Chapter 30
YUMA
They had boarded over the windows of the first floor of the Feast Hall. Through the little gaps in those boards, Yuma observed Lysandros in his head-to-toe metal armor as he fought Garamund. The sun had already set outside, but Fractica’s blue light illuminated the square.
Lysandros’s armor looked bulky, but his movements were swift and precise.
Fractica’s blue glow swirled with the violet vapor of Lysandros’s armor, making his every movement an arresting sight, as if he were a dancer performing for them.
From the floor above, she could hear snatches of the Host’s continuing song.
Lysandros had taken that armor out from Fractica’s body. It was so large, he didn’t so much put it on as lower himself into it. And yet he moved effortlessly, as nimble as a cat. Yuma guessed that Lysandros’s armor moved under the same principle as his iron frame.
The Grim King’s general Garamund was so large that even Lysandros in his full armor looked like a child next to him, though the Imperial emissary was clearly not weaker.
He withstood Garamund’s swinging mace, which otherwise could have taken down a house, without much strain.
Every time the mace made contact with him, it made a dull ringing sound like a bell, and Yuma grimaced as if she had been hit herself.
Lysandros had no weapons in his hands, but he sliced and stabbed with the long blades fitted onto his armored forearms with expert skill. One of the blades split Garamund’s chest, but the inhuman giant didn’t even flinch, and the wound closed immediately into a long scar.
The black orox Garamund had ridden had already had its head sliced off by Lysandros’s blades and fallen dead.
The ground was also littered with the remains of the skeletal soldiers that had charged at the emissary—most of them had shattered with one blow of his fists.
The ones left standing were still attacking him from the back and sides, but he deftly picked them off and pulverized them with his hands.
“This should be a duel, between the Imperial emissary and the general of the Grim King,” suggested Lysandros to Garamund as he crushed another attacking skeleton without even looking, “while these pests simply watch.” His tone was the same as when he conversed and joked with Yuma, though his voice was amplified as if he were speaking through a cone.
Fractica stood a little off from the battle, shining its light into the square.
Garamund must’ve realized it was the source of Lysandros’s power, as he kept trying to approach it, but Lysandros quickly blocked him each time, goading him into another round.
Lysandros was a smart man, expertly carrying out their plan.
While Garamund was distracted by Lysandros, Yuma knew the skeletons would soon charge into the Feast Hall.
The herders were finishing up their preparations, barring the doors that originally did not have bars.
Aidan would be tying the last traps in place.
His gaze was darker than she had ever seen.
Having been closer to the Grim King than any of them, he was probably more fearful of what was to come than the rest.
She saw the windows around the square that had previously been shut tight begin to open a little.
The citizens of Danras couldn’t help their curiosity, this glorious machine-man fighting against the abomination of the Grim King.
Yuma was counting on that curiosity. Now all Lysandros had to do was win …
Suddenly, the skeletal soldiers leaped away from Lysandros and disappeared from Yuma’s narrow sight. She turned to the main doors of the Feast Hall.
“Chief Herder!” shouted the young lookout. “They’re coming!” The youth scrambled away from the doors, as a loud crash against them made them shake. All the herders took a step back.
“It begins. Ready yourselves,” Yuma announced, as calmly as she possibly could.
This fight was not only up to Lysandros. The herders in the hall also had their role.
Yuma drew the machete from her hip. The Spear of Hope remained on her back—she wasn’t as proficient with the spear as with the blade, and the confines of the Feast Hall made it a cumbersome weapon for now.
While the herders considered it shameful to hit a target with only nine shots out of ten from the saddle of a running horse, the skeletal dead were impervious to arrows.
There were unfortunately few among the herders who had ever used blades in battle, so the best they could do was use the iron cattle prods that they typically used to herd oroxen.
They held up these cattle prods with trembling hands, waiting for the entry of the deathless soldiers who knew no fear or pain.
“Why do these things have to come at night,” muttered one of them.
“Life has become death for them,” explained Aidan, “and to them, day is like the darkest night is for us. They can’t see clearly in front of them during the day.”
