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Hi y'all. Tried a bit of foreshadowing in this chapter. Not really sure it came out right.

Comments welcome.

Chapter IX - Foreshadowing and Flight

Ranks of armored guards stood, guts fluttering but faces stoic, flanking from two sides the thousands-strong mob gathered on the weathered white marble steps of the grand Cathedral of Many. They held their halberds upwards, pointing to the sky in a forest of lethal blades and points, their paws sweating and ready to bring weapons to bear upon the crowd should restive gathering become bloody riot.

Upon a raised spit of stone that extended from the top stair outward over the lower steps, the hunched and elderly grand pontiff leaned heavily on his white crosier, carved of rarest woods and embossed with silver and gold inlay, attempting to address the peasant mob's fears.

The guard captain patted his sergeant of the watch on the shoulder, as the two stood on wooden blocks brought so they could see over the ranks of their men, and pointed to a tall and handsome red-tunic'd wolf whose voice seemed to press upon the crux of the crowd's dismay as he spoke over them, quieting many.

"Holy Father, we are gathered because the trade ships have ceased. What do you know of the rumors about the dead rising? We hear such things from river sailors, before the Duke has them spirited away as spies!"

The wolf was dressed as the rest were, but something about his bearing and comportment seemed off to the seasoned, grizzled watch captain, a twenty year veteran of the chaos brought on by aristocratic politics, angry ignorant peasants, street crime, war, and plague.

His sergeant nodded, needing no words to understand what the captain meant. That wolf seemed, to the captain, likely to be a spy and agitator from one of the lords opposing Duke Casso, and while the Guard had no particular love for Casso, the chaos of civil war was even more dangerous and unpredictable than the vicious tiger and his mad sons.

The elderly prelate raised a bare-skinned paw, mouse tail flicking behind him as he spoke in a warbling tone that nonetheless was now audible as the crowd went quiet, straining to listen.

"I have consulted all the various oracles of our gods, and they all agree there is aught amiss abroad...But in the signs, our oracles read that this unrest is caused by angry, jealous nobles who oppose our Duke's coming coronation, not the undead. Our gods would never allow such abominations to exist in these blessed and sacred lands..."

The crowd did not seem mollified if their raised voices were any indicator, and the captain frowned, tightening his chain-gloved paw on the pommel of his worn and well-loved sword. As a nobleman, even a bastard son of a minor bankrupt house, he was allowed such a weapon. The other guards fingered their halberds which were expensive, but considered suitable for commoners. Behind their four hundred fur pike wall, Duke Casso's soldiers were taking high positions on rooftops to support them with archery and crossbowmen.

On the other side of the great square, the captain could see a third unit approaching. Casso's elite cavalry forces, bloodied in the recent war and resplendent in their armor and upon their massive steeds.

The captain cursed. Such furs did not possess the calm hearts needed for keeping civil law. If this ruckus failed to come under control soon, there would be a massacre of the people he'd sworn to defend with his life, all those years ago.

He brushed his gauntlet through age-greyed fur and swished his orange tiger-striped tail behind him in agitation, before patting the halberdier in front of him to move him aside.

The sergeant called out to him as he moved.

"Cap'n Summer, going to get ugly if they don' stop, init?"

The captain merely nodded, grunted at his long-time friend and assistant, and mounted the short barricade his men had carried with them when they'd heard about the riot. One of the Sergeant's smarter ideas, he mused, patting the sturdy oak and pine structure and stepping up onto it next to one of the angular tongue-and-groove joints that allowed his men to slot the things together in moments after carrying them piecemeal across town.

He watched the mob, waiting, tasting the air with his sensitive nose for the right mix of fear and doubt. Speaking before the crowd was ready to hear would be shouting into a hurricane, and speaking after the crowd was enraged would merely change their target from the clergy to his own men.

It was like watching a restive sea under a green storm sky. The gloom of the ongoing day, cast in the long, twisted, dancing torch-light shadows of the interlaced buildings made his heart thud wrong a moment, as the drizzling rain began to intensify. He felt as if pressure were building, a buzzing behind his breastbone telling him things were going to reach a breaking point. A sudden flash of lightning made him grimace and shield his eyes.

A thud sounded next to him, and he looked down to see a raven, still smoking from the lightning that had struck it mid-air on its journey between clouds. Its fall had impaled it on the spikes of the wooden fortification, and its cooked feathers were floating down around him, whirling chaotically in the falling rain on their way to imbed in the muck. Its spread-winged form was flopped down, broken-backed, and he winced at the memory it called forth.

He'd had no love for the rebel King Verenax, but seeing him dead on the battlefield as he and his scouts retreated ahead of the late King Callian's army had been like seeing a coffin pass on the street. A kingdom with no king would be chaos, like the falling feathers.

