Chương 79: Chapter 59: Max - Stonebridge

Max woke to the chapel bell clanging wildly somewhere beyond the Wayhouse walls, and was moving before he was fully awake. He threw back the blanket, found his boots in the dim gray light, and shoved his feet into them without bothering with the laces. Around him, the others came awake to the same alarm. Cass was already dragging on her leathers. Borin had his mail over his head and was reaching for his hammer.

Elias nearly caught one sleeve wrong as he pulled on his coat, while Alina snatched up her bow and quiver from beside the bed. The bell kept hammering away. Max buckled his sword belt as he crossed the room, grabbed his shield on the way past, and shoved the door open with one strap still hanging loose. Cass was directly behind him. They hit the hallway at a run. Max pulled the shield strap tight as he took the stairs two at a time.

Borin was still fastening the side of his armor behind him, Elias had one hand working at the clasps of his coat, and Alina was tying back her hair while running. The Wayhouse below was only beginning to wake. The innkeeper had emerged from behind the counter with a shawl pulled hastily over her nightclothes, staring toward the windows as the bell continued its frantic clanging. One of the few other guests stumbled barefoot from a room near the back, demanding to know what was happening. Max didn't stop to answer.

He crossed the common room, drew his sword on the way, and shoved through the front door. Cold air hit him hard. Stonebridge was waking around them. Doors were opening all along the lane. Lanterns appeared behind shutters. Villagers stepped outside in coats thrown over nightclothes, some staring toward the eastern rise while others were already calling to neighbors. The chapel bell never stopped. Someone was hauling on that rope as though their life depended on it. Max turned toward the hill and ran.

Cass overtook him for half a dozen strides while fastening the last buckle at her wrist. Borin thundered behind them, hammer already in hand, with Elias and Alina close enough that Max could hear their boots striking the frozen road. Shouting reached them before the chapel came into view.

"Back from the wall!" Harlan's voice carried down the lane.

"If ya can't fight, get clear!" Max pushed harder up the final rise. The chapel yard opened ahead of them in flickering torchlight. Half a dozen villagers stood well back from the cemetery wall with spears, axes, and whatever other weapons they had managed to grab, while Harlan held the gap between the stones with his sword drawn. Father Edwin stood on the chapel porch, both hands wrapped around the bell rope, hauling it down again and again.

Elder Rowan was beside him, directing frightened villagers away from the hill. Inside the cemetery, three graves stood open.

Dark earth lay scattered across the frost. One coffin had been dragged partly from its grave and broken open, while another lay splintered beside its marker. Bones littered the ground near the wall. Then something moved between the headstones, and a skeleton staggered into view. Clods of wet soil still clung between its ribs, and one arm hung crooked from a damaged shoulder. Its skull turned toward the chapel before the entire body lurched forward. Harlan spotted the party coming up the lane.

"Three came up!" he shouted.

"Two down already!" Max drew his sword without breaking stride. Borin's voice came from behind him.

"Skull or spine!" The skeleton reached the chapel path just as Max intercepted it. He planted himself between the creature and Father Edwin, shield rising as bony hands clawed toward him. They struck the iron rim with a dry clatter. Max shoved hard, knocking the skeleton backward, but it recovered immediately and came straight at him again. No hesitation. No pain. No instinct to protect itself.

"Elias!" He was already casting. Radiant Flare burst across the cemetery in a wash of white-gold light. The skeleton jerked as the magic struck, its empty sockets flaring brilliantly for an instant as its advance faltered.

Borin was on it before it recovered. His hammer swept around in a brutal arc and smashed through the side of its skull. Bone scattered across the frost and the skeleton reeled sideways. It remained standing, only for a moment, but long enough to turn blindly back toward Max with one arm still reaching.

