Chapter 276: Battle at the Pyramid

The tremor came up the pyramid, making the swept flags buck while the silk-cotton roots flexed in the stone like rope under strain.

James looked over the blazing steps while the jungle went mad. The foliage thrashed though there was no wind to move them, leaves came down in sheets, and smoke tore sideways from the torches in ribbons.

The pressure pushed against his chest and rang in his teeth, soundless. It was as explained, the jungle cried for the thief and every root and leaf seemed to know it, while the flames leaned toward the slab and the darkness drew closer.

Behind him was the pagan ritual, the chime of bells, and Zephy’s chanting. He let himself one look over his shoulder.

She had the hatchling beneath her left hand and was taking it apart joint by joint with a sharp bone from her hair. The webbed toes went first, then the wing stubs, then the knuckled tail, each part dropping into a channel as blood and dark ichor dripped down toward the basin.

Zephy flung cornmeal over it, sprayed cane spirit from the calabash, and rubbed salt into every cut to keep its beak gaped in a cry the hush swallowed whole.

"Face the dark, mon capitaine. The green, she hunts the crying, oui?"

The words rose out of the ritual.

"So you keep your eyes on the dark, and you leave me to my part."

"Aye, aye, I’m lookin’. Go on with your chantin’, lass, and leave the starin’ to me."

Then the dead came out of the trees.

They poured from the darkness in dozens upon dozens, a harvest rising from every graveyard in the Caribbean, until they occupied the plaza as deep as the torchlight reached.

French infantry came first, tattered coats, rusted muskets bristling with socket bayonets. Behind, there were buccaneers in hog-hide jerkins stiff enough to stand by themselves, carrying muskets and half-moon blades on poles for hamstringing cattle, while Flibustiers came with axes and old Spaniards wore corselets with pikes in their hands.

Bone, leather, and strips of gray flesh shuffled forward in one tide.

Pale vines spread through their eye sockets and open mouths, then threaded down their ribs and arms, through every vein and muscle, until each limb jerked on a string. Sap oozed from them, milky green turning black, and it smelled sweet as spoiled molasses, while the only sounds made were the rattle of bone, the wet slap of vine, and the creak of old leather.

The undead puppets were slow, dragging across the open plaza one step at a time with their heads lolling. At the edge of the firelight, the front ranks flinched from the flames like cattle shying from a lantern, but the green drove them onward.

"Hold the light!"

James bellowed down the steps hard.

"Hold it, you dogs, like it’s the last bloody hope you’ve got!"

From the foot of the stairs drifted Mary’s voice, dryly. "Ah, Mother o’ God and all the saints, would ye look at the feckin’ state o’ them! Scarecrows, so they are, half o’ France dragged up out o’ the dirt to bring in the harvest, and not a one with the decency to wash first."

"Scarecrows don’t walk, Mark, ye daft sod!" Dunk shouted from the left wall.

At last the front ranks jammed between the serpent heads at the foot of the stairs, where the steps narrowed them and Mary held it with Bonnet at her shoulder.

The dead came up in threes, each trio with the same few tricks, the bayonet lunged slow and straight before the butt swung around, the half-moon blade swept low before chopping high, and the axe went up over the head and hung there for an age before falling.

Mary knew the lot as soon as they came.

She was among all three before the lunge had reached her, turning the bayonet aside with the forte of her cutlass and catching the next bayonet on the same guard as the undead tried to recover. The vines running through his arm tightened beneath the torn sleeve, hauling the weapon back toward her, but Mary had stepped off the line.

The half-moon blade swept for her legs and she hopped over it, coming down inside its reach where she slashed across the wrist. The bone cracked beneath the cut and the musket fell from the corpse’s hand, though the vines still writhed through the severed fingers as they reached uselessly after it.

Then the axe came down behind her. Mary twisted clear of the blow and felt it tear through the sleeve at her shoulder, then turned with the motion and drove her cutlass into the thing’s knee.

There, the blade bit through bone and vine alike, dropping the leg beneath it, but the corpse only lurched forward on the remaining foot.

She drew her pistol and fired into its chest at pointblank, blowing splinters of rib and blackened flesh across the stones, yet even with its chest open the dead thing kept dragging itself toward her.

"Joints, lads, the joints!"

The axe came down while she warned the merry band, tearing through her sleeve from shoulder to cuff as she twisted beneath the blow.

"Ah no. No, no, no! That were me nice coat, ye rotten, pox-ridden, maggot-gutted bastards! I’ll have the price o’ that out o’ yer shinbones, so I will!"

