Death After Death
Chapter 254: Expected by the Unexpected

They were three days down the rugged mountains, and trees were slowly becoming more common than boulders now that they were almost to the foothills once more. Before the sun had set, he’d even been able to see the forests in the distance, and though he couldn’t quite see the river or the town their mission had started from, he knew it couldn’t be more than fifty miles away or so.

None of that knowledge helped him when the spell rang out. Simon didn’t hear the words, but he knew them just the same as he watched a lightning bolt strike the center of the camp, where the knights had gathered to discuss things.

Gervuul Dnarth Vrazig Simon thought to himself as he watched the fiery bolt streak down from the dark, cloudless sky and blow apart the area where the knights had been sitting. Greater distant lightning was a powerful spell, and it spoke to a powerful foe. The arcing electricity was gone in an instant, but still, it was a fearsome thing. It was also the first time he’d been on the receiving end for a spell of such power from a mortal opponent.

At least I hope it’s a mortal opponent, he thought.

He’d dealt with fire and even greater fire from men and goblins. Aside from his brush with the demon in his last life, though, he’d never had to deal with a spell that could one-shot him before he saw it coming.

Of course, being on the receiving end was relative. He’d been a hundred yards away at the time, carrying a load of firewood to the watch fire at their rear. That was too far away to even feel the heat of the strike ripple outward. The roar still deafened him enough to mute the screams that followed in the wake of the lightning strike, but Simon was ignoring those.

His instinct to run and heal who he could was a trap, and instead, he whispered the words of lesser light concentration as he looked out into the night to try to find the person who’d done it. It was a moonless night, but now that his eyes weredrawing in enough extra light to make the fires painfully bright, he could see as well as he’d been able to in twilight a few hours ago. What he saw was not what he expected.

He dropped his wood immediately and drew his sword. “To arms!” he yelled at the dazed group. “They’re coming! The dead are coming!”

He knew that he risked being targeted for shouting an alarm, but amidst the mob that was approaching, he couldn’t see anyone who looked like a warlock. All he saw was a tide of the dead coming up the slope. There were hundreds of them, and though they seemed to move with a bit more discipline than he was used to, they still had the blank gazes and the clumsy movements of the zombies he’d fought so many times before.

The small army he was a part of had more than fifty men and dozens of animals, so they had to choose their campsites well. Tonight, they’d chosen a wide spot in the main road with a tiny watering hole near the cliff that protected their rear, and they’d made fires on the road on both sides so they’d see anyone coming from either direction. Toward the southwest, there was a gentle slope that led down into an empty valley that was streaked with a dry gulch and several sandy washes. It barely had enough grass for grazing, and they’d tethered their animals in that area.

Now, the horses and mules were breaking free of their tethers and running for their lives in all directions as the dead shambled past them in a wave toward the encampment. Simon was sure he would have been able to hear them if he hadn’t been partially deafened by the blast.

Simon certainly didn’t blame the beasts for running. He would have done the same if he’d been smart. Instead, he charged through camp with his sword out as he ran toward danger, shouting more warnings and instructions. A few people moved to join him and drew their weapons automatically, but most of them were rushing toward where the bolt of lightning had struck down several people.

That’s just asking for another blast to take out everyone else, Simon told himself as he avoided the area.

Even after he’d reached the slope and engaged the first zombie, though, a second lightning strike never landed. That made Simon curious, but he didn’t have time to figure out why that was the case before he engaged the closest zombies.

“Don’t let them bite you!” he roared as he noticed almost no one had armor on. Simon didn’t either, but there wasn’t much he could do about that now. He’d been lulled into a false sense of complacency by the events. In fact, he’d have convinced himself that these people really were a year or two too early, and they’d be back when the real necromancer showed up. Now he knew the truth; this wasn’t bandits, and they were here at exactly the right time, but his foreknowledge didn’t exactly do him a lot of good.

Now, nothing did any good except for hacking away at the dead. Even his magical sword was useless because it was powered by the life force of his enemy. So, he threw that down after it failed to cleave through the next of the first zombie like he’d planned and pulled out the hatchet he’d been using to gather wood instead. Then he used the hard butt-end like a mace and took out each zombie that came toward him in a single blow.

Still, the way they moved unnerved him, and it took him a minute to realize that was because they were attacking in ranks, which was something zombies should never do. They were unintelligent, hungry creatures. They were a mob, not an army.

The rest of the men weren’t faring as well. They were largely killing zombies, too, but there had also been cries of pain. Someone got bit, he told himself. I just hope it’s not fucking Rodrick.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Several times, he saw men on his side disarmed because they’d stabbed a zombie through the heart or the gut, and it had just kept right on coming, depriving them of their blade. Simon yelled out instructions time and time again in those chaotic few minutes. Go for the head. Don’t let them bite you. Don’t get surrounded.

It was simple stuff, but whether people couldn’t hear him over the din or they couldn’t make themselves do reasonable things over the panic that the situation caused. He couldn’t say.

