As the food was served, the men broke out the ale, and the night turned into a miniature celebration. The soldiers were all still alive and healthy—for now—and they reveled in having good food and drink. Some sang, increasingly out of tune as the evening wore on. A few men danced regional jigs that didn’t last very long either because there was no one to perform the female role or simply due to too much alcohol.

  The squad hadn’t been on the assignment very long, so the Commander hadn’t rationed the drink yet.

  Lieutenant Sperry ate a little apart from the others, Tybalt noticed, and she did not seem to eat very much. She was also not drinking the strong stuff the other soldiers were. She had served herself from one of the barrels of small ale that the squad brought everywhere; this had a much lower alcohol content than the ale men consumed to get drunk. She wore a pensive expression, as if seeing the squad in a new light—or perhaps just locked in her own head. It could be for reasons unrelated to her conversation with Tybalt.

  Commander Volusia was another non-celebrant, though he did partake moderately in the alcohol. Baldwin drank moderately, too, though Tybalt was not certain whether the revenant actually experienced the effects of it.

  Tybalt drank small ale as well.

  He wanted to remain as close to stone-cold sober as he could and observe the effects of his contagion on the men.

  As they ate the stew, Tybalt sat on his own, pretended to read a book, and surreptitiously watched the soldiers, waiting for some sign that his virus was having its effect.

  He watched for two hours. As the night wore on, what he saw seemed to underperform his expectations. A few men wandered off periodically into the darkness to relieve themselves, but that seemed to be more a product of the alcohol than his virus. They returned too quickly, by his reckoning, to be suffering from the diarrhea he had intended to cause.

  Fuck, he thought. Maybe the number of virions per bowl just wasn’t enough—or it just takes longer than an hour or two to have an effect? Or I overestimated my powers? Maybe I should have done a test on just one or two people first. He had no way of knowing the specific potency of a virus he had just concocted and tried out for the first time.

  Either way, he needed to move forward with his backup plan. A few of the men had already gone to sleep, and most of those remaining were drunk. They probably would not notice if one of their number slipped away in the night.

  Baldwin, Tybalt transmitted, it’s starting to look like my food poisoning plan didn’t work—or maybe the virus needs longer to take effect. Either way, I have a job for you.

  Tybalt needed to get some levels soon, even if it meant taking some risks.

  I can guess what you mean, Baldwin replied.

  —

  The firelight danced in Baldwin’s cold, dead eyes as he listened to his master’s telepathic messages.

  You know what I want already? Tybalt sounded surprised.

  It’s like you said earlier, Baldwin sent back immediately. We need to increase our numbers. That means you need bodies. But the soldiers here will be on guard. If they’re not sick, we won’t be able to kill anyone here.

  On the other hand, there are a lot of unguarded bodies… Tybalt replied.

  At the beastfolk village we destroyed this morning, Baldwin finished.

  Exactly, Tybalt replied. Sounds like you really do know exactly what to do.

  Baldwin, with his eyes closed, could see his master nodding to himself in his mind’s eye. He recognized that the mental link between the two of them carried more than simple messages. Since the servant was only just figuring this out himself, he wondered if his master knew already.

  And he wondered whether it was best to tell him. There was a part of Baldwin that still wanted to find some way of reversing this situation on Tybalt, implausible though that seemed at the moment.

  I am learning your devious mind—I mean your clever strategies—much better now that I serve you, master. Baldwin sent. He sensed Tybalt snort in response.

  Have you eaten? Tybalt asked.

  I played with my food a little, mainly for the benefit of the men sitting around me, Baldwin replied. I assume I cannot take ill from one of your ailments, now that I am no longer alive, but in truth, I don’t feel the need for food or rest. My belly doesn’t make any sound as if it wants something, either, so I’m guessing that’s not just in my head. It’s part of my new condition. Something I won’t have to worry about anymore.

  Baldwin could not help a little bitterness coming through in his last words. He was rapidly getting used to calling Tybalt “master,” and he thought he could stomach being subordinate to the bastard. Baldwin respected the younger man’s ambition, which seemed to exceed his own. But he still missed being human.

  The inconvenience of hunger had never been a big problem in Baldwin’s pre-death existence, considering that he got three square meals a day provided to him as a soldier. Rather, it was annoying that he had now lost the desire to eat. And he thought he might have lost other desires, too. Earlier in the day, when Lieutenant Sperry came to bother him, Baldwin had leered at her a bit. But he hadn’t felt any of the lust that he would typically have experienced with an attractive young woman prior to his death. He feared the worst.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  His mind was pulled back to the present as he sensed Tybalt nodding. I think that’s right. The undead are self-sustaining. That’s what makes them ideal soldiers and laborers. There are a few exceptions. It’s possible that you might find yourself craving meat if you get injured or worn down. But otherwise, you’re pretty much golden, I think. One day, you might be glad that you don’t need food. We’re on a path toward being complete outlaws, after all.

  It’s good to know there are upsides to my situation, Baldwin sent with a slight edge of sarcasm.

