I really didn’t know you cared so much, Commander, Baldwin thought, a sick amusement running through his mind.

  As the Commander carried him, the human emotions that had flowed into Baldwin from Volusia’s speech had slowly given way to a smug sense of superiority.

  Tybalt and I have broken this man. His morale is through the floor, he’s blaming himself for getting me killed, probably depressed about how the squad is doing… This is amazing.

  It was strange. The human still inside Baldwin was appalled to feel this way. But the monster enjoyed this. It wanted to bask in the grief and despair that had settled over the squad.

  The men were mostly still alive, but a third of the survivors had been injured in the rockslide. The handful of men left worst off leaned on the others for help walking, or in one case had to be carried. That man, who had survived with a crushed leg, would never be useful as a soldier again. Health elixir could only do so much, and it was doubtful that Private Holst would have the coin for a high level healer.

  There were occasional moans of pain from a few men who were hurt but still conscious.

  And even the uninjured men were pale and sickly, walking with a distinctly feeble gait.

  This is perfect, Baldwin thought. The injuries, the sickness, and the beastfolk waiting to pounce. If Tybalt can persuade the furballs that he comes in peace, they could mop the rest of the squad up in an afternoon.

  That was a big if, but Tybalt clearly believed in the plan, and he knew things that Baldwin did not. The revenant decided that he would send a message to the necromancer soon after the squad had returned to camp. It would be good to give him all relevant defensive information at once, from where the wounded were staying to where the remaining guards were posted.

  The group walked the entire way they had come that morning in reverse, much more slowly this time. What had been an hour or so of walking one way took, by Baldwin’s estimate, almost three moving in the other direction. It was afternoon by the time they got within sight of the abandoned beastfolk village where they had made camp.

  “Specialist Curtis, set up wounded and sick areas, deputize any soldiers you need to provide care to the injured and sick, use as much health elixir as you need to,” Volusia ordered. “We have to get this squad back into fighting shape right away—”

  “Commander,” Curtis interrupted, “fighting shape is out of the question at this point. Look around you, sir.”

  “You’re starting to sound insubordinate, Specialist.”

  “Sir, I don’t mean to be difficult, I’m just trying to do my job. The squad is in a bad way. This bug that’s been going around—or poisoning, whatever it is—already had them weakened.” Curtis lowered his voice. “I think some of the men have been dosing with health elixir just to get through the day—to stay functional—in the absence of real medical treatment. We have less than we should. Significantly less.”

  Volusia paused for a moment, absorbing that information. “Then my men have done what they needed to do to keep themselves functional,” he said at last. “They understood their orders well. They appreciate how important our work here is. Do you understand your assignment, Specialist? For instance, what I just said, that you have to make them functional. Dying in a blaze of glory hopefully isn’t the ending that’s ahead for us, but if that’s what the gods have in store, it’s above my pay grade to argue. I only need them able to fight. Can you do that?”

  “You know I’m not a twice-damned healer!” Curtis said. He sounded upset. “Just a medic. I can patch them up, but curing disease or treating poisoning is far beyond what I know how to do.”

  The Commander set Baldwin down on the ground, lying on his side and facing away. But Baldwin could practically see it as Volusia placed a hand on the Specialist’s shoulder.

  “Do what you can, man,” Volusia said. “You know we all count on you. But you can’t let the men see you like this. If the guy who patches up the wounded gets rattled, do you have any idea what that would do to their heads? Morale is half the battle out here.”

  Specialist Curtis let out a long breath. “All right. Yes, sir. My apologies, sir. You’ll have no more of that bitching from me, sir.”

  “Good man. And use up all the health elixir we have left, if you have to. Just let me know if you do. We have to be up front with the men about how much healing they can expect going forward. If this is the end of the line in that sense, I want to look them in the eyes and tell them myself.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Specialist Curtis saluted and strode off, then immediately began calling orders.

  Baldwin could hear him as he took charge of the situation.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “You, with me! You, take down that wall there, open up this space… Indus, could you go and fetch the rest of the health elixir from the cart? I need to take inventory.”

  It continued like this, with Curtis deputizing the healthy, calling out orders, setting up different treatment stations for soldiers in different conditions, and the like. The medic was in his element. Baldwin knew Curtis hadn’t been selected for medic training because he was a great mind. It was the combination of a lack of aversion to blood and generally performing well under pressure.

  In a situation like this, Baldwin would put more stock in Curtis’s steady pragmatic approach over Tybalt’s relative shrewdness.

  I should tell Tybalt to send Hieron and the others to attack right away, before their situation starts to stabilize.

