Death After Death
Chapter 255: Back to Their Source

Simon spent almost all the hours until dawn using words of healing and curing. Where wounds were minor, he used words of lesser healing, but even a word of greater healing couldn’t do much for their leader. The force of the lightning had burned the man’s chain mail coif to his flesh, and using healing words would have simply fused it faster.

Simon didn’t tell the men around him that the knight was better off dead, but only because it would have eroded the fragile goodwill he’d won throughout the night. He could probably have saved the man, but that would have been the magical equivalent of major surgery, and there was no way he could save the knight and cure everyone else who’d been bitten.

By the time dawn broke, no one was going to turn, but Sir Kongrin had passed away from his wounds, which made for a rough trade. Simon’s throat was completely shot, too, but no one cared about that or the fact that he’d burned half a decade tonight. That frustrated him, given how hard he’d been trying to avoid using magic, but there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t just not save these people to live a longer life. He’d just have to find another way to get those years back.

A few hours later, with the sun well above the horizon, they returned to their campsite to salvage what they could and investigate what clues had been left behind. Simon wasn’t sure what he expected to find, but the one thing he didn’t expect was nothing at all.

Their campsite had been almost entirely erased. Only the scattered ashes remained to mark it from the previous day. Not a single corpse or even pieces of various tents remained. Someone had been fastidious and cleaned up every scrap of evidence that there’d been a battle here. Even the bloodstains had been covered over with dirt, and only the swarming ants in those spots hinted at their presence.

“They even stole my sword,” he said to himself as he surveyed the area.

“What happened to all the bodies?” Sir Branaugh asked. “They couldn’t have just gotten up and walked away!”

They almost certainly did, Simon thought, deciding it would be kinder not to say that. Instead, he just pointed and said, “Whatever it is they’ve done with them, the answer lies in the direction,” in a voice that bordered on hoarse.

The group had approached the site of last night’s battle with trepidation. Their need to find their armor and their weapons had only slightly outweighed their fear of what they would find when they returned. This divided them.

About half of the twenty or so people insisted that this was more than enough reason to flee and return with reinforcements. For the rest of the men, though, their anger at the idea that something terrible had happened to the bodies of their dead friends was raw and visceral.

The two groups debated the point for twenty minutes with increasingly violent rhetoric before Sir Branaugh said, “I will not force anyone to fight beside me. Those who wish to warn the crown about the horrors we’ve seen feel free. The rest may join me in exacting our revenge.”

Simon wasn’t surprised at the outcome. The force that had been 48 as they left Schwarzenbruck and 22 after they’d fled the fight became 10 once the cowards quit the field. Just like that, they’d gone from being outnumbered by two to one in their first encounter to at least eight to one in their second.

Simon was okay with that. Numbers would help against the zombies, but they weren’t the real threat. The mage was the real threat, and Simon would have to take him out regardless. As he looked over the group, he realized that they looked a lot closer to Oracle’s vision than they had before. They were still a little more numerous than that uncertain future showed him, but even these facts told him something. Without him, these men would go on to be successful, and some of them would make it out alive just long enough to spread the terrible affliction to Schwarzenbruck. There was no way that he was going to let that happen.

Still, that realization was slightly more surprising than the fact that Rodrick stayed with them, too. In fact, this time, he took the lead. He might be a bad husband and mediocre warrior, but the man could track better than Simon, and quickly found his way through a sea of footprints. The path of the dead was occasionally decorated by blood or a bit of debris they’d dropped, but mostly, the clues came from the sand. Here they were dragging something. There, they were starting to narrow together, from a wide wall of people into something closer to single file.

Based on their path, Simon could see which canyon they were heading toward even before their huntsman pointed it out. Why the zombies were returning to the canyon, he couldn’t say, but there was no doubt about it.

As the dark stone walls rose up around them, everyone was concerned that this was a trap of some kind. Everyone except for Simon, that was. The trap had already been sprung last night.

They’d already killed everyone they could. Whatever they’d found was the reason for all of the dying. More and more, he was reminded of the bandit mass grave he’d found. It wasn’t until they saw the mineshaft and the tailings pile that he finally understood.

Simon held everyone up short and then behind a bend in the canyon wall, and he explained. “This… all of this is about slaves,” he explained. “Whatever dark magic is behind this is less concerned about the contents of the caravans than the bodies of the men traveling with them.”

“Why? How would that make any sense?” the knight asked. “Slavers take the living to put them to work. They make no profit on the dead.”

“That's only true because they can’t use the dead in the same way whoever is behind this can,” Simon said, pointing to the tunnel that had been bored into the far wall and the vast quantities of rock that had been excavated from it. “I’m telling you, this is where your caravans are going.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“What are they digging up?” someone else asked.

Simon shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”

It was a good question, but Simon had no way to know. Was it a vein of some scarce metal or the secret entrance to some long-forgotten ruins? He had no way to tell. Once he saw the small shack with smoke coming from the chimney, though, he no longer really cared. That was his target. He was sure of it.

Zombies didn’t need fire to cook food. Even if it was a smithy or something, he doubted that even zombies as well-behaved as these ones could do anything half so complicated as forge an implement of steel. He didn’t say anything about that, though. Instead, he laid out a plan that he thought would put everyone in the last danger.