"Spine!" Borin barked. Max stepped aside rather than retreating and brought his sword down across the exposed back. The blade struck between two vertebrae, and bone cracked beneath the steel. The skeleton collapsed beneath itself, ribs and limbs spilling across the frozen ground. Max backed away immediately as Borin stepped forward and brought his hammer down once more on what remained of the skull. Bone shattered against the earth. They waited. A loose hand settled where it had fallen.

One leg lay twisted beneath the shattered ribs, the foot pointing at an impossible angle. Nothing reached for a weapon. Nothing tried to rise. Only then did Max look around. One skeleton lay scattered near Harlan, while the remains of another had been smashed almost beyond recognition beside the cemetery wall. Between them, three graves gaped open beneath the paling sky. Father Edwin finally released the bell rope, and the abrupt end to its frantic clanging left Max's ears ringing.

For several seconds, nobody spoke. Then Max looked toward the open graves. Three tonight, and everything they had found yesterday suggested someone had prepared this deliberately. Whatever had started in Stonebridge, this wasn't the end of it. Dawn came slowly. Gray light crept over Chapel Hill and spread across the graveyard in a thin wash that dulled the torchlight and revealed the damage more clearly than anyone wanted. The villagers hadn't left.

They stood now in small knots along the cemetery wall and near the chapel porch, speaking in low voices. Some watched the adventurers. Others stared at the broken graves as if afraid the earth might move again. Max crouched beside the scattered bones of the skeleton they'd just cut down. Borin nudged one piece aside with the head of his hammer.

"Nothing holding it together now. Whatever power raised it is gone." Max nodded once and stood. Behind them, Harlan was already organizing the men who had answered the bell.

"You three check the wall. You two with me." Rowan approached carefully, the torch in her hand now burning low in the growing daylight.

"Is it finished?" Max glanced toward the broken skeletons lying among the stones.

"For the moment." That answer didn't seem to comfort Rowan much. Harlan returned a moment later with two guards at his back.

"We checked the graves," he said grimly.

"Three coffins empty."

"That matches what we saw," Max said. Father Edwin had come down from the porch by then. His hands were still shaking slightly as he looked over the cemetery.

"There are more graves disturbed," the priest said quietly. Everyone turned toward him.

"More?" Harlan asked. Edwin nodded and pointed toward the far end of the cemetery where several older stones stood in a crooked row.

"In the dark we only saw the fresh ones," he said.

"But some of the older ground has been moved too." The party spread out again. It didn't take long to find what Edwin was talking about.

Once the frost brightened under the growing light, the signs became clearer. Several graves showed the same uneven settling the others had shown the day before. Others bore marks where the soil had been pried up and tamped back down again. Cass crouched beside one and brushed away loose dirt.

"This one's empty too," she said. Elias moved to the next and looked inside the open coffin.

"Another," he said. The count climbed quickly. Three became five. Five became eight. By the time they finished searching the cemetery and the small burial plots behind the chapel wall, the truth had settled over the hill like a second frost. Harlan stood with both hands on his hips, staring at the disturbed earth.

"Eighteen." Rowan blinked.

"Eighteen?"

"Opened graves," Harlan replied. Father Edwin made a choking sound under his breath.

"Three rose this morning," Max said. Rowan rubbed a hand across her face.

"Fifteen walking corpses," she murmured.

"Or waiting," Elias said, which was somehow worse. Borin stepped forward into the center of the graveyard.

"Clear some space," he said.

"I can put a lesser consecration over the cemetery." Harlan gestured to the villagers immediately.

"Get back." They obeyed without argument. Borin planted the head of his hammer into the frost-rimed earth and closed his eyes for a moment. When he spoke, his voice carried a low resonance that seemed to push gently against the morning air.

He spoke in the dwarven tongue of his faith. The words rolled slowly across the cemetery, deliberate and steady. Max couldn't understand them, but he felt their weight all the same. As Borin continued, the air around the graves seemed to settle, the unease hanging over the hill receding beneath the cadence of the prayer. He lifted his hammer at the end of the chant and brought the butt down against the soil. A faint pulse moved outward through the ground. It wasn't bright like Elias's magic had been.

