Olive climbed back out of the carriage's front window, laden with two heavy sacks. "Give me a hand up to the roof," she said.
"What about Mother Lleddew?" Giogi asked.
"She's got some protection of her own. The undead aren't bothering her," Olive huffed. She took a swing at an overzealous zombie with one of the sacks and knocked the monster off its perch on the front carriage wheel. "They're coming after younger prey now—namely us. Give me a boost."
Giogi hefted Olive onto the top of the carriage. The halfling pulled the sling out of her garter and grabbed a handful of ammo pilfered from Uncle Drone's memorial feast. She loaded a golden apple into her sling and whipped it around.
"Have some apple sauce!" she yelled, loosing the fruit down on the crowd of zombies. "Go on, get out of here."
The ripe apple caught an undead square in the forehead, and it toppled backward. By the time it hit the ground, two more apples were zinging with halfling accuracy through the ranks of the undead. Those monsters that came close enough to climb the coach were met by Giogi's merciless foil.
The nobleman parried their clawlike hands and stabbed at them fiercely. Their lack of self-preservation appalled him. At the same time, he worried about his own preservation. Just how long will this magic potion last? he wondered as sweat began breaking out on his forehead. Will I be able to tell right away?
Giogi glanced toward the temple, but Mother Lleddew had abandoned her defense of the stairs. She was heading toward the carriage, wading through the crowd of zombies, jostling them as she went. The creatures paid no more attention to her than they did to each other.
"Giogi! Look out!" Olive cried, snapping an apple at a ghoul that had managed to climb up to the driver's seat. The red missile splattered in the middle of the undead's shredded face, but the ghoul kept coming. A hissing snarl escaped its torn lips and the ghoul leaped on Giogi.
In a moment, the creature had Giogi bent backward, its claws securely fastened on the noble's shoulders. A paralyzing coldness crept from the ghoul's fingers, and Giogi felt himself go numb. His foil fell from his unfeeling fingers and clattered to the driver's seat. The ghoul's ruined mouth smiled and opened, displaying a row of fanglike teeth.
Olive ran across the carriage roof and kicked the monster in the head before it managed to sink its teeth into Giogi's throat. The ghoul loosed its grip, but Giogi was unable to move to balance himself, and he toppled from the driver's seat into the zombie horde below.
A collective "Ah!" of undead delight issued from the mouths of nearby zombies. They fell on top of the man and began pummeling him with their corpse-white hands.
Olive screamed and began pelting the zombies below with apples thrown by hand. A few fell back, but more took their place. The halfling was just wondering if it would be worth risking her life to jump down on top of the fray when something grabbed her ankle.
Olive twisted around. The ghoul who had paralyzed Giogioni had not fallen over with the nobleman. Now the monster was dragging Olive toward the edge of the carriage roof.
"Let me go, you ghoul!" Olive shouted, reaching frantically for the dagger she kept up her sleeve. The ghoul laughed until Olive slashed off its hand at the wrist. She jerked her leg back and gave the undead another kick—sending it into the hordes below. She poked with her dagger at the fingers of the dismembered hand until it fell away from her ankle.
On the ground below, Giogi was wondering if the potion had already worn off. The fists of the zombies rained down on him in a torrent. He could never recall hurting so badly in his life, and the paralyzation was like a nightmare. The worst part, though, was his inability to breathe.
One of the zombies had enough sense left in its undead brain to throttle him. It knelt beside him and gripped his neck in the bony vise of its fingers. The other zombies pulled back and watched their compatriot choke the noble. Dark spots danced in front of Giogi's eyes. Somewhere in the distance, Olive shouted.
Something warm touched Giogi on the face. The warmth spread downward to his torso and then to his arms and legs. In a moment, he felt his muscles relax, and in another, he could move again. He brought a fist up sharply in the face of the zombie who was choking him. The creature fell backward from the sudden assault. The noble kicked and pounded and stabbed at the zombies who tried to close on top him. Strong hands, warm and living, latched about his arm and helped him to his feet.
Mother Lleddew stood beside him. "Get back up on the carriage and take the reins," she ordered, "I'll clear a path for you to turn around."
