We don’t need to keep up these pretenses much longer, Tybalt replied. He nodded in the direction of the beastfolk outlined against the top of the cliff, slowly receding from view now. We’ve had our first sighting of our new allies. They’re even fiercer than I’d hoped. How much can Volusia really know anyway?

  I don’t know for certain, master, Baldwin sent. But he seems very suspicious of you—and even of me. I don’t think he needs hard evidence. In the field, he takes initiative on incomplete information all the time. He is the law out here.

  All right, we’ll just have to move a little more carefully from now on, Tybalt sent. Just for the next day or two. At the same time, we need to create as many undead as we can, keep the squad as sick as possible, and prepare for them to encounter the beastfolk defenders soon. When they do, we’ll take advantage of all that setup and betray the squad as suddenly and brutally as possible. With luck, we can wait until the beastfolk really need our help and we might make the difference between victory and defeat.

  What makes you believe that will work, master? Baldwin asked nervously. What do you intend to do with the beastfolk after that? And how can we be certain they won’t be hostile to us too?

  They were only ever hostile to the Army because we were trying to run them off, Baldwin, Tybalt replied. I will need more than just undead to carve out my own territory out here. We’ve seen that almost none of those I raise come back like you. And intelligent soldiers are worth a lot more than those things. I intend to make the beastfolk a core part of our force going forward.

  Baldwin’s eye twitched at the words entering his brain. It was one thing to meddle with raising the dead. That power had been granted to Tybalt by a god, and it was far beyond Baldwin’s ken to make suggestions about the right or wrong thing to do with such a gift. But now Tybalt was talking about betraying their own kind—working with the beastfolk against humans. It went against everything the Army had ever been about—and therefore against the direction of Baldwin’s whole career.

  I have to follow his lead, Baldwin thought. No choice. And I’m not human anymore anyway. What’s with this loyalty on my end, to people who would kill me if they knew what I was?

  He sucked in a deep breath, then let it out again. Baldwin didn’t exactly need to breathe, he could tell, but the old behavior was calming. He took two more deep breaths before he was ready to respond.

  As you say, master, Baldwin sent at last. What do we do now?

  Wait until dark, try to sneak off and animate the remaining skeletons you brought with you from the beastfolk village, and then I want you to take them to the mining camp, Tybalt instructed. It’s time for us to get some more intact bodies—and some levels. If someone notices you’re gone from camp, oh well. It’s not that big of a deal if you have to desert now. People will just think the beastfolk got you at this point.

  —

  The rest of the day seemed to pass quickly.

  Tybalt did not manage to sneak more of his virions into the squad’s next meal. With the cook dead, Volusia personally divided up the squad’s remaining rations and distributed them by hut. Tybalt only had the opportunity to contaminate his hut-mate Markus’s food.

  Everyone was now preparing their own meals from the distributed food.

  It was impossible to say if that was because the Commander had begun to suspect Tybalt’s methods or simply because Baldwin had killed the cook, and there was no easy replacement at hand. But it would be more difficult now for Tybalt to further sabotage his squad.

  On the bright side, from what he could tell, the porridge had further infected the others. Squad members looked visibly queasy. They walked around with foreheads covered in a thin sheen of sweat that did not appear to be related to the weather, clutching bloated stomachs, and they kept walking off into the sand to relieve themselves. Volusia instituted a mandatory buddy system, because the frequent trips were an obvious potential vulnerability for anyone watching the camp.

  If this just happened an hour ago, Tybalt thought, that attack from the beastfolk would have really ruined the squad.

  He looked forward to ensuring some similar disaster occurred in the near future.

  Tybalt leveled up soon after lunchtime, and his pestilence mage class experience continued to tick up throughout the afternoon.

  Much of the squad was working on fortifying the abandoned village for the first hour, which Tybalt assisted in. The defenses the squad created, to obstruct any further beastfolk sneak attacks, mainly included shallow trenches lined with sharp implements taken from around the village or made from surplus equipment from the cart. They also blocked off the spaces between some of the huts to reduce the number of paths in and out of the village.

