“Wake up, Tybalt! Come on, fuck…”

  The necromancer stirred at the sound of Markus’s lightly stressed voice.

  “Come on, bastard, if you’re not up and out in the next five minutes, Commander’s going to have my ass…”

  Tybalt opened his eyes. “I’m awake,” he said, giving Markus a small smirk. “Wouldn’t want anything to happen to your ass.”

  The necromancer ignored his hutmate’s answering scowl and rose slowly and carefully from his bedding. He didn’t remember whether he had passed out there or somewhere else in the hut while he was performing self-repair on his ribs. He was definitely wearing the same clothing from yesterday, a gambeson he had taken to replace the one he stabbed Baldwin through and a plain pair of pants.

  My ribs seem to be fine. Everything in that area is less painful than yesterday. That was a marked contrast to the rest of his body, which seemed somehow to have gotten worse. His arms and legs were one long bruise, barely interrupted by a few patches of his torso that felt a bit better now that he had repaired the broken bones.

  Unfortunately, with more substantial injuries than cuts and bruises, health elixir or even healing magic could not always do everything. If it was just a couple of broken ribs, maybe the body could repair them instantly.

  But if a gang of ruffians had, for example, tried to beat you into silence for a quarter of an hour, paying careful attention to most areas of your body, that was something else.

  Even if Tybalt had drained another health elixir, he would still have needed a little time on top of that to reach full health and feel at full strength.

  Tybalt slowly gathered up the necessities of the day—weapons, rations, some bones to carry as extra improvised weapons, and that vial of health elixir that he wasn’t officially allowed to drink—and moved to the hut’s entrance under Markus’s anxious, watchful eye. As he stepped into the sunlight, he barely remembered to walk laboriously, with a slight limp, occasionally slowing down as though his injuries made it hard to keep going.

  Wouldn’t look good if they knew how much I’ve recovered.

  Markus stepped out behind Tybalt and began walking in front of him, not bothering to go slowly so that Tybalt could keep up. The necromancer didn’t mind, of course. He preferred to let his hutmate get further away, so that Tybalt could focus on more important matters. During the walk, he made telepathic contact with his undead assets.

  Baldwin, anything going on in camp I need to know about? he sent.

  No, master, just Lieutenant Sperry and Commander Volusia talking about something while the rest of us wait to move out, Baldwin replied. I thought I might have to come and wake you.

  I have Markus for that, as it turns out, Tybalt thought. I’m a homework assignment for him, just like I was a homework assignment for Sergeant Remus and that bunch of goons he assembled to beat the shit out of me.

  But he didn’t dwell on it.

  Hieron, give me a status update, Tybalt sent. Are you and the others close to the squad’s position and ready to follow us into the valley?

  I made a bit of a command decision, master, Hieron responded quickly. He seemed to be trying to sound flippant, but it was useless in a telepathic exchange with the necromancer. Tybalt could feel Hieron’s slight anxiety at having even bent his orders.

  Why? Tybalt sent flatly.

  Well, I tried to contact you, but you were unavailable, the fext began in a slightly whiny tone of voice.

  That’s not what I was asking, Tybalt replied. I’m not that concerned about protocols as long as you have a good reason.

  Oh, I found something that will be of use to us… Hieron explained what he had discovered.

  Tybalt nodded to himself. You did the right thing, he sent. Keep showing initiative like that, and I’ll put more undead under your command soon enough.

  At your will, master, Hieron replied in a voice of thin sycophancy. He again showed that strange semi-contemptuous attitude that Tybalt did not entirely know how to reckon with. But there would be time to teach him respect later.

  Tybalt stepped toward the squad, which was already loosely formed up near the end of the village that faced deeper into the valley. Only a fraction of the squad was missing from what Tybalt could see. Volusia had apparently chosen to leave only a thin crew behind to defend the squad’s base in this abandoned village. He was heavily committed to assaulting the mountain that day. Tybalt could see Volusia and Mariella standing side by side, still discussing something, and in a moment of slightly raised volume, he heard his name come from her lips.

  He raised an eyebrow. Is Mariella going back to being Volusia’s obedient little puppet, then? Reporting on my movements or something? There weren’t a lot of good reasons he could think of for her to bring him up to Volusia just then.

  But there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Just stay watchful.

  Tybalt walked over to Baldwin, who stepped away from his friend Corporal Dickon and approached Tybalt with a look of exaggerated concern on his face, meeting him halfway between the nearest hut and the rest of the formation.

  “You all right, buddy?” Baldwin asked loudly enough for anyone listening to hear. “You look bad, like you took a fall.”

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  As he spoke, Baldwin placed his right hand on Tybalt’s left shoulder, using the right half of his body to conceal the movements of his left arm. With his left hand, Baldwin quickly reached Tybalt’s collar and slid several objects down Tybalt’s shirt front. Only the slight clink of glass gave away the fact that it was the health elixirs Tybalt had asked him to swipe from the cart the previous evening.

  “Thanks, Baldwin,” Tybalt said. “I did fall, but I’m recovering. You know I’m a tough bastard.”

