Guild Wars_ Ghosts of Ascalon - Matt Forbeck [93]
“Dak finally hit her, just once. She toppled over and smacked her head on the cobblestones. We tried to get her to wake up, but she never did.
“Any of us might have done it. There we were, racing into a city filled with angry ghosts, and she was honestly loud enough to wake the dead.”
“You didn’t have any potions?” asked Kranxx. “No magic to heal her?”
Dougal shook his head. “Maybe if we’d had more time. But the trouble wasn’t that Dak had killed Cautive: it was that he’d silenced her too late.
“As Vala knelt down to try to help Cautive, the first ghosts appeared. There were probably a dozen of them. They—they looked much like they must have in life. They wore the old Ascalonian uniforms, and they carried swords. But they were colorless, so much so that you could see right through them.
“When they saw us, they froze, stunned. They just couldn’t believe we were there. Then they attacked.
“As they came at us, they wailed even worse than Cautive had. They were mad in every sense of the word. They had no words for their anger, but they expressed it in noise and steel.
“You remember the ghosts of the shepherd and his apprentice. When you see a ghost, how insubstantial it looks, you wonder how such a thing could hurt you. Can a mist harm you? It seems ridiculous.
“But when the first ghost struck, he ran Dak straight through, and that sword of his was solid enough to bring blood up into Dak’s mouth. Jervis started casting spells, but there were just too many of them. They actually picked him up, and Marga as well, and carried them away.
“I’ll never forget their screams. They went on forever.”
Dougal felt his throat tighten. After a moment, he continued.
“Vala gave up on trying to help Cautive and turned her attention to Dak. I left her with him while I tried to rescue Jervis and Marga.
“I followed their screams. By the time I caught up with Jervis and Marga, the ghosts had taken them to the main square. The place was filled with scores of ghosts, an entire army of them. And there, up on the battlements of the palace, loomed the ghost of King Adelbern, shouting at his dead soldiers.
“I climbed up the side of a building so I could get a better look. Marga was already dead, her body pulled apart and being tossed about like a rag doll by the spirits. The ghosts were pulling pieces off of Jervis a joint at a time. I had a bow with me, and my first arrow caught him in the chest, which only hurt him more and alerted the ghosts that I was there. I fired the second while they turned to charge at me. The third finally caught Jervis in the throat and put an end to him.”
“You killed Jervis?” Riona spoke so softly that Dougal could barely hear her. He thought about pretending that he hadn’t but then nodded.
“It was the best thing—the only thing—I could do for him.” He closed his eyes and tried to banish the look on Jervis’s face when the final arrow hit home. It had been a look of gratitude.
“Bear’s blood!” said Gullik, solemn but insistent. “Don’t stop there, man! What happened to the others?”
“I raced back to where I’d left Dak and Vala, but when I got there, all I found was Dak, dead in a pool of blood.”
“What about the woman?” asked Ember. Dougal hadn’t even been sure the charr was listening.
“I—I never found her. I looked, but … I heard her screaming for me once, screaming for me to run. But it was cut off. I tried to keep looking, but the ghosts found me and the pursuit began.”
Kranxx shook his head in disbelief. “So there you were, alone and caught between a legion of charr and an army of angry ghosts. What did you do?”
“I did what I had to. I left. I fled. Like a dog in the night, I ran from Ascalon City and made my way back to Lion’s Arch. We had told some people where we were going, and when I turned up alone, the stories started and a lot of people wanted to hire me, since I had survived the City of Ghosts. But they never realized I had failed, and those I cared about had paid for that failure.”
Dougal put his head in his hands and discovered