The Corpse-Rat King Read online

  He placed his hand flat on the ground in front of him, wriggled it to get firm purchase upon the shifting mud, and tensed. Slowly he lent into his arm, pushing upwards so that his shoulder slid out from underneath the soldier’s embrace. His head followed it, inch by inch. Once it was clear he stopped, and waited. Only the sound of crows reached his ears. He smiled. Just a little further…

  “I wouldn’t do that,” a voice like a rusted gate whispered from just in front of him. Marius froze. His head seemed to twist around of its own accord, until he was once more staring at the sword-blighted corpse. While his eyes widened in sudden terror, the corpse smiled. Marius swallowed, once, twice. His voice, when it emerged, was little more than a choked cough.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Get up like that,” the corpse said. “I really wouldn’t, if I were you.”

  “But…”

  The corpse blinked, dislodging a cloud of flies. “A fellow like you, wandering around, it’ll cause more than suspicion, don’t you think?”

  “But… but you’re dead.”

  The corpse ran its tongue over cracked lips. “Well, that’s all a matter of perspective, wouldn’t you say?”

  “No!”

  “Heh. Well, perhaps you’re right.” It hacked, and spat a red globule onto the ground in front of it. “Still, I think you’re missing the point.”

  “What?” Despite himself, Marius couldn’t help but be drawn into the exchange. After weeks of Gerd’s inability to hold down two consecutive thoughts, even a dead man made for stimulating conversation.

  “Come here.” The corpse tilted its head in invitation. Marius glanced about him, then quickly lowered his head back towards the grinning face.

  “What?”

  “You know how I’m dead and all?”

  “Yes.”

  The corpse shot out an arm and grabbed Marius around the back of the neck. Marius pulled away, but the soldier held on with a dead man’s strength. Slowly he pulled Marius down until no more than a centimetre separated them, and Marius’ vision was dominated by the corpse’s eyes: one black and endless, the other staring through him to a point so far in the future Marius was terrified to think of it. With surprising speed the corpse pushed its face forward and kissed Marius on the lips, then pulled him back to his former position. It smiled, as Marius drew breath to scream.

  “So are you.”

  TWO

  Marius fell, far longer than the half-second it should have taken for his head to travel from the corpse’s grasp to the mud. The mud let him go and he slid downwards, through the slippery scurf of the battlefield, into a warm, gritty embrace that held him briefly before he scraped past it and into an open space with neither light, not air, nor any sensation of movement or life. He simply moved away from life, receding from it at a slow pace that was all the more terrifying for its lack of urgency, and his complete inability to alter the rate of his journey, or indeed, bring it to a halt. Just as he became convinced that he was destined to fall into the unending blackness forever, he burst through into a cone of dim, brown light. Before he could register the change he landed flat on his back, knocking the wind from his lungs. He lay stunned for long moments, lost in the sensation of airlessness, and the closed-in feeling of something deeply buried.

  Gradually, as his senses returned, he was able to focus upon a ceiling several feet above him. It was dirt, rough and un-worked, as if Marius were observing a garden bed from the underside. Here and there roots poked through the surface, hairy points hanging in the air like warts clinging to the face of a beggar. Occasionally, a drop of muck fell as some disturbance or other sent tremors along its surface. No hole existed to prove Marius’ passage, yet he knew without doubt that it was from that ceiling that he had fallen, and were he able to penetrate its solid surface, he would find himself back at the battlefield, however many unknown miles above his head.

  “How…?”

  It was then that he became aware of tiny sounds around him, creaks and groans as of a large body of men standing quietly, expectantly. He stiffened, and fixed his eyes upon the ceiling.

  “I don’t suppose this is the new ale room at the Axe and Raven, is it?”

  Someone giggled. Marius’ bladder twitched in response.

  “No. I didn’t think so.”

