“Just because we don’t need it doesn’t mean we couldn’t find a use for it,” said our spokesman. “We could donate it to charity. Arrange trust funds for our surviving loved ones. Take up antique collecting. Go to the opera.”
“They wouldn’t let you in at the opera—”
“Well, that was just an example, wasn’t it? We could go to a pantomime or some low-budget musical production or something. The point is, you can’t expect to hire an army without incentive; if everyone could do, that the whole economy would collapse.”
People were starting to drift off again, as they do when words like “economy” enter the conversation, so Dreadgrave was spurred to interrupt. “Okay, listen, listen. What would you say to . . . a profit sharing scheme?”
The drifting stopped. The crowd cocked a collective ear.
“Join my horde, and every time we fall upon a town or village, you get to keep everything you loot, minus a small percentage—no! Wait! Come back! No deductions, no deductions! Maybe a small deduc—okay, none at all! All yours! And free room and board at my doom fortress.”
There was a lot of conferring going on among the shambling dead. I waited to see their decision; I’d been in enough angry mobs in my time to know that the smart money was always with the majority.
“And every month, I’ll take you all to see a low-budget musical production.”
A lot of heads were nodding approvingly now. The spokesman counted a show of hands, then relayed the result. “Done.”
“Then march, my undead horde!” screamed Dreadgrave, holding his arms aloft and getting back into the swing of things. “We ride to my fortress of darkness!”
TWO
Dreadgrave’s request that we march to his doom fortress could only be obeyed creatively at best, since every zombie had to master his own interpretation of walking. We were learning fast, though; I and the other guys fortunate enough to have both legs had almost totally shaken off rigor mortis by the end of the first night, and even the guys with no limbs at all had worked up a decent pace using only their teeth or their buttocks. In the spirit of marching, Dreadgrave’s horde lurched, goose-stepped, crawled, shuffled, and chewed its way through Goodsoil County.
That was what the guy earlier had called the place, and what was written on the older road signs, but the countryside had seen a lot of changes while we’d all been out of touch. The newer signs seemed to believe they were in a place called “Greydoom Valley,” which seemed a lot more appropriate. The day was overcast and grim, while the night was just plain cold and dark. It was like a black cloud had descended to ground level and refused to move on, squatting in place like a big fat toad.
The peasants we passed on our way to the doom fortress didn’t seem to think there was anything good about the soil, either. They came out of their tiny hovels to line the roads and gaze at us from under their heavy brows with slack-jawed wonder. They had the skinny builds and pale skin that come from a diet with too much reliance on potatoes and cabbages. All in all, standard local color with low to middling potential for pitchfork-and-flaming-torch-wielding mob-forming.
I did have a pleasant conversation with one of the shrewder ones, who was going down the ranks trying to sell sticky buns. It was from him that I learned that my homeland of Borrigarde had been invaded and conquered by the neighboring kingdom of Pillock forty years ago. I wasn’t that bothered: I had never been patriotic. Whenever the King’s carriage had rattled through my home village during his monthly “parades” through the land, I had usually joined the other kids to run behind him throwing old peaches.
But it did mean that I could estimate how long I had been dead. At the time of my sudden and tragic death I was fairly certain that the fragile peace between Borrigarde and Pillock was about due for another collapse. There was a lot of very old, very stagnant bad blood between the royal families. Apparently, in their youth, the two kings had been roommates at Rolledgoat University and there were several outstanding issues regarding eating each others’ food and bringing girls around late at night. Anyway, at the time I had died, I had given it ten years at most before another big war. Therefore I must have been dead for roughly fifty years before Dreadgrave came along and proved my eternal slumber to be nothing of the sort.
After four days’ march we came to the top of one last hill, and Dreadgrave’s distinctive voice echoed throughout the plains. “Behold!” he yelled. We laboriously climbed the rise and beheld.
