It took him a little less than half an hour. One of the best things about being able to control zombies like he could was the ability to see through all of their eyes at once. It was a skill that Katie was still doing her best to learn. Of the six ships he’d been given, four were in good condition. One of the others was seaworthy but in need of some light repairs while the other was in need of heavy repairs. Oh, well. He could handle some repairs. He sent one of his zombies to call Jake and Travers over, so he could explain the situation. In the meantime, he sent Gerald and some of the men who’d been guarding the ships to go procure the materials they needed for repairs.
“I can see why you’re a Grand Necromancer,” Jake murmured.
“Well, if nothing else goes right during this mission, I can honestly say that I am fulfilling one of the dreams that every necromancer has – zombie pirates.”
Travers and Jake laughed.
“Can your zombies carry out repairs?” Travers asked.
“These are high-quality zombies, so they can do things most zombies can’t. My master is also better at controlling them than most necromancers, especially when there are only this many to worry about,” Katie said. “But they’ll only be able to do some of the repairs. We’ll have to leave the more intricate repairs to people.”
“These zombies can even swim,” Timmy added.
“What is the world coming to,” Travers muttered. “Swimming zombies? I’m glad you’re on our side.”
“Thanks to my connection with my zombies, if I know how to do something, they should know how to do it too.”
“That’s why you’ve been watching so closely while we were sailing,” Travers said. “And asking all of those questions.”
Timmy grinned. “It’s been a while since I’ve sailed a ship, so I wanted to refresh my memory. Thanks to your help, my zombies should be able to keep up when we cast off. When the time comes, I plan to have them draw as much attention from the enemy as possible.”
“Incredible.” Jake’s eyes were glued to the zombies working in perfect unison to scrub the decks and ready the ships for sailing.
“My master might be a bit lazy most of the time,” Katie said. “But he’s no slouch when he actually tries.”
“I’m not sure whether to be pleased or insulted by what you just said.”
Jake stared as Katie took a swipe at Timmy with one of her shadows. He’d seen Katie slice through wood like it was paper with those shadows, but Timmy merely dodged and continued to talk like it was something that happened every day. The necromancer pulled Katie into a headlock and ruffled her hair.
“Hah! You’re going to have to practice a lot more before you can even think of hitting me with something so pedestrian.” He nodded at Jake and Travers. “I’ll give you two command over the zombies here. Can you check in on them from time to time? If you see them doing something wrong, tell them what to do instead, and they’ll do it. Katie and I have some other business to attend to.”
Katie did her best to put on a serious expression, but it swiftly gave way to cackling as she punched the air. “Giant shark time!”
Travers chuckled. “We’ll handle things here, but do I even want to know what ‘giant shark time’ means?”
“You’ll find out.” Timmy cackled too. “Believe me, you’ll find out.” He and Katie ambled along the docks. “Are we going to walk all of the way there, or can you fly us there?”
Katie snickered. “Who would have thought that my magic would be so handy?”
“Katie, you can make a giant hand out of your shadows to squash things. The handiness of your magic has never been in doubt.”
“Very funny, master.” Katie summoned her wings, complete with the tail she’d added more recently. “Now, hold on.”
“I’m more worried about you dropping me. Unlike you, I can’t actually fly.”
“As if I’d drop you, master.” Katie poked him in the side with one of her shadows. “You still have plenty to teach me, and you have your shovel. You can always break your fall with a geyser of mud or something.”
“It’s nice to know that you’ve thought so much about this.”
Katie snickered again, and the two of them soared up into the air.
Her contacts had arranged to meet them in a more secluded part of the island – a cove where most of the smugglers and other people engaged in less than legal business handled their affairs. It was far away from the main docks, and the authorities turned something of a blind eye to anything going on there, provided it wasn’t too troublesome. Technically, the hunting that Katie’s contacts engaged in was legal, but he was certain they did some smuggling on the side that was distinctly illegal.
