Sergeant Remus scowled as he finished burying his waste.

  “Fuck this poison or bad air or furball curse or whatever the fuck this is…” he muttered.

  “Yeah, right?” said a voice from nearby. Closer than should have been possible without Remus noticing.

  He spun and saw a smile he’d never expected to see again, just ten feet back.

  “Baldwin? You’re… alive?”

  “You might say that,” Baldwin replied, grinning wider. “You could even say I have a new lease on life. Like a second wind.”

  “Praise the gods, it’s a miracle,” Remus replied, smiling back with feigned joy. His left hand loosened his dagger in its sheathe. The Sergeant couldn’t help but notice that Baldwin carried a blade in his right hand, and there was blood on his gambeson.

  What are you up to, Baldwin? he wondered.

  “Oh, you noticed something a little off,” Baldwin said, eyes on Remus’s hand as it prepared to draw the dagger. “Well, that’s all right. You know, I’ve missed how you and I used to spar, back in the day.”

  “You never won once,” Remus said, giving his words the tone of a warning.

  Back the fuck off… I wish I’d brought my spear. There was undeniably something off about this Baldwin as compared with the Baldwin that Remus had known. For one thing, he looked quite happy despite what seemed to be some very painful-looking scratch marks on his face. Baldwin had never been a man to suffer injuries particularly quietly.

  “Maybe now is different,” Baldwin said. “You said you weren’t going any further than shouting distance. This is a little further. Too distant for a scream to bring help.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Remus swallowed.

  So that was really his body back at the village, not some kind of double. Otherwise he wouldn’t have overheard that. But the Commander said he checked his pulse, and there was nothing. How? Some kind of magic elixir to slow his vitals? Maybe it’s also killing the pain from those scratches.

  “You always were arrogant about your physical power,” Baldwin continued. “You didn’t think anyone could beat you so long as you kept up your training.”

  It’s true. By the gods, if you keep your body in shape, even age won’t slow you down too much!

  “I had the skills to back it up,” Remus said, unable to keep some pride out of his voice. “Still do. By contrast, you were just cocky, my friend.”

  “Let’s go, then,” Baldwin said. “I could have ambushed you while you were shitting your guts out in the sand just now, but I thought, what a sad way for my Sergeant to go out. So draw your weapon.”

  Doesn’t seem like I have much of a choice. He’s right that I went too far away from camp to yell for help and be sure of being heard. Even if I could, no one would reach me in time if he’s somehow gotten stronger than me.

  Wordlessly, Remus raised his dagger and took up a fighting stance, moving his feet so that his body presented a smaller target area for Baldwin to strike at. Baldwin moved into his own mirroring stance a little more slowly. Far too relaxed, like he wasn’t worried about being attacked.

  Don’t take me lightly…

  The Sergeant took the opportunity to ask him a question.

  “When did you start working for the beastfolk?”

  “If you beat me, I’ll give you all the answers you want,” Baldwin said, smiling from ear to ear.

  “If I beat you, you’ll be dead!” Remus spat. He lunged, dagger stabbing forward—at nothing. Baldwin made a little backward jump to get just out of reach, then stabbed at Remus, but the Sergeant was already pulling back himself too, getting just out of range.

  So he’s not some kind of evil spirit, at least. He can be physically harmed. Otherwise there’d be no point in dodging. I can win this. If it’s just the same old Baldwin, I could even win without killing him. He wondered what sort of information could be pried from the other man with the appropriate sort of pressure. You made a mistake, deciding to face me openly.

  The two men circled, daggers raised, each waiting for the other to strike first or make some misstep.

  But no vulnerability presented itself.

  At last Remus lost his patience and lunged again.

  This time, instead of darting back, Baldwin sidestepped and tried to stab Remus in the torso. The Sergeant twisted to the side and kicked out at Baldwin’s knee. His foot struck it in the side. Baldwin fell and then rolled.

