A Dragon's Ascension - Ed Greenwood [30]
Transferring his grip up to a handy Delcamper forearm, he led Flaeros back away from the rocks, to where there was a little open space around the road where a tree had fallen long ago. Then the baron turned again to face the direction from which those soft sounds-of footfalls, boots planted heavily and clumsily on soft ground-had come, and crouched with his sword hilt low before him, its tip up and foremost like the prow of a ship.
And then the shambling Melted came.
Dead they were, or looked it, and yet moved. Stiff and clumsy, striding ahead with unseeing eyes and blades in their hands, their flesh melted and sagging hideously away from skulls and lesser bones.
"Oak and Lady both be with me," the baron swore, eyes narrowing. Melted! Hadn't they all fallen with Corloun? Or-gods, yes!-didn't every damned wizard write everything down so he could boast about it? And those scrolls fell into the hands of other mages, and so on… but of course: every wizard in all the Vale probably knew how to make these shamblers now!
"Run, lad," he said shortly. "You can't stand up to these-try, and let them get a grip on you, and they'll explode into flames and take you with 'em!"
"But-I can't leave you!" Flaeros protested, dancing in fearful indecision, torn between fleeing and not daring to leave the reassuring safety of the Smiling Wolfs blade.
"Ah, got to stay and see the heroic baronial fall, and write the ballad about it, hey?" Glarsimber said, eyes never leaving the advancing cadavers. "Can't you see it from a distance, lad? Or perhaps work some useful magic with that scepter you've been so clumsy at trying to keep hidden from me?"
"I-uh-"
The silver-tongued bard Flaeros was still struggling for words when the first Melted reached Glarsimber-and swung its blade with a vicious speed that was astonishing for something that tottered along with such faltering, stumbling strides.
But the Smiling Wolf wasn't there. A quick sidestep, a lunge around and to the right-and the slashing blade missed an armored thigh by inches, while Glarsimber brought his own stout blade around in a chop that half severed the Melted's head. It flopped loosely atop the bloodless neck, but seemed not to slow or confuse the shuffling cadaver at all. The Melted turned with a lurch and struck out vigorously again, striking sparks from the baron's parrying blade-and this time Glarsimber backed hastily away from it, as three other Melted came within reach and chopped at him in unison, heedless of each other's blades or the intervening arm of the first Melted.
That arm dangled from a few strips of flesh when they were done, and one Melted had been knocked over by the backswing of a fellow, but none of the lurching corpses seemed to feel pain or even to notice what wounds they took or what happened to their fellows. They stumbled forward, and Glarsimber cast a quick look back over his other shoulder, swore, and lunged with his blade right under a Delcamper armpit. "Gods, lad, don't you ever look behind you?"
Flaeros gulped, ran a few steps and turned in time to see the Baron of Brightpennant slash open the face of a Melted with a flurry of swordblows, duck forward to trip the corpse over backwards, then spin away to rush back to where he'd first been fighting, and parry the thrusting blade of another Melted before it ran Flaeros through.
"Would this be the hearty exercise you were saving your strength for earlier, lad?" Glarsimber panted, as he pounded past. "I'd appreciate it if you jumped about a bit, even if you don't want to swing a blade-just to give these corpses a little sport, that's all!"
Flaeros shot him a shocked look, then realized the baron was jesting and ducked frantically away from the blade of a Melted-only to feel the icy sting of another blade, its tip just slicing flesh after cutting through a stout