Posted by Thanatos on April 15, 2000 at 12:06:11:
Author's note: A 'sword & sorcery' story from me this time. I found this difficult to write without descending into clichés, so I hope it works. All feedback welcomed, as always.
Oh, and I have cast someone you may recognize in the role of the narrator, as she is so fond of the ‘mystic’ stories.
Th.
N E C R O P O L I S (c) Thanatos Reborn 2000
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Scratch, scratch.
The nib of the pen moves slowly over the parchment.
The words form with great slowness, as if the writer has difficulty controlling their hand.
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
Moonlight is flooding in at the open window where the writer sits. It fills the room with pale white light, and in the light we can see that the writer is a young woman. She is dressed like a soldier; some kind of dark armor covers her upper body, and high boots adorn her long legs that are thrust under the table.
Her hair is black against her white face. She sits at a tiny table by the window, intent on her task. The room is strangely bare of furniture; there is no bed, or chairs; just the desk and a few dusty objects in the corner.
Dust everywhere.
Scratch, scratch.
A deathwatch beetle clicks behind the wooden paneling, but the woman carries on writing, oblivious to her surroundings.
We crane over her shoulder, and in the moonlight we can read the first three words as her hand reaches the end of the sentence:
'I am dead.'
* * *
I am dead.
I write these words with difficulty, for my hands do not form the words as easily as they used to in life, and my memory struggles to recall things. Therefore I, Anna de Barbe, one-time soldier in the army of the High King, set these things down, so that others who find this place may hear what happened here.
As I recount my tale, you may not be able to believe the events that befell me, and you may step over my crumbling bones without a thought. But I caution you, bold stranger, heed my words, for I buy them with great pain.
The moon is rising as I slowly write these words, crawling up the sky, lighting up the white buildings and towers with its cold radiance, spilling its white light onto this page.
Moonrise over Necropolis.
How can I convey to you, mortal stranger, what a city is like that is populated only by the Dead? Even at soul's midnight, a great city is filled with sound; but the only sounds that come through my window here are the ceaseless sounds of the waves lapping against the harbor walls. The city is silent, but the Dead are awake, for they work in silence for their dark mistress, and their only thoughts are those that she puts there. Behind countless dark windows and doors, the Dead work ceaselessly, in the forges and armories, in the shipwrights and in the chymists' chambers, where Sulonne's potions are brewed that are used to reanimate the corpses of Her vanquished enemies.
Ah yes, I was an enemy once. A lifetime ago, I marched out, young and proud, under the banner of the King, to hammer at the gates of Necropolis and demand that Sulonne, the Queen of the Dead, yield to us.
Let me tell you my story, stranger, so that you might learn.
* * *
I was in the advance guard that rode ahead of the army and long before the main force arrived, we had scouted out the layout of Sulonne's city and learned the disposition of our foes.
Ah! I remember well that handful of days, with the breeze in my hair and my faithful steed Dorkas under me, loping effortlessly through the high grasses as we scouted out the lands round Necropolis. I was young, and fit, and healthy, and the wound from my last battle had healed well, and my comrades and I rode all day, and feasted on rabbits and other animals that we had caught. It was Spring, and the Sun lit up our days, and our spirits were high.
Twice during those days I chose a young novice during the day for special attention, and later in the night, when everyone else was dozing, I seduced them away from the campfire into the high grass, to slake the lust that burned within me. The second one, a powerful youth only a year or two my junior, put up a magnificent fight as I straddled him that night, but I was gloriously strong, and I forced him back into the grass, and I was filled with a sense of great power as I impaled myself on the sword of his manhood, my thighs gripping his sides as I took him. I felt like a wild animal, feasting on the kill, as he lost control beneath me and groaned, filling me with his young fire.
Ah... I know these things happened, and it fills me with sadness beyond words that it is gone.
On the last day of our patrol, the day before the army arrived, we spied out the walls and gates of Necropolis itself.
The city was on rising land by the Eastern coast, and its encircling wall and battlements ran roughly in three-fourths of a circle from Northeast, round to the great Western gate, and back again to Southeast. The unwalled fourth quarter, facing the sea, leading down steep terraces and alleys to the harbor by the sea. There was no practicable way to scale the cliffs and come by the city from the rear, or past the fortified harbor walls, so we recommended a frontal assault on the Western gate, while a diversionary force would attack the Northern wall, where we deemed the ground best for a scaling.
