by Rex Jameson
A handful of bandits must have left the main army to pillage and loot Dona. Their greed and gluttony had been their downfall, and the undead of Perketh and the southern lands had visited great retribution upon them. It gave Ashton some comfort to think that a portion of the screams he had heard earlier, the ones that prevented him from imagining himself elsewhere, might have belonged to a dying Red Army man rather than some poor farmer or carpenter in training in Dona.
He crouched over another such bloody patch where a common man lay dead but undisturbed not even ten paces away. This stain had been a Red Army bandit. He looked around at the silent army that marched onward to Mallory Keep, but they averted their eyes from him. Even Clayton, always nearby, seemed embarrassed by the aftermath of their feeding frenzy. Ashton wondered if the undead thought he judged them for eating the bandit, but he did not. He only wanted the deaths to mean something—that this undead retribution would burn a hole in the history of the southern lands that prevented another Red Army from ever happening again.
A woman in a light blue and white dress in the crowd of undead met his gaze, and he smiled at her. Her hair was black and the irises of her glossy eyes matched her dress. She reminded him of Clayton’s wife. She smiled back but quickly covered her mouth and ran her fingers through her hair to try to make herself more presentable. It was unnecessary though. Wherever her wounds were, they were not to her face.
In all the time he had led these people from Perketh, he had not tried talking to them. Every time Clayton tried to talk, the wounds to his jaw made his speech garbled. Ashton knew that such failed attempts at simple acts embarrassed his friend, so he only asked rhetorical questions or ones that could be answered with a simple yes or no. Still, days of marching amongst the silent, angry undead made for lonely company. He wondered if she, with her seemingly unblemished face and vocal chords, might talk with him for a while and relieve him of some melancholy.
“What are you doing?” he asked her, pointing to the unnecessary maintenance she had been doing to her hair and face.
“I’m…” the woman said, “sure I look ghastly. I… didn’t mean to stare.”
“It’s a welcome change,” he replied. “Many of the people…” He motioned to the throng of undead around her. “They won’t look at me here, as I stand near…” He pointed at the blood patch and remnants of tendons and entrails of a bandit.
She nodded solemnly and moved forward, holding her stomach where a wound still leaked blood. “We are changed… but still the same. Our hunger is powerful… hard to stop.”
“You can’t help yourself,” he agreed. He put his hand on Clayton’s leg and looked up at him reassuringly and approvingly. “You must eat, just as I do.”
He looked back at the recently deceased middle-aged man who lay next to the remains of the bandit. “Yet, you do resist the urge.”
“The urge is strong,” she said, “but the need for vengeance is stronger. This man may help you. He may help us. No one wanted the bandit to return. He was an evil man.”
“So,” he said. “You ate the bandit to prevent him from being resurrected?”
“No, no!” she cried. “I haven’t eaten anyone. I… You only raised me a couple days ago. This was done by the older ones. I simply watch. I wait…”
“You wait for what?”
She looked toward the southeast, the direction that the bandit army had moved toward. “I will only eat one man—the one who violated me and my family. The one who stabbed me in the stomach and pulled the knife upward.”
She closed her eyes and covered her wounds.
“Do not be embarrassed of your wounds,” he said. He stood up and spoke louder for all who followed near him. “Your wounds are not marks of shame. They are reminders of what we still must do. I thank you for not consuming the innocent. I know now that you have shown amazing restraint. Now, show courage. Do not be afraid that the living might abhor, fear or loathe you.”
The undead looked at him and gathered around. He walked to a nearby porch, likely the home of the man who had been murdered on the street. Once Ashton was behind the shoddy banister, he addressed the crowd once more.
“Instead, be proud that you have come back. Be strong and support each other. Hold your heads up high and walk together with purpose.”
He nodded as the crowd nodded, but inwardly, he was worried. He had no idea where he was going or even what he was doing. He only knew that he must keep going forward.
“I have no great strategies,” he admitted to them. “I know nothing of battles or cavalries or archery. It’s true that I have made armor and arrows, but I had more to do with the makings of cups and silverware. And yet, here I am with you, and we’ve come this far.”
Something like a cheer came back at him from the undead. It was tempered somewhat by injuries, and there were more wheezes and coughs than intelligible words, but there was enthusiasm in their cries. Their eyes were furious and rapturous.
“Some of you have called me Master,” he said. “I do not see myself as such. I know not the rules or laws that bind you to me. I don’t know how long you are here. All I know is that as long as you are here, I will be beside you. We will find this Red Army.”
Another cheer.
“We will chase them out of our towns and into the forests!” he promised.
A louder cheer as more undead pushed into the crowd around the porch.
“And as they stumble, you will be upon them,” he said. “This hunger you feel is no doubt the divine retribution that the gods of our world have demanded. For it is not me who resurrected you. I cannot believe that. I am no scholar of magic or the occult. I have no wisdom to teach others and multiply this strange craft. All I know is that I have stood over you, and I have asked you to come back. It was you, not I, who clawed your way back into the world of the living! I am but a man who walks alongside you, not a Master!”