It was quieter than that, more like the feeling of warmth returning to numb fingers. Borin opened his eyes. Father Edwin stepped closer, watching the disturbed earth as if expecting it to answer the prayer.

"That will keep them down?"

"It will make this ground harder for the dead to rise from. Not impossible. Just harder." Edwin nodded slowly.

"Then we must do more."

"Aye," Borin said.

"Send word back to Brindleford. The Allfathers Temple will have priests who can fully consecrate the cemetery and the chapel grounds. I'm not strong enough to do it myself. What I did only bought you time."

"I will write the message myself," Edwin said at once, and he hurried off. Rowan looked from Borin to the broken graves and then toward the village below.

"What do we do until then?" she asked. Max answered that one.

"We figure out where the rest went." They started with the graves. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. The difference between the three that had risen and the others became obvious once they knew what to look for. The coffins beneath the first three graves had broken from within. Lids were split upward along the grain, nails bent or torn loose where something underneath had forced its way out.

The disturbed soil above them had collapsed inward afterward, leaving the ragged openings they had seen when they arrived. The remaining graves were different.

Those graves had been opened from above.

Some of the coffins remained partly buried, lids pried loose and bodies simply gone. Others had been closed again before the soil was thrown back over them, as if whoever had taken the corpses had cared more about hiding their work than respecting what remained behind. Elias stood over one of the broken coffins and looked toward the scattered skeletons.

"Three coffins broken from inside. Three skeletons." Cass had already moved toward the eastern wall.

"More than two people this time."

Max looked over.

She crouched near the game trail they had found the day before, brushing frost from one impression with two fingers. Alina had joined her and was studying the ground several paces farther out.

"The heavy boots are here again," Cass said.

"And the lighter pair." Alina pointed toward another impression near the brush.

"There's another one here." Cass shifted over to look.

They found another. Then another. Once they started separating the overlapping prints, more appeared.

At least five sets had crossed the ground beyond the cemetery wall, perhaps more. Several had followed so closely behind one another that their tracks merged into broad, broken patches where the frost had been crushed flat.

"So they brought help," Max said.

"Or they always had help," Cass replied.

"We only found two of them close enough to the graves yesterday to leave something useful behind." Alina had already followed the trail into the brush. Cass glanced after her, then at Max.

"We should see where it goes." The tracks carried them east along the narrow game trail. They became easier to distinguish once the party left the churned earth near the cemetery, and for a short distance the pursuit almost seemed straightforward. Then the trail began to change.

"They knew they'd be followed," Alina said with a frown. She had crouched beside a patch of flattened grass where several prints abruptly converged. Cass nodded.

"Looks like they started stepping in each other's tracks." Farther on, someone had dragged a branch behind them. Not enough to erase everything, but enough to break the clean edges of prints and scatter leaves over the softer ground. The trail continued another few hundred yards before reaching harder ground where exposed stone broke through the thin soil beneath the trees.

There, it disappeared almost completely. Cass and Alina spread out. They found a scuffed patch of moss. One snapped twig. A faint scrape where a boot had slipped against stone.

Then nothing. For nearly half an hour they worked outward in widening arcs while Max, Borin, and Elias waited nearby and watched the surrounding woods. Alina eventually returned first, frustration plain across her face.

"I can't pick it up." Cass emerged several moments later from another direction.

"Neither can I." Max looked back along the path toward Stonebridge, the chapel roof barely visible through the bare trees.

"They covered themselves that well?"

"Once they reached the stone, they didn't need to do much." Cass brushed dirt from one glove.

"Could've split up. Could've changed direction twice. Could've walked another hundred yards and doubled back. Without tracks, I'd be guessing." Alina frowned toward the woods.

"And guessing wrong out here wastes hours." Cass nodded.

"Or walks us directly into whatever they prepared for someone stupid enough to follow." Borin grunted.

