We moved silently through the forest, careful not to alert the soldiers of our presence. Once we came within a few hundred yards of their camp, I called a halt to our advance and dismounted. I was going to scout ahead alone to check out the layout of their camp and figure out the best angle to attack from. I didn’t want to use my skeletons because they were too clumsy, and Talon would need to fly too close to see them from a horizontal angle.
I moved with speed and stealth through the trees. Soon, I reached the edge of the camp, which was set in a large clearing, ringed by tall fir trees. The clearing would be perfect for our charge, as the ground was smooth and relatively unbroken.
Although there were about 40 tents, there had to be over 60 soldiers. They far outnumbered us, but we had the greater skill and the element of surprise. The soldiers were preparing their lunch, oblivious to any threats that might be lurking in the shadows.
My eyes were drawn to a giant of a man secured to a tree by a number of iron chains. He was a northern barbarian, that much was clear, and he was fucking massive. He was as big as an ogre, and as ugly as one, too. He was perhaps a few years short of 30 but had gone prematurely bald. His straw-colored hair, matted and greasy, was long on the back and sides. Somebody should have told this guy that a skullet was never a stylish cut.
A huge scar ran across the entirety of his swollen face while fresh wounds oozed blood. It was obvious that Rollar’s boys had been laying into him liberally with their boots and fists.
The barbarian was shirtless despite the chill in the air—I guessed that for him, coming from the frigid Wastes, this weather was downright balmy—and his entire upper body was covered in a mixture of thick blue tribal tattoos and battle scars. Around his waist, he wore a grubby blue and purple kilt, his legs beneath covered in black leather leggings. He wore boots of brown bear fur, as most of his countrymen did. Notably absent, though, was his battle-axe.
I had no idea what a northern barbarian was doing this far from the Wastes. We were pretty far north to be sure, but the Wastes were still many miles from here.
I would figure out the mystery of who this barbarian was and why he was here later. Right now, I had asses to kick. I made a few quick mental notes of the soldiers’ positions before I crept back through the woods to my own troops.
“Okay,” I said as I mounted Fang, “they’re ripe for the picking. We’ll steamroll the fuckers before they even know what hit them. Remember: the essence of the charge is speed and power. No hesitation, no holding back. Once you commit, you commit. Got it?”
The women all nodded while the skeletons simply stared stoically ahead. They knew what to do.
“Oh, and another thing. Rollar’s men have a prisoner, a big northern barbarian. Don’t kill him, but don’t free him, either. I want to question him once the fight’s over.”
I arranged everyone into a classic wedge formation, with me riding Fang at the tip and the bigger skeletal cavalrymen packed close next to me. I put Isu in the center, a few rows behind me, Rami on the left edge, and Elyse on the right.
We advanced slowly and quietly through the woods, doing our best to not make a sound, until we were within about 20 yards of the clearing’s edge. We paused for a few moments, listening to the oblivious laughter and jesting of Rollar’s soldiers. They were completely unaware that they were about to meet their doom.
“When I say ‘charge,’ you kick your horses into a gallop,” I whispered over my shoulder. The women looked a little nervous, but they nodded nonetheless and gripped their spears tight.
I beamed an ear-to-ear grin. The last time I did this, I was a teenager wearing full plate armor and training to be a knight. Now, finally, I was about to put all that training into action.
I felt like I needed to do something to mark this occasion. After all, it was the first ever cavalry charge of the Army of Necrosis… if that’s what I was going to call my army, anyway.
“Thus begins the first cavalry charge of the Army of Necrosis!” I cried.
“Does that mean we should charge now?” Rami yelled back.
“For the Death God!” I yelled. “Charge!”
Chapter Ten
Fang charged ahead, so battle-hungry that I could barely hold on. I dug my knees and thighs into his flanks, a spear couched like a lance in my right hand and my kusarigama gripped in my left. A roar bellowed from my mouth as we burst into the clearing, my skeletal cavalrymen thundering along behind me.
“You bastards are getting a personal visit from the God of Death!” I yelled.
The panicking soldiers scrambled to grab their weapons, but we were on them before they could even begin to organize any form of effective defense. Fang bowled over three lumbering soldiers with the brutal ease of a bull rampaging through a pen full of toddlers. Then, without even shaving a sliver off his momentum, he and I crashed headlong into a group of soldiers trying to maneuver themselves into a defensive square and set up a shield wall.
Their shield wall may as well have been made of ass rags. Fang flattened the hapless troops while I punched my spear into the eye slit of a soldier’s rusty great helm. The speed and force of the impact not only drove the spear point
