They tied my hands and feet behind my back, and began to pile large chunks of firewood around the base of the stake, then spread the bales throughout the wood, so it would cook me evenly, I assumed. A soldier walked over to Captain Black, and asked if they should use lamp oil, to speed the burning. I was so glad the good captain was a vindictive man; he said no.
I closed my eyes once more, and began to build those mental shields. I would need them to block out so much pain, before the ropes burned away. Once they were weak enough for me to break free of them, there was a very real chance I’d already be dead. Assuming my spell didn’t work.
Captain Black took an iron torch from one of his men, and ceremoniously stepped in front of my pyre. The people had gathered in a semi-circle, so nobody would be left with the cheapened view of my smouldering back – everyone got the full show. That would work to my detriment; it’d be easier to run through a small line of people, than a line three-deep.
‘People of Victoria’ Black began, turning to face them, ‘it is almost a year to the day, since the Holy Slayers rid this land of the blight that was Castle Nekross…’
Nekross. Its words had faded from my mind. Now the Castle would have a real title in my thoughts, for when I finally leave this wretched fort.
‘The necromancers there seduced our brothers and sisters in Hovvercroft and Darmus with manufactured visions of loved ones, supposedly brought back from beyond the veil to speak once more. In return, they were allowed to operate for so long, taking the dead and raising them in an affront against nature. This remnant is all that is left of Castle Nekross, and in honour of the Slayers, and to purify this blight from Victoria – we will burn this creature away with a cleansing fire!’
Black’s voice burned to a roaring crescendo, echoed by whoops and cries of excitement and encouragement from the assembled peasantry. As Black hurled that torch into the kindling, a thought ran through my head, and I latched onto it like an oath. I swore that I would make the peasants fear the night once more, as the Slayers had made me.
My meditation began to kick in, dulling all my senses, slowing the flow of blood in most of my veins. My left side, burned and scarred, didn’t have all that much flow to begin with. I couldn’t smell the smoke as it wafted into my nostrils, and I couldn’t feel the rising heat as the fire spread throughout the pyre. I couldn’t hear the crackling of the flames beneath me; just the sound of my own voice as I began a low, soft, chant.
The words were not important. They were nonsense, whatever my subconscious fixed on for this particular spell. It might be the same spell for a hundred casters, but most often their incantation would be different, if they even needed one at all. Words just help open that pathway, but some can do without them. I needed to save all the energy I could, so I cast the spell by the basic means.
Cool air began to swirl around me, but with whispers of power I forced the air to form into a swirling wall between the fire and my front side, leaving my hands to be burned by the heat. As I lowered my meditative concentration to influence the wind, I felt the heat building on my living hand, and bit my lower lip as pain began to flash across the skin in searing white swirls. The fires were building, and were now up to my waist.
I couldn’t feel the heat on my front, but as seconds ticked by the pain in my hand became unbearable, and I screwed up my eyes, determined not to scream for the amusement of the rabble. As I bit down harder on my lip, a stroke of luck went my way. I began to bleed.
My blood fed into the spell, and the chilling wind began to grow in intensity. I opened my eyes, to find it spilling out from the barrier, and whipping the flames up into a great frenzy. There was shouting, panicked shouting, and people were forced farther back from the flames.
I took this opportunity to slide down the stake, my back to the post, so that my hands and feet were further together. With pain flaring almost unbearably through my living hand, it was mostly up to my dead, unfeeling left hand to untie the knot on my feet. It was mostly a charred mess, and crumbled apart under my fingers.
My feet freed, I stood up tall again, and renewed my chanting, while pulling my hands forwards as far and as hard as I could. The fire had weakened the ropes, but with the effort and the heat, I almost succumbed to exhaustion in the fire. But with another whisper of will, I blew the wind in a circle around me, whipping fire and wood into a miniature tornado. I could barely make out the screaming through the heat haze and flying debris.
The rope snapped, and my hands were free. I stood there for a shining second, surrounded by a cone of power and still with nearly a full reservoir ready to go. Once my moment had passed, my moment of victory, I sent the circle of fire, icy wind and splinters of wood, all forwards, into that semi-circle of onlookers.
I didn’t think to check what damage I had done. I took to my feet, jumping over the remains of the pyre and landing on heat-scorched soles. I winced in pain, but forced myself to forge ahead, pushing and shoving my way past people doubled over in pain. I saw one man with a plank of wood thrust into his stomach, another bent over with cold, their skin flecked with frost, and a third, with scorch marks on their skin.
I ran, still with the wisps of charred rope around my hands like an obscure kind of bracelet, and shreds of the bonds that tied my feet slowly falling away. The road was as hard on my feet as it had been on my aching back. I was sure I was leaving bloody footprints in my wake as I ran, but I couldn’t afford to let the pain get to me. So I began to build up those mental barriers around the pain, once more.
My breath came in sharp gasps, the muscles in my living side began to ache with the effort, and as soon as the last house was behind me, I slowed down, and after a few weakened paces, stopped to lean against a tree, facing the way I’d came.
