by Deck Davis
When that died he heard Helena shout, but she’d slipped into her native tongue, one she hadn’t used in years, and it was like her voice was coming from far, far away.
Hips walked to him now, his waist slinking this way and that, like a snake given legs and told to strut. He held a second dagger in his hand, and the flicker of fire flame showed the blade clean, that this wasn’t the one used to kill the oracle.
He held the dagger aloft. “I hope you all understand the significance of this,” he said. “I’d hate to teach this lesson to deaf ears.”
The last thing Gunar saw was a silver blade coming at him, and then hot, searing agony spread across his throat.
Nobody was watching when Gunar’s body slumped onto the ground. They were looking, but they weren’t really seeing. The caravaners had known him as their leader for so long that it was impossible to comprehend his current state.
For Helena, the spread of utter insanity had started and her mind was rolling in fits and tumults that carried her far, far away from anything that would approach logic.
The slavers were already bored. Killing wasn’t a sport for them and they got no enjoyment from watching it. To them, the blood spurting onto the ground might as well have sounded like coins falling from their pockets and tickling away down an alleyway to fall into a gutter.
They understood that the oracle had to suffer because a man who would betray a whole host of families and who could summon storms when strong enough was not a man you let live. The other guy had been cargo. All the slavers owned a share in the price his flesh brought, and it would earn them nothing if he was dead.
Knowing not to argue with Hips, they busied themselves in getting ready for bed, even if it would be a nightmare to try and sleep while the cargo was gasping and crying and screaming.
This meant nobody watched as Gunar’s blood seeped into the cracks in the desert.
Such small cracks, wrinkles in the ground so commonplace that most Toil travelers didn’t pay them any notice. The blood found its way into these rivulets and followed them down, down, down, deep into the desert until they reached cavities big enough for mice, and the further until they widened into tunnels big enough for a man, then ones big enough for something more insidious to creep through.
Gunar’s blood found its way into the lusk warrens deep underground. It seeped into the warren of an ancient lusk, one as old as the sand it made its home in. One who other, younger lusks lived near. Not together, but near, so that they could bring him tributes of rats and rabbits and let him gorge, and in turn, he would protect them if they were to ever need it.
The blood of this poor man reached these tunnels and its scent spread through them until it reached nostrils that hadn’t smelled the blood of man in a long, long time.
Now an ancient lusk opened his eyes and he breathed in and he knew that, for the first time in years, something lay on the surface that was worth breaching for.
Bear was tired. He’d followed his nose for many miles now, for many suns, and his belly felt tight like the time he’d sucked rotten marrow from a fox that had been dead for too long.
He’d nourished himself on four lizards who had been fleeing from something, and who had stumbled into his path. He carved one of them open with a great swipe of his right, fully-clawed paw. The other three attacked on instinct but he killed them and he feasted on their skin and flesh and he drank their blood and he snapped their bones and sucked the marrow, knowing it was fresh.
With the heat of blood in him he carried on, sun after sun, and sometimes he thought about Pup and he felt something inside, a darkness like the night when only the moon looked down, and Bear wondered now if there was a place for Pup to look down from and watch him.
Soon the smell he was following began to change. It grew stronger, and he came to realize that he was following many smells, not just one. Not just the scent of the man who had harmed Pup, but others.
No longer weak, Bear sniffed the air again and set out, and he could feel fury pounding in his ears and urging him on.
CHAPTER 38
Jakub heard screams. Even from his vantage point, it was hard to see what was going on, and the slavers’ fire was dying. It was night now, and nobody in Toil would let a fire die when the night cold set in. Something was distracting them, and the screams were part of it.
As far as he could make out, the cries were coming from the far-left side of camp, where he could make out the silhouette of a wagon against the darkness.
Was it Gunar and the others screaming? He hated to use logic when logic tasted so sour, but it had to be. It was hardly going to be the slavers screaming.
At least they wouldn’t be able to see him. He’d first approached the slavers from the south, but the terrain was flat and so, as weary as he felt, he made a diversion west and then north again, climbing a series of rocky hills so that he could look down on them. Len the lusk was underground, and when Jakub opened his map he saw that the reanimated creature was directly below the camp, ready to breach when he commanded it.
That would be a destructive diversion, but it wasn’t enough. He needed something else, something to add to the chaos and let him free the caravaners. Once they were out they could lend numbers to the fight, even unarmed. Together with Len rampaging and the panic a fully grown lusk would cause, they could overpower the slavers.
He checked his spell list to see what he could use.
Glyphline 1: Soul Harvest
Essence Grab [2]
Draw soul essence from the dead for use in necromancy.
Health Harvest [2]
Convert soul essence into a healing wind
Wilting Touch [1]
Touch a living thing to take some of its essence
Glyphline 2: Resurrection
Major Creature Resurrection [1]
Raise creatures of any size from the dead (does not include humans or other beings of similar intelligence)
Last Rites [2]
View the last minutes of a person or beast’s life.
