“Galvin…” Anselm said, turning back to the tower.

  “Your keep,” Guyime cut in. “The one you swore to hold. If you don’t lead these men, it falls tonight and they with it.”

  The anger lingered on Anselm’s face as he returned Guyime’s stare until a grudging shadow of understanding passed across his gaze. “Sergeant-at-arms Tuhmel!” he called out, breaking the contest with Guyime and moving away.

  One of the onlooking soldiers straightened, a stocky, heavy-jawed man a few years older than his comrades. “My lord!”

  “The state of our defences?” Anselm asked him, voice clipped with a new terseness.

  “Timbers readied, my lord,” Tuhmel said. “Reckon we’ve got enough to raise five-foot walls in the breaches. Only enough to half seal the gate, though. Was waiting for Squire Galvin’s word on how to proceed.”

  “Wait no longer,” Anselm told him. “I want all barricades raised by midnight. And get our archers on the battlements. They’re to call out at the first sign of anything approaching this keep, no matter how strange it may appear. And tell them to watch the lake as well as the shore.”

  The sergeant’s anvil-like jaw worked a little as the man considered his next words, exchanging glances with his men, all pale of face and uncertain of bearing. “If I may, my lord,” he said. “What’s out there? Is it the same as what befell Iervo?”

  Seeing Anselm’s brow furrow as he struggled to find a reply that wouldn’t raise the fears of these soldiers to a yet higher pitch, Guyime said, “It’s the same thing that sits outside the walls of any castle under siege.” He moved to place a firm hand on the sergeant’s shoulder, making sure the man saw the command in his eyes. “Something that wants to kill you. Now, if you’re keen to see the dawn, save your questions and follow your liege lord’s commands.”

  Father Lothare’s face was grim as he pressed the poultice to Galvin’s wound, the priest’s gaze shadowed by something Guyime had seen on many a healer’s face.

  “It’s a form of corruption I’ve never seen the like of before,” Lothare said, rising from the stricken man’s side. He moved to a cask of clean water, dipping a pus- and blood-stained cloth into it before wringing it out on the stone floor. He glanced over his shoulder at Galvin’s bulky, inert form laid out on a bed of straw sacks in the tower’s main chamber. “Turned the wound black in the space of an hour. Spreads too fast for gangrene. Smells a good deal fouler too.”

  “Medicines,” Anselm said, his voice shot through with a hoarse, demanding note. “Balms…”

  “There’s no balm nor physick known to man that would cure this, my lord,” Lothare told him. “The corruption is in his veins now, his bones too most likely. Truth be told, it’s only thanks to the sheer brute strength of the man that he hasn’t died already. I’m sorry. All we can do now is ease his pains and pray to the Risen for his soul.”

  Anselm’s features took on the blankness Guyime knew signified a man confronting something both horrible and inescapable. The knight’s lips twitched as yet more desperate pleas stirred his tongue only to fade in the face of Lothare’s implacable visage.

  “A tour of the keep is in order, my lord,” Guyime said. “Gauge the progress of the defences, maintain the men’s spirits. I’ll take Seeker to the top of the tower. Her cat sees well in the dark.”

  Anselm hesitated, eyes lingering on the squire who had begun to stir in feeble distress. “Elsinora,” the knight said, voice faint. “She always had such a care for him. Telling her of this…” His voice faltered and he let out a sigh, tearing his gaze from Galvin. “Tour of the keep, Captain,” he said, moving to the door. “Quite right.”

  Guyime watched him exit the tower before turning an intent stare upon Lothare. “You killed Iervo,” he said. “Or rather the thing that had been Iervo. As a widely travelled man, I assume you know what will happen when the squire dies.”

  Lothare consented to meet his eye for only a second before reaching for a clean cloth from the chest that held his curatives. “I do,” he said, voice clipped with evident reluctance.

  “He’s too big and strong to allow to rise and wreak havoc…”

  “I know!” Lothare rounded on him, beard parting to reveal his teeth in an angry snarl. “Damn you, I know.” His ire calmed quickly and he moved back to Galvin’s side, voicing a bitter reply, “I’ll see to it. But not an instant before it’s needed. Now, leave me to my work.”

