Post by JMDavis ((Silver)) on Mar 31, 2015 19:14:17 GMT -5
Criminals & Heroes
Thunder cracked above in an angry sky. The rolling thunderheads only serving to make the night darker than it normally was. Though the brief flashes of lightning served to illuminate a landscape of twisted trees with ominously looming branches. Shadows of brief light and darkness making them out to be monsters to the imaginative and easily frightened.
The wagon jostled and rocked from holes worn in the muddy road. Derrolt couldn’t decide which he hated more: the cold rain sheeting down through rusted iron bars and soaking his dirty black hair to his pale olive skin, or the occasional bump that sent him floundering into the other passengers aboard the wagon. The rain had the terrible habit of being cold enough to make it feel like a vice compressing his chest. But the upside of dampening the smell of his fellow inmates – which combined the perfume of low tide with the scent of sewer-fire smoke. The jostling, on the other hand, just served to get him much closer to the men he shared the cramped confines with. It also served to drive splinters deep into the cheeks of his ass.
In comparison, the rain wasn’t so bad.
Ultimately, he decided, it was the manacles still digging into his wrists that was the most annoying and painful. The cold deadened the pain and washed away the blood. So the chafing against his wrists and feel of warm blood oozing down his fingers wasn’t as terrible as it used to be. With a sigh of long suffering, the man slouched forward; shoulders hunched and eyes staring intently at the locks on the manacles, trying to puzzle a way out of them. They’d searched him well enough – twice – and managed to find every hidden bit of scrap he could have used to get free. He was more than sure that he was doing this more for the benefit of not giving into despair than any hope of actually freeing himself.
That was, sadly, more than could be said for the rest of the passengers – or most of the rest of the passengers. The majority were hollowed eyed men garbed in thin rags and looking half-starved. He’d seen more flesh in an ossuary than were on the poor bastards he was sharing the cart with. But, he reflected, that was the difference between them and him. They had the wasted and hungry look of desperation still clinging to their sallow features. Peasants whose only crime may have been stealing a piece of food. Compared to them Derrolt knew he was practically a specimen of pique physical health.
Which was a terrible thought, considering he was only moderately more fleshed out than them. Career criminal versus would-be bread thieves.
The only other one who stood apart was one of the violent southmen: muscle-bound, layered in scars, with pale skin generally reserved for the sick. Rain plastered dark red hair to his head and shoulders – since the man seemed to have no neck – and made a thin, scraggly mess of his beard. The barbarian’s blue eyes were bright and sweeping around the bars of the cage.
Derrolt swallowed, a clash of thunder almost serving to mask – to his ears, at least – the sound of his fear. He recognized it, of course he did. Fear was important to those who wanted to filch and live. But he didn’t like it, if only because now the fear didn’t have a place to work itself toward. He couldn’t fight the big man, no weapons, and he couldn’t run – damned cages. So he contented himself with doing his best to avoid eye contact and be immensely thankful for the much thicker chains that bound the barbarian.
Then that damnable curiosity – the same affliction that now had him in chains – sparked, he’d never been close to one before now – but he’d heard the stories. Why they didn’t just kill the brute outright he didn’t understand. Pale green eyes roved over the terrifying behemoth before those blue eyes focused on Derrolt and caused the man to flinch and hurriedly look away. There was a slight grunt, one in which the thief was sure he felt more than heard, before the barbarian looked away with disinterest.
That was when a body crashed into the wagon. Metal bent and warped as blood splattered against Derrolt and the rest of the prisoners. The body-turned-missile of one of the outriders rolled from where it had crashed onto the ground. Horses and men screamed, and howls went shrieking into the night air. Howls that sent jagged slivers of ice through Derrolt’s veins. Lurching in a spastic, jerking lope that parodied both man and beast – they came. Hungry and howling, stomachs distended and trailing organs.
Zombies.
The bloated demons hurled themselves at the guards. One managed a lucky shot from his crossbow – quivering bolt buried in gangrenous flesh. The beast corrected its course with the horrifying smoothness of a serpent, lunging and tackling the guard from his horse to the ground. The man shrieked in fear, struggling to get his sword free and fend off the jaws of the demon.
Teeth sunk through boiled leather, flesh, and then shattered bone. A toss of its head sent the guard’s hand away before it dove into the feast. Another guard – and his horse – were pulled down by six of the snarling monsters. To the credit of the man, his sword was out and slashing wildly as he was covered in rotting bodies. The rest of the men, five on horse and the two drivers, readied themselves. The lead guard on horse drew a heavy, ugly looking warhammer from a loop at his belt while the others drew swords. The two drivers had massive crossbows – the kind that could pin two knights together with a single-shot.