"Then we don't follow." They returned to Stonebridge before noon. Harlan took the news badly. He stood beside the chapel wall while Max explained what they had found, jaw working as he looked toward the eastern trees.

"At least five?"

"At least," Cass said.

"And no sign of where they took the bodies?"

"No," Max said. Harlan rubbed both hands over his face.

"Damn." Elder Rowan was less expressive. She simply stared toward the eastern approach for several seconds before turning back toward the village.

"Then we prepare for them to return." That became the work of the next few hours. The brush nearest the cemetery was cut back farther. Harlan doubled the watches and made it clear that no one patrolled alone. Lanterns were placed along the eastern lane, the chapel hill, and the approaches near the palisade, with spare oil kept close enough that they could be refilled without leaving a post unattended.

The villagers needed little encouragement, and by early afternoon, Stonebridge had stopped looking like a place frightened by rumors and started looking like a village expecting an attack. There was only so much the party could do until darkness came, and by late afternoon Max found himself heading toward the yard behind the Wayhouse again. Alina and Cass were already there. Alina had the short sword in hand, its blade wrapped in cloth, while Cass stood a few feet away with her arms folded.

"No," Cass said as Alina stepped forward.

"You're crossing your feet again."

"I'm not," Alina insisted.

"You are." Alina looked down. Cass smiled.

"See?" Max stopped in the doorway.

"Starting without me?" Cass glanced over first, a small smile already forming.

"We had to. Alina was getting impatient." Alina straightened.

"I was not."

"No?" Cass looked thoughtful.

"Could've sworn you checked that door three times."

"I was watching the yard."

"Mhm." Alina's grip shifted on the short sword.

"You offered to help."

"I did." Cass's smile widened slightly.

"Mostly because watching you pretend you weren't waiting for him was getting painful." Alina shot her a flat look, though a little color had begun to creep into her cheeks.

"I wasn't waiting for Max."

"Of course not." Max laughed as he crossed the yard.

"Should I come back later?"

"No." The answer came quickly enough that Cass's eyebrows rose. Alina glanced away.

"We already started. That's all."

"Right," Cass said. Alina ignored her. Max reached for the strips of cloth they had used the evening before.

"Alright. What have you been working on?"

"Footwork," Alina said.

"Her footwork," Cass corrected. Alina gave her another look but didn't argue this time. Max wrapped his longsword while Cass stepped aside, then handed Alina another strip when he noticed part of the cloth around her blade had started to loosen. By the time they were ready, Elias had wandered out carrying a steaming mug and claimed the same overturned barrel from the evening before.

Borin followed not long afterward, finishing a quiet conversation with one of Harlan's guards near the gate before coming over to watch. Max settled his sword into a comfortable guard and looked at Alina.

"Yesterday was getting inside my reach. Show me what you remember." Alina settled into her stance. She already looked better. Her feet were placed with more care, her weight centered, and the sword stayed between them instead of drifting toward whichever direction happened to catch her attention. Max raised his weapon.

"Come on." Alina no longer advanced straight toward his blade. She shifted toward his weapon side, forced him to turn, then stepped inside as he adjusted. Her short sword touched his upper arm, and satisfaction flashed across her face.

"Got you." Max didn't move.

"Look down." Alina followed his gaze. The wrapped point of his longsword rested against the center of her chest. Her smile vanished.

"You stabbed me."

"You cut my arm," Max corrected.

"I killed you." Cass chuckled from the fence.

"Welcome to the next lesson." Alina stepped back.

"Which is?"

"Getting the hit doesn't matter if you die doing it."

"So what did I do wrong?" Cass grinned.

"You saw the opening and forgot the rest of the fight." Max reset.

"Again." This time she was more cautious. Too cautious. He pushed her backward three steps before Cass spoke again.

"Stop watching the sword." Alina glanced toward her.

"You keep staring at his hands whenever he moves," Cass said.

"Watch all of him. Shoulders. Hips. Feet. The sword can lie to you. The rest usually gives something away." Max nodded.