  "I’ve seen the dead brought to a semblance of life before, but not like this.”

  Guyime rested his hands on the edges of the Baron Blackfyre’s tomb, meeting the eyes of each of his companions in turn. He wanted to ascribe the strain in his arms as he gripped the stone to his imagination, but it was too acute to be denied. Muscles that hadn’t expressed the slightest ache for decades of wandering and battle now felt stretched, as if the long years of his unnaturally prolonged existence had suddenly decided to make themselves known. Also, an unfamiliar tug of weariness had started to cloud his mind, something he found irked him more than his bodily aches.

  Without the demon, he thought, quelling the impulse to run a tired hand over his drooping brow, what am I but a very old man with a sharp sword?

  Gritting his teeth against the mounting fatigue, he settled a questioning look on Lexius. “Bodies that should be wasted by corruption move with all the quickness and ferocity of a wolf,” Guyime said. “Possessing eyes that glow with a green fire.”

  Throughout their acquaintance, Guyime had noted how Lexius seemed to be incapable of forgetting even the smallest scrap of lore. Typically, he answered all questions without pause, effortlessly plucking the required facts from his mental archive of arcane and ancient knowledge. Now, however, he allowed a notable interval before replying, one Guyime doubted had anything to do with a dulled memory.

  “It’s a fragmentary tale,” the scholar said. As ever, the lenses he wore made it hard to gauge his mood, but there was no mistaking the foreboding in his voice. “One that was old before even the rise of eternal Valkeris. But at least it provides us the name of our quarry, and our foe. For, I suspect they are the same thing.”

  “The sword we seek is doing this?” Orsena asked him.

  “I believe so.” Lexius cast a frustrated gaze around the gloomy recesses of the crypt. “Somewhere in this structure there lies a blade that has many names, but the oldest strikes me as the most apt: the Necromancer’s Glaive. As you know, Calandra’s father was obsessed with the Seven Swords and set me to researching any and all tales regarding supposedly enchanted swords or blades. The vast majority are patent nonsense or invention, but always it was the most ancient and rare that ring the truest. Some could even be corroborated by other sources. So it was with the Necromancer’s Glaive.

  “On the northern shore of the third sea there sits a ruin, so ancient and denuded by time that many will perceive it only as a jumble of old stones rather than the great city it once was. Its name is lost, as is the language of the people who live there. All we have are the tales of its fall. The more rational scholars ascribe it a terrible pestilence that swept the Five Seas in ancient times, a sickness with no cure that raged for a year and claimed two-thirds of the population before it faded.

  “The city on the shore was no exception, much to the distress of its king, for he greatly loved his people and the trials of watching them die drove him beyond madness. The pestilence was particularly fierce in his domain, sparing only a handful of people, including their maddened king who now reigned all but alone in a city of corpses. Raging and weeping he wandered the silent streets, imploring the dead to return, whereupon he found himself confronted by a living man, a stranger from far across the sea. A stranger bearing a sword.

  “‘If thou takest this blade,’ the stranger told the mad king, ‘and bargain with the beast that lurks within, then thine subjects will be restored unto thee.’ And so the mad king took the sword from the stranger who promptly vanished, never to be seen again. The beast within the blade whispered its vile enticements to the king, promised him that all he need do was unleash the power of the blade and once again his people would walk the streets of this majestic city. But, as is the way with demons, there was a lie in the promise. For, when the king held forth the blade and summoned its power, his people rose, but they rose as the corpses they had become. The sword’s evil magic filled them, making their eyes glow with the colour of the sickness that had claimed them. Great was their hunger and their malice, for they were driven by a demon’s lust. Great was the destruction they wrought upon their city and great the slaughter when they spread beyond its confines to assail those of other lands. The mad king’s army of death grew with every massacre, for in killing they swelled their number. The bite of one of these creatures is invariably fatal and all the dead within reach of the glaive’s malice were cursed to walk and feast on the living.

