made him initially think he had woken too early, but his mind finally caught up and he remembered the long walk through the underground passages. Sitting up quickly as he also remembered the creature following them, he found that On’esquin was reclining against a wall while Yoska had his ear pressed to the door of the warehouse.

  “Is safe,” the gypsy told him without looking over. “Something small ran past maybe hour ago. It did not stop, so I think we have lost it. We will need to start moving again soon, before it circles back.”

  Nudging On’esquin to wake him, Raeln began packing up his bedroll and the food they had determined to be safest. Within minutes, all three men were ready to travel again, though Raeln distinctly did not feel any desire to march for another day or longer. The underground traveling made him sleepy and more than ready to return to the surface.

  They set out after briefly watching the street outside the door, letting Yoska lead the way, as he had the best idea of the layout of the city. During longer stretches of traveling where there were few turns, On’esquin or Raeln took the lead. The path they took eventually came to a staircase down after leaving the main street. At the bottom, another set of large doors were barred shut, though these appeared undamaged and far stronger than the ones at the entrance to the city.

  “Go on or go back?” asked Raeln, pointing at the door.

  “Go on,” Yoska insisted. “Bar is on outside, so is still good sign. This is place where defenders would hide out if they lose battle outside. If that were so, they put bar on inside. Bar here is precaution and little else, yes?”

  “How would we know? I cannot answer that question.” On’esquin said, sounding somewhat agitated.

  Raeln could detect a bit of nervousness in Yoska’s voice, but he seemed sure enough of himself. From what he could tell, Yoska was afraid in general, not of this room or the strange silence of the city hinting at secrets they might not want to know the details of. For all Yoska’s bravado, he was not immune to fear. He simply chose to hide it behind his foppish behavior.

  Going down the narrow steps as fast as he could, Raeln smelled death again, though far more clearly than he had anywhere else in the fortress. Blood was somewhere nearby, reeking of bodies left out until they had begun to decay and burst. It was a scent he had smelled all too often in the last year, but one he kept hoping he would never encounter again. Each time he encountered it, his heart felt as though it sank into his stomach.

  Raeln lifted the heavy bar on the door and held his position briefly, waiting for something to charge through the doors at him and his companions. When nothing came, he set the beam aside, propping it against the wall. Gingerly, he placed his ear against the door, hearing nothing.

  Walking down the steps, Yoska eyed the beam Raeln had just moved. He pushed at it without budging it. “Is heavier than I am. Did not see you even strain. Can I get wolf to promise to never hit me? I think you break me if you did.”

  “No,” Raeln growled as he continued trying to listen.

  After a minute of silence, Raeln pulled the doors open. A sickly gasp of air being sucked into the room beyond shifted much of his fur. Immediately after the air stopped moving, the stench of death wafting out of the room became so strong Raeln collapsed and vomited.

  Spread through the massive open space before him, Raeln could see fly-covered bodies of dwarves. They were piled everywhere, lying two or three deep in most places. Blood stained the smooth walls of the oval room in long, thin streaks, telling him these people had clawed at the walls until their fingers were torn open or something had caught them. There had to be at least a thousand dwarves in that large room, all of them staring blankly at the floor or ceiling—those that still had eyes at all.

  On’esquin seemed to be faring little better, somehow managing to look more grey than green for once. He held one hand to his mouth, staring at the piles of corpses with more sadness than nausea as he attempted to step between the torn bodies on his way into the room.

  Behind On’esquin, Yoska looked horrified but managed to keep from getting sick. He followed the orc into the large room, his wide eyes darting from one corpse to the next nervously. “This is garden,” he noted softly, coming back and offering Raeln a hand to help him off the ground. “Many simple plants to keep air fresh and make horrible food for dwarves stuck down here. Holes high in roof let in more air from outside. Large well in middle keeps defenders alive for months or years. No one should be dead here. This was to be safe place. No matter what, was to be safe.”

  “How far to the other side of the city?” Raeln managed to choke out.

  Yoska hesitated, almost as though he had not heard Raeln. “We have walked maybe twenty hours already since we were in daylight, forgetting rest time. If we can get through short way, is about half day more to mountain rivers that we can follow north, where we hopefully find boat. Long way…two to three days and then we still must follow river, maybe with no boat.”

  Swallowing hard as he stood outside the door trying to calm his lurching stomach, Raeln said, “There’s no way we’ve been down here that long.”

  “Is true,” Yoska insisted. “Dwarves make fun of gypsies during first visit. They say we do not know how to tell time. Is point of pride to not have to be mocked twice. I would wager on time being right or very close to it.”