“Rodrick and I will go into the hut and deal with whoever’s behind this,” Simon said in a rough voice after deliberating for a moment. “The rest of you should either fight the zombies as they come out of the tunnel or simply collapse the thing and bury them alive.”

“Why?” the young knight asked. “Shouldn’t we all move as one and—”

“If the necromancer sees ten guys coming at him, he won’t hesitate to blow us all apart,” Simon assured them, “But two of us… we’re much more likely to sneak up on him before he can do anything awful.”

“Then maybe you and I should—” the knight started to say, but Simon cut him off.

“Rodrick has the only bow left among us,” Simon rasped before coughing a moment to clear his throat, “And I’m the only one who knows anything about magic.”

“Yeah, well, you sound like you’re about to pass out,” one of the men at arms said. “Maybe we pull back and wait for another…”

His words stopped the second he felt everyone’s eyes on him. The cowards had already left, and they were committed. “Fine,” Sir Branaugh said in that awkward silence. “But I forbid you to die. There’s been enough of that already, and I need answers to bring back to my lord, not bodies.”

Simon nodded at that and shook the man’s hand. Then he spent a few minutes reminding them all the proper way to kill a zombie before he and Rodrick set off along one wall of the canyon while the rest of the group headed off to the far side toward the mine. That was a tense few minutes. The two of them did their best to sneak, but he was more than aware that at any moment, the necromancer or necromancers that were running this show could end them with a few words. He didn’t even know if their enemy had any tripwires.

Would they be alerted as soon as someone slew the first zombie, Simon wondered. They have to have some kind of connection with them that goes beyond what I’m used to. So that means what? A new word? A new meaning of an existing word? The very idea of raising the dead was something he hadn’t completely unraveled, but the idea of forcing them to do as they were told, well, he hadn’t even considered that to be an option.

Truthfully, he was pretty conflicted because he wanted to kill the asshole that had done this, but there was definitely something here to be learned, and with so many other people around ready to burn witches at the stake, he doubted he was going to have that chance.

While he had all the time in the world to think about it as they approached the shack that was made out of wagon parts, it did little to take the edge off the moment. “Are you sure we should be doing this?” Rodrick asked when they started to move closer. “I could just get him from here if he tries to leave the place. I’m sure I could. He’ll never see it coming.”

Simon paused a moment, considering it. Then he said, “Good idea. You stay right here and to that. I’ll go inside and get the drop on him, but if that doesn’t work, then you make sure he doesn’t get away.”

The hunter seemed confused by that answer but didn’t argue. Simon had given him a way out, and he was going to take it in the same way that Simon would. It was only a little breathing room, but Simon would take it. He had a plan, and unless this guy was much better than Simon thought he’d be, it wouldn’t be hard for him to handle.

“Uuvellum,” he whispered, feeling the burn in his throat as the null rippled out around him. That would be enough to stop all magic for at least a minute or two based on his experience with the whisperers, which was really all he needed to gain the upper hand.

After that, he opened the door and strolled in like he owned the place to find a man in his forties cooking breakfast. “Light night, huh?” Simon asked, forcing himself to smile.

The man looked at him in surprise but recovered quickly enough. “So a survivor was actually foolish enough to throw away his good fortune and come back for more,” he said, acting confident. “Are you really so eager to become a zombie?”

Simon recognized the trick. Get your enemy talking, and then act while they were distracted. Still, he went for it anyway. “Actually, I just—”

“Zyvon!” the necromancer shouted, obviously intending to leach life from Simon. That wouldn’t be enough to kill him, but it would have hurt.

The choice told Simon a lot about the man he was facing, and he continued even as the guy tried shouting twice more. He even shouted, “Gervuul Zyvon!” without any effect.

“Actually, I just wanted to know what you were digging up,” Simon said, completely ignoring the attempted attacks. His little aura of antimagic wouldn’t function a whole lot longer, but bluffing would add to that time. “Ancient secrets? Forbidden tombs?”

As he spoke, he looked around the place. It was a hovel more than a home, and it was crowded with the weapons and belongings of dead men. Simon didn’t see anything that looked like a grimoire, but he was hoping he’d find one somewhere.

“Bah, what makes you think I’d—” the necromancer started to bluster. That was when Simon lifted his hatchet and threw it as hard as he could at the wall. It wasn’t quite a close shave, but the whirling weapon did pass within three inches of the other man’s face before embedding in the wall behind him.

That was enough to make the enemy necromancer drop to the floor, cover his head, and cower. “Gold! He said. They’re digging up gold!”

Simon shook his head. “All of this… all those lives just so you can get rich. Do you know what will happen if one of your zombies gets loose and bites some traveler?”

“That would n-n-never happen unless you killed me!” the man stammered in fear. “I c-control them. They must obey and using their bite to spread the curse… well, that just means I don’t have to cast so many spells. Surely you can understand that. You obviously know a thing or two if you can suppress my spells. Surely, we have much to teach each other.”

Simon sighed and then extended the man his hand. “I just want to know how you control them.”