by Rex Jameson
Riley was still there. Someone had rammed sticks into her sides, desecrating her body—likely bandits who seemed numb to the pain and suffering of others and who didn’t respect the dead. Not that the people of the town had been any better. They had burned her alive and left her here as a lesson. Don’t commit witchcraft. Don’t be a necromancer. Don’t be Ashton.
Clayton nudged him, bumping his arm against Ashton’s shoulder.
“What is it?” Ashton asked, staring into the blackened flesh of Clayton’s wife.
He mumbled a response.
“I can’t understand you.”
“Bren back.”
“Bren back?”
Clayton pointed at her and then back at himself. “Bren ‘er back.”
“Bring her back?”
Clayton nodded.
“Clayton, buddy,” Ashton said. “I don’t even know how I brought you back.”
“Repit,” Clayton said, clutching his jaw with his hand to try to speak better. “Do same.”
“I don’t know how I did it,” Ashton said. “I was at your grave. I was crying. I wanted you to come back. I asked you to come back.”
Clayton nodded. “Repit.”
“I don’t know if I can do it,” Ashton said. “Besides, look at her.”
Parts of her skin were untouched by fire, but her clothing had obviously taken to torch, and her breasts had melted down her stomach. Her hair was singed, and her eyes were glazed over and sunken. Still, a part of him wondered if she was waiting for him to bring her back like Clayton must have been.
“Try,” Clayton said clearly. “Repit.”
Ashton nodded. “For you,” he said, “I’ll try.”
He readied himself in front of Riley, trying to remember exactly how he resurrected Clayton. “Do you think we need to bury her?”
Clayton shrugged.
Ashton felt embarrassed, like he had said something really stupid in front of a crowd—like hundreds of eyes were watching him, judging him.
“I was hovering over you,” Ashton said, shaking the sense of being watched even though no bandits were around. “I begged you to come back to me and Riley.”
Clayton unbound her hands from the stake and gingerly placed her on the stone tiles in the main square, away from the pyre she had been burned at. Her skin came off easily. Clayton patted the crispy skin back down. He nodded to his friend and motioned for Ashton to continue.
“Ok,” Ashton said as he crawled beside her. “Ok, I’m doing it.”
He tried to close her eyelids with his hand, but they were melted to the rest of her skin. He looked at her grotesque orbs and climbed atop her. He expected the smell to be overwhelming, but the rest of the sun-scorched bodies must have numbed his sense of smell or perhaps she had been in the square for too long. Perhaps it was too late.
“Repit,” Clayton urged him again.
“Ok,” Ashton said, waving a hand at him. “Let me concentrate. I think I need to talk to her like I talked to you.”
Clayton nodded and folded his arms as he paced the stone square.
“Riley,” Ashton said. “I know it’s been a while. I’m sorry that Clayton and I left you here. It’s been a couple weeks. We were… overcome with grief. Clayton misses you. I miss you too. We want to take you away from here—somewhere far away where we can all be together.
He placed a hand lightly against her flaking, crackling shoulder.
“We need you to come back to us.”
He half expected her to bat her eyes and rustle beneath him, but she didn’t.
“Clayton and I need you to come back to us,” Ashton said. “You weren’t supposed to die here… Return to us from the underworld, away from all that death and darkness. Come back to us. Come back to the light.”
There was no response. The sense of being watched came back in full force. He looked around briefly, expecting bandits or refugees from the woods, but he and Clayton were alone. A board in a nearby building fell, likely weakened by the day’s fire. A slight breeze rustled leaves somewhere behind him. Birds chirped in the distance.
“Come back to me,” Ashton said. “I need you here. Clayton needs you here.”
His senses seemed to focus on everything but her in his periphery. Something rustled in a building. Ashton became aware of footsteps approaching him. A wounded dog or something crawled along the stone steps of Mayor Seth’s office, slithering down. He refused to look at or acknowledge their presence, and he cursed his brain for not focusing harder.