  Marius decided to leap to his feet, to gather his legs underneath him like steel coils and lunge through whoever surrounded him in a mad dash for the nearest exit. Assuming there were exits. Assuming he could gather the strength to move. Assuming his body would let him. He considered it. His body declined to comment. He willed his legs to drive him upwards, and his arms to begin the motions necessary to propel him into a crouch. Nothing. Marius sighed. Ah well.

  “I don’t suppose anyone fancies giving me a hand up, do they?”

  For a moment there was no response. Marius began to entertain the notion that something heavy had fallen from the sky and hit him on the head, resulting in a somewhat strange and vivid hallucination. Then rough fingers gripped the fabric at his shoulder, capturing a fair amount of flesh underneath, and hauled him to his feet. And beyond. Marius dangled from the grip of his hidden helper, too terrified to turn his head and see the face of whatever giant held him aloft. If it was anything like the ones before him, he didn’t want to know.

  Not a single face was whole. Countless strangers stared back at Marius – every age, size and ethnic grouping, and not a single one of them was complete. Skin had peeled back to reveal the underlying bone; eyes were absent from sockets; dirt trickled from all the usual orifices and ones that looked like they had been created by teeth long after death. Beyond them, in the darkness, the glint of unseen eyes winked at him, so many and to such a distance that Marius did not bother trying to count them. He scanned the crowd in soundless fear, taking in the hue and age of each tattered body. Soldier and peasant stood arm to rotting arm. Women eyed him with as much baleful energy as the few cats and dogs who crouched without panting at their feet. Children, most terrible of all, stood silently amongst their taller counterparts. A scream rose within Marius’ throat like bile, and he calmed the temptation with the only words he could summon enough sense to utter.

  “So you’re all dead then?”

  A little laughter, even from one of the children, would have helped his state of mind. He received nothing, not even a whisper of movement as a young woman raised a hand to cover a shy smile. The dead ranks simply stared. Marius’ own laughter lurked behind his teeth. If it were to escape, he knew, it would never stop. He swallowed, then did so again, forcing it away down his throat.

  “Is there someone I could talk to?”

  At his words, the crowd parted. A corpse, no different to the others as far as Marius could establish, tottered on stiff legs to stand less than a foot before him. Marius sniffed, then wished he hadn’t. It opened its mouth. A fine shower of earth fell from the open hole. A small snake broke cover to glide across its face and under a scrap of shroud still clinging to the dead man’s shoulder.

  “You wish to talk?” he said, without the corresponding movement from his jaw. Despite his fear, Marius frowned in surprise.

  “How did you do that?” he asked, leaning forward to examine the corpse’s jaw more closely.

  “We are the dead,” the corpse replied. “We are freed from many limitations.” His voice, Marius noted, seemed to come from within him, as if someone were utilising a speaking tube from the other side of a wall, or some hole deep inside the dead man’s chest.

  “Remarkable,” he muttered, then aloud, “I hate to be a bother, but there seems to be some sort of terrible mistake. I… what am I saying? What the hell is going on here?”

  “There has been a battle.”

  Marius swallowed. “Um, yes.”

  “A king was killed.”

  “Ah. Well. You see–”

  “We are in need of a king.”

  “We didn’t know it was him, of course. And even if we did, we wouldn’t… I beg yo
ur pardon?”

  The dead do not breathe. It could only have been in Marius’ imagination that the corpse sighed in irritation.

  “We need a king.”

  “Um,” Marius squinted at the rows of implacable dead. “Would it be impertinent to ask why?”

  “He is the sovereign, anointed by divine right.”

  “Okay.”

  “He is placed upon the throne by the Lord God himself.”

  “Uh huh.” Marius had dined with several kings. On the basis of that evidence, divinity came at the end of a thief’s knife. Still, he wasn’t going to debate that with someone who could hold him aloft with no apparent effort. “And?”

  “We are the dead.”

  “Established that.”

  “We lie here in wait,” The corpse swung about on one stiff leg, an arm raised to indicate the grimy expanse of the cavern. “Alone. Unheeded. Forgotten.”

