Guild Wars_ Edge of Destiny - J. Robert King [81]
Eir released the bowstring. Three shafts whistled away to crack through three decaying faces. Still, the creatures rose, fletchings jutting from nasal cavities and cheekbones. The monsters emerged from the whirlpool as if the water had no grip on them. They rushed the gunwales of the Cormorant, and their skeletal fingernails clawed its boards. With daggers in their rictus grins, they climbed.
Eir released three more arrows, which snagged in three more skulls without destroying the monsters. Eir slung her bow on her shoulder and pulled a great mallet from her belt. “Here we go.”
With a gurgling roar, the first line of rotting creatures reached the rail.
The crew of the Cormorant replied with a roar of their own. They attacked, blunderbusses blasting and cutlasses swinging.
Heads rolled from shoulders, but bodies climbed on. Sailors hacked hands from wrists, and arms from shoulders. The bodies merely fell into the whirling soup as more Orrian undead emerged.
Rytlock rammed Sohothin into one, lighting it like a lantern. Fire sizzled in its eyes, and it plunged away into the water. Sohothin punched through the rotting chest of another undead, roasting its heart, then slashed down the midline of a third.
Beside him, Garm bit the head from a skeleton and spat the skull into its body. The decapitated creature plopped down into the whirlpool. With a sick growl, Garm chomped the rib cage of another creature and shook his head, ripping the bones apart.
The Cormorant was pulling clear of the maelstrom, but the sea beyond boiled with even more undead.
They lunged up en masse, clawing toward the rail.
Three swift strokes of Eir’s mallet reduced three of the foes to greenish paste on the side of the ship. Then she stepped back. “Keep them pinned down,” she called to Rytlock and Garm. “I’ve got to help Logan guard the asura!”
The charr and the wolf tore through many more.
Eir retreated to join Logan beside Snaff and Zojja. “How’re they holding up?”
“See for yourself,” Logan said.
Snaff and Zojja swayed hypnotically. Their eyes hung wide, and the red powerstones in their laurels flashed.
Eir glanced aft toward the two barques that her friends controlled. Both had sailed past the whirlpool, but both were now swarmed by rotting corpses. They clambered up the gunwales and vaulted over the rails and shambled across the decks—only to drop into a clever set of trapdoors. The spring-loaded hatches dumped the undead belowdecks and slammed closed again, ready for more. Meanwhile, beneath the planks, gears spun and bones splintered and meat ground into a gray paste, which oozed out the portholes. The two barques were golems of a sort, steered from afar. Instead of cargo, their holds contained powerful meat grinders.
Snaff and Zojja destroyed undead by the hundreds. Even Morgus Lethe could not hope to raise the chum that poured from the barques.
A nearby roar brought Eir’s attention back to the aft deck of the Cormorant, which now swarmed with undead.
Eir smashed one to the deck and spun to kick another in half and turned to fling a third over the rail. It was heavy work, like shoveling sand from a pit that kept filling.
Logan meanwhile painted blue aura in the air around the asura, making a shield that would guard them. He spun around and pounded skeletons like tent pegs. His hammer crashed into their heads and drove their spines down to scatter across the deck.
But wherever two fell, three more rose.
Worse, yet, before the bow of the Cormorant, another ship lurched up from the depths. It was a ship of the undead, huge and hoary, with black masts like burned-out pines and a riddled hull and sails hanging in tattered ribbons. It disgorged the sea from its decks and hull and rose up, tacking toward the Cormorant.
Captain Magnus saw the ship and the monster at its helm: Morgus Lethe. “They’re coming alongside! Load cannons. Hoist grapnels.