Death Puppet [2]
Temporarily reanimate a dead or dying person and step into their body.
Spirit Transfer [1]
Transfer a dead person’s spirit into a vessel
Glyphline 3: Death Bind
Summon Bound [2]
Summon your bound animal from the Greylands.
Glyphline 4: Raiser
Reanimate [2]
Bring a person or creature back from the dead, with limited cognitive function. Not true resurrection.
Corrupted Soul [1]
His Soul Harvest glyphline was useless right now because there was nothing to drain essence from, and he didn’t need to heal himself. Perhaps Wilting Touch would help if he got close enough, but getting close was the problem.
His Death Bind glyphline was also a no-go, because the only spell he possessed on that line was to summon Ludwig. As much as he’d loved to see his friend, the only thing Lud could do would be to sneak into camp and gather intelligence. That would be useful, but it’d leave no essence for anything else.
That left his Resurrection and Raiser glyphlines. One of the spells nestled within them had to be the answer.
Major Creature resurrection and Last Rites wouldn’t work – there was nothing to resurrect, and no dead person whose last few minutes of life he needed to view. Same with Reanimation; no corpse, no party. Ditto Spirit Transfer.
Damn it. Being a necromancer didn’t help when there were no corpses in sight. Was he just going to have to let loose with Len and hope for the best?
While he’d been trying to make a plan, the shouting in camp had carried on. Slavers had surrounded what he assumed was the wagon where they kept Gunar and the others. Were they trying to break out?
He needed to get closer. He quickly checked his gear. He had his dagger in a sheath on his belt, the bottle of Firelick in his bag, and he held his sword in his right hand. With nothing else to take, he set out.
After climbing dow
n the rocks he ran at a half-crouch, keeping himself small. After closing a quarter of the distance, he stopped dead.
He could see something now. As he’d suspected, the caravaners were in a guarded wagon. But in the center of the camp, near the bonfire, there was something Jakub could use; a body lying on the ground.
Given the body wasn’t in a wagon, he assumed it was a slaver. Maybe one of the caravaners had managed to hide a weapon or something. Either way it was a body, hopefully dead, and it was Jakub’s ride into camp.
Focusing on it, Jakub spoke the Death Puppet spellword. A feeling overtook him, a sudden lurch followed by a rush as if he had just been thrust off a tower.
Though his vision went dark he felt his consciousness being thrust across the desert, before coming to an abrupt stop.
Necromancy EXP gained
EXP to next lvl: [III ]
He felt different now. Heavier. Warmer. The feeling was like waking mid-dream, swimming to consciousness but not sure what was real and what was a figment of his wandering mind.
His eyes were shut, and he knew that he’d used Death Puppet correctly and that it had transferred him from his own body into this one, a corpse lying next to the bonfire in the middle of the slaver camp.
Now he needed to get a sense of who was nearby and what was going on. The longer he stayed in the body the more essence it’d use, and he didn’t have enough to waste playing dead.
With the need to act came a slight problem; the people around him assumed he was dead. If he suddenly got to his feet, it’d probably cause a reaction. Most people, when encountering a corpse rising from the ground, tended to act a little unpredictably.
He opened one eye slowly, bit by bit, until light leaked into his vision. He saw waves of red and orange flickering over wood, and knew he was facing the fire. It was as though letting the flames into his sight awakened all his senses, and he was bombarded with the smell of burning wood, with sweat and piss and shit, with the iron stench of spilled blood.
Voices made a chorus around him, none of them singing from the same sheet. Twice he heard Gunar’s name mentioned, possibly by his wife. Each time she spoke a slaver would tell her to shut her mouth.
From listening, he could tell most voices were coming from behind him, and there was a mix of slavers and caravaners concentrated in and around the wagon. This was more than a little annoying, since he needed to get to the wagon to get them free.
With his essence draining, his own body currently defenseless and empty some ways across the desert, it was time to do something.
He made a fist with his new hand and felt his knuckles crack. He shifted his left leg, and then the right, trying to quickly grow used to the weight distribution of a new body. This was the hardest thing about Death Puppet; stepping into a corpse wasn’t like trying on a new pair of trousers, it was like trying to ride an unfamiliar horse with your arms tied and eyes shut.
When he finally pushed himself up to his feet and he stretched his arm out above his head and felt his limbs pop, he turned and took a look around.
And then a silence fell over the camp.
Every person stared at him. Thirty or so faces, some belonging to slavers, others to caravaners. Eyes widened, mouths opened in silent gasps of astonishment.
Helena as the first to speak. “He’s alive!” she shouted. “Gunar’s alive!”
Gunar?
He was in Gunar’s body?
A wave of guilt stabbed him now. Whatever had happened, Helena’s husband was dead, and he’d given her hope that it was not so.
And to think he’d worried that his new Wilting Touch was a corruption of necromancy. It turned out that the corruption wasn’t in a man’s powers, but how he used them.