  “And this means…?” The exertion of keeping this conversation going was beginning to tell on Marius. He couldn’t imagine where it was leading, but he could taste the pint of ale he should be drinking at Saucy Kat’s House of Welcome right about now. It didn’t help.

  “God has forgotten us.”

  “God.”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.” A single penny dropped against the stone floor of Marius’ understanding. “And a king is God’s representative.”

  “He is.”

  “A conduit to God. To remind him you are here, waiting.”

  “That is so.”

  “I see.” Marius frowned. “Well, it’s very interesting, but I don’t see how I…”

  “You are the king.”

  Marius blinked. He knew he hadn’t heard that properly.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You are the king. Of an earthly realm. You were smote, and laid your life aside, and a warrior who had commenced the journey to join us observed you, and so you came.”

  “You what? Are you kidding me?

  “It is as was seen.”

  The crowd behind the corpse parted, and a warrior, fresh killed and bearing only the injuries of weapons, not time, stepped forward. Marius saw the grin, and the scar that ran from low down the side of his face to the top, and the hole where an eye had been destroyed. The soldier stepped in front of the corpse and lowered himself upon one flesh-bearing knee.

  “Your Majesty” he said. The rest of the assemblage followed suit, as well as their dead and rotting limbs would allow them. Marius shook his head, half in disbelief, half in protest.

  “Oh no,” he said. “Oh, no. You have the wrong man. I’m telling you. You really, really…”

  He struggled against the grip of his warder, twisting to release himself. Something shifted under his shirt. Before he could lower his arms to grab it, a circle of gold fell out and rolled across the floor, to fetch up against the foot of the dead warrior. He gripped it between stiffened fingers, and raised it up so all could see. Then slowly, with great deliberation, he stepped forward until he stood in front of Marius, their faces separated by mere inches. He raised his arms, and with great care, placed the crown of Scorby upon Marius’ brow.

  “Your crown, Your Majesty”

  Marius closed his eyes, and uttered his first words as King of the Dead.

  “Oh, fuck.”

  THREE

  The throne room was nothing more than a cavern carved out of the earth by dead hands, no more or less square than any other hole and no more or less careful in its construction than any other burrow. The throne itself was a wattle and daub frame that resembled a chair in the way a corn doll resembled a full-grown human, and really, what else could he expect when the only resources available were roots, earth and the shit of the world? And kingly robes. Good God, they had even found him raiment. They smelled of dirt and worms, and lay stiff as old blood against his body, but they were his kingly robes, and Marius was too numb to ask where they had come from, or who might have possessed them before him. The Ruler of the Dead, in his dead man’s clothes, sitting upon his throne of dead man’s shit. It was all so perfect.

  Around him milled an obscene parody of a court. The dead, dust for voices, emptiness for eyes, facing him in impatient rows, waiting for his first proclamation. Expecting the word of God made flesh for confirmation that they were no longer alone. Marius stared above their heads, at the crowded entrance to what he now thought of as the main hall. There was no escape, he knew, no exit in that direction. Still, it was the only bearing he had left, and so he stared at it. And waited.

  The figures in his “court” shuffled about aimlessly, conversing about who knew what, sparing him an occasional glance, hiding behind bowed heads if he attempted to match their gaze. Marius slumped in his throne. A bubble of fear and panic sat at the base of his throat, and unless it was released, he would choke to death upon it before long. Which would be ironic, he thought, and very carefully did not laugh.

  A figure appeared at his elbow, silent and respectful. Marius ignored it. Eventually it offered the politest of coughs. Marius sighed, and glanced up. It was the soldier who had crowned him. Marius snorted, and returned his chin to the fist upon which it had been resting.

  “What do you want?”

  “Your Majesty--”

  “Sod off.”

  “Majesty, the people are waiting. They need to hear you speak.”

  “Fine. Tell them to sod off.”

  “Your Majesty, Please. Can you not see how they wait upon your word?”

