Morlo the Great and Terrible got quiet after that, which was not a nice thing to experience. I was hardly a fan of the curmudgeonly arsehole when he was talking, but the sullen, considering silence that overcame him unnerved me to an extent that was hard to properly put into words. We kept on across the countryside, and I kept hoping he might break the quietitude with some arcane insight about everything.

  He did not. There was always more journey, and none of it left me more enlightened than any of the leagues behind us. Vara remained as bitchy as ever and Morlo was bloody Morlo.

  If there was one advantage to all the long travel, it was that I had ample time to practice my swordsmanship. Not only that, but Morlo seemed rather enthusiastic about it—to the point of helping me.

  You might expect a contest between a seventeen year-old man in the prime of his life and an elder who more resembled a scrotum than a person to be over quite fast, but you’d be wrong. Putting aside that Morlo moved like he was half his apparent age, and wielded his wooden practice sword with a grip like Larick’s, his bloody weapon was never where I thought it would be. I didn’t land a single hit on him as we trained.

  “What sort of hero are you?” the Thaumaturge giggled, smacking my sword aside for the fifteenth time that morning and, deliberately I thought, leaving rather a large bruise on the wrist.

  “An unlikely one,” I grumbled, bending down to pick the wooden stick back up. It was evening at the moment, and we’d stopped only briefly to rest our horses. It was these rests that always left Morlo’s beatings the worst, he had a lot of pent up energy and was always eager to vent it through swordplay.

  “Watch!” The Thaumaturge yelled just as he swung for my hand as I tried to pick up the fallen sword. I jerked my fingers back barely in time to keep from having the knuckles smacked, glared up at him.

  “You know,” he grinned, “I think your reflexes are faster now. They might even be almost not-shit.”

  Vara was watching it all from the side, smirking away like me getting thrashed by an old man was the funniest thing she’d ever seen. I had half a mind to stop but, of course, did not. However humiliating, painful and lengthy these sessions were…They were also necessary, and Morlo wasn’t wrong that I’d reaped a few benefits from them already. I’d never trained half so hard in my life, nor with quite as good an instructor, and if I had a lot more bruises now they were well worth sharpening my skills up.

  I didn’t think we’d be lucky enough to avoid another tangle with the undead forever.

  That evening we’d made camp at the crest of a hill, which I hadn’t inquired about the ‘whys’ of but Morlo had insisted on explaining anyway. Sight lines in every direction, of course, and it would slow anyone trying to rush up after us, which gave him more time to use his magic. The magic in question would also be more powerful.

  I had asked about that last part, and he’d almost gleefully explained.

  “To do Thaumaturgy is to seize magic from the world itself, my sources of power tend to be high up. The distance between me and them makes it harder to work, shrinking those distances makes it easier. I’ll be a shade more potent up here than lower down.”

  The thought of Morlo with even more uncontrollable power at his disposal was far from a comforting one, and I did my very best not to let it take up too much of the space in my head. That was made difficult, however, by the fact that I didn’t really have much else to do at the time.

  We hadn’t been planning to stay for more than the hour, but of course plans are made to be ruined. Circumstance conspired as it always did, and within half that time Vara sat bolt-upright and barked out a warning.

  “Something down there at the base!” She snapped, pointing an almost frenzied finger to indicate the direction, “something moving, look!”

  I did look, and I just about shit myself when I saw that the movement in question was undead. I shrieked, like a tiny little girl, and backed off. The noise probably carried right down the hilltop and to our persuers, because they sped up as they started an advance up the hilltop within the moment. Leave it to me to give the game away and let our enemies know they’d been spotted of course.

  “Back, idiots!” Morlo roared as he stepped forwards, and I felt my ears popping. His body was steaming, magic pouring around it and seeming to gather as visible cyan energy dancing along in streaks and twinkles. It built for all of a second before orange flames emerged at his hands, then leapt down the hillside.

  The fireball hit just beyond the front ranks of undead, and exploded outwards like a keg of gunpowder. They must have been a hundred yards below and the heat was far from reaching me, but I saw its effects as grass wilted and the entire landscape around us was suddenly lit up and clear in the incendiary glare.

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  My sword had gotten its way into my grip, somewhere. I didn’t remember drawing it, but I was glad I had now.

  “To the horses!” Morlo roared, not needing to tell me twice. Or once. I leapt to the back of mine and urged the beast on quickly, hearing the Thaumaturge call for me to stop and paying him no heed. Now when you find yourself suddenly attacked, it’s always important that you stay together. Disunity and lack of cohesion will quickly spiral into a disaster if allowed, and the larger the group the more easily this can happen. I promptly caused this eventuality by riding away form my own allies in a blind panic.

