by Jim Galford
“Master,” he said softly as magical winds drifted over him, warming him despite the snow blowing in from the window. Almost immediately, his heart began racing as the powerful spell drained much of his strength. When he opened his eyes, a dark hole hung in the air inches from his face, looking like a sort of black cloud that roiled in one place. “Council, please answer me. We must speak.”
Though the spell normally linked to the target person at any distance instantly, Therec waited several minutes as the magic gradually sought out anyone within the council chambers of Turessi. Hundreds of miles away, a matching black cloud would be drifting through the temple, until it could find someone there. He was nearly ready to give up, wondering if the council had come to some kind of harm, when he was answered by a woman. The features of the woman’s face appeared in the smoky cloud, with the tattoos on her face and the black of her hood remaining dark, but the rest of the cloud faded to an off-white for her skin, giving her a ghastly appearance. This was normal with the magic, revealing only a simple representation of the person at the far end. The spell had been designed to gain little more than a basic idea of the face of the person on the other end, along with a clear view of their markings.
“What is this, Preserver Therec?” the woman asked as her eyes shifted to stare at him. “You were ordered to learn more of these people and stay silent until you returned. We did not wish to hear from you for at least another year, if not longer. What warrants contacting us already?”
Swallowing nervously, Therec bowed his head. “Council master, I need to know whether there are more of our people here. I have encountered a man with clan tattoos that I did not recognize and…”
The woman laughed and cut him off. “Therec, you were to place yourself beside the king of that land and wait for any further orders. Why would the council reveal anything further when it might impact the tasks of others? There is a war underway, and you were to gather information on the king, not call home to check in on us every opportunity.”
Therec lifted his head and stared at the woman who had trained him, studying the smoky image of her for emotion. There was none, not even the annoyed firmness he had come to expect to see when he had done something wrong. She was not even forcing herself to be calm…there was nothing at all in her expression.
“Master Aphola, the king is in the next room. I have his complete trust,” Therec lied, monitoring every possible facial tick that might give him away. In person, he knew he could never lie to that woman, but the magic was imperfect that they used. She would have to listen to tone and watch for obvious clues, which he knew he could hide. “I spoke with him no more than an hour ago.”
A flash of emotion crossed Aphola’s face and she was distinctly unhappy. “Do you think lying to me would…?” she began, but this time it was Therec that cut her off.
“How did you know the war had begun? The cities were skirmishing for decades. When we spoke last, the war had not erupted into anything more than small land-grabs. There is something you are not telling me, councilwoman.”
The woman’s lips curled into an amused smile, but her eyes gave no hint that there was humor backing it. “Therec, dear Therec,” she mused, cocking her head as she stared at him. “You always were the clever one. This was why we were ordered to place you where your skills would be most useful. A shame you had to survive. I was told you would die there, but something has gone wrong or changed. Your mission was to die far from home, not to reveal our secrets. Something will need to be done about this.”
Therec clenched his gloved hands, but fought to keep his face calm. “What has happened to the council, Aphola?”
“Nothing to concern yourself with, Preserver. You are much too far away for it to be a matter for your attention. We still control the lands and will until long after you are gone.”
“Tell me what has happened to the clan…my wife, my child, my parents.”
“No. You are on your own, Therec. Be a good little preserver and keep those bodies fresh and ready for our arrival. You have no further orders from the council of clans. We will not answer any further summons. May your death be swift.”
“Aphola,” he said more firmly, raising his voice in uncontrolled anger as he stood. “What have you done?”
“I did not do this, friend,” Aphola said more gently, her eyes showing just a hint of sadness. “You will understand someday, if all goes well. Until then, I can only say that Aphola is sorry for all that has happened to the clan and your family.”
“Why speak as if you are someone else?”
The image smiled broadly at him, then shook its head. “You will figure it out in time, Therec. I trust that you are a wise man. Your wisdom will mean much to the people there. Do not let your remains get buried according to their customs. We would wish to see you return to your homeland, proud of what you have done.”
“Die alone in a storm,” cursed Therec in an old Turessian dialect, waving his hand across his body. As he did, the smoke dissipated, leaving the room quiet and empty once more. His hands shook with more anger than he could remember feeling in his life, but there was nothing to be done.
Heading straight to his desk, Therec began laying out book after book that he had taken from the magisters’ libraries. Several he tossed aside, knowing they held nothing useful for him. It was the books on magic and northern history he began arranging in order of importance for him to read.
He had to prepare himself for a war against his own people, and without his clan’s collected knowledge at his disposal, this would have to do.
As Therec began searching for ideas of how to fight against an army of undead, he found himself worrying about his family. Though he had been trained to always ignore such emotion when it interfered with his duties, this once Therec embraced the fear and allowed himself to hope that they were safe somewhere.
*
“Sir, the enemy is falling back. Should we pursue?”
Therec looked around in surprise. He had been lost in thought as the battle had raged on. It took him a moment to get his bearings again. After two weeks of hard riding and another of preparations for the journey, he was far too tired for what he was trying to do. Another hour and he would likely have fallen off of the horse as he nodded off.
