A scream broke the stillness of Commander Volusia’s sleep.

  “What?” he muttered to himself. “What’s going on?”

  He rose slowly to a sitting position. Did I dream that noise? What was my dream about? I don’t remember…

  “Help!” The desperate word was followed by a garbled noise as if someone was choking on his own blood.

  That got Volusia off of his bedroll in a hurry. This was no dream.

  He darted out of the opening to the hut and looked down the village path in both directions. His eyes widened at what he saw.

  Strange, shambling figures were dragging a body out of one of the sick huts.

  Volusia recognized Corporal Mateo despite what someone had apparently done to his throat.

  “The fuck?”

  The Commander was on his feet, a dagger in his hand, almost as soon as he saw what was happening.

  Some unknown force was attacking his camp. That was straightforward enough. He would ask questions later.

  Volusia closed the distance to the odd, hunched human figures in a second, and without really looking at their faces, he slashed one’s neck. The head tumbled from the body with a single cleave of his dagger.

  In the back of his mind, Volusia was surprised. He hadn’t intended to apply that much strength, had he? If these were enemy soldiers, their bodies should be a bit tougher. He turned to the other man and stabbed him in the heart.

  The figure stumbled forward, and Volusia took the opportunity to finally shout a warning.

  “Enemies! We’re under attack!”

  In the back of his mind, he wondered what had happened to the men he placed on watch. He naturally feared the worst.

  He turned his attention to the sick hut and squinted his eyes. He saw movement inside. That probably meant more enemies within.

  “They’re attacking the sick!” Volusia yelled. If any backup came, he wanted them to know where to go. He took a step forward, meaning to enter the sick hut.

  Then he felt a pair of hands on his shoulder and back. There was a low growl and the sensation of hot breath just behind his neck.

  Volusia spun and threw a quick uppercut, not calibrating or holding back any of his strength. His fist struck the enemy’s chin and kept going, smashing through the opponent’s entire jaw and coming out through the nose.

  The Commander got a good look at who he was fighting. The enemy still had his dagger in its heart.

  What the fuck? I just fucking killed you. How? How?!

  His heart pounded as he realized he wasn’t dealing with any normal enemy. The hands reached out for him again, and Volusia jumped back. He pulled his arm up and back, pushed mana into his right hand, and flattened his palm and fingers into a blade-like shape. As the humanoid creature stepped forward, Volusia chopped with his hand.

  The side of his palm sliced through the opponent’s neck, and the head tumbled away from the body.

  Ouch. Volusia looked down at his hand. Even after years of practice, his mana control simply wasn’t as good as a mage’s. He could see that at the point of impact, he was going to have a bruise.

  He looked down at the body and verified that it was truly no longer moving.

  Sever the head from the body, got it, he thought.

  He drew his dagger from the dead man’s chest and advanced into the sick hut—and saw something that confused him almost as much as it horrified him.

  There was a boy kneeling over Private Carson. Two dead bodies lay on either side of them, drenched in blood, and two of the strange, shambling figures stood on either side of the child. The boy had a dagger in his hand, and his hands were so bloody that he might as well have been wearing red gloves. He smiled at Volusia.

  “You must be the Commander,” he said. “I guess I wasn’t very efficient. I made a meal of this… Enjoyed it more than I should have.”

  “Get—get out of here, kid,” Volusia said, even as he knew it was wrong, knew that this child was no ordinary boy and had to have some involvement in what was going on.

  “Get him,” the child said, tilting his head at Volusia.

  The two humans to the boy’s sides shambled at Volusia, and his brain thankfully suspended the urge to thoughtfully consider what was going on.

  He darted forward, slashed up, sent a head tumbling, and then continued in a wide arc until his dagger reached the other body. He left a deep gash in that one’s neck, but it kept coming.

  Right. Actual severance. Not enough to inflict a fatal wound.

  Volusia pulled the blade back and slashed again, and this time, he decapitated the enemy. Then he turned back to the boy. The child had the tip of his own dagger pressed to Private Carson’s neck.

  “Surely we can negotiate some peaceful resolution to this situation, Commander?” he asked in an eerie, un-child-like fashion. The words didn’t even sound like they were his own.

  Volusia lunged forward, faster than he had shown he could move in the last two minutes, and letting go of the dagger, he smacked the boy in the face with an open palm.

  The Commander could feel the child’s cheekbone shatter on impact, and the blow sent the boy tumbling to the side, rolling across the ground.

  He didn’t let go of his weapon, Volusia noted mechanically.

  The child stopped rolling near a body, got to all fours still holding the dagger, and then Volusia kicked him hard under the jaw. The Commander heard the brutal crunching sound of the spine breaking where he had hit, and for a moment, he took a breath of relief.

