The Nomad - By Simon Hawke Page 0,92

Which way had they gone? To the left or the right?

Valsavis suddenly felt a hand grasp his shoulder. He spun around, drawing his sword in one smooth motion, and chopped the arm off the grisly specter that stood behind him, empty eye sockets staring, mummified flesh drawn back from aged bone, nothing but a hole where the nose had once been, a grinning rictus of a mouth whose jaws worked hungrily.

The arm of the corpse fell to the ground, but it did not bleed, and the corpse seemed not even to notice. Valsavis swung at the corpse’s face with his fist and knocked its head right off its shoulders. It fell to the rain-slicked street with a thud, its jaws still working. The corpse turned away from him and fumbled for its severed limb with the arm it still had. It found the amputated appendage, picked it up, and simply reattached it. Then it reached for its head.

“Gith’s blood!” swore Valsavis.

He swung his sword again in a powerful, two-handed stroke, cleaving the body of the walking corpse in half. The two severed halves of the corpse fell to the street, splashing into the water sheeting over the paving bricks. And, immediately the two halves started wriggling toward each other, like grisly slugs, and as Valsavis watched, astonished the rejoined, and the corpse starting searching for its head once more.

“How in thunder do you kill these things?” Valsavis said aloud. He looked up and saw several more dead bodies lurching toward him through the rain. “Nibenay!”

There was no response.

“Nibenay, damn you, help me!”

“Oh, so now it’s my help you want, is it?” said the Shadow King’s voice unpleasantly in his mind.

There were more undead coming out into the street around him. And each of them started toward him. Some were no more than skeletons. One came almost within reach, and Valsavis swung his sword again, decapitating the corpse. It simply kept on approaching, headless. He swung his sword again, grunting with the effort, cutting the skeleton in half. The bones fell apart and dropped, splashing, to the flooded street. And then, once more, they began to wriggle back together and reassemble themselves.

“Damn you, Nibenay,” Valsavis shouted, “if I die here, then you’ll never get what you want! Do something!”

He felt something grab him from behind and spun around, kicking out hard. The corpse was knocked back, falling with a splash to the rain-soaked street. But it rolled over and started to come at him once again.

“Beg,” said the Shadow King. “Plead for my kelp, Valsavis. Grovel like the worthless scum you are.”

“I’ll die first,” said Valsavis, swinging his sword once more as the rotting corpses closed in around him.

“Then… die.”

“You think I won’t?” Valsavis shouted, laying about him with his sword as the corpses kept coming, relentlessly. “I’ll die cursing your name, you misbegotten snake! I’ll die like a man before I grovel at your feet like some dog, and your own miserable pride will deny you what you want.”

“Yesssss,” said Nibenay, his voice a hiss of resignation. “I truly believe you would. And unfortunately, I still have need of you. Very well, then—”

And in that moment, Valsavis felt something crawling up his leg. He screamed with pain as one of the corpses he had felled climbed upon him and sank its teeth into his left wrist. Valsavis cried out, trying to shake it off, but there were still more corpses reaching for him and he had to keep laying about him with his sword to stay alive. He could not stop for a second. Wailing in agony, kicking out at the corpse that had its teeth fastened on his wrist, he could not afford to stop swinging his sword even for an instant to keep the undead from overwhelming him. Each one he struck down only got back up again moments later. And more were closing in. He was fighting for his life, as he had never fought before.

The pain was incandescent as the corpse chewing on his wrist crunched down with teeth that were as sharp as daggers. Valsavis felt the pain washing over him, and he fought with all his might to jerk his left hand free as he kept fighting off the advancing corpses, and suddenly, there was a sharp, snapping, crunching sound, and he was free.

His left hand had been chewed off.

Roaring with both pain and rage, he fought his way through the remaining corpses and ran down the street, through the rain, gritting his teeth