Seated atop a horse, Therec was among dozens of Lantonnian soldiers at the foot of the mountains, where Altis had sent out a large force to slow them. He had ordered the attack through Dorus, after convincing him that testing the enemy’s strength would be vital. The results had been about what he had expected.
Arrayed across the foothills, more than fifty trebuchets had been arranged, surrounded by battalions of soldiers. In each battalion, Therec had insisted on no less than a hundred archers and several wizards, even if the wizard was little more than an apprentice. This, in his mind, was to be their trial by fire, an attempt to get them used to using their limited skills in the field of battle. What he had not told Dorus was that this was also a test of the enemy. He needed to know what the Turessian holed up in Altis was capable of and sending in these forces was the only sure way.
As the commander spoke to Therec, the trebuchets continued hurling rocks into the mountains. They crashed down on the road that ran from Altis down into the plains, and every impact created a plume of fresh snow, making it easy to spot the landing. Entire sections of the cliff-lined road had collapsed, taking hundreds of undead with it. Therec doubted they were “dead,” but if their remains were buried under boulders, he would count that as a kill. For the first time in his life, he had begun to view the shambling bodies as the enemy, rather than the unfortunate ancestors of those who still lived.
“Do not pursue,” Therec ordered. “I want that road destroyed. Collapse every section that can be torn off the mountainside.”
“The enemy has already fallen back out of our range.”
“Keep firing. I want them to use the other roads if they want to attack us again. Going around will cost them days of travel and may e
ncourage their leaders to find a new target. Given the size of their forces, it might buy us weeks or longer.”
“What of the golems, sir?”
Therec turned in his saddle and stared up at the massive metal beings that waited behind the Lantonnian army. They were not nearly as impressive as the war golems the dwarves had loaned the city, but they were finely-crafted and powerful as anything Therec had ever seen. A dozen of the metal men stood ready, unmoving until the apprentices that controlled them gave an order.
“Send the golems into the mountains to smash anything that tries to escape off of the main road, but stop them before they reach the first curve, where we would lose sight of them. I want every Altisian pushed back toward the city, not into the wilds. I’ve been advised there are people living out there beyond the control of Altis, and I would rather have them come to us for aid than be killed pointlessly.”
It took just a few minutes for the order to be relayed back through the lines, and the golems lurched into motion. They stepped carefully at first, their every movement guided by their controllers, who were cautious about making sure they did not step on the soldiers or stomp too heavily until they were past the line of horsemen. Once the golems were past the last of the soldiers, the apprentices set them on their way, covering vast sections of the rising land with every huge stride.
“Do we call this a win for the day?” asked Commander Phillith, eyeing Therec. The old man had kept mostly to himself during the early parts of the battle, but had begun suggesting tactics in the last few hours. He was far wiser about tactics than Therec and worlds better than Dorus. “I’d like to give my boys and girls some good news.”
“Tell them whatever you want, but when those golems have done their work, take everyone back to the city,” Therec told him, nudging his horse to get it walking towards the battlefield.
Checking his saddlebags as he went, Therec found that he had enough food and water to last him a very short journey into the mountains, but it would be sparse eating during that time. He would need to be at his best if—likely when, not if—he was attacked. What he intended to do put him in almost certain danger.
“Are you sure, ambassador?” the commander asked him, eyeing the saddlebags as he rode up alongside Therec. “Traveling on your own is not something I advise in times of war.”
“As sure as I can be,” he admitted, squinting up at the steep mountainside and the top, where Altis lay. “If you would like to take my place…”
“Kiss my armored ass, necromancer. I’ll die in any battle you name, but I will not go to a slaughter.”
“I thought as much. I’ll return as swiftly as I’m able. I will either meet you on the road back to Lantonne or in the city itself.”
Therec looked around at the soldiers who were not heading back to the trebuchets or carrying the dead back to camp. Those few who were waiting for him to leave appeared not exactly malicious, but relieved. It was a welcome change from open hostility, but it was a long way from accepting him and his people. They now saw him as an unwelcome ally, but that was still more than he had expected.
With a flick of the reins, Therec set off up the road toward Altis. The early sections of the road—those parts from which he could look back and still see the faces of the soldiers—were rough but manageable, covered with deep tracks from the golems that had gone ahead of him. There were plenty of rocks strewn about from the attack and more that had fallen from the sides of the nearby foothills, but the major obstacle were the bodies of the broken zombies. Each time one groaned or reached in Therec’s direction, his horse shied away and tugged at the reins, as though reminding him that fleeing was still an option, even if likely not for long.
Within the hour, Therec passed the golems as they turned to retreat. He moved past the majority of the bodies and into sections of the road that had been untouched by the trebuchet fire. The road wound back up and into the mountains, slowly rising from the plains toward the peaks that Therec could no longer see behind the foothills.