“That’s the ship,” Katie said, pointing down at one particular vessel.
“Yes, I think the giant shark floating beside it gave it away.”
Katie scowled, and Timmy had to bite back a smile. “Maybe.”
They landed on the beach and made their way over to where a group of men were waiting. The shark itself was tethered to the back of their ship. It was most likely protected by magic to prevent it rotting away or being eaten while they transported it. The shark was absolutely enormous. It was easily fifty feet long, and its bulk made for a truly menacing shadow in the water. Timmy couldn’t wait to get his hands on it. The men waved as they approached, and Timmy signalled to the rats that they’d brought along. To be safe, they’d brought five of the rodents, and the invisible ninja rats swiftly fanned out to check for any traps or signs of an ambush. Timmy was confident it wouldn’t come to that, but it didn’t hurt to be careful.
“Katherine!” the man at the front of the group shouted. He was a tall man but whipcord lean. He wasn’t wearing a shirt or tunic, so they had no trouble seeing all of the scars on his arms and chest. Despite his appearance, however, his smile was warm enough. “We saw you flying in. It’s a useful ability to have.”
“It has its moments,” Katie replied. Timmy would let her handle this to see how she went. “I’m sure that you’ve heard of my master.”
The hunter nodded. “The Lord of Black Tower Castle. It is an honour to meet you.”
“Thank you. And you are?”
The man puffed up his chest. He might even have posed a little. “I am John Seaton V.”
“John Seaton V?” Timmy pursed his lips. “Wait… wasn’t your grandfather –”
“John Seaton II!” John cried. “The legendary slayer of the great kraken that terrorised the western seas for more than a decade. Yes, hunting beasties is a family business. My oldest brother is more interested in hunting things on land, but the sea is where my heart is.”
“It’s been a lean season this year, hasn’t it?” Katie asked. “You haven’t been able to land any krakens, not even a small one.”
John made a disgusted sound, and the men behind him cursed. “You would not believe how poor our luck has been. Twice we had a bigger kraken steal the kraken we had caught. Another time, a sea serpent escaped us when a dragon attacked. We were lucky to avoid being sunk.” He gestured at the giant shark, and two of his companions sprang into action, using their magic to slowly, but surely, haul the shark toward the shore, so Timmy and Katie could get a better look at it. “But then we came across the shark. I have no idea how it died, but I knew you’d want it.”
“You were right.” Katie nodded firmly. “We discussed the price beforehand, I believe.”
“Yes, we did.” Jake’s brows furrowed. “But there have been some… complications.”
Timmy listened intently as John continued his tale of suffering and woe. It wasn’t uncommon for a hunter to bump up the price a bit, especially when he’d been forced to go to extra trouble to bring something to the client, like John had in this case. But to his immense pride, Katie held her ground. In the end, Katie did pay a bit more for the giant shark than she had planned – although still within her budged – but she had also secured first-offer rights for John’s next expedition. If everything went o
ut well, the extra cost would be nothing compared to having priority on buying whatever John caught.
After the exchange had concluded and John had agreed to haul the shark to their ships, Timmy asked the question that had been on his mind for some time.
“How do you two know each other?” Timmy asked. “I don’t think we’ve met before although I have done business with both your father and your grandfather. Oh, do say hello to them for me, by the way.
“I will.” John’s lips curved up into a smile. “It’s a funny story. I am not my father’s oldest son. That would be my brother, John Seaton IV.”
“Your family really likes naming people John, don’t they?”
“It’s a good name,” John replied. “Actually, I am the youngest son in my family. My brothers are all hunters of one kind or another, and when I wanted to become one too, my father said I should apprentice under him or one of them. I did that for a while, but eventually, I knew that I was ready to have my own crew, to do things my way. I didn’t exactly have the money to strike out on my own, so I decided to look for funding elsewhere. I was able to put an advertisement in a necromancer trading magazine.”
