Tybalt silently communicated with Baldwin as he and Private Graven carried Private Lorenzo’s corpse.

  How close were you to this Jackson guy? Tybalt sent.

  I was closer to his father, Baldwin replied instantly. Why?

  I’ve been wondering if I might get a minute alone with his body, Tybalt sent. If I did, I could turn him undead. He would probably just be a zombie, though. Like Lorenzo. His personality wouldn’t be intact. Which is no sacrifice for me. I didn’t know him. But at higher levels, I can unlock skills that have a higher chance of creating intelligent undead. Thought I would check in whether you wanted me to wait and see if the opportunity arises again later.

  Tybalt didn’t communicate what a long shot that was. He probably needed to get to level twenty before such skills might become available. In that time, the likelihood that this body would still be in good shape was not very high.

  Of course, you didn’t give a shit about whether I came back intelligent or not, Baldwin observed.

  Correct, Tybalt replied bluntly. I just needed bodies.

  Let him resent me if he wants, the necromancer thought. He remembered that negative emotions could actually feed a revenant’s growth. Even if he wasn’t trying to actively feed that fire, he wouldn’t go out of his way to extinguish it either.

  Well, don’t bother doing it for him either, Baldwin sent. I didn’t care that much for the son, just the father. And Sergeant Jack won’t be happy to get his son back as a zombie, a revenant, or any other kind of undead. I actually ran into some naturally occurring undead with him, maybe sixteen years back. He said, “Full dead is always better.”

  Tybalt snorted quietly to himself and earned a contemptuous glare from Private Graven.

  “Something funny, bastard?” Graven asked.

  “You wouldn’t get it,” Tybalt said.

  Graven’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing back.

  Shouldn’t start so many verbal skirmishes when you’re so poorly armed, Tybalt thought.

  To Baldwin, he sent a quick, Got it. Will try a stealth move if I can.

  Let me know if you need support, Baldwin replied.

  But Tybalt looked and saw Baldwin was embedded in a group of talking men. They were either pressing him on the Private Lorenzo situation or else filling him in about Corporal Jackson, as if they thought he somehow didn’t already know what had happened.

  Tybalt wasn’t going to bother asking for help even if there was some way Baldwin could be a convenient distraction again. Baldwin had already miraculously pulled Tybalt’s chestnuts from the fire once that day. It would be foolish to rely on it happening again. More than that, it was best not to give the others too many opportunities to recognize the close association that Tybalt and Baldwin had formed recently.

  No, Tybalt would either manage this or fail to, relying on his own resourcefulness.

  He and Graven managed to get Lorenzo’s body across the village to the cart. No flies had begun to gather yet. Tybalt wondered if the body would truly decompose, considering how quickly he had gotten to it. Then again, as he understood it, zombies were less energy intensive to create than revenants for a reason. Part of that was that the brain continued functioning in a revenant. But probably another element was fully stopping the process of decomposition.

  You’re welcome, Baldwin, he thought to himself.

  They set the corpse down at the edge of the wooden structure.

  Another soldier, Private Deckard, was sitting in the cart waiting for them. Though the day’s light had only just broken, beads of sweat were already blossoming on his forehead. He looked annoyed that he was in the position of safeguarding a cadaver.

  The other body, Tybalt could see, lay sideways in an open barrel that had once held spirits. Corporal Jackson’s face was frozen in an expression of horror and dismay that looked particularly ghastly when contrasted with Private Lorenzo’s relatively peaceful dead visage.

  “What do we know about what happened to him?” Tybalt asked, pointing at Jackson.

  “Why do you care?” Deckard replied brusquely. “Anyway, I don’t know anything beyond what Commander Volusia said when we assembled five minutes ago.”

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  Tybalt decided not to call attention to the fact that he had not been among the number assembled.

  “Fair enough,” he said, affecting annoyance. “I just give a shit.”

  “You know, one of these days, that mouth is going to get you into some trouble it can’t get you out of, Specialist,” Graven said. He pronounced Tybalt’s rank in a tone of feigned respect, for once not calling him “bastard.” It made Tybalt uneasy for a moment, but he quickly recovered.

  “I’m just asking a simple question here,” Tybalt said.

  “And implying that we don’t care about our dead squadmate,” Deckard said, frowning. “What makes you think you give more of a shit than we do? It’s not as if you talk to anyone here.”

  “Not many people,” Tybalt admitted. “I used to occasionally chat with Jackson, though. Me and Baldwin both. Baldwin knew Jackson’s people, you see.”

