V.
Fingers touched steel.

Calm descended, like a weighty blanket dropped across his form. Jonas curled his hand around the hilt of the sword, and rose to face the dead at the window.

He backed away, unconciously. His eyes skated from skeletal hand to shattered glass, and his left heel thunked against the pew behind him.

Think, damn you. Like he taught you — stop breathing and look at the pieces on the board. What do I have — what can I use?

The stone pew was far too heavy to be of any use. The young squire made himself look beyond the terrible, dry rotted forms. His temples burned with concentration. The once-men could clearly see him, the grasping arms bent in his direction as he moved. And shouting in the streets had brought the clacking horde running through the rain. But, they didn’t seem very intelligent. The mob of seven or eight skeletons just kept throwing themselves at the hole in the window, attempting to break their way through. The back of the mob could barely be seen through the rain, but none of them seemed to be trying to find another way around to get to him.

A fresh bolt of sorrow struck him. All of his old friends, people he’d known all the short years of his life reduced to this. Mindless, animated death — flung tirelessly forward. Do they know what they want? Jonas wondered. Do they want to kill me, or drink my blood, or make me like them — is there enough of a mind left to even …want things? To know this moment from that moment? Are the souls of my people still inside these things?

III.
The squire’s elbow punched through the stained glass. Jonas gasped in pain. The glass was nearly an inch thick, and the lead that lined the panes had little give. He jabbed his steel blade in the small hole and worked it forward and back. The pounding rain did not slow, its roar almost masking the approaching dead.

A skeletal hand entered his field of vision and ripped him away from the broken window. The sword hung limply from the hole.

The green eyes of the once-man shone sickly with light. A bit of flesh still clung to its lower jaw, a gray flower. In a frenzy, Jonas grabbed the thing by its rib cage and lifted. The squire felt his shoulders pop in dismay as he flung the skeleton back. Panic fueled, he turned back to the window and worked frantically at the sword. He continued to saw as he heard the skeleton begin to pick itself up.

The central lead line gave with a pop. The bottom third of the window gave way, showering Jonas in a rainbow of glass. Without hesitation, he flung the sword inside and pulled himself up onto the window sill. The opening was small.Damnably small, the thought skated across his mind.

The bleeding youth pulled himself through the opening, gasping with exertion. He felt his cloak rip, caught on the narrow opening. His shoulders burned. Half in and half out, his eyes widened in shock. A bony hand curled around his leg, almost delicately.

Jonas kicked with animal fervor. The skeleton’s grip slid, then fell away. Bile rising, the battered squire tore a runnel of flesh from his right hip — the thick glass cut deeply. He tumbled forward onto the stone floor, landing squarely on his shoulder. Without pausing, he scrambled away from the shattered window and pressed his back against something wooden. A pew.

His heart beat once – echoing like a drum beat in his ear. Then the pain.

II.
The words hung hollow in the street.

Jonas skidded across the cobblestones to engage the next once-man. Right boot slipped, dropping his guard. His teeth rattle as the bony hand rakes across his face with surprising force. The squire’s vision blurred, making his blood appear purple as it landed on the front of his cloak.

Without stopping to think, Jonas lashed out — the sword’s pommel glanced off the yellowed skull. Skipping backwards, he swung in panic. Forgetting form in exchange for speed, his breath came quick and gasping. The skeleton fell backwards. Jonas heard the chink of steel on cobblestones as he battered its still form. The ribs crunched as he landed a furious kick.

Eight skeletons now. Jonas felt his blood turn to acid. His war cry had drawn them.

One clutched a dead hen, as if caught on the way to market. Another still had enough hair clinging to the skull for him to recognize Mogrin. She had walked the way-path near his father’s farm, taking the cows to pasture. They had shared kisses and some sweaty moments in the field, hidden from view by the tufted hay bales. The acid drained out the bottom of his feet, and left him feeling channeled out and sick.

Mogrin’s yellow hair had gone green and black with decay.

The squire spit blood and rainwater on the cobblestones. He had only been in Gilead for a few …minutes? An hour perhaps?
_
Gotta get to higher ground — someplace I can fight them and not get surrounded._

His eyes swept the city square wildly. Past two more of the skeletons, a bay window — stained glass, too dark to reveal its design. Jonas stole a quick second to dash more rain from his face, and flung himself at the two rotting townsfolk between him and the church window.