The door shook hard. They were perhaps using a large log to try to ram through the doors. Again, and again, the doors shook. Yuma could see the herders’ knuckles turn white as they gripped their cattle prods.
Finally, the bar across the doors cracked.
Yuma gestured for them to stand back. With another slam, the heavy doors exploded open, and as soon as Fractica’s blue light entered the room and lit up the skulls of the undead army, Yuma sliced through the rope that Aidan had just tied up.
The logs hanging from the rafters swung downward and struck the bony intruders as they began to pour in.
Before Yuma could even give the signal, the herders charged at the remaining skeletons that had avoided the logs.
But the undead soldiers were completely unfazed by the attacks; one that had just lost its legs tried to get up and fight, and a hand that had fallen off tried to creep up Yuma’s leg.
She shook it off and crushed it beneath her foot.
“We can’t defend ourselves here,” Yuma reminded them. “Fight them off as you retreat!”
There were only two places where retreat was possible.
One was the gathering room deep in the back of the first floor; the other was the staircase leading upstairs.
The Grim King did not know where the Host was yet, so Yuma’s plan was to divide the undead army in two and fight for as much time as possible.
As the stronger herders covered for them, the younger ones were to run to the gathering room and get ready to shut and bar the doors.
The rest were to slowly defend their way to the stairs, creating a bottleneck.
The minions of the Grim King threw themselves upon the herders, afraid of neither injury nor losing their undead lives. Several herders screamed and fell as they made their way to the stairs, and they quickly drowned under a wave of bleached bones.
As Yuma defended the stairs, she glanced at the front doors. The Grim King’s minions continued to swarm through them. Yuma was worried about the battle outside, but she reassured herself that if Lysandros had lost, it would’ve been Garamund, not the bone soldiers, entering through those doors.
Normally, the Feast Hall—like the catacombs—would’ve had the protection of the Host’s enchantment and it would not be a place that the monsters of the Grim King could enter and defile so easily.
But the Host was putting all he had into this song.
When Yuma had asked the Host if he could protect the catacombs, the Host had not answered.
If the catacombs were not under enchantment, and the Grim King realized this, the rebellion would be over in a second.
Early-winter wind brushed against Yuma’s cheeks, and she heard the wind chimes tinkle above her, so incongruous with the sounds of battle.
Fighting from above on a staircase is much easier than from the other direction, so Yuma and the herders used their machetes and cattle prods to fend off the corpses as they slowly made their way up.
“Chief Herder, these bastards keep—” Before Barund could finish his sentence, his throat was ripped out by a bony clawed hand, his spurting blood bathing the white skull of his attacker red.
With no shout of triumph, or any other reaction, the skeletons stepped over Barund’s fallen body as they advanced.
Yuma fended them off with her blade, taking another step back.
A herder who’d been standing behind Barund quickly filled in the space he left.
Yuma and the herders had retreated to where the stairs exited the Feast Hall to wrap around the building. Only the stars lit the way through the dark, the building itself now blocking Fractica’s blue light from their sight. She could barely hear the ongoing battle between Lysandros and Garamund.
Kicking an attacking skeleton off the stairs, Yuma shouted, “Get to your prepared places!” She felt the others moving hastily behind her. They might not be soldiers, but the instant way they obeyed her orders put the Grim King’s walking bones to shame.
Aidan had suddenly appeared by her side and was fending off an entire phalanx of the dead.
She risked looking backward to make sure the stairs were empty.
Yuma and Aidan exchanged a glance, a signal.
They simultaneously turned and ran up the winding steps.
The sound of the clacking skeletons in pursuit was too close for comfort.
Yuma did not look back, and when she reached where the herders had gathered, she kicked a peg stuck into the stairs with her heel.
Three protruding wooden pegs started spinning before flying off, and the stairs behind Yuma collapsed under the weight of the skeletal soldiers.
The Grim King’s undead army flailed in the air before scattering to pieces on the streets of Danras below.
Yuma breathed. They had managed to buy some time.