Fires of the Dead

by Jed Herne

  Fires of the Dead

  A Pyromancer Novella

  By Jed Herne

  First published by Undergrove Press 2019.

  Copyright © 2019 by Jed Herne.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Jed Herne asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  JedHerne.com

  First edition.

  To Mum and Dad, for all your support, belief, and love. Thank you!

  Free Fantasy Story

  ASCENDANT FLAMES

  A Pyromancer Story by Jed Herne

  The price of power is blood.

  Desperate for respect, a young magician joins a criminal gang and becomes drunk on her newfound power. But when she must decide between everything she wants and everything she used to be, will she let the past die, or will she reject her new life?

  To claim your free story, go to: jedherne.com/fires

  (This is a standalone prequel to Fires of the Dead, and can be read before, or after.)

  Part I: Wisp

  1: WISP

  Breeze handed Wisp the telescope and Wisp smiled, doing his best to avoid a grimace. His damn knees were hurting again.

  Stretching ahead of ‘em was the Ashwood Desolation. Last time Wisp saw it, before the Gutting, the forest was lush and green and full of plump deer. Now it was a charred wasteland. Blackened, leafless trunks marched out to the horizon and ashen clouds blew in the wind. Only upside was that you’d spot an ambush a mile off, ‘cause most of the trees had been incinerated. Got to find the upside in these things.

  Wisp lowered the telescope. Mountains surrounded the Ashwoods on all sides except one, which was blocked by a river. The damn water was deeper than a gambler’s grudge, and twice as vicious. You could only cross in a handful of places. One of ‘em lay ahead.

  Wisp frowned. “Breeze, what’re we dealing with?”

  The young woman snapped to attention – eager to prove herself, as always. “A dozen men guarding the crossing. Only eight are soldiers. The rest are cooks, carpenters, blacksmiths. They’ve got a Source Flame in the middle hut.”

  Wisp stroked his stubbled chin. “So then at least one of ‘em is a Pyromancer.”

  The river crossing was no easy path. More a place where the water ran shallow enough to wade through, so long as you kept your balance. Four huts and a low wall protected the bank on Wisp’s side. Nothing on the Ashwood side. Why would there be? It’d been lifeless since the Gutting.

  Was it worth building a raft? Wisp shook his head. Given the currents and the rocks, it was too time consuming and too risky. Besides, Wisp had spent none of his fifty-four years learning how to swim. No changing that now.

  Anyway, the border crossing would be a good test for his crew. He glanced around, sizing ‘em up: Black Eye, hulking and vacant-looking; Marogan, scowling and chewing jerky from last night’s dinner; Breeze, twitchy-handed and fingering her bow; and Fleetfoot, pale-faced and shivering from the cold. Wisp had worked with ‘em before, but never all together. They could do with some practice.

  “Alright.” Wisp gathered ‘em around. “You know the plan. The Skull’s across that border. Let’s do this.”

  ~ ~ ~

  “Halt!” said the guard.

  Wisp, Marogan, Black Eye, and Fleetfoot paused a stone’s throw from the low wall. Six guards stood behind it, brandishing crossbows and swords. Wisp forced a smile. Didn’t matter how much he did this – nerves jangled through him and he had to piss. Listening to the fast-flowing river only made his bladder ache more.

  “State your business,” said a guard.

  “Passage into the woods, good sir,” said Wisp.

  “For what purpose?”

  “Painting.”

  Beside Wisp, Marogan smirked. He elbowed her to shut her up.

  “Entrance into the Ashwoods is prohibited,” said the guard. “On orders of the High Priest and the Confederate Council.”

  “Because?”

  “Because they bloody well say so. Piss off.”

  “We ain’t gonna steal anything,” said Wisp. “Just paint it. We’re artists.”

  He waved his gloved hands in the air in a vague pattern. Seemed artistic enough.

  The guard raised his eyebrows. “Do that from this side of the river.”