She slid inside the swing and took the head at the nape.

Sap burst across her blade as the head came free. The pale vine lashed out from the severed neck, writhed blindly for a moment, then went slack, leaving the head to tumble down the earth.

Meanwhile, James swept his gaze around the pyramid like a masthead lookout.

On the left wall, the hunters swung at Dunk, low sweep and high chop.

He hopped over the low sweep, caught the descending chop on the forte of his blade, and turned it aside, keeping his feet moving as he counted the rhythm of their attacks like a hornpipe.

"Low an’ high, low an’ high, an’ a one, an’ a two, an’ a three. Now here’s a step ye ain’t been taught, ye sods!"

On the third exchange, Dunk broke the rhythm and stepped inside the sweep and brought his blade down across the first wrist, turned through the next stroke, and caught the elbow before the corpse could recover. Then he drove the edge through its neck, sending the head tumbling against the stone steps.

It bounced once, then sprang back toward him, jaws snapping shut around his hat and tearing it clean from his head before rolling away down the steps with its prize.

"Come back here, ye thievin’ lump o’ bone! Betsy stitched that band herself!"

On the right wall, Pike had a pistol in each hand as the undead reached him. He fired the first and the shot smashed through a knee, splintering the joint and folding the leg beneath its owner, but when he pulled the trigger of the other pistol it only spat sparks into the pan, the damp priming refusing to catch.

The corpse arms closed around his fist before he could cock it again, their hands grinding against his as the vines hauled them inward. Pike snarled, reversed the pistol, and hammered the butt into one elbow until the bone snapped and the vine binding it let go.

He tore his hand free at last, though it came out swollen and livid, the fingers thick as a boiled glove.

"Why’s it allus me? Allus bloody me!" he howled.

Across the summit, over Zephy’s bent back, Nub held the far wall against the pikes as one of the dead thrust straight at him, then dragged the point sideways in a sweeping cut.

Nub turned with it, caught the shaft beneath his arm, and clamped down hard enough to stop the weapon cold. The vines running through the undead pulled taut as the corpse strained against him, its whole shoulder jerking with the effort.

"Aw, go on then, me lover, pull harder. Put yer back in it, there’s a good lad."

The undead pulled harder, their vine-strung arms straining as they tried to wrench the pike free. Nub held on until their weight had shifted forward, then suddenly let go, and the entire file stumbled backward, one corpse dragging the next with it, until all of them toppled over the steps in a tumbling heap like skittles.

By then the undead stood three deep on every wall, and for each one that fell, two more climbed over.

"Pull the torches!"

James roared.

"Burn the bastards back to the hell that spat ’em out! Burn ’em!"

Pike ripped a torch from its bracket and drove the burning end between the open ribs of a dead musketeer. The vines inside caught at once, the fire racing through them before the corpse lurched upright and flared like a living lantern, black smoke pouring from its mouth as the undead around it recoiled from the sudden heat.

But every torch they tore left a breach in their wall of light, and the dead immediately pressed toward them, dragging themselves out of the darkness and into the narrowing glow.

James took one stride down the stairs, his hand on [Verdict], then stopped, the next tread beneath his boot.

The witch was behind him.

He went back up.

At the foot of the stairs, Bonnet found himself backed against a serpent head as two blades came at him together. His weapon moved almost lazily, the reforged blade beating the first aside, then the second, each parry clean and precise, just as a Bridgetown master had drilled him with garden canes.

He counterattacked with a riposte that slipped neatly into the opening, then turned the blade and dropped into a remise as the corpse tried to recover. The edge bit through the knee, parting bone and the pale vines wrapped through it like wet rope, and the leg buckled beneath the undead.

Bonnet swept a small, breathless bow to the heap of bone at his feet.

"Oh, I do beg your pardon, sir, most abjectly. How dreadfully clumsy of me."

"Save yer manners for the livin’, Bonnet."

Mary hewed into the next corpse.

"This lot’s only after yer liver!"

Out of the corner of his eye, James caught a flame at the summit corner bending.

He turned.

While every blade faced outward, vines had been climbing the pyramid unseen between the torches. Thick green ropes appeared through the far side of the peak, slid across the swept flags like snakes, and lifted.

Zephy knelt at the slab with her hands inside the hatchling, her chant steady and her eyes on her ritual, unaware as the vines came over the summit.

A vine cracked across the flags toward her back.

A second rose behind it.

"Zephy!"

James drew [Verdict] and ran.