The undead man reached out, took the parchment, and went back to the table. Already a clean piece of paper awaited him. Seeing it, he let the first fall to the floor. He leaned over, wrote a few words, and gave the new page to Sholt.
The Warlord is calling us. He wants us to go that way. Please make me die.
Sholt looked up and saw where the man was pointing.
“That’s east,” Spyra observed. Oraphel and Southport were the only two places immediately east, he thought. Beyond that there were only the marsh lands, but beyond the marshes was Dakahn.
The undead man pulled his finger across where his throat had once been and glared with empty sockets at the master wizard. It was the unmistakable sign of a man slicing his neck. In this case, it was an undead thing begging for true death.
Sholt nodded his understanding. “You must leave us now, general,” he said. “Outside the building, preferably.”
Spyra left and went across the road to the Axe Master’s Lodge. Hopefully, as a lord of the realm, he could get a drink in the private establishment. He needed one.
Sholt emptied a pouch of silvery dust on the floor and then poured a flask of virgin water onto it. He chanted the words to a spell, and a bright, crackling lavender flame flared from the pile. Smoke divided into two equal wavering streams and made its way through the bars. For a long while nothing else happened, then suddenly the fire faded and both of the bodies collapsed. Sholt cast another spell and was relieved to learn that Pael’s taint lingered here no longer.
His spell-weary mind was racing with the implications of what the undead had written, but he tried not to think of them. He left the constable’s office and went straight across the way to join Spyra. If they wouldn’t serve him, he decided that he would cast a charm spell on them all. They didn’t so much as question Lord Spyra or Sholt. They seemed to know what the men were about. In fact, the barman sat a full flagon of his most potent brandy wine in front of each of them and then went about his business.
After shaking off his initial shock, Commander Lyle charged his destrier at the nearest robed skeletons. It was dark but a pair of torches had been kept aflame on the wagon, so there was some visibility, but not much.
His horse reared up and lashed out with its powerful hooves. The skeleton had apparently expected a different sort of attack, like a sword swing or a passing stab. It was caught off guard when the destrier didn’t charge past him. The first hoof went into its ribcage, and when the horse came down it crushed the whole skeleton to the ground. The other hoof struck the skull and shattered it with a splintering pop.
Sergeant Tolbar called out a couple of orders after seeing his commander engage the unnerving enemy. Soon, the sound of steel on steel, and steel on bone, rang out. Some of the skeletons had loose-fitting shirts of mail under their cloaks; others had old leather pieces, unmatched and ill-fitting, strapped to their tissueless frames. Most of them had short swords that they seemed to wield effectively, but a few of them had deadly crossbows.
It appeared that maybe twenty of the skeletons were ringed around the group, but with only two torches and a ground full of long, dancing shadows, it was hard to tell.
Petar, following the sergeant's order, spurred his horse and formed up with a few other men around the wagon cage. The two kingdom men on the bench fired their crossbows, reloaded, and fired again as quickly as they could. They didn’t know that they were doing absolutely no damage to the undead. The bolts went right through, or rattled away, deflected by the bony forms of their targets.
A man screamed as an enemy crossbow bolt caught him in the neck. Hot blood sprayed from the wound in pulses.
Suddenly, the light from another torch flared. The man who ignited it threw it up and out from the wagon in a flickering arc that lit up the whole area as it passed through.
Commander Lyle saw that there were only a dozen or so of the skeleton warriors close at hand. A larger number of robed figures appeared to be further out from the group, but he couldn’t trust his eyes. He fought stroke for stroke with one of the things. Finally, the skeleton jabbed its sword into Lyle’s horse, running its bloody blade right up to the hilt. As Lyle tried to dismount without getting crushed, he saw the same skeleton pick up another sword, and thrust it into Sergeant Tolbar’s back. It left the blade inside the man and then ran away into the darkness.
Sergeant Tolbar screamed out in pain and valiantly fought the thing before him. He didn’t last long, though. A moment later he slumped out of the saddle and was hacked to death before he hit the ground.
Out of nowhere, a deep, rumbling roar erupted just as the sound of galloping hoof beats came from behind them. Commander Lyle darted his eyes around, searching for the source of the sound. To his shock, he found it when a dark four-legged thing as big as a horse darted into the light and leapt on a pair of his men. Its wicked maw found one man and its bulky weight carried the other and both horses to the ground in a writhing heap. The man who wasn’t in the creature’s mouth began screaming in pain and fear. Lyle could see that one of his legs was bent at a grotesque angle and partly pinned under a motionless horse.
The thing, whatever it was, and the other man, were already gone.
Lyle took a bolt to the side then. Having caught in his chain mail, the arrow only grazed him. He stumbled out of the way just as a handful of riders passed through the torch light, howling and screaming, and hammering their shields like wild men.
Another torch went spinning through the air, revealing a handful of city guardsmen from Weir. Their horses were terrified as the riders went waving their swords around among the undead.
At the edge of the light, both Petar and Commander Lyle saw the retreating group of skeletal men and the large, hairy back of the creature that was dragging their man’s torso away with it.
“Run me through,” Sergeant Tolbar yelled through clenched teeth from the ground. His body was a ruin lying in the middle of the torchlit scene. How he was still alive was beyond reasoning. “Kill me, man. Come on, do it,” he begged the stupefied man looking down at him.
Petar climbed from his horse and ran to the sergeant. A glance told him that the wounds were fatal. He didn’t hesitate when he pushed his blade tip through Tolbar’s throat, but he did mumble a prayer.
“Well met, Lieutenant,” Commander Lyle said gruffly to the only man he recognized.
“I couldn’t stay around Weir after what happened,” the wiry man said, pulling on his long mustache. His expression was tense and confused as he glanced around the bloody body-strewn road. “But by the gods, Commander, it looks like I might have done better there than out here with you.”
One of the men sitting on the wagon fell forward into the horses. The horses mistook it for the command to go and started ahead. They stopped after only a few feet when the wagon wheel wouldn’t roll over a man’s arrow- ridden corpse.
“I think they were after their friends,” Commander Lyle said with a sigh of frustration. “They’re gone.”
The lieutenant rode around to the far side of the wagon and looked around. “Maybe,” he said as he gracefully leapt from his horse and bent down to retrieve something from the ground. “They killed the fisherman.” He stood back up holding the leather satchel that had been strapped around the fisherman's shoulder.
The lieutenant reached inside it and pulled out a golden crown encrusted with enough jewels to buy a castle.
“Maybe that really was Glendar’s skeleton, Commander,” the lieutenant said, seeing the Westland lion head etched into the circlet’s front-plate.
He led his horse back around to the other side of the wagon cage and passed it up to the commander.
“It has to be authentic,” Lyle said, more to himself than to anybody. The magnificent craftsmanship and the large, glittering emeralds in the piece were definitely fit for a king.
“Eight men dead, Commander,” Petar reported. It didn’t appear that the skeletons were coming back. “There are two wounded, but not grievously.”
“Thank you, Petar,” Lyle said. “See to them.” He put the crown in the saddlebag of a riderless horse and studied the scene.
“I think our orders dictate that we chase them down,” Lyle reasoned aloud. “Set up a perimeter watch and make a bonfire. In the morning we’ll bury the dead.” He turned to the former lieutenant and the men he’d brought with him. “Will you be joining us?”
“I do believe it best. We’ve lost our old employment,” the lieutenant said. “My name is Mordon Garret, and