  It would make Baldwin moving in and out of the village more difficult, except that the revenant took part too. Tybalt was fairly certain Baldwin left a weak spot or two in the area of fortifications he was responsible for.

  After that, most of the squad were given leave to enjoy themselves. Around a third of them took to their beds, trying to recover or preserve their strength. Those who felt a little better and had technical skills spent time in front of blazing fires attempting to forge the remaining household objects and surplus equipment into climbing gear, an unenviable task. The squad only had a very limited amount of mountaineering equipment with them, since they had expected to be fighting beastfolk in the desert rather than the mountains.

  But Tybalt didn’t have those specialized skills, and his actual primary job—scouting—had already been done by a few volunteers while he and Sperry conducted reconnaissance on the cliff, so like most of the squad, he was free to enjoy himself.

  With the downtime he had, he checked his status and considered further moves.

  Where did I get all that new defiant necromancer experience? he wondered.

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  Then he checked Baldwin’s status. Part of it was that Tybalt wanted to see if he had surpassed Baldwin in any categories. But there he found his answer.

  He did a quick calculation and recognized that Baldwin had received multiple levels from killing Private Lorenzo and helping Tybalt cover it up. It seemed that Tybalt had gotten roughly ten percent of the experience Baldwin acquired, just because it was his undead who had performed these tasks.

  If there had been any doubt about the next steps, that would have settled it.

  I need Baldwin to go and get his hands dirty. That’s how I get my next few levels. If he and those skeletons can kill a few miners in their sleep, I might start to have something resembling a squad of my own…

  Tybalt eagerly waited for the day to end, practically rubbing his hands together with glee as the sun went down.

  —

  Sperry wrestled with her decision for most of the afternoon, but in the end, she reached the conclusion she had known she would from the beginning.

  I’m going back, she decided. Come what may.

  She couldn’t be blind anymore. From what Tybalt and Volusia had each separately said, she thought she had been ignorant to what was going on for far too long already.

  When the sun had set, she wrapped herself in warm clothing and used her only stealth-related skill, Fire Shadows Camouflage. There were plenty of fires burning around the abandoned village as many of the men shivered with the stomach issues that were going around.

  Thankfully, Sperry was less affected for some reason. Almost entirely unaffected now, though she had felt a bit queasy the previous night. Perhaps it was because she wasn’t eating very much. She hadn’t had any appetite lately.

  Moving through the shadows cast by the myriad little fires, she slipped away from the camp and set off through the cold desert night.

  —

  Tybalt and Baldwin set out for where they had buried their remaining bones once night had fallen.

  It might have looked suspicious that they were walking around together, but the buddy system was in effect. There was no getting out of camp separately just then.

  At any rate, as Tybalt had pointed out, soon, they would be able to act openly.

  “Be careful, master,” Baldwin said when they were out of hearing range. “They say that pride cuts intelligence by one half.”

  Tybalt nodded. “True, and I’m still not particularly dangerous or tough. I know. But I’ve got you protecting me, don’t I? You’re probably the toughest fighter in the squad now, besides Sperry.”

  “I don’t just mean to be careful by having me nearby. I think you’re taking a lot of risks. Taking things for granted.”

  “Hmm.” Tybalt sighed. “I don’t know if there’s a path for us that doesn’t involve an uncomfortable level of risk.”

  There was a pause in the conversation as Tybalt pointed to where the skeletons were. He had ordered the actual undead they had left behind to signal him as to their exact location. It responded by reaching out from just beneath the surface of the sand, waving its bony hands to get its master’s attention. The gesture looked ridiculous, like Tybalt was farming bones in the desert, but it was very effective for pinpointing the remains.

  The necromancer and revenant quickly uncovered the lightly buried piles of bones, and Tybalt began a quicker version of what he had done the previous night: organizing the skeletons, marking them with his sealing sigil, and reanimating them.

  He was less concerned about being careful this time, more concerned about not getting caught out in the desert with all these bones and no good explanation. He had already animated three skeletons before, and it was as simple as anything else he could do. He had sensed that the bones knew where they needed to be as long as they were close enough together. All he had to do was supply the power that would bind them.

