Two Necromancers, a Dwarf Kingdom, and a Sky City

by L. G. Estrella

  “It’s a grim sight, isn’t it?” her master drawled. It was sometimes easy to forget that as easy-going as he could be, her master had faced situations like this before. It was impossible to become a Grand Necromancer without participating in at least a few large-scale battles. “It would be nice if we could pick and choose our battlefield, but we haven’t got a choice. We have to stop them here.”

  Katie nodded. If the goblins managed to breach the city, there would be far too many casualties. Dwarves were not as numerous as humans, and they reproduced more slowly too. It was how the goblins had been winning. Battles of attrition were at their most effective when the opponent could not easily replenish their numbers. Her brows furrowed. Near one of the bridges was a large metal golem. It was crushing goblin after goblin, but it was being forced back by a steady stream of arrows, boulders, and magic. It made her wonder why the dwarves hadn’t fielded more of them. That single golem was basically holding a bridge singlehandedly. If the dwarves could have fielded even half a dozen more, the battle would look very different. Perhaps they simply hadn’t had the time to make more, or perhaps it was special in some way that made it difficult to replicate.

  “What do we do?”

  “Hmm…” Her master studied the battle below them for a moment longer. “Our first objective is to pressure the goblins. At the moment, they’re leaning heavily on the dwarves, and the dwarves are barely hanging on. If we can get their attention, they’ll have to ease up on them a little. The best plan, I think, is to march our zombies around to the rear of the goblin horde. They’re so focused on the dwarves that they might not see us coming, especially if we use some of our stealthier troops to eliminate their scouts while having Amanda cloak us with her illusions. If they do notice us and retreat, that’s fine too. They’re fast, but they’re not at their best above ground, and we can harry them all the way back to Diamondgate. If they choose to stand their ground, we’ll try to flank them. Goblin hordes are large, but they aren’t well organised, and they can be slow to react to sudden changes on the battlefield.” He pointed. “Look through the eyes of one of our scouting zombies. What do you think of their equipment?”

  Katie shifted her awareness and peered at the goblins through the eyes of one of the zombie hawks her master had circling the area. While not as fearsome as zombie wyverns or zombie drakes, their speed and excellent vision made them ideal for scouting. Her brows furrowed. “The majority of the goblins aren’t well equipped at all. Most of them are either using weapons they’ve stolen from the dwarves or weapons they’ve made themselves, which aren’t very good, mostly bone, stone, or wood. From the looks of it, they don’t take great care of their weapons either.” She frowned. “But there are other goblins. Some of them are much bigger, and they’re wearing plate armour and moving in orderly formations. I can sense magic in some of them too.” Her attention shifted to another zombie hawk. “And there are some really big goblins – almost as big as our zombie ogres.”

  “That’s normal. Goblin hordes are a bit like insect hives. Individually, goblins aren’t very smart, and they tend to rely mostly on numbers, cunning, and surprise to win. But the bigger a horde gets, the more likely you are to see some semblance of organisation, as well as other smarter and more powerful varieties of goblins. The bigger ones are usually smarter too, and the ones with magic should not be underestimated.” Her master’s eyes narrowed. “Goblin shamans draw their strength from the horde. The bigger the horde is, the more potent their magic becomes. You need to kill them – and the other powerful, intelligent goblins – as quickly as you can. Without their leadership, the rest will dissolve into a chaotic rabble that we can mop up without too much difficulty.” He glanced up. “Look. They’ve noticed us.”

  Katie followed his gaze. There were things flying through the air toward them. “Drakes?”

  “Goblins occasionally form alliances with drakes since dwarves and drakes do not get along. Whenever possible, dwarves drive drakes away from the areas they occupy. The drakes don’t like that, so they work with the goblins.” He pointed. “The goblins riding on them aren’t there to command them. A drake would never take orders from a goblin. Instead, they’re there to shoot arrows, throw spears, and maybe jump off and stab anyone they can reach.”

  “Really?” Leaping off a drake to stab someone sound crazy. Sure, the rats could do it, but they had ways of getting back to the ground safely. She doubted the goblins could say the same. “That’s crazy.”

