'The Plight of Henri Guidon, Part 1'

A Flintloque Story by Gavin Syme

Amid the frozen horrors of the Witchlands, Henri Guidon battles zombies and seeks survival in a desolate, haunted land.

~

He never realised that sweat could dry to ice so quickly. Surely, even here in the midst of this frozen hell, the heat of his furiously working body would keep the water that came forth from his chest, neck and brow warm for more than a few seconds. It did not... and this was only one of the things that Henri Guidon had learned at great cost since he had entered the Witchlands with the Grande Armee of the Ferach Empire.

A few seconds of warmth and then the brittle feeling of forming ice, before it broke in tiny crackle as his torso flexed and his arms drove the ram rod back down the barrel of his musket. Ice not only tried to cover his fraying and sodden uniform, once a proud grey and red, now a faded and smeared mess of patch and linen wrappings, but his weapons too.

Those weapons included the musket, a good solid and reliable Lyonesse made model, which even now for the thousand time, it felt, he primed, loaded and fired but also several other items he had collected over the past few weeks. Two pistols, one of Elvish make and one of Beervarian origin at his waist and a slim sword of tempered steel that, secure in its scabbard, was safe from the worst of the terrible weather of this icy realm.

Mouth dry and tired he spat the lead ball into the musket and once more rammed and then put a pinch of held black powder into the pan and then locked back the elegant hammer. With a fluid movement born of life saving repetition he levelled the musket and then exhaled in a cloud of expanding mist as he aimed at the closest of the five Zombies that were shambling towards him and Luigini.

The creature, once it had been a Dog solider, also had a musket which it discharged ineffectually into the frozen soil as its rotten mind tried to recall walking and fire drill, the effort being too much for it. The bang did not distract Henri, he was now too jaded for that trifle to surprise him anymore. As his exhaled breath ended in a heave of empty lungs he pulled the iron trigger with a firm tug.

Grey smoke and fire erupted from the barrel and roared forth for several feet before the musket ball emerged and flew on towards its target. It covered the intervening distance in the blink of an eye and, with a burst of decayed flesh and globule blood, struck the Dog Zombie in its neck, half severing its head. The head took no notice of this mortal wound, but with a crack of worn bone it tipped like a broken main mast in a storm and before many more moments had passed it was looking at the empty sky from the top of its own back.

The Zombie, its neck now no more than a few strips of rotten muscle was still moving but Guidon knew from experience that it was out of the fight. Sure enough the nightmarish walking corpse tried to lay its hands on its skull, dropping its rusty musket. Grasping at thin air with a gurgle from an open windpipe it toppled into the snow before its head came loose.

Henri dropped the discharged musket at his feet and drew both charged pistols, the musket being caught by the Todoroni soldier named Luigini who knelt by Guidon's side. Though Henri and Luigini had known each other only for a few days, he being of the 3o Tortelli lnfanterie and Henri of the infamous Corps Imperial des Dragon, they now were brothers of battle's heat. They were all each that the other had in all of Valon. They had a chance.

With a flick of his long, thick tongue, the Todoroni swept up another cartridge and began to load Guidon's empty musket with the knowledge that the seasoned Elf had more chance of hitting any enemy with his shots than he himself could. As he began ramming the wad into the barrel, he heard his ally fire two pistol shots at a Zombie so close that its distorted shadow had appeared in the corner of his down turned vision.

Guidon dropped the pistols and snatched back the primed musket from the Todoroni's rag wrapped hands, sparing a moment to look Luigini in the eye and smile. As many Elves had done, he had thought all the Nepolise cowards and slovenly troops, but this Toad was dependable and now as he had done before he allowed Guidon to survive by loading as he fired.

They continued to load and fire until only two Zombies remained capable of harming them. The others lay in crumpled silence or grasped feebly as the dark arts that propelled them slowly ebbed from shattered bodies.

"We 'ave broken them I think. Would you be so kind as to get us ready to move on, while I dispatch de last two."

Guidon drew his sword and leaving Luigini squatting with all their firelocks, shotte and meagre supplies to gather up he advanced on the first of the final two foes. It was important to keep moving and find shelter before the dusk; this place became even worse in the darkness.

Steel whipped out and shattered the ribs of the first Zombie, it had once been an Elf like Guidon, but now it was no more. It hardly shook as he struck it twice more to leave a gored mess to collapse in a now eternal death. He moved on to the last Zombie, hearing the Toad begin to sing one of those awful Nepolise opera tunes that he insisted were high culture. The sound was welcome though, anything that reminded him of Urop and Armorica, his homeland, was a kindness to be embraced.