We were looking down into a wide valley, and while I had thought the rest of the surrounding country was gloomy, this place made it seem like Happy Smiling Bunny Rabbit Junction. Except for the oily foliage around a small decorative swamp the color of ancient lettuce, there wasn’t a scrap of vegetation. The very earth of the valley slopes was gray and cracked, all life drained. A snaking river of unhealthy greenish-brown water bisected the landscape, and a gigantic black cloud hung in the sky, spiralling and swirling madly above the only man-made building in the valley, which squatted over the river like an incontinent titan.
Dreadgrave’s doom fortress looked exactly like doom fortresses are supposed to look: a big gnashing skull from the front, and a great sprawling insect from above. Veins of obsidian ran across shiny black marble. Black pipes and black chimneys placed randomly around the black roof and walls emitted occasional bursts of decorative black flame. The tallest tower (black), which I took an immediate interest in, was a magnificent hundred-foot affair studded with black stone gargoyles of the kind of terrifying hideousness that has to be specially imported from countries with higher suicide rates.
“Ooooooh,” went the undead horde.
“Pretty snazzy,” I said aloud to no-one in particular, as we began to march very carefully down the twisting path into the valley’s heart.
“It is an abomination,” said the person walking alongside me. “It is an affront before the house of the Lord.”
I glanced at him and recognized the all-too-familiar collar. I sighed. “No-one’s forcing you to tag along, you know.”
“Be silent, venomous spittle of the Doom Serpent!” he barked, dodging the issue. “You are a servant of evil. An affront to God’s will, a corpse reanimated of devilry that man should not wot of.”
“Wot?”
“Indeed.”
“Hey. You’re just as much affront to God’s will as I am. We’ve all got the same kind of black magic up our arses.”
“You are wrong. I was returned to life by the blessing of the LORD, for He would have me continue my good work of spreading His name.” He stared down at me with both nostrils. “You are a demon taking human form, a silver-tongued tempter to draw the righteous from the LORD.”
“Look, I’ve got nothing against the LORD,” I protested. “I just didn’t see him rushing to intervene when that jerk up ahead started bringing us back to life.”
“You were not worthy of His gift!” he barked, a hint of mania dropping into his voice. He grabbed my face in one hand and almost knocked me off my feet. “Out, demon! Leave be the body of this poor wretched soul!”
I shook him off. He was obviously taking an extended holiday from reality, an option that I had to admit I was finding more and more tempting.
We had reached the outer wall of the fortress, and the portcullis that filled the entrance slid upwards like retractable fangs into the gigantic skull-shaped archway. The horde shuffled into the main courtyard, where two little desks were set up. Behind each was one of Dreadgrave’s armored human minions, glumly sitting beside stacks of enrollment forms. A third minion, an undead girl who couldn’t have been older than 20 when she had died, stood in the middle, earnestly hugging a clipboard to her chest. Dreadgrave nodded to her briefly, then disappeared into the shadows.
“Okay!” exclaimed the girl, her voice loud and high-pitched enough to make the maggots in my eardrums wriggle crankily. “Welcome to Greydoom Valley, and your wonderful new career as one of Lord Dreadgrave’s undead minions! My name is Meryl, and I am the company settl
ement officer, so if you ever have any problems or if you just want to chat, my door is always open!” Quite a lot of the assembled dead were exchanging confused glances. “Now then, most of you will be working as security or maintenance personnel, but we do have some openings in middle and upper management, which we will assign once we’ve gotten all your names down and worked out your individual qualifications. But don’t worry, there’s a place at Greydoom Valley for even the least qualified, least physically intact zombie!”
A nearby torso gurgled appreciatively from its neck stump.
“We’ve got quite a lot of people to process,” she continued, “so if you could form two orderly queues in front of the desks, we’ll have magic users on the left—that’s all you mages, priests, conjurers, anyone in the magic industry, on the left—and everyone else on the right. If you’re not sure where you fit, just go on the right, there.”
