The wall shook beneath Hugo's boots. Another impact. The fifth in ten minutes. He tightened blood-slick fingers around his sword hilt and squinted through the grey drizzle at Greyhaven's final barricade.
"Hold position!" One of the Captain voice cracked with strain. "They're evacuating the southeast quarter!"
Hugo didn't answer. No point wasting breath. Twelve hours on the wall had burned his voice to ash, and the bones of his shoulders felt hollowed from fighting. Around him, the remaining soldiers of the Sixth Division stood in ragged formation, weapons ready but bodies swaying with exhaustion.
Another crash rocked the wall. Mortar crumbled between ancient stones.
"How many civilians still behind us?" Hugo asked the runner crouched nearby.
The boy, no more than fourteen, wiped rain from his face. "Hundreds. The tunnels bottlenecked when part of the eastern passage collapsed."
"Gods help them, then," muttered a veteran with a blood-soaked bandage wrapped around her head.
No one looked at the shrines built into the city walls every twenty paces. Their alcoves stood empty, offerings untouched for days. The marble faces of the gods stared blindly outward, unmoved by prayers or curses.
The wall buckled.
"Brace!" Hugo shouted as soldiers scrambled for purchase.
Stone shrieked against stone. A massive crack split the rampart where Hugo stood. He jumped back as the section tilted outward, then froze. Beyond the wall, the undead horde stretched into darkness. Thousands of pale shapes churning like maggots.
"FALL BACK!" Captain screamed. "INNER RING! NOW!"
Too late. The wall collapsed in a thunder of stone. Hugo leapt but caught only air as the rampart crumbled beneath him. He crashed down through clouds of dust and rubble, landing hard on his side. Pain exploded through his ribs. Something wet filled his mouth. Blood.
Hugo tried to rise but fell back, pinned by a massive chunk of wall across his legs. Dust cleared enough to reveal chaos. The breach gaped thirty feet wide. Through it poured the dead.
They came in a silent wave, reanimated corpses with clouded eyes and gaping mouths. His squad met them with desperate fury. Swords flashed. Men screamed. Blood sprayed across fallen stones.
"Hugo!" The veteran appeared beside him, swinging her axe at a corpse reaching for his throat. "Can you move?"
"Pinned," he gasped, lungs burning.
She glanced at the stone crushing his legs, then at the swelling ranks of undead. Something passed across her face, calculation, resignation.
"I'm sorry."
She turned away, cutting down two more corpses before vanishing into the fighting.
'Smart,' Hugo thought distantly. 'No sense dying for a dead man.'
He watched his squad die.
One of the soldier fell first, swarmed by five corpses that tore out his throat. Another soldier backed against a broken pillar, fighting brilliantly until something small, a child once, slipped behind and bit through his hamstring.
Captain lasted longest, her sword a whirlwind of steel, until she simply disappeared beneath a pile of writhing bodies.
The pain in Hugo's chest sharpened. Broken ribs had punctured something important. Each breath gurgled. Blood leaked between his lips.
Beyond the breach, civilians fled toward the inner city. Too slow. The dead flowed around fallen soldiers and pursued with terrible purpose. Hugo watched an old woman stumble. Watched the undead drag down a man carrying a small child.
Their souls lifted from their bodies like pale smoke, streaming toward their killers. The undead breathed it in, grew stronger with each life taken.
Hugo's vision blurred. Not just from pain. From something worse, the realization of failure. They'd held this wall for nothing. All these deaths meant nothing. The evacuation had failed. The city would fall.
He'd seen enough battles to know when one was lost.
A shadow fell across him. Hugo looked up into the face of what had once been a woman. Her skin hung in grey flaps. Black fluid leaked from cracked lips. She dropped to her knees beside him, reached with broken fingers toward his chest.
Hugo slashed weakly with his knife. She caught his wrist, bones grinding together as she pinned his arm. Her mouth opened impossibly wide. He felt a cold tug deep in his chest, not physical, but something deeper. His soul responding to her pull.
'No.'
The refusal rose from some primal part of him. Not fear of death, he'd made peace with that years ago. But the raw, animal refusal to die like this, helpless, pinned, feeding something that should not exist.
The undead leaned closer, inhaling. Hugo felt his memories thinning, stretching like threads toward her hungry mouth.
Something snapped inside him.
Hugo grabbed her wrist and pulled back. Not with his body, with whatever part of him she was trying to consume.
The creature froze, confusion crossing its rotting features. Hugo pulled harder, gritting his teeth, focusing on the cold spot where her soul-drinking connected to him. Instead of letting her take, he took back.
Fire exploded behind his eyes. Ice filled his veins. The creature shrieked, the first sound he'd ever heard one make, as something tore free from her and flowed into him. Memories not his own crashed through his mind: a village burning, children running, teeth sinking into flesh, souls flowing like sweet wine...
The undead collapsed atop him, truly dead now. Empty.
Hugo gasped, back arching as power surged through him. The crushing stone suddenly felt lighter. The wound in his chest burned cold, then hot, then stopped hurting altogether. His vision sharpened until he could count the raindrops falling through the breach.
He shoved the corpse aside and pushed against the stone pinning him. It shifted. With another heave, he freed himself and staggered to his feet.
All around him, the massacre continued. Soldiers died. Civilians fled. The dead pursued.
But something had changed.
The nearest undead paused. Turned toward him. Their clouded eyes fixed on Hugo with something new in their gaze. Their advance faltered. Several took unconscious steps backward.
Hugo wiped blood from his mouth and picked up a fallen sword. The blade felt perfectly balanced in his hand. Power hummed through his muscles.
The undead closest to him hissed, a sound like steam escaping a kettle and retreated another step. Others followed, creating a small clearing around him in the chaos.
For the first time since the dead had risen, they showed fear.