A blue braid marked the last Zombie out as an officer, or at least he had been. Guidon tried not to think of the Zombie as he must have been, one of the Voltiguers of the 9eme Regt de Ligne who had been overrun seemingly in the distant past, but he knew it had been only possibly a week since he had last seen a member of the 9eme. He raised his sword, knowing what the creature, as now it surely was, would in all likelihood do next.

Being correct kept you alive and Guidon was correct now. The Zombie raised its musket and when Henri, with Elvish grace side stepped, the badly kept weapon fired and the ball flew past; missing him by several feet. With a deft stroke of his sword he neatly took the head from the Zombie and as it bounced away the body collapsed, the fixed bayonet of its musket pinning the ground leaving the weapon upright as its former owner was draped in fleshy coils around it.

It was then that he noticed the singing had ceased and been replaced with a silence that spoke an awful weight of impending bad tidings. Thinking that more enemies were to their rear Guidon whirled on his heel and then he saw what poor fortune and his actions had forced to happen.

A shot meant for him had stuck the busy Todoroni in the small of the back, making him instantly a cripple. It was a portent of a coming doom that even the most true and brave soldier would have difficulty accepting.

Guidon almost howled in despair, as Luigini pitched forwards onto his soft fleshy face, into the thin snow and solid earth beneath. He ran to the mortally wounded Toad and tossing his black gored sword to the ground, oblivious to the pain it would cause his friend, he turned the Todoroni onto his back so that the wound was plunged into the snow.

It was hopeless though and both of them knew it. A wound such as this was only treatable by the finest of surgeons at the security and facility of a wagon bourn Field Hospital; the type that often followed the mighty Ferach columns as they smashed the Emperors enemies in a hail of shotte and shelle. Guidon knew some herbs and bindings for simple cuts and breaks but this was beyond him and of course beyond his only resource; his hands. He had no bandages or even clean linen, no forceps or even a good bayonet. Nothing to use that could aid him; even if he knew how to aid his ally.

Bloody flecks foamed at Luigini 's lips and his long tongue lolled from his mouth, already turning a vile blue greyish colour that spoke of internal injury too severe for hope. His huge eyes were turning opaque and his normally oily skin was drying rapidly.

Despite knowing the futility of his action Guidon took the wolf pelt from his uniform shoulders and draped it over the Todoroni.

"Be still, you will be well. I swear it".

Guidon did not believe his words, though they had been heartfelt. Luigini coughed and moved his head in a silent gesture of no; he knew the truth even if the Elf refused to believe it. He pushed Guidon's wolf pelt off his chest and tried to draw the wickedly sharp dagger that he kept in his left boot. Thinking that the Toad wished to be able to defend himself against the Undead that would surely find them soon, the noise of musketry carried far in the empty air of the Witchlands, Guidon spoke.

"No, my friend, if you wish me to leave you then allow me to give you des pistols and shotte to make your final defence. They will be of greater use than your blade." As soon he the words left him and Luigini 's expression changed he knew the folly of his words. The Toad did not want the blade for defence against the nightmares, he wanted it to prevent himself from becoming one of them; one of the walking insults to life that endlessly hunted the Grande Armee in its trudging flight back to Urop.

Guidon did not pretend to understand the arcane and dark sciences that drove the legions of the Dark Czar, he hated them, and he knew how to fight them, but he did not know their ways. But he did know that those who fell from Elvish and other ranks in battle often appeared days if not hours later as enemies - dead but alive. They were Undead, the walking dead, and legend come to perverted life. But Guidon knew how to kill them once more. Shooting them was not enough, to be sure. A shot that punctured the skull or one that exploded the heart seemed to stop them in their tracks, but he had seen Zombies peppered with musket balls and keep coming on. Arms, legs and even missing abdomen did not stop them - not at first. They would keep coming on before eventually halting long, long after a mortal would have expired. In fact, missing arms and legs did not seem to affect them at all, except in mobility and efficiency.

You could remove their heads with accurate fire or with a sword; that worked well. The body did not seem to be able to accept a living death without a head. Though dead the Zombies still acted much like their living kin. Surely they were slow and almost incapable of speech or complex act, but wounds such as those make them 'think' that they should be dead or at least caused them such trauma that they could not continue.

Whatever the methods the Undead used to create more Zombies from his fallen comrades he did know how to stop them from doing it to Luigini. His expression hardened and the Todoroni saw this and wheezed before simply staring up at the slate grey sky. Guidon could not save him, but he would keep him from harming anyone else after his death.

