That one’s no longer un-dead.
Closer to the body, the acrid smell of burnt flesh was enough to make the veteran soldier hold his breath. He reached forward with his free hand and grabbed the Kanosee’s wrist to turn him, but when he pulled on him to do so, the flesh of the thing’s forearm and hand stripped off like a macabre glove. Sienhin tossed it aside to hit the water with a hollow slap.
What in the name of the Gods happened?
The general faced the dim light and started toward it, wading carefully through the murky water. Between him and his goal, he saw other darker patches floating. Each of them he touched with the tip of his sword; none of them reacted. A disembodied head floated by. An arm. A leg. Things so badly damaged they were rendered unrecognizable.
How did I survive this?
Dank water splashed around his knees as he approached the light and he heard a noise that made him stop. For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of dripping water and the lap of the tiny waves created by his movement sloshing against dismembered body parts.
Then he heard it again: a moan from the vicinity of the underwater glow. Perhaps a human sound, perhaps not. Sienhin inhaled a distasteful breath into his chest and moved toward the sound.
A few strides away, the glow cast enough light for him to see the man slouching precariously against the tunnel wall. In the dim illumination, his skin looked black, his physique frail, and Sienhin wondered if this might be the fiend responsible for the blinding flash of light that almost ended his life. He extended the tip of his sword at the man’s throat.
“Who are you, devil?”
White eyes, a stark contrast against the black skin, moved lazily at the sound of his voice, but the man did not otherwise move. Sienhin took two more steps.
“Speak or die,” he barked.
A sound whispered through charred lips, a sibilance that might have been nothing more than a breath. The general leaned closer, his blade pressed close to the man’s throat.
“Did you do this? Did you kill them all?”
He turned his ear toward the man. A click sounded at the back of his parched throat, then words hissed past a swollen tongue.
“Ssssssienhinnn. Hhhhhhelpp meeeeee.”
Sienhin pulled his face away from the man, looked into his eyes and saw pain in them. The eyelids were burned away, the ability to blink taken with them. The man’s nose was gone, his cheeks blackened and cracked. All the hair was melted from his head.
“Perdaro.”
The general lowered his sword and looked the man up and down. Tatters of clothing hung from his shoulders and a patch of flesh burnt red rather than charred black showed through his shirt. His fingers were curled to useless claws, his arms bent crooked and tight by tendons shrunken with the heat. Sienhin’s lips flattened to a thin line beneath his bushy mustache. No man should have to endure such pain.
Almost no man.
“Sssienhinnn. K-k-k-kill mmmmeeee.”
He stared at the man, remembering who he’d been, or who he’d thought he was before he sold out his kingdom. Had he ever been the man Sienhin thought him to be? Or was it years of trickery and deception, living behind a facade, a mask hiding his true nature and allegiance from those closest to him? Now he’d never know.
Sienhin raised his blade to the man’s throat again, pressed its edge against his flesh and watched as the burnt and destroyed face of Hahn Perdaro flinched with the pain of its touch.
“You deserve death,” the general said leaning close to his one-time compatriot’s ear. “But you do not deserve mercy.”
He stepped back and slid his sword back into its scabbard.
Without lips or eyelids, the burnt man was incapable of showing expression, yet Sienhin saw a change in his eyes as panic rose in them. Had he been able to move, he’d have undoubtedly grasped at the general’s clothes, begged him for death, but he could only look back with those panicked, pleading eyes. Breath huffed between his teeth, perhaps intended as words, but Sir Alton Sienhin didn’t stop to find out.
Instead, the veteran warrior plunged his hand into the murky water and retrieved the staff. Its end glowed with eldritch light, an untrustworthy light, but he needed it to help him make his way down the tunnel. He extended it in front of himself and sloshed away, leaving the Voice of the People to his torturous pain and whatever fate might befall him.
Chapter Eighteen
With one quick movement, the undead soldier yanked the mask off Graymon’s face. Khirro slid an inch of the dagger’s blade out of its sheath, but stayed his hand when he saw the face of the living soldiers wrinkle with disgust; he stole a glance at the boy’s face.
Athryn’s magic had worked equally as well on Graymon as it had on Khirro. One side of the boy’s face looked red and wet, glistening in the sun, the other side unscathed. Khirro wondered if this was how Athryn himself looked before his wound healed to the pink, shiny scar he’d had before the Necromancer healed it.
The undead soldier dropped the mask back in place over Graymon’s face.
“What did you do to him?” one of the others asked.
“Tried to escape,” Khirro replied rumbling the words in the back of his throat. “Taught him not to try again.”
“Long as he’s alive, I guess. The witch don’t care what he looks like.”
The second soldier punched the first’s arm. “Don’t call her that.” He gestured toward first Khirro then the undead soldier. “She got ears everywhere, Tugg.”
Tugg shrugged. “Least we get to go back to camp now.”
The two men started back down the road the way they came, toward the salt flats and the Kanosee army camp sprawled across them. The dead man stood in front of Khirro, blocking his way, watching him; expressionless, emotionless. Khirro pulled his lips back to expose his teeth and growled a low rumble at the back of his throat.
What am I doing?
He didn’t know if the dead acted this way, but felt he needed to do something. The thing stared at him a second longer, then turned away to follow his living companions. Khirro released his breath slowly and relaxed his knotted shoulder muscles before looking to Athryn. The magician nodded shallowly. Traveling with the enemy was far from ideal, but it would get them where they wanted to go.
“Come,” Khirro gruffed and yanked on the rope as he started down the road. At the end of it lay the Isthmus Fortress and his beleaguered country, a kingdom he was destined to save.
Or watch perish.
***
Tugg and the other soldier, Mandich, sat near the fire warming their hands and slowly turning a rabbit skewered on a makeshift spit. Flames crackled with the juice dripping from the meat and wispy gray smoke carried the odor of it cooking toward the clear night sky.
Khirro stood off to the side, away from the two Kanosee and the dead man standing erect and unmoving behind them, guarding his prisoners who sat on a fallen log a pace behind him. Each breath he inhaled drew the sweet aroma of cooking meat into his nose, sending it directly to his empty stomach. He felt it stir and move, ready to gurgle its emptiness to the world, and it was for this reason he stood so far away from the others. He hadn’t seen the dead man eat, and could think of no reason why one would be hungry once dead, so why would his stomach growl?
The undead warrior stared across the fire at Khirro, his gaze unwavering, unblinking, as though he expected to catch them at something. Khirro stared back, holding the thing’s eyes, but his legs felt weary after their flight, and he struggled to keep them from shaking. He was exhausted and needed to rest.
Do dead men sleep?
Watching the monster in his black mail splashed with red, it didn’t seem so. The thing stood so steady and unmoving, Khirro couldn’t even detect his chest rising and falling with breath. But why should it? If a dead man didn’t need to eat or rest, why would he need to breathe? Khirro made his own breathing as shallow as he could in an attempt to keep the necessity of life from giving away the fact he wasn’t dead.