  Tybalt instantly sent a telepathic message, relaying this new ‘fact’ to Baldwin so that the revenant would not contradict his story.

  “I guess that’s one out of two down, as far as soldiers who gave a shit about you,” Graven said, his lips twisting into a nasty smirk.

  “Nice,” Tybalt said. “Actually, I owed him money when he died. Lost a game of knucklebones to him last week.”

  Tybalt drew a dusty silver coin out of his pocket while at the same time beginning to move aura from within his body, pushing it into his arm and slowly concentrating it around his hand. Only those with classes could see other people’s mana in action. Lieutenant Sperry was off talking to Commander Volusia. That left only Tybalt able to see mana out of those nearby.

  I can do this. I just have to be subtle.

  “It’s not as if he can use it where he’s gone,” Deckard said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Not like you to gamble, bastard,” Graven said.

  “Yeah, it’s not like me to lose, either,” Tybalt replied, smiling sardonically. “It was a night full of surprises.”

  “I wouldn’t think you’d be so flush that you’d want to throw money away on a dead man either,” Graven added.

  Tybalt made his face into a mask of outrage.

  “Are you impugning my honor, Private?” he asked, speaking up in a controlled way as if he was trying not to yell. “I take your snarky little comments every time I happen to see your smug face, but I won’t have you call me a welcher.”

  “What are you going to do about it, bastard?” Graven asked. He tried to make his posture menacing, but he was clearly intimidated.

  “Hey, Graven, why don’t you and I go and take a smoke break?” Deckard said, suddenly stepping in between Tybalt and Graven, raising his arms, palms on display, in the universal gesture of asking for cool heads. “Clearly, Tybalt wants to say farewell to his close acquaintance, Corporal Jackson.” He turned to face Tybalt. “You, calm down. You’ve been here longer than me or Graven. There’s no excuse for you to lose your temper and act like you’re going to start something over some words, and in the middle of a combat zone, no less.”

  Tybalt managed to add a trace of chagrin and dull his feigned outrage slightly, without completely extinguishing it. That would have seemed unrealistic. He gave the other two a small nod.

  As they stepped off the cart, Tybalt slid further forward into it. His hand was now wreathed in mana, as well as holding his silver coin. He didn’t look around himself. He trusted his own situational awareness enough that he was more concerned with appearing suspicious by looking around than he was at the possibility of someone happening to notice something off. No one was watching him. He was almost certain of it.

  As a final precaution, Tybalt tried to posture himself to cover the opening of the barrel from view as completely as possible.

  Finally, Tybalt slid his hand to the middle of Jackson’s corpse, pushed the energy quickly in along with his intent, and sent a silent command: Be still!

  The body twitched. The chest spasmed, and Tybalt realized that in the moment of their creation, even the undead were not in complete control of their own body.

  Still! he sent once more.

  Despite his orders, the newly created zombie—or revenant, although Tybalt found that unlikely—let out a single, rasping post-death rattle. Since he could see it coming, Tybalt pounded his own chest and coughed loudly to cover the sound as best he could. The noises weren’t perfectly aligned, but he thought he had done it.

  He felt eyes shift to look at him, though Tybalt could not know instantly whose eyes they were. He ignored them and allowed himself to cough two more times, as if he was clearing his throat.

  Play dead, Tybalt sent into the monster’s brain. Play dead until I call for you to move.

  Its chest fell, as if the creature was silently exhaling, and then the entire body stilled and moved no more.

  Thank Lord Mudo that the undead operate this way, he thought. Instant obedience.

  Tybalt slid his hand over to the side of Jackson’s corpse and quickly slipped his silver coin into the man’s pocket.

  A small price to pay for the opportunity…

  “You all right, there, bastard?” It was Graven’s voice. Hostile, almost taunting.

  Tybalt turned toward the sound and gave Graven the scowl the other man would be expecting.

  “Thought you fucked off,” Tybalt said.

  Graven gave him a false smile, then stepped onto the cart, setting his foot down right beside Private Lorenzo’s head.

  Graven also set down a bowl of porridge. Tybalt was pleased that the Private was getting a good breakfast before the day’s work. A quick glance around told him that others were doing the same, wolfing down the slop in anticipation that they would be moving out quickly.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it before I helped you get this body into that barrel,” Graven said.

  There were no mishaps as they crammed the bodies into the barrel together. Then the two men, carefully keeping their distance from each other, walked over to where the main body of the squad was gathering.

  Commander Volusia had started to address them as they ate, saving some time.

  “We’ve lost two men to the demihumans, neither in a straight fight…” Volusia began in a frank tone.

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