The horde began dividing into two grumbling columns. I couldn’t help noticing that the priest had joined the queue directly in front of me. I tapped him on the shoulder.
“Feel free to leave at any time,” I whispered. “This being a den of Satan’s progeny and everything.”
“I will not leave.”
“And why’s that?”
“I see now that this is the holy mission with which the LORD has blessed me,” he said, through his teeth. “I am to destroy this den of evil from within.”
“Well, at least give us time to settle down,” I said gloomily, losing interest in the conversation. He glared at me for an instant, his lips stretching as far away from his teeth as he could manage. Then he fixed his gaze upon a point somewhere inside his own head and started speaking in dry croaky tongues.
Further interaction was impossible so I took the opportunity to steal his place in line, and soon enough it was my turn to be interviewed. I stepped forward.
“Name?” said the hairy man behind the desk, who was wearing a very authoritative spiked helmet.
“Jim . . . ” I began, but then my rotten memory banks failed. “Jim something.”
“James Smith,” wrote the officer aloud. “Occupation in life?”
“Magic student.”
“Ah. College boy. Were you thinking of a job as a mercenary, or just some support role?”
“Support, I suppose.”
He nodded. “Good. Seems like everyone else in that cemetery was a mercenary, we’re up to our eyeballs in the buggers. Must’ve been a lot of wars around there, I guess. What we really need is a cook. All the human guards’ve been eating tinned beans for months. You know anything about cooking?”
“I used to tend bar part time,” I tried. He crossed something out on my form and I felt a little disheartened.
“Any idea how advanced a magic student?”
“Not very. Firebolts, that’s about it.”
“Well, there’s nothing quite like on-the-job experience for a young corpse’s education. You’re on the security team. That basically means you hang around the fortress and kill adventurers.”
“Just adventurers?”
He didn’t look up as he wrote. “Anything that doesn’t work here, but it’s mostly adventurers, yeah.”
I glanced around at the crowded courtyard. “Do you really need this many zombies just for adventurers?”
This time, he did look up. His helmet made it hard to tell but I think he was giving me a very funny look. “Call it erring on the side of caution,” he said, with loud sarcasm. “Anyway, it’s easy work, I’m sure you’ll pick it up quickly. Now, I just have to ask a few personal questions for our equal opportunity policy. Country of origin?”
“Borrigarde,” I said.
“New Pillock,” he wrote.
“Ooh, you’re Borrigardian too?” said Meryl the company settlement officer, who was floating around in an uncertain supervisey sort of way. “I’m Borrigardian! Did you die in the Pillock Wars?”
“Er, no. Before then. I think. College rivalry thing.”
She was suddenly very interested. “A pre-integration Borrigardian? Both your parents, too?”
“Yeah, tenth generation,” I said guardedly, wondering what she was getting at. “My family didn’t get around much.”
Her eyes were shining. Or rather, while they were still glowing with the sickly yellow light of necromantic magic like everyone else’s, she was now gazing at me like a starving man gazes at a grilled cheese sandwich. She laid a hand on the officer’s shoulder and glanced at my application. “Security? Great. Put him on my detail. I really look forward to working with you, mister . . . Smith.” She scampered off about her business, leaving me and the officer, baffled.
“What was that all about?” he asked, like I would know.
“Cough,” went the incredibly long queue behind me.
“Oh, right, let’s keep this moving.” He pointed to a nearby archway leading into the fortress. “You’re in the main tower, that’s the third turning on the right. Keep heading upstairs until you find a free bunk. Welcome aboard, look forward to working with you, etcetera. Next!”
THREE
In the tower, the atmosphere was convivial. As I ascended the perimeter staircase I paused on each floor to take in the sights. Undead minions sat around on the straw mattresses and sackcloth sheets they would never actually sleep on, chatting, laughing, joking, all prejudices in life forgotten. Idly I kept an eye out for any of my crypt-mates, but one case of decomposition looks pretty much like another after a while.
