by Deck Davis
“Friends of yours?”
“They were absolute bastards.”
“Then you don’t have to worry about them anymore, and they’re going to help us in death. Read the tome, and then when I’m finished, we’ll go.”
Rud sat on Morrigan’s bed with the book in his hands. He adjusted himself for comfort, before finally deciding to lie back with his head on her pillow and the book resting on his chest.
Jakub could see what was going to happen here. Sure enough, Rud yawned, and his eyes began to close.
Jakub found a stone and threw it at him.
Rud bolted upright. “Hey!”
“We don’t have time to rest. Get reading.”
“I haven’t slept for over a day now. I can’t keep this up. I can’t even concentrate on the words.”
Jakub unclasped the bracelet of rest. As soon as he did, a flood of fatigue hit him so hard he had to put his hands on the floor to steady himself.
This wouldn’t work. They couldn’t both wear the bracelet, but Rud was right; neither of them had slept in too long. They needed rest, but all the same, every second spent sleeping was a second lost.
He decided that his own alertness was more valuable than Rud’s, since everything hinged on him and his spells. He put the bracelet back on and felt the tiredness retreat.
He was going to pay for this later. He was building up a hell of a sleep debt.
“I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to fight through it. Read the book and it’ll make you a better shot. The sooner we do this, the sooner it’s all over.”
“I’m not gonna be able to hit anything if I can’t even keep my eyes open.”
“Do you want to sleep while Florence is in the hamlet? You know what they’ll do.”
This seemed to shock energy into Rud. He got off the bed and instead took a seat on the floor with his back against the wall. He took out one of the bolts that Jakub had given him. Whenever his eyes started to flicker, he jabbed himself with it.
While Rud struggled to get through the talent tome without falling asleep, Jakub got to work on the body. The man was from the hamlet, and that was the key here; he needed him to be recognizable.
He could hide the man’s fatal stomach wound by fastening his coat shut, even though the man’s girth made it a battle. The bigger problem was his face.
After Jakub had stabbed him, the man had hit the floor so hard that he’d shattered his nose. It was at a crooked angle now.
He grabbed it and tried to bend it into place, hearing the bones crack. Although it straightened, it still looked like he’d taken a sledgehammer to the face.
Well, there was no helping that. When he used Death Puppet on him, he’d just have to make a story. Say he got whacked, or something.
The best he could do was to use a cloth and water to wipe the crusted blood from his nostrils. Finally, he took his inquisitor’s belt from his inventory bag and fastened it around the corpse’s waist. Maybe the persuasion powers of the belt would add a little weight to his words and make the hamlet dwellers less suspicious.
With that done, and Rud only in the middle of the talent tome, he was tempted to take the bracelet of rest off and sleep for an hour. He decided against it; his sleep debt was so enormous, that once he closed his eyes nothing in the Killeshi lands would rouse him.
Instead, he sat and waited for Rud to finish, and he ran through his plan in his mind, rehearsing everything that could possibly go wrong.
These rehearsals added up to a lot of potential trouble, but there was no choice now; he had to go to the hamlet and get Kortho back.
63
When they were a mile away from the hut, Rud dropped his end of the corpse on the ground. Jakub was just glad that he’d insisted on holding the head. He didn’t want to get the man’s face covered in mud.
“Careful,” he said. “I need it in good condition.”
“Good condition? It’s a man, not a wagon,” said Rud. “His name was Thorndyke. His friends might have been pricks, but he was always fine with me.”
“You’re getting a little tetchy.”
“I’m tired, and my head is banging, and talent tome or not, I don’t think I’ll be able to shoot straight. You’re making me carry Thorndyke and slowing us down, when we should just be heading straight there and taking them on.”
“You said it yourself; they’ll be at least twenty guards waiting in the hamlet. You’re not thinking straight, Rud. You’re just tired, that’s all.”
“You seem fine.”
Jakub touched the bracelet on his wrist. He hadn’t told Rud what it did; after deciding to prioritize his own alertness, it didn’t make sense to cause friction.
“I guess I must be having a second wind.”
Rud ran his hand through his hair. His locks were wet with sweat. “I’m just worried. I don’t see how this can work.”
“I have as much at stake as you. If this doesn’t work, I’ll pay for it just as much, believe me. The only sure fire way of avoiding it going wrong is to not try at all, and that’s hardly better, is it?”
“You’re right. Come on. I’m ready to go again.”
“Good. Just be careful with it,” said Jakub. Then, catching a look from Rud, corrected himself. “Careful with him. We don’t want-”
“Wait. What’s that?” said Rud, pointing.
Jakub followed the direction of his finger, where he shapes lying on the ground a quarter of a mile away.
“Might be an ambush. Get down.”
“They’re not moving.”
“That’d be the point of an ambush.”
“No, Jakub. They’re people…and they’re dead.”
The figures were Killeshi, six of them, all lifeless. Some had stab wounds, and others had crossbow bolts sticking out from them. The ground was covered red with their blood.
