Necromancer's Gambit (The Flesh & Bone Trilogy Book 1)

by A J Dalton

  ‘Sounds like you have a low opinion of Tristus, and officers in general. Anyway, might you have chosen to raise Tristus instead if we hadn’t gone through this exercise of reading the field?’

  ‘Yes,’ Young Strap said grudgingly. ‘Tristus looks fit, strong and well-fed. He looks the part of a hero.’

  The Old Hound nodded. ‘And yet he is precisely not a hero. The old fellow was closer to it, but who killed him, Young Strap? Can you read that?’

  ‘A fierce enemy warrior probably. One with great strength or technique. A combination of both is likely required to survive in a melee. That, and luck. But the path such an enemy cut should be obvious, and his weapon. The old fellow looks like he’s had his chest staved in by a war hammer or mace. Yes, here’s another of ours killed by a crushing weapon. And another here. It seems to lead to that grouping of bodies over there.’

  They picked their way over to where Young Strap had indicated. Five enemy soldier lay in a rough, mangled circle. One of them was a bearded giant who’d had one arm severed and his throat cut. A large, stone hammer lay half-buried nearby. Looking at it, Young Strap didn’t think he’d even be able to lift it.

  ‘Well, lad?’

  ‘It must have been some hero of ours that killed these five, including the giant.’

  ‘At least he managed to kill these five before he himself was overwhelmed.’

  Young Strap looked at the Old Hound quizzically. ‘There’s no body. He must have survived. He’s probably in a tavern in Corinus celebrating our victory.’

  ‘Unlikely,’ the Old Hound said heavily. ‘This other man here has no weapon. What was he carrying?’

  ‘A pike. He’s got an empty stirrup for it at his side. I see what you’re saying! There’s blood in the centre of the ring where our hero was presumably impaled. A lot of blood. Even if he’d escaped this group, he would have been severely injured and easily cut down before he got more than a few steps. Now, I don’t see the bodies of any of our heroes round here. Does that mean a necromancer’s been here already?’

  ‘We’ve been watching the field. None have entered since the end of the battle except the one we put an end to, we know that. That leaves two possibilities. First, the enemy King – Orastes, I think his name is – could be recruiting necromancers and using them in battle. Or someone spirited the body away during the battle at the behest of a necromancer. Either way, it’s not good, not good at all. We’ll have to report this,’ finished the Old Hound with a grimace and spitting on the floor as if to clear a bad taste from his mouth.

  ‘Report it? To whom?’

  ‘The King, lad.’

  ‘The King?’ Young Strap goggled.

  ‘Yes. That’s the way things are done.’

  ‘I’ve never even seen the King before. And now I’m gonna meet him in person!’

  ‘It’s nothing to get excited about.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ the youngster frowned.

  ‘Never mind. Let’s finish what we came here to do and get out of here before the blood fleas have another chance at you. Knew a fellow once who ended up with one on his privates. He never peed straight again afterwards. Wet Shoes is what everyone used to call him.’

  ‘O-okay! What’s left to do then?’

  ‘Last thing to do is make the place safe for the living. Then the locals are free to move in and rob the dead of whatever they want.’

  ‘So how do we make this place safe?’

  ‘How do you think? Your questions are tiring me out, lad.’

  ‘Sorry. Erm… do we burn all the bodies or hack their heads off?’

  The Old Hound genuinely seemed to ponder Young Strap’s answer. ‘There’s merit in those two approaches. Lot of grisly work, though. There’s an easier way: water blessed by a priest of Shakri. A dab of water on the forehead of a corpse will ensure it can never be raised. The temples have to supply the King’s Guardians for free. Otherwise, the temples charge whatever they like, which usually means a lot of gold. The poor never get this stuff.’

  With that, he threw Young Strap a battered flask.

  ‘Off you go then. There’re a lot of bodies to do and we want to be gone by nightfall.’

  Young Strap looked at the flask dubiously. ‘Does this stuff really work?’

  ‘Have faith lad, have faith,’ said the Old Hound, settling himself under a tree.

