Nights of Villjamur - Mark Charan Newton [51]
“So we simply wait here,” Lupus protested, “and get picked off one by one?”
A rustling from the trees.
Everyone looked toward the copse.
Three figures lurched forward and Lupus brought an arrow to anchor point, aimed it.
“Not till I say.” Brynd held up a hand, but was reaching for his axe with the other.
The dark figures started running toward them.
Brynd signaled. Lupus released an arrow.
It whipped through the air, struck one of the intruders powerfully in the face. By then he was nocking another arrow, and soon another figure was falling to the ground. The final one stepped forward with sword raised.
Brynd hurled his axe through the intervening space.
It cleaved the attacker’s face and he too slumped to the ground.
Then suddenly the unlikely happened: all three fallen bodies began struggling to push themselves upright, trying to pull out the arrows, with jerky, improbable movements.
Lupus fired repeatedly, pinning the bodies to the ground, twitching. And again they tried to stand with a jagged motion.
“Aim for their legs,” Brynd yelled, running to reach under the carriage for a crossbow. Then, returning to Lupus’s side again, he began shooting at the heads and torsos.
They fired until finally the bodies lay still.
“Cover!” Brynd swept in toward the dead, seized one of the corpses back into the light of the campfire. Soon the others had done the same with the rest.
Brynd began tearing open the ragged clothing on each of the corpses. “By Bohr, these men we’ve killed were already dead.”
“Are you sure?” Nelum questioned, and was rewarded with a glare of annoyance from his commander. Yes I’m sure. These things are fucking dead, many times over.
“Look at this one. His skin is ice cold—blue, even in this light. He isn’t even bleeding, just the remains of some black gunk. He’s been dead for several days at least.”
The soldiers remained silent.
“Draugr,” Nelum said eventually.
“Y’what?” Apium demanded.
“Draugr. Undead. A purportedly mythical creature. Well, that’s what it looks like anyway. Give it awhile longer and I suspect they’ll be back to life, in some sort of manner. So we might want to make sure they’re finished off properly, commander.”
Even as soon as he spoke, one of the bodies began twitching, the fingers moving gently and impossibly. With a sigh, Brynd stepped quickly to the carriage and pulled out one of the larger axes. Over the next few moments he hacked away at the reviving corpses with relentless brutality, grunting as he hauled the metal blade down on them again and again, releasing his frustration in the process, and Apium soon joined in the frenzy with another axe till the camp was carpeted with bone and smashed heads. They then gathered the individual fragments together away from camp, and Brynd fervently hoped there was no way that they could resurrect themselves from that destruction.
“Now,” Brynd demanded, with disgust on realizing he was covered in small chunks of flesh, “could you tell me about these draugr, lieutenant. Please.”
Nelum had this scholarly way about him when he was explaining, always had done for the years Brynd had known him, and the act in itself was a comfort now, the return to business-as-usual. He began casually, pacing around in slow strides. “A few volumes of collected folklore report sightings of undead, mainly on islands like Maour and Varltung. Ascribed to distant mythology, mainly. So you certainly wouldn’t expect to encounter them in this day and age, or for many centuries past. From the accounts I’ve read in bestiaries of the Archipelago, they’re last reported about as far back as the Máthema civilization. That means myths of sixty thousand years.”
“Yes, but what exactly are they?” Brynd interrupted impatiently.
“Exactly what I said: the undead. Corpses that in some way become animated again. Normally, their bodies have to be disposed of in certain ways, so I’m guessing and hoping your little dissection would have covered