Whingrham was not the largest town I’d been to, even then. A mercer father meant lots more travelling for me than most boys my age, or most men ten years older at that. Its outer wall was still a reassuring sight though. I hadn’t left Sheppleberry in about half a year, not since coming third in that tourney, and though fifteen feet of oak was better than thin air as far as defensive barricades went…

  The protection out here was beyond compare.

  It looked to me that the wall was twenty feet, at least. It was wider of course, sheltering a population five or six times larger than that of the smaller village, but also a great deal better. Made from worked stone rather than lumber and, I thought, at least somewhat thicker. I doubted it would’ve held up to a cannon (and, as a more experienced warrior, can now say in retrospect that it definitely wouldn’t have taken more than a half hour for it to be breached by even a single one) but the thought of those lumbering undead giants managing to smash their way past it struck me as nothing short of ridiculous. For the first time in hours, I relaxed.

  Slightly.

  Father had a way with city watchmen of course: they tended to be lazy, underqualified idiots. It wasn’t that you couldn’t become a watchman if you had anything in your skull, just that being smarter than a rock that had already been used to bludgeon someone meant you could generally find about fifty other jobs that were better.

  This meant two things. The first was that city watchmen were dirt poor, and the second was that they were some of the most easily manipulated human beings you could expect to find anywhere. Both of these traits worked together well in helping my father bribe our way into the city without waiting for a proper permit to get all our luggage past its gate. We even found ourselves a nice escort to our accomodations.

  It didn’t take long to find a high-end inn willing to take us in on short notice, and soon I was relaxing in a bath. I always did like baths, back then, and over the years I’ve come to love them outright. Baths are peaceful things, and hot water has a way of unknotting bundled muscles and feeling like it’s scouring the pain out of open wounds.

  Left to my own devises, I might have stayed there all night. It was only the Thaumaturge’s head suddenly popping up from underneath the water of my own fucking bath that stopped me.

  For one moment I stared at him, and he grinned up at me. It was just the head, everything from the neck down seemed gone. Wrinkly collarbones were half-merged with the water and wrinkly face and skull popped up above it. He had his stupid hat on, the mad glint in his eyes, and he was staring at me with what could best be described as enthusiasm. After several seconds, at last, he spoke.

  “Before—”

  I screamed, louder than I’ve ever screamed before perhaps. Loud enough that I knew people would be barging into the bathing chamber to check on me within seconds. After a quarter-minute, though, I ran out of breath and turned my shout into a desperate scramble for air. Still, nobody had come.

  —”Before you scream,” the Thaumaturge continued as if I’d made no noise at all, “I’ve warded this entire room and sealed it off with a shield of force. You won’t be able to get the attention of anyone outside it, or vice-versa.”

  I screamed again, because I was an idiot.

  “Shut up!” Morlo’s voice took on an angrier edge which did, in fact, shut me up. There are few things that inspire obedience quite like the irritation of a Thaumaturge, let me say. I practically froze as the old man remained there, staring me down.

  “Your father is an idiot boy who’s made an idiot mistake,” he said at last. My first thought, stupiddly, was amusement at hearing my father called boy. Oh he’d have hated that, another entry to the endlessly tall pile of slights he’d received for not being a real elder.

  “I…Am safe here,” I replied. Morlo started laughing outright.

  “You think that? You’re an idiot too, oh you haven’t the slightest idea what you’ve done boy. That little town of yours is already being torn asunder by undead and this slightly less little one will follow soon after.”

  He might’ve smacked me and had less effect.

  “Sh-Sheppleberry?!” I croaked, “what do you mean torn asunder? I thought they were…” I lowered my voice, naturally, even though the Thaumaturge had already proven rather solidly that there was no point in it, “I thought they were after me, those undead…?”

  “Bah,” the Thaumaturge waved a hand as if to swat my words away. “They’re after you, sort of, but they don’t just home in on you. What did you think they could smell you from miles away or something? Why do you think they attacked your house, you daft cunt? They’re combing through all the nearby human settlements they can.”

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  I was far too selfish to feel any great wash of guilt at the notion, if Sheppleberry were crushed tonight it would only mean that I’d saved myself by leaving it beforehand. The idea that I was still in danger, though, that shook me very, very deeply.

  “So what can I do then?”

  Morlo grinned without bothering to try and hide it.

  “I’ll be at the outskirts of this town come sundown, half an hour from now. Meet me there and we’ll head off.”

  “No!” I snapped, trying to think it through despite the million other thoughts rushing their way across my wits. “...No! That’s, that’s ridiculous. Why would I seek safety by running off with some mad Thaumaturge!?”

