Curse of the Necrarch by Steven Savile

Author:Steven Savile
Format: epub, mobi

Days abed turned into weeks, as Metzger gathered his strength.

The po-faced sister returned with her vile tasting tisanes and took away the soured poultices. There was nothing sweet in her demeanour but she most certainly had a healing touch.

There were mornings when Metzger awoke sure that he had died in the night and woken in the underworld, a prisoner of Morr, but then the pain bit and he knew that he was still alive. It was funny how the same thing that threatened to kill him became the thing that told him he was alive. It was an exquisite irony.

The men mustered. He sat in a wicker chair, watching from the window as Bonifaz and Cort put them through their drills, driving them hard. No one complained, the deaths of their friends and neighbours still fresh in their minds. The sound of swords rang out from dusk till dawn for a month and the rhythm of the drills changed, hinting at the growing proficiency of the men down on the parade grounds. Bonifaz visited night after night, the sweat still clinging to him as he sank into the chair opposite to report the day’s news. “We’ll make fighters of them yet,” was the most common conversation starter between them, followed almost always by, “Six men arrived from Merz,” or “Five more came in from Genz,” or some such.

They were building a small army one soldier at a time.

It wasn’t enough, the old knight knew. He had seen the things the enemy could do, raising swords from the grave and turning the casualties back on their friends before their blood had stopped gouting from their wounds. It was a perversion but it was only one of many that the enemy was capable of. Bohme was right: the enemy could not hide. The earth revolted at their vile presence, all of its vitality touched by the blight of unlife as the dead walked. In their wake they left a path of disease and decay.

More than anything, he felt helpless. It galled him to have to beg for aid, his own sword arm not strong enough to do what was necessary. He missed watching the goshawk fly. He missed the sweat of honest toil training side by side with his men. He missed being able to trust his own flesh.

“Enough with the self pity, old man,” Metzger berated himself. He knew he had reached a fork in the road. Stay in the chair and slip into dotage as a feeble old man, or push himself to his feet, get dressed and get back to whatever little life his heart permitted. Better to die defending what he loved than live like a dotard swaddled in blankets and drinking pulped vegetables with a wooden spoon listening to some well-meaning Shallyan nursemaid cluck and croon about what a good boy he was. That wasn’t the death he had imagined for himself, certainly not the one he had fought for time and again. He had earned the right to something better.

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