  A tall man climbed onto the wall. There was something in the way he carried himself that seemed suspicious, so Wisp activated his Sight.

  A shimmering orange thread appeared, visible only to Wisp, leading from the tall man’s chest to a hut behind the wall. Wisp surveyed the others, but the man was the only one with the orange thread.

  “One Pyromancer,” he whispered to his crew. “Tall man.”

  “Leave,” said the guard. “Or my men will fill you with arrows.”

  “Hmph.” Wisp crossed his arms. “That’s the problem with today’s young folk.”

  The orange thread leading from the Pyromancer vanished. The man gaped.

  “No appreciation of art,” said Wisp.

  An arrow erupted from the Pyromancer’s chest. He coughed blood and toppled over the wall and the other guards gawped.

  Wisp opened his jacket and removed his hidden crossbow. He fired. Black Eye and Fleetfoot did the same, and bowstrings twanged and arrows hissed through the air as the defenders yelled and fired back. Wisp dove behind a boulder. Marogan slid next to him, spraying dirt over his face.

  Crossbow bolts smashed into the boulder. A bow thrummed and another guard shrieked. Wisp smirked. How long until the idiots realised Breeze was behind their wall?

  Marogan peeled off gloves to reveal her hands, which were a mess of scars and waxy flesh. Wisp had to respect her courage. Hard enough having the guts to burn one hand, let alone two. Somehow, though, he doubted she’d ever considered another option.

  Wisp removed his right glove. His hand wasn’t as burnt as Marogan’s, but it’d been enough to give him the Sight, and a small dose of Pyromancy.

  Orange threads ran from him and Marogan into the distant hills, to the cave where they’d made a Source Flame that morning. He nodded. Their lines thickened, bursting with energy, and they stood from behind their boulder and pointed their burnt hands at the low wooden wall.

  Flames erupted from their palms. Fire roared through the air, washing over the logs and making guards scream.

  Black Eye used the distraction to sprint to the wall and scramble over the sharpened logs.

  “Jon!” yelled a guard. “There’s one over the-”

  Bone broke with a sickening snap, followed by shrieks and curses.

  Marogan strode towards the wall, maintaining the stream of fire spewing from her hands. Wisp stumbled after her. His knees hurt like hell but he grit his teeth, shoved the pain aside, and scrambled over the logs.

  He landed on a guard. The man scrambled away, dropped his crossbow, and raised his hands in surrender. His lip trembled. He didn’t look much older than a boy.

  Poor kid.

  Marogan clambered over the wall and pointed her hand at the youth. The orange thread leading from her chest thickened.

  “Stop.” Wisp sucked in a deep breath that did nothing to lower his racing heartbeat. “He surrendered.”

  Marogan scowled, but lowered he
r hand.

  Bodies lay sprawled on the ground. A stray guard staggered across the river, splashing through the water, but he didn’t get far before Breeze stepped from a hut and shot an arrow into his back. He crashed into the water and the current tugged him away.

  Wisp’s heart pounded. Bloody hell, they’d fought for thirty seconds and his body was screaming. Back in his younger days, he could’ve fought for hours without feeling a damn thing. He’d gone soft.

  Squawks sounded from the air. Wisp glared at the Antoraxes circling above. Didn’t matter how clear the skies were – any large burst of Pyromancy attracted the damn birds. Stupid carrion-feeders had botched his missions more times than he could count.

  Black Eye strolled to Wisp and Marogan, stepping over the bodies. The rancid stench of spilled guts clogged the air, joining the smell of burnt hair and smoke. Spot fires flickered atop the wall.

  “Please.” At Wisp’s feet, tears streamed down the young guard’s face. “D-don’t kill me.”

  Fleetfoot’s thin-fingered hands grasped the top of the wall. Marogan heaved him over. He stared wide-eyed at the corpses and shoved a handkerchief over his nose to stop the smell. When it came to fighting, the damn boy was more useless than a boat in the desert. Good thing Wisp had got him for another task.

