My night vision is better than it was, Baldwin thought.

  The burned buildings were not yet completely destroyed. Baldwin expected he could still navigate the place from the positions of the huts, even if they were mostly erased—and slowly smouldering.

  Baldwin felt nothing at seeing the place where he and his comrades had wrought so much death. It had been just a workday for him. Now that he was undead, any regret he might have felt was more of a difficult hypothetical problem than an actuality. He was more focused on the fire.

  The flames weren’t visible, but what was left of the buildings was producing smoke, which meant there was still a fire going somewhere. In multiple places. Baldwin had witnessed this effect previously at other sites Lieutenant Sperry had been ordered to destroy, but he had never paid as much attention to it as he did now.

  His brow furrowed.

  Those flames are powerful, Baldwin noted. There has to have been a special skill used there, right? Normal flames would have guttered out long ago. I’ll have to mention it to Tybalt. Lieutenant Sperry’s fires can go on for much longer than you’d think.

  Baldwin thought of how it might feel to encounter them in a combat situation—and considered that he should be a bit more polite to the Lieutenant.

  Having made some observations from the near distance, Baldwin strode into the village outskirts. He quickly started to see them. Beastfolk remains.

  There was just one problem.

  The revenant was considering what to do—and whether to ask for further instructions—when he heard something.

  Some of the soldiers ended up suffering after all, came a voice in Baldwin’s mind. It took him a moment to recognize it was his master’s.

  What do you mean? Baldwin sent, slightly confused. His mind was focused on the beastfolk village.

  I just wanted to let you know that some of the soldiers came down with the stomach virus I gave them after all, Tybalt replied. It took a couple of hours longer than I had expected, but the virus worked. I think a fifth to a quarter of the men are indisposed, up and down dealing with the runs. I imagine you’re too far away for it to make sense to come back and take advantage. But I thought you’d like to know about the glorious misery they’re experiencing.

  Baldwin shook his head. Tybalt was a sadist. His second class suited him all too well.

  I am too distant, master, Baldwin agreed. I already made it to the beastfolk village. It is good to know that the plan is coming together. I did have a question, though.

  Yes? Tybalt transmitted.

  Most of the bodies here—all of the bodies I’ve seen so far, actually—are horribly burned. Lieutenant Sperry’s magical flames are no joke. They seem to keep destroying things even after natural flames would have gone out for lack of proper fuel. I wanted to ask if it’s a problem that these corpses are charred—some of them are already down to bone.

  I honestly don’t know, Tybalt replied. Bodies in better condition are always better for me. That increases my odds of a successful revival. My skill can fail, and I’m not exactly experienced using it. Cadavers that are in bad enough shape might disintegrate under the influence of my mana, or they might turn into skeletons—while using up just as much mana to make them as a zombie would. If the corpses are badly burned, I would say don’t bother collecting full cadavers. Get as many skeletons as you can instead. That should allow you to bring more of them to me, and I think the flames will have a different effect on the viability of a skeleton undead versus a zombie undead… Plus, skeletons have a very high success rate.

  Baldwin shrugged. You are the expert, master. His semi-genuine deference was almost entirely real this time. Baldwin had no idea what made a good corpse candidate. Tybalt sounded like he actually knew his stuff.

  Thank you, Baldwin. There was a pause on Tybalt’s end that felt to Baldwin suspiciously like a yawn. I appreciate the diligence.

  Baldwin sensed that Tybalt might be going to sleep, so he chose to stop talking. He began his exploration of the beastfolk village in earnest, assembling as many complete skeletons—or nearly complete, Baldwin didn’t know enough about anatomy to be sure—as he could.

  These ibex beastfolk bones are a bit thicker than human bones, he noted idly as he worked. Should be more durable. But it didn’t help them any, did it? If they fought as fiercely as us, though—well, then I guess I wouldn’t have all these bones to choose from. Hopefully they'll be tougher dead than they were alive.

  Baldwin conducted a couple of experiments along the way, wherever he encountered the smoke that pointed to a still smoldering magical flame. He buried a bit of her fire that had hold of a rug. It took a couple of attempts—more than would have been necessary for normal flames—but he noted that the Lieutenant’s magical fire was still extinguishable with water or soil. It just took more effort.

  Once Baldwin had assembled a dozen skeletons in the center walkway of the village, he began working on the problem of transportation. He removed his gambeson—really Tybalt’s gambeson, as the sharp-eyed Lieutenant Sperry had noticed—and tied knots at the sleeves and neck. With the knots and all buttons done up, the gambeson would do as a sack.

  But the revenant found himself with a slight problem. He had more bones than he could hold with only one sack and two hands. He wasn’t going to strip off his pants and risk being caught almost completely naked with his clothing turned into sacks of bone. It seemed to him as if things would be slightly more explicable—in the unlikely event that he was discovered—if he was at least wearing pants.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Maybe that was a leftover human emotion. A touch of vanity.

  In any case, it did not take him too much time to find another article of clothing that he could use for the same purpose: a woman’s dress.

  She had been carried out of the village rather than burning with it, so her corpse was less scorched than the others. Baldwin judged her body was in no decent shape for Tybalt’s purposes, though. There were too many holes in it.

  The dress was just what Baldwin needed, though. The soldiers had ripped it in a few places, but it was nothing large enough that Baldwin couldn’t tie a strip of fabric together to cover it or simply place a large bone in front of a hole to keep other bones from falling out.

  The beastfolk mostly wore rough sackcloth anyway. If you could ignore the bloodstains, which Baldwin could, it was exactly the sort of material a sack should be made of.

  Once he had loaded up this second bag, Baldwin was ready to return to his master.

