Inheritance by Steven Savile

Author:Steven Savile
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9780857875341
Publisher: BL Publishing
Published: 2011-10-04T07:00:00+00:00

chapter eleven

The Swords of Scorn

ESSEN FORD, SYLVANIA

Winter, 2010

The sounds of the battlefield were all wrong.

There were screams as soldiers fell and fierce battle-cries answered by the stampede as swords clattered off shields, the cacophony intended to instil fear in an enemy that knew no fear. Despite the screaming, the drumming and the stamping feet there was no ringing clash of steel on steel.

The fight was no ordinary fight.

Swords slashed through the torrential rain, cutting at the dead arms as they clawed and scratched and pulled at the soldiers. The dead stumbled forward and the living lurched backwards desperate to evade their outstretched arms and suffocating embrace. The ground beneath their feet was treacherous. It was virtually impossible to fight. They were reduced to trying to stay alive. They staggered and lurched as they struggled to fend off the dead, their movements mimicking von Carstein’s monstrous regiment as they struggled to keep their balance.

No matter how desperately the Ottilia’s soldiers fought, the dead kept on coming, surging relentlessly forward without fear or concern for their own safety.

Fischer fought for his life beside Baumann, the flaxen-haired archer proving himself as deadly with a sword as he had shown he was with a bow. There was no smile on his face now though, only grim determination to stay alive as the dead threw themselves at them. Twice already during the fighting Baumann’s blade had deflected a blow aimed at sweeping Fischer’s head clean off his shoulders.

Fischer ducked under a wild blow, jamming his sword up into the gut of a woman. Half of her face had been eaten away by maggots. He wrenched the sword left and right violently slicing deep into her spinal cord. Her torso buckled, folding over itself. Fischer dragged his sword free. Unable to support itself her body collapsed at their feet but still she clawed at them, tugging at their feet. Her clawed hands hooked around Baumann’s ankle and almost succeeded in toppling him before Fischer’s sword cleaved through her wrist. He kicked her severed hand away as another zombie trampled over her writhing corpse. There was no time for thanks.

The pair fought on, lungs and arms burning with exhaustion. The sheer weight of numbers was overwhelming. The dead climbed over each other to get at them.

All across Essen Ford it was the same.

The dead were a tidal wave, an undeniable force beyond the limits of nature sweeping everything away in their path. Von Carstein’s army was relentless and lethal. They had no need of weapons. They threw themselves bodily at the terrified soldiers, dragging them down into the sinking mud and once they had them down the dead swarmed over them, clawing, biting and rending at their flesh until they had stripped the fallen soldier of his humanity.

It was barbaric.

It wasn’t a battle, it was butchery.

Ghouls, once men like Fischer and Baumann before they sank so far as to become cannibalistic eaters of the dead, picked over the corpses as the combatants trampled them into the mud. The vile creatures stripped away fillets of fresh meat and gorged themselves on it.

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