  ***

  CHAPTER 3: To mourn the passing

  ‘Are you ready yet?’

  ‘Alright, alright!’ Mordius said, clearly harassed. He strapped one last bundle to a disgruntled looking horse and clambered up into the saddle. ‘I can only move so quickly, especially if I’m going to be sure that this undertaking is properly provisioned before we set out.’

  ‘This is a very slow way of travelling. Once the food you bring runs out, we’ll have to stop and hunt for more. It’ll just slow me down. Why don’t you let me go and get the Heart on my own and bring it back here?’

  ‘If it were as simple as that, I would have claimed the Heart ages ago. Unfortunately, necromancers have to be within a particular distance of their animees to keep them alive. Your little jaunt last night, when you left the cottage, put me under considerable strain.’

  ‘So I can’t really go beyond a few miles distant from you?’ Saltar mused.

  ‘That’s about the size of it. Oh, Shakri’s blessed feet! I almost forgot. Hang on,’ and the necromancer climbed down from the horse. He went to his baggage and pulled out a small, intricately designed box made of what looked like bone. A long pin appeared from up one of Mordius’s big sleeves. He eased the lid of the box open and then stabbed something inside. ‘Lacrimos bless our journey! The life of this cockroach in offering to you.’

  Saltar stared at Mordius in consternation. ‘What was that?’

  ‘A votive offering to the Keeper of the Dead,’ the necromancer said uncomfortably.

  ‘You haven’t shown any religious inclination up until now, though to be sure I haven’t known you more than a hand of hours. It’s just that there’s something about you killing the cockroach that strikes me as not quite right. I think you share my unease about it.’

  Mordius turned his back on Saltar, apparently to calm his increasingly churlish horse. ‘It’s best to be on the safe side. It is said some necromancers worship Lacrimos and that he blesses them with particular powers, although what they are I’m not sure. It is said further that the truly faithful are gifted visions of Lacrimos. I have never seen him, to my knowledge, but as with all the gods he has a number of forms – the diseased man, the reaper, the destroyer, the starveling, the demon, and so on. I tend to see necromancy as a science, yet the great thinkers say that even the sciences came down from the gods – who am I to argue with them?’

  ‘Are there temples to this Lacrimos? I don’t seem to have any memories about him from my previous life.’

  ‘That is surprising, because Lacrimos the destroyer is often depicted as a warrior and worshipped by warriors.’

  ‘Perhaps I laughed in the face of death instead,’ Saltar said with a quirky smile. The idea seemed to please him.

  ‘Anyway, I have heard of a few temples in remote places. Certainly, Lacrimos is not worshipped side by side with the other gods. He is not popular with his sister, Shakri, first amongst the gods as the god of life and creation.’

  ‘I guess he’s like a jealous brother trying to break his sibling’s things. Why make offering to such a god, Mordius? First of all, the offering would be ignored if you weren’t one of the truly faithful – and you only remembered Lacrimos as an afterthought, if you believe in him or the gods at all. And second, the killing of the cockroach seems somehow gratuitous, though I am no friend of cockroaches to be sure. I can understand the killing of animals for food and the killing of people as a means of self-defence, even if that form of self-defence is organised as an army. But I cannot understand the killing of any creature just to excite the attention of a petty, jealous and vindictive god.’

&nb
sp; Mordius blew out his cheeks as he hauled himself up into the saddle once more. ‘I’ll thank you not to be so free with your blasphemy, whatever the nature of Lacrimos or his existence. You risk putting us in unnecessary danger. As to cockroaches, everyone knows that they are never entirely destroyed. When you squidge one, that only serves to release its eggs earlier than they would naturally be released. The growing young then feed on the body of their dead parent. Even in death there is life with cockroaches. And perhaps with humans too, if our spirits are released to a new life when we die.’

  ‘By that principle, Mordius, we could equally have sacrificed a living person to bless our journey as a cockroach. I can just about tolerate your animating those who are already dead, but I will not help you sacrifice the living. This journey will not start until we have come to an understanding on this matter.’