  As he spoke, he undid a single button on the front of his gambeson, slid in his right hand, and activated his storage ring, sweeping all of the health elixirs away in an instant.

  “You can’t keep a good man down,” Baldwin replied with a grin, clapping Tybalt’s shoulder.

  The two separated. Baldwin returned to his place, while Tybalt stepped into the front row of the squad. He anticipated that Volusia would have him somewhere near the lead, where the entire squad would have eyes on him. There were many possible excuses the Commander could give for that.

  But surprisingly, Volusia didn’t say anything to Tybalt.

  As Mariella and Volusia separated, Volusia moved toward the center of the formation, avoiding Tybalt entirely, while Mariella stayed at the front.

  “I’ll be guarding you again, today, bastard,” she said in a normal speaking voice, loudly enough for all those in the front ranks to hear. “Stick close to me, and don’t talk too much.”

  She kept her facial expression neutral during those sentences, but Tybalt barely managed to suppress a smile. It was beginning to feel as if he and the Lieutenant had inside jokes, though this wasn’t exactly that. Rather, it was more that she never called him “bastard” like some others in the squad did, and she certainly wouldn’t normally bother ordering him not to talk too much. The out of character remarks were a hint at something.

  Hopefully they’re a hint that she’s fooling Volusia, or she thinks she is.

  “Attention!” Volusia’s voice shattered the dull murmur of the squad in an instant. The squad shifted into various forms of the attention position, arms at their side, bodies straight. “Silence from here on out. We’re going into this valley in force. We must assume the enemy will have prepared as best they can to answer that force! They may not have our discipline, or our levels, but we cannot underestimate them. We will be on their home terrain for the entirety of today’s engagement. Our best defense is not to let them know our location at any given moment. Not until we’re ready to fight. We want to sneak up on them. Only speak if spoken to or if necessary to report a possible threat! Am I understood?”

  “Sir, yes, sir!” shouted the squad in unison.

  “Follow behind Taun and Derren! Forward march!”

  After that, silence fell over the group. Only the rhythmic sound of marching remained to signal their movement through the valley. It made Tybalt a little nervous. He was counting on the beastfolk to move competently and actually keep a good eye out for the squad’s advance. To help them, he would have liked a little chatter here and there.

  He weighed the idea of making some noise himself, then quickly discarded it. Volusia was already suspicious of him. Better not to put a target on his back again.

  The squad advanced for an hour or more before the valley narrowed and required a new command.

  “Single file,” Volusia said in an inside voice. “Be on guard. This is a good location for a trap if the enemy is inclined to spring one. In a place like this, our numbers mean less.”

  The squad quickly obeyed. Tybalt shifted to directly behind Mariella.

  For him, the air filled with a thick tension. This was the place his fext had described. At any moment now, it should begin.

  Attack when ready, Tybalt sent. Just avoid the front. That’s where I am.

  The squad walked for another thirty seconds in stillness and quiet. Tybalt began to wonder if he had misidentified the place Hieron had described.

  And then there were several bone-crunching thuds from far behind him, near the back of the formation.

  Tybalt opened his status screen with a thought.

  Yep, I just got experience, he thought with satisfaction. Took me about halfway to the next level.

  And all it had taken was a few thrown stones.

  “We’re under attack!” Volusia barked, no longer concerned with stealth. “Turtle formation! Expect projectiles from above!”

  The squad, as a body, lifted their shields over their heads and prepared to endure whatever the beastfolk—really, the undead, but they had no way of knowing that—rained down on them.

  And Tybalt received a sudden transmission through his mental bond with Hieron.

  He was about to send the fext some words of praise, but Hieron sent a message in a tone of urgency.

  Master, there’s something you should see.

  A moving visual and audio transmission followed. It took Tybalt a few seconds to make sense of it. He saw beastfolk on the mountainside above and parallel to the undead. These were the same races of beastfolk the squad had encountered before: foxes, ibexes, and harpies. On the mountain the beastfolk stood on, well above the undead, they appeared to be pushing around a bunch of barrels of something. They rolled the barrels close to the cliff’s edge, near a bunch of large stones.

  What am I looking at, Hieron?

  I don’t know, master. The fext sounded genuinely nervous. But when they rolled out those barrels, they looked a little too excited. Nervous, too. More than anything, angry. These people really hate you guys.

  Just then, the fox beastman standing closest to the edge sparked a flame with his hand. Tybalt couldn’t see the mana he used, probably because he was observing through Hieron’s eyes rather than his own. But it was obviously some basic, non-class-requiring magic.

  The beastman lit a fuse that protruded from one of the barrels, and then he simply ran.

  Some kind of alchemic concoction that reacts to flame, Tybalt decided.

  His whole body prepared to move.

  There was a loud noise from overhead.

  “What’s that sound?” Mariella wondered aloud.

  The initial noise was followed by multiple violent, world-shaking bangs.

  Tybalt was already looking overhead, so he saw it before anyone else when the sky began to fall.