“It’s just you, me and Clayton,” he said. “Don’t worry about them. They don’t care about necromancy. There are bigger problems in the world. They’re not burning me here like they did you. Clayton and I won’t let them. Come back to me. Come back to me, Riley. Come back.”
More footsteps approached him.
“Keep them away from me, Clayton,” Ashton said, waving his hand absently toward the noises. “Make sure they don’t come back.”
Clayton grunted an acknowledgement, but he didn’t move.
“Come back,” Ashton asked her again. He pushed against her chest with a finger, hoping she might respond to his antagonism from the afterlife. “Don’t leave Clayton here by himself. Join us. Come back to us, if only for a moment. Help us avenge Perketh. Help us hide from those who might seek to harm Clayton and me. Protect us. Come back…”
He tried to raise her for thirty more minutes, never looking at the gathering audience around him. They didn’t matter. No one jeered him. The bandits or townsfolk near him were silent, probably intimidated by Clayton.
“I don’t think it’s working,” Ashton said finally. “I think she’s too far gone… I had those blue stones from Farmer Albertson’s fields. You know? The leylines or whatever. Maybe we should grab some of those and try again—”
He looked up. He expected to see bandits and dogs, but if they were among the crowd, they were changed. The people swayed there, waiting for something. Men, women and children, all mangled and deformed. Dead. Undead.
He recognized Mr. Merkins. Then Mrs. Selena. In his desperation to raise Riley, he had managed to raise the entire town of Perketh.
“Maybe I don’t need the stones from Farmer Albertson after all,” Ashton said lamely.
Clayton shook his head in agreement at the negative.
A large man in a black smock with red stains down his sides looked down at Ashton from the front row. Even with the gaunt face and slashes across his cheek, Ashton recognized Master Nathan anywhere. A realization dawned on Ashton at that point. He realized that he didn’t have to run anymore. He didn’t understand what he had done, but he knew these people. Despite what they had done to Riley, they were his neighbors. Beneath their glassy eyes was recognition. They knew who he was, and something akin to love was still there—just as it had been with Clayton when he had come back from the grave. Ashton knew, somehow, that they would fight to their end for him.
“Umm…” Ashton said, as they waited for him to say something. He stumbled through thoughts in his head. Finally, he held onto his friend Clayton and looked out at them.
“I’m sorry this happened to you,” Ashton said. “I can’t make this right. You’ll never be the same, and I don’t know how long any of you will last here amongst the world of the living. The only thing I can offer you, the only thing within my power to give you, is justice.”
A low murmur built among the undead residents of Perketh.
“The bandits are moving east, and then I think they’re going to move south toward Mallory Keep. There are many of them, but we are many as well.”
There were people nodding in the crowd.
“You’ve already died once before,” he said. “You died trembling in your homes. You died because you didn’t fight together. You died alone, by yourselves, with your families—hoping for mercy. The time for fighting alone and begging for mercy ends today. We’ll fight together now.”
The crowd cheered again.
“Follow me to Mall
ory Keep,” Ashton said. “Follow me and take vengeance on the Red Army!”
Nathan shouted louder than most, but the five hundred reborn residents of Perketh each gave a shrill battle cry that echoed across the stone tiles in the main square and against the brick and mortar of the burned out buildings.
Caught up in the crowd’s enthusiasm, Ashton began to leave Perketh, but Clayton wouldn’t let him. He pointed at Riley on the stone tiles and then at the graveyard. Ashton felt immediately terrible at having forgotten about her.
He commanded the undead horde to exhume Clayton’s old grave. Four large men gently lowered her down into the freshly dug pit, and the town participated in another funeral procession, much like they had for Clayton before. Clayton sat across from Ashton, where Riley had sat previously.
This time, the undead men and women of Perketh stooped to kiss Clayton’s cheek. This time, the spouse of the buried wasn’t the only one who looked ghoulish. The people’s faces were just as gaunt as before but without makeup. Every person who bent down to kiss Clayton’s cheek left marks of blood and ooze from their own wounds.