  Marius looked at the crowd. They glanced at him, he realised, not from awe, or fear. They waited in anticipation, and with more than a little unrest. He frowned.

  “That’s another thing. How the hell can I see so much, anyway? We’re underground. I haven’t seen any shafts, or torches.”

  “We are the–”

  “Yeah, yeah. You are the dead. That’s your reason for everything, isn’t it? That still doesn’t explain why I can see.”

  “You are our leader, Your Majesty. Our king. Whatever we can do, you can do. We are your subjects and servants. Of all the dead, you are the greatest.”

  “Yes, but I keep telling you. I’m not… dead?”

  “Of course, Your Majesty.”

  Marius scowled. Bad enough to be amongst the dead, worse to be patronised by them.

  “Look,” he said, rising from his seat before his tormentor could react. “I am not dead. I swear to you. I keep trying to tell you. You picked the wrong man. Hand on my…” He placed his hand against his heart, and paused, gaze slipping from the corpse’s face to stare at a point somewhere far beyond the walls. A smile spread across his face, and he looked back at the soldier in triumph.

  “Let me feel your chest.”

  “Your Majesty?”

  “Your chest.” Marius reached forward and placed his hand flat against the left side of the soldier’s torso. “Ha! Give me your hand.”

  The soldier complied. Marius laid it in the same spot. “There. You feel? Feel it? Nothing. No heartbeat. That’s because you’re dead!”

  “Of course. We are the–”

  “No, no, no. Here.” He placed the soldier’s hand above his own heart. “Feel that? Feel it?”

  “Your heart…”

  “Strong as a whale!”

  “Beating.”

  “Like the pounding of a thrupenny whore!”

  “That means you’re–”

  “Alive.”

  “An imposter!” The soldier stepped back, and drew a battered sword. Marius became very aware of the bodies around him, all of whom were staring in his direction.

  “That’s not strictly true,” he said, backing away. Half a step and he fetched up against the edge of the throne. He toppled backwards, landing in an undignified heap on the seat. His robe swept up and across his face, and the too-large crown slipped down. By the time he untangled himself he was hemmed in by the mass of corpses, and the blood-rusted tip of the sword was pressed hard against the joint between his throat
and shoulder. Marius swallowed, and the sword pushed further into his flesh.

  “Hang on,” he managed to croak. “I tried to tell you.”

  The soldier leaned into his sword. A trickle of warmth ran down the outside of Marius’ throat.

  “Told. You. Not dead,” he managed, before the pressure against his throat became too much, and he escaped into darkness.

  FOUR

  He would not have expected to wake, or to still be alive. Or to find his hands unbound, and a hole in the ceiling above his head, with the glint of daylight shining bright blue at the far end. The crowd of corpses standing above his supine body; rusted axes, sickles and swords in their hands – that was closer to what he had expected. Being forcibly hauled to his feet and dragged to the nearest wall – that was definitely what he expected. Having the crown of the late King of Scorby thrust into his hands, well, he wouldn’t have expected that if he’d been given three guesses.

  “Is there something going on?” he asked, trying his best to frame an innocent smile. For all the reaction he engendered, he may as well have kept his mouth closed. The corpses holding his arms simply pressed him harder against the coarse earth wall until he gasped with pain, ending any further attempt at conversation. Marius struggled, but soon gave up. The dead don’t tire as easily as an exhausted and beaten thief. Even if he could have freed himself, where would he have run? Up the chimney towards daylight? Marius tipped his head back. The hole taunted him from at least forty feet away. Maybe the dead need sunlight every now and again, he thought, then stifled a giggle. It was too close to hysteria.

  From somewhere in front of him came the rustle of leather. He delayed lowering his gaze, straining to feel the breeze of the upper world on his skin. After long seconds he closed his eyes and sighed. No such luck. The real world was out of reach.

  “It is very far away.”

  “Yes.” Reluctantly, Marius’ eyes met the soldier’s one remaining orb.

  “Farther for us than you.”