Most of the men at arms and the squires he fought beside attacked as they always did and were quickly dragged under the wall of grasping arms and rotting flesh. Meanwhile, Simon swung until his arm ached, going for the temple or the spine of the one in front of him over and over, depending on which way they were facing.

This wasn’t really combat. Not as he thought of it. It was exhausting and more like chopping wood. Fortunately, he’d been doing an awful lot of that in the last few years, and he continued even after his arms felt thick and heavy. After less than ten minutes, Simon was with only other porters. They, at least, had listened to the scary stories he’d told them around the campfires some nights. They didn’t need to hear him now; they’d already internalized the lessons he’d taught them about fighting zombies.

Still, it was a losing fight and only a couple minutes after that, Simon heard someone sound the horn. Though he’d hoped that they were reforming, the second blast sounded almost immediately, and then a third. It was a call to retreat.

Simon did so, grudgingly. He only moved back when everyone else had, and even then, he never got too far ahead of the dead so he could keep killing them with opportune strikes. That only continued for another hundred yards. Then, the zombies stopped following them. That puzzled Simon because they should have stayed with them until they’d killed and eaten everyone, but strangely, that wasn’t the case.

What in the fuck is going on, Simon wondered as he followed the tide of stumbling men as they ran down the trail away from the fight. No second lightning bolt, even though we were sitting ducks and well-drilled zombies instead of a mob? This is crazy.

It wasn’t any less crazy once he met up with the few other survivors. A few of the men that had survived the lightning bolt were thrown over the back of mules and horses, but everyone else was on foot, and all of them were looking pretty ragged. Fear was more common than armor or even clothing in some cases. Half of the men that survived had done so because they’d woken up from a sound sleep and hadn’t even bothered to put on trousers before they’d run for their lives.

They didn’t stop, either. Not for a long time. They were more than a mile down the road before people finally gathered behind a large boulder and established a defensive cordon for an attack that never came.

As he took stock of the situation, he quickly decided there were only a few silver linings. The first was that Rodrick was still alive even if he was bitten, and the second was that the man who was one of the unspoken was dead or missing. That made what he was going to do next only slightly less dangerous.

“Alright, everyone, I know we’re all panicking, but if we don’t get those wounds treated, you’re going to be in for a really bad night,” he started. “We need to—”

“Who put you in charge?” one of the men at arms asked as he wrapped a bloody strip of cloth around his arm. “Sir Kongrin will—”

“Your leader has third-degree burns and will be lucky to survive the night,” Simon shot back. “That makes him more fortunate than everyone else who was bitten by one of those things.”

“What were they?” another man asked, causing the fragile silence Simon had only just started establishing to unravel. Suddenly, half a dozen different conversations were unleashed at once. Who was in charge? What was happening next? Were they about to be attacked again? Were they really attacked by the dead?

“Enough!” Simon shouted, moving to the most seriously injured man who was standing close to him. Not only was the squire’s arm broken so that it flopped limply, but it also had two ragged bites taken out of it. It was an ugly wound, but as Simon grabbed the arm and pulled it straight, he whispered the words of greater healing, followed by a word of curing, and the wounds vanished almost immediately.

He was well aware that he’d taken his life into his own hands in that moment, but there was little else he could do. He needed to get these people focused, and the disadvantage of having lived such an unremarkable life up until now in this group meant that no one gave a shit what he said.

“Witchcraft,” someone breathed behind him even as the young man looked at his suddenly healed arm.

“I don’t know witchcraft!” Simon shouted. “Just a couple healing techniques from my, ehmmm… Ionian goddess. That’s all. I can’t summon lightning or raise the dead or anything like that.”

It was a flimsy lie, but it was the best he could come up with on short notice. Truthfully, what he was doing was pretty much the opposite of what that Ionian goddess wanted, if that’s what the Oracle was. She didn’t want him interfering in the flow of world events, and she certainly didn’t want him using magic regularly, but right now, clarity took a back seat to saving lives.

“How can we trust you?” one man asked. “How do we know all of this isn’t your doing?”

“That’s easy,” Simon said, suppressing a smile. “I’m the one that’s going to keep you breathing tonight and the one that’s going to help you get revenge tomorrow. If you want to kill me now instead, though…”

The man who asked the question had a sword in his hand, and Simon had to look at it for several seconds, wondering if he’d work up the courage to use it. When the man noticed he still held a weapon that seemed to surprise him more than anything, and he quickly sheathed it.

“I… I think we have enough enemies out there in the night without turning on each other,” one of the surviving nights said finally. Sir Branaugh was one of the younger men in the initial group. He was inexperienced enough that Simon would have been tempted to call him green any other time, but he was also the only one of the knights that had led them to still be standing on his own two feet. “Please, Simon, do what you can.”

Damn it, he cursed silently as he realized anyone that survived would end up telling the story of yet another Simon. He hadn’t meant for things to go like this, so he hadn’t considered working under an alias. It was too late to fix it now, though. Instead, he turned his attention to fixing the men around him who viewed him uneasily.