As the crowd waited at the edge of the wood to the south, Clayton and Ashton looked at each other.
“It’s time,” Ashton said.
Clayton patted the mound of earth that housed Riley’s resting body. He grabbed three morning glories from a vine that had overgrown a nearby tombstone and laid them on her grave.
“Sleep well,” Ashton told her from beside his friend. “We love you.”
Clayton nodded and hugged the mound. In town, on the southern path to Mallory Keep, the people of Perketh waited. For Clayton to finish saying goodbye. For Ashton to lead them to their promised vengeance.
12
A Tale of the Fallen
Lord Godfrey wrote a quick note in his daily journal about the mundane details of the Royal Guard, its status, and routine. No casualties. No sicknesses. Perfect bill of health for the regiment, minus the units on loan to the various prefectures of the realm. He thought of his son in Lord Mallory’s lands as he dictated the time left on the loans of Royal Guardsmen into his parchment. At the end of the day, he’d bind these pages as he had done every day for thirty years.
He looked up from his menial tasks to find his aide-de-camp Gerard Bastille awkwardly standing before him. Gerard was a battle-tested, seasoned soldier. Awkwardness and being tongue-tied were unusual for him—Godfrey wouldn’t have accepted him as an aide otherwise. Gerard was being trained as a potential replacement, even if his oldest son Frederick was assumed to be next in line.
“What is it?” Godfrey asked.
Gerard adjusted his greaves and then his shoulder armor.
“It’s your son,” Gerard said.
“My son?”
Godfrey laid the scrolls down and placed the pen atop them.
“And?” he asked finally.
“I’m not sure how to tell you this…”
“Has there been an accident?”
“No, General. I don’t think so.”
“Is my son here? In the capital?”
Gerard’s eyes batted feverishly and he coughed lightly. “Yes, Sir.”
“Has he come to ask to be reassigned?” Godfrey asked with some relief.
“No, Sir.”
“What does he want?” Godfrey said gruffly as he rose to his feet.
Gerard bit his lip. “He wants for nothing. Sir, your son has been—”
Godfrey felt the room spin. Gerard said something else. It sounded like “killed”, but in truth, Godfrey’s mind had turned off. Gerard’s voice droned on muted and ambient while other noises amplified. He became aware of the crackle of embers in the hearth of his office. The creaking and clanking of Gerard’s armor resonated like an anchor being dragged along an iron girder. He swore he could hear a mouse farting in the wall.
“Show me his body,” he said finally.
“Captain,” Gerard said, “his body has only just arrived. Lord Vossen brought it here as soon as he found Frederick on the field south of Perketh.”
“He died fighting the Red Army?”
“It looks that way,” Gerard said.
“Show me his body,” Godfrey repeated. “I want to see my son.”
Most memories are fleeting things. A single image might be all that a person can remember of a childhood friend, a vacation to a beach, or the scent of a first girlfriend.
Godfrey couldn’t remember what his first wife looked like. She had died over twenty years ago. He couldn’t remember how she smelled or what her favorite color was, but he loved her and remembered her fondly because she had given him Frederick—died during childbirth doing it.
Godfrey couldn’t remember the exact moment he first picked up a sword, though he still felt excitement every time he heard the clang of a sword removed from his scabbard. He could remember a tree he had practiced against in his family yard, but he couldn’t remember a single swing he had done there.
These were all things that Godfrey loved, and he had only fleeting reminders of them when he focused hard on them. Godfrey’s memories of Frederick were different.
Godfrey had memorized whole days he had spent with his son. Every strand of hair and its position on that boy’s head. The first time Frederick had come in second place at a tournament when he was just fourteen years old and fighting grown men. The way Frederick had leaned in his saddle as he pressed forward in the joust. The first time he had been caught in his room with a girl, and the surprising words that made their way out of Godfrey’s mouth, “be careful,” as he closed the door. The moment Frederick graduated from military academy, beaming a wide grin under that blond mustache at his father, and Godfrey tearing up. He remembered the salty tears draining down his face and into his mouth, a sensation that was repeating itself now.