Looking up, Giogi saw Olive squaring off with a noseless zombie on the driver's seat. Giogi plucked his foil up from the seat. Leaping up the carriage step, he thrust his weapon into the zombie's back. The creature crumpled. Giogi withdrew the foil and pushed the zombie from the carriage. The noble took his place on the driver's seat.
"Better hold on, Mistress Ruskettle," he warned Olive. "We'll be moving soon."
Mother Lleddew moved forward toward the horses, whispering and patting them comfortingly. The ghouls drew back from her. The zombies remained all around both her and the horses, though they did not attack. Slowly the woman spoke into the lead mare's ear, and the horse rose from its knees, pulling its companion to its feet as well. The priestess placed herself in front of the lead right horse and began muttering loudly. The zombies suddenly noticed her presence and began crushing in on her, trying to drive her under the mass of bodies. Mother Lleddew held up a platinum engraving of Selune's sign and cried out, "Return thou to dust!"
The engraving glowed, and the zombies in the carriage's path ignited with a mystic blue fire. In another moment, they'd crumbled to gray ash.
Mother Lleddew stepped aside and smacked the lead horse's rump. It charged forward. More zombies rushed to fill the gap left by those the priestess had disintegrated, but the horses trampled over them. The priestess grabbed hold of the carriage door as it shot past. The carriage shifted precariously from her weight until she managed to scramble up to the roof.
For a bulky old priestess, she's pretty spry, Olive thought, clutching the back of the driver's seat.
The carriage shot across the meadow toward the temple, the horses trampling undead and the carriage wheels crushing them. Giogi yelled and steered the horses so the carriage made a wide turn back in the direction of the road.
Overhead, the great carrion birds wheeled beneath the shadowy, solitary cloud. "You, halfling," Lleddew called, pulling from her shift pocket a fragile glass vial of clear liquid and tossing it to Olive, "try this."
"Holy water?" Olive guessed.
"Yes. Don't bother with anything on the ground. Get one of the vultures in the air."
"The vultures?"
"Yes. They're undead as well."
A vulture swooped overhead with a ghoul in its claws. Olive shot at it as it banked toward them. The vial of water smashed into the vulture's wing. The bird dropped its cargo as its wing burst into smoke. It crashed to the ground, smashing several zombies beneath it.
"Nice! Got any more?" Olive asked with delight.
Mother Lleddew handed her another vial and Olive loaded it into her sling. The carriage pulled out of the hilltop clearing and into the light cover of the trees.
Olive hit a second undead vulture with a holy water missile. The bony creature broke up in the air and crashed into the temple pillars. It lay still, but in the temple behind it something else moved.
Olive's mouth fell open as she caught sight of what caused the movement. "There's a girl back there!" she gasped.
"Where?" Giogi cried, pulling back on the horse's reins.
"Don't stop!" Mother Lleddew ordered, her wrinkled face tight with panic.
Giogi stood in his seat and looked at the temple. It was the girl he'd spoken with the night before. "We can't leave her!" he objected.
"You must," the priestess insisted. "She's a Shard. It's her duty to protect the temple. Mine is to protect you. Now go!"
Giogi stared at the girl, shimmering still like a moonbeam in the shadow. "But she's just a girl," he said, unable to bring himself to abandon so helpless a creature.
"She just looks like a girl," Lleddew argued, moving forward to take the reins from Giogi. A pair of ghouls dropped onto the carriage roof from an overhead branch. One slammed into Mother Lleddew and succeeded at knocking her to the ground. The other lunged at Olive. Giogi stopped the carriage immediately.
These ghouls stank with an overwhelming odor of rotting meat. The halfling doubled over with nausea, but managed to sidestep the undead attack anyway. Brandishing her dagger, she whirled about to keep the creature in sight. "You really need a bath, pal," she gasped. "Why don't you go jump in the lake?"
To Olive's astonishment, the creature immediately turned from her, hopped off the carriage roof, and headed down the hill.
Realization and recognition flamed in the halfling's mind. "It just obeyed me. A ghast! That was a ghast! I just commanded a ghast!" she cried excitedly. "The potion only works on ghasts!"
Suddenly remembering Mother Lleddew, Olive looked down at the ground. The other ghast had the priestess pinned to the ground with its inhuman strength. Olive scrambled down from the carriage roof and gave the creature a kick, trying not to inhale its odor.
"Get off her, you stupid undead," Olive ordered the ghast.