  The Sergeant took a moment to regain his own balance, then threw himself after Baldwin—and just barely managed to pivot to the side, when he noticed that the other man was ready for him, using one hand and both feet to hold himself up while the other held his dagger aimed up at Remus. The blade stabbed at the air where the Sergeant would have been if he hadn’t managed to change directions, then pulled back again.

  He’s fighting less conventionally than usual, taking the kinds of risks I don’t remember him taking before, Remus thought. If I hadn’t changed my trajectory there, I would have stabbed him in the back, and his dagger would have caught me in the guts. He was willing to take a fatal hit to deliver one of his own. This feels wrong. He shouldn’t be doing this when fighting someone he knows used to kick his ass regularly. He should be nervous, careful. On the defensive.

  Baldwin rose to his feet, keeping his dagger pointed at Remus’s chest as he moved. The Sergeant wondered what the other man could be thinking.

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  “Are you treating this like a sparring match?” Remus asked.

  “How did you figure it out?” Baldwin asked, smiling. The expression had no soul to it, Remus noticed for the first time. No heart, just teeth. The Sergeant swallowed.

  “You know you could die, fighting like an idiot out here,” Remus said slowly. He wasn’t sure why he felt compelled to point that out. Old habits.

  “That sounds like something for me to worry about,” Baldwin said. “You worry about your own survival.”

  That’s right. I asked him to give me information if I beat him. He hasn’t asked me for anything if he wins. So he definitely intends to kill me. Why is he making such risky moves if he’s treating this like a fight to the death?

  Just then, Baldwin darted in. Remus’s guard was up, and he had been ready to move in an instant, so he was able to shove Baldwin’s dagger arm with one hand while slashing at his neck with the other.

  Baldwin’s dagger buried itself into Remus’s right shoulder instead of the middle of the Sergeant’s chest. At the same time, Remus’s blade went through Baldwin’s throat.

  “Dumbass,” Remus said quietly as he watched Baldwin stumble back. The dagger pulled out of the Sergeant’s shoulder, following along with Baldwin’s backward motion.

  Despite the fact that Baldwin had clearly betrayed the squad in some way—there was no reason to have faked his death otherwise—Remus felt a stab of regret as he saw the blood slowly trickle from his slashed throat.

  He was a good man, once… Wait, what’s going on?

  The blood flow from the neck wound was far too slow and thin for the wound Remus had given. The shoulder wound the Sergeant was beginning to feel now was definitely bleeding more, despite the fact that Remus had basically carved Baldwin a second mouth on his neck.

  “Something wrong?” Baldwin’s voice was different. Hoarse. Raspy. As one would expect for someone whose throat had been damaged. But it also echoed with something unearthly.

  Gooseflesh rose all over Remus’s body.

  “What are you?” he whispered.

  Can he even be killed now?

  —

  “I’m just your old friend, Baldy,” Baldwin replied. “Don’t mind the slash to my throat. I’ve had worse, believe it or not.”

  “Somehow I doubt it,” Remus said, swallowing.

  Baldwin could tell he was shaken now. Maybe terrified, but hiding it with his usual wall of reserve. All the better.

  Losing blood fast, shitting his pants all over again from seeing that cutting my throat wasn’t enough to kill me—these are exactly the kinds of advantages I need.

  The revenant wasn’t overly confident in his fighting skills, despite what he knew Remus thought. He was aware that he would lose a fair fight with the Sergeant. Even now, with his powers and the difficulty of killing an undead, along with eight additional levels on top of his pre-mortem strength, it would still be a slog for Baldwin.

  As a fighter, Remus just outclassed him. He had the technique, the levels, and the patience to whittle Baldwin down, undead or alive.

  But not if the Sergeant had no idea what he was dealing with and got worn down to a nub himself before he knew the truth.

  The two men resumed fighting. Remus was a little stiff—stunned, Baldwin felt certain—and Baldwin got in a couple of slashes to the Sergeant’s uninjured arm.

