“When I say the word, you guys all charge. Got that, Jurgen?”

  “Yes, you filthy surface sucking scum whose glowing ass needs to get ra–”

  “A simple yes would suffice. The last zombie that gave me any lip ended up getting summoned and unsummoned rather a lot. I’m told it’s an unpleasant experience.”

  “Noted,” Jurgen mumbled. His jaw had been broken when he was killed, so his speech wasn’t the clearest, but the tone suggested he was suitably cowed.

  “Ok. Three, two, one… Charge, my zombie horde!” That felt good to shout, I’m not going to lie. A bucket list item from back home.

  I was now up to three hordes of various spellings. Obviously, the best hoard was the shiny one where I lay my head to go sleepy-bo-bos, but the Orlic and undead ones were pretty handy too. In particular, my latest acquisition, being dead and all, had very little in terms of logistical requirements, something I hoped Kat would be suitably grateful for. I also didn’t have to worry about them reproducing so much from battle that they would swarm over the entire world.

  But they were dead. Thus, they were slow, smelly, and surly. The charge wasn’t quite the triumphant return to battle I had been anticipating. It was more of a shamble. They almost oozed out of the door and slurped their way across the battlefield towards where the fighting was still going on.

  None of my charges seemed to be in dire straits. Chi watched disapprovingly from the sidelines, her scowl never leaving her equine face. The others… well, I would need to be very careful in future when I told them “bad people here, go kill”. They were vicious. The regular troops were just running from them in terror whenever they got close. A tactic that hadn’t been working, in light of dragons being capable of flight, so now they were largely hiding behind their strongest fighters.

  Said fighters had been singled out by people like Heartflash, Flamingwhooper and the mysterious Armand in the plain armour. For all his pompousness, Flamingwhooper knew how to fight; he was all flash and show. Broad sweeping swings of his sword, driving the enemy rankers back. He kept screaming about illumination as he cut people's heads off. I suspected he was one to keep an eye on; it’s hard to trust a zealot.

  Heartflash was absolutely bloody terrifying. I was grateful, as my zombies rolled, crawled and shuffled towards the fight, that I had not come to blows with her back in Pratnips hunting garden. I also reassessed the value of the tons of laser-based items I was planning to flog at auction.

  The bunnyborgs were terrors for slicing limbs off or burning holes through armour with their mana-cannons. Heartflash was different; she was mean and inventive with her power. Centimetre-thick holes burned through four men’s heads because they had happened to line up, a discoball of death move that was simply horrific, a spray of tiny beams poking holes in everything in front of her… I would have to compare notes with her sometime and see if I couldn’t figure out a good way to use some of the junk in my trunk. It could be a selling point when I had to go back to the arena in Ankmapak.

  The old man in plain armour… that guy was a machine. He fought with the rhythm of a metronome, every movement precise and perfectly timed. He wasn’t flashy like Flamingwhooper, or a walking warcrime like Heartflash. Just clean and effortlessly effective. He went right to the top of my list of people not to fuck with. Every swing, step and thrust was a kill, then he moved gracefully into the next one.

  With the TOTS, the powerhouses, and my new zombie army, small though it was, the battle was ours; it was just a question of finishing them off or waiting for them to run. Army might be a bit too generous a word to use to describe my pet monsters. There were perhaps a hundred and fifty of them, mostly dwarves but with some humans mixed in as well.

  They didn’t quit, though. Lose an arm? Pick it up, take a bite, then batter whoever cut it off over the head with it. Whether autocannibalism was some kind of thing with zombies or not, I saw more than a few of them indulge in the disgusting habit. As much as it grossed me out, it absolutely horrified the people who’d just injured them.

  I wandered over towards Heartflash, who was taking a breather, a servant pouring water so cold that it frosted the glass and passing it to her as she swept back her visor.

  “Bob! Woof! A stunning victory! Tally ho!”

  “Yeah. I think we’re into the cleanup phase, right?

  She leaned on her longsword and winked at me. “Oh yes. Your flying friends made all the difference. Normally, I’d have to chop through hundreds of the poor fools to reach the leadership. Your lot sorted them out, moo.”

  “Then I think we need to broach the most important issue.”

  “The prisoners? You can’t eat them.”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “I don’t want to eat prisoners.” Although now that she mentioned it… I had recently got my appetite back and was feeling a bit peckish.

  “The glory gets divided up back in the capital. Can’t do anything about that now, but I’ll put a word in for you. Might be a proper peerage in this for you.”

  “No, I don’t care about– A proper peerage?”

  “Meow. Of course. You saved thousands of lives. I can see a viscountcy in your future, Bob.”

  “Well, that’s sweet of you–”

  “Course, we have to win the war first. Can’t dish up the profits if we’re dead or defeated. Quack.”

  “I wanted to talk–” This was getting annoying.

  “About the zombies? You can’t keep them. I didn’t know you’d dabbled in the dark arts. Knew a chap once, Sevenipple was his name, something like that. Seemed nice enough then, BAM, turns out he was working for–”

  “LOOT! I want to talk about loot!”

  “Cheep.”

  “No, I am not. I think the TOTS and I deserve a considerable slice of the pie for our work here today.”