Many times during that day I put the spyglass to my eyes and stared at the silent city, and I marveled at the sight of the Dead, pacing the battlements of the city ceaselessly, day and night. I could see their tarnished and blackened spears moving against the sky, and at our closest approach, from a knoll to the West of the Gates, I could make out their features. They looked like living people, until you saw that some had ghastly wounds on their faces, and most were clad in tattered uniforms of vanquished foes that flapped in the breeze. This was my first sight of the Dead, that I heard so much about in campfire stories, and I shivered, and crawled back down from the knoll to where my companions waited with the horses.
My thighs were stiff with all the riding, and my womanhood sore from the previous night's pleasure, but I put my foot in the stirrup iron and mounted Dorkas and still sat upright, without slouching. I was proud of my bearing and my rank in the King's Army, and I was but twenty-two years of age. My firm breasts thrust forward in their leather armor, and my hard thighs lay astride the soft leather of the saddle. I had put on my tall leather boots for the day's fighting, and I thrilled to the hot blood in my veins and the feeling of power, of invincibility, that my armor gave me, and I put my hand down to feel once more the pommel of my longsword.
'Before the day is done, eh!' grinned Gawdron, grinning through his moustache at me.
'I said, you'll be swinging that through someone's neck before the day is done!' he repeated, urging his horse closer to mine with a powerful thrust of his pelvis and the lightest touch to its sides.
I smiled.
'I don't think they count as people, my friend,' I replied, gesturing towards the battlements, 'they're not alive.'
At this, Gawdron looked suddenly sad, and I ordered the rest of them to hasten to our army, that was assembling a mile or two distant, while Gawdron and I walked our horses back. I sat in my saddle, not saying anything, knowing that Gawdron would speak when he wished to.
'Some of our kinsfolk march today on those battlements, raised from the dead by Sulonne and her evil arts,' he said, lifting his chin from his thoughts. 'How will you feel, Anna, when you take your blade to someone that you once knew, maimed and disfigured though they be?’
I returned no answer, and Gawdron continued:
‘And, though I have never told you before, my brave warrior at arms, many years ago, Sulonne's armies took my village and my family, and maybe somewhere in there they are moving too, in the nameless life of the Dead. And let me tell you also, if I find them in there, I will be hard pressed to put my dear wife to the sword, though she knows me not, and may hold arms against me.'
I reached out and put my hand on his arm, and I said nothing as he bowed his head. I prayed silently that he would be spared seeing his loved ones today.
And then the horns and drums sounded, and we shortened our reins and urged our horses forward to a canter as we hurried back to the lines.
The battle formations were gathering.
* * *
I was in the vanguard of the army, that marched up to the evil gates of the city. We stopped at the bottom of the ramp that led up to the gates, and from our ranks the herald and her guards rode forward until they were directly beneath the gates.
An eerie silence greeted them. Sulonne's soldiers had disappeared from the walls, and only the blank gray stone of the gates and the encircling wall greeted them. The wind blew, silent and cold around us as the herald read out the challenge to Sulonne and demanded that she yield to us.
The herald reached the end of her text, and looked up for a response, but there was nothing. Three times she read the challenge, and each time her words were greeted by utter silence.
The small party turned and made ready to descend the ramp back to our vanguard.
Suddenly there was a vicious thrumming of arrows, and the herald screamed in pain. A bloody arrowhead protruded from her chest, then another, and another, and her mouth fell open and she dropped her reins in shock as she was shot again and again in the back, and she rolled slowly and painfully off her panicking horse.
Her guards flung their hands wide as they too were pierced by arrows, and then their horses were struck, and they reared up, or fell on their sides, kicking madly in the dirt. There was a sickening crunch as one of the guards' horses fell onto his rider's leg, crushing it, and the rider was pinned down. More arrows whined into the struggling figures, and the trapped man jerked helplessly as he was shot through again and again by Sulonne's archers. They were uncannily accurate, as if their very hands and eyes were guided by Sulonne's evil will.
They saved most of their arrows for the herald though, who was clawing at the sides of her fallen mount, trying to pull herself to safety, and they used her breasts as targets, loosing arrow after arrow into her, the shafts piercing the leather breastplates with a savage THUNK, until she fell backwards, arms outstretched, on the flanks of her downed horse, her dead eyes staring at the sky.