  Well, yes, Tybalt sent insistently. You’re gradually going to get much stronger than you were, too—and you’ll always have a prominent place in any forces I control. Undead are kind of better than normal people. It gives me confidence that we can defeat our squad if I can turn even half of their number into undead. They need food and sleep. You do not. Your stamina has limits, but revenants do not require those basic human things. And zombies will have other advantages, like no fear or other inhibitions.

  I understand, master, Baldwin sent. He reminded himself again that there was a lot to gain by helping Tybalt and working for him effectively—and no possible benefit to resenting his new condition. Even if Baldwin might have lost some of the pleasures of the flesh, the world was larger than those. I imagine the beastfolk will be a good addition to our side. I will bring back as many bodies as I can.

  There’s no need to rush on getting large numbers, Tybalt replied. I definitely want some bodies, but there are pretty tight limits to how many undead I can raise in a night, just from my mana being low and regenerating slowly. Damned low level… I would imagine it won’t be more than five, maybe six or seven tonight if we wait for me to recover some energy and if the bodies don’t take as much power to raise as I’m expecting. My mana is a big constraint, until I get some more levels. And I don’t want you to be too reckless. I have reason to believe Lieutenant Sperry might check out the wreckage of the village at some point. Probably not tonight, fortunately for us. She is a stubborn woman. It all depends on how she reacts to something I said.

  Baldwin nodded. Got it. Will do my best to move quickly and leave no trace. And… there’s something that you may find interesting, master. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that we can observe each other’s locations and body language—or at least I’ve been able to—through the link. It requires only a little focus on the other person.

  The revenant sensed it as Tybalt closed his eyes, then nodded.

  Yes, I see what you mean. Very interesting. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. The necromancer did not sound surprised, but Baldwin could not tell if he had already known or if he was simply playing the moment cool. For the revenant, this was an incredible capability.

  He wondered again if he should have said anything or kept it back… but he reminded himself that it was best to play things as straight as possible and not give Tybalt any reason to distrust him. The master might succeed in his aims, after all.

  And now Baldwin had a mission. His very first one.

  He finally rose from where he sat by the fire.

  “I’m going to take a piss and hit the sack,” he said gruffly to the men around him in general.

  He walked off beyond the huts, deliberately not looking around to see who was watching him. He knew the answer would be no one.

  When he was fully out of view, with the demihumans’ ramshackle abandoned buildings obstructing his comrades’ line of sight, Baldwin began twisting his path in a wide arc, looping back toward the ibex beastfolk village they had destroyed that morning. Improbably, the place was still smoking—though Baldwin was confident that everything of value would have been burned already earlier that day.

  His vision was only lightly obstructed by the fog, which seemed to diminish as he advanced away from the squad’s position and out toward the Salt Waste proper.

  Baldwin had been acting as normal with his squad members, but now that he was alone, his mind finally had leisure to think its own thoughts—not simply consider how best to hide what he was, or how to handle Tybalt. He began to go over the events of the day and try to digest them in a way that would make more sense out of what had happened.

  I died, he thought. I died, and I was raised from the dead as a monster. An abomination. That was the word Tybalt had used, wasn’t it?

  Baldwin paused in his train of thought, expecting a wave of horror to rise up within him and overwhelm whatever sensibilities he had left from his upbringing in the Kingdom of Niet.

  But he waited in vain.

  All he felt within himself was a black emptiness and a vague desire for destruction.

  That was the gift of his new un-life. He was no longer human.

  Baldwin might still act like himself—the remark about Sperry’s “sweet ass” was vintage Baldwin—but it was acting. Because Tybalt had told him to behave as normal, and the necromancer’s words had a certain compelling force for Baldwin that they had not enjoyed before.

  On the bright side, what flimsy moral center Baldwin had possessed prior to returning from death seemed to have quieted. He suspected conscience would not be troubling him any longer… unless it was Tybalt’s conscience.

  Imagine the things we can accomplish, Baldwin thought, trying to be optimistic. Without conscience to hold us back.

  He did feel something then. It was a sensation he’d experienced earlier that day, the same one he had experienced when he saw the Tower of Death. The feeling that a block had been removed from his path—that the opportunity to rise had opened for him—that his middle life was not the beginning of a downward slide into decline and death, but the beginning of a new way forward.

  Baldwin could not articulate exactly what it was that he felt. He lacked the vocabulary, as well as the inclination, to discuss how returning from death affected his view of life in general.

  But he understood that even if he was dead, his ambition was not. If anything, his ambition, his desire to be somebody important—coupled with actual belief in the possibility of achieving that—was more alive than it had been for twenty years.

  Baldwin’s lips spread into a cold mask of a smile. The revenant felt something that might have approximated happiness.

  He kept walking. His boots ate the distance, and as the sun fell in the sky, his stride never changed. He was walking at exactly the maximum pace that allowed his natural stamina regeneration rate to match his consumption of the resource. It was the sort of thing that required consistent movements that would normally be difficult or impossible for a human to manage perfectly.

  But Baldwin wasn’t human anymore. His body wasn’t limited by the normal constraints of muscle fibers and nerves.

  Before he knew it, the sun was down—and shortly afterward, the burned out husk of a village stood in the near distance.

  Defiant Necromancer Patreon is currently 25 chapters ahead of Royal Road.