Rami spooned second helpings of the stew, and we sat around the fire, eating in silence. The hairs on the back of my neck pricked up, and I realized the skeleton sentries I’d stationed around the camp had seen something. I closed my eyes and placed my spirit inside one of them.
Through my skeleton’s eyes, I waited to see what they’d noticed. A blur shot past me, and I heard a thud sound from behind me. I turned my head to see a crossbow bolt embedded in a tree trunk.
Crossbowmen.
I stared into the dark forest, looking for any sign of them. I noticed a few patches of black leather armor and filthy mops of hair.
I returned my spirit to my body at the campfire and smiled. “We’re about to have some visitors.”
“Should we save them some stew?” Rami asked.
My smile must have made her think we’d be entertaining esteemed guests.
I shook my head. “They’ve come here to die.”
Chapter Eight
“Get yourself ready for a fight,” I ordered Rami, Elyse, and Isu. “I want to try something else.”
Instead of putting my soul into a single skeleton, I portioned out pieces of me and placed them inside a dozen skeletons. It felt like I was being torn apart from the inside, but the sensation soon faded, and I was seeing through a dozen pairs of eyes at once. Well, not eyes. Sockets.
This new form of sight left me feeling more than a little seasick and disoriented. But the perks made the downsides fade to the back of my mind.
I now had a 360-degree view of the woods around us. Black-painted crossbow bolts were streaking out of the dark, visible only when they tore through beams of moonlight.
With the soldiers using the heavy foliage for cover, I couldn’t order my harpy—Talon, as I had named her—to attack them, nor were my mounted undead much use. For now, I could only use my foot skeletons or Crusaders. There was a slight chance that the crossbowmen would fire a successful shot at me or the women, so I called in my Crusaders, and they huddled around us, creating an impenetrable wall with their tower shields.
I remembered the old archivist in my father’s keep teaching me that snakes were able to hunt so effectively in the dark because they could, somehow, see or sense the body heat of living creatures. Well, I had a giant reptile here, and while he wasn’t a snake, he might be close enough.
I darted out a section of my mind into Fang’s head and melded my consciousness with his. It was strange because it was so different from that of the skeletons and Crusaders, who, since they had once been human, saw and felt the world just like I did. Getting into Fang’s head, though, and experiencing the world as he saw and felt it was damn overwhelming.
Shapes and objects that had been clear to my human eyes were blurry and indistinct. Fang’s field of vision was not simply one big blur of shades of gray. There were bits of bright, pulsing color all around. Sources of heat?
I turned his head and looked through his eyes at me and the three women, and this suspicion was confirmed. Through Fang’s eyes, we were one big blob of bright color, huddled behind the Crusaders’ shields. Interestingly, the Crusaders only showed up as blobs of gray.
There were small blobs of glowing color in the trees. Birds sleeping for the night, obviously, and other small blobs on the ground, likely rats, hedgehogs, or other small forest creatures.
However, in a few trees, maybe 50 yards away, were a couple of bright, human-sized spots of color. I had no doubt that these were the crossbowmen who were attacking us.
“All right, motherfuckers,” I said, “the game’s up. I’ve discovered your sorry asses.”
I sent my skeletons charging out to the trees with crossbowmen in them. The enemy bolts passed harmlessly through undead ribcages, and none of my warriors fell.
“You think you’re safe up in your trees, assholes?” I yelled. “Well, think again! Fang, shake those rotten apples out of the trees!”
Fang charged over to the closest tree with a crossbowman in it. The man frantically fired and reloaded, but his bolts glanced harmlessly off Fang’s armored scales. The huge undead lizard stood up on his hind legs against the trunk and grabbed it with his front legs, then started to shake the tree. The whole tree trembled violently, and with a scream, the crossbowman plummeted to the ground. He hit it with a sickening crunch and slumped over, his neck broken.
Fang raced to the next tree. This time, when he shook the crossbowman out, he caught the screaming man in his jaws, chewed him up for a while, then spit his broken body out onto the soil.
One more crossbowman remained, and Fang ran over to the tree he was in. Before he started to shake it, I held him back.
“You saw what just happened to your friends, asshole!” I yelled. “And unless you want to become my pet lizard’s second midnight snack, you’d better drop your weapon and climb down out of that fucking tree. I’ll give you five seconds.”
“Okay, okay!” the crossbowman screamed. “I’ll come down. Just keep that monster away from me.”
“Your crossbow. Throw it down first.”
The crossbow dropped out of the tree.
“You next, titfungus. Come down slowly and show me your hands.”
I walked over to the tree as the crossbowman climbed down. When he was a few feet from the ground, I grabbed him and ripped him out of the lowest branch. He wailed, and I slammed him onto the ground before I jammed my boot down on his throat, pinning him. My skeletons surrounded us in a circle while Fang looked on. I pulled the strands of my mind and soul out of all of them; they were fine to function on their own now.
“Well, well, well,” I said, “looks like I’ve caught a midnight creeper. It’s too