  “Because if I wanted to hurt you, I could’ve already done it.” He said it so calmly that it almost tricked me into not shivering at the reminder. “Besides, all the things that make you scared of me are more reason to trust my ability to protect you.”

  He was making some sort of sense, at least.

  “And why should I trust you? How do I know you don’t have some nefarious goal here? Why do you even want to protect me?”

  Morlo rolled his eyes.

  “To achieve my nefarious goal,” he sighed as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, “but I need you alive to do that—which is why I haven’t just killed you yet. I’m really running out of patience here boy, do you want to avoid being mauled by undead or not?”

  I was running out of things to protest with, but still had something.

  “My father would never allow it.”

  Morlo’s irritation melted away instantly, and a great grin sprouted on his face as if he’d just been promised the world. When his voice sounded again, it was with triumph.

  “Oh, I think you’ll find he will. As a matter of fact I’ve convinced him already.”

  I was genuinely speechless for a second, it was only a shame there were no young women nearby to enjoy what would surely have been a once-in-a-lifetime miracle for them. Like all good things, it ended quickly and with a great deal of pitiable bluster on my part.

  “H…How?!” I managed, but the Thaumaturge just shook his disembodied head.

  “No time for that now, think on your answer but not for too long. Eastern gate, remember.” Without another word the head sank back into the water. I jumped, expecting to feel it dropping down onto my legs but…No. It was just gone.

  I didn’t enjoy the rest of my bath, something about being terrorised by a mad Thaumaturge just soured the whole experience. I got out, towelled myself quickly and made my way out of the bathing chamber more quickly still. I found my mother waiting for me outside, my father alongside her.

  “Go with the Thaumaturge,” he said, not even addressing me before he did. It threw me for a loop, and I had to actually take a pause to catch up with the unexpected shift of the conversation.

  “I…What?”

  “You heard me, idiot,” he snapped, “go with the Thaumaturge and leave us here.”

  I took a shocked step back. “I…Why are you changing your tune so quickly here?” Anger of all things bubbled up in the pit of my stomach, though I didn’t know why at the time. My father matched it.

  “Because I don’t want this household to be in jeopardy from having its head kept next to someone who’s drawing an army of undead after him!”

  A punch to the face, that. My father had never hit me, he didn’t need to. Sentences like that one did all the same damage and more.

  “So you’re just giving up?!” I snapped, “letting a Thaumaturge bully you into sending me off?!” I turned to my mother, but found no contradiction of my father’s words in her eyes. She…Fuck, she agreed with him.

  “You’re in danger,” was all she said. I didn’t miss the way she looked at my father, there was something odd there. Uncertain. I knew why. He was behaving off. Oh he held himself well enough, and I supposed the circumstances explained a great many of the subtler twists in his demeanour, but there was something about him that still…Off. Off was the only word that worked, vague and useless but…Accurate.

  “You’re trying to get rid of me!” I wasn’t sure where my anger came from, but it did. And it lasted only a moment before my father’s hand cracked across my face and sent me a step back.

  “My mind is made up,” he spat, “now be out of here within twenty minutes.”

  Everything that happened next did so as a blur.

  I don’t really remember getting myself changed, nor packing, nor making my way out. I doubt I did all but the former by myself—my travel things were too well-prepared to have been assembled by me. I said goodbye to my mother, didn’t to my father, and made my way through the town.

  At the eastern gate, just as I’d been told, was Morlo the Great and Terrible. He didn’t look like any of those things now, shortish, hunched and grinning with beady eyes up at me as I drew near. My blood boiled just at the sight of him. This was the man who’d thrown everything in my life out of place.

  That he actually wasn’t, and that he was actually saving me from the consequences of my own actions, did not really register to my idiot young brain.

  “You’ve ruined everything,” I spat.

  Morlo just started laughing. “It’s dark already,” the Thaumaturge responded, “and the shamblers will be here within the hour. They can’t sense you everywhere but if one gets within a few hundred paces you’ll have far more at your back. I’d suggest you cut down the whinging and follow me.”

  I stood there, wavering for a second. My anger was not something I usually saw ignored, not by anyone except the elders and my father.

  But then, why was that exactly? Because of power, and how they simply had more than me. There was nothing special about those men save that they stood higher in the local hierarchy than me. And this man, this Thaumaturge, was…Well, he was difficult to place. But magic powers certainly rated higher than being a rich brat.

  “Let’s go.” I said the words with some finality, but Morlo the Great and Terrible didn’t seem to notice at all. He just started walking, and I started following. It wasn’t until we came to approach a group of tethered horses that either of us spoke.

  The speaker was me, and the speech was a question. Because I saw Vara standing right beside the animals and looking up at me with a face made of pure, cold fury.

  “What the fuck?”

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