Rud wrenched a bolt from the spine of one of them. “My mum makes the bolts,” he said. “She always puts a little nick in them. See? It’s her signature. She said a person should always leave their mark on their work.”
“I take it that it isn’t common for your people to slaughter Killeshi?”
“I don’t know if you can call them my people anymore,” said Rud, “but no. We avoid them. The Killeshi don’t stop when they have a score to settle, and it wouldn’t make sense to provoke them. We’ve never coexisted, exactly, but we’ve never tried to stir up war.”
“Then Ryden must have seen his end game if he’s being so reckless.”
“Ryden doesn’t control the camp; Mum and Gregor do.”
“Tell yourself that, kid. I’m sure it’s what your mum tells herself, too. People like to feel like they’re in control even when the evidence suggests otherwise, and Ryden has been leading your people for a while now.”
“I wish they’d never let him into camp.”
“How did your mum and the others end up living in the hamlet? It’s not the first place I’d think of if I was looking for a place to settle.”
“I was only a baby when they came here, so I don’t know first-hand, only what Mum told me. Gregor was already coming out here with the other families when my father left Mum. She was alone with a baby coming, and Gregor offered her a place to live in a new community where things would be simple.”
“Were they already practicing Imbibism back then?”
“Mum won’t tell me. She hardly talks about that kind of stuff. I just know Gregor and the others never came out here to cause trouble; as soon as they got here, years ago, they offered the Killeshi tribes gifts. They’ve always left us alone, and we’ve never been stupid enough to bother them.”
“Why attack the Killeshi now?”
“It must be Ryden.”
“Well, I’m going to find out,” said Jakub.
It didn’t matter which corpse Jakub chose for his Last Rites, since they’d all died at the same time. First, he used Essence Grab to refill his soul necklace. With that done, he kneeled beside one corpse and cast his new and improved Last Rit
es.
*Necromancy Experience Gained!*
[III ]
64
Watching one of the Killeshi’s last minutes, Jakub saw that they were moving in a band of seven. This was strange, since they were only six corpses on the ground, but he put that thought to one side.
Five Killeshi moved at the front, scouting ahead, while two – including the one whose rites he was watching – were at the back.
The Killeshi turned his head, and Jakub saw that he and the other straggler of the group were carrying a body.
He couldn’t help but feel a laugh building inside him. Here he was, watching through the eyes of a Killeshi as he and another carried a corpse across this piece of land, when just moments earlier he and Rud had been doing the same.
When he saw the corpse’s face, Jakub couldn’t believe it. The body was Harry Helmund, the traitor. The man they’d been sent here to collect, and the start of this whole sorry mess.
So, where were they taking him?
He had no time to answer the question in his head, because there was movement up ahead. The four Killeshi leading the pack stopped.
“Archers, move. Two left and two right,” said one, the tallest and strongest-looking of the group. If the length of his beard was a symbol of his status, then this man enjoyed power among his clansmen. He had more hair on his face than Jakub did on his neck.
“Trouble?”
“Trouble.”
The Killeshi carrying Harry Helmund set his end of the corpse on the ground. His friend did likewise, and put his hand on his shoulder.
“Remember, you have trained for this, Lars.”
“You weren’t scared in your first fight?”
“I almost pissed myself. Nothing to be ashamed of, being scared, as long as you are with us when it matters.”
The first scream came from their right. The Killeshi turned his head to the right.
There was a swirling portal, like the ones Ludwig came through from the Greylands, but much darker. Claws reached out from it and struck at the man nearest to it.
The Killeshi was eviscerated at the waist, and streams of blood mingled with the swirling black tar portal, just as his screams mixed with the whoosh of the portal itself.
“What in all hells?” said Lars.
A scream to their left drew his attention again. This time, he caught sight of a creature puncturing a long claw through a Killeshi’s body, impaling him and then dragging him through a portal.
The Killeshi whose rites they were watching edged closer to his friend Lars. Both had their weapons ready.
“Remember your lessons, and don’t fear whatever these things are,” said Lars.
“We should flee, brother.”
“Never. Better dead than cowards.”
“Together then.”
“Together.”
Both Killeshis rushed forward, swords levelled at midriff-height with the points outward, ready for a strike.
A bolt took Lars first, popping through his windpipe.
It didn’t kill him instantly, and he staggered one step, two, and then collapsed.
The Killeshi looked left, right. Only three of his clansmen were left, and they had packed tight together, backs pressed against each other so that they could see every direction.
“Over here, brother,” said one.
The Killeshi started to run to his clansmen.
Suddenly, the image lurched downward, straight into the dirt.
The Killeshi screamed.
He looked at his ankle, where a bolt was wedged in his tendons.
“Crawl!” shouted a voice.
There was no time to crawl; blackness spread around him, inky and thick.
The Killeshi’s stomach exploded outward as a claw punctured all the way through it, from underneath him where a portal had opened.
The image dimmed, the sound faded to just whispers of screams and shouts.
The last thing the Killeshi saw was four men approaching from the north. They killed the remaining Killeshi and then approached the body.