  “You’re still certain about sending me and the skeletons to the mining camp?” Baldwin asked. “If we get caught…”

  “Then you’ll be destroyed, and I might be caught too, yes,” Tybalt said without looking up, his hand glowing deep green with necromantic power.

  Baldwin winced at the word “destroyed.” Tybalt barely kept himself from smiling. Using the word “destroyed” instead of “killed” was just a little calculated reminder that Baldwin wasn’t human anymore.

  The revenant pressed on as the first of the new skeletons began to move.

  “And even if we don’t get caught, you’re also relying on the beastfolk becoming friendly to you,” Baldwin continued. “What if the enemy of our enemy is not our friend?”

  “I don’t think they’ll be instantly violent towards us,” Tybalt replied. “Not when we show up with the corpses of dead soldiers and miners as proof of our friendship. As long as we don’t get attacked without a chance to talk, I’m confident we can work together. That makes the mining camp attack more important. Some of the beastfolk might be hostile in time—people always fear what they don’t understand—but then I’ll deal with them.”

  The same way we’re dealing with the miners, went unspoken.

  The necromancer pushed mana into the second new skeleton. He wanted to return to the village before the guards could get suspicious and also in enough time to give Baldwin the chance to sneak back out and rendezvous with the skeletons again.

  Tybalt had another reason for viewing the beastfolk as potential future friends, but he did not want to tell Baldwin about Vidalia yet. It would be embarrassing to explain that his plan was based in part on his interpretation of a few erotically charged dreams about a seer he had never met in real life. Even in his own head, it didn’t sound entirely credible.

  “If you say so, master.” Tybalt could hear the doubt in Baldwin’s voice, but the necromancer did not feel he needed to clear it up.

  Let his negative feelings fuel him. That was the strength of a revenant. Fear, doubt, anger, hatred… those were only a power boost for someone—something—like Baldwin. That was why Tybalt sometimes needled him. Not at all because it was fun.

  “Don’t worry about it right now, Baldwin,” Tybalt said. “Enjoy tonight’s mission. All you have to do is go forth and destroy.”

  He raised the remaining skeletons, including one whose pieces Baldwin had brought with him back to the desert burial site. Now there were a total of eight.

  Tybalt gave them his standard instructions and then ordered them to lie down in the sand until Baldwin returned to take command of them. There were a few spare bones, and Tybalt stuck them in his pockets, between his shirt and pants, and into a couple of spaces in his boots where they wouldn’t move around too much. One never knew when some spare weapons would come in handy.

  The necromancer and the revenant turned to walk back to the abandoned beastfolk village.

  Then Tybalt stopped himself. “We have a minute, let me fix something,” he muttered in response to Baldwin’s inquiring gaze.

  He walked back to the skeletons, grabbed them by their horns, and activated Scrimshaw.

  The bone soaked up some of his mana—thirsty, like dry soil—and he felt the hardness reduce to almost nothing in an instant. Tybalt ran his finger along the material, and it conformed to his touch. Just like clay.

  The necromancer smiled and started working on the horns.

  He had always found it strange how suboptimally shaped ibex beastfolk horns were for combat. Now he corrected that, straightening them out and bending them slightly again in a different manner, so that they resembled the horns of a bull more. Perfect for goring people. He considered giving them sharpened edges as well, then decided against it. Beast horns were stabbing weapons, not slashing weapons.

  “Now they’ll be deadlier,” Tybalt said softly.

  “Good move, master,” Baldwin said. “Not just deadlier, but difficult to recognize as the same type of beastfolk.”

  “That assumes living witnesses,” Tybalt said, frowning.

  “There are over a hundred men there, and I know you don’t expect me to kill all of them,” Baldwin replied. “There is an element of luck in this operation, make no mistake.”

  “Then be lucky, Baldwin,” Tybalt said. “If anyone sees you, give them the desert’s peace.”

  Baldwin grunted an acknowledgment, clearly still a bit worried.

  But the two returned to the village, and half an hour later, the revenant slipped away.