God Within Us

Her whole world shrank down to two narrow slits as Vasilisa donned the helmet. Her mother had owned a fine suit of lamellar tailored for a woman’s fit during her days as a Quanli noyan, and on her own sixteenth birthday the arms-master Stavr had gifted her a light, long coat of maille which gathered dust in the armory once her father put a stop to her sword training.

Alas tonight, she wore neither her mother’s nor her own armored finery. Instead, the spearman and quartermaster of the Gravemarsh Keep hurriedly adorned her with whatever armaments they could scavenge from the barebones armory: a rusted maille hauberk forgotten in a corner, vambraces of leather and iron splints, and a nasal helmet with a maille curtain to protect her face and two small eye holes that made her look like an owl. None of the armor fit as it should - made as it was for different men all varying degrees of shorter and wider than her - and none of it matched.

By the time she lowered the helmet over her head the rest of the druzhina had rallied to the gates of the keep - an armored core some thirty strong with large oaken shields and a mix of axes, spears, and swords.

“My lady looks every bit a warrior,” said the spearman - Tikhon - as he looked her over.

“It’s one thing to look, and another to fight as one,” she replied sourly. And if I fight, may the shame carry the others at my back to fight just as hard.

The clouds above had opened once more, and the night was filled with looming stars as she led the druzhina to ride down from the keep and towards the town’s gatehouse. As her courser pounded down the slick cobblestones she saw the freeholders and Nesha rushing the opposite way, making towards shelter in one of the abandoned houses as all around them more militia gathered to Serhij’s side. She sped by Nesha and the freeholders, but did not spare them a glance - and she wondered whether they themselves even recognized her as she was, clad near head-to-toe in iron and leather.

When they drew near the gatehouse, the druzhina gave a cry of “Rovetshi!”, raising their weapons in salute, and the militia called back with a cry of their own. As the druzhina dismounted she leapt from her courser and shoved her way up to the walls where Serhij stood leaning on the battlements - his brow covered with sweat, his eyes barely containing the roiling fear within his heart. The magister nearly jumped as she laid a hand on his shoulder, and it took a moment for him to recognize her eyes through the iron curtain of maille.

“My lady, you should be-”

“In the keep?” she replied, her voice sounding muffled. “Magister, it has always been the duty of the nobility to defend the people - much as it is yours to govern.

“Besides-” She looked the magister up and down, and saw that though the rest of his militia armored themselves with padded jackets and maille, he himself wore only his tunic and cloak. Instead of a crossbow or a pike, the magister wore only a short sword at his belt - a sword whose blade had never tasted the open air since it was first sheathed by the smith. “Of the two of us, I think I am the better…dressed for the occasion.”

The magister made to say something, but bit his tongue - it was too late to argue, and he turned his gaze beyond the walls once more.

A pale mist still lingered over the marshes, but further beyond she could make out the shadows which turned into the figures of starved men and women as they drew nearer. The deluge of people marched without coughing, arguing, or any sort of talk - their heads lowered, as though they were walking half-asleep. Some of the freeholders wielded pitchforks, sickles, and daggers, but most of them staggered forward clutching only rocks and heavy branches - and none carried shields to protect them from the rain of crossbow bolts that was to come.

Gods…they’ll die in the hundreds for nothing, she thought, but then she remembered the stories - men fighting on while their guts slipped from their stomachs, fighting with fists and teeth like animals. If they fought as such, then even a man with a rock could injure a trained spearman - and a dozen could rip him to pieces.

And it was not for nothing that they were to die - the grounds around Rovetshi’s walls were already piled with the dead. And with more…she imagined a black crystal erupting from the dying earth right in front of the town - a dreamer called down and awakened by the scents of blood and suffering rising high into the cold heavens.

That is why the skies are now open…they are waiting, she mused. They are hungry.

The staggering horde of sleeping men and women seemed to number only two or three hundred by her count - but from behind them, she saw something else: thousands of small, bobbing lights, and a great flowing sea of shadows emerging from the mist. When she squinted her eyes at the moving shadows she saw only what looked like reeds and bushes…but then she saw they were drawing closer, and from within the shifting mass, there bobbed a helmet rusted red through and through.

By the light of the moon, the first skull she saw almost seemed to glow - the skeletal body covered over with so much mud and debris from the ages that it had dried and hardened until the dead man was more marsh than bone.

The skeleton walked with a stiff soldier’s gait as it might have in life, and as she drew her gaze across the tide Vasilisa saw the Gravemarsh had now released its many drowned from its grasp - an army of hundreds who lay dead for centuries now risen from their graves and bringing up the rear of the approaching horde.

In their hands the silent dead clutched ancient, rusted blades and axes retrieved from the muck, set to fight one, final war.

And in hollows of their dead eyes…she saw twinkling starlight.

“Gods above…look…look…” Serhij stammered, his face completely drained of color as he beheld the dead. “Gods of heaven and below…what are- how-”

“Harvest,” Vasilisa whispered more to herself than the magister. “You repelled it once, and now it comes back with more. The Dreamers…”

“How can you kill dead men?” Serhij wondered aloud, looking to her for answers. “How?”

The magister’s questions and the awestruck murmurs of the men around her fell quietly to her ears as Vasilisa leaned out across the battlements and tried to peer further past the darkness. Through the sea of mist and the staggering dead, she saw one figure that towered above the rest slowly emerge into view.

The one who led the horde rode atop a great, ugly plow-horse that could barely hold its weight. The Dreamer resembled a dead man freshly turned from the grave, but with monstrously-wide, muscular shoulders and a great tangle of black, oily hair that reached down to its waist. Covering its cracked skin of clay was a long blood-soaked shawl, and bracers of iridescent glass shimmered on the Dreamer’s forearms. It's cracked face bore two hollows for eyes, but within the emptiness Vasilisa sensed the Dreamer's gaze meet hers, and it took all her might to resist the urge to fall to her knees. The feeling of domination, of crushing, terrible might, struggled to force her to her knees - but her silent heart burned in defiance, and her soul flooded with warmth to ward away the cold, twisting darkness that filled her vision.

“The time has come.” The voice that crept from the monster’s stony throat sounded one-part a howl, and to her, one part a song - a melody of a thousand different heavenly noises that overlapped and blended into the song of the stars. It would have brought her to tears, had its singer not been the thing of nightmares.

As the Dreamer's voice carried out over the town, Vasilisa saw several of the militiamen and druzhinniks tremble before its call.

The Dreamer pulled its worn steed to a stop just beyond the reach of the crossbows on the walls, and then the entire swath of men and dead fell to a stop as one alongside it. Only when the splashing and squelching footfalls fell silent did Vasilisa realize that the rest of the marshes had fallen silent - no waterfowl screeched, no insects chittered - everything, everyone stood stock still. Fear choked out all sound of life around.

“Hold, everyone!” She called to the men on the walls, and those who stood in formation down below. No one can deny it now. No one can close their eyes. “Fear will be your end! Do not let it drown you!”

The Dreamer raised one hand into the air, and then there came another song.

“The Heralds call. The Majesties awaken. And we are coming home.”

The dreadful hand came down. Then the dead and the sleepers charged forth - and their rattling shrieks filled the world.

"Do not be afraid!"