Jack Sunder
“You had the best of intentions, Jack. You couldn't have seen this coming.”
Jack parted the curtains and looked down on the street once more. The dead had moved on, but now the corpses of the killed were rising. But not all of them - was his guess back at Narma’s correct? “I could have. What if I had investigated more, rather than violently breaking into a delicate operation? I could have been more careful...”
“No, Jack. You said it yourself – there was screaming coming from there, and that could mean nothing good. Even if you had known, would you have condemned them to their fate?”
“I would have, if I knew thousands would die from this.” Sunder closed the blinds, head and shoulders drooping. He sat down on a nearby stool. “Thousands, Kara. Thousands at the least. And the people I saved didn't even live.” He looked up at the lady, grief, desperation, and regret clawing in his gut. “I... I...”
Kara was sitting across from him, somehow looking elegant in the homespun cotton dress, and the knit sweater she wore over it. She was smiling, but Sunder could see the glumness in her eyes. “You did everything with the best of intentions, Jack, but you could not have seen this coming. But you can't change the past any more than I can. You can only keep building the future, with those good intentions of yours. It's the best anyone can ever do.”
Sunder shook his head. The lady was right, of course. He was despairing and recriminating when he could have been acting, or at least planning. “I sent my associates Lore and Maureen to rally the city watch, and crush the dead before the disease spreads. I think the City Watch fought at the life temple, though, and lost. Either way, it won't work – either they ride out and stop the infestation at Narma's and the other homes, losing the city to the Life Temple; or they fight at the Life temple, and leave the homes unguarded.”
“So what do we do?”
“I... I'm not sure. We could rally the Royal Guard, but even if they did come down, everyone in the city would be dead by the time they cleared it. And the infection might have very well spread to the surrounding towns, too.”
“You think the Royal Guard would come?”
“Not for us. But the Life Temple is more important than us, even if your sister pulled as many strings as she could. Maldorbus needs his treatments – he might send down to reclaim the Temple.”
Kara shook her head. “But what about us?”
Sunder sighed, his shoulders drooping. “It's out of our hands by now. We... we just need to survive. You need to rejoin your sister, and I need to find my associates and leave the city.” He frowned. “If the guard was not sent... Perl and Lore will want to search for me. I wonder where they--” He paused, frozen.
Footsteps were coming up the hallway outside.
“Lady Kara, please get behind some furniture,” he said quietly, then drew his machete, and went over to the door. They had holed up an apartment building on the Middle Ward, not unsimilar to the one that Narma and Kara had stayed in, save for being bigger and fancier. Sunder drew over to the door, stepping quietly, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the door had a small hole specially made for peering out.
Peering out, he could see the empty hallway, but not to either side, much to his disappointment. He could still hear the footsteps outside, drawing nearer. Should he burst out and surprise the dead, or see if the creature would pass them by? The footsteps drew nearer.
“Sunder, there's no other way out of this apartment.”
Sunder frowned. He couldn't just have the dead lurking around in the hallway – if the street were to clear up, he wanted to be down there with the lady Kara as quickly as possible. Sunder's hand undid the latch, and slowly pressed down on the handle. The door slipped open with the barest of clicks, and the footsteps still came forward, the same as before.
Closer, closer, and... Jack threw the door open, and lunged out of the door. For a brief, frozen moment, he saw green eyes go wide. Then his target skipped back out of the way. His most apparently human target.
“Sir, are you alright? We're here to save you!”
Sunder blinked. “Excuse me?”
“My name is Kallaster Poe, Lady Adventurer!” The woman in question curtsied, an action that looked quite ridiculous, given that she was wearing trousers. “We saw your face in the window, and thought we should come help!”
“Mr. Jack Sunder, pleased to meet you?” Sunder bowed, not sure what to make of the situation. “Any help is help; you said 'we'?”
The young woman—a southerner, if Sunder were not mistaken—looked back down the hallway. “My partner in adventure: Glynn Fifer. He... is apparently still downstairs.” She turned back to him and grinned. “Come! We must be off!”
“Wait one moment,” said Sunder. He ducked his head into the room, only to find the lady Kara right on the other side of the door. She had a bemused expression on her face.
“You're being rescued.”
“Yes. You too.”
“Of course!” Kallaster said over Sunder's shoulder. “I rescue fine dames and handsome dandies alike! But quickly!”
Sunder took a deep breath, then hurried down the hallway after Kallaster. Kara was right behind him.
Then, with no warning, Kallaster passed them the other way, unslinging an ornately carved bow. “Change of plans, going this way.”
“There's no exit that way,” sad Kara, changing directions far more lightly than the heavier Sunder.
“Well, there better be – Glynn seems to have set the downstairs on fire in his valiant defense.”
Sunder looked over his shoulder. Behind him was a bald man, with the same green eyes. The cousin? “Hello.”
“Glynn. Kall will want to introduce us formally.”
Up ahead, there was a crash, and the sound of breaking glass. “See! An exit!”
“Are you mad? We're two stories off the ground!” came Kara's reply. Sunder was starting to wonder the same thing.
“No – I'm just inspired!” More breaking glass, and Sunder rounded the corner to see Kallaster tearing off the curtains and throwing them over the broken glass. “Glynn, your rope?”
The man hurried past Sunder, and pulled a length of rope from his backpack. “Don't you have your own?”