“What the hell did I just see?” said Rud, unable to take his eyes off where the Last Rites image had been.
“We just watched men from your camp take the traitor’s body.”
“Those things, those claws…what were they?”
“Something from another plane of existence.”
“The Greylands?”
“A place worse than that,” said Jakub. “We have no choice now, Rud. Everything is at the camp. Kortho, Florence, the traitor. It’s the only thing left.”
65
They stopped walking when the hamlet was in sight. Jakub opened his inventory bag and took out everything that could be useful.
“You’ve got the crossbow and the bolts,” he said. “So that’s that. The vagrant blade isn’t any good here, since the disguise is blown and the blade itself isn’t much use in a fight.”
“What about your new sword?”
“Blade of Purge Evil? Sounds fancy, doesn’t it? Its blunt as hell, though. When I use Thorndyke’s body, I’m not going to able to carry too much because it’ll look suspicious. Still, I’m gonna need Purge Evil.”
“What for?”
“My friend, Morrigan. Something I promised her.”
“That’s pretty much it, then.”
“I’m going to take my own blade too, since it’s actually sharp. I’m going to need the vial of restoration as well. Sorry, Rud, but I’m the one walking into trouble, so I’ll need it. I can’t leave you with much.”
“I’m not staying out here the whole time.”
“We’ve been over this.”
Rud nodded. “I know.”
“Now, let’s talk about Thorndyke.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Anything about him that might blow my cover. The way the spell works, I’m going to be in Thorndyke’s reanimated body, almost wearing it.”
“You’re sick bastards, you know that?”
“We’re moved passed that, Rud. What do I need to know?”
“Well, Thorndyke was from the Yelew isles, so he had a pretty strong accent.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Sorry, no.”
“Damn it. Okay. Who was he close to in camp? If I walk through that gate in his body, after he’s been missing for a couple of days, I need to know who’s going to come running at me looking for a hug.”
“No wife, no kids. He was a loner. When he wasn’t on guard duty, he’d be over by the fire, whittling these little goat figurines out of wood. He used to give them to people on their birthdays.”
“What else?”
“He used to call necromancer Ryden ‘necro.’ He was always suspicious of him, never looked at him with doe-eyes like the rest of us did. The idea of necromancer never sat well with him.”
“Then things haven’t turned out well for him at all, given what I’m about to do. What about Florence? What was her relationship with him? I’m going to have to try and get her to leave the hamlet with Thorndyke before anyone notices, so I need to know what kind of relationship they had.”
“None, as far as I know. They never would have needed to spend too much time together.”
“That won’t work then; she needs to trust him. Is there something you can tell me to say to her? Something that would only have come from you?”
“When we were planning to leave the hamlet and get passage on a boat, we were going to make the Golden Docks our first spot. Her grandmother used to live there, and she used to go every summer.”
“That’s exactly where your mum and her parents would have looked for you, too. Hells, kid. Talk about wanting to get caught. But okay, that should work; I’ll use that to get her trust.”
“So you’ll talk to Florence, find your mentor, and get the body you were looking for?”
“I’ll settle for two out of the three now; Florence and Kortho. Me and your girl aren’t going to be able to carry two corpses out of th
ere while avoiding a master necromancer, a camp full of hostiles, and whatever those demons were that he used to attack the Killeshi. On top of that, I need to find Morrigan, too. I’m sure she’s here.”
“I can’t just stay out here, Jakub. I’ll go out of my mind.”
“I need you here. When I leave those gates, I’m going to have a lot of people chasing me, and I need you ready with your crossbow.”
“Okay, but if you’re gone too long, I’m coming.”
“I think that’s everything,” said Jakub. “Time to use Death Puppet.”
“You necromancers,” said Rud. “Always playing up to your image.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your spells always have such morbid names. Death Puppet.”
“What else would you have it called?”
“I don’t know, something less dark.”
“Such as?”
“Huh. I don’t know. Erm…Meat Costume?”
“You keep working on that while I’m gone. I’ll be back before you come up with anything worthwhile. One last thing; here, take this.”
He gave Rud the bracelet of rest. He didn’t need it in Thorndyke’s body, and it would be more useful to have Rud stay awake while waiting outside.
Rud offered his hand out. Jakub took it, and they shook.
“Good luck,” said Rud.
“Thanks.”
“Bring her back to me.”
“I’ll do my best.”
66
His first steps in Thorndyke’s body were awkward ones; the man was taller and wider than him, and it was like trying to walk in a suit of armor. By the time he reached the hamlet gates he’d gotten the hang of it.
Where once there had been one man guarding the hamlet entrance, now there were four, each wearing battle leathers and carrying swords.
“Thorndyke?” said one. “Where the hell have you been?”
“You look like shit,” said another.
This was it, the first test; raise their suspicion, and the plan was over before it began.
Jakub was never one for accents, and now wasn’t the time to try. He spoke in a low voice.
“We attacked the Killeshi’s hut, like the necro asked,” he said.