  “Goblins are, almost by definition, crazy.” Her master checked the pouch at his side. It was full of pebbles. “Trust me. I’ve had a goblin leap off a drake to try to stab me when we were more than two miles off the ground. They don’t care if they die as long as they take you with them. Expect the unexpected.” He shifted slightly to put himself in a better position on the zombie drake. “Order your portion of the zombies to begin moving into a flanking position. We’re not far off now. I’ll do the same. We can have Avraniel target their leadership from up here while Old Man, Amanda, Chomp, and Gerald land and help out on the ground. In Gerald’s case, we can have him speak to the king and offer additional support with his magic. I know for a fact that he’s got enough medical supplies for a hundred battles. As for us, we’ll stay up here. Spot and our other fliers can take on the drakes.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” Katie swallowed nervously. “We’ll win, right?”

  “Nothing in battle is ever certain,” he said. “But the odds are definitely in our favour.” He smiled fondly. “Now, pay attention. This is your first big battle, so you’ve got a lot to learn.” His magic flared as he relayed his orders to his zombies and through them to the others. “This is where things go from interesting to really interesting.”

  Katie relayed her own orders as their ground-based zombies continued to advance. The amount of ground they could cover was truly staggering. Unlike the lesser zombies made by weak or poorly trained necromancers, her and her master’s zombies could move at speeds equal to or greater than regular armies without ever needing to rest. With her orders given, and the huge swathes of zombies below them beginning to move into position, she turned her attention to the fliers. The battle for aerial superiority was critical. Whoever won could rain down attacks from above. Her master had thus ordered numerous flying zombies to accompany their army, along with the pride of his flying zombie collection: a zombie drake-salamander-roc that he and Katie had painstakingly assembled last year. It had the raw power and durability of a large drake combined with the speed and agility of a roc and a salamander’s ability to produce fire. More importantly, they’d managed to acquire parts from a gale roc, a type of roc that could control the wind. When combined with a salamander’s ability to create fire, their composite zombie could do a decent impression of a dragon. Sure, the flames weren’t as hot as dragon fire, but they were still devastating, and they could cover a huge area. Her master had also summoned a flock of zombie pigeons, and the demolition rats that had accompanied their zombies from the castle had spent days arming them.

  In retrospect, she was amazed no one had thought of strapping explosives onto zombie pigeons before. Hitting things with explosives was hard, but if the explosives were attached to something that could fly, it got a lot easier. Sure, pigeons weren’t the quickest animals in the air, but they were usually quick enough. They were also easy to obtain, and few creatures considered them a threat, so they wouldn’t react until it was too late.

  The first three drakes to reach them made that exact mistake – and promptly regretted it. As the large, sinuous reptiles dove toward them, a group of zombie pigeons surrounded each one and then exploded. The drakes went down, either killed outright or wounded too badly to stay aloft. The other drakes immediately scattered to avoid the slower, less agile pigeons, which gave their zombie wyverns a chance to strike. In theory, drakes were far more powerful than wyverns. They were larger, stronger, and more durable whereas wyverns tended to have a higher top speed and greater agility. What
tipped the odds in their favour was cooperation. In the wild, wyverns often struggled to work together. But their zombie wyverns attacked in perfect unison, and Katie had practiced enough times to know what orders to give. After all, they had to get their drake corpses somewhere, and fresh was always best.

  Most wild wyverns made the mistake of targeting the throats or chests of drakes. Those were, of course, the areas that could easily lead to a kill if they were damaged. However, most drakes had thick scales on their chests and neck, and they had a lifetime of experience in defending their vulnerable areas. Instead, Katie ordered some of her zombie wyverns to go for the face and eyes, distracting the drakes so others could tear into their wings. Two of her zombie wyverns were killed almost instantly and half a dozen more were badly damaged in the opening moments of the battle. A drake’s claws weren’t quite as sharp as a dragon’s, but they were more capable of tearing through a wyvern. Elsewhere, a drake gave a roar of triumph as it bit down on the neck of a zombie wyvern and ripped its head off. But her wyverns pressed on to deadly effect. One drake fell out of the sky, its wings ripped to pieces, and others soon followed it. But the drakes refused to break. Instead, they charged forward, bombarded by zombie pigeons and assailed by zombie wyverns. They must have felt that they could only win if they were able to get close. Drakes were not as intelligent as dragons, but they weren’t stupid. They could sense her and her master’s magic in the zombies. Thankfully, her master had kept their zombie drake-salamander-roc nearby, ready as a final line of defence if the drakes actually managed to break through all of their other zombies.