  —

  Tybalt lay awake for a long time after speaking with Baldwin and consulting Unholy Forces.

  He was attempting, unsuccessfully, to relax, but his mind kept racing. He was obsessively considering logistics, future plans, potential alliances… anything that might give him an edge now that he was an enemy of the Kingdom.

  He might have been talking to himself out loud if not for the fact that he was sharing his space with someone.

  The squad were sleeping two to a hut, since the fog looked like it might turn into a rare desert rain. Normally, some might sleep under the stars, but no one wanted to be left outside and catch a chill. Especially not when, as had become clear in the hours after Baldwin left and before the camp began settling in to sleep, a quarter of their number were suffering from stomach troubles.

  Commander Volusia had not allowed this sudden spate of illness to slacken the camp’s readiness for ambush. Indeed, he had openly speculated that there was some foul play, some poison in the food, though he didn’t know how the beastfolk had done it.

  The men assigned guard shifts were selected from the remaining able-bodied soldiers. For once, being semi-distrusted seemed to work in Tybalt’s favor. Volusia chose a dozen other men for the job, and the necromancer was able to relax with the others lucky enough not to be assigned night watch. He was assigned Markus as a hutmate, sharing a space small enough that Tybalt could hardly extend an arm without risking slapping his fellow soldier in the face.

  At first, he lay on his bedroll in a meditative state, exercising his control over his mana—trying to ensure it would not corrode his physical form while he slept. Tybalt wasn’t a meditation expert. He mostly just tried to empty his mind and keep his energies circulating, not sitting in one place too long.

  The mind-emptying part finally helped him find a degree of the relaxation that had eluded him earlier.

  Eventually, long after Markus’s soft breathing had dissolved into rhythmic snoring a few feet away, Tybalt allowed himself to drift off to sleep as well.

  His dreams began unpleasantly.

  They featured shifting scenes, each of them a grim warning.

  In one, Tybalt found himself in a simple rural courtroom. He stood before a priest of Vika acting as a judge, while another man dressed in the official uniform of a county prosecutor .

  “Your Eminence, the accused stands charged with participating in vile, unholy arts. We have witnesses ready to present testimony that he has consorted with the dead and sullied holy ground by performing arcane rituals to animate corpses buried there. We are ready to begin trial immediately if necessary.”

  “Trial is only necessary if the accused wishes to present a defense,” the priest said. “What say you, boy?”

  The necromancer tried to plead his case, but he found that his mouth had been sewn shut.

  Perfectly normal criminal procedure, Tybalt thought sarcastically. What the fuck is this?! When did my mouth get sewn shut?

  The priest sitting in judgment seemed to see nothing wrong, however.

  “Hearing no defense,” he said, “the accused is found guilty and sentenced to execution by dragging.”

  Shit!

  Strong men carried Tybalt from the courtroom, kicking and issuing muffled screams. They bound him behind a chariot using long, leather straps, at which point the charioteer worked the reins, and the team of four horses took off.

  The necromancer struggled to run behind the chariot with his weakened body, but after ten feet, he could not keep up with the horses’ speed. He stumbled, bounced on the ground, miraculously regained his footing—and fell again. This time, his body was scraped painfully against the ground, skin tearing and blood gushing everywhere.

  Tybalt blacked out, and when he came to, he found he was completely naked.

  Wait, did I survive that? Tybalt thought, confused. How?

  He felt firm hands holding his arms again. Those who restrained Tybalt now dragged him before an altar in the Great Temple of Astara in the capital. Tybalt had never been to the Great Temple in person, but he recognized the notorious place by the descriptions he had heard.

  Carved and painted illustrations on the walls depicted romantic and sexual scenes—men and women holding hands, kissing in the elven style, removing each other’s clothes—and engaged in the physical act of love, in a variety of positions and states of full or partial undress. The images depicted both large numbers of consensual scenes and a smaller number of scenes in which one participant was raising obvious—though invariably unsuccessful—physical resistance to the advances of the other.

  A tall, beautiful, dusky-skinned woman with brightly painted lips and cheeks stood on the other side of the altar as strong hands dragged Tybalt forward. Her thick lips parted in a cruel smile as Tybalt’s body fell under a source of light.

  He looked up and saw that the ceiling of the temple high above them was open to the sky, and a full moon shone through the opening.

  Some part of Tybalt’s mind nudged him, suggested that the moon was not at that part of its cycle right now, something was wrong—and how had he gotten here from being dragged behind a chariot, anyway?—but then the woman began to speak and banished coherent thought from his brain.

  “Soldier Tybalt, you have betrayed the Goddess of Love. Your sentence has been pronounced, and judgment is to be carried out now,” she began.

  Tybalt opened his mouth to speak; at least it wasn’t sewn shut this time. “I was already punished, I was just being dragged behind a chariot—”

  His words were cut off by a rough slap to his face from the woman. Her fingers were covered in metal rings, and the slap was stronger than he’d have expected if he didn’t know she was some sort of important figure in the Temple. He felt one of his teeth jostle loose, and a slow trickle of blood began leaking from the gums around it.

  “Silence, heretic,” the man holding him said in a rough, guttural tone. “You are in the presence of High Priestess Asha.”

  “Prepare for your punishment,” the High Priestess said. Her eyes took on a sadistic glee and she produced a serrated blade from within the folds of her robe.

  “No, no, no…” Tybalt could barely find breath to speak as the men holding him dragged him onto the altar and held him as steady as they could at the center.

  The knife flashed in the moonlight as it descended toward his groin—and the night echoed with his screams.

  The vision dissolved in a haze of blood and pain.