  “For the King!” a voice called from behind him.

  Then Volusia felt the sharp bite of steel sinking into his lower back.

  He turned his head to see Private Xavier behind him, shaking like an autumn leaf.

  “C-Commander?” Xavier said, swallowing.

  “What gave you the impression that was a good idea?” Volusia growled.

  “I heard the yelling about enemies in the sick hut, and I only saw one figure,” the Private said. “I couldn’t see you properly, but you appeared to be beating a child to death… although I don’t know where the kid came from.” His eyes widened as he spoke, and Volusia turned back to see that the child whose neck he had broken was still moving.

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  The boy cracked his neck back and forth, then seemed to pull it back into place with his hands. There was a strange crunching sound that Volusia guessed was the bone reconnecting.

  Fuck… Seems we’re very lucky this one is still just a child. Even severing the spine didn’t do it.

  None of the other enemies had been apparently immortal.

  Volusia went for his dagger, ignoring the spear still sticking out of his back. The boy didn’t seem to move in response.

  The Commander turned to face the child, and he slashed at the boy’s neck once. The head fell away from the body, and Volusia at last breathed a sigh of relief. He looked down at his dagger. It appeared to have lost some of its edge over the last ten minutes of action. Another such attack without sharpening it and caring for it properly might nick the blade.

  Well, if that doesn’t end it…

  The body and head both twitched, as if in answer to his unfinished thought. Then they started pulling slowly closer together, drawn by some invisible force.

  “What the fuck?” exclaimed Private Xavier.

  “Yeah,” Volusia said dryly. He couldn’t be surprised by this right now. He had to actually deal with it. He reached behind himself and pulled the spear from his back, ignoring the pain from the wound. He stabbed the blade into the child’s arm, severing the limb at the elbow. Then he did the same to the other side and kicked both arms away from the body. He began working on chopping the body up into more pieces.

  If it was going to reconstruct itself, he’d make it damned difficult.

  “Um, sir, your wound,” Private Xavier ventured.

  “I’ve had worse,” Volusia replied. He could feel his high constitution already slowing the bleeding to a trickle. Nothing important had been pierced, he assessed. In a few hours, the wound would probably be closed completely. It would hurt like Kur in the morning, but there was no helping that.

  As he was working, the Commander had the thought that he should try and leave a little more of an impression on this young soldier. Give him something to aspire to. He half-turned back with a smile. “It takes more than that to kill an officer in the King’s own.”

  “Yes, sir.” Xavier nodded respectfully. He didn’t look like he’d forget tonight anytime soon.

  “Fetch me some fire,” Volusia said. “That’s how we deal with the undead. Then go and check the sick to see who’s hurt, who’s untouched, and who’s actually dead.”

  “Commander,” a voice rasped.

  Volusia looked down and saw Private Carson was awake. He was bleeding from a shoulder wound and a long slash down one arm, but it didn’t look like the wounds would be fatal.

  “Don’t strain yourself,” Volusia said quietly.

  “Knew you’d come when I called, sir,” Carson managed. “Saw him killing Omar and Myron. I—”

  “Don’t strain yourself, soldier,” Volusia repeated. “You did good. Rest now.”

  “How sweet.” The child’s voice broke the slightly sentimental mood that had begun to settle over the men. It reminded Volusia that no, the danger wasn’t past.

  “You can still talk?” Volusia said. “Without your body? Without air?”

  “My body’s right there, sir!” the child protested with a creepy giggle. “Perks of being undead. We don’t need air.”

  “All right, then you’re going to tell me everything I want to know,” Volusia said. “Or I’m going to make this a very bad night for you.” He stuck the point of the spear he had been using into the undead’s chest cavity just to emphasize the point.

  The child giggled again. “You think that can hurt me? Silly military man. That tickles!”

  Sweat beaded on the back of Volusia’s neck. This child certainly couldn’t kill him—hadn’t seemed that much stronger than a normal eleven or thirteen year old kid, whatever he actually was. But this apparent immunity to pain would be trouble. How would they get answers out of him? And if he could not be destroyed by chopping him up, they would have to constantly keep a man on guard, watching the parts of him so that they could not reunite into the whole.

  “I’ll happily tell you why I’m here, though,” the boy said.

  “Go on.”

  “Sir, I brought the fire!” Private Xavier was back, holding a torch. Volusia hadn’t really noticed that he’d even left.

  “Give me a few minutes, Private,” Volusia said.

  “There’s something else, sir!” Xavier added. “The miners are here. They brought a lot of men. I—”

  “All right,” Volusia said.

  He bent and picked up the child’s head by the hair and lifted it up to his own head height.

