Ten of Swords (Draft Only)

Chapter 38

When the waves of undead finally passed, the defenders of the holdout could finally rest. Having been awake far too long, their bodies sore and minds foggy, they took the time to rest. Lookouts stayed in rotation, keeping an eye on things just in case the tide turned again. Takunda was nowhere to be seen, yet his inner circle still relayed his orders and prepared for the rested to go out looking for more food and survivors.

While they searched the streets that had been passed by the undead army, they could still hear the fighting further up the hill. They called out, but there were few answers from the homes around them. Some places had been broken into, doors broken down and windows smashed to pieces where the foul army had made its entrance. Places they wouldn't have any interest in unless there had been people inside.

Meals were handed out. Light, as to prevent stomachs from turning. With the stench and anxiety in the air, it was all to easy to grow nauseous, and they didn't want to waste any food. Trade wouldn't return to the city until the siege was over, meaning they would have to make do with whatever they could find until then. A few among them could hunt, but not enough to sustain all the survivors if they ate too heartily.

Legom was allowed to feed the cats under the condition that he went out and brought back more food for them. He didn't like it, but he understood. To the others, the cats were his pets, rather than his family. Pets that ate a lot of meat. He was given rations for them, and after he rested, he would head out of the city with the hunters to do some foraging. At that moment, he was simply too exhausted to take the cats out so that they could hunt for themselves, and he would hardly allow them to eat the corpses. If only because they were too rotten and would make his furry children sick.

Elise lay on the floor of one of the buildings with nothing more than a single blanket between herself and the ground. There were just enough to go around if they took in turns using them, but there were simply not enough beds to sleep on. She knew that sleep would not come easy anyway, as she was left wondering if her son had made it somewhere safe and was resting. Maeve betrayal also weighed heavy on her. Not knowing where everyone was or what they were doing left her feeling on-edge. How far away were Rell and Yor now? Will they have received notice yet of the siege?

When she did eventually fall asleep, it was fitful. Constantly she would wake up, roll over and lay there with her mind filled with a tangle of incoherent thoughts until she woke up enough for them to clear. She couldn't fall back asleep with those thoughts in her head, and quickly worked out that if she wanted to rest, she had to wake herself up first. It was torturous.

The skull sat outside on a stone fence, as if watching over the valley of the dead. Corpses that should have been buried and long at rest lay in the street as if they had fallen from the sky, pushed aside into piles that would need to be cleared away. Another job to do while waiting for the battle to end.

Up at the castle, things were not so peaceful. Wael Aarle had the kitchens blocked off and was trying to help the royal steward establish a plan for what to do next. The soldiers who had seen the monster that had killed the king were sworn to secrecy, and the others were informed that the king ha been injured and was recovering in his quarters. If word got out that the king was dead, the consequences would be disastrous. The fact that the enemy had not called for their surrender only meant that they didn't know that their assault had been successful.

There was no telling what the undead were truly after. Whatever it was, they could not be allowed into the upper city. The civilians would be slaughtered. Perhaps they would retreat if they knew that the king was dead, but the problem with that went beyond the battle at hand. A castle without a king meant succession wars, or worse, invasion from a neighbouring state. The only way to prevent that was to bring the prince back to the castle and have him declared as heir before even a single whisper of Hereskel's passing reached beyond those walls. The fate of one city did not outweigh the fate of an entire kingdom.