Orphan's Blade by Aubrie Dionne Page B

churned. She hadn’t lived in the castle for long, but she sensed something wasn’t right. “Do you not smell that foul stench?”
    Cadence rubbed her eyes, already bored. “My nose is stuffed. ’Tis all the old tapestries.”
    Clanging chimes made Valoria’s body rigid. A church bell rang as if it were broad daylight.
    Cadence’s eyes widened. “Has the bell boy gone mad?”
    “No, not mad.” Panic bolted through Valoria’s veins as she heard additional shouts, all coming from the wall. “That’s an alarm.” Valoria launched back into her room and dug out her riding suit.
    Cadence followed her, then stood like a scarecrow and stared with her mouth wide open. “What are you doing? Are you mad?”
    Valoria slipped on her underskirt and riding coat. “I’m lending my assistance.”
    “Oh no, you’re not. Echo will have my head if I let you go out there.” Cadence placed herself in front of the door.
    Valoria strapped her harp to her back. “He’ll have your head if you stand in my way. Echo was the one who told me I have to go.”
    “What?” Cadence didn’t budge, but she’d lost some of her earlier resolve. “I cannot believe that nonsense.”
    “It’s not nonsense.” Valoria stared her down. “Echo believes I can help.”
    Cadence put a hand on her side. “Just you, all by yourself with your harp?”
    Valoria nodded. “I know I can. Just this once, will you believe in me? Will you let me go?” If Cadence didn’t, Valoria would have to knock her upside the head and leave her unconscious. Besides, if her own handmaiden couldn’t believe in her, then maybe Echo had lost his mind in that apothecary shop.
    Cadence nodded. “All right. But don’t do anything foolish.”
    “I will stay safe.” Valoria kissed her cheek. “Besides, you do not play a harp from the front line.”
    * * * *
    Nathaniel hefted a bucket of hot oil over the wall. As it fell, archers raised their bows with flaming arrows. The oil splattered on the pale heads of the undead, then burst to flame.
    The undead writhed, climbing upon each other blindly until the flames ate their skin away and nothing held their bones together. Nathaniel uttered a prayer as their bodies fell into the muck. Could the undead join Helena and Horred in their holy temple in the sky?
    “Over here, sir! Look!”
    His soldiers called from the battlements above the gate. Some of the undead had walked from the mud with flames engulfing their bodies. Instead of blindly throwing themselves against the stone walls, they fell at the thick oak of the gate.
    “Water!” Nathaniel called from the wall. “Bring it to the back gate.”
    He glanced over his shoulder. The king stood with a battalion of soldiers behind the gate with their swords drawn. If the undead breached the wall, how many of those young men would lose their lives and join the ranks of the other side?
    “Now!” Nathaniel threw himself down the steps and grabbed a bucket carried by a servant. He ran back up the stairs three at a time, reached the wall, and dumped it over. The small splash disappeared in the flaming ball that had become the back gate.
    “We need more water!” He ran down with the empty bucket.
    Beside him, the gate crumbled into ash. The first few undead stumbled through engulfed in flames. Behind them, a line of bodies hobbled forward like a force of nature beyond anyone’s control.
    Nathaniel stared in horror. Not since the time of Helena and Horred had undead crossed the border into Ebonvale. They were worse than the foulest tales he’d ever heard. No story could have prepared him for the unnatural jolting of their limbs, or the lolling of their white eyes. If they’d been people once before, they had no resemblance to them now.
    He threw the bucket at the horde and unsheathed his sword. A crude trumpet call sounded behind him. The battalion shouted war cries as they ran forward.
    A body who used to be a man lunged at him, teeth clacking. Nathaniel stabbed the man’s