  He was about to begin transmitting the message, when he heard the sound of loud talk. Multiple men’s voices. What gave him pause was the fact that the noise sounded like it came from outside the bounds of the village.

  Who are they? As he strained slightly to hear, he thought he could sense more voices, lower, murmuring. How many of these people are there?

  There was a frustrating commotion all around Baldwin, as the healthy people who had not been given orders by Specialist Curtis all moved to see who these newcomers were. It made it impossible for the revenant to gather information at first.

  Then he heard something about the mining camp.

  Shit, really?

  Baldwin tried to figure out if it mattered that the people Tybalt had sent him to attack were showing up now. There hadn’t been any surviving witnesses, as far as he knew, and even if there had been, it had been a dark night.

  There was fire, from me burning down the foreman’s cabin, so maybe someone could have seen my face… but I’m dead as far as they’re concerned. No, this isn’t a big deal. Except it means I don’t bother telling Tybalt to attack, because an unknown number of able-bodied men just arrived. Damn. There was hardly any window of opportunity.

  “You’re the Commander?” A male voice spoke up loudly and clearly, and most of the others quieted down.

  “That’s correct,” said the Commander. “Name’s Volusia. We’re in a bit of a tense situation here, expecting further violence from the beastfolk, potentially at any minute, so I hope you don’t mind if I skip the pleasantries. What brings you all here today?”

  There was a moment of hesitation before the initial speaker replied. Maybe he had looked at the other miners for reassurance or something, but Baldwin was frustratingly lying in a position where he couldn’t see anything. Being a corpse, it would be suspicious if he suddenly changed position to better understand what was going on.

  “Commander, we were attacked by the beastfolk, too,” the man said. “Our camp was. We think they killed our foreman and his family, and they seem to have got a couple more of our guys. We’re not sure if they actually killed them or took them captive. There were no bodies left behind. But the foreman’s cabin was burned to the ground, and there was no call for that as far as we know unless it was to cover up murder.”

  “Sounds like we’re both missing a lot of information.” Volusia spoke in a more subdued tone, his voice thoughtful. Baldwin didn’t like that one bit.

  Was it likely that Volusia would figure out what was actually going on if he just thought about it long enough? Not really.

  But could he get close enough to be dangerous? Absolutely.

  “Commander, we don’t want to impose upon you and your squad in what turns out to be a very difficult time for you on your mission,” the miners’ spokesman said. “We’ll just head back to our camp, and—”

  “Hold on, there,” Volusia said. “I have more than half my squad dead or out of commission at this point. I need more manpower, and you men need your camp to be safe. I think we should work something out. Could you step into my hut here? Um, I should ask, can this fellow speak for the rest of you guys?”

  “His name’s Raybeck, sir,” said another miner loudly. “And he speaks for me!”

  “We normally decide things by vote, sir,” called another miner. “Please bear that in mind!”

  “I understand,” Volusia said in his most amiable voice. “I’ll present my thoughts to Raybeck, since you can’t all fit in the hut, and then he can carry them back to you and maybe the rest of the miners.”

  The miners uttered murmurs of assent, and then there were sounds of movement. Chatter broke out between the miners and the soldiers who remained healthy. There was no sound Baldwin could hear from either Volusia or Raybeck, and he didn’t see where they went, either. Play-acting as a corpse suddenly went from amusing to a pain in the ass.

  Baldwin just lay there, listening to the sounds of people in pain—Specialist Curtis was doing his work, using bandages, needle and thread, fire, and splints where he could avoid just relying on health elixir.

  The practice of medical care without a healer in the squad was brutal. Baldwin felt the strange tensions of his situation keenly in these moments of listening to suffering without gaining any information.

  On the one hand, this strange part of him that he’d been recently observing enjoyed the audio entertainment—even as he recognized the pained cries of men he had known for years. Those sounds were like food for his soul now.

  On the other hand, that seemed profoundly wrong to his rational brain.

  And more importantly, he was kept from fully savoring the experience by the tension of knowing that plotting was occurring that he could not hear.

  Do I move? Will I be noticed if I move? I have to know what’s happening. Otherwise I’m no use to the master—whoa! What the fuck was that thought?

  “So that’s what I intend to do.”

  Before he could examine what was going on inside his head further, Baldwin heard the sound of Raybeck speaking. They must have been back outside. Either that, or before, they had been keeping their voices low to avoid being spied upon.

  What? What do you intend to do, damn it?!

  “I appreciate it,” said Volusia. “We have to stick together at times like this. Your country thanks you and all the others who volunteer…”

  Oh, shit…

  Still listening carefully to every scrap of conversation he could hear, Baldwin began transmitting a message to Tybalt.

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