Belly of the Beast Warren Thomas (e novels for free .txt) 📖

zombies falling back and reassembling for their next attack. And attack they did. Time and time again they attacked, though never once did any of them reach the battlements, with few even surviving the moat crossing. The carnage sickened Tane, as it did even hardened veterans. Even the Tyrians were hard-pressed to find any humor in the situation. Only sunset brought a stop to their mindless charges.

            By the middle of the day the moat was completely filled with dead bodies. Tane couldn’t even look at it. To see the face of a dead friend would be too much.

            To Tane’s horror, the gray-robed priest didn’t seem to learn any lessons from their failure. The next day was a repeat of the last, as was the third, fourth, fifth...until the morning of the twelfth day.

            “What is that?” Tane said as he and Quinn were posted together atop the wall.

            The zombies were acting stranger than usual. Instead of standing silently in massed formations, the zombies were busy hauling stones, baskets of soil, and felled logs. The logs were being laid out in a series of squares to form a large rectangle from the walls back to the woodline. The areas inside the log squares were being filled with stones and dirt. Tane noted they had built up the end butting up to the walls more than that nearest the forest.

            “They’re building a ramp,” Quinn said. “They might not have any idea of how to organize a proper siege, but at least they know how to make a stable ramp.”

            “A ramp?”

            “Yes,” Quinn said, pointing. “See how the logs hold the fill in place? That makes the whole thing more stable, so siege towers can be rolled up them to the city walls.”

            “How long do you think it’ll take?” he asked.

            Quinn paused, studying the zombies a long moment. Tane followed his example, and found the tireless efforts of the zombie slaves below disheartening.

            “They work fast,” the half-elf said, echoing Tane’s own grim assessment. “But it’s an awful long and wide ramp, too. I’d say they can build a low ramp for siege towers in a few days or so, a little longer if they are trying to build a ramp to the battlements and attack on foot.”

            “Shouldn’t we be doing something?” Tane said. He knew what he wanted to do, but running for his life was out of the question. He had friends to think about now, not to mention his family out among the zombie horde. To save his family, the horde had to be defeated, and their terrible God vanquished. “Maybe I should go tell the sergeant or something.”

            Quinn gave him a fatherly clap on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.” He turned around, facing into the city and pointed to a nearby warehouse. It was huge, easily the largest stone structure Tane had ever seen that wasn’t a castle or other fortified structure. But to his surprise, he saw scaffolding being erected hastily around it. “If you look closely, you’ll see those men are soldiers. They are about to start tearing that building down, to use it as a quarry, and then we all get to help build up and reinforce the wall facing the ramp.”

            “But won’t the zombies just raise their ramp?”

            “Probably. But then we’ll raise our wall again to counter them,” Quinn said. “We’ll keep it up until one side gives up, or either our wall or their ramp collapses under its own weight. Then we’ll all start again somewhere else on the wall and do it all over again, or they’ll try a new gambit.”

            “You make it all sound boring,” Tane said, feeling some of his fear being bled away by Quinn’s matter-of-fact tone and manner.

            The half-elf shrugged, “I’ve been in dozens of sieges, on both side of the moat. Truth be told, we have a pretty good chance of survival here. Our rear is the river, allowing us to receive supplies and reinforcements almost uncontested. And while we might be a bit pinched for food and rest, the zombies will likely be hard-pressed to feed their massed thousands. There’s only so much forage available.”

            “We’ll lose anyway,” Tane said, surprising himself with his confidence.

            “How do you know that?” Quinn said.

            “I just do,” Tane said. He cast a grim look at the horde below. “My dreams have changed again. They aren’t as frightening, but scream for me to escape the city while I still have time. He is coming.”

            “Dakar?”

            Tane nodded.

            Quinn was quiet a long moment before asking, “Do your dreams say what to do? Or how to escape the city?”

            Tane looked at Quinn in surprise. “You...you believe me?”

            “I’ve never known you to lie,” he said. “And if your dreams are prophetic, as both Joelle and Raven seem to believe, then I would be a fool to ignore them, as would you.”

            Tane barked a short, nervous laugh. “As if I could ignore them! Great Kamain, what I’d give if I could ignore them!”

            A great shout rose up further down the wall. Tane whirled around to see untold thousands of zombies storming the wall. The city walls were sparsely populated at the moment, since only minutes before the zombies weren’t formed up anywhere. They had forgotten how quickly sorcerous control of human minds could mount an attack. And how eerily silent the zombie attacks were conducted.

            “They’ve made the battlements!” Quinn shouted, starting along the wall.

            Alarms bells began ringing all over the city. Men and women, soldier and citizen alike, charged through the streets toward the nearest wall. Then signal fires blazed to life atop the curtain towers framing the sections of wall under attack.

            Tane, following Quinn, stopped suddenly as the tower before them lit its signal fire. He turned to glance through the battlements as a dozen grapnels arched over the walls and clanged on the stone catwalks. In an instant they were