The Ghoul King by Guy Haley

Author:Guy Haley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

Old Columbus

MORNING CAME, AND WE DEPARTED. Robyn was stiff with her farewells, still aggrieved at being left behind. We took only the bare essentials, water, food for the day, ropes and climbing gear, electric flashlights and pitch torches. And our weapons, of course. I set out into the pale predawn with a heavy heart, stepping through that ragged door over the remains of our fire as glumly as a man on the way to the scaffold. Facing the night dying in the west, looking out into the wilds, I was seized by the desire to run and not stop until the broken spires of Columbus were over the horizon, but my feet dumbly followed the others around the building and down the gentle slope of the valley to the broken course of the Scioto River.

Fallen structures and dead trees had clogged the flow. The Scioto is not a mighty flood, and is much diminished by the diversion of its tributaries. Not far north of Newtown its braidings weave themselves back into a single channel, but by Old Columbus the river splits into rivulets, many ending in stagnant pools, and all of it surrounded by thick brakes of stunted willow and alder. I was glad of the time of the year, for in summer the swamp would surely be swarming with mosquitoes.

We crossed the floodplain. Ice fringed brown waters. Frost dusted the grass. We passed the boulder I had seen the ghoul perch upon as the pack had run by. The ground there was deeply scored by their claws, and the concrete bore parallel scratches from the talons of the female’s feet. There was a faint, musky scent on the air. Quinn pointed out their droppings, black with blood and clotted with hair.

The rumble of distant water grew. The river spread itself out further into many wide, shallow channels, but in places there were deep lakes, oddly shaped, the works of the Gone Before. Their earthworks were everywhere, the signs of their endless roads. And as we drew nearer to the spires of the city, more artifacts of the distant past emerged from their coverings of grass and tree. The piers of a mighty bridge loomed from dry ground, the river having sidestepped them long ago.

Then we came to the field of wonders.

Angelic armor lay scattered around, half-submerged in the water, or resting broken backed on the remains of shattered buildings. All of it was stripped of paint and decoration by the forces that had downed it, but such is the art of the angels that many of the suits were recognizable for what they were. They were forged for giants, tall as three men, with long arms of banded steel mounting fearsome and incomprehensible weapons. Faceless helms sat atop armored necks, and from the backs of each spread wings. These were delicate, made of some sort of glass that had wilted in the heat of the bombs where it had not been blasted completely away. The wind moaned through the gaps in the plates.

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