CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Zombie Gregory groaned quietly. Even in death, his oiled curls shone glamorously in the sun’s steady light. This was offset by the sickly green tint of his flesh, and the way his skeleton didn’t seem to be fully attached to his muscles. Pale bone protruded from his fingertips, and every time he moved, his whole body twitched spasmodically. I sheathed my sword, then held up my free hand and waved it in his face.
“Hey, buddy,” I said soothingly. “How ya feeling? Feel like taking a nap, maybe?”
“Hhhhhiiiiiiiiii.” His voice sounded like an engine that hadn’t been oiled since the Paleozoic period. His breath was of a similar vintage. I gagged and stepped back. “Buuuhhhdddiieeeeeeee.”
“Buddy, right. Remember that we’re buddies?” I glanced from Gregory over to Bee. Our young assassin wasn’t moving all that much. Her shadow-woven cloak was fringed with mildew, and a thin milky glaze hung over her eyes. Bethany had always been quiet, but this was unnerving. “Bethany, you remember we’re friends, don’t you?”
There was a rattle of steel. When I looked back, Gregory had unlimbered the massive zweihander sword from his back, and was staring at it with curious detachment. I took another step back, resting my hand on my sheathed sword. I didn’t want to provoke a confrontation if I didn’t have to, and I wasn’t sure how much of Greg and Bee were still in these bodies. If they had the same amount of agency as Percy apparently did, then it wouldn’t do to start cutting them when a little talking might do the trick.
“You probably don’t need that, Sir Greg,” I said. “You can just put that away and—” I jumped back as he gave it a practice swing. Behind me, I heard the creak of Chesa’s bow. She had Bee’s attention. The assassin was staring (almost literal) daggers over my shoulder in Chesa’s direction. “I’m trying to de-escalate here, Ches. Maybe hold back on filling them full of iron?”
“And I’m trying to not get killed,” she answered. “So until they prove—”
Bethany let out a snarling roar and leapt toward Chesa. There was some magic in her movement, her body flickering into shadow as she jumped, bone-white daggers drawn back to strike. She got about four feet before the thin pink ribbon tying her to Gregory snapped tight. Her snarl turned into choked frustration as her feet flew out from under her. Gregory twisted in her direction, stumbling a few steps but staying upright as Bee smacked into the ground. She was on her feet in a flash, straining against the tether, slowly dragging Greg forward.
“Chesa! You’re making this worse!”
Two arrows sang through the air, the first skimming off Bethany’s leg, the second snagging her cloak and pinning it to the ground. That first arrow ricocheted into Gregory’s chest, startling him. He roared his displeasure and charged.
“Damn it!” I intercepted Gregory, taking the full brunt of his charge on my shield, sending us both stumbling away. Bethany turned her attention to me, slashing mindlessly at me with her daggers. They bounced off the steel plate of my thigh, then traveled up hip and into my ribs. There was a brief moment when I felt the blade press against the chain-mail seam between hip and belly, but Bethany continued up my side rather than plunging the dagger home.
I battered her aside with my shield and fell back. Chesa was already on the retreat, dancing backward while drawing and firing her bow with enviable grace. Arrows stitched the ground around Bethany, slowing her attack and occasionally striking a glancing blow to limb or shoulder. At least Chesa hadn’t gone full murder hobo on our wayward team members just yet.
As for Gregory, once the cobwebs had cleared and his attention was drawn, he had decided to go full murderous sword fight. He came at me like a maniac, swinging that sword with all his strength. The zweihander is a ridiculous weapon, nearly five feet long with a wave-pattern blade designed to trap blades and leave gruesome wounds. It always struck me as funny to watch Greg wrestle that much steel around the battlefield. I no longer found it funny. The blade whistled through the air, steel in constant motion as Gregory advanced. It was so well balanced that he could change direction with a shift of his shoulders, even altering his attack into a thrust or counterswing. I kept my shield in heater form just so I could see where the strike was coming from. The blade cut hunks off my shield, and I kept having to tap into my magical reserves to reconstitute the steel and bolster my defense.
The only thing saving me was Bethany and her single-minded fury at Chesa and her buzzing arrows. Bee kept pulling Gregory off-balance, sending his sword thudding into the gravel and shedding sparks, or yanking him back just as he charged at me. Eventually, Gregory gave a furious roar and swiped at the ribbon.