  And then Spot entered the fray.

  The dragon was smaller than any of the drakes – the smallest drake was twenty-five feet long while the largest measured more than fifty feet – but he was a dragon. He’d been circling high above the battle, watching and learning how best to strike. Unlike Katie or her master, Spot was born for aerial combat. The blade-like front edges of his wings gleamed in the sun as he unsheathed them and dove, a reminder that he was part astral dragon. He caught the first drake on its front-right shoulder, and the blade-like edge of his wing simply opened the flier up from shoulder to hip. The drake gave a warbling, startled cry of pain and plummeted toward the ground. A second drake lunged, but Spot rolled, and the blow went wide as his momentum propelled him past the left wing of his opponent. The wickedly sharp wing edge would not have cleaved through a dragon’s scales, but the wing membrane of a drake was far less durable. The suddenly one-winged drake pitched sharply to the side, and Spot turned his head to unleash a concentrated blast of flame at the wings of a third. The blast wasn’t enough to set the drake ablaze – drakes weren’t dragons, but they were cousins of a sort, so fire wasn’t quite as deadly to them as it ought to be – but it did make the creature panic. It bucked wildly and retreated, running headlong into a trio of zombie wyverns that yanked the goblins off its back and then went to work with their beaks and talons. A few moments later, it fell. Hopefully, it would crush more goblins when it hit the ground.

  People often compared drakes to dragons, but Spot was showing why dragons considered such comparisons insulting. Dragons were called the rulers of the sky for a reason, and from the savage smile on his face, Spot wasn’t about to suffer some overgrown lizards flying in what he viewed as his sky. Still, as deadly as Spot was, he would have been in trouble if one of the larger drakes managed to land a solid hit, but he was too quick and too agile for them to lay a claw on him. All of those training exercises and practice missions with the rats were paying off. Nothing in the sky could match him, and he was not in a merciful mood.

  In front of them, their zombie drake-salamander-roc – which Katie had nicknamed Derrick much to her master’s dismay – began to flap his wings. A searing wind full of embers and flames billowed outward, and their zombies parted seamlessly to let the oncoming drakes bear the brunt of the assault. The lesser drakes recoiled, not defeated but far from happy, while the larger ones continued their charge only to find themselves besieged by the remaining zombie wyverns and pelted by exploding zombie pigeons. It was a chilling example of how good her master’s control was. Katie had been issuing general instructions, but her master had dozens of zombies acting as though they were a single entity. The two drakes that did manage to get close found out why Derrick was the ideal last line of defence. They had upgraded his claws using fragments of dragon claws salvaged from battles between the massive beasts. Derrick shredded one drake, and the armour around his belly shrieked as the other drake retaliated only to find his magically enhanced armour too sturdy to penetrate.

  Derrick swung back at the remaining drake, but it was agile enough to dodge. It tried to grapple with him, but flames enveloped the zombie, a testament to the salamander parts used in his creation. The drake reeled back, and Derrick landed two massive blows. One tore a huge gash in the drake’s side, and the other sent it tumbling down, one of its wings broken. As the rest of the goblins’ aerial forces retreated in disarray, Katie turned her attention to the battle below them. She was skilled, but she was still young. She couldn’t multi-task the way her master could, and she wondered if she’d ever be able to match him in that area. His ability to command large numbers of zombies with incredible precision was what separated him from other Grand Necromancers.

