More men were approaching the bridge along the Morano Way, the route the Iron Hoof riders had taken. Soldiers, definitely the alive kind rather than the walking dead kind, filled the road from side to side, marching abreast, all in shadow, the sun gleaming only on the rooftops now.
“Check my side.” I waved Renprow absently across the width of the bridge and started walking toward the advancing troops. By the time I got to the end of the bridge I could see Martus, four ranks back upon his horse, resplendent in breastplate, conical helm with faceguard and an aventail of chainmail spreading across his shoulders.
The sight of Martus and his army at least filled the citizenry with enough confidence for a few to open their windows and lean out to cheer whilst the men marched below. For my part I felt only a sense of nagging unease, which floated upon a sea of primal fear. I hadn’t wanted the marshal’s sash in the first place and it was beginning to look more like a noose by the minute.
Martus came to a halt fifty yards from the bridge with his soldiers streaming out to either side of him, heading in both directions along the bank.
“I left orders for you to stay at the palace!” I shouted, advancing on him.
“A good thing I ignored you!” He lifted his faceplate so he could bellow to full effect. “We’ve got a dozen or more incursions along both banks. Got to stamp these things out before they take hold. Like a plague these dead men. One makes the next and so on—”
“I’m the fucking marshal and you obey my orders!” I felt slightly foolish shouting up at him on the back of his stallion but I wasn’t about to lose command to him, even if our audience were common foot soldiers.
Captain Renprow rode up behind me, leading Murder. Darin overtook him at the last, a good number of the men with him, battered, goresplatted, but largely in one piece.
“You’re to follow my orders, Martus,” I said, not shouting now but loud enough for everyone to hear. “Or I’ll see you hang.”
“Hanging seems unlikely.” Darin rode in between Martus and me, cutting off our brother’s reply. “A week in the dungeons on the other hand . . .” He looked meaningfully at Martus, then glanced past him and frowned. “What’s that?”
“Red smoke.” I followed his gaze. “Shit. The walls.” Red smoke had been my proudest instigation. Each wall tower now had a stock of a dozen paper-wrapped fire-powders that gave off copious red smoke when lit, the idea being that any emergency could be signalled swiftly across Vermillion in this manner, faster than messengers and with a longer reach than bells amid the cacophony of the city. As an added bonus the rare salts used in the fire-powder’s manufacture were costly and dug from the Crptipa mines, leading to a nice profit that would come directly back to my pocket. Right now though, seeing a seven-tailed bank of red smoke rising from the towers of the east quarter, I would gladly have forgone all and any income resulting from the need to restock fire-powder.
“You’re not making any sense . . . Marshal.” Martus looked back at the smoke over the heads of his troops.
“We’ve got half the city watch and two thousand troops chasing less than two hundred dead along the riverbanks. Meanwhile at our city wall seven tower captains have seen something that made them scared enough to light the emergency signal . . .” Each tower stood sixty foot high, crenellated like a fortress and manned by a garrison of twenty-five with room for a hundred. I really didn’t want to know what would be enough to cause seven of them to call for help at the same time. “This isn’t the assault—this is the diversion!”
THIRTEEN
“I hope to God Grandmother named you marshal for a good reason.” Darin joined me atop the leftmost of the two towers flanking the Appan Gate, his voice awestruck. “Most of our cousins thought it was a joke.”
“Most?”
“The rest thought it was a punishment.”
We looked out across Vermillion’s overspill, the extended city reaching half a mile from the walls, still further where it followed the Appan Way, as if desperate to wring a few more coins out of any traveller so foolish as to leave. Dead people crowded the space before the gates— men, women, children—the grey and flaking dead in the filthy remains of their grave-clothes; the fresh dead, still scarlet with their murder, a silent throng stretching out around the walls, back along the main road, pressed tight in the alleys between houses.
Even sixty feet up with a light breeze the stench proved invasive, tearing at the back of my throat, stinging my eyes. More than a few meals had been splattered down the wall. The sight and smell of your first walking dead is apt to do that to you.