  Mordius glared at Saltar and began to wish he’d never raised this tiresome fellow. The soldier had already tried to attack Mordius, had walked away into the night – running who knew what risks – had unceremoniously awoken Mordius from his slumber before the sun was even fully above the horizon and had risked Lacrimos’s anger, all in the space of a few hours. Now he was giving Mordius an ultimatum and threatening to ruin their entire enterprise.

  ‘You seem to forget that you remain animated only for as long as I will it.’

  To Mordius’s horror, Saltar threw his head back and produced a long and loud laugh. ‘Do you seek to threaten me, little man? We have many nights together ahead of us, and you will not have a thick door to go and hide behind. If we cannot come to an understanding and trust each other on relatively small things, then how can I trust that you will honour your promise to resurrect me fully once we have the Heart? I may remain animated subject to your will, but I could kill you and return to my rest by choice. Also, I doubt it’s that simple for you to return me to the grave. You said you had given me something of yourself before. It would take you time and effort to reclaim it, which would be plenty long enough for me to cross the space between us and wring your scrawny neck.’

  The horse snorted and danced away from the cold and threatening wave emanating from the undead soldier. Mordius blanched and cleared his throat nervously. Then he closed his eyes for a few moments and took some deep breaths. ‘Saltar, you are more than I bargained for. And, yes, we are stuck with each other for the nonce. I realise we will both have to make compromises. From now on, I will not sacrifice to Lacrimos, but if I should ever have to explain myself to him, I will be sure to direct him towards you. Does that satisfy you?’

  ‘Yes. Which way are we headed?’

  Mordius blinked at the sudden change in direction. ‘Er… north. That’s where the Heart was last thought to be. We’re heading for the kingdom of Accritania. Rumour is that there are as many dead walking around there as there are living.’

  ‘Accritania, Accritania. I remember. They are the enemy. And I fought for… for Dur Memnos.’

  ‘Yes, this kingdom is Dur Memnos.’

  ‘I hear Dur Memnos won the latest battle. Why were they fighting?’

  ‘I’m a bit embarrassed to say I don’t really know. What do kingdoms ever fight over? Money, trade, land, an imagined slight or even less than that. Shunned as we are, we necromancers don’t really keep up with the latest comings and goings, intrigues or fashions of the nobility. Besides, the war between Accritania and Dur Memnos has been going on for as long as anyone can remember. The why has become less important than the continued fight and the prospect of final victory.’

  With that, Mordius set his horse off across the grass in the direction of a distant road. Saltar was on foot but had no difficulty in keeping up with his long, tireless stride. ‘So, do necromancers never talk to anyone?’ the animee asked after some time. ‘Strange and lonely type of life if you ask me. What about family and so on? How would you ever start being a necromancer?’

  Mordius ground his teeth but managed a fairly even answer: ‘It’s not that bad. I have ventured into towns round and about dressed as a journeyman. And then there are the monthly markets when there are lots of strangers about and some general information to be had. As for family, I was happy to be taken in by my old master, Dualor, rather than suffer the daily beatings meted out by my father.’

  ‘Fond of you, was he, this Dualor?’

  Mordius glanced sideways at Saltar, trying to see if the soldier was mocking him, but failed to discern anything in his deadpan face. ‘He was a kindly teacher. He taught me a great many things, a great many secrets. Some have spent lifetimes trying to obtain the knowledge he shared freely with me and helped me learn within a handful of years. And so what if he was lonely and just wanted company?’

  For once, Saltar didn’t answer. He didn’t even look at the necromancer, just marched onwards without breaking step. Now, Mordius felt under some pressure to speak.

  ‘Occasionally, I wish for a more normal life, with a wife and kids, but I’m not sure such a life even exists. The war is a fact of day-to-day life, Saltar. It’s a fight for the ordinary person just to feed themselves, let alone a family.’

  ‘The ordinary person you speak of seemed to be having a good enough time in the inn near your home from what I could see, Mordius. They weren’t fighting to eat. And every army needs to eat, so they have to leave the food-producing population pretty much unmolested.’

