Meek

Chapter 63: Past the Shrine

Shadows moved in the mist around the corner. A dark mass of swinging limbs and hunching shoulders, accompanied by the scuff of shoes against stone.

From a thinner patch of mist, a spark showed Eli the risens' white eyes and rictus smiles. Bonespurs burst from swollen cheekbones and around rotten tattered of skin. The risen had ropy hair and uneven gaits and wielded cudgels and swords. Yet, despite their twisted limbs, they loped forward as fast as living women and men, their strength giving them speed.

"Get to the horses," Riadn said.

"Ten or eleven of them," Eli said, running alongside Lara.

From the rooftop, the man's fading voice called, "Temple District to ... east, only way ... inner wall ..."

"Meek in front," Riadn snapped.

Eli drew his falcona and sent one spark sweeping forward. He took longer strides, leaving Lara behind, watching in every direction at once.

Riadn sped up to follow, moving faster than he'd expected. She wasn't tall but she was all leg while Payde was all chest and shoulder. He ran like a blacksmith, but Eli suspected he wasn't trying to gain much distance; he preferred to remained in the rear in case they needed his shields.

Eli raced forward and--

A spike of power from the Reach made him gasp. He skidded around a corner on the damp-slick stone and there, a few yards away, three dark forms sifted from the mist.

Three risen, wearing the tattered, bloodied clothes of laborers or apprentices, with blind eyes watching Eli. Unarmed, with frozen smiles. No--four of them, but the fourth was low in the mist, running on his bare hands and feet like a mockery of an animal

Eli caught his balance with a spark and shouted a warning and the crouching risen leaped at him like a pouncing cat. He juked sideways and the dead man only struck him a glancing blow before the next one reached him with grasping arms.

A furious, frightened slice of falcona chopped off the dead woman's arm at the elbow. She didn't react except to grab with her other arm at Lara, who shrieked and slashed wildly with her short sword.

Eli spun to help and a spark showed him the fourth risen lunging for him from behind. Despite the warning, he wasn't fast enough to dodge. The risen's rotting arms clamped around his neck and its too-white teeth tore a mouthful of flesh from behind his ear.

He roared in pain and anger--then ignored that one. Instead, he chopped at the one attacking Lara and the risen took another bite out of him.

Riadn's blade caught it in the face and drove it off him and Payde lopped off the crouching risen's head in mid-leap. A single blow of his axe and the thing hit the ground and burst like an overripe fig.

"Happy news!" Payde boomed, while Riadn rolled low. "Take their heads!"

Riadn's quick blade sliced through a rotting calf, making the risen who'd grabbed Eli topple to its side. "Slow them--more coming--keep moving!"

Eli shoved his falcona into the second risen's chest and drove it backward while Lara hacked at the toppled risen's neck until it stilled.

With a backhanded slash Riadn chopped through a knee and shouted, "Retreat, retreat!"

The risen mob appeared through the mist, jerking and hobbling yet moving fast. The one without a calf grabbed Payde's boot and Eli stomped its wrist to break the hold while the first few risen slammed to a halt as if they'd struck an invisible wall.

Because they had.

Payde took a shaky breath. "Choir, that's hard with the Reach in my head."

"Run, Payde," Eli growled, and shoved the other man after Riadn and Lara.

Eli stayed in the rear, watching behind himself with a spark as the mob tore the mage shield apart.

Ahead, Riadn sprinted through the remains of a pillared hall. Heaps of stones--some with faces, some with wings--statues--flashed to either side as Eli followed. They hadn't come this way, but he didn't have to time to wonder if they were lost. The mob moved faster than they did--faster that Payde and Lara at least.

His spark showed the creatures closing in every time the swirls of mist momentarily lightened. Forty feet away, then thirty. And more of them kept joining the mob, jerking into place around half-melted staircases and pebbled walls.

"Faster!" he yelled. "Faster!"

"Find us ... " Payde panted. "A defensible ... "

Riadn veered into an alley between two slumping buildings. Not quite an alley, more of a chasm, as if the walls were eroded earth. A trickle of water splashed under Eli's feet and the mob was ten feet behind him--though only two of the risen could run abreast in the narrow space.

His sparks throbbed. His core swirled in his chest, boiling as he neared Heaven's Reach even though he groped inwardly for the protection of the mountain's weight, the mountain's cave. Halfway along the alley, he slashed behind himself, guided by the sparks. Taking Riadn's lesson to heart, he aimed for the knee of the nearest risen.

It stumbled and the next one leaped over but the one after that tripped on the fallen. In a moment, a pile of writhing risen clogged the alley--while the ones in the rear climbed them like a ramp.