The Elf stood and then scooped to retrieve his wolf pelt and then his sword, wiping the steel clean on its black fur. He replaced the pelt to his back and the sword to its scabbard and then loaded his musket with careful concentration. This final task complete he placed the end of the musket's barrel against Luigini's forehead.

Staring at the sky with eyes growing clouded and more useless with each passing second, Luigini wondered how the stars could shine here so far from Nepolise and the city of Pondlemo, the place of his spawning, as they did there. Two worlds so far apart but under the same sky, he wondered on and though what would become of his wife and his little house near the lake if the Dark Czar decided to pursue the Grand Armee all the way back to Urop. Would killers such as Guidon be able to stop them, they had failed here in the snow in such force of numbers that Luigini had thought failure impossible. Could they fail? Luigini never even heard the booming discharge of the musket as it destroyed his mind, making him useless to the creators of the walking dead. He was at peace from now on.

Henri Guidon was now alone, alone and running for his life through deepening snow and a darkening sky. After leaving the deceased body of his only ally, a ruin of no use to his countless enemies, he had simply reloaded his musket and after collecting the few scraps of clothing and meagre food the pair had possessed, along with the purple velvet bundle he always carried, he had started to make the best speed he could away from his pursuers.

Did he know that they would follow, no not for absolute sure. But he was sure that every creature near a mile from him had heard the shot that ended Luigini's life never mind the musketry before it during their encounter with the Undead.

Better to move on and seek shelter where it was to be had. For night was coming and the ever-dropping temperature that accompanied it was never the only peril to overcome in the Witchlands.

He had some strength left and unlike a lot of the other races of Yalon the High Elves of Armorica were very nimble and fleet of foot. Food had been scarce but he had been lucky with the Corps Imperial des Dragons, those skilled killers never went hungry when there was anything to be had from foe or friend alike. It seemed like an age since he had been with his regiment, though it had only been a couple of weeks since the rout at Putrigrav.

Guidon ran on for more than four hours, slowing when he needed to, or the snows became too thick to traverse at more than a Dwarfs pace. It was now dark and though his eyes were keener than average he had sense to seek shelter. Noting a structure of crumbling grey stone amid petrified trees he made for it as the weak moon climbed to ascendancy in the sky.

Nearing the structure, he supposed it had once been a windmill and bake house in one. The mill was ruined and its stones strewn around or carried off, but the adjoining bake house had a roof and even a timber door upon iron hinges. He thanked the elder Elvish deities of long times past for this stroke of luck, the snow was falling more heavily, and he would do better dry than wet for the night.

With his musket on his shoulder and both pistols drawn he lifted the latch on the bake house door and used his left foot to push it open. A rasp of dry metal then a creak revealed the interior to be devoid of life, or unlife as well for that matter. Guidon went in and closed the door, pulling two bolts across and locking them down. Pistols in hand he looked around the one room which, apart from stone flags and stone benches around its walls, was empty but for a huge oven in the middle of the room with a chimney that pushed through the turfed roof. The black iron door of the oven was open and its insides smooth and vacant.

Despite good luck so far, the evening had passed with no sign of any enemies, Guidon was miserable. He was alone again and apart from a pocket of cartridges, his sword and the wrapped bundle he was almost unarmed, surrounded by hostile foes and unaware where if at all his own troops were. The chances of a solitary person, no matter their skills, being able to persist for long in the Witchlands were sparse. The wind had begun to pick up and the walls of the bake house were full of drafts and chills.

He dared not make a fire or any smoke, so pondering his next move he ate a meagre meal of greenish bread and molden cheese that his fur lined pack offered up. Guidon decided that the only place to sleep, for he needed to sleep more than anything at this moment, having been awake for several days and on the move, was in the oven. It was solid, it was dry and with the door pulled it would afford him a draft free night's slumber.

Carefully Guidon pushed his pack into the large oven and then his musket, bundle, other weapons and his sword before hoisting himself into the belly of the silent beast. Even with him and all he had inside there was still space in the iron box, possibly enough for another Elf to have joined him. A small smile as he remembered the warmth of Collette's embrace. He pulled the door almost shut, a crack of floor and wall still visible, placed his 'des Dragon' pelt under his head and closed his eyes to sleep.

~

Webmaster's Notes

'The Plight of Henri Guidon, Part 1' was first published in 60 Bloody Rounds Issue 1 on the 29th March 2008. It was first published on Orcs in the Webbe on the 19th December 2024 as the nineteenth entry in that year's Advent Calendar.

Any comments in maroon in the article above have been added by me either to provide additional information or clarity. I may also have made small changes to grammar and layout but may not have marked those.