Defiant Necromancer (Book 2 stubbed)

The sights that greeted Andric, Tatiana, Sabine, and their undead escorts as they walked toward the smoke that slowly rose into the sky was a grim one.

They crested the hill and then saw it: a town in ruins.

“Which side of the border are we on now?” Andric asked, looking at one of the undead.

“I am not completely certain,” the nachzehrer said after a moment. “We have walked far since Morngart, and the trail… has wandered much.”

Morngart was the final port they had disembarked at, since it was the closest they could get to Bloodlady Ragga’s last known position without overshooting. Morngart was the southeasternmost port in Niet, and the next port after that was Nezia, on the eastern side of the Gulf of Gold. Disembarking in Nezia would mean weeks more of sea travel and overshooting where they wanted to be by a thousand miles - in the opposite direction from where Ragga was presently traveling.

The Discontented Lands took up the entire space between Niet and Nezia, all the way south to the ocean, and it had no ports in its entire north. The land was chaotic, which was how it had birthed hordes like Ragga’s.

“At some point, we did cross the border out of Niet, right?” Tatiana asked.

“I… believe so,” the nachzehrer said, sounding embarrassed. “I am not a living map, I was a merchant before the necromancer’s contagion claimed me, but I have traveled some in these parts. We may have crossed back and forth over the border. It is possible we are walking the border at this very moment. It is nebulous, since the Discontented Lands are anarchic. But this is certainly the border region.”

“Let’s investigate the town,” Andric said.

The others looked at him, at the smoking ruins, and then back at him skeptically.

“We have to find the ones who did this,” he said, answering the unspoken questions. “If there are clues, we won’t find them by standing around up here.” He looked Tatiana and Sabine in the eyes and then winked. “Don’t worry, ladies, I’ll protect you.”

“Or we’ll protect you,” Tatiana said, smiling. “Remember that my sister and I can fly, beloved.” It was a pet name she had been trying out for him lately. He liked it. “You do not need to protect us if the threat is dire. Just grab onto our legs or let us grasp your shoulders.”

She was trying to sound confident, but Andric observed a slight look of foreboding on her face.

The town appeared even more ominous as they approached it. Everything pointed toward the town being completely void of life: burned out husks of buildings, a stillness that hung in the air like a dark cloud, and the sight and smell of rotten flesh, as corpses came into view on the streets.

“Well, the ogres clearly did not ask for the town’s peaceful surrender,” Sabine observed, smiling weakly.

“We don’t want the Kingdom’s peaceful surrender,” Andric said quietly, his eyes cold and steely and far away. “We want them to suffer a bit first.”

“Is that what we want, or what you want, beloved?” Tatiana asked. “Not to say I disagree. What I mean to ask is, is it a likely source of conflict, within our own ranks?”

The foxman understood what she was saying without further elaboration. The goals of the Grand Beastfolk Army and Tybalt’s goals were one and the same now. Would Tybalt want the Kingdom to burn before he ruled it?

Maybe not.

“I don’t think it’s a source of conflict,” he said after a moment. “A leader takes into account what his followers want. There is a near universal desire among our people to get some sort of vengeance.”

“Hm.”

They stepped onto the streets - real cobblestones rather than dirt, because this was a real town. Flies buzzed, and the smell thickened.

“How long ago was this slaughter?” Tatiana muttered, fanning the air in front of her face. “Probably not much benefit to spending time in this place if the bodies have been rotting for days.”

“They have not.” The nachzehrer spoke up. “My kind feeds on life force. The life force in this place has thinned greatly, as all of the inhabitants are dead or dying, but it was far more recent than you’re imagining. If it was a days-old slaughter, the only life I would be able to drain would be from the scavengers. But these corpses still have life energy wafting off of them like meat smoke from a fire.”

Andric resisted the urge to ask what he and his fiancees smelled like to the nachzehrer.

“How long?” he asked instead.

“I cannot give a precise answer. Hours, perhaps.”

“Something else, Andric,” Sabine said, crouching down and looking at one of the bodies. “Have you seen these marks on the flesh?”

Andric looked. The corpse had been severely burned, and there was something about the skin that looked off.

“They were eaten,” he said after a moment, eyes widening. He looked around. “Scavengers?”

“There are a lot of them like that,” Tatiana said, casting her eyes around. “The teeth marks are a little big for any of these animals. And scavengers don’t scorch the meat before they eat it. The ogres did this, I think.”

“The humans do consider them monsters,” Andric said. “But then, they say the same sorts of things about us.”

“Cannibalism is not out of place for ogres,” the nachzehrer said quietly, his voice empty of emotion. “It is well known. They don’t concern themselves with whether you are alive or dead when they eat you either. Travelers say that if you’re taken by them, it’s best to slit your own throat if you can before they actually get their hands on you. That’s at least a clean death.”

“What sort of savages does King Tybalt wish us to ally with?” Sabine asked, frowning. She swallowed and looked back and forth rapidly between Andric, the two undead, and Tatiana. “I didn’t mean to suggest, um, question—”

“You’re allowed to question,” Tatiana interrupted with a hint of irritation. “The Beastking is not trying to become a tyrant… I hope.” She looked at Andric.

They hadn’t discussed it much since the undead had told them, a few weeks back, about the necromancer crowning himself. Andric himself had accepted that was an inevitability, but he wasn’t sure how Tatiana felt. She had always been more skeptical of Tybalt and his intentions.

“That’s right.” He turned to the nachzehrer. “Can you try and detect where the most recent kills are? That might give us a hint as to which direction the horde headed after they accomplished this bloodbath.” It was hard to keep the disgust from his voice.

“Yes, sir,” the undead replied.

He cut through a few streets and made his way down toward the southeast end of town.

We’re going away from the Kingdom again, Andric thought. Is this horde really traveling randomly? I thought they’d be invading the Kingdom or something, but they keep changing their direction of travel…

They made it to the end of town and, as the cobblestones gave way to dirt and grass, Andric was quickly able to pick up a thick trail of footprints - and boot prints and hoof prints - that the horde had left as they departed.

It seems their force is quite diverse.

He raised a finger to his lips to indicate silence, and then the group of five began to follow the horde’s tracks. Their path went up a hill and down it, through a field - tearing everything apart as it crossed the ground - and onto muddy dirt.

Everywhere, the ground was disturbed. There was no effort at concealment, only - apparently - speed.

This was the sort of trail a blind man could follow. There was no need to look for broken blades of grass or some other esoteric signs of a person’s passing.

It seemed that they were hot on the heels of the ogres, which was why Andric felt a bit dismayed when they reached a stream, and the trail suddenly just stopped.

There was nothing on the other side. No prints, no snapped twigs, no sign that foot or hoof had ever trod on that ground.

“They must have gone downstream,” he muttered.

“Or upstream,” Tatiana said pointedly.

“Either way, it was a good move to lose any pursuers,” Sabine said.

Andric frowned. These ogres mixed savagery with cunning. Maybe they would be good allies for the beastfolk forces, or maybe they were something to be feared and destroyed. It was impossible to tell for the moment.

That’s why Tybalt sent you, he reminded himself. To use your judgment and figure out if they can be brought over to help us. With their physical strength, the ogres would be powerful allies.

“Let’s go this way,” Andric said after a moment, pointing back toward the interior of the Kingdom.

“Are you sure?” Tatiana asked.

“This way, even if we’re wrong, we’re not letting them slip past us and deeper into Niet,” Andric said. “It would be disastrous for our mission if they start getting into real fights before we manage to link up with them.”

Andric had little doubt that, even if the ogres had shown a certain low cunning, the Royal Army would still be able to smash them as easily as they had every beastfolk attempt at self-defense for centuries.

The five began to follow the stream.

They walked for the rest of the day, without coming into contact with any sign that the horde had exited the stream, until they came within sight of another town. This one had not been destroyed, and the stream ran right through it.

So, they went the other way, then.

He shook his head. It wasn’t exactly disappointing.

“Let’s go into town and see if people have seen any signs of ogre trouble,” he suggested.

The others readily agreed.

***

“Have you heard anything about a horde of ogres running wild around these parts?”

They repeated that question ad nauseam - to the point where Andric actually felt a bit nauseated at repeating it again and again. The group got used to answering the same questions every time, phrased in different ways: “What’s it to you?” “Who’s asking?” “Why are you asking me?”

The townsfolk were a suspicious bunch. Just barely on Niet’s side of the border region, they were keenly aware of their vulnerability to an attack by the horde.

The story they quickly settled on was that they were adventurers seeking to collect a bounty on the lead ogre’s head. The bounty was made up, but of course, these bumpkins had no way of knowing that.

One of their early conversations revealed she was not just called Bloodlady Ragga, her formal rank among the ogres. She was known as Ragga the Faithless.

“I heard a whole town surrendered to her without a fight, and she butchered them anyway,” one of the men in town said in a very rural accent. “That’s why they call her Ragga the Faithless. The white flag don’t mean nothing to her.”

“They say she eats her mates after she takes their seed,” said a local woman knowingly. “Like a black widow spider, that one. Of course, if you wind up at her mercy, maybe that’d be the best option for you, young man. Better to go out in style, eh?” She threw Andric a flirtatious look, and he had to drag Tatiana away before the harpy could claw the woman’s eyes out.

“The horde’s been raiding all up and down the coast,” said an older fellow. “They’ve never spent so much time this far north, not while I’ve been alive. I can’t say what’s drawing them.”

“I hear that General Pius has a full corps of men hunting the countryside for the ogre, ready to bring His Majesty the King her head on a plate. She’ll face the King’s justice, you’ll see. Whenever it happens won’t be soon enough, if you ask me.”

But no one had any idea of the direction the horde might lie in.

At last, after eating dinner there, Andric and the others headed out of town, back the way they had come.

They spent the night under the stars, then rose early the next morning to keep up the hunt.

It was when they were ascending a hill for the fourth time that morning that Andric felt eyes on them.

He turned, looked all the way up the hill, and saw a flicker of motion as some creature or person jerked quickly out of view.

“I think we might have some company,” Andric said.

“Finally,” Tatiana said.

All of them put hands to their weapons as they resumed climbing the hill with renewed energy.

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