“Shush.” Kall tied the rope to an arrow, and fired it down out the window, hardly aiming. Glynn was tying the mid-point of the rope around the metal stove in the kitchen. He was grumbling.
Kall tore off a few lengths of cloth from the curtain, and handed them to Sunder and Kara. “Just do as I do!” She climbed outside of the window, looped the cloth over the rope, then slid down the rope, crossing the street in the process.
“Kara, can you manage?” asked Sunder.
“I've always wanted to do something like this. Always read about it in the novels.”
“You're not the only one, it seems,” said Sunder as he climbed out the window. Looping the cloth over, he wondered for a moment how well the arrow might hold his weight. He liked plans, and this was most definitely not a plan.
“Hoy! Glynn! I could use some help down here!” Kall was shooting the dead as they approached her, arrows pin-cushioning the corpses to little avail.
Well, that was his cue. Sunder slid half-way down the rope, then let go. Landing with a quick roll, he drew his machete again, and lay into the dead from behind. The dead fell quickly to his attack, and he found himself next to Kallaster.
“Next time, let me go first, and you can shoot arrows to help me,” he said.
Kall nodded. “I'll keep that in mind. I guess we are one and one in the rescues department.”
Kara slid down the line, her dress flapping behind her. “Oh, that was exhilarating.” She looked slightly flushed.
“Kall, there's more coming down the street.” He pointed in the direction of the Life Temple – a trio of the dead were hurrying down the street towards them. One of them had freakishly long arms, and another was bounding ahead of the other two on all fours. “Aim for the legs, we need to slow them.”
“Legs are tricky, mister, but I'll do my best!”
Sunder frowned. As the sun set further, he could see flames pouring from a mansion on the upper ward. They could not save the city, they could not fight the city. “Only get the fast one. The other we'll out-run, then lay an ambush.”
“Of course – we need to get you two to safety.”
Sunder looked down the street. There were corpses starting to stir.
“Yes. To safety...”
Kallaster Poe, Lady Adventurer
Kall notched an arrow, and stared down at the street. The monsters were walking down the street slowly, carefully, predictably. Easy picking for a skilled archer like herself. She could see herself in her mind's eye, drawing and sending one arrow into the head of the monster with the long arms, and then, when the other monster turned to look, one into his head as well. Easy pickings.
Except... the spine. What an unsatisfying target. But Sunder said it worked, and he had dropped those monsters far quicker than anything Glynn or herself ever had managed. Couldn't argue with results, especially from a handsome man like him.
And so Kall waited. 'Poised' was the word, she decided. She was poised. Poised up on a second floor balcony, with a fair damsel hiding behind her, and a handsome young man hiding down below, ready to help her partner Glynn.
Movement; quicker now. One of the horrors must have noticed Glynn or the handsome man they were trying to save. Well, then.
Kall pulled the bow back, and let loose with her arrow. The magical shaft slammed into the back of the monster with the long arms, knocking it to the ground.
At the same moment, Glynn unleashed his spell, and stream of bright orange flames shooting from the shadows, igniting both of the zombies.
The blast ended, and for a moment Kall was blind in the deepening twilight. A foolish choice to look at the action. Eyes wide, she tried to see what was happening in the darkness. The sound of metal chopping into flesh echoed on the silent street. Then everything was quiet. By the time she she had regained her night vision, Sunder was pulling her arrow out of one corpse, and the other lying face-down, still.
Kall frowned at having missed the action. A real shame. “The deed had been done, good lady! We have prevailed! Come! Let's go!”
Kara, the fair damsel she had found with Sunder, followed close behind, no doubt feeling safer nearer to the victorious Lady Adventurer. Kall grinned as she hopped down the last few stairs, and stepped out into the night air, Kara in tow.
“That was too bright, Glynn – that must have been seen up and down this entire spoke.”
“Flames are bright, Mr. Sunder. There's no way around that.”
“Can you cast something else?”
“No, I'm a bit of a one-trick pony – never was really good at magic, frankly. Kall knows more, but she insists on using that stupid bow of hers. Says it's more dashing.”
Kallaster crossed the street. “It is, of course. 'Kallaster Poe, Lady Adventurer, Master Archer' you know. If I were Kallaster Poe, Master Magician, I think the Council of Twelve would feel embarrassed in comparison.”
“Thank you, Ms. Poe,” said Sunder. “As I was about to tell Glynn, we need to get off this spoke – that blast must have been seen by every dead man from here to the castle.”
“Spoke?”
“This road. Let's go.” He started down a dark alleyway, Kara following behind him. Kall wasn't sure what to make of that.
Glynn shrugged, and followed behind the two, and Kall found herself—the leader of this rescue—trailing. She hurried to catch up with everyone else, feeling foolish.
“Wait – there's something creeping in the shadows across the street,” Sunder said, quietly. Everyone had stopped in the shadows in the alley. “I think... That looks like Perl, which would make those two Lore and Selena... but then where's Maureen?”
“Friends of yours?” asked Kall, stepping over to Sunder's side.
“I think so.”
“Well, there's only three, and they aren't weird.”
“What?”
“HEY! YOU IN THE SHADOWS! ARE YOU ALIVE?”
Three heads swiveled towards her, three bright eyes wide open in shock and horror.
Well, that was an odd response.
Next: Chapter 8