  “What happened next is vague. The various legends contradict each other. Some say that armies of mortal men were gathered to oppose this host of dire wights, as they came to be called, and eventually prevailed, killing the mad king and casting his cursed sword into the sea, or sometimes a volcano. Others state that it was the mad king himself who brought an end to the onslaught. By sheer power of will he returned himself to sanity and contained the demon’s influence in the sword before taking himself off to die a lonely death in far off lands, far away from the province of men. There are a few scattered stories dating from earlier times, fables of the dead summoned from the grave to wreak havoc, but they are sparse. It seems that, for most of its existence, the power of the Necromancer’s Glaive has been contained, until now.”

  “Someone unleashed it,” Guyime said. He kept his gaze from Seeker but she had evidently already formed her own conclusion.

  “Ekiri,” she said. “My daughter came here weeks ago, this we know.” She closed her eyes, jaws bunching. “She unleashed it, somehow. The dagger she carries, the thing inside it has enslaved her, set her to craft this trap for us.”

  “Meaning,” Lorweth mused, “it knows we’re tracking it.”

  “It didn’t guide her here to claim a sword,” Guyime realised. “But to draw us here, so that its power would end us.” He let out a small, bitter laugh, knowing Lakorath would have surely described this piece of deadly cunning as worthy of the Ravager himself. He sobered quickly, sensing the others’ discomfort at hearing him voice any expression of humour.

  “If the ancient tale is true,” he said, “then we know the power of the Necromancer’s Glaive can be contained. As long it remains undiscovered anyone who dies within reach of its influence will rise and feast on the living.”

  “The line of bodies we found must mark the limit of its power,” Orsena said. “But the village where the old man clawed his way out of the grave lies beyond that line.”

  “Magic is like a flame, your ladyship,” Lorweth said. “Burns bright when it’s first lit, then recedes. I’d guess the old man was awoken when the sword was found in this keep.” He grimaced. “Wherever it might be hiding itself.”

  Orsena shook her head. “The tombs hold only rusted swords. We opened each one and checked every corner of this crypt. It’s not here.”

  “It must be…” Guyime insisted, trailing off as Seeker abruptly stiffened, raising her eyes to the ceiling.

  “What is it?” Guyime asked her.

  “Lissah,” Seeker said, expression grim. The caracal had been dispatched to the tower’s summit to keep watch whilst they gathered in the crypt. “She smells them. There are many. Every soul that once dwelt in this valley is rising from the lake.”

  Her warning was confirmed by the muted sound of alarmed voices echoing down the stairwell. “Stay here,” Guyime told Lexius as the others all made for the steps. “There must be something, some clue, otherwise Ekiri couldn’t have found it.”

  “But, won’t all blades be needed?” Lexius protested, putting a hand to the Kraken’s Tooth.

  “You’re the keenest mind I’ve encountered in a very long life,” Guyime told him as he strode to the stairwell. “But also, perhaps, the worst swordsman. Your place is here. Keep looking and fetch me when you find it.”

  Emerging into the courtyard, he found the barricades had been only partially completed. Those on the breaches stood four feet high whilst the bracing of nailed-together timber at the gate was more substantial. Although standing taller than most men, the barrier still left an appreciable gap between its upper beams and the gate’s arch.

  “We’ve no time,” Guyime told an anxious Anselm who had been engaged in loudly haranguing the labouring soldiers to nail more timbers in place. One glance over the barricade covering the nearest beach revealed an ugly and growing tide on the lakeshore. The dire-wights were struggling free of the water in a thick mass at the base of the isthmus, whilst dozens more splashed about amidst the moss-slick rocks at the keep’s base. Whatever malign intelligence guided these things was evidently intent on assaulting them from all sides.

  “Sergeant Tuhmel!” Guyime called out. The stocky soldier came quickly to his side, face beaded with sweat from both toil and well-justified fear. “Line up all the casks you can at the gatehouse barricade to create a parapet,” Guyime told him. “Take half the company and work them in relays as they tire. They are to use their halberds at all times and make sure each man is wearing gloves. These things die when you crush their skulls and a single bite is fatal. Get to it, man!” he snapped when Tuhmel hesitated to cast a questioning look at Anselm. Receiving a nod from his lord, the sergeant ran off, shouting orders.

  Guyime expected a prideful rebuke from Anselm regarding infringement of his authority, but instead the knight’s attention seemed mostly fixed upon the entrance to the tower. It glowed with the light of the fire inside where Lothare still laboured to ease the pains of a dying squire.

