Well, that makes things considerably easier. I begin kicking out at knees and arms, swiping my blade across arms and legs and anything else that’s within easy reach. Even still, the horsemen are largely overwhelmed.
Famine keeps growing plants, and they’re picking off some of the dead, but there are so many more corpses closing in on us that his efforts merely staunch the flow of them, not stop them altogether.
Amidst the chaos, I catch sight of a line of skeletons marching up the freeway. There must be a dozen of them, and they slip through the grasp of Famine’s plants and weave their way through the debris. Unlike the other dead, they aren’t hasty, and they aren’t focused on the horsemen.
Instead, they move towards me.
“Lazarus,” Pestilence’s calls as he cuts through an undead, “they’re coming for you!”
I race away from the skeletons, swinging my borrowed blade and cutting off limbs of attacking revenants where I can.
Death’s servants approach me as a unit, and the fact that I’m moving around doesn’t seem to bother them. Half of the group simply walks past me and the horsemen, while the other half fans out in front of us. It’s only then that they truly close in on me, moving into a tighter and tighter formation until they encircle me. Once they’re in place, they stand eerily still.
I try to shove past them, but the moment I take a step towards one of the skeletons, the entire group shifts in the same direction, maintaining a three-foot boundary around me as best they can. It puts them frustratingly out of reach.
I try again, stalking towards another skeleton on the opposite side of the circle, and again, the same result. I blow out a breath before I wonder: what would happen if I ignored the skeletons altogether and approached one of the revenants fighting outside of the circle?
I spot one charging towards Pestilence, and I move to cut the creature off. The skeletons move with me, but once I reach the charging undead, my guards stop moving forward, preventing me from getting any closer to the creature.
I swipe at the putrid corpse beyond the skeletons. My dagger sinks into the woman’s mottled skin, but it doesn’t do much, not with a skeleton between the two of us. So, withdrawing my blade, I close my fist around my weapon’s handle and punch the skeleton in front of me right in the skull. It jerks back, smashing into the rotting corpse and throwing both revenants off balance.
The fresher corpse falls to the ground, and moving over to it, I put a boot on the undead woman’s chest and slice her arms off at the joints, trying not to gag at the awful smell of her or the fact that she was once a human. I remove her legs the same way, only pausing to turn aside and retch when the sights and sounds and smells overwhelm me.
I’m not a monster, I chant to myself. Because dead or not, this feels monstrous.
Already, my skeletal bodyguards have reformed around me, but it makes no difference because I can suddenly fight again.
More revenants pour in by the second, and it seems to be taking everything to keep them at bay.
“Famine!” War shouts, slicing through more undead as he speaks. “Forget the revenants!”
At that, the Reaper seems to go still, a disbelieving look on his face. “Are you mad?” he bellows back.
“I may be mortal, but I am still a warlord and you will heed my command. Stop using your powers against the revenants and make a barrier around both you and Pestilence strong and tight enough to keep the undead out.”
No sooner has War spoken than two separate circles of trees rise from the ground. Each tree trunk is so close to the next that not even the smallest revenants could hope to get through. The circles of trees close in around Famine and Pestilence.
“What about you and Lazarus?” the Reaper says, for once not bickering with his brother.
“Lazarus doesn’t need protection. Death wouldn’t dare harm her.”
The Reaper’s eyes flick to me before returning to War. “And you?” he asks.
“One of us still needs to move around freely,” War says, even as he slices through a row of incoming corpses.
“Now, my brother,” War continues, “use everything in your power to get our brother out of the sky.”
My heart is hammering.
“Pestilence,” he calls out, “get your bow ready—once Famine brings Death low enough, I want you to shoot him.”
“Lazarus,” he says, cutting through a few more undead before he looks at me, “once Death’s out of the sky, if he’s not yet dead, you will be the one who must kill him.”