  The battlefield wasn’t complicated. The terrain outside the city was a combination of flat areas interspersed with hills of varying size and steepness. As their zombies moved into position, Katie sent some rough orders for them to adopt a defensive formation. She couldn’t command tens of thousands of zombies on an individual level like her master, but she could issue more general commands to large groups. Despite their best efforts, the goblins had already spotted them, and sections of the horde were gradually turning to meet the new threat.

  Zombies were typically awful with ranged weapons since they usually lacked the fine motor skills required to make good use of bows, crossbows, slings, and other such weapons. It was possible to make zombies with better motor skills – zombie warriors and zombie marksmen were perfect examples – but it took more time and magic. However, there was an easier solution: create composite zombies that could shoot volleys of projectiles. It would be like having their very own mobile siege weaponry.

  Their most potent ranged zombies were composite zombies that relied primarily on a certain species of large spiky lizard. These lizards – one of whom Councillor Winters had captured and named Spike – could grow to truly impressive size, and they attacked by shooting their spikes at their opponents. With a bit of tinkering and by adding some parts from other creatures, she and her master had developed zombies with a slower firing rate but greater range, as well as spikes that were designed to fragment upon impact, shredding anything nearby with shards of bone. Their hard work and innovation had won them the coveted Innovation of the Year Award at the most recent award ceremony run by the necromancers’ guild, and she was hoping it would also win them the even more coveted Innovation of the Decade Award in a few years time. Apart from the zombie lizards, they also had zombie archers and some zombie mages to fill out their ranged arsenal.

  At the front of their formation were the zombie ogres. These massive zombies were completely covered in armour and equipped with huge shields. Regular infantry would have a hard time even injuring them, and light infantry like the goblins would be hard-pressed to even scuff their armour before being crushed by the colossal war hammers they wielded. Sadly, they could only field about fifty of the zombie ogres, but each zombie ogre still served as a formidable bulwark capable of blunting even the most determined charge. Waiting behind the zombie ogres with their spears, shields, and swords at the ready were their zombie soldiers. They were less powerful than zombie warriors but stronger than lesser zombies. The less well-made zombies – the ones that most necromancers colloquially referred to as biters since all they could really do was run after people and bite them – were kept further back. It was tempting to use them as fodder to sl
ow down the goblins, but her master had advised against it. They might not be much good in a pitched battle, but against a disorganised foe, they could prove devastating. Every goblin they killed could be added to their forces whereas the goblins crushed by the zombie ogres or shredded by their zombie lizards would be too mangled to use. More importantly, biters were exceptionally quick on their feet. Few things could outrun them, and there was something viscerally terrifying about an enemy that relied on its teeth instead of weaponry.

  Their zombie army was a summation of how her master thought necromancers should wage war. Zombies did not know fear, exhaustion, or disobedience. Therefore, using them as a disorganised rabble, while useful in small engagements and definitely amusing, was ultimately a waste of resources when applied on a larger scale. A zombie army could fight with absolute discipline and cohesion, combining disparate troops into a unified whole guided by a single will. The alternative was to simply overwhelm their enemies with sheer numbers, a traditional but not always efficient tactic.

  “Avraniel!” her master shouted, knowing the elf could easily hear them despite the distance between them. “See those goblins in fancy armour and robes?” Katie rolled her eyes. Of course, the elf would notice if her master described them that way. “Do me a favour. Kill them all.”

  Avraniel laughed as the zombie wyvern carrying her veered off. Her bow was ready a moment later, and the surge of magic that followed threatened to knock some of their zombies out of the sky. It really was unfair just how insanely powerful the elf was. The bow glowed as brightly as a second sun, and then she loosed her arrow. A lance of raw heat crossed several miles in an instant and struck with the force of a dreadnought’s broadside. The goblins had only seconds to register the threat, and a good portion of their leadership disintegrated before they could even begin to cast defensive magic. As the remaining goblin mages and shamans scrambled to put up some magical defences, Avraniel continued to bombard them with shafts of blazing heat and light. The goblin leadership hadn’t been entirely wiped out yet, but they were in no position to command the battle.