Therec soon lost track of time as he made his way up three more switchbacks on the road. He had begun seeing more shattered rocks, and some areas of the road were so badly damaged he was forced to lead his horse on foot off the path and into the uneven woods nearby to ensure they would not have the road collapse beneath them. A single look at the sheer drop-offs where the road had been broken told him that he had no desire to get anywhere near those edges.
The daylight gradually faded as Therec moved past the last of the broken sections of the road. During one brief gap in the hills, he thought he could just barely make out the towers of Altis, but with the sun setting behind it, he could not be sure. It was still a long way away, making him wonder if his supplies would actually last him through a return trip to Lantonne.
Once the sun had fully set, the familiar chitter of animals in the woods was conspicuously absent. At first, Therec believed his horse’s footfalls were scaring off the local wildlife, but he soon realized that was not the case. Something else was out there and the animals of the region wanted nothing to do with it. His own horse whinnied and kicked occasionally, its eyes wide as it watched the woods.
Shadowy humanoid shapes skulked just off the path, turning to watch him pass. They stood in groups and lines, some bent as though their backs could no longer support them. Others lay on the ground, unable to stand, staring up at him from the edge of the trees. These were the stragglers of the army of the dead, the creatures his enemy used in defiance of any Turessian tradition. He felt pity for them, but after this much fighting, he could not let himself dwell on their fate.
Therec had spent his whole life dealing with the animated dead. He had been in charge of ten other preservers in his clan, each with around twenty ancestors to maintain. Never had he seen so many undead this close, all watching him with a hunger that made him uneasy. There was no doubt these creatures were different from the peaceful dead that filled his clan’s huts, even if the same style of magic had created them. Whatever was holding them back was absolute, keeping them from rushing in to kill him as they clearly wished to do. The animated corpses made his stomach clench, their decay bothering him far more than the fact that they were undead. To allow a corpse to be left in this condition was desecration of the memory of the dead to his people.
The horse he rode on was nearly impossible to control anymore, frantically looking between the waiting zombies. With nowhere to run, the beast pushed on as Therec directed, though he expected if an escape route presented itself, the beast would take off, with or without him.
Coming around another sharp switchback in the path, Therec yanked the reins to stop his horse. The animal was more than happy to obey, though it began looking around at the unmoving shapes in the woods for somewhere it could go in a hurry. He could barely stay on it for how hard it fought him.
Standing at the center of the road no more than ten feet ahead of him was a man…or what had once been one. Even in the near-dark before moonrise, Therec could see what appeared to be a shadowy cloud lingering over the man. The entire moving shadow had the appearance of a fire billowing around the pale standing corpse, though instead of giving off light, it consumed it.
Beside the corpse was one of Lantonne’s golems, standing perfectly still with one metal fist held over the undead as though it had frozen mid-swing. As soon as Therec stopped his horse, the undead motioned towards the golem and it backed away obediently, clearing the road.
As Therec approached, his horse bucked again, throwing him backwards to the ground. He tried his best to roll with the landing, but the uneven road and rock-strewn terrain tore into his robes and the flesh beneath. Sliding to a stop, Therec watched helplessly as the horse ran into the woods, followed seconds later by the animal’s screams as the waiting undead in the forest descended on it.
Therec brushed the pebbles from his arms and sat up, finding that the single creature in the road was walking toward him. Raising a hand toward the undead, Therec prepared to defend h
imself, not really knowing if he could even do anything to help himself. Whatever the creature was, Therec had never seen anything quite like it. If it could stop a golem, it was far stronger than he was.
The shadowed corpse stopped several steps from Therec, though its rictus grin widened as though it was resisting the urge to run at him. Slowly, the black cloud that lingered around the corpse descended into the creature’s body and its posture relaxed. The shadowy cloud had nearly vanished into the undead when it blinked and its eyes took on a faint red glow. Shaking its head, the creature looked around as if trying to remember where it was.
“Ah, my esteemed guest,” the pale corpse said as it noticed Therec lying in front of it. Its voice was thick, as though the decay in its jaw limited the speaking ability of whatever was controlling it. “I had wondered how long it would be before you came to see me. This shell has been waiting for some time. I left him out here for you. Please, follow this humble servant.”
Without any hint of the anger and hostility that had existed a moment earlier, the corpse spun gracefully on a rotted boot heel, then set off toward Altis. It stopped after a few dozen steps, turning part ways to stare back at Therec. “Hurry along, Therec,” it told him, smiling as best it could with the decay that marred much of its face. “I cannot control every action of all these undead. If you stay behind, my ability to keep you alive will be greatly diminished. Sooner or later, one of them will find you too enticing to not attack. If your concern is for the golem, trust that I will send others to fetch it. I may already have a purpose in mind for it.”
At a total loss for words, Therec got up. Burning scuffs filled with gravel covered much of the skin of his shoulders and one leg, but he ignored the pain and limped after the creature that waited near a turn in the road. As he went, he funneled a small fraction of his strength into magic that gradually mended his wounds as he walked, easing his pain and smoothing his gait. By the time he had fallen into step behind the strange corpse, his shoulders and leg felt no more battered than if he had worn rough fabric for a day.