“Ah, I see.” Given their unique needs, necromancers had several trading magazines where it was possible to put out help-wanted advertisements or to sell certain goods and services. Timmy had subscriptions to several such magazines, as did Katie.
“Katherine was looking for someone who could get a few things for her. They weren’t hard to get, but they weren’t the most profitable to retrieve either, so no one could be bothered getting them.”
Katie huffed indignantly. “It’s a common problem. Hunters focus on the big money makers, like krakens. I was only seven-years-old when I contacted John for the first time, so I couldn’t afford any of the major hunting groups. I needed to start somewhere small.”
“I would have turned her request down, but Katie offered to advance the payment after threatening me in some extremely impressive language if I betrayed her.” John shook his head and laughed. “At the time, I assumed that she was a fully-fledged necromancer, so I didn’t even think of trying to cheat her.”
“A seven-year-old scared you.” Timmy smirked. “If it was any other seven-year-old, I’d be surprised. But it’s Katie, so it makes perfect sense.”
“I used the advance payment to secure a small ship and crew, and we got the things she wanted. We did some more jobs for her, small stuff, and once people saw that we were reliable and earning a decent living with our skills, they began to contact us for bigger jobs. And, well, here we are. It’s one of the reasons I still deal with Katie even though I now know that she is actually a child.”
“She helped you get started.” Timmy would have to keep a closer eye on his apprentice. Was she involved in anything else from a business standpoint? He glanced at Katie. She was subtly signalling to him with her shadows. It took him a moment to understand what she wanted. “Ah, given how well you’ve done for yourself, John, my apprentice would like to sponsor you more formally – as in to invest to own a stake in your enterprise. There would be more funding available, and you would have our backing – the backing of Black Tower Castle itself – as well, which is why I’m making the offer instead of her.”
“Is that so?” John grinned. “Get a contract written up, and we’ll see.”
“We can do that. In fact, we should discuss it over a meal once you’ve towed the giant shark to our ship. We’ll be around for a day or two.”
As the hunters went back to their ship, Katie tugged on his sleeve. “Thank you, master.”
“Don’t thank me,” Timmy said. “You chose well. Being the youngest son has given him even more motivation to succeed. I think you’ll be making a handy profit for years to come. Besides, it’s wise to invest when you find a good opportunity. Remember, I have stakes in several trading companies.” None of them were directly related to necromancy, but all of them were profitable although not enough to pay for the castle and everything else on their own. However, he would certainly be able to live well if he ever decided to abandon the castle and quit being a necromancer. When he got his pardon, he could use the money to finish renovating the castle and to develop the land around it. He might even build some nice, little cottages by the lake, perhaps even put up an inn.
* * *
Katie giggled as Spot nudged the corpse of the giant shark with his snout. “No, Spot, you can’t eat it.”
The dragon trilled plaintively and gave Katie his cutest pout, which was unbelievably cute considering that Spot had grown to almost five and a half feet in length and had begun to take on the more menacing, stream-lined look that he would one day have as a full-grown dragon. Only a little.
“Spot, you can’t eat it, even if it’s only a little. We need the whole thing for what we’re planning to do.” Katie patted the dragon’s head comfortingly. She couldn’t blame him. He was growing quickly, which meant he was always hungry. He went through a cow and a half a day now, and they’d only managed to keep him fed thanks to Gerald’s magic and the occasional impromptu fishing trip. “If you want a shark, you could always go hunt one down.”
Spot turned to face her master. He’d learned that when he needed approval for doing something, it usually came from either Avraniel or Timmy. And since Avraniel was busy keeping watch – her remarkable vision made her ideally suited for the task – it was up to Katie’s master to make the decision.
He was busy walking around the giant shark, inspecting it for any flaws or imperfections. They had managed to get it up onto the deck of one of the ships crewed by his zombies, but it hadn’t been easy due to the giant shark’s weight and bulk. “You can go hunting for a shark if you want, Spot. Just make sure not to lose sight of us. Avraniel will throw a fit and set us on fire if you get left behind.”
