Ghost Bird's Revenge

There is a species of bird known as the potoo bird that sits still for many hours, camouflaged with its surroundings. Many believe the potoo is the reincarnation of a heartbroken maiden mourning the loss of her lover for all of eternity. This bird does not caw like a crow. Nor does it screech like an owl. The sound that comes from it is a wailing cry.

***

It was a little after dawn when the Black Coats arrived. A sliver of sunlight stretched across the land, cutting through the shadows that hung over the gnarled deadwood trees. Their tops were without heads. Empty branches with hooked fingers grasping at nothing.

The ground was still wet from last night’s rainfall. Bubbling mud stinking of sulfur and decay. A thin mist trickled over the forest floor, ebbing and flowing like ocean waves made of smoke.

It was quiet too, save for the impatient croak of ravens and vultures as they perched on the branches, trying to decide if the bodies below were their next meal or not. It was difficult for them to decide. The bodies looked dead, and they certainly smelled dead, but a few of them were beginning to move.

Were the bodies wriggling with life or corruption?

Would they bleed red or black?

One of the corpses climbed to its feet. Milky eyes, withered flesh, exposed bones with scant muscle or tissue still remaining. The early bird gets the worm, and it seemed the crows had been quicker than the ravens or the vultures.

It wasn’t long before the clearing was crawling with undead husks. Most of them shambled along on broken ankles, their tendons and sinew severed.

The lucky ones retained full mobility. They had a better chance of catching their next prey. A better chance of sinking those yellow teeth into untainted meat.

Just as the sun had taken to the sky, and the shadows were forced into retreat, there came a groan of trundling wheels, accompanied by the muffled clop of hooves against mud.

Six Black Coats arrived. Two sat on the bench of the caged wagon, and four additional riders were in tow. They came to a gradual halt and dismounted.

The Black Coats were dressed in their usual garb: threadbare silk, cotton, and wool crushed beneath bits of rusted mail and boiled leather. Some had bits of steel plate. Others donned gambesons. Each of them wore face coverings around their mouths and necks.

As if that would protect them from corruption.

At their hips or across their backs were shortswords, knives, daggers, rapiers, longswords, axes, hatchets—whatever kind of blade could be wielded against the beasts.

The two Black Coats descended from the bench, both armed with a torch that cast pools of light across the clearing. The corrupted shied away from the flames. Hands raised to shield their eyes, teeth bared in a snarl.

The Black Coats laughed as they approached. A few poked and prodded at the corrupted with their swords, stabbing fresh holes to join the old ones. Black blood spilled.

“Hurry up now, lads,” the squad captain called, clapping his hands for emphasis. “We need to get ’em back to the tunnels ’fore curfew ends.”

As the Black Coats toiled away, getting the corrupted dressed in irons, there was movement from above. It wasn’t the ravens or the vultures who watched with fervent curiosity as the Black Coats loaded the dead into the prison cart.

No, it was something else. A dark mass that had been lying flush with the branches for hours on end.

Ghost Bird dropped. Mud sloshed beneath her boots. Against the collective groans of the undead, this went unnoticed. But as she began charging toward the Black Coats, there was no ignoring her.

The nearest Black Coat turned just in time to see her draw steel. The longsword screamed from its sheath and whistled as it cut through the air.

The Black Coat grabbed at his throat. Blood seeped from between gloved fingers, trickling down to his chest.

The next Black Coat managed to get a hand on the hilt of her shortsword. She didn’t have enough time to get it out of the scabbard, though. Ghost Bird ran right past, slashing her throat no different than the last.

Two more Black Coats waited for her with daggers in either hand. They ran with the gait of a drunkard. She brought her boots down hard and glided across the mud.

The first Black Coat slashed at her face. She ducked under the blade and thrust her longsword through his belly, piercing past gambeson and the smock beneath.

The other Black Coat came at her from the right. She was unarmed then; her sword still stuck in the previous man’s stomach. So, she lifted her hands to defend herself. A natural reaction that betrayed all of her training.

The Black Coat’s dagger sliced through the fingers on her left hand. The blade swerved and came back for another slash.

She dipped away, waited for it to pass, and threw herself against him, shoulderfirst. The two collided with a dull thud and went tumbling to the ground. She landed on top and brought her fist against his unprotected throat.