Captain Summer rested a paw on the hilt of his sword, tracing a curved clawtip along the weathered engravings his nobleman grandfather had put on it, as he called out to the mob.

"You! In the red tunic!"

The mob were listening, receptive, and as the red-tunic'd spokeswolf turned towards him, Summer knew he'd timed his opening well.

"I have your answers! Calm your crowd, and we'll talk!"

As he expected, the wolf looked apprehensive. He hadn't come here to talk rationally, only to stir the superstitious and easily-frightened peasants up into a mob. Nonetheless, the crowd was now pushing him forward, and he could no more have refused the parlay than he could part the sea.

Summer grabbed the barricade's upright support and used it to lower himself to the cobbles, armor clinking as he stepped a few paces towards the crowd. Most of them that had been standing near the barricade were the less troublesome sort, the one who wanted to flee if things went bad, and they parted in front of him well before the red-tunic wolf arrived.

The wolf puffed himself up as he made the last few yards of being pushed along. Captain Summer could see the nervousness in the wolf's widened eyes and the stiffness of his walk. He could also tell, by how the fur was walking, that he was either armed or used to walking with weapons hidden in his clothes. Behind the Captain, guards made restless noises and fingered their halberds, worried for their commander.

He waved a paw, both to calm them and forestall the wolf's obvious intent to pontificate. His voice came out strong, loud, a parade-ground voice that carried over the mob and echoed off stone facades.

"I'm sorry to hear the trade ships have stopped, it must be hard for your livelihood. My men have brought me many reports, that there is unrest and revolt in surrounding lands. Your leader and I will be approaching the mayor to ask that grain be distributed from the emergency silos, to make certain no one starves until trade can be re-established."

The puffed wolf blew out his lungful of air, his eyes darting to either side as he realized the danger he was in. Acknowledging him with a nod, the Captain gave him a knowing, victorious smile, and waved him over. The crowd responded, pushing their 'spokeswolf' towards the Captain, who clasped a paw on his shoulder, squeezing hard enough for the wolf to grunt and grit his teeth but not so hard it could easily be seen by the mob.

"As to the living dead, I swear to you we'll look into it. Until then, please go home. I'm old and tired and have to piss, and this is keeping me away from my warm home, eh?"

The reminder of their damp misery and his self-targeted humor seemed to have sapped what was left of the crowd's will to fight. Overhead, the thunder clouds hung ominously, but the rain had slowed to a soft drizzle for the moment.

Looking up, as the barricade was opened for him, he spoke to the wolf without glancing his way.

"You and I, wolf, are going to talk to the mayor. Then you and I are going to talk to each other. Then, maybe, if I'm feeling especially friendly and helpful, I'll let you go and not send you to Casso as the spy I suspect you are. Understand? Helpful means life. Unhelpful means Casso's sons get you."

The guards waited for his command, and the Captain didn't let them stand idle long.

"Split into two groups. Half of you will open the barricade and guard it. Let the people use it as a walkway to get out of the square, in case Casso's men decide to be asses. The other half of you are to patrol the streets and make sure this doesn't start up again elsewhere. Groups of no less than three, got it?"

The 'yes sir's!' that echoed back made him nod and put a paw to the wolf's stiffened shoulder.

"Whoever sent you ought to know something, wolf. We're not as easily fooled as they thought."

Timid rested his paws on the tilted sill of an arrow slit high up inside the tower, and watched the mist-obscured border of the forest, where the road's edge simply faded away, consumed by the ancient, ominous wood.

He'd been told to await a signal from Vanyal, and he prayed quietly to nobody in particular that the fox would be as wily as his peoples' reputation said to expect. Somehow, in the strange and awful silence that rose like a miasma from the crowd of undead below, Timid felt heartened. He had but one more companion to find, and he wasn't allowing the fact of how vague the prophecy was concerning him to enter his mind.

Nonetheless, his mind niggled at him, and he worried for the fox. Their warden companion had been gone more than a full day now, and while it had been a blessing in that Cel's wounds were less critical, every moment they lost to waiting was another moment the city could put towards protecting itself from the coming storm.

In the last evening, he'd watched in horrible fascination as thousands of the dead had marched up the road past their tower, either unaware of or ignoring his party's presence. He was no longer entirely certain the city could survive an attack of this size even if it was warned, but his sense of duty gnawed at him every time he thought about simply bypassing the place entirely.

Planning their part of the escape had taken less work than he'd thought. Tomasj had simply snorted and proclaimed Timid's plan a failure that would get them all killed, which Timid took as a sign of approval. Cel had merely grunted, nodded her head, and in a hoarse voice stiff with embarrassment asked to be carried into the barracks room. Once there, she'd broken the lock off an armory locker with a swipe of her sword that left Tomasj and Timid both raising eyebrows and the priest wondering how she could muster such strength in her condition.