  Wisp crouched next to the young guard. He stunk of sweat.

  “What’s your name, son?” asked Wisp.

  The boy trembled. “Ben.”

  “I need you to do something for me, Ben. You got any other friends here? Any other guards on patrol?”

  Ben sucked in a deep breath. “Are you g-going to burn me, too?”

  “I ain’t ever killed a fellow countryman who laid down his arms, Ben.”

  Relief filled Ben’s eyes and he relaxed. “We’re the only ones. Next border post is five leagues upstream. We used to have more people, but they’ve culled our numbers these last few years.”

  Ben kept babbling about guards and orders. While he talked, Marogan flexed her fingers, Black Eye watched with a blank face, and Breeze plucked arrows from dead soldiers.

  Fleetfoot gaped at the guard. Maybe he was thinking about the scarce difference between him and the youth, save that one wore armour and the other had the shabby clothes of a street rat pulled into a thieving crew.

  Wisp raised a hand to stop Ben’s rambling. It was always this way. When they thought you were about to kill ‘em, folk were so busy pissing themselves you couldn’t get ‘em to unhinge their jaws. Then soon as they saw safety you’d think they were paid by the word.

  Wisp grimaced. Crouching was murder on his knees.

  “Listen, Ben,” he said. “What I said before – I ain’t ever killed a fellow countryman.”

  The boy nodded.

  “Thing is,” said Wisp. “I ain’t from your country.”

  2: WISP

  They lit a fire in a hut. Wisp and Marogan pricked their fingers with knives and dripped blood into the flames. The blood sizzled. Through Wisp’s Sight, he saw new orange threads appear, Bonding him and Marogan to the flames. Just as well, ‘cause their link to the fire back in the hills was fading.

  Couple of the soldiers had decent kit, so they stole their weapons. Then Wisp’s crew splashed across the freezing river. He glanced back. Antoraxes plunged towards the charred corpses, ready to feast.

  Wisp led them into the Ashwoods, heading north. Silence filled the air. No rustling leaves, no creatures slithering, or crawling, or running, or flapping. Just silence. A silent, charcoal landscape of grey skeletal trunks covered with burn marks and stripped bare of leaves. Ash coated the ground. It rose in puffs with each step, covering his boots with greyness.

  He scowled. It’d been three years since the Gutting – the inferno that consumed the Ashwoods. Damn place should’ve healed by now. Ain’t natural for it to be barren after so long.

  “Wisp.”

  Breeze stood on a hill, a hundred paces away. He’d sent her to scout.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “You’d better see.”

  He sighed. Course she had to be on a bloody hill. He struggled up the slope, using his sword as a walking stick, gritting his teeth when the other crew members raced past him. His knees creaked. How long before they snapped clean off? Did knees do that? Wish he knew more old folk. Then he could ask how they managed the aches. Thing was, in his line of work it was rare to reach twenty-five, let alone his age.

  Again with the age.

  This might be his last mission, but he had to find the Skull for the Baron if he wanted enough money to retire. Focussing on how broken he was wouldn’t help.

  So stop focussing on it.

  Problem was, his bones squeaked so loud a one-eared grandpa would’ve heard ‘em.

  After a thousand years, he reached the top. He expected a hoard of buried treasure, or at least a stockpile of weapons, but after all his effort his reward was a cluster of trees.

  “You dragged me up here,” he said. “For trees?”

  Breeze flushed. “I thought…”

  Marogan crouched next to a trunk. “Look, Wisp.”

  Seared deep into the trunk was a hand. Blackened sap stained the wood, frozen into a charred puddle that looked like blood. Underneath the handprint, letters were scratched into the wood: death lies beyond.

  Black Eye pointed at the other trees. “It’s here, too.”

  Sure enough, the same handprint and message scorched the other leafless trees. Some trunks had split in two, from where the handprint had marked ’em.