The Black Coat immediately gagged. His fingers went slack around the dagger’s handle. Ghost Bird snatched it up and drove the point through his face. Once, twice, and on the third time she encountered too much resistance to get it free again.

The torch wielders were all that remained. One barreled toward her with a hatchet. Not far behind was the other, armed with a horseman’s pick.

Ghost Bird rolled aside. The hatchet came down against the corpse of the daggerman, blade lodged firmly in a layer of boiled leather.

Getting to her feet, Ghost Bird raised her hand in time to catch the pick as it swung at her. The tip went through her palm and peered out the other side. Pain pulsed down her wrist, along her forearm, and into her torso where it scattered across the rest of her body.

What should have been a fiery throb threading through her muscles was no more than a dull ache. Someone else’s hand, someone else’s pain.

Ghost Bird shoved the pick aside and punched the Black Coat. Her knuckles connected with his nose, just the way she had been taught.

A strike like that was always painful. Always brought confusion and tears. The Black Coat went to his knees, blinking against them.

Ghost Bird’s elbow fell against the top of his skull. Over and over until he was on the ground. But before she could finish him off, the hatchetman was back on the offensive, rushing at her with wild swings more befitting of a child than a trained soldier.

Pulling the pick free from her hand, she turned it at an angle, allowing the hatchet to rebound against the shaft. She and the Black Coat were repelled in opposite directions, but she recovered faster and stabbed the pick into his thigh.

For some reason, these daft bastards never bothered to wear padding or armor around their legs. With a few tugs, she dragged the pick from upper thigh to the knee, tearing through veins and arteries.

A trench of blood was left in the pick’s wake, and the Black Coat went down, unconscious by the time his head met mud.

Ghost Bird took a few seconds to catch her breath. The last of the Black Coats, the one who had originally been armed with the pick, was beginning to stir.

She buried the pick in his kneecap. The way a dancing woman might get applause, she was rewarded with a cry of anguish. Either response left her with an honest smile, hidden behind her stolen scarf.

“Hold still,” she muttered, her voice hoarse. The sound of muddled vocal cords.

Unsheathing the knife from her waist, Ghost Bird splayed the Black Coat’s fingers. His screams rang across the sky, scaring some of the birds from their perches.

When she was finished, she returned the knife to its sheath and held three fingers in her hand: the pinkie, the ring, and the middle.

Carefully, she fitted them against the stumps where her own fingers had been. Strands of tissue coiled around the new fingers, bringing all the pieces together.

There was no scar to differentiate the body parts. The only true indication was how the Black Coat’s pale skin contrasted against her darker complexion.

“What the fuck are you!” the Black Coat screamed, more angry than afraid.

Ghost Bird retrieved her longsword and brought it down in his gut, driving it deep enough to pin him to the ground. He shuddered and shivered and begged.

People were so quick to beg. Man or woman, rich or poor. Everyone begged the same in those final moments. Even she had begged. She made promises she knew she couldn’t keep. She prayed to gods she never believed. She looked up at the cosmos and swore a vow to every Elder Being she could remember.

None of them had answered her though.

The only one to answer her was the silkworms. They had emerged from the dirt, white and luminous like the stars above.

As she slipped from one world to the next, she saw the silkworms burrow into her chest. She awoke hours later, feeling like herself, but also, like someone else.

After minutes of searching, Ghost Bird finally found the key in the pocket of the hatchetman. With that taken care of, she returned to the only surviving Black Coat and removed her sword from his bowels. She ripped the cloth from around his mouth and used it to wipe the blade clean.

“Help me,” he pleaded. “I’ll give you anything.”

Ghost Bird dropped the cloth onto his chest and said, “I don’t want anything from you.”

The longsword went into its sheath, and she went to the cage cart, using the key to unlock the door. Hesitantly, the undead husks shuffled out.

Ghost Bird mounted one of the Black Coat’s horses and whirred it around. She headed north. As she was about to reach the trees, she looked back one last time.

The ravens and vultures had swooped down to feast upon the Black Coats, but many of them were chased off by the undead husks. In the midst of the two groups was the lone surviving Black Coat, crying out for mercy.