She'd then proceeded to outfit them both. Timid looked down at the steel half-gauntlets she'd forcibly shoved into his arms while leaning against Tomasj, and itched at the unfamiliar weights on his paws.

"Paws are where you'll most likely be bitten while fighting these things," she'd said, and he wasn't going to argue with the veteran knight's assessment. Tomasj had laughed off additional armor, and peeled back his buttoned sleeves to show her the fine chain mesh he wore beneath the studded leathers. Timid grinned lightly, as he watched the misting rain, at the memory of how she'd stared at him and asked if all Svalich wore their armor backwards.

A movement in the trees should have alerted the priest, but he was too busy remembering how embarrassing it had been when she'd asked for help getting a breastplate on. He'd had to re-wrap her chest bandages, something he'd not had to do while she was conscious and trying not to be embarrassed herself. Celibacy wasn't a requirement of the Finder's lower clergy, but he'd never had much experience with how to handle bandage-wrapping a woman's breasts without it getting awkward.

The palm- and bite-shaped bruises on them hadn't helped.

An arrow zipped over his head, missing him by so little that he felt its passing wind, and Timid snapped out of his reverie with a muffled yelp as he dropped to the floor and rolled, looking behind him to see a green-fletched arrow imbedded in the far wall's wooden paneling. Cursing himself for a fool, he realized that from such a range in the rain, Vanyal probably couldn't see him. When he'd arranged which room to deliver his message to, he must have assumed Timid wouldn't be idiot enough to stand in front of what was effectively declared an archery target.

Muttering and rubbing at his neck bemusedly, the priest stood and gripped the arrow, yanking it from the paneling with a grunt, and unrolled the thin strip of bark the warden had wrapped around the shaft.

"Fond hors. Wating frst. ejj."

Timid smacked a paw over his face at the spelling, and hoped this wasn't some manner of warden code for 'wait where you are' or 'stay in the tower, zombies everywhere.' He hoped it meant 'Found horses, and am waiting at the forest edge.'

Mumbling about the value of proper education and grammary, he went for the stairs. They had no more time to waste.

The tower doorway flew open, smashing a trio of the undead to the soupy, muddy ground as the three companions stumbled through, not having expected the heavy thing to budge so swiftly.

Before them, the horde stirred and moaned, and began to turn towards the morsels they'd been left behind to besiege.

Timid realized he was hesitating only because Cel lashed out with her long, slender bastard sword, snipping the head from a lunging, rotting monster like a gardener trimming rotten fruit. The thing's rotten gore seeped from the severed neck as it fell, and the knight squeezed his arm, speaking a sharp command in her hoarse voice.

"Do not stop moving until we reach the trees, father!"

The priest swallowed with a dry muzzle, and held up the Finder's Star with a quivering paw, praying, begging, demanding, in his mind, for the Star to use its magic, while he took his first step out and straight into the mouth of the swarm.

As they had planned, Tomasj unleashed the first shot of his terrible pistol just as the swarm condensed and surged forward, arms outstretched, bony fingers wriggling as they called out in their horrid sonorous moan. The arcane round shot through the chest of the first monster, blowing its rotting guts out its back, before detonating with a percussive thud that nearly knocked Timid down despite having been braced for it.

Cel clung to his arm with a powerful fist, shearing her sword one-pawed through a creature that had evaded the blast, as scorched gore showered down around them. Behind them, Tomasj was spitting blood and taking his aim again without having paused to reload.

Even with the magical blast having winnowed their number and blown a crater in their midst, Timid could see through the whirling smoke that the enemy were hundreds strong, and he waved the Star furiously, shaking and glaring at it.

"Damnit! Work you stupid thing!"

A surging wave of the dead poured into the gap of their own lines then, and hurled themselves in groaning, shrieking fury towards the companions.

Timid thrust the Star towards them, his heart thudding in his chest as the thing lay inert in his grasp. Then he was staggering, as Cel shoved him back and away from her. He watched as the knight planted her bad leg, digging her booted heel into the mud as the misting rain soaked into her bandages and she raised her sword, long and gleaming silver, in a salute.

"For King Callian and Saint Tinia!"

With a blast of blood and fire from its barrel, Tomasj's pistol barked out another shot, blowing dozens of the dead to flinders and scraps of flesh as the wolf charged to support Cel against the irresistible wave, his muzzle split wide in a savage grin that showed his bloody, sharp fangs.

The dead swarmed forward, and Cel flicked her blade to the side, then swept it forward in an arc that clipped heads from the undead like daisies, before reversing her swing and bringing it back down across-body to slice another in half at the waist. The move brought her blade around in perfect time to spit an incoming monster through the eye by simply lifting her right arm and letting the thing impale itself by its own momentum.

