"Get your hands off her!"
At the sight of Chap and Magiere, Chane scrambled out of the way, reaching for the longsword embedded in the headless corpse.
"No, Magiere," Wynn called. "He saved me. He came to help me."
"Came to help you?" Magiere's rage increased. "Wynn, get back!"
She charged toward Chane as he jerked out the longsword and turned to face her. Black fluids stained his shirt around a tear in the fabric. She thrust under and up, breaking inside his guard and slicing him across stomach with the falchion's tip.
Chane gasped at the touch of her blade and retreated. Magiere knew it would burn him as a mortal weapon would not.
"Stop it!" Wynn shouted.
Chap rushed by and launched into Chane with snapping teeth. Both dog and vampire toppled back across the wet ground. Magiere followed, waiting for an opening to pin the undead down by running him through. He saw her, kicked up, and caught her in the jaw, then pitched Chap away so hard that the dog roiled off into the brush.
Chane rose up, shifting his gaze between his two opponents. Magiere sidestepped, watching for an opening.
"Wynn is correct," he said. "I only wanted to save her from these walking dead."
"Liar!" Magiere snapped, and she felt her canines extend as she shook her head. "You're nothing but a killer… and you're getting tired."
Chap was on his feet again, but he limped upon his rear left leg. He growled again, watching Chane's every move, and hobbled closer. The calm in Chane's light brown eyes faded, and he looked at Magiere in anger.
"So are you," he replied.
Magiere charged Chane, swinging for his head. He dodged, spun, and swung back. When she blocked, he let his blade slide off hers.
He turned so fast, she could barely follow. Instead of slicing back with the sword, he slipped inside her guard and slammed his fist into her cheek. Only Rashed, the Suman undead of Miiska, had ever struck out with such force. Magiere went down.
A moment later, he was standing above her, sword gripped in both hands, its tip pointed down at the center of her chest.
"No!" Wynn shouted, and the sage threw herself over Magiere, kneeling with one palm raised toward Chane. "Please, do not hurt her."
Chane hesitated, lowering the blade as he stared at Wynn.
Magiere reached up and grabbed his wrist. He tried to jerk away, and his own effort pulled Magiere to her feet and Wynn tumbled away. Magiere thrust her sword up through the circle of Chane's arms.
The falchion's tip bit into the soft skin below Chane's jaw, tearing his neck open as it slid out over his right shoulder. Black fluid spat from the wound. He toppled back, and Magiere fell on top of him, flattening the longsword between them. She rolled left, blade up, and swung down on his exposed neck.
Chane's head shot off his body and rolled through the mulch.
She remembered Wynn shouting… Chap snarling… but all she could do in the moment was breathe until her self-control returned.
Wynn crouched by Chane's body, pulling at his shirt as she sobbed. The bandage had fallen from her wound, and she was bleeding again.
"No… oh, Magiere, no," she whispered.
"Stop it," Magiere told her.
Wynn looked up with wild eyes. "You murdered him, as if he were nothing! What are you, Magiere? You think you are better than him? You are worse."
Enough anger swelled in Magiere that she almost slapped the sage. The little fool had put her trust in a monster. Then she remembered Wynn's earlier words, and her anger became cold suspicion.
Chane had come to help her.
"How long has he been following us?" Magiere asked. "How long have you known?"
"Since Stefan's village," Wynn shouted, dirt smearing in tears upon her round face. "I did not banish Vordana-he did! He is the one who saved us from an undead you could not overcome. But I was afraid to tell you… because you might have killed him."
Wynn dropped her head upon Chane's chest.
Magiere stood up and backed away.
"You lied to us? Betrayed us? All those nights you curled up with Chap, you knew an undead was trailing us. You even knew who it was-and you didn't say a word?"
She trusted few people, and she had trusted Wynn with her life and Leesil's.
Chap ceased growling and stood watching them both. He looked to the south and whined as he trotted toward the heavy brush. When he barked once, Magiere joined him, peering out into the forest.
Leesil came toward them, at times leaning against or catching himself on a tree trunk or low branch. Relief washed everything else away for the moment, and Magiere hurried to him. As he grabbed for her, she pulled him close. He threw an arm over her shoulders for support.
"I'm so glad to see you," he said, half-breathless. "I lost Wynn."
"Are you hurt?" she asked.
"Just weak. Vordana caught up to me."
She looked back the way he'd come. "Where is he?"
Leesil lifted his other hand, waving off her concern. "He's back there somewhere… most of him, that is. We won't have to see that awful grin of his again."
Magiere pulled his face in close to hers without a word. Leesil, always so constant, who kept her in the light.
"We have to find Wynn," he said.
Magiere pulled him through the brush, and he took in the scene of the decapitated mariners, and Wynn with her face resting on the chest of a headless corpse. Leesil pulled away from Magiere, catching sight of the head beyond the body.
"What in? Wynn, you're bleeding. Is that Chane?"
The sage lifted her face, but she didn't look at him. She had ceased weeping and stared vacantly into the dark.
Magiere had no pity for her. She had betrayed them.
"We have to burn the bodies," Magiere said.
Wynn blinked once and grabbed Chane's sword. She could barely lift it, but she pointed the blade out, and her shoulder started bleeding harder. "You are not touching him!"
Leesil's eyes darted back and forth between the sage and Magiere, unsure what was happening. Chap whined loudly, and barked twice.
"No?" Leesil said, looking to the dog. "No to what?"
Magiere kept her angry eyes on the sage as she joined Chap once again.
She heard an eerie scream in the distance, and a hissing sound much closer. A glimmer flew through a tree only a stone's throw into the forest. It was the child ghost who had led her to Ubad.
"We don't have time to burn bodies," Magiere said. "Ubad is dead, but his servants are still out there. We need to go."
"They're coming back?" Leesil said. "There was wind earlier that seemed to drag them all away."
He stepped slowly, either in fatigue or in fear of startling Wynn as he neared the young sage.
'Time to leave," he said quietly.
Wynn's effort failed all at once as the sword tip dropped to the ground. Leesil picked up the blood-soaked bandage at her feet. He pressed it into her shoulder, closing the torn short robe over it.
Chap led the way, holding his rear left leg off the ground now and then as he loped ahead. Leesil was beside Wynn, and it was difficult to tell who held whom up as they hurried. Magiere followed last, watching both ahead and behind.
She spotted open space ahead out ahead. They were almost free of this marshland forest, filled with its apparitions of the dead and scaled coils of night. A wail rang out through the trees behind them, growing louder, closer, and Magiere looked back.
The grizzled soldier with the stomach wound rushed through the air toward her.
"Run!" she shouted. "The forest ends just ahead."
Leesil glanced back, caught sight of the ghost, and gripped Wynn's shoulders, propelling her forward. Magiere drew her falchion, flashing it in the air as she tried to catch the spirit's attention.