The Wyvern's Spur - Kate Novak [68]
He was bruised but otherwise unharmed. The niggling Aunt Dorath-like voice inside his head said, "I told you so," and Giogi began to think he would be lucky if he could reach the top before the light failed and he fell in the drink.
The sky at that moment grew very, very dark. Giogi hesitated. Maybe it's just a darker than average storm cloud over the setting sun, he hoped. He waited on the ledge for a minute, then another, for light to return. The forest around him remained dark.
Giogi realized he'd miscalculated. The sun had set already, and twilight in the dense woods had been very short. The moon would be full tonight, though, he remembered. It should rise soon, now that the sun has set, he reassured himself.
In the meantime, the nobleman couldn't help feeling there was something malicious about the darkness. It was filled with rustling and twig-snapping, which he could hear uncomfortably well over the rush of the cascade. Unwilling to wait for Selune's light, Giogi crawled toward the cascade and began climbing the rocks by feel.
Something scaly brushed against Giogi's hand, and he pulled it back with a jerk, lost his balance, and tumbled sideways, landing with a splash in the pool of water below.
Giogi surfaced immediately, sputtering water and soaked to the skin. The water was only three feet deep, but that was more than enough to submerge his dodders, and the young noble could feel icy water creeping down his stockings.
A beam of moonlight broke through the clouds in the east, illuminating the pool around him. Giogi stilled a shriek and began to back away. In the hip-high water all around him bobbed the bloated corpses of men.
As he stepped backward, one of the corpses in front of him sprang to life, lunging out of the water at him like a trout striking at a lure. Rows of needle-sharp teeth gnashed inches from his face. Giogi shrieked without inhibition, terrified.
He recognized the creatures from Uncle Drone's books. They weren't just corpses, but lacedons, undead monsters that preyed on the flesh of the drowned. Giogi took another step backward, but the lacedons had him surrounded. The nobleman had just enough presence of mind to draw his foil.
A second lacedon breached directly in front of him with its hands raised over its head. Giogi could smell the fetid, mossy scent of the creature's breath as it brought its decayed face close to his own. Then the monster's sharp, algae-covered fingernails struck at his forehead. Giogi jabbed his weapon into the creature's flesh, but the lacedon wriggled itself free and swam off.
The remaining lacedons swam slowly around him, thumping up against his legs, trying to knock him off balance, and occasionally breaking the surface to leer and gnash and slash at his face. They're playing with their food, Giogi thought, fighting back his nausea.
Blood dripping from his wounded brow obscured his vision in one eye and splashed into the water-spurring the undead into a frenzy. Giogi screamed again and stabbed at the hideous beings, trying to clear a path to the shore. It was hard to lunge into the water accurately, though, and there were too many of them to concentrate on one direction at once, without risking attack in the rear.
One of the lacedons toward the back of the pack reared up and began walking forward, so Giogi had a better view of its scaly body, water-rotted face, and bulging, yellow eyes. Another lacedon adopted an erect stance, and another and another, until all the corpses advanced on him like soldiers.
The noble turned in the frigid water, unable to decide on a direction to run. He caught sight of the glimmering gemstone in the top of his boot. The light of the finder's stone pulsed in the darkness, even beneath the water.
Giogi drew the finder's stone out, hoping the light it would cast might frighten off the monsters, or at least hurt their eyes. He tried to recall the bit of rhyme he knew as a child: