Book of The Dead

Biting winds from the north blew down from the mountain peaks, bringing with them the frigid chill of the icelands beyond the borders of the Empire. Georg wasn’t pleased to learn from the locals that the breeze, as they defined it, was so regular as to have a name: The Northern Medicine Man.

When he’d asked them by, they’d laughed and explained. “Medicine’s bitter, ay?”

As bitter as the frigid air. Apparently it was even colder further north, the climate so unwelcoming the locals weren’t able to grow food without relying on magickal means.

At least his zombies weren’t rotting from the sun, even if they were a little stiff.

“We didn’t have to kill them all, did we Georg?” Merrit asked him, not for the first time.

“Do you think I wanted to?” Georg demanded, trying to maintain his calm. “If we hadn’t killed them, what do you think was going to happen? Once they found the zombies, that was it!”

If anyone was to blame, it was him, and he hated that fact. They harvested lumber in this village, that was obvious once he’d seen the mill. If he’d thought about it properly, he would have moved his undead deeper into the woods, or further north. Instead, a lone lumberjack wandered into the forest and got bitten before running back to the village, screaming about the dead at the top of his lungs.

“But… all of them?”

“Fucking hell, Merrit!” Georg roared, dropping the body and snatching the Corpse Handler by the front of his shirt. There was fear and shame in the man’s eyes, he was on the edge. Georg had to wonder if he himself looked exactly the same.

No, he was different. There was anger in him, and desperation. He wouldn’t be caught, he wouldn’t let it all be for nothing. Not him. He’d stood up to Tyron Steelarm and earned his freedom. There was no way he would let it go to waste because of one damned wood cutter.“Stop barking about it, it’s done, do you understand me? We had to do it. If word had gotten out, this whole place would be drowning in Soldiers, Magisters and Marshals and we’d be dead. All of us! Dead! You understand that, right?”

“I… I do… I do… it’s just.”

Georg released his grip with a sigh and placed a steadying hand on his shoulder.

“I know, Merrit. I wish this hadn’t fucking happened. It’s not what I wanted, but this is where we are now and we have to deal with it. We have to keep everyone safe, and that means doing the hard work that nobody else wants to do. I can count on you, can’t I?”

After a moment, Merrit nodded, taking hold of himself.

“You can. I’m sorry… I never expected to… deal with something like this.”

Georg nodded sympathetically.

“I get it. Let’s just… get this over with.”

Inwardly he wondered if Merrit could be counted on as much as he’d thought. This was a setback, and a harsh one, but also an opportunity. A small village of only eighty people, but that was levels and materials that Georg sorely needed. Not all of the remains were appropriate for zombies, of course, but a decent number were, and his horde was in desperate need of replenishment.

The final stretch of the journey had been the most harrowing, and he’d been forced to expend numerous undead to keep himself and the rest of the group alive. The village of Harrowstead had been a sight for sore eyes to the bedraggled group, and had taken them in with nary a question.

Not unlike the people Georg had grown up alongside on the farm, they were honest labourers, people of the land, with good and generous souls.

He had Mrs Morrey under the arms, dragging her bruised and battered corpse towards the barn they were placing the bodies in. She’d fed him the first night they’d arrived, her and her husband had sat across from him at their dinner table.

Pushing the memories away, Georg tried to focus on the here and now. Spilled milk was lost to the bucket. Inside the barn, row after row of dead were already lying. Moving quickly, he dragged over the body and laid it in its place before straightening with a groan.

“I think that’s all of them, isn’t it Merrit?”

“It is. Thank the gods.”

Georg raised his brows.

“Which gods, Merrit?”

“Oh. Oh. Force of habit.”

“You head back to the others, Merrit, you’ve done enough. I can take care of it from here.”

“A-are you sure? This is… a lot of work.”

“I’m sure,” Georg said firmly, pushing the man out the door. “Go and get some rest. Let everyone know we’ll be moving in a few days, so they should pack up anything they want to take.”

After some more, weak protestations, Merrit finally walked away, looking all too relieved.

Georg lowered him a few further pegs in his estimation. Merrit couldn’t be relied on, but he was the best Corpse Handler in the group by far. Perhaps he should give more work to Sue, try and get some more levels into her skills and see if she was capable?

“Did Tyron have to deal with this nonsense?” he grumbled to himself.

Whether he did or not, it didn’t matter now. His former teacher was in the past, no doubt getting himself killed in his mad quest for revenge. Georg had severed their connection, forging his own path and unbinding their fates.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

Part of him wished he could have convinced Richard and Briss to join him, but he’d always known it would have been useless to try. They were too devoted to ‘Master Steelarm’, unwilling to see how they were being used. If they’d known what he’d had planned, they would have gone running to him at the first opportunity.

Sighing, Georg got to work.

It was a familiar routine for him now, working with the dead. Far from disturbing, it was almost soothing to slip into the routines.

Georg had always been able to separate the bodies in front of him from the people they’d been before. It was something everyone who worked with animals learned early. A cheerful animal one day, meat on the plate the next. Briss had always thought he was callous, but Georg didn’t see it that way. He was simply practical.

As undignified as it might be, it was far easier for him to work on the bodies without their clothing, so the first job was to cut the blood-soaked cloth from them. Then he could start to repair the damage done to the corpse. His magick was able to knit dead flesh back together and make it whole, a miraculous healing process that unfortunately had absolutely no effect on the living.

His zombies were, unfortunately, not very clean killers, ripping, tearing and biting for the most part, or using the crudest of tools and weapons. Extensive repairs were necessary for most of the remains, forcing Georg to stretch his magick reserves in order to get the job done.