A collective shout of anger rose up from our vanguard as we wheeled rapidly away, out of bowshot of the walls, but some of us were not quick enough, or unlucky, and I saw a young rider shriek in terror as an arrow struck him in his back, severing his spine. His nerveless legs gave way and he fell from his mount, but he could not release his foot from the stirrup iron and was dragged, conscious, across the rocky ground, her head crashing in bloody spurts against the rocks.
I do not know what weapons you have in your time, stranger, but the pain of an arrow in your flesh is beyond description. The sound is the worst thing. At close quarters, the thrum of the fletches becomes a baleful shriek, and the arrow pierces your soft flesh with a sickening thump. This evil sound, punctuated by the cries of men and women that were shot in the back and fell from the saddle, pursued as we raced away, down the slope and back to our waiting army.
We rallied, out of range of the walls, and charged recklessly forward again, towards the gates. We knew from our early reconnaissance that there was a safe area right in front of the gates, where the angles of the stone were too extreme for the archers, and we made for this.
Arrows flickered amongst us like black lightning. They shot at both horse and rider, but we pressed on, relying on our sheer weight of numbers, and now our own archers, running up behind us, began firing over our heads into the Dead. I saw many shafts find their targets, and some of the enemy archers fell, but many more carried on firing, oblivious to the shafts in their dead bodies.
We made the gate, and I dismounted, and I sent my horse running back. I prayed that she would survive the arrows, and I turned my attention to the two Chymists that had ridden up with us, and who were preparing a blasting charge against the doors. They had placed the two small barrels near one of the hinges, and after lighting the fuse they shouted for everyone to retreat.
For agonized moments, I had to expose myself to the murderous fire from the walls again, as I ducked round the side of the gate towers, then there was a shattering BOOM that smote the ground on which I stood, and a great cloud of dust swirled up. Iron rivets and pieces of wood buzzed and fell in a clattering rain, and I rushed back round to the gates, one of which now lay flat on the ground.
We poured into the gate tunnel.
It was narrow, and at the farther end, as the smoke and dust from the chymists’ explosion cleared, I could see that it was closed by a second gate. I skidded to a halt, and the cries of warning went up:
‘It’s a trap!’
‘Get back!’
‘Retreat and reform!’
In the narrow space, we turned and tried to get back, but it was too late. A portcullis, that had been raised when we entered, now rattled down with terrifying speed, and our soldiers scrambled to escape before it closed. One of the female soldiers was not quick enough, and stumbled and fell directly underneath it.
She turned in time to see one of the sharp wooden spikes plunge into her stomach, and her piercing scream as the blackened spike punched through her young body was piteous to hear. She struggled frantically, her booted legs scrabbling helplessly on the stones, her cries ringing off the walls, unable to escape as her blood spurted out past the spike in crimson jets, soaking the stone.
Then the oil came down.
They had been boiling it in the watchtowers on either side of the gateway, and I heard the cries from the first soldiers as the hot oil issued forth from the ‘murder holes’ that lined the walls above us.
It spilled down like rain, and drenched them from head to foot in flaming oil.
The ones wearing metal armor suffered the worst. Unable to move quickly, they screamed behind their metal visors as the oil ran inside their armor and took fire on their bodies. They tried to get their armor off, but it was held on by many buckles, and they collapsed in wriggling agony or expired before they could loosen it.
I was surrounded by screaming, struggling men and women, and my senses were reeling from the horror of the gateway, when the internal gates were unbarred, and a host of Sulonne’s best troopers burst in, while we were helpless on the ground.
They finished us off without mercy. I saw one of Sulonne's captains stand over one of our knights, and with evil relish, plunge his sword directly into the eye slit in her helmet. The luckless knight screamed and thrashed about, her armor clanging on the flagstones, then the captain withdrew his sword, dripping in blood and gore, and plunged it savagely into her neck.
'Noooh!' screamed another, as four of Sulonne's troops rammed her backwards against the stone wall, and they fumbled with the straps that held her breastplate in place. Then it was off, and her white shirt was exposed, and her unprotected flesh underneath, and they held her arms aside, baring her chest for the blow. Two of them crouched down and grabbed the ankles of her boots and held her legs apart, so that she was spreadeagled against the rock, shaking her head in terror as the killing blow approached.
'Noooooooooooh!' she screamed, then her face was wrenched into a grimace of anguish, as the leader thrust his bloody sword deep into her abdomen, and she writhed in agony, run through by the blade.