  Morlo’s cries reached me easily enough, no horse was even one tenth as fast as sound, but I didn’t listen. Couldn’t listen. I’d lost control of myself, almost, and was operating on a state of sustained, mindless panic. I just drove the animal on and left my allies in the dust.

  But animal instinct is no good thing, there’s a reason only species who act beyond it end up building cities and founding nations. In this instance it drove me right towards a wall of the undead.

  They evidently weren’t expecting it, but that didn’t help nearly as much as it might have. Scrambling quickly and clumsily, the shamblers nonetheless managed to put up a few spears as I closed in—and this time there was no Thaumaturge to break their balance before we reached one another.

  I might have gotten skewered on that rusty metal, and that would’ve been all she wrote for dear old Kyvaine. But I got lucky again. My idiot horse reared up at the last second, and spears which had been meant for me found it instead. I felt the creature stop, all at once. A horrible, jerky halting that shook me from it and sent me tumbling down into the dirt of the hill.

  Then I rolled. Not sure how long for, everything was, understandably, somewhat muddled in my head at the time. I rolled until my considerable momentum had dwindled to nothing and my whole body was caked in dirty, then I scrambled up just as more shamblers closed from around me.

  No fighting those, not in numbers like that and with the weapon I had. Besides, I was still in panicking animal mode. I sprinted like I never had before and started taking off down the hilltop on great loping strides as the shamblers shambled after me. Always been quick, me, for more reason than one. Longer legs means a longer stride, and it helps to build some good stamina and explosive movements when you use a local fencing contest to impress girls.

  Shamblers are quick too though, not in the same way. They’re not really superhuman as much as just roughly human and willing to injure themselves in anything they attempt to do. Dozens of them peeled off and took after me, sprinting fast enough to tear tendons and strain joints.

  And, of course, they were undead. The burning of exertion that slowed and weakened muscles wasn’t a factor for them like it was for me. But I was still in scared animal mode, so I just kept running and hoping to God they wouldn’t catch me.

  I reached the base of the hill, took off like my arse was on fire and heard them cross over it a few moments later. There was a river not too far away, a couple of hundred paces maybe. Close enough to reach? I considered the possibility it wasn’t with every step I took towards it. Not like I had any other options, the undead were between me and Morlo now.

  It’s always hard to judge what is and isn’t within ‘sprinting distance’ though, unless you do a fuck-lot of sprinting to learn from experience. In my case I was shy by a good score of paces, slowing to…Well, a shamble. That was far too irony for my taste.

  Fortunately, I wouldn’t be tormented with feeling it for long. Still running, the shamblers closed fast and started encircling me. I knew I was fucked the moment I saw the first row of them peel around to stand between me and the river. And that was that, I was fucked. I stood there for a second, heaving and panting and trembling and crying. Did I piss myself? You know, I can’t remember. I always go before a fight these days, because I always go during if I don’t. I suppose I probably did. Yes, I was standing there with a sword in one hand and empty air in the other and an ungodly trembling in both. Covered in sweat, piss running down my leg, tears down my cheeks, fear down my spine.

  There’s your hero, ladies and gentlemen. The legendary Kyvaine, gaze upon him and tremble. The shamblers definitely didn’t, they came right on—about as scared of the crying teenager as they were of anything else. Granted, a pack of humans wouldn’t be much scared of me.

  And that was when I moved. Instinctively, like before, but also entirely unlike it as well. It was like some other intelligence had started guiding my body, one that had been in a lot more fights than my own.

  When the first shambler got near enough, my whole body uncoiled like a compressed spring and practically launched me at it. I wasn’t sure where the energy came from, but I was glad for it. The shambler seemed as surprised as I was because its weapon came up far too late to keep the blade from biting hard into its face.

  This was a slashing weapon more than a thrusting one, and so I didn’t impale the thing’s brain. I did smash it out though, because the sheer impact pushed bits of skull in and right into the brainpan. Before the shambler was even falling, I leapt at the others and swung—slashing this time.

  I found my weapon blocked, shearing big flakes of rust and shoddy metal from the blade of my opponent right as I punched it across the face. Something flared up in my hand, noticed only by that part of my mind which was now distant until the fighting finished, and I punched again. Took another blow still to knock the shambler down, and I kept it there with a hard heel to the knee while I focused on the others.

  Blades bit into my body from multiple sides, and seeing a hand removed as my sword bit into a rotting wrist was of little consolation. I kept running, driving the pain away and stumbling like a drunkard with a wounded leg. Fifteen paces to the river, with almost as many shamblers at my back as before. Ten, and spears were starting to be thrown. Something smacked into my back at five, leaving me to fall and roll the last few feet right as they reached me.

  The water’s embrace was cold, numbing, deadly. In fact, it was the second deadliest thing I’d felt today.

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