  Black eye shuddered and made a sign to ward off evil. Marogan scowled, but even she tightened her grip on her sword and her knuckles whitened.

  Wisp’s guts clenched. He used his telescope to survey trees on the hill’s other side. All were scarred with the hand mark, hundreds of ‘em, as far as he could see.

  He frowned. Even with all her strength, Marogan would struggle to imprint her hand into one tree. But whoever had done this … they’d burned a thousand trunks.

  His skin crawled. Ain’t many things that frightened Wisp. He’d bested dozens of foes in muddy battlefields and soot-stained streets, and each encounter had hardened him. But this … this was something else. Something unknown.

  Fleetfoot swallowed. “Wisp, what is it?”

  “How old are you, son?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “You know stories about the Gutting?”

  Fleetfoot shivered and hugged himself. “A few.”

  “Well unless you enjoy pissing yourself, I suggest you forget ‘em. Keep moving, crew.”

  They plodded deeper into the woods.

  “Reckon they’re still here?” asked Marogan. “Whoever did these?”

  “It was a bunch of kids, with brands.” If Wisp tried hard enough, he could almost believe it. “Probably a dare.”

  “How would they cross the border?” asked Black Eye.

  Wisp growled. “I dunno. Swum, probably. All the kids can swim today, can’t they? Not like they got weapons dragging ‘em down, like us. Honestly, Black Eye. If you went any slower you’d be going backwards.”

  Black Eye blinked. “Okay.”

  Wisp scowled. For a hulking man nearing on seven feet tall, outside a fight Black Eye was the most docile person you’d ever meet. Drove Wisp mad at times. He missed having Bats in the crew. Bats was weaker than Black Eye, but he’d been a damn sight better to talk with. Too bad he’d taken an axe to the guts.

  They stopped for a lunch of cold rations. Wisp squinted at the sky. Only good thing about the ash clogging the air was that it stopped the sun cooking ‘em raw. Got to find the upside in these things, even if he’d prefer to be sitting on the grass outside his cottage.

  Stop thinking about retirement, fool.

  When he’d met the Baron’s messenger, this mission seemed an easy way to finish his career. But now he was here, the Gutting seemed closer. And sharper. Before, stories about the Gutting made him lean towards the campfire, or grip his mug tighter
in the taverns. Thing was, around a campfire or in a tavern, he’d never worried about those tales being real. Now …

  They ain’t real. Just superstition.

  “Which way to the Castle, Fleetfoot?” he asked.

  Fleetfoot froze with his jerky halfway to his mouth. He wrapped it back up and scrambled to pull the map from his pocket.

  “Relax,” said Wisp. “It ain’t a race.”

  Marogan barked with laughter. Black Eye watched with blank-eyed disinterest. Breeze looked on with the closest thing to sympathy.

  Fleetfoot blushed. “Sorry.”

  Hands shaking, he spread the map, then pointed to their location.

  “We’re about six miles from the border crossing.” Fleetfoot’s voice grew calmer as he gazed at the map. “Another hour and we should reach the Flegethon River, which we can follow to Castle Randall.”

  Wisp smiled. The boy had been nervous all day, but now he was beside a map he’d regained his confidence.

  “You think it’ll still be there?” asked Wisp.

  “I think so. Even if it’s dry, we should see the riverbed.”

  Wisp clapped Fleetfoot on the shoulder. “Good man. Knew you’d be a decent navigator.”

  Fleetfoot flushed again, except this time he looked pleased. He kept smiling, even when they broke camp and marched deeper into the Ashwoods.

  The sun arced through the sky, burning into deeper shades of red as it inched towards the horizon. As they walked, Wisp thought he heard voices whispering through the burned trees, but whenever he turned or made Breeze climb a tree to survey the land, the forest was empty. The largest animal they saw was a solitary Antoraxe gliding overhead.

  Wisp kept sending Breeze ahead to scout. He became used to her ambling back without any news, so when she appeared over a hill and sprinted towards ‘em, he tensed.