  ‘That inn hadn’t been there that long, Saltar, a few years, little more. Nor the farmers. They came as refugees looking for an uninteresting and relatively undisturbed district to settle in. But the war will find them again eventually. It’s like an insatiably hungry meat-eater that’s scented blood.’

  Saltar found himself greatly disturbed by this information and fell to a silent brooding. Could it really be that this monster called war had been on the rampage for whole lifetimes, for generations, for who knew how long? What kept it going? Surely it hadn’t taken on a life of its own or found some sort of animation like a zombie, like himself? It certainly seemed unnatural. Didn’t most wars either fizzle out or come to an abrupt end? A generation of fighting men were quickly used up, so what was fuelling the opposing armies now? It didn’t make sense. Perhaps Mordius was exaggerating. He hoped so.

  ‘If what you say is even half true, then I can see why you prefer the company of the dead, Mordius. But last night you intimated I had a family. That was a lie, wasn’t it?’

  Mordius glanced nervously at the animee. ‘Erm… I have no real knowledge about your life, Saltar.’

  ‘And now I think about it, if you just pulled a likely looking hero off a battlefield, then you wouldn’t really know my name. My name isn’t really Saltar, is it?’

  ‘No!’ Mordius admitted faintly.

  The animee continued looking straight ahead, his face as dead as it had ever been. Mordius held his breath. His chest began to hurt with the pressure.

  ‘I should kill you.’

  A simple statement. Fact. And worse, Mordius understood just how much he had wronged this soldier. The knowledge weighed heavily on him and he crumpled in the saddle. How arrogant he’d been to treat it so lightly before.

  ‘I can return you to the grave if you wish,’ Mordius whispered miserably.

  Saltar groaned in torment. ‘By Shakri’s paps, what have you done to me! I don’t even remember if I believe in the gods and an after-life. What if this is all there is left to me? Never quite alive, but the closest thing there is to it. It’s agony. I can almost taste food, almost taste wine, almost feel the sun’s warmth, almost the cold. And I have a dim memory of what it was once like, just to add to my torture. It’s like… it’s like… yes, I know what it is. This is hell. You’ve consigned me to hell, Mordius.’

  Mordius covered his face with his hands in shame.

  ‘And it gets worse the longer it goes on, the more I discover about what I no longer am and what I can no longer have. So tell me again why you’ve done this.’

  Mordius struggled for an answer. Why did he really w
ant the Heart? It wasn’t that he was simply afraid of death. ‘I-I can’t tell you. No, no, don’t get me wrong, S-Saltar!’ he said hastily. ‘It’s not that I won’t tell you, it’s that I don’t think I understand the reason entirely myself. I can’t quite grasp it, just as life is tantalisingly beyond your grasp.’

  Saltar mulled over this spectacularly inadequate answer. He snorted and startled the horse. ‘So! You don’t know your own mind, Mordius! Are you under some sort of compunction or bewitchment or are you just a fool?’

  They turned onto the road, which was wide and well-paved. An image of an army in formation marching up just such a road jumped into Saltar’s head and made him miss a step. Mordius gave no sign of having noticed the lapse.

  Saltar frowned as he looked into the distance. There were people strung out along the road in ones and twos, travelling in the same direction as themselves. There was even a wagon on the horizon, but he couldn’t make out much more than that, what with the dust it threw up.

  ‘No, Saltar, I’m not bewitched, or at least I don’t think I am. I just know I have to get the Heart. There’s something wrong, I can feel it.’

  ‘Maybe it’s something you ate.’

  ‘No, seriously. There’s something wrong and I have to get the Heart.’

  ‘Well what is it that’s wrong then?’ Saltar said with irritation.

  ‘I-I…’

  ‘Let me guess: you don’t know.’

  ‘It’s, it’s everything. Everything is wrong somehow.’

  ‘And you’re telling this to a zombie? I’ll say there’s something wrong. Something wrong in your head.’