Elora closed the door behind her, plunging the room into near darkness. She had to lean heavily against it to get the warped wood to fit back in the frame, but that was a good thing. A stuck door would make it difficult for someone to sneak into the room while she slept.
A steady drip from the thatched roof added to the pool accumluating between the narrow bed and the tiny nightstand, so she stepped over it and deposited her pack in the dryest corner of the room. She’d slept in worse.
She’d just removed her cloak and was about to flop on the bed when a shriek rose from the common room. It took three steps to cross the room and jerk the door back open. Another to make it into the hallway. Four more and she’d reached the common room, where chaos had erupted.
Chairs and tables had been knocked askew. The door stood open, banging against the wall as the rain laden wind flung it about. About half the patrons had already fled, leaving a dozen or so of their companions trapped in the corners. Most wore horrified expressions and looked as if they were trying to become part of the wall.
Two bodies lay in crumpled heaps, one with a rapidly spreading pool of blood underneath it. A girl crouched next to the second, or the thing had once been a girl. Now it was a ghast, an undead creature Elora recognized instantly. They were driven by an insatiable need to feed on the living. Fortunately they were relatively weak and practically mindless.
The question was, where had it come from?
Elora drew her blade in one smooth motion. The enchanted steel gave a soft metallic ring as it cleared the scabbard, but the ghast didn’t notice the noise. It was too focused on another target. The monster charged just as she stepped into the room.
The thing scuttled across the floor with amazing speed, vaulting a chair and leaping into the air. Growing horror bloomed in Elora as she realized who the target was. Tal. He had his rapier drawn, the eldimagus blade drinking in the firelight. Yet he didn’t use the weapon.
Instead he reached into his cloak, no doubt to grab whatever focus he used for his magic. Then he seemed to reconsider the action, no doubt realizing that casting a spell in front of so many onlookers would guarantee death as surely as the ghast.
The hesitation cost him. The ghast lunged at Tal, raking his chest with her fingernails as she tried to grab him. The blow tore his tunic and left bloody furrows in their wake, eliciting a cry of pain. Yet Tal didn’t panic.
He stepped to the side, allowing the undead’s momentum to carry her forward. Then he buried his rapier in the back of her neck, cleanly severing the spine. It was an impressive strike, though in truth she guessed it was more luck than skill.
The ghast collapsed to the floor like a boned fish, twitching once before going still. Silence reigned. People stared around the room, avoiding each other’s gazes as if to deny what had just happened. Then Tal spoke.
“You. Help me move Marya,” he barked, thrusting a finger at a barrel chested fisherman whose eyes were still wide with terror. “Quickly man, her life hangs in the balance. We must act swiftly.”
The man gave a start as if suddenly waking from an awful nightmare. He moved leadenly towards the innkeeper, who lay moaning on the floor not far from the still open door. Her arm and torso were covered in blood, and she was wracked by sobs.
“Grab her legs. I will take her shoulders. We will carry her to the bar and lay her down there,” Tal orderd, his voice as commading as any Elora had heard. It was almost as if he’d forgotten to be the timid fugitive she’d spoken to earlier.
The two carried the innkeeper to the bar and deposited her on the worn wood. Tal spun and rushed to the fire. He seized the poker on the mantle and thrust one end into the flames. A few moments later he removed it, tip glowing a dull red.
“Hold her down. I doubt she will be able to move, but there is no sense taking chances,” Tal commanded the fisherman as he headed back to the bar. “I am going to cauterize the wound. Ghasts spread poison with their bite, but if we are lucky this will help to slow it.”
The fisherman gripped Marya’s shoulders, not that it seemed to matter. The woman was as limp as a dead fish, though her eyes stared up in horror. Tal shoved the heated end of the poker against the wound in her arm, but she didn’t so much as twitch. Her only reaction was a low moan, delivered through a slack jaw.