Spot gave a happy cry and launched himself into the air. They’d only left the island yesterday, so they didn’t have to worry about coming under attack from anyone but a daring band of pirates, which they could definitely handle. Spot would most likely try to find a shark from above before diving down to put his teeth and flame to work. Given how deadly he’d become, Katie wouldn’t be surprised if he came back with something twice as big as he was.
“What do you think, master?” she asked. She had a few ideas, but she wanted to know what was on his mind. Experience was invaluable when putting together more complicated zombies. “Can we get a zombie shark-hydra-griffin to work?”
“I’m not sure,” her master replied. “The hydra should fit onto the shark without any problems. We’ll have to be careful when attaching the heads, and we’ll have to transplant some additional organs too, but it should be fine. We’ve done harder things, and we’ll be working together. However, I don’t know if the griffin part will work. You do want this thing to fly, right?”
Katie nodded seriously. She had thought long and hard about what kind of zombie she wanted, and a giant shark that could fly and had some hydra heads to spew acid was definitely the zombie that she wanted. “I thought griffin wings could work since you have that zombie hydra-griffin. Griffins have strong wings, and I thought we could add some griffin legs too, so it could walk on land.”
“Griffins do have strong wings, but they don’t get as large as this shark. My zombie hydra-griffin can only fly for short periods of time because of how big it is, but I’m sure you want a zombie that can spend a lot of time in the air. For something as big as this shark, you’d need multiple sets of griffin wings. I can tell you, from past experience, that adding multiple sets of griffin wings never goes well.”
“Really?”
“Really. I’m not entirely sure why, but whenever I add multiple sets of griffin wings to a zombie, they never last long. I suppose it’s something about the innately holy nature of griffins that makes them rot faster when used in zombies, especially composite zombies, and adding more griffin parts just makes it worse. It would be different if we could balance the holy nature out with
something unholy, but I didn’t have anything like that laying around when I asked Gerald to store some parts for this trip.” He frowned. “I could also be overthinking this. It could be that they don’t handle the joining process well. Magic doesn’t flow through a griffin’s body the same way as it does in a shark or a hydra, and the difference is quite large. It’s why my zombie hydra-dragon-bear took so long to make. I was working on it part time, and the dragon parts did weird things because of how magical dragons are.”
“What about drake wings?” Katie asked. She didn’t mind if she couldn’t have griffin wings. She just wanted her zombie to fly. “Gerald has some of those stored away, right? Drakes also get much larger than griffins, and we’ve made zombies with multiple sets of drake wings before without having any problems.” She bit her lip as she paced around the giant shark. “We’d need more than two legs though. We’d need a solid six or eight – no, I think we’d definitely need eight to support the weight of the giant shark and the hydra heads.”
Her master waved one hand. “It’s nothing we can’t handle. I mean we’ll have to do some creative anatomical rearrangement, but we’re necromancers. This is right up our alley.”
Katie hummed in agreement. Like most necromancers, her knowledge of anatomy was impressive. It simply wasn’t possible to build a good composite zombie without knowing how to properly attach all of the organs and various other bits and pieces correctly. “So… we’re going to make a zombie shark-hydra-drake with, say, six drake wings and eight drake legs?”
“That sounds about right,” her master said. “You could – maybe – get away with only four drake wings if they were big enough, but having six is a good insurance policy.” He prodded the giant shark’s side. The flesh was still in almost perfect condition because of the magic that had been used to preserve it. John and his crew had done good work. “Do you remember those golems we got a while back?”
“Do you mean the ones we salvaged from the mission with the giant golem that tore its way out of a mountain and fought our zombie titan?” Katie had loved the zombie titan, even if it hadn’t been around for long. She couldn’t wait to make another one. Unfortunately, suitably large corpses were hard to find, especially frost giant corpses.
Two Necromancers, a Dragon, and a Vampire (The Unconventional Heroes Series Book 3) Page 36