  They continued the dance. Both men made lunges, pivoted to dodge, darted back, turned failed stabs into slashes where necessary. Rinse and repeat.

  Neither man could get another good stab in on the other after Baldwin’s stab into Remus’s shoulder and Remus’s slash into Baldwin’s throat. Those more committed moves were also more telegraphed and difficult to actually land without the other person doing something.

  Instead, little cuts accumulated, minute by minute, on both men’s bodies.

  And while Baldwin’s stamina ticked down, only Remus was actually slowed down by the cuts themselves. He lost more blood with every exchange, his body’s natural healing far from able to keep up with the continuous damage. Baldwin didn’t have a functioning circulatory system, so his bleeding was minimal, just the old blood that hadn’t dried up yet slowly oozing out.

  “Why—tell me why you’re doing this,” Remus said, eyes visibly beginning to go unfocused. The blood loss was obviously getting to him.

  “I have to,” Baldwin replied. He could feel an energy building up inside him. He didn’t know if he was just getting pumped to actually be winning a fight with Remus—even if by attrition—or if there was something strange happening with his revenant physiology.

  But with each injury suffered, the energy grew. It seemed to have started with the moment when Remus slashed his throat.

  “Why?” Remus asked again, his tone pointed.

  Baldwin closed the distance, aiming his dagger point at Remus’s heart. But the Sergeant sprang back to life, kicked Baldwin’s leg out from under him, and threw himself on top of the falling revenant.

  Remus seemed to sense that it was his last chance to win the fight, and he sank his dagger deep into Baldwin’s abdomen.

  The revenant could tell that major organs had been perforated, but not his heart. He was fairly certain he didn’t need that anyway, but it went to show how conventionally Remus was handling this fight. He wasn’t even thinking about the strange physiology Baldwin had already demonstrated—the fact that the revenant had shown he could survive a cut throat and continue fighting without issue.

  Someone like that was not going to be killed by a blade to the stomach. Maybe to the heart. Not to the stomach. The best bet was a decapitation.

  Sorry, friend, Baldwin thought. And goodbye.

  Baldwin felt the power in him reach a crescendo, and he sensed it surrounding his dagger in particular. He stabbed his blade upward in a joyful arc, at a moment when Remus’s weight was still heavily leaning on Baldwin, pressed down into the hilt of the dagger in Baldwin’s guts.

  The edge struck Remus’s chest with unstoppable, unnatural energy and force. Baldwin could feel the power run through both of their bodies, far more than he could have applied on his own.

  What is this? Whatever it was, it was exhilarating.

  The word came to Baldwin’s mind as he struck. This was a sound rather than text, so he could actually understand it. He would shortly come to recognize that it was the name of his skill, a skill he had invoked without truly intending to.

  Payback.

  The dagger carried the weight of the world with it as it stabbed through Remus’s gambeson. The cloth proved no apparent protection against Baldwin’s blade.

  A large hole opened in the Sergeant’s front, bigger than the actual size of the dagger. Closer to the size of Baldwin’s fist, but slightly larger even than that. If the revenant had been at a better angle, he was fairly certain he could have seen Remus’s spine. He could certainly feel the cool air pass through the gaping hole in his chest.

  The wound wasn’t to an instantly fatal location as Baldwin would have thought of it, but Remus’s eyes widened. Wordlessly, he tumbled to the side and seemed to instantly expire.

  I think he ran out of health, Baldwin decided. A real death by a thousand cuts, so to speak.

  He smiled to himself, but there was a hint of sadness to it.

  I got you something very good, master… the third most dangerous person in the squad, after Volusia and Sperry. He was a phenomenal warrior. I deserved that damn level.

  Baldwin rose, leaving Sergeant Remus’s corpse where it lay for a moment. There were a few more tasks to perform before he left the camp to Hieron.

  .