The taste broke him from his melancholy. He realized he was mindlessly following Gerard down the stairs of the spire to the ground floor, towards his son’s body. He wiped a sleeve against his cheek. He was wearing his leathers that cushioned his chest from the harder edges of his armor, but not the armor itself. He was dressed for leisure in his office.
Is this appropriate for seeing my son?
There was no suit appropriate for seeing his dead son. There was no proper moment. This was not supposed to happen.
Frederick was the finest soldier Godfrey had ever trained, even better than he was, and that had made Godfrey proud. Despite the last orcish incursion and the call-to-arms, Godfrey had held Frederick back in the capital to let him see how a war was actually conducted—the politics and the logistics, all important aspects for a future commander.
His son was smart and a prodigy with a blade, lance and armor. He had all the tools to win on the field and in the council chambers. He had the experience. He had the pedigree. Frederick had been groomed to be the greatest commander the Surdel Kingdom had ever known. He was the finest tournament champion Surdel had produced in two generations. And despite his gifts and the enormous efforts and privileges bestowed on him by a doting father, Frederick had died in the southern states fighting a second rate army of ragtag idiots, likely hired by Lord Vossen to attack Mallory over nothing.
“Wait,” Godfrey said. “Did you say Lord Vossen brought my son in?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The elder?”
“No,” Gerard said. “Jeremy, his close friend.”
“His best friend,” Godfrey corrected him.
Since Jeremy had been so close to Frederick, he was similarly recorded in Godfrey’s mind. The boy was trouble, but no more than Frederick had been with women and drinking. In truth, the two men had been made for each other. Both had won tournaments, though Jeremy never in the same tournaments that Frederick had competed in. Jeremy had always placed well.
Godfrey nodded. It was a relief that his son had been found and cared for by a close friend, someone Godfrey trusted.
He found Jeremy in the hospital wing, standing in front of the table that held his
son. He could only see his boy’s armor, the very set that Godfrey had commissioned for him, and the top of his golden head, where the curls fell down to the floor.
Jeremy did not look up. His face was dark, and he had been crying. Godfrey wiped his own face and hugged his son’s best friend. Jeremy returned the hug hard and cried even harder.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Godfrey said, pulling away from him.
“I came as soon as I found him.”
“Where did you find him?”
Jeremy grew silent for a moment as he sniffed and wiped at his eyes. “In a wood south of Perketh. I came upon him as he lay dying.”
“You killed the man who did this?” Godfrey asked.
Jeremy shook his head slowly. “No… I think Freddie may have killed him… there in the forest…”
Godfrey pushed Jeremy gently aside to look at his son. The bandits had not desecrated his boy. Jeremy must have found him before they had had the chance. For that, he was eternally grateful. There was a puncture wound to the neck, obviously done at close quarters. Too big to be an arrow and not big enough to be a sword.
“Someone got close enough to him to stab him with a knife?” Godfrey asked in disbelief.
Jeremy didn’t answer.
“This kind of blow shouldn’t be possible,” Godfrey said. “I helped design this suit of armor myself. The visor locks against a neck guard.”
He looked to Jeremy for affirmation of the preposterousness of this death, but Jeremy’s eyes were on the floor. He was still crying.
“Did he take his helmet off?” Godfrey asked. “Was he playing with that damned plume again? Did you find him without headgear and neck guard?”
Jeremy nodded. He seemed to be thinking. Remembering. “When I first saw him, he was without headgear. He had taken it off.”
“Why?” Godfrey asked. “What possible reason? He knows better. He has been trained to never underestimate an enemy. Never!”
Godfrey remembered harsh lessons he had metered out himself to his son. Dozens of examples in their family courtyard during sparring, teaching him to never turn his back on an enemy and to always wear his armor when battle was near. Never to showboat. Never to grandstand. Quickly kill and move away to a new advantageous spot. Always meet a force with overwhelming power. Never show weakness. Never present a soft surface.