  “Are you a zombie too? I saw you eat a few people, but I assumed it was just, you know.” Heartflash waved a hand towards Pete, who was a silvery blur, a ball of teeth and claws rolling through the now-broken enemy.

  “I’m sorry about them. They’ve had… a sheltered upbringing, and this is some kind of teenage blowout kind of thing. At least it’s not drugs and premarital sex.”

  “You must release the dead.”

  “With all due respect, I don’t take orders from you or your baron.”

  “Some of them are our people! Woof!” The final woof was emphatic.

  “I’m keeping the dwarves.”

  “Fine.”

  “Heartflash. You need to call back your cavalry, they’re overextending, and we can’t be sure there isn’t some additional threat lurking.” Armand, the mechanical warrior, had appeared beside us without me noticing. Definitely one to respect. Heartflash pulled out an orb and began yelling orders, punctuated by regular animal sounds, into it.

  “You did well. I saw you take out Gigglesworth.” The dragon in me wanted to snap and snarl at the threat this man seemed to represent. A mammal, yet dangerous.

  “He did the black knight bit. He deserved what he got.”

  “Your young friend is vicious up close. The next battle will be at Gallow’s Garnish. I trust we’ll see you there?”

  “Do you guys have dance cards for this shit?”

  “Of course not. Battle is not a dance; it’s a process. A mechanism. But custom dictates that all the major fights are arranged in advance. We’re all on the same side after all.”

  “No, we bloody aren’t. I’ve got allies and enemies.”

  “But afterwards, when the blood is shed and the winner anointed by the gods, then it is time to talk again, yes?”

  “Mr Armand, I stopped here on a whim. I don’t know that things would have gone so easily for you if I hadn’t.”

  He laughed like pistons slamming back and forth. “You’re a mage. Use the identify spell.”

  “Speculator Visus? Oh. Ok.”

  Duke Armand Smith

  Strategium

  Level 169

  STR 257 AGI 67 MAG 42 ARM 6890

  “And now you see. This battle was never in doubt. It might have taken me a while… but the conclusion was inevitable. I thank you. There are many treasures in this world, but the most valuable of them is time.”

  I did not agree with his assessment. I had centuries, millennia of time at my disposal, but shinies were shiny.

  “Smith?”

  “What of it?”

  “You’re an outremonde?”

  He sighed and pulled off his simple barbute helm. He wiped a faint sheen of sweat from his face with a coarse cloth. “Yeah. I hear you’re mates with gods?”

  “Mates is a bit strong. They fuck me over periodically.” I waved a sparkly arm. “And try and railroad me into doing their bidding.”

  “How’s that working out for them?”

  “Well, I glow, so pretty good,” I grumbled.

  “Hah, it has its advantages. I believe you were discussing loot earlier?”

  “Woof,” Heartflash confirmed.

  “I can see a four per cent share being in order, assuming you release Sir Gravelmound and Captain Darksbane from your… associates,” Armand finished.

  “Seriously, Armand Smith?”

  “What of it?”

  “Nothing. Sure, I’m keeping the dwarves; they’re fair game according to Bulb, all the other side is.”

  “I see no issue with that. You’re aware they are eating the dead now that the living have outrun them?” he asked politely.

  “Ah, crap. JURGEN! KNOCK THAT SHIT OFF! I want ten per cent.”

  “Meow!” Heartflash exclaimed in shock.

  “Six.”

  “Nine!”

  “Seven and a half. That really is the final offer. We all have forces to maintain, and loot must be shared,” Armond said. I found I disliked the word 'share' almost as much as the word 'buy'.

  “Fine,” I ground out, painfully conscious that while this man might not be able to kill me, of everyone I’d met, he’d stand the best chance.

  “Excellent. I’ll leave you to deal with your… minions.”

  “You guys aren’t going to have a go at me about using necromancy?”

  “You glow. Meep.” I wasn’t even sure which animal that noise was meant to represent, but I took Heartflash’s shrug as a sign I wasn’t in some terrible trouble for what I’d done, despite accidentally reanimating a bunch of the “good guys”.

  “So, I can bring my pixie through a portal to sort the negotiations? Not a wild pixie! She’s a minion and a… friend, kind of. She’s an outremonde as well. Failed her test for godhood and got stuck with me.” Their faces had darkened at the use of the P word. You can accidentally reanimate someone's dead friend and turn them into a shambling horror, and that’s all cool, but mention pixies and you might as well have started dancing around in human skin.

  “We would prefer a human intermediary, if possible,” Heartflash said.

  “I’ll try and sort something out. Would an Orlic do? OK, that’s a no. I’ll find a human.” If Tim was out, could I send Inedible-Reg? I could sic Gledna on them, but I had already breached a bunch of the local laws of war.

  I headed over to where my zombie army was zombie-ing out and, well, feasting. They certainly had an eye for biomass. They also seemed to focus on the thighs and buttocks of the people they were devouring. Possibly because those parts had armour that was the easiest to get off. At least I hoped that was the reason.

  “Oi! You lot. Gather round, good… undead. So some of you are not bad guys, and I’m sorry for the whole raising you from the grave thing. I’ll be sending you back shortly. Jurgen, you and your mates are shit out of luck. You’re evil dwarves, so it’s ok for me to keep you as undead minions. Welcome to the team! There is no healthcare, but that’s not exactly at the top of your wishlists anymore, is it?