Whatever those Nordic dwarves used to make that ribbon, it was truly miraculous stuff. The zweihander’s razor-sharp edge tangled in the thin pink loops, jerking Bethany back. When Gregory tried to slice the ribbon, he only managed to tighten the bond between himself and Bethany. She turned on him and yelled in Undead. He yelled back.
In the brief break this gave me, I signaled to Chesa.
“This might be our only chance. Keep her attention while I work on Greg. If we can get them—” I wasn’t able to finish my thought, because some random loop of the ribbon slipped free, and the two zombies stumbled away from each other. Immediately, Gregory turned and rushed me. I barely got my shield up in time, and had to bash a pommel-strike aside with the forte of my blade, twisting my wrist awkwardly.
Fortunately, Chesa didn’t need further instruction. She wheeled around the perimeter of the gravel circle, putting arrows into Bethany’s cloak and at her feet. Bee gave Gregory one last miserable glare, then pranced off after Ches. The length of ribbon between them was troublingly lax. I suppose it had to be long enough to bind Fenrir, but that wasn’t doing much to keep Gregory off me.
The big knight lurched closer, thrusting experimentally with the blade. I caught the attack with my sword, then punched his blade away with my shield and rushed closer. The zweihander rattled along the face of my shield, traveling down to the point of the heater, almost low enough to slip free and strike my legs. I countered with my sword, but that left me with nothing to strike with as I got closer. I tried to force him back with my shield, but Gregory was a big guy, combined with whatever strength undeath gave him, making him impossible to shift. He simply laid the pommel of his sword into the middle of my shield and thrust, sending me flying backward. Gregory followed up with a transition strike, striking down from an overhead position. The blow rattled my bones and drove me to one knee.
Fortunately, that was as far as Gregory could press. Straining against the ribbon, he waved his blade over my head, growling in frustration. I scrambled backward, resuming my guard and glaring at him. I spared a glance in Chesa’s direction.
She and Bethany were well engaged. Chesa danced at the edge of Bee’s reach, firing arrows and falling back, tricking the young assassin into pulling on Gregory at critical moments. Her shots were no longer aimed at the ground, or Bee’s extremities. Chesa shot with desperation, but Bethany deflected each shot with those bone-shard daggers. A few arrows got through her defenses, but Bethany ignored them, even though they stuck out of her leg, chest, and shoulder.
Our eyes met. Chesa was on the verge of panic.
“John?” she shouted. “We need to do something, and fast. I’m running low on arrows.”
“I didn’t think you could run out of arrows.”
“Usually not, but—” Her mouth clapped shut as Bethany jumped at her. Bee had lured her too close, and Chesa had to somersault onto one of the standing stones, balancing precariously before leaping to a nearby broken stub of granite and then rolling to the ground. She somehow fired mid-leap, but Bethany swatted it into the sod. As she fell back, Chesa called back to me. “Usually a magic thing. But I’m low on the juice.”
“Do what you have to do to keep her busy, Ches!” I shouted. “If both these bastards come at me, I’m finished.”
“That’s the point. If I run out of magic and drop back into the mundane world like the saint . . . ” She let the implication hang. That would leave me alone on the hill with Bee and Gregory, all while that creepy bastard did whatever he was doing up that pillar.
My eyes went to the pillar. It was maybe four feet in diameter and looked as solid as Esther’s impatience. An idea formed in my head.
“Right. New plan.” I nodded to the pillar. “Let’s knot ’em up.”
Chesa glanced at the pillar, then nodded confidently. Hopefully we were on the same page for once.
Gregory came at me again, sword over his head, the tip pointed menacingly at my face. As he thrust I caught it on the shield, but he switched to a slice at my leg that required some fancy magic on my part. I folded the shield out into a tower, slamming the bottom rim down on his striking sword. That drove the blade into the gravel, pulling Gregory along with it. Ecstatic, I swung hard for his hip, forgetting that I wasn’t trying to kill my old teammate. My blade bit deeply into his exposed chain mail, breaking links and drawing tar-thick blood. Gregory howled, but I was already running toward the pillar.
