Chapter 74
Inever considered what would happen to a deathwalker who is starved for souls, but as my weakness gnaws from expending so much energy on this wildly rushed trip here in my human form, I wonder if I could wither away from existence.
A final death.
They pass for human, but don’t. They’re bigger with a gray hue to their skin. Their fingers come to bony, bloody points just like their teeth. But it’s the eyes that are the most unsettling.
“Ready a defense!” I yell over my shoulder to Hoack, who yells orders to his second.
Thirty rogues stride across the flat to where we guard the cave entrance. Thirteen guards fill in behind me.
“This is it?” I hiss to Hoack. “I thought we had at least fifty.”
Hoack’s face is pale. “I sent half to retrieve a supply train this morning.”
From within the cave, I hear a baby cry.
I pull my sword of shadow, and its long, black blade flickers in direct correlation with my own strength.
“Fall into two lines,” I yell behind me. “One in front, one in back! Guard the entrance!”
Feet rustle behind me as the rogues descend.
“Remember,” Hoack calls out. “Guns don’t work. Spear through their hearts!”
As soon as they are close enough, they jump onto our lines. A spear impales one through the shoulder while my blade slices the head off another. The one hung up on the spear thrashes until it reaches up and snaps the spear in two, pulls it forward, and sinks its rabid jaws around the neck of the man who held it.
The body of the one I just decapitated begins crawling fast for the man next to me, claws thrashing. The man beside me plummets his spear through its back, straight through the heart.
The rogue drops like a rock, ceasing to move.
Through the heart. Got it.
They move so fast, the ends of our lines dissolve in bloody screams as spears are shattered and blood is spewed. We are outnumbered.
With every man who falls, I am failing. With every thrust of my sword, I’m draining. A rogue jumps and lands on Hoack.
I pivot, stab.
Another one jumps on to Hoak’s second. I spin and thrust.
One clears the wall of guards and takes off for the tunnel. I spirit to him and sink my blade through its back.
My short absence from the front is noticed. Cries of pain and death erupt as the rogues begin attacking in twos and threes.
I jet back to the front. Pivot, stab.
Jump, thrust.
Run, turn, stab, stab, stab.
Rogues are falling, but our walls are falling faster.
Ice rolls down my shoulders and up my blade as I try and fail to save every man.
It doesn’t matter how skilled I am. I can’t save the man twenty feet away while I’m saving the man behind me.
My blade is beginning to shorten, flickering. My movements are slowing. As I reach through a rogue chest with my fist, I realize they have no souls for me to feed on.
Our lines shrink to five men, who are barely standing, and we have roughly twenty rogues left.
That’s when more appear on the horizon.