I was staring death in the face, and it was only the second time in my life. I grinned, of course. I pissed myself. Of course.

  Then the first of the giant shamblers was coming at me, closing fast. I screamed and lunged. My sword was a big thrusting weapon, made more for duelling than battlefields. It was perfect for this though. The undead’s great cleaver came swiping around for me like death’s own scythe, and I raised my arm up almost reflexively.

  In a parry. I tried to parry it. Fucking moron that I was, the blades clashed and my arm felt like it was torn out of the damned socket as I stumbled away and fought with every ounce of strength I had not to fall over. The shambler was not polite enough to wait, lunging after me while I staggered. It was only a last-moment instinct, a pricking at the nerves in the back of my neck, that kept me alive by spurring my body into a desperate leap forwards and away. I rolled, came up and reflexively slashe at the air. Were I being attacked by a human, it might have paused at the steel whipping around. It might have though; ‘golly, the edge on that weapon sure does look dangerous, I’d best steer clear of it’, but as I know now undead do not feel such hesitance.

  My death did not come that day though, because Jeeves did. He dropped down to land with a roll and came up swinging—not a shitty little rapier, like me, but a great two-handed hammer which had probably been made for smashing stones into mortar paste. The iron head connected hard with the shambler’s knee, and I heard the sound of impact from where I stood.

  The sound of impact, not of broken bone. The shambler took a step to the side and whirled on Jeeves with frightful speed, though was too slow to catch him. Somehow I was mad enough to lunge in with a stab of my own—the smart decision. If I ran and let Jeeves fall we were fucked, fighting now was better for me long-term. Not that I was thinking that far ahead.

  I saw steel scratch on the rusted metal covering my enemy, and almost winced at the thought of my pretty little sword ruining its edge. Problem with heavy metal armour—it works. It’s worn for a reason. My arm throbbed with the impact and my enemy was unhurt as ever.

  Not only unhurt, ready to strike again. I chose not to try and guard the next hit rather than twist and let it slide off my weapon—trying to deflect more than halt. I still almost went down with the sheer force of it, backing up another pace just to keep my balance. The other shambler seemed to have lost interest, the only reason I still lived, but this one was trouble enough by itself.

  Another swing came my way, and I leapt aside to let the dirty cleaver bury itself in earth and grow dirtier still. My sword smashed down on the wielder’s wrist and found a mark in the armour where old plating had started to part with age and dicrepitude, biting into withered meat. Then the limb was raising again and I had to fall back.

  Fencing tourneys hadn’t done much to prepare me for combat at all, and certainly not with this creature. The largest man I’d ever fought was maybe two inches taller than me and barely had more reach, yet here I was trying to fight an enemy with arms over a foot longer than mine.

  Fortunately, I wasn’t doing it in a fencing tourney. There were all sorts of rules there which might have gotten in the way, out in a mindless brawl like this one I was somewhat more free. I felt my consciousness expanding as I fought, my mind drifting into what I now know well to be the state that any good fighter’s thoughts melt into when steel is flying and blood spurting. I saw everything before me; watched every twitch of my enemy’s body, ever shifting of weight, every premonition of violence. Simultaneously, I felt everything around me. A situational awareness that would keep me alive through a hundred battles over the rest of my life.

  Barely.

  There was oil, not ten paces away. Barreled and stacked up beside the wall by that nameless idiot who’d thought lighting undead on fire was a good idea. Maybe it was, with this one. Maybe this shambling monstrosity would perish to heat where it didn’t to metal.

  It was a nice idea, but there’s a reason you don’t hear of many cunning flourishes in combat. Real combat, the ‘kill him before he kills me’ sort of combat, just doesn’t leave the room for such things. A single second is a lifetime when swords are cutting the air, and an aeon when they find skin. I’d need more than a single second to do anything with that oil.

  That fucking cleaver came jumping after me as I scrambled away, the rat fleeing a cat. Sparks didn’t fly out with my parries, such things happen in novels alone, but I almost felt they should have. Shockwaves ran up my arm with every block and the muscles grew weaker by the moment. Now, I thought, I finally knew how the steel felt when it was beaten into shape by a smith’s hammer.

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  Before it finally broke.

  The steel in a smithy was alone, though, immobile and unaided. I had Jeeves. He descended on the shambler like an arc of lightning and smacked his hammer right across the thing’s head, buckling the metal inwards and actually splintering a few brittle chunks from its iron edge. A man would have been downed by that, armour or no. His skull would’ve been cracked and his brain mulched. The undead might have even taken some damage to its own grotesquely oversized form, too, but I couldn’t know at a look alone.