  Raeln’s stomach continued to clench and unclench, forcing him to clamp his jaw closed to prevent himself from vomiting more. He eased into the room, trying not to use his nose at all and rely instead on his less-refined senses. For once he thought he might have a clue about what it was like to be anything but a wildling without his sense of smell…it was something he did not want to repeat.

  The room had few features Raeln could make out past the bodies, though in a few spots he did manage to see the trampled and rotting remains of some sort of plant. The center of the room held a huge pond that might once have been spring-fed, but now sported three floating bodies of its own.

  Raeln looked around the walls and saw the room wa
s roughly domed, the stones above them lined with heavy steel or iron beams to support the weight of the mountain above them. Four doors came into the room, two of which were closed, with vast numbers of bodies piled in front of them. Far overhead, he could see holes in the dome that he guessed were for the air vents Yoska had mentioned, though none let in any light, as though they were blocked or it was nighttime.

  The fourth door stood open like the one that they had come through. There, only a handful of bodies lay, but those were torn open rather than rotted. The farther the bodies got from the door, the fewer visible injuries Raeln could see, but when he stared long enough, he could pick out clawlike wounds on all of the bodies, no matter where they lay.

  “Raeln,” whispered On’esquin, pointing toward a pile of dwarven remains.

  Raeln stared where the orc had pointed and saw a small amount of movement in the dim light. He thought at first it might be a rat, but it was much bigger, knocking aside several of the bodies as it flailed.

  “Close us in,” Raeln ordered, walking toward the movement. “I don’t want whatever’s behind us getting in here too. We can handle one.” He moved slowly over to the pile of corpses, hearing the door being barred behind him, likely by On’esquin, given the weight of the beam. Raeln eased himself to a crouch as he got close to the moving shape, trying to keep out of its reach as he figured out what it was.

  Lying beneath a pile of dwarves that had climbed each other in an attempt to get to the door in that part of the room, a single human corpse moved about, groaning softly as it tried to reach for Raeln with blackened and decayed fingers. The white of bone poking through the tips of the fingers allowed Raeln to easily see how far it could reach and stay out of that range.

  The zombie was trapped by the weight of the dead dwarves, weakly biting at the air and flailing the only arm it had free. At Raeln’s approach its white eyes turned his way and the hand slapped at the floor, desperately trying to grab him.

  Raeln stepped on the zombie’s outstretched hand, ignoring the sickly squish under his toes and the way his claws sank into its flesh. Keeping it held down that way, he leaned closer to examine the body.

  Though it continued to try to bite at him, Raeln poked and pulled at the human corpse’s clothing, trying to find any that was still intact. He finally found a section not covered with blood and not too badly decayed and eyed the fabric in what little light emanated from the magical globes that lined the upper walls of the room. “Altisian,” he noted, hanging his head. Drawing his dagger, Raeln plunged it into the zombie’s forehead, ending its thrashing.

  “Fortress is lost if Altis has been here already,” Yoska replied nearby, standing beside the pool at the middle of the room. “Water smells not good for drinking, either. We should try to get out with what we already have, though will be small meals until we get out of the mountains.”

  “We have bigger issues,” warned On’esquin, facing the far end of the room. “I hear snarling. Does anyone else hear snarling?”

  Perking his ears, Raeln immediately caught the sounds On’esquin spoke of. Something—rather, several somethings—were running down the passage opposite the one they had entered through, where the door was propped open. All three other entrances were closed—now that they had closed the one behind them—but that one stood open and whatever was hissing and running their way did not sound far off.

  “Get the left!” Raeln shouted, jumping to his feet and running for the twin doors on the north end of the room.

  On’esquin reached the doorway at the same time Raeln did, each of them slamming into one of the heavy doors. They strained and grunted, pushing the heavy stone barriers slowly shut.

  At the last moment, as On’esquin’s side had nearly shut, a pale-skinned arm reached through and clawed at the air, snagging Raeln’s shirt briefly. Twisting, the arm tore at On’esquin’s sleeve and the skin beneath, leaving long, ragged scratches that faded almost immediately to bruises and then disappeared into the green of the rest of his skin.

  Raeln knew the creature that arm belonged to. He had seen them in and around Lantonne during its last days. The thing lunging for them was a ghoul—a kind of zombie that had become like a feral beast, trying to consume the living at any risk to itself. They were disgusting diseased monsters and whether they could handle the creature or not, Raeln wanted nothing to do with it.

  Keeping his weight against his door, Raeln caught the ghoul’s wrist and yanked the arm backward, breaking its elbow against the lip of the door. A bloodcurdling scream from the other side preceded the creature pulling its arm back into the darkness and the door slamming shut. With a thankful whistle, On’esquin dropped the bar across the door, locking it.