"Listen to her." Alina looked between them.

"Are you teaching again?" Cass smiled.

"Apparently." They continued. Alina still lost most exchanges, but she stopped losing them the same way. She learned to abandon an attack when the angle turned against her instead of chasing it until Max punished her. Twice she slipped partly inside his reach, saw his sword beginning to come around, and backed out before he could touch her.

The third time, she got greedy. Max's wrapped blade tapped her ribs. Alina closed her eyes in frustration.

"I knew that was coming."

"And you did it anyway."

"I thought I could beat it." Max grinned.

"You didn't." She exhaled sharply and leveled a half-hearted glare at him.

"Thanks, I noticed."

"That's why we're here. Again." After several more passes, Max finally lowered his sword.

"That's enough for today." Alina stayed where she was.

"Wait." Max raised an eyebrow.

"I know you're slowing down for me."

"A little." Cass laughed. Max cleared his throat.

"Alright. A lot." Alina tightened her grip on her sword.

"Don't. Just once. I want to see the difference." Max studied her for a moment.

"You sure?"

"Yes." He glanced toward Cass.

She shrugged.

"She asked."

"Alright." They reset. Alina planted her feet carefully, sword centered, shoulders relaxed the way Max had been correcting for two days. Max used Battle Focus and Adrenal Surge and moved.

His first strike knocked her guard aside before she could properly react. He stepped through the opening immediately, drove into her shoulder, and took her balance out from under her. Her sword hit the dirt, and a heartbeat later, Alina was sitting on the frozen ground with Max's wrapped blade resting beneath her chin. Silence held for a second. Then Alina laughed and shook her head.

"That was awful." Max shrugged.

"You lasted longer than you would've yesterday." She looked up at him.

"I'm pretty sure that was less than two seconds."

"Then yesterday would've been one." Cass nodded solemnly.

"Progress." Max offered Alina his hand and pulled her upright. She retrieved the short sword, rubbing her shoulder.

"I have a long way to go."

"You've only been training with that thing for two days."

Max nodded toward her bow, leaning against the fence.

"And anyways, I think you're missing the point here. You're a Ranger. If someone bigger, stronger, and better with a sword gets that close to you, something has already gone very wrong," Max said.

"Your first answer should be the bow."

"Preferably before they reach stabbing distance," Elias added from his barrel.

"Preferably well before," Max agreed. Elias lifted his mug slightly.

"Same principle for me, really. If I'm trading blows with someone carrying a sword, several other things have already gone badly wrong."

Alina glanced toward him.

"That's part of why we're a party," Elias continued.

"Max and Borin stand in front and make it difficult for anything to reach me. Or you. Cass makes trouble wherever she sees an opening, and the two of us get to work from farther back where our advantages actually matter." Borin looked over from near the gate.

"That's generally the plan."

"Generally?" Alina asked. Borin glanced toward her.

"Plans have a tendency to fall apart when the fighting starts." She accepted that with a small nod. Elias looked back to Alina.

"The point is, none of us is supposed to be good at everything. We cover the things the others are bad at." Max tapped the wrapped flat of his sword lightly against the short sword in Alina's hand.

"And this is for when that stops working."

Her expression sobered.

"Something will get through eventually," he continued.

"Someone slips past us. You get separated. Run out of arrows. Get cornered somewhere you can't create distance. Whatever happens, you need an answer that isn't standing there and wishing you still had fifty feet between you and them." Borin nodded once.

"You survive long enough to make space again."

"Exactly." Alina looked down at the short sword for a moment, then toward her bow.

"So I'm not learning this because I'm supposed to become a swordswoman."

"You are learning to use a sword," Max said.

"But you're learning it because you're a Ranger." That seemed to settle something for her. She sheathed the blade.

"Fair enough." Max began stripping the cloth from his own sword and glanced toward the sky beyond the yard. They still had several hours before darkness, and sitting around the Wayhouse waiting for something to happen wasn't going to make those hours pass any faster.

