Free Stronghold by Paul Finch

it into his opponent's breast before rolling the body away. However, there was no respite. Another twisted shape lurched at him through the gloom. Guiscard drew his sword and pulled up his coif. In the brief half-second before this new foe attacked, it passed through a ray of moonlight, and he glimpsed its face - its mouth yawning open and glutted with black slime, its eyes hanging from its sockets on stalks. What looked like a rope noose, its tether-end chewed through, was tight around its neck.
    Guiscard struck first, swinging his sword in an overhand arc, splitting the abomination from cranium to chin. It still grabbed hold of his tabard, and he had to strike it again, this time hewing through its left shoulder before it overbalanced and fell. He raised his sword a third time, intent on chopping it to pieces, only to be halted by a searing pain in his right calf. Gazing down, he saw his first assailant, the one he'd thought stabbed in the heart, biting through his tough leather leggings. Thrusting his sword down, Guiscard transfixed it via the midriff and leaned on the pommel heavily. With a wet crunch , he sheared through its spine and pinned it to the mud, whereupon, rather than dying, it commenced a wild, frenzied thrashing.
    Guiscard staggered backward, stunned. There were shouts and screams all around him, along with a weird, inhuman moaning. The stench had become intolerable - thick, putrescent, redolent of burst bowels, stagnant waste. He was leaped onto again, this time from behind. He flipped his body forward and threw his assailant over his head. But more of them ghosted in from the front and side. He unslung his shield and slammed it edge-on into mouth of the nearest one, but the thing only tottered. Guiscard's coif was then ripped backward; cold, mud-covered fingers rent at his hair. He tried to spin round, but hands were also on his throat. He was dragged back down to the mud, where he was unable to use his sword. He unsheathed his dagger again, but it was wrested from his grasp. He hammered at them with his gloved fists, but it made no difference. Fleetingly, a face peered into his that was little more than raddled parchment; its nose was a fleshless cavity, its eyes shrunken orbs rolling in bone sockets.
    On the wagon meanwhile, both Hugo d'Avranches and Brother Ignatius were rooted to their bench. They pivoted around, helpless to move or say anything.
    "They can't die!" a man-at-arms screamed as he went haring past. He made it several yards into the trees before he was bludgeoned with a knobbly branch. He sank to his knees, only to be overwhelmed by more dark, stumbling figures.
    Ignatius shook his head dumbly. He didn't know what he was going to do. He didn't know what he could do. But then a weight fell on him from behind. A ragged shape had scaled onto the back of the wagon and scrambled over its canvas-covered cargo. The sheer weight of it bore him from the bench and into the mire.
    As a rule, Ignatius didn't like to fight. He felt it incompatible with his vocation. But as scribe and accountant to a professional soldier, it was impossible to avoid the occasional confrontation. He'd prefer not to be wearing mail over his black burel; he'd prefer not to be carrying the cudgel, the round-headed iron club by which clergymen were permitted to wage war. But he was glad of both now. The thing that had him down was cloaked by darkness, though a sickening reek poured off it. It ripped at his throat with bare hands that were slimy and flabby. He kicked at it, making good contact, though of course this was with a sandaled foot rather than a boot or sabaton, and the assailant would not be deterred. Ignatius grabbed the cudgel from his belt and smashed it across his foe's skull, which flew sideways at an angle that surely betokened a broken neck. The thing's grasp was weakened and Ignatius was able to push it off and scramble up.
    It was still too dark to see what was happening. Strangely, there was no clangour of