He found the undead raven-haired woman in the blue dress. He smiled at her, remembering her answers to his questions. She grinned back. Her demeanor seemed to have changed though. She listened intently and no longer favored her wound.
“I have asked you to take vengeance on the men of the Red Army,” he continued. “I have asked you to avenge yourselves on those who have wronged and killed you and taken your families. Look not to me for your redemption. I am not the instrument of your retribution. You are! Only you can stop this army, and every step we fall behind, they take more children from their mothers. More husbands from their wives.
“Do not linger here in Dona with me. My work here is slow, and I feel that keeping you here is only causing you more pain and keeping you away from your final, deserved rest. I am of no more use to you there than I am here. I seek only to ask more here to join you—to accompany you to wherever this chase may end. Do not look to me for orders. You know in your heart what you must do. Bring your anger to them, wherever they have gone.”
Despite his words, the crowd continued to look to him for guidance. He grew frustrated. He put his hands on the banister and begged them to listen.
“The Red Army is to the southeast,” he shouted, “and yet you are here with me, walking amongst the undead, the destitute and the lost. Do not linger here. Go! Find the Red Army. Go now, and do not stop until every last one of them is dead.”
After a few moments of confused looks, the crowd dispersed and poured around the house. He watched them jostle against each other like a tightly-packed flock of birds. Dozens and then hundreds stomped along the dirt and the cobblestones until the boards rattled against the rickety house.
He turned around and found the woman in the blue dress still standing there. She was the only undead person not moved to stampede with the mob. She smiled at him queerly.
“I take it my words had no effect on you,” he said as he approached the man he had been standing over.
“I wouldn’t say that,” she said. “Just different. To them, you are a master. To me, you are a curiosity.”
He pro
cessed her words and looked at her as he approached another dead man.
“What do you find curious about me?” he asked.
“You remind me of someone,” she said.
“Who’s that?”
“A great general of the durun,” she said. “He loved his people very much. He died serving them. Ultimately, he failed the durun, but he tried.”
Perhaps, Ashton was wrong. He wasn’t sure he wanted to continue conversing with the undead. Perhaps it was better to have more with mouth injuries like his friend Clayton. Ashton smiled politely, and stooped over the man he had noticed a moment ago. His spirit was strong, hovering there above the body and beside the remains of the bandit.
A door creaked behind him, just past the porch he had made his speech from.
“Are you the Necromancer?” a young girl asked.
“No one has called me such to my face,” he said, “but if there was a man more qualified to answer to the title, then I don’t know him.”
The young girl, no more than five years old, opened the door and slipped through. She shyly and clumsily made her way down the stairs, and fidgeted at the remains of her filthy shirt and long, dirty dress. She had blonde hair, similar to his own, and he felt immediately sorry for her.
“Are you going to raise Daddy?”
“Would that be ok?” he asked.
She nodded vigorously. “He… he…” She struggled to form a coherent sentence, as most five year olds often do. “I need him here! He’s supposed to… He needs to take me to school and go to the market and…”
“The market’s on fire,” Ashton said, profoundly aware that this young girl had not grasped the magnitude of the destruction of Dona and that life as she had known it was over. “Your school is probably gone too. Your teacher at the school, if she is still alive, may not come back.”
“But I liked…” the girl said. “I loved her stories… the old gods… the wood elves! Those were my favorite!”
“Those were your favorite?” he asked, trying to force a smile, despite the death and destruction around him. Not even a hundred yards away, one of her neighbor’s homes was still smoldering. Charred bodies were visible in the yard.
“The elves spend all their time hanging from trees,” she said, excited but distracted with her fidgeting at what cloth still clung to her body. “If we had a tree, I’d hang from it. Daddy planted one in the back for my last birthday, but it’s too small to hang from.”
“It’ll grow,” Ashton said.
“But Daddy said he would make me a swing. I tried to wake him… but… he won’t get up. Maybe you can wake him?”
Ashton looked over the man and then back up at the woman in the blue dress. She raised her eyebrows at him to indicate that she was merely here to observe.
“I am the Necromancer,” he said, “and I can feel your father here with us. I believe I can give him back to you.”
The girl stomped her feet and jumped up and down at the foot of the stairs to her home.
“Don’t get too excited,” he warned. “You’ve seen the ones around me. All of the men and women who followed me here from Perketh…”
The girl nodded.
“Your father would be like these people.”
The girl cast her eyes downward and held her hands at her stomach. “Would he eat me?”
“Would he eat you?” Ashton asked, confused and appalled.
“I watched them from the window,” the girl said, “when they ate that bad man. They were like wild dogs. Daddy told me to stay away from wild dogs because they eat people. I can only go after them if I have a big stick, and only if there’s one of them, never two. That’s what Daddy says. Says when they’re a pack, they get madder, and a stick won’t be enough to scare them off. If Daddy turns into a wild dog, I don’t think he’ll be scared of a stick, even if he’s not with the others.”