The ghast stood up and blinked its bloodshot eyes in confusion.
"Go away!" Olive shouted.
The ghast stumbled off into the woods.
"Ugh!" Olive grunted. She bent over the priestess. "Are you all right?" she asked.
Mother Lleddew groaned. Her shift had been slashed in a dozen places, and she was bleeding profusely. Her breath was husky and labored, and the whites of her eyes had gone strangely dark. Olive couldn't tell if these were symptoms of an injury or an effect of the ghast's touch. She tried to pull the large woman to her feet, but Lleddew slumped against the half-ling, driving Olive to her knees.
"Damn! Giogi, give me a hand here!" Olive cried.
Oblivious to the undead closing in on the carriage, Giogi stood on the driver's seat, watching with horror the undead surrounding the dark-skinned, silver-haired girl. The girl shone now more like a powerful magic light, and the undead nearest her covered their eyes with their hands.
Olive looked up at the nobleman and noticed with panic the ghouls coming down upon them. "Giogi!" she shrieked.
Huge arms lifted Olive from behind and tossed her onto the top of the coach. Olive looked down to see Mother Lleddew, once again on her feet, facing the pack of ghouls with her arms outstretched. Her whiteless eyes held a manic gleam. The priestess roared a guttural, incoherent cry of rage. Then the ghouls were upon her, toppling her and burying her with their bodies.
Olive shouted Giogi's name again.
The roar, and Olive's shouts, finally attracted the noble's attention from the girl at the temple. He looked down to where Olive pointed frantically just in time to see Lleddew disappear under a torrent of undead.
Like a man awakening from a dream, Giogi whispered, "No, no," and then shook himself to action, screaming, "No!" He leaped down and began stabbing like a madman at the pile of ghouls.
Olive wondered if, by now, it wasn't too late for the priestess when the pile of undead began to shift and grow, like a swelling seed. A huge paw broke through one side of the pile, flinging a pair of ghouls off. Then a second paw shot out, spearing a ghoul clean through the chest with its claws.
A huge black bear waded out of the pile of ghouls, shaking their broken bodies off it like they were hunting dogs. The bear's forehead and chest were marked with silver-haired crescents, and Olive saw Mother Lleddew's manic gleam in the beast's eyes.
The great bear roared, a roar more powerful than the one Lleddew had made a moment before. The remaining ghouls broke away from the pile and fled from the bear.
An eerie keening rose from atop the hill. Giogi looked back at the temple. He could no longer make out the girl who Mother Lleddew had called a Shard. There was nothing but a white fire burning at the heart of the temple. The undead on the hilltop were fleeing into the woods.
The bear fell to all fours and wobbled unsteadily. Its front paws looked as if they'd been caught in a trap, and its massive shoulders slumped. Olive scrambled down from the coach once more and checked the bear's wounds. They were many and deep.
"Get the carriage door," Olive ordered Giogi.
The nobleman obeyed automatically; his attention was fixed on the hilltop. The bright white flames seemed to be dying down, and the noble caught sight again of the Shard, but she seemed to fade with the fire. A thick, glittering fog rolled around her, and she seemed to grow as one with the mist, which drifted out the open sides of the House of the Lady.
Olive looked at the mysterious, growing fog with anxiety. "Hop in, Mother Lleddew," the halfling said. She gave Giogi a sharp nudge. "Get up there and drive," she ordered.
The bear scrabbled into the carriage and collapsed onto the boxes of food. Olive slammed the door and climbed up beside Giogi.
The nobleman turned about and looked over the roof of the carriage. The Shard had vanished. The cloud roiled and bubbled as it descended the hill, and the undead fled before it. Those who were caught in its coils screamed and then collapsed beneath it and were silent.
Suddenly a single lance of white light shot up from the center of the temple, pierced through the roof, and struck the lone dark cloud overhead. As if it were a wounded beast, the cloud shot away from the light striking it. Afternoon sunlight returned to the hill immediately. The fog became milky white and began dissipating in the warm spring sunshine.
"She's gone," Giogi whispered.
With a sigh, Olive took up the reins and slapped the horses into motion. The unevaporated edges of the fog slid beneath the carriage and through the horse's feet. The mist hid the road from their sight, but caused them no harm. Of the undead that had haunted the woods beside the road there was no sign.
