“Please don’t take too long, Vance,” Isu said. “This armor is truly crushing my mammaries.”
“Don’t worry, this battle will be over before you know it,” I said before I walked over to the others.
“Everyone ready for their… hmm, what should I even call this?” I asked.
“Airlift?” Elyse suggested. “I don’t know why, but that word just popped into my head.”
“Airlift. Sure, let’s call it that. A new word for a new era of military tactics.”
Rami-Xayon, Rollar, and Drok—my most skilled hand-to-hand fighters—would be airlifted with me. They all nodded, grim-faced and ready for battle.
“Good,” I said. “Rami-Xayon and Rollar, start counting down from a thousand.” They needed to do this so that our movements would be synchronized. “Everyone else ready to play your parts in the battle?” I asked the rest of them.
They nodded, their expressions as stony as those who would be airlifted.
Controlling my harpy, I picked myself up in her claws and flew through the dust-storm in the dark. When I reached the largest outcrop, I dropped myself off at the end. Nearby, the enemy archers and crossbowmen were getting into position for the ambush. I remained hidden from their sight by the dust storm Rami-Xayon had conjured. The Crusader troops could barely see or hear each other, and if their comrades were more than a yard or two away, they were practically invisible.
I waited, hiding behind a boulder while the Church of Light soldiers positioned themselves for the coming ambush. I sent the harpy down to grab Rami-Xayon, whom I dropped at the other end of the outcrop. She landed silently on the ground and took position behind a lone tree. I picked up Rollar and placed him at one end of the main outcrop on the opposite side of the valley. Drok I saved for last because he couldn’t count to a higher number than the amount of fingers he possessed. My instructions to him were simply to start his attack the moment the harpy set him down on the outcrop. I’d made him promise not to make a sound, and he’d begrudgingly agreed. I positioned him downwind of the soldiers so they wouldn’t catch a whiff of his reek.
I slipped swiftly and silently through the blackness of the dust-storm. I approached an archer who was oiling his crossbow’s rail. He cursed his frozen fingers, and he didn’t see me coming when I slipped Grave Oath between his ribs and into his heart. He barely had the chance to gasp before his soul was mine.
I moved on to his companion, who was standing on the edge of the outcrop about two yards away while he attempted to peer through the sandstorm.
“Fucking barren north,” he cursed under his breath. “Who the fuck sends us on a damned crusade up here? There’s nothing here except sand and rocks.”
I crept up behind him, not needing to be particularly stealthy because of the howling wind. I slammed Grave Oath into his ear, killing him instantly and drinking in another soul.
My companions and I moved along the outcrops, killing off the archers and crossbowmen one by one. I met Rami-Xayon in the middle of the outcrop and ordered Talon to pick up Drok and Rollar. Now that there were no archers who could rain death from above, we were ready to walk into what was intended to be an ambush.
But there was something else I needed to do first.
I closed my eyes and resurrected all of the enemy archers and crossbowmen as zombies. They lurched to their feet, their eyes glowing an ethereal green. Despite their cut throats, disemboweled stomachs, and snapped necks, they were fully capable of fighting.
On my side now.
I could control them like two dozen puppets on the end of thousands of invisible interconnected strings.
This ambush was going exactly as planned. Well, according to my plan. Those Church of Light assholes were in for a deadly surprise.
Chapter Two
I blasted my spirit into Talon’s body and flew her through the dust storm to the rest of my army. My zombies and skeletons were led by Rollar, Anna-Lucielle, Isu, Layna, and Elyse. Once they saw Talon land in front of them, they knew it was time to march, which they did, walking into the ambush with open eyes.
I then flew Talon across the valley to Rami-Xayon on the opposite outcrop. As soon as my harpy landed next to Rami-Xayon, she called off the storm. As fast as the storm had come, the wind turned to still, clear air. We could breathe again, but the inky, moonless night still didn’t allow for much visibility.
Crouched behind the boulder at the end of the outcrop, with a bow in my hands that I’d taken from one of the archers I’d killed, I waited for my force to come around the corner and emerge from the gap between the towering cliffs.
They did, at just the right time.
The Crusader Commander, a Resplendent Knight in gleaming, bright-silver full plate armor—the only soldier who wasn’t wearing brown camouflage—trotted out on his horse, stopping around 30 yards away from my fighters. The small contingent of infantry troops marched in a square behind him, and had I not known about the ambush, he and his small force certainly would have been the perfect bait to goad me into a charge. Of course, he was the one now walking into a trap, a trap of his own making.
Isu, dressed in my black armor and mounted on Fang, took a few steps out from my force but said nothing. She didn’t want to give the game away.
“Vance Chauzec, false god, vile heretic, filthy necromancer, and fork-tongued servant of darkness!” the commander bellowed as he pointed his sword at Isu. “You have officially been declared an enemy of the Church of Light and