  I didn’t wait to know, either. Just lunged again, left a bright scratch along one vambrace, and started for the barrels. The great shambler must’ve been stunned, else it would’ve taken a lot less time to chase after me. I got all of three paces before it started, and two more before the blows were coming again.

  Strength was a thing of the past, and so was skill. My fencer’s stance broke apart like bricks before a cannon and my defence became a clumsy thing of simply locking joints and trusting in weight alone to hold my sword in place where it met the enemy’s. The undead seemed tireless, of course. Fucking shamblers. Two more paces, and I was just three away from the barrel. One more, then another. Then I dived back, watched the cleaver come down, lunged aside and heard wood smash apart and liquid burst outwards.

  It occurred to me, then, that I did not actually have a way of producing any sort of flame to ignite the fucking oil. Fortunately I wasn’t the only one who’d formed this clever little plan. Someone, I didn’t ever find out who, dumped a burning rag on the shambler. It wafted down almost ludicrously slow, resting gently upon the undead’s shoulder.

  Then, all at once, the oil caught. I scrambled back as the air around me suddenly leapt in temperature and my giant enemy turned into a giant bonfire. It was an incredible sight.

  But not necessarily one that would save my life, because it takes a good long while for flames to do enough damage that a person’s body can’t move anymore. Need to melt ligaments and muscle, unless the sheer pain immobilised them. Shamblers didn’t feel pain of any kind, and this one didn’t even stop.

  In a brief handful of seconds, I had managed to turn my giant, superhuman, undead opponent into a giant, superhuman, incendiary undead opponent. The blows came no slower, but my blocks did. It took only three before the weapon was smacked clean out of my numb fingers as my body fell back and into the dirt.

  Jeeves moved before the shambler could, his hammer striking its arm and sending the next blow wide of the mark—the mark being my skull. I saw ugly metal dig in deep to the earth beside my skull and rolled away, scrambled, spat and clawed for purchase in the ground beneath me as violence gave chase. The sound of metal on metal rang out over the roaring flames and the creaking joints and the whoosh of disturbed air, dirt crusted my nails and my muscles burned. Crawling like a worm in the dirt, almost crying, still with my idiot grin plastered right across my face. The skin on my back crawled and itched where I felt certain a blade would find home.

  It didn’t, but only because of Jeeves. By the time I’d managed to so much as flip myself over and start getting up, he’d already hit the shambler another few times and drawn its attention to him. The flames were roaring up more than ever now, and I caught the whif of cooking meat on the air. Rotting meat, too, all the putrefaction buried under desiccated skin now exposed. There were winds around it, it seemed. The sheer volume of fire making the air dance. All around us I saw shamblers shambling, breaking in through the battered gate as people swarmed in to try and fight them back. The defence was crumbling, even if I killed this monstrosity I might just be run down and butchered after.

  Jeevs ducked a swing, caught another on the shaft of his hammer. The shaft broke. I watched him back away with a gash across one arm, blood seeming suspended in the air and sizzling where it clung to the dirty sword which had drawn it. I saw everything that would happen and knew my death would soon follow—his life was my life. One of us alone would be no match for the thing, even half-burned. Especially me.

  Maybe I would just be butchered by the other hordes right after, the ones closing and coiling around even now. But if I could buy myself a few moments more then I would. The sword was back in my hand before I even knew it.

  I was fighting a bonfire with limbs, and the limbs were longer than mine. Every moment of continued life was a triumph, every breath of air scorched my lungs as I found their proximity to that lumbering inferno growing by the second.

  Fortunately, the undead was also burning up more by the second. I was starting to see a dull discolouration take to the clumsy metal of its armour, and bits of flesh were sloughing off to sizzle and pop in the dirt behind it. It wasn’t a lot of consolation, knowing that my killer would come apart soon after, but something I supposed.

  One of my parries came a shade late, and I winced as hot metal opened up a jagged rent in my leg. I retaliated with a pitiable swing for the undead’s head, watching a new, tiny notch appear in the softened metal before it hefted its sword high and tensed to bring it down. I was about to be split in half.

  My arms moved on their own, raised my weapon up as my feet planted themselves and my weight spread. Every muscle in my body tensed against the undead’s strength when our swords clashed. Still I was driven down, knees almost buckling and joints straining to hold myself up against it.

  The shambler’s leg came up and I winced, ready for the kick which might well kill me. But it didn’t land. As soon as one foot was off the ground the other caved, and a thousand pounds of rotted flesh and rusted metal collapsed backwards to keep burning on the floor.