At the very least, he wouldn’t use Gunar in vain. With essence bleeding out of him, Jakub reached into the fire and grabbed a burning log in each hand. His mind flinched at the flame and expected heat, but this wasn’t his body and those feelings of pain wouldn’t reach him.
Setting sight on the slavers near the wagon, Jakub charged at them, reaching one in time to swing a flaming log at him, crunching his nose and setting his beard alight.
An arm grabbed him but he swung with the other log now, hitting someone behind him. He didn’t stop to check who.
Instead, he pushed himself away, got to the edge of the wagon and looked through the bars at the terrified prisoners.
“Whatever happens, don’t leave the wagon until it’s over,” he said. “I’ll open the door, but don’t leave yet.”
A hand grabbed his shoulders. He shrugged it off. Helena reached for his empty hand, but he slipped her grasp. Raising the fiery log, he smashed it against the padlock on the cage door again and again until it shattered.
With that, his essence left him, and his mind was catapulted all the way back across the desert.
There, he awoke in his own body. It hadn’t been a smooth journey, and he felt like his mind was a ball bearing rolling side to side in his skull, and the feeling made his stomach protest. He retched once, then breathed and held it in.
He got to his feet. The camp was in chaos now, one man running around the bonfire with his head aflame while the others tried to waft it out with blankets. The wagon door was open and a figure stood halfway out of it. Slavers were torn between guarding the prisoners, extinguishing the burning man, and inspecting the corpse that had just risen, attacked them, and died again.
There had never been a more opportune time for a lusk to breach.
Len, Jakub commanded, with a thought. Rise from your sandy grave.
CHAPTER 39
York, Bear, Jakub, Helena
A boom roared out from the camp due east, causing the horse to whinny and raise its legs. York held the reins with one hand and stroked its mane with the other.
“Hush, fella. It’s okay,” he said, but his dry throat didn’t lend much of a soothing tone to his words.
Maybe it was because he didn’t believe them. The boom worried him, and in his heart, he knew this could never be okay. The camp had caused him enough worry; the cloth and compass had pointed this direction until York saw flames, and it was only when he got closer that he realized this was a camp of twenty-something people with wagons and horses.
So many people out here meant only a couple of things, neither of them good.
The explosion was altogether worse because not many things in Toil could cause such a riot. Either the idiots at the camp had just thrown a barrel of gunpowder on the fire, or…
A second boom shattered the peace, this louder than the first. His horse reared so high that York tumbled off and smashed onto the ground, knocking the wind out of him.
He got to his knees and sucked in half a breath at first and then more as his lungs would allow it, while clenching his fists through the pain. At the same time, he watched the camp in amazement.
Something rose up from the ground from directly under the fire. It was a monstrous shape, twenty feet tall but too dark to make out against the pitch black of night.
As it breached the ground it sent fire logs flying in every direction, some smashing into the sides of wagons, the flames leaping onto the canvas sides and setting them alight. As flames tore through the tarpaulin the added light illuminated the whole camp, and York saw everything.
A bunch of folks running this way and that, some collecting weapons, others trying to douse flames.
A wagon full of people, some of them climbing out, others hunching back into the corner, petrified.
Two monstrous gods-damned lusks rampaging through the camp, one taller than a bell tower and making the ground shake with every jump, the other nimbler, leaping across camp and tearing into any poor bastard who got too close.
York had a mind to help them, and he also had a mind to stay the hell away. It was hard to know which mind to listen to. In the split second he’d had to assess the situation, he felt he had a pretty good idea what was going on. That was part of a hunter’s play deck; there were
n’t many situations where you had the luxury of time to make a decision.
Way he saw it, the folks in the wagon were prisoners. Otherwise, what were they doing in something that looked like a damn cage?
That’d make the bastards running around camp their captors. Slavers, mostly likely. They could have been queen’s men taking bounties someplace, but that didn’t seem probable as there was no way they’d cut through Sun Toil.
You only went through Toil to avoid being seen. And you only avoided being seen if there was something you didn’t want others to find.
The creatures leaping to and fro through camp and tearing limbs from sockets and heads from necks were lusks. Big bastard lusks on a gorging frenzy, too dumb to know when they were full and it was time to stop eating. They’d tear through every person in camp, drinking blood and eating flesh until their stomachs were ready to burst. Whichever god mixed a pea brain with a predator’s body was cruel, cruel son of a bitch.
Then again, maybe there were different gods up there. There were different afterlives, so why not different gods? Maybe one of them had arranged things just so York would be right here, right now.
Maybe he wasn’t here to kill an old bear after all. He was here so that on one horrible night, when a bunch of slavers stopped for night camp and lusks decided it was time to feed, York would be there to help a bunch of innocent souls get free.
Feeling renewed, he got to his feet. He approached the horse and stroked it and whispered soothing gibbering sounds to it, and when it looked calm enough he took his things.
First his crossbow, which he slung around his shoulder. Then his machete, which he tucked into his belt. Finally, he made sure his bolt wand was tucked into his belt, and then he set off toward camp.