I paused at the staircase to watch some corpses dance country-style to the earnest fiddling of a minion in the corner. Seeing their wide smiles—rather unsettlingly wide, in the case of the faceless ones—I very nearly considered staying. But no, I thought, shaking my head. This was not the life for me. Death for me. Unlife—whatever it was, it wasn’t for me. I continued up.
It really was a very tall tower, and the sun had set by the time I reached the very top, and I emerged from the stairwell to the biting cold breeze of a Greydoom evening. I reflected that neither the sensation of cold nor the enormous climb had caused any degree of discomfort in my new, undead form, and my magic-powered glowy-eye vision let me see to the very edge of the horizon. None of it was any comfort.
Somewhere along the last fifty years I’d acquired a new perspective. Maybe it had been my horrific death, or vision of the afterlife, or seeing all the countries of the world unfolding below me, but having witnessed it from the outside, I realized just how futile my life had been. And now I had been living a second one for about four days in a far less functional body and didn’t feel there had been any improvement in the key problem areas. So I decided I was done with it. My life had failed its field test. I would leave it for some other sucker.
I stepped onto the parapet and glanced sadly down the full height of the tower. Far below me the last few minions were still queueing politely in the main courtyard, like tiny, mutilated, foul-smelling ants. I snorted. It was easy to feel superior, looking down from this height. Perhaps this was why necromancers were always trying to take over the world.
There was a full moon, and even the drab landscape of Greydoom Valley seemed beautiful as it rolled away into the horizon. The very beginnings of dawn were bringing a spectacular tint to the sky. I drank it all in for a few seconds, then jumped off before I could change my mind.
The second time I died started off pretty similar to the first. My body hit a gargoyle on the way down with a sickening crunch, then cartwheeled to a bone-splattering finale on the solid stone far below. My grateful soul was immediately ejected like a blast of air from a bellows.
But from that moment, I could tell that something was wrong. There was no glorious light, and no sensation of being lifted through the air. I was still on the ground, standing over my shattered corpse in a world without sound or color. In the living world, minions as intangible as smoke were rushing over to inspect the damage, and still the universe was making no attempt to elevate me to a better place. I tried jumping up and down
a few times, but I remained distressingly fettered to the earth.
The thought occurred to me, with a lurch of my astral tummy, that the priest might have been right. Maybe, having been raised by black magic, I was now a tainted thing in the eyes of the glorious golden presence that had welcomed me before. Maybe I was excluded from heaven, condemned to walk the earth as a lost soul, wailing and shaking chains and knocking things off shelves to scare the willies out of nervous losers whom no-one would ever seriously believe.
“Oh well,” I said aloud, my voice sounding distorted and muffled as if I were talking underwater. “I’ll take that.”
I suddenly became aware that there were figures standing around me. They must have been part of the ethereal landscape, because the zombies in the living world were bumbling right through them undaunted. They were angels, but they bore very little similarity to the golden ones that had escorted me during my first brief visit to the hereafter. These were white, wearing flowing white robes that glowed with amazing brilliance, and their wings were little more than brief triangles poking poutily from their backs. Like the angels I had met before, they had no faces, but I felt none of the waves of love and acceptance that the golden ones had radiated. Eight of the white angels were standing around me in a tight circle, staring down like they were waiting for me to do something. High above, I could see endless legions of the same beings, flying across the gray sky at impossibly high speeds, each apparently fixated on some vital personal errand.
“Hello,” I said, suddenly very intimidated.
I could hear a strange sound just on the edge of earshot, like a constant high-pitched gibbering in some incomprehensible tongue. At first I thought it was coming from the angels, but then I realized it was somehow entering my mind without needing anything as mundane as ears. The angels didn’t move, but they still seemed to be closing in on me, still glaring eyelessly and ceaselessly. I was rooted to the spot, terrified.
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