Yet it was the zombies that were the more horrifying to Derrolt. The reasons for that, his panic-filled mind told him, were twofold. The first was because the zombies were creatures of the Darkness. Monsters driven only by an insane, bestial urge. There was no bargaining with them – no reasoning. A man could be bribed or threatened. A zombie could only be killed.
The other reason was because the guards had set themselves so the wagon, filled with whimpering – expendable – meat, would be hit first. Something went sailing out of the mass of zombies – the remnants of the horse carcass – which shattered against the cage door of the wagon. The door bent, something snapped, and hinges squealed as the iron fell from the hinges.
Two things kicked in at that moment: herd instincts and survival instincts. Herd instincts dictated a mad, massed rush – and the hollowed-eyed prisoners followed it. In a wave of jostling limbs and fear the ten criminals spilled from the gate. Their gibbering voices raised in fear.
They didn’t even make it to the other side of the road. The howling mass of zombies piled into the ten prisoners. Limbs and blood flying. Guards watching with only twinges of disgust as the undead feasted. Ropy tendrils of drool and blood leaking from shredded maws, fifteen eyes searched hungrily.
Derrolt swallowed – the instincts of a career thief pushing him to the furthest back of the cage. He couldn’t escape. But he could delay the inevitable and pray to the Host. Of course they wouldn’t answer, as the first zombie began to ooze its bulk through the twisted door frame. Derrolt shut his eyes tight, not wanting to see the end.
There was an ungodly roar, the sound of something ripping, and Derrolt was splattered in something thick and warm. He whimpered, opening his eyes and staring. He’d forgotten about the huge brute that hadn’t run. The barbarian stood, hunched over, in the prison-wagon, the unseeing head of the zombie clutched in one hand. The bloated body of the demon flopping on the ground as the last vestiges of its unholy false-life fled. The big man still had the heavy chains around his wrists.
How the fuck? Derrolt stared – fear of the undead replaced by fear of the man he was currently stuck in the cage with.
The barbarian tossed the head, awkwardly and underhanded, through the doorway of the cage. The kicked the body following after it. Rolling his shoulders and cracking his nonexistent neck, the massive southman planted himself firmly in the center of the wagon – glowering at the undead. Derrolt remained where he was – cowering behind the living mountain of muscle and hatred. A chorus of howls went up, and the zombies hurled themselves at the ruined doorway. Gangrenous claws and fleshless talons clawing and scrabbling to get in.
The barbarian remained where he was – only one of the things could get in at a time. No need to rush. Bellows – almost human – as claws turned against waxy flesh. Zombies beginning to rip and tear at one another. A shout went up, a clatter of hooves, and the guards rushed the flanks of the zombies. Heavy-bladed swords hacking into dead flesh. Heavy warhammer pulping meat and bone. The captain reversed his grip on the warhammer as the last zombie died. Utilizing the spike at the end he hooked and dragged the bodies from the door, keeping his eyes on Derrolt and the barbarian.
The Captain set his jaw, looking away from Derrolt to the big man. “If I tell you to sit down and stay put, will you?” his voice was low, the rain almost muting it. Brown eyes with dark rings beneath them looked at the savage with a weary acceptance for solving this physically if necessary. The barbarian’s response was a low sound as he sunk back down onto the benches lining either side of the wagon. The Captain turned his eyes toward Derrolt and arched an eyebrow inquisitively. Derrolt swallowed a lump in his throat, shifting to settle on the opposite bench as the barbarian.
A slight nod before the Captain turned away, looking at the mess of dead. The zombies were the only things close to being recognizably whole. The other prisoners were scattered about in human chunks. None of the other four outriders had returned. Of his own men who had died at the scene one was whole enough. Wet leather ran down a tired face. “Mark the spot, lads. We’ll return tomorrow, after dropping these two off at Stalwart, with wood and oil. Pray to the bloody Host that we don’t find this place stripped clean,” he ordered – the sound of his voice all too clear that he’d given this same command before. One of the guards gave a slight nod, retrieving a worn map of smooth vellum and a piece of charcoal, sheltering it as much as he could to place a thick X on it.
The Captain looked back at us, before giving a slight nod of his head toward the barbarian. He turned his horse away, trotting to the front and pointing to two of his men in a wordless command. The selected guards traded off their swords to the drivers for the heavy crossbows before returning to the rear. Glistening steel tips pointed at the ruined, open door of the cage. The threat was clear enough – though Derrolt still placed his bets on the southman.
The wagon groaned like a wounded beast before shuddering and limping forward. It wobbled more than before – even when missing potholes. The same wounded groan rose up every minute or so and set Derrolt’s teeth on edge. If only the big man had tried to escape. Then Derrolt could have fled.
Into the night.
Where zombies had just come from.
The thoughts sobered his ideas of fleeing, and he thought back to the bodies left behind.
A shiver, not wholly due to the cold and the wet. Maybe being behind the walls of Stalwart wouldn’t be so bad.