Even now, his fingers weren’t as nimble as he would have liked, and he still went through his limbering routine twice a day to help train his dexterity. Fortunately, this was a spell he knew well, and though his hands grew stiff and sore, he didn’t fumble once.

Once they were whole again, he took a break, wiping the sweat from his brow and drinking some water to ease his throat. Popping some mage candy into his mouth, he leaned against the wall as the energy in the crystal began to disperse into his body, refilling his magick.

He wouldn’t be able to raise all of them by the time they needed to leave, but he would get through as many as he could. That meant no sleep tonight, again.

Though he lacked the insane endurance of his teacher, Georg was no stranger to sleepless nights.

“Work doesn’t get done unless it gets started,” he muttered to himself, shaking out his fingers one more time.

One corpse at a time, he began to cast the Raise Dead ritual, the cornerstone of the Necromancer Class. The version Georg had constructed for himself bore little resemblance to Tyron’s, far less time was spent neatening the edges and rounding the corners. Instead, it was direct, simple, and effective. A solid and sound house rather than a mansion, it served its purpose well.

After all, a zombie was much simpler than a skeleton to raise. No need to create musculature or ligaments of magick, no need to weave an artificial mind, since the brain was still there and intact… most of the time. All it needed was the animus and conduit connected to him in order to draw on his power to move.

As far as Georg was concerned, it was by far the superior undead. His feats and abilities strengthened their undead flesh, making them deadly combatants when they got close. He had to be careful, though, as a single bite from one of his undead was enough to cause the plague of undeath to spread unchecked. When he’d selected the ability, he’d done it for the debilitating effect the bite would have on kin, but the side-effect was one that could expose him easily if he wasn’t careful.

Fifteen minutes later and the first zombie was up and moving. Georg shook out his fingers and moved on to the next.

Ten, twenty, it wasn’t easy to keep count once he fell into the rhythm. He found it didn’t help either. What did it matter how many he’d done? If the sun wasn’t up and there was another body to work on, then he kept going, it was as simple as that.

Fatigue grew with each subsequent cast. His hands ached, his throat was raw, yet he pressed on. He would recover in a day or two, but he had to take the most of this opportunity while it presented itself. He pressed on.

Georg was so absorbed in the repeated casting of the ritual, he failed to notice anyone had entered the barn until they stood right behind him. A clink of metal, a slight crunch of the hay beneath a boot finally broke through as he recovered from his most recent cast. If he’d been more aware, less tired, then maybe he would have realised what was happening, but as it was, he simply turned, bleary eyed.

“Merrit?” he asked.

No, it wasn’t the reluctant and increasingly unreliable Corpse Handler that he saw, but someone in full, gleaming plate armour, the insignia of the Empire emblazoned on their pauldron and tabard in golden letters.

“Not exactly,” a cold voice replied.

With a thought, Georg tried to direct his zombies forward, but it was much too late. A mailed fist crashed into the side of his head and the world went dark.

When he awoke, there was a splitting pain in his head so strong it made him wretch. Coughing and spitting out the bile that threatened to flood his throat, Georg forced his eyes open, glaring as he tried to understand what had happened.

He’d been found? How? By who? Had he been betrayed by someone in his group? They would have had to have run the second he’d turned his back. Even then, would they have had enough time to contact anyone?

It was so hard to think through the pain, but he forced himself to push through it. He couldn’t allow it to end like this, there had to be a way.

Someone spoke, but his head was so sore he couldn’t take in what had been said. His vision was so blurry, he couldn’t make out the contents of the room. It was dark, and grey, and perhaps there was someone in front of him? He tried to lunge forward, but something restrained him.

The voice spoke again, and suddenly his mind was clear. He gasped aloud as the pain receded so suddenly it was as if it had never been. Shocked and bewildered, he blinked, trying to process what was happening.

In front of him, a white-robed figure retracted a hand from his forehead.

“There we are. You may find you can converse a little more easily now.”

A middle-aged woman, with a long sun-burnt golden braid draped over one shoulder and wearing the robes of the Goddess Selene. He’d been captured by a Priest? By the Church?

Carefully, he shifted his hands and ankles and found they were tightly bound. When he tested the restraints around his wrists, they cut painfully into his flesh, but didn’t yield at all.

Worse still, when he tried to reach for his magick, he found it suppressed. The conduits that bound him to his minions were muted, barely functioning. What was happening?

“Your teacher may be able to avoid the gaze of the Divines, child, but not you,” the Priestess said with a smile. “It seems he never bothered to extend that protection to you. The Oracles spoke of your arrival weeks ago.”

She leaned forward sympathetically.

“It seems you were abandoned. Poor thing.”

He’d been… what? The gods? The Divines? Why would they ever bother with him? Such a possibility had never even occurred to him, it was so ridiculous!

Perhaps seeing the confusion and fear in his eyes, the Priestess leaned back, giving him space.

“This is a lot to take in, I’m sure, and there will be time to discuss it later. Before we can get to that, there are a few administrative matters to take care of first. Magister Thyle?”

Another person stepped into the room. The cell, Georg realised. He was in prison.

Red-robed, with a look of pure disgust on his face, a dark-skinned man walked closer, something bright and sizzling in his hand.

“It’s the law, I’m afraid,” the Priestess said. “Don’t worry, it won’t take a moment.”

As it turned out, that was quite a lie. By the time the brand was properly rooted in his flesh, Georg was no longer capable of screaming.