No, that didn’t make sense.
I looked at the women. “Whoever did this wasn’t interested in their gold or valuables, or their weapons. Nothing has been taken from them. And I don’t think they got into an argument over the loot.”
Elyse frowned. “Why do you say that? It seems the most likely explanation.”
“They would have fought each other with their weapons, and the losers would have had their purses emptied.”
“It seems to have been a matter of justice,” Rami remarked.
“But what kind of authorities patrol these vast woods?” Elyse asked. “There’s very little out here but for the occasional logging camp.”
“There are hunters,” I answered, “but in remote places like this, they’d be working alone, or in pairs or groups of three at the most. They wouldn’t have taken on a dozen soldiers like this. And if this was done by hunters, the corpses would be riddled with arrows, and they’d have taken the gold off the soldiers.”
“Soldiers,” Drok grunted. He had dismounted and was wandering around, staring intently at the ground. “Many soldiers. More soldiers than soldiers in tree.”
I hopped off Fang, sucked in a lungful of fresh air, and held my breath when I was within a few yards of Drok. His reek was still taking some getting used to.
“See,” he said, dropping onto his hands and knees and pointing at the carpet of leaves. “This show many soldiers walk here.”
I saw that the leaves had been disturbed in a particular pattern. I also knew that northern barbarians, who spent much of their lives wandering through various areas of wilderness, were expert trackers and woodsmen.
“And here,” he continued, scrambling over to another place where the leaves had been disturbed, “these soldiers, dead soldiers, they come from this way. Other soldiers come from that way.” He crawled across the ground for another couple of yards. “And here, many soldiers leave this way.”
I trusted his recounting of events, and it made sense that a group of soldiers had done this. The only ones who were this far north were Rollar and his troops. Had Rollar’s men executed their comrades? Had these corpses in the tree been deserters? That seemed the most likely explanation.
I returned to the women. “Drok’s discovered that a large group of soldiers came here, stopped, then turned and marched off in that direction. So, it seems that these dead pricks were executed by soldiers.”
“Then Rami was right,” Elyse said. “It was a matter of justice.”
“Yes,” I said, “It’s a pity. I’ve been itching to try out my new corpse explosion spell in combat.”
I looked up at the tree and considered lighting it up with a series of explosions. A smile touched my lips as I imagined what it would look like, but I held off for now. I didn’t want to waste my energy needlessly.
I cut the rest of the corpses down, raised the skeletons, then sent them on their way to join the rest of my infantry troops. We mounted our rides and headed onward.
Every now and then, I shot my senses up into Talon’s body for a look at the landscape. Half-hidden among a particularly thick clump of huge oak trees, I finally caught sight of the ruins of Kroth. And camping among the ruins were Rollar’s men. Hundreds of them.
“We’ll reach the ruins of Kroth by dark,” I announced after I’d returned to my body. “And I don’t intend to waste any time in attacking Rollar’s camp. The darkness will be our ally.”
The others murmured their agreement, and we continued toward the ruins.
As we traveled closer to Kroth, the trees became larger and larger. By the time we were within sight of the ruins and Rollar’s camp, the oaks were enormous. Despite the fact that the Tree God had been dead for quite some time, some power still lingered here.
“Something about this place feels strange,” Elyse said with a shiver.
“Well, everyone is convinced it’s haunted,” I said.
“An ancient energy lingers here.” Isu stared in wonder at the enormous trees.
I ordered everyone to dismount and wait. I decided to scout around Rollar’s camp so that I could come up with a plan of attack. Talon was still flying, and I sent my mind back into her body. In the night sky, she’d look like nothing more than a black speck, so I didn’t need to worry about any of Rollar’s men seeing her.
The first thing I noticed was that Rollar was prepared for a cavalry attack. The soldiers had dug a number of deep ditches and pits before they’d filled them with sharpened stakes. Any charging horse would end up impaled. Even my skeletal horses would probably get trapped, stakes jammed between their ribs.
In addition to the ditches and pits, a number of troops stood in defensive positions, shields and spears in easy reach. In a matter of seconds, they could gather into shield wall formations.
As for Rollar himself, he was nowhere to be seen, nor was there some fancy tent where he would have resided.
Like the previous military camp we had come upon, there was something I didn’t expect. The last camp had contained Drok, while this one had a huge dire bear. The giant beast sat in the middle of the camp, beside the command tent, eating berries out of a bucket. It wasn’t chained up, and the troops didn’t seem interested in its presence. It may as well have been a mangy mutt for all the attention they paid it.
Did someone control it? Was this bear Rollar’s secret weapon?
Any fear I might have had was squashed with a simple reflection on my own pet monster. Fang, the giant zombie-lizard, would likely devour the direbear. At least, that was my hope.
The more relevant concern, however, was how to get past the defensive formations. There were a couple hundred soldiers, and we couldn’t steamroll the fuckers with a cavalry charge. We were also too heavily outnumbered to enter the camp on foot.
I studied the camp layout and troop placement closely, weighing my options and running