“That isn’t good,” Tal said, replacing the poker by the fireplace. He turned to face the crowd, all eyes fixed on him. Elora was impressed. He carried himself well during a crisis. “She is paralyzed, which means the poison is spreading more quickly than I anticipated. She will die by dawn if we do not find a way to help her. Is there a healer in this town?”
“We don’t hold with witches,” a scrawny man said. He had a weasily face with an ugly sneer. “If it’s a man’s time to die, we let him die. No sense prolonging things with witches dirty magics.”
“Lovely,” Tal answered. He finally turned in her direction, and his entire demeanor shifted when he spied her. His shoulders slumped and the confidence flowed from him like wine from a sack. He was silent for a long moment before speaking again. “Elora, can you do something? Her life is dust if we cannot give her aid.”
“I have no such skills. If Martos were here…” she trailed off, unsure of what to say. The woman was going to die and they were powerless to stop it.
“We should be more concerned fer ourselves,” a beefy fisherman with a salt and pepper beard rumbled. He stepped forward, turning to make sure all eyes were on him. “Most of you know me. Those that don’t, name’s Ivan. I’ve sailed this coast since before most of you were birthed, so I know what I’m about. I’ve seen this sort of thing before, though usually to the south of here. This is the work of Maw Pirates, and if we don’t flee inland not a soul will live to see the dawn.”
“Tell us of these pirates,” Elora demanded, stepping forward. She rested the point of her blade against the floor, the unspoken threat menacingly clear. Every eye fell on the enchanted blade. “I want facts, not myths. Who are they and what do they want? When will they strike?”
“I’ll answer as I can, no need to go waving that fancy silver sword around,” Ivan replied, taking a step back and holding his hands up as it to ward Elora off. “The Maw Pirates come from the south, though no one seems to know where they hail from. They’re corpses. Dead men. Only they don’t lay down like a proper corpse should. They keep moving, just like that girl Anika.”
Ivan pulled up a stray chair and sat heavily. He let his words sink in, glancing slowly around the room before continuing.
“They carry folks off, though no one can say why. They attack ships most often, but sometimes when the storms come they take whole villages,” he said, tone flat like death. “Villages just like this one. You know they’re coming, because anything that’s dead comes back to life. Dogs, horses, people…it don’t matter. They’ll all rise up and start attacking. That’s just the beginning though…”
“Afore long we’ll hear their awful dirge,” he said, voice dropping to a bare whisper. It was the only sound save the keening wind. “It’s in some foul tongue, old when man first crawled out of the sea. No one knows it’s meaning, because those that hear it don’t live to tell the tale. They’re carried off by the pirates, onto their black ships. And they ain’t never seen again…”
“What are we waitin for then?” the weasily face man asked, grabbing his cloak from a peg near the door. “I’m heading inland for Yelena’s Crossing. Anyone with half a wit in their head should come with me.”
Several others joined him and the knot of people plunged through the doorway into the storm. That left seven people in the room with Elora, six if you didn’t include Tal.
“They ain’t gonna make it very far,” Ivan chuckled, though there was little mirth in it He rose and stepped behind the bar, pulling the cork from a bottle of brandy. “Every dead thing that flies, crawls or walks just came back to life. They’re all hungry too. Those poor fools are as good as dead.”
He didn’t bother with a mug, simply upending the bottle. Amber liquid flowed down his beard, splashing across his neck as he finished the bottle.
“So what do you suggest we do, wait here these pirates to come take us?” Tal asked. He sheathed his weapon and walked towards the door. “I would rather chance a few ghasts than wait for these Maw Pirates.”
“It’s too late,” Ivan replied, a hysterical laugh bubbling up from him. “Don’t you hear that? Listen…”
At first all Elora heard was the wind, but then she caught the faint strains of a song. It was a horrible dirge, beyond sad. It was despair given voice. There were words to it, but they were in no language she’d ever heard.
From the sound whoever was doing the singing was nearly upon them.