"Come on," he said.

"Let's take another look around the village." The others gathered their things, and within a few minutes they had split up again. Max and Borin made another circuit of the palisade with Harlan, checking the places where the watch could see the eastern approaches and the stretches where houses or sheds interrupted their view.

Cass and Alina walked the inner lanes, looking for narrow passages someone might use to move through the village unseen, while Elias returned to the chapel with Father Edwin to inspect the doors, windows, and the places where the bitter oil had been found. They discovered nothing new, and as the afternoon wore on, that somehow became worse than finding something. Stonebridge began closing itself early. Shutters came down while traces of daylight still lingered in the sky. Doors were barred.

Children vanished from the lanes. The usual conversations outside the Wayhouse never began, and the handful of villagers who came inside for food ate quickly before returning home. Lanterns burned along the palisade and eastern lane. Pairs of armed villagers moved between them. The party joined the watches once darkness settled. Borin and Elias took the first circuit along the eastern side of the village, covering the chapel hill before following the inside of the palisade south toward the fields.

Max went out with Cass several hours later. The village felt different at night. Every creak of timber carried farther. Every movement beyond the lanternlight drew the eye. Twice Max stopped because he thought he had seen something beyond the wall, only for the shape to resolve into branches moving gently against the sky. Cass never mocked him for either, which told him enough about how tense she was. They passed two villagers standing watch near the eastern lane. Both gripped their spears too tightly.

"Anything?" Max asked. One shook his head.

"Nothing." Max looked beyond the palisade toward the dark fields and trees. Nothing was exactly what he could see too. They kept walking. Their patrol carried them past the chapel. The cemetery was quiet. Borin's lesser consecration had left no visible mark on the ground, but not a single grave had moved since morning. Father Edwin had left two lanterns burning beneath the chapel porch, and Harlan had stationed another pair of watchers where they could see both the cemetery and the eastern approach.

Max paused at the wall. Cass came to stand beside him.

"You're doing the face again." Max glanced toward her.

"What face?"

"The thinking one."

"I only have one face."

"You have several. Most are unfortunate." Max almost smiled. Cass looked toward the graves.

"You think they come back tonight?"

"I think whoever took those bodies had a reason."

"Not what I asked." Max stared into the darkness beyond the cemetery.

"Yes." Cass nodded.

"So do I." They continued their circuit. By the time they returned to the Wayhouse, it was very late. Harlan was waiting near the door with another pair of watchmen preparing to take over.

"Quiet?" he asked.

"Completely," Max said. Harlan gave a tired grunt.

"I'll take it. Go on and get some rest." Alina was already upstairs, along with Borin, who had gone to sleep after his watch, while Elias had claimed a bench near the hearth and was dozing with his staff resting against the wall beside him. Cass glanced toward the stairs.

"How long until dawn?"

"A few hours."

"Think they'll let us have them?" Max looked toward the dark windows.

"With my luck? Probably not." Cass sighed.

"Good. I was worried I might wake up rested." They gently woke Elias and went upstairs. Nobody undressed properly. Max loosened enough straps to lie down without the edge of his armor digging into him, then set his shield against the bedframe and left his sword within reach. Cass dropped onto her mattress with most of her gear still on. Borin slept with his hammer beside him, while Alina's bow and quiver rested against the wall within arm's reach. For a while, Max lay awake listening.

Footsteps passed outside as the watch made another circuit. Someone called quietly from one post and received an answer farther along the palisade. Wind moved against the shutters. Then silence returned. Max stared at the ceiling until the beams began to blur together. Eventually, his exhaustion won. He didn't know how long he slept before the chapel bell tore through the darkness. Max's eyes snapped open. For half a heartbeat he lay perfectly still, listening. The bell kept going. Fast. Frantic.

Then shouting carried across Stonebridge. Not from the chapel hill. Farther east. Another voice joined it. Then a scream. Max was already reaching for his sword.