  “That was closer than I would have liked,” the orc said, nodding at the rips in Raeln’s shirt. “They cannot kill me, but they certainly would be one of the more efficient ways of torturing me for eternity. Have you ever been touched by a ghoul before?”

  “I have and I know you should be losing feeling in your arm about now,” Raeln noted, eliciting a smirk from On’esquin. “That doesn’t work either?”

  “Many things do not work on me, but it still hurts the same. Given enough of the ghoul’s poison, I believe I would eventually slow down. See to it that the gypsy hasn’t gotten us in more trouble. We need to come up with a plan to get through the rest of the city.”

  Raeln left On’esquin at the northern door and headed over to where Yoska stood, just inside the door they had entered from originally. The old human rubbed at the stubble on his cheek, staring off into the dark hall beyond though the tiny gap between the doors.

  “Thinking of another way out?” asked Raeln as he came over.

  “No,” Yoska told him, smiling nervously. “I am listening to them coming around through the halls. We are being trapped. Is no other way out that I know of. We face ghouls no matter which exit we take…as well as whatever has been following us, which is likely another ghoul.”

  Raeln cocked his head and tilted his ears forward, listening to the creak of the stones and occasional echoes of water falling from the damp roof of the cavern to the floor or into the well at the middle of the room. He could not hear anything out there at first, but then slowly he began to pick up soft echoes of bare feet running. The ghouls were approaching swiftly, circling the room.

  Raeln’s tail sank nervously and his skin prickled with a chill as he looked around at the corpses that filled the room. He leaned against the doors and tried not to think about how long they might be stuck in there. The answer might depend largely on how much food and water they had left of their own and how much air the room held.

  Moving away from the doors, Yoska started to sit down, but then grunted and came down hard, clutching at his side. Before Raeln could ask, the man held up a blood-covered hand for him to see. “Poultice is good, but is not magic,” the man explained, sighing and tapping the back of his head against the stone door. “Wound was very deep. Deep enough that she thought I would die within hours. She intended for me to suffer. Now, she gets her wish before I have gotten my revenge on the creature that uses her body, no? Had hoped to find supplies to stop bleeding while down here.”

  A scratching from the far side of the thick doors let Raeln know the ghouls had found their way blocked.

  Looking around, Raeln tried to think of a way to run, even if he had to carry Yoska, but nothing seemed to present itself. The walls were smooth and joined in a gentle arc with the curved roof of the room. Only the doors would have allowed them out, but with all four sets barred and ghouls circling the large chamber, there was no chance of going through any of them. They would have to wait and hope the ghouls found something else to chase.

  After a little while, Raeln sat down with his back to the door, while Yoska tried to slow his bleeding unsuccessfully. The whole time, On’esquin paced around the room, muttering to himself as he continued to study the walls, clearly looking for anything they had missed.

  The room remained
quiet for what felt like hours. Eventually, Raeln tapped at the door and heard an immediate hiss and scratching. The ghoul or ghouls were still waiting.

  “I have grown very tired of being locked away in tombs for my own safety,” growled On’esquin. With a huff, he turned and kicked one of the corpses, knocking it into a larger pile of dead.

  Before Raeln could chide the man for his callous treatment of the dead, a groan from within the room sent a chill down Raeln’s spine and clenched his guts. Apparently the ghouls were only part of the trap that had been set for anyone coming down into the fortress city.

  Off to his left near the body On’esquin had kicked, several of the corpses were sitting up, their eyes slowly sweeping the room. One by one, the bodies began to move, as though they had been merely asleep. Dozens were soon moaning as they pushed against one another, trying to get up.

  “On’esquin?” Raeln called out, grabbing Yoska’s arm. “Can you do anything?”

  “Not that would help us, unless you are secretly a wizard,” the man shouted back, running around the pond at the center of the room to join Raeln and Yoska. By the time he reached them, nearly fifty zombies had gotten to their feet and were watching him move with hungry expressions.

  Raeln pulled Yoska onto his back, immediately feeling warm blood against his shoulder. They would have to go through the ghouls or they were as good as dead anyway. Thankfully, Yoska did not argue with his attempts to get them moving.

  Searching the room one more time as On’esquin did the same, Raeln’s eyes kept coming back to the pool at the middle, meant to provide fresh water to anyone hiding in there. The dwarves floating face down in that pool were not moving, unlike all the others.

  “Those ones drowned,” Raeln said aloud, walking past On’esquin toward the pool. Before he reached it, one of the first zombies began lumbering his way. With a straight kick to its chest, Raeln sent the creature tumbling into a pile of corpses, which then began moving too. While it might have slowed the one coming after him, fighting back had compounded their problems.