Tomasj leapt at another of the creatures that was coming straight at her, recognizing her skill would only do her so much good when she couldn't easily keep her footing with a damaged knee.

No, no, this isn't how it was supposed to be!

Timid clamped his eyes shut and grabbed the amulet with both paws, hard enough to cut stingingly into his flesh, as he tried to recall what had happened the last time the amulet's magic had worked.

His eyes closed, he remembered the darkness, the muddy water, the dead, clawed hands wrapped around his throat.

So it wasn't the incantation...Can't incant while being strangled.

Sir Cel's flashing bastard sword took another head, and another, then whirled and cut down a rotting corpse that had become intent on Timid where he knelt in the muck. Tomasj's pistol flashed and gouted again, as the bloodied wolf whirled and slashed one-pawed with his sword.

The priest dimly registered that arrows were flying from somewhere beyond the tree line, arcing down to strike the shambling dead.

He remembered the pain in his wrist, the sensation of drowning...

The name! I thought his NAME!

The little priest shot to his feet. Eyes darting left and right, he saw they would soon be surrounded entirely, and dragged down despite the consummate skill, strength, and ferocity of his two warrior companions.

There was no further time for doubt. No time to worry about old temple doctrines about the forbidden, hidden names of his god.

"Tauriel! Na'haln! Eri-Liath!"

From his tree-top perch, Vanyal had spotted the undead well before they could have noticed the shadow-silent warden of the woods. He knew this place far too well for that, and it knew him as well.

He'd fired off his signal arrow, then waited, hoping the others had come up with some workable plan. They hadn't counted on the undead left behind being so damn numerous, and he couldn't take the risk of trying to whittle down their number, lest they swarm his tree and find the three rangy highland horses he'd managed to find for them. Bound to a tree trunk a dozen yards back, they would be little more than meat for the dead.

When the tower's front door flew open, he started to take aim. Once the dead were focused on something, he'd learned, they tended not to notice other distractions like flying arrows. So, once Cel had started slicing through the creatures like she was scything wheat one-pawed, he spitted one through the back of the head just to see what happened.

He lost sight of the undeads' reaction when the black wolf with the tall hat let loose a terrible scourging blast of witch fire from his infernal pistol. Vanyal lifted his arm to shield his eyes, cursing silently as stars danced in his vision from the flash. Moments later, he was firing again, as all he needed were silhouettes, knowing where his companions stood by the movement of the crowd.

The dead were too thick, he realized, as his vision cleared. The enemy had been more clever than they'd given credit for, hiding dozens of cadaverous foes in the road ditches, under the water lilies that covered the streams there.

"Mindless? My tail they're mindless..." he whispered to himself as he loosed another shaft, putting a shambler down as it tried to move around the embattled companions.

He saw the priest drop to a knee, and grimaced. To his eyes, their erstwhile leader had just given up, and was preying before death. Undeterred, the warden loosed more shafts, burying them unerringly in the enemy's vulnerable skulls.

A strange word struck through the air like a fist, and he jostled back in the tree, grabbing onto the bark as his eyes widened.

From little Timid, a shockwave of power surged, blasting the dead away from his companions without harming the mad wolf and the knight. The creatures disintegrated as they were struck, though the magic stopped some ten paces from the cat. Then a second wave, behind the first, crackled from the priest's mouth, arcs of light flying from his lips that zipped outward in lightning blurs to blast and burn flesh from the monstrous attackers.

The third wave came a moment after, and one of the hundred or more still swarming towards them was struck by a blast of lightning that surged from the sky, thick as a mighty king oak, that left the ground burned and sizzling in its wake.

As he saw Timid fall flat on his face, the undead horde lost all cohesion, simply shambling about aimlessly, groaning, arms out as if they were praying or like blind men seeking a wall to guide them.

Tomasj grabbed the collapsed priest and bolted for the trees, not slowing as he bulled through the last remaining foes who tried to grab at him with their claw-like boney paws.

Vanyal fired two more arrows, over Cel's shoulders, at a pair who had gotten behind her, and yelled out over the din of groaning corpses.

"Run this way, damnit!"

She took a step forward, and let out a grunt of pain he could hear even over the rain as her left leg collapsed, a choking sound from the woman who was embarrassed to show pain.

Vanyal slid his arm through the bow and leapt, grabbing a leafy tree branch to slow his descent, and nearly flew over the mud as he ran to her side. He grabbed Cel under her left , his paw brushing up against the steel breastplate she'd put on over her bandages.

"C'mon, Cel, get up! There's too many to fight them!"

She grunted, grabbing onto him with spasmodic strength that bruised his shoulder. Ignoring the pain, he helped her up, and the two limped toward the trees.

"Ponies, straight ahead of us, maybe twenty yards! We can use them to reach Sundertown!"