  “Your place is here,” Guyime reminded him. “The men need to see their lord is not afraid.”

  “He saved my life,” Anselm said, eyes lingering on the doorway. “More than once. My father used to say that, without a good squire, a knight is just a pampered fop in shiny plate.” He laughed, bitter and short. “A man of great insight, my father, even more so when he’d had a few skinfuls of wine. He wasn’t born to nobility, you see. He won it by dint of courage in arms, something neither he nor the true nobles ever forgot. Although born to title, I have truly been one of them. Elsinora didn’t care, though. Nor did Galvin.”

  “You’d be best placed close to the gate, my lord,” Guyime advised when Anselm lapsed into a reflective silence. “With your permission, the Stone Dogs shall oversee the breaches.”

  Anselm blinked and nodded, drawing his longsword then pausing to cast a frowning glance around the courtyard and the ragged walls of Blackfyre Keep. “This is a useless pile of stones, is it not, Captain?” He spoke without expectation of an answer, laughing again and shaking his head. “Strange I didn’t see it before. I had such dreams of it. A castle of my own, far away from the sneers and scorn of the western nobles. I would have been a good lord to the people here; fair and just. Now, it appears they want to eat me.”

  “Destroy them all and the lands will be empty,” Guyime said. “And good land is never wanting for tenants.”

  He strode off, beckoning to Seeker and the others. “Choose your spot,” he told the Beast Charmer, nodding to the battlements. As she ran for the steps abutting the gatehouse, he resisted the impulse to remind her that every arrow had to count: he had never seen her miss.

  “Ultria,” he said, turning to Orsena. “If you would have a care for the eastward breach and I’ll see to the west. Master Druid, abide in the courtyard and conserve your strength. If these barricades fall, we’ll need your winds to cover a withdrawal to the tower.”

  Lorweth gave a pale-faced nod before forcing a grin. “A tight spot to be sure, your worship,” he said. “Still, I’d wager you’ve known a few tighter, eh?”

  “Save for the wrath of a mad god, no.” Guyime attempted an encouraging smile, but from the way the druid took an involuntary backward step, deduced it resembled more the leering grimace of a grizzled tyrant steeped in death.

  Orsena appeared more resolute as they moved to the rear of the tower, though he assumed inhuman strength did much to buttress the courage of one facing combat in battle for the first time. Still, there was some uncertainty in her bearing before they separated, a flexing of her hands as she clutched the hilt of the Conjurer’s Blade. “There are…children amongst them?” she asked.

  “All ages, all sizes.” Seeing her hands twitch again he added, “They are not people any longer. They are not even beasts. They are worse. See only the evil that animates them and do not spare. If one gets past you, this keep will fall.”

  He watched her nod and stride off, then went to the south-facing breach. It was the narrowest of the gaps in the walls and therefore the most easily barred. Four men-at-arms waited at the barricade, faces stark with fear. “Get your gloves on,” Guyime instructed one when he saw the man’s hands smear sweat on the haft of his halberd. He stared at the soldier until he complied, then peered into the breach. “They can only come at you one at a time here. When you kill them, try to push the corpses back a ways so they don’t pile up before the barricade.”

  The sweaty-palmed soldier promptly vomited on his half-donned gloves, much to the profane disgust of his comrades. “Shut your yap!” Guyime ordered, his voice the hard rasp that had once commanded thousands and ordered men flogged to death for ill-discipline. He paused to let their abrupt silence string out; it was good that they fear him more than they feared what was coming.

  “If it looks as if the breach will fall,” he said, placing a hand on the spewer’s shoulder, “come fetch me at the eastern breach.”

  “Yes, my lord,” the fellow breathed, a glimmer of hope rising in his eyes.

  “Just a captain, lad.”

  He found the east-facing breach in a yet more aggravating state of disorder, the half-dozen men-at-arms stationed there exchanging fearful glances as they stood around in tense uncertainty. A few curt snaps of the Ravager’s voice sufficed to set them in motion, trundling two carts up to the barricade to serve as a parapet and gathering a stack of wood-axes for secondary weapons.