The one that had leaped slammed into Eli, driving him backward with blows from unfeeling, magic-empowered limbs that landed like clubs.

Eli dodged and backpedaled. He aimed for the dead man's neck with his falcona, but it was too close, flailing its arms too fast. He sliced the creature's chest instead--then one of Riadn's arrows took the creature in the forehead, snapping his head backward.

Eli sized the opportunity to chop through its throat, then fled.

The bottleneck in the alley bought them a little time, but not much. Riadn led them across deep depression that must've been an amphitheater, then around a wall bulging with globules of melted stone, toward a high splat of rock that--

Oh!

Eli belatedly recognized his surroundings. The horses were just thirty feet away.

"No time to mount," Riadn said, after glancing behind. "Keep going."

"I'll hold them off," Payde said.

"Keep going," she repeated.

Payde cursed but obeyed. And she was right. By the time they reached the horses, the risen were just ten feet behind again. Even if they leaped into the saddles--which he and Lara couldn't, not by a long shot--there wasn't enough time to flee. The risen would swarm the horses before they had a chance to build any speed.

And Payde's shield wouldn't last more than a heartbeat against a wall of risen, twenty of them now, pounding forward like a battering ram, feeling no pain and no hesitation.

So Riadn led them sprinting past the horses.

The risen hit a moment later.

The horses screamed and struggled.

It was ugly.

But as the risen paused to slaughter the horses, Riadn broke to the left, through a tilted archway in the high wall.

"Where the halo ... are we going?" Payde panted.

"Temple district."

"You've never ... been here!"

"I saw a cupola," she said. "And Fishhook said east."

"The Reach is a ..." Payde swore again. "Spike in my head."

"Keep moving."

At the end of a snaking road, she trotted along a stone canyon that had once been a landscaped expanse between two mansions. Past that, the streets changed again. The walls still sagged, but less completely. The streets grew level instead of sloping and rippling like a frozen river. The buildings stood apart, instead of melting together like in the rest of the city, while the mist cleared slightly.

And the constant hum of the Reach eased slightly.

"Hellbless," Payde panted, when Riadn slowed for him to catch up. "I can think again."

"Yeah, the Reach is softer here," Eli said.

"Dreamer shrine," Riadn said by way of explanation, pointing to a squat, domed building.

Looked like any other building in the Weep to Eli, like a pile of stone without any entrances or exists, without any safety or sanctuary.

"They weren't Dreamers when that was built," Payde reminded her.

"So it's an Eld shrine?" Lara asked.

"Dreamer shrines weaken Celestial magic," Eli told Payde. "And maybe Bloodwitch magic. Except that's not what we're feeling from the Reach."

"Expert on magic, are you?" Payde asked.

"I'm dryn," he said, to cover that fact that he was guessing. "But also, the risen following us? They're slowing a bit as they get closer. It's affecting them."

"Sound like they're still getting closer, though," Lara said.

"Come," Riadn said, and trotted past the shrine.

Six temples to the Old Gods lined a square beyond the Eld chapel. At the far end of the square, a slab of stone--a section of the inner wall--drooped halfway to the ground.

And dozens of risen shambled from between the buildings. Moving slower, but not by much. At first sight, they truly did look like the risen dead. Like walking corpses. Except they weren't even that human. Some crept forward on hands and knees. Some were eyeless, yet still clearly saw--or at least sensed. Most of them smiled rictus smiles that reminded Eli of Angelbood, but instead of humming those terrible Celestial hymns, they uttered no sound.

"Give us a ramp," Riadn said, trotting toward the stone slab.

"Festooned with roses and singing a song of praise," Payde said.

A shimmer appeared in the mist, near the lowest stretch of the sagging wall.

Riadn stepped into a chunk of half-dissolved gatehouse at the edge of the square then leaped onto the shield-ramp, as if walking on mist. The shield remained intact beneath her until she reached the top. Showing the way.

"Lara," she said, turning to reach for Lara as she walked up the ramp.

"You," Payde told Eli, in a tight voice.

Eli looked to Riadn. "I'm last."

"Payde," she said, "come."

Payde grunted acknowledgement. "Captain."

Beads of sweat gleamed on his forehead as he climbed onto the remains of the gatehouse. With the risen shambling closer, Payde basically fell onto his mage-shield. The shimmer flickered slightly, but stayed intact as Payde crawled to the top of the slab of wall.

With risen closing in around him, Eli climbed the gatehouse--and the shield flickered again. It wasn't going to last long enough. He knew that. No reason to pretend. The instant he set foot on it, it would disappear beneath him and he'd fall ass-backward into a murderous mob.

And however fast he healed, they'd tear him apart even faster.

"Now!" Riadn yelled.