‘DIEE!' growled the trooper in its guttural voice, as it watched her blood spurt out and soak her white shirt. He watched as she twisted and turned, dying slowly on his blade, a strangled cry escaping from her open mouth, then he pulled his sword out and let her collapse to the floor, blood pulsing out and over the stones.
A male soldier was cornered by two of Sulonne’s female soldiers, and they dragged him down to the ground, and drew their short knives, and they went into a frenzy of stabbing him, the rise and fall of their blades punctuated by his shouts of agony as they pierced him again and again, in the chest, in his groin, in his eyes, in his throat...
I spun round to try to spot a way out, and then there was a THUNK.
Time stood still for me then.
I looked down, and there, quivering from the arrested motion of its flight, was an arrow, and it was in me. It had pierced the leather armor over my chest, and I felt light-headed, and I fell to my knees.
Oh no, an arrow in my heart.
Not an arrow.
I reached up with my gloved hands and tried to pull it out, but I felt so weak, and my fingers wouldn’t work, and I fell down sideways onto the cold hard stone. I tried to get up, but my booted legs just scraped weakly against the ground.
I tried to speak, but nothing would come out, and then a sound came, as if from far away, and I knew it was my death cry, and it sounded like a soft, groaning noise, and I felt as if I was falling backwards, ever backwards, and the noise and the killing slipped away to the end of a very long tunnel, that fell away from me even as I watched. I tried to speak, to cry out, to hold on to the world that was rushing madly away from me, but I could not draw breath, or make a sound, and a great roaring filled my senses, and I...
* * *
...I awoke.
Oh, no, the arrow in my heart!
I clutched at my chest in agony, and once again grabbed for the feathered shaft, but my hands grasped on empty air, and I was lying on a stone slab, and Sulonne was over me. She was wearing a long, dark robe that showed nothing of her form, except for her face and eyes that watched me like cats’ as I writhed on the slab.
She stood there, in a nimbus of swirling smoke, waiting for the death spasm to subside, flanked at either side by her dark-clad priestesses. The priestesses chanted ceaselessly, in words that I did not know, but the chanting sent slow surges of power through my limbs and, compelled to do so, I rose from the slab to stood in front of her.
I felt as if I was surfacing from dark waters. The blood no longer pumped through my veins, and the myriad tiny noises of your body, that I was unaware of in life, were utterly silent. Just the slow creaking of bone and tendon as I stood in obedience.
My mouth opened, and a voice came from it that was my own, but I did not will the words:
'I am your slave.'
Sulonne stepped up and examined me closely.
'This one is in excellent condition. How did she die?'
A captain stepped forward, and tore my shirt open at the breast, to reveal the small hole, caked with dried blood, where the arrow had penetrated my chest.
'Arrow wound to the heart, my lady,' he announced, his voice low and without emotion. 'She died instantly.'
'Excellent...' Sulonne breathed, her gaze lingering on my exposed chest, 'and such an excellent specimen, too. Have her taken into my personal bodyguard. Are there any more worth raising?’
‘No, my lady,’ responded the captain, ‘the others are too badly damaged to be of useful service.’
‘Very well. Put down the spells,’ she ordered her priestesses, and as they ceased their chanting and began the closing spells, she cast off her cloak and clanked forward in metal half-armor. Her body underneath the masculine clothing was hard and firm, and her hair was long and black as the night from which she came.
'Bring them to the balcony,' she commanded, and we were pushed to the front of the high chamber, to a public gallery that overlooked the central courtyard of the citadel. A huge crowd was gathered there, and moved with an eerie rustling noise. At the center of the courtyard, a line of prisoners awaited their fate.
Sulonne appeared to the crowd below, and an utter silence descended that was more terrifying that the rustling movement before. The prisoners struggling against their bonds looked up in terror.
Sulonne ordered us to come to the edge of the balcony.
'See, you misguided servants of the King, what happens to those who oppose me and my army!' her eyes glistened with excitement, and I realized that she meant for us to watch the executions.
'Begin!' she shouted, and from the highest tower overlooking the courtyard, three prisoners were hurled. Stout ropes unraveled behind them as they fell, and their piercing shrieks were cut off abruptly as the ropes went taught, and their bodies twitched at the end of the ropes. Two of them had their necks broken by the fall, but the third survived, to twitch and jerk horribly at the end of the rope, piss spraying from his clothes as he died in agony. Sulonne seemed to drink in the cries, and yelled for the next ones to be killed.