Ashton looked at her with horror, at the rationalization of her own father becoming a wild thing if he came back. He had never really thought of the undead that way—there really hadn’t been enough time to consider what he had done in bringing people back as cannibals.
“I don’t know much,” Ashton said, “but I don’t think your dad would come back as a wild dog. When I brought my best friend Clayton back, he remembered me. He followed me and made sure no harm came to me. He has protected me, like your Daddy did to the dogs.”
“Then bring him back,” she demanded shyly. “With all the people and trash in the streets, the dogs will come back. He’s better at scaring them off. And he promised me a swing…”
Ashton’s eyes watered as he looked at her. He placed a hand on her father’s shoulder, but his gaze never left the young girl.
“What’s your name?” he asked her.
“Margie,” she replied.
“Short for Margaret?”
She nodded.
“My mother’s name was Margaret,” he said. “And what’s your father’s name?”
“Albert.”
“That’s a good name,” he said.
“He’s a good Daddy.”
“Albert,” Ashton said, finally looking down at the man and speaking firmly. “Your daughter needs you. Return to her.”
Albert’s eyes opened, and he looked first at Ashton and then at Margie. Albert smiled and cried as he stumbled to his feet.
“Honey,” he said, grasping his side where a sword or dagger had ended his life. “Margie, are you ok?”
“I’m fine,” she said as she put her arm around him.
Albert put his arm around her and ascended the stairs back to his home. He turned around as he reached the door, and Ashton noticed the father had left a streak of blood on his daughter’s dirty shirt.
“Thank you,” Albert said simply.
“Make the most of whatever time you have,” Ashton said. “I don’t know how long this magic will last.”
Albert nodded before opening the unlocked door and pulling his daughter inside the house.
The woman in blue continued to smile queerly at him.
“So this general you were talking about?” he asked her.
“General Maddox,” the woman said.
“Who did he lead again?”
“The durun,” she said.
“Never heard of them,” Ashton said.
“They are what I am,” she said.
“And who are you?” he asked.
“I have many names,” she said. “Some terrible. Some quite flattering. But who I am is unimportant right now. Who are you?”
“I didn’t actually raise you, did I?” he asked, standing up and dusting his palms against each other.
“Not in the way you think, no. You know that all these people will die, right?”
“Ma’am,” Ashton said. “These people have already died.”
She chuckled. “What is your name?”
He could have answered her, but he felt a compulsion to defy her request. He did not know why, but he felt the conversation had taken on an importance—that he could not dismiss it flippantly. There had to be a reason that this undead woman was talking to him when no one else had. Besides, she claimed she was not undead. She was something else. Why had she approached him as someone he had resurrected?
“I asked yours first,” he said, “and you didn’t answer. Why should I?”
“It’s not a simple thing for me,” she said, her blue eyes appearing to grow darker in hue. Her features became more accentuated. Her bosom plumped. Her hips grew wider. She cocked her head. “I’m not from here. Neither are my people. Names do not mean the same thing where I come from, and the way you pronounce them is quite different. I’ve come a long way to find something. Now, I wonder if I’m here to find someone too.”
“Are you an elf?”
She laughed with a sweet richness. He found himself moving toward her.
Her dress grew darker. Then black. Whatever wounds had been there on her stomach disappeared. Her lips grew redder. She exuded a type of sexuali
ty that was dangerous and alluring.
“For a long time,” she said, “there were those among my kind, the durun, who called me Queen. Like so many young people, I let the titles get to my head. I thought I would rule the universe. That’s where General Maddox failed his people. I have put men against men and dark beings against dark beings since before this world even took shape out of the celestial mists. My titles are ancient. My names are infinite.”
“Are you a goddess?” he asked.
She smiled and placed a finger on his lips. “Careful,” she said. “I’m very susceptible to flattery, and I sense in you a large void in what I consider my specialty. Be very careful what you say to me, young mortal. I might make you my pet, and my pets never last. For now, I’m an admirer. Let’s leave it at that.”
“Then what should I call you?”
She groaned slightly. “What do you want?”
“I want what’s right by my people,” Ashton said. “I want to right the wrongs of this world.”
She laughed heartily. “Oh, you sweet, sweet thing. So pure. Can it be true? Here? So close to where the Vision of Maddox rests? How far do you hope to go? What would you do for your people?”
Her fingers walked up his arm, and her nails had grown long and impressive. Her once blue dress had split from the top, revealing overwhelming cleavage that was covered only thanks to the flimsiest of two clasps. He felt an urge to undo them. His eyes drifted to her now exposed belly button, and as he looked down, her dress seemed to retreat and grow tighter. Her clothing seemed almost pasted on now. The cloth grew darker and darker until it was black as night.
“There are men who worship me,” she said. “Men who cry out in the night for the power to smite those who cross the boundary to this world through the old cities, where the elves failed to keep the bad men at bay. And I have given them that power, at some small cost. What power do you seek so that I might shower you with it?”
“What should I call you?” he asked again as her hands and fingernails roamed around his shoulders.
“What do you crave?” she purred. “For my name depends on your desires.”