  “We’re going for a little walk,” he said. “Don’t do anything annoying, like biting.”

  “Whatever you say, sir. I’m mainly a messenger here to deliver the wishes of my master, Lord Andric.”

  “Fine, fine. Just a minute.” Volusia felt like he was dreaming. This was so ridiculous, so surreal. It almost had to be a dream. But of course it wasn’t.

  Actually…

  He extended the head to Private Xavier, who took a reflexive step back.

  “Sir?” Xavier asked.

  “Hold this for me, Private,” Volusia said. “Don’t let the parts reunite. This kid’s a killing machine. I was going to take him away from the rest of his body. But I also just realized I don’t want him to overhear the conversation I’m going to have with the miners. Maybe burn off the ears. Try burning bits of the body, too. I’m not sure it will be enough, but we should try what we can. Fire is usually the right way to deal with the undead.”

  “Y-yes, sir.”

  “Aww, boring!” exclaimed the head as Xavier took him.

  “I’ll be here to receive your message later,” Volusia said, smiling at the head. He felt he’d figured out what the undead child was here to do—to give some information, maybe a threat, while also receiving far more important information simply by being present in the camp—and Volusia was pleased with himself for countering the boy’s plan.

  Or rather, the owner’s plan. His smile turned to a frown.

  “There’s a necromancer out here somewhere,” he muttered quietly. He hadn’t heard of a necromancer being active within his own lifetime. His knowledge about them was all legends. Folklore.

  Those miners will have to be up to the task of defeating him with us. I don’t really have enough men of my own anymore…

  Volusia walked out to find the miners and the healthier soldiers all gathered on the village’s main path. There were dozens of miners. Not nearly all two hundred of them, as Volusia might have prayed, but still enough to make up for his losses. At least in numbers. These men wouldn’t have the same quality as his trained, professional soldiers, but they would hopefully be up for the task that needed accomplishing.

  “Everyone!” Volusia called. “We have a Code Black situation.”

  The professional soldier section of the crowd immediately started murmuring in worried whispers, while the miners simply sounded confused.

  “Silence!” Volusia boomed. The camp quieted in an instant. “I need Specialist Curtis, Private Graven, and miner Raybeck, in front of me right away.”

  The three men in question parted from the crowd and lined up in front of Volusia.

  “Specialist, the enemy targeted our sick men,” Volusia said, turning to Curtis first. “Check on them, make certain no one bleeds out on your watch from a hidden wound. Use health elixir liberally—”

  “Sir, the first place I went after you raised the alarm was the supply cart,” Curtis interrupted. “The enemy went for the supplies before they went for the sick. Or simultaneously. Either way, every single vial of health elixir in the cart was smashed to pieces. It’s all soaked into the sand now. I rounded up a half dozen vials between myself and the other men, but that’s all we have.”

  “Perform triage, and use it as necessary, then,” Volusia growled. It was just one thing after another. “You’re dismissed!”

  Curtis looked like he wanted to say more, but he simply saluted and moved past the Commander into the sick hut.

  “As for you two,” Volusia said. He lowered his voice. “Raybeck, pick a half dozen of your finest men and follow Graven here. He’ll lead you into the valley where we were ambushed by the beastfolk earlier today. I need you to undertake a daring mission tonight. I want you to try to locate and rescue our fire mage. She is absolutely essential to the success of the next few days. Oh, and we’re also missing another man. Graven will fill you in about him.”

  “Yes, sir,” Raybeck said uncertainly. “What does Code Black mean, if I may, sir?”

  “I’m glad you asked. It relates to the other thing I need you to do. We invoke Code Black when it becomes clear unholy forces are at work. Tonight, the camp was attacked by undead. An enemy consorting with dark gods or demons is active on the other side. That gives me additional authority under the King’s Code and pursuant to our accord with the Divine Trust.”

  “Additional authority?” the miner asked, frowning.

  “I’m afraid so. Send a few of your men back to the mining camp. I know you have around two hundred men there. I asked for your help, and you bravely sent around forty people here. That’s phenomenal, but the situation has changed. I am no longer asking. By the King’s law, I am hereby conscripting all able-bodied men in the area to put down a serious threat to the Kingdom and to all humankind. Anyone who fails to comply, the law will hear about it.”

  He waited for the reaction, for any sign of pushback. These miners were used to some autonomy. But Raybeck seemed to grasp that this was not an area where things could be put to a vote.

  “Yes, sir,” he said finally. “Understood.” Raybeck made a poor attempt at a salute and then walked off without waiting to be dismissed.

  Volusia didn’t correct either error. It was speed of action that they needed now, and the miner seemed to understand the urgency of the situation as well as anyone.

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