I could not turn away, nor close my eyes. I was condemned to watch my fellows being slain before my eyes, and my soul screamed out to try to help them, to do something, but my dead body was motionless, being animated by a will other then my own.
I shall not recount in detail the terror of that grim afternoon, where I saw the brave men and women that had survived the slaughter at the gate put to the sword, or shot through with arrows, or burned alive at the stake, or dropped into cages of starving dogs.
And in every case, the still-twitching dead were hauled off, their limbs dragging behind them, to Sulonne's chambers, to be reanimated. Even the twisted, smoking skeletons from the fires were taken, and I saw with my own eyes one of these hideous things come back to rise again, creaking horribly, and take up its station with its blackened sword.
For this was the punishment of her Dead, to be held in this world against their will, to be held in a life-in-death that was but a travesty of the life they had left behind, so that their souls ached for release, and every one of us was burdened with the terrible memory of their own death.
* * *
I will not weary you, stranger, with tales of things I saw during my time in that city. Sulonne's armies were sweeping aside all opposition, and she reveled in the supply of newly killed corpses for her inspection and re-animation.
And nightly, in the candlelit confines of her private quarters, at the heart of the dead city, she consumed them. Her sexual appetite was voracious beyond words. She would regularly command three or more of her best male specimens to rape her in turn, or together, and delight in taking the sword or the flame to those who failed to impress her.
Only the dead cannot be killed, and I have seen the dismembered and mutilated remnants of her pleasures twitch and grope their way round the darkness of the palace. She would often main just for the pleasure of it, removing limbs, genitalia and faces, and watching the endless suffering of her victims.
Then, having slaked her lust on the males, she would turn to the females, and would command the most hideous acts of indecency to be performed on her. Her cries of pleasure would echo round the palace walls as yet another probing tongue found its mark, and her body would almost disappear underneath a mass of bodies striving to touch her naked skin.
She loved killing soldiers. After every battle, she would command her captains to bring her the finest living specimens, and she would plunge swords into the faultless stomachs of females, and watch them writhe on the blade as she withdrew it. And she fired crossbow bolts into the men, watching their bodies jump as the bolts disappeared into the secret places of their bodies, breathing in their screams, their pitiful cries as she slaughtered them in her lust.
As her slaves, we were commanded to do terrible things. I lost count of the victims that I held down while Sulonne hacked at them with her bloodstained blades, or strangled them with ropes, or torched them at the stake. I was made to run several through with my own sword, for her pleasure.
And now I come to the hardest part of my story, and I would weep if I could shed tears, for the Dead cannot cry, though their souls ache with a sorrow beyond words.
Last night, they dragged a young soldier before Sulonne, and I recognized the young novice that I had taken in the field the day before my life ended, and he recognized me, and cried out to me to save him, and Sulonne’s eyes lit up as she realized we knew each other.
I was forced to castrate him with my sword.
He wept as I did it, crying out my name, begging me to stop, and my soul screamed out for release from this torment. Then, when he lay moaning on the floor, she commanded me to strangle him to death, with my own hands. The strength of Sulonne’s evil will ran through my body, and I could not resist as I straddled him in a travesty of that sweet day in the long grass, and my fingers reached for his throat, and his cries were stopped as I crushed his throat. He bucked and heaved beneath me, but this time he was dying in agony, not struggling against my lust, and my eyes were blank as his struggles slowed, and stilled, and he went limp in my hands, and I released him, and his dead young body slumped to the hard stone floor.
* * *
So that is why you read these words, stranger.
I have resolved to end my existence, and to return to the halls of doom, and await my fate. It will take the utmost of my fragment of free will, and I will do it while Sulonne slumbers, for during those hours her will is weakest, and I can steal into her chambers by the secret tunnels that we bring soldiers up for her to slaughter.
In Sulonne’s dark chamber, there is a secret fire that burns always, with a cold green flame, and those corpses that she wishes put down, or who have exceeded their usefulness, she has thrown into the consuming flame, and in a great cry they are returned once more to the Netherworld.
I resolve to step into that flame; to go tonight, and to end this horror that has corroded my soul.
Therefore I, Anna de Barbe, commit this manuscript to the silence of this room, in the hope that one day this city will be overrun, and that you, the stranger reading this, will know what has befallen here.
Good luck, stranger, and may you pass the portals to the Netherworld lying in your own bed, surrounded by your family, as you peacefully slip away.
No one can ask for more than this, in this world.
Anna de Barbe.
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Thanatos@reborn.com