The dirt roads between the wooden houses had given way to forest, as I jumped from the beaten path. The earth underfoot was cold and soft, and soothed my burned, bloodied feet. I felt so terrible, words can scarcely describe, yet all the while, I hummed with the ecstasy of victory.
I couldn’t feel the foot on my dead side, like the rest of my body, but my brain knew that it was hurting. My hand, my feet, both burned, cried out to me. My back, and parts of my chest, covered in lumps and cuts from being dragged by the horse, all screamed to me too. But there was something in the air that just made me begin to smile. A smile that turned to a toothy grin, and after another shaking, deep breath; a warming laugh.
Voices began to drift through the trees towards me, hurrying shouts and orders. Fear took over my thinking again, but in a different way. Fear provokes the ‘fight or flight’ of adrenaline, and I knew exactly what I had to do. I knew that I was going to fight. But on my own terms; this dark forest, on this dark night.
I set off at a hurried run, continuing the line I’d been following into the woods. There was something here that could help me, and only now did I realise why my feet had pulled me from the road. The thing that had drawn me to the town was over this way, the thing that I had told myself to avoid.
The graveyard. If I led them to the graveyard, and forced my power through the bodies of the dead, I could raise a terrible force, to wipe the smug smile off of Captain Black and his weekend warriors! Smash the town! Raise the people! My mind began to shout all possibilities at me, but I yelled back, that all things would have to be seen after this night.
I ran, low to the ground, until a wall swam into vision in the night, low, and made of crumbling old wood. I vaulted over it with all the smooth motion of a lanky unwashed necromancer on a revenge binge. So, not much grace at all.
As an after thought, I ripped a plank of that crumbling wood from the fence, and then turned to face the graveyard proper. I was expecting something a little bigger than a few dozen plots and a couple of family crypts; but it would have to do.
I ran into the rough centre of the boneyard, and dropped to my knees. I began to wrap the death of the place around me like a cloak; the emotional ghosts of grieving relatives, bereaved friends, efficient priests and surly gravediggers. All their pain, their sorrow and their inappropriate dark humour.
And I fed it into the earth, driving that piece of graveyard fence wood into the ground like I wanted to pierce the heart of the world. It broke the soil, and allowed the gathering ghost energy, trapped into the graveyard by that very fence, and sent it rushing through the soil and through the coffins, and finally, into the dead that lay within.
All their souls had fled, long ago. All that remained in most of the graves were bones and rags. Recent graves, dug within the last year, still carried flesh inside them, riddled with worms and carrion creatures. It didn’t bear thinking about, but I pushed the power into every single empty human vessel within the graveyard. And in every instance, the power filled the cup, and the brim ran over; power seeping from the dead and rupturing the earth as they clawed their way back to the surface.
Hands began erupting from the ground, in neat lines, following the plot layout of the graveyard. The skeletal undead were the first to rise, earth and grass clinging to their bare bones like clothes. All that kept their bones together was my magic, working as their invisible muscles.
I knew the name of everyone who I raised, and called them aloud with barely taking a breath between each. There were eighteen of the skeletal dead, and eight of those still draped with flesh; zombies. In one move, I had turned the scales in my favour, just a little. They may have still had forty soldiers, but now I was not just one necromancer; but one necromancer and twenty six friends, willing to die again for me.
I lifted the piece of wood, and broke it in half, creating a slim wand-like item, with a rather nice point. If I was to keep some of these creatures mobile, I would need some kind of focus item for them to feed from, other than myself; an item shrouded in death energy. Like this piece of wood.
Zombies feel no pain, and have no emotions. Their souls are long gone, replaced by necromantic power. They require orders or they’ll just stand around doing nothing, but don’t require much upkeep once they’re on their feet. They are simply cheap shock-soldiers, who are only killed by damaging or removing the head, or by purifying fire, which severs the magical link.
Trapping them in a circle can also cut off their link with their benefactor – myself – though I doubted that anyone in Victoria would be wise enough, or brave enough, to run a ring around an advancing horde, and infuse it with magical or blood energy.
I wasn’t much of a fan of the zombie. They’re too slow for my tastes. While they may work of their own accord once they’re up and about, they don’t have any kind of independent thought, no improvisation – just the order they’re given. That and the fact they smell bad. I prefer the skeletal undead.
Though skeletals have an aversion to holy magic and holy objects, they will not hesitate to strike against a priest or priestess when pushed. They’re fuelled by a constant trickle of dark energy; and when acting in the field they require a darkly enchanted item, or a necromancer; like myself or the graveyard wood, but when guarding a fortress can draw on the negative energies of the place – providing there’s suitable energy around in enough volume.
They have to be smashed into a few pieces to be destroyed, or severed hands will still crawl about in a suitably comic fashion to see! Even if the skull is cracked open. Skeletons can also be repaired, meaning that I could call them time and time again.
The words of my training were called back to me so suddenly that a minute or two passed without my realising it. When I came back to my senses, the dead were around me, waiting for orders. I rose to my feet, with the deadwood rod in one hand, and a fistful of grave dirt in the other; grinding it between my fingers, to better link myself to my creatures.
‘Prepare for battle’ I commanded.