This brought me closer to Bethany, which wasn’t a problem as long as she didn’t notice. I ran at her with my sword overhead. There’s no way to be stealthy in plate armor, and Bethany spun around long before I reached her. Still on plan, because as she rolled out of the way, Chesa was able to cross toward Gregory.
He met this new threat with a clumsy swing that earned him three arrows in the chest. None of them did more than dimple the steel plate of his armor, but that was enough to stun him. I scooped up the length of ribbon that hung between them and crossed to the pillar. Chesa grabbed her own length of ribbon and went in the opposite direction.
Bethany was the first to figure out what we were about. Knots were always her thing, and she knew when the noose was closing. She went after Chesa, but that just crossed her line close to Gregory’s, and soon they were drawing tighter together. I got the ribbon around the pillar just in time for Chesa to cinch her strand to an arrow and fire it into the surrounding zombie crowd. The arrow thumped into a Russian officer with exposed teeth and eyes like burnt matchsticks. He went down, and the line went taut.
Gregory finally caught on. He ran toward me, but he was already caught. I gave my length a pull, dragging it around the pillar like a pulley. He came to a halt, his boots sinking into the gravel as he was dragged toward the pillar. Bethany let out a series of furious snarling threats, cutting at the loops of ribbon that were sinking into her skin, but with each lurching step she came closer and closer to the pillar. Chesa wrapped her arms around the taut line that ran between pillar and downed Russian and pulled, dragging at it like a lonely tug of war. Gregory gave up on reaching me, and turned his attention to slicing through the ribbon. But each time he looped a section around his blade, or slashed at a length of pink material, all he did was tighten the bonds.
With a final titanic effort, Chesa and I closed the knot. Gregory slammed against the pillar, arms pinned to his chest, sword akimbo in his hands, covered in cheerful loops of ribbon. Bethany was down on both knees, one leg pulled against her chest, a section of ribbon in her mouth as she chewed at it fruitlessly.
Chesa dropped her line and ran to me.
“Can you hold that?” she asked.
“Forever? No. We’ll need something to keep it in place. Do you think—” I fell forward on one knee as Gregory renewed his efforts at escape. I straightened, desperate to hold the pair in place.
“I’ve got it,” Chesa said.
“Look, I’m all about that liberation, but if I can’t hold them in place, there’s no way you can do it.”
“No, not like that. One last bit of magic,” she said, drawing an acorn from the pocket of her jeans. “Let’s hope it works here. Hold the loop open, like you’re trying to catch something.”
I did as she said, spreading the two strands in my hands like a basket. She tossed the acorn onto the ground in the middle. No sooner had the acorn hit the gravel than it sprouted into a mighty oak. I was thrown to the ground by the force of its growth, losing my grip on the ribbon. The sound of groaning wood and rustling leaves filled the air, and when I opened my eyes the sun had been blocked by a large, leafy canopy. A spiderweb of pink ribbons ran from the trunk to the stone pillar at the center of the hill. Greg and Bethany were trapped, bound tightly to the staircase by the tree’s verdant anchor.
“Well, that was a hell of a trick,” I said, slowly standing up and dusting the grit from my legs. “Do you think it’ll hold for long? I don’t want to leave them here forever, you know, what with the army of zombies . . . Chesa?” I circled the tree a couple times, but there was no sign of the elven princess. “Well, I suppose that answers that question. Hopefully you and Matthew are someplace safe.”
“Mr. Sir Rast!” The voice came from the zombie horde. I turned just in time to see Percy fighting his way through the impromptu soccer match that had consumed the shambling mob. He stepped over the fallen Russian and stared up at the tree for a long moment, then remembered his urgency. “Sir Rast, your friends are gone! They sank into the earth. I tried to grab them, but . . . ” I pointed to the pillar, and the two former members of Knight Watch trying to bite their way free of their bonds. “Well. Glad to see that’s in order.”
“Yeah, me, too. Think you can stay here and watch them? Make sure they don’t get away again?” I asked.
“Of course, sir. Where are you going?”
“Not really sure. Guess I’ll just have to find out,” I said.
I climbed the stairs up into the storm, squinting against the wind and sudden rain that struck me about ten feet off the ground. The clouds closed around me, and the gusting wind took my breath. Soon all I could see was each step before me, and all I could hear was the rain on my helmet and the hammering of my heart.