Volusia watched as Graven and the miners headed out of camp and into the valley.

  Hopefully that’s a small enough group of people that they can slip through unnoticed. There’s so much that can go wrong right now. Damn. A necromancer, of all things. He quietly suppressed the thought, in the back of his mind since he decided to give Raybeck and Graven this task, that he had only chosen men who were expendable for this mission.

  If they died, it would be a necessary and noble sacrifice.

  As he looked after the departing group, he sensed a man approaching from his side.

  The Commander waited until the figure was almost upon him to turn and look in his direction.

  “News, Specialist Curtis?” Volusia asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Curtis said. His expression was grim.

  “Well, give it to me straight.”

  “We took a head count of the squad, and this latest attack left another eight dead. Only three of them were sick. Five of them were on watch. There was one watchman who they probably thought they had killed, but he was only knocked out and near dead. We saved him.”

  Volusia nodded. The news was not as bad as he might have imagined. The squad only had thirteen of its original complement still alive, but considering the enemy had gotten past the guards, it was pure luck that they hadn’t been more competent and deadly.

  It was unlikely that they could have killed Volusia himself, but murdering a majority of those who were left rather than just over a third of them was not out of the realm of possibility,

  “Sergeant Remus is among the dead, sir,” the Specialist added.

  Volusia let out a slow, deep breath. That was quite a loss. The man had served with him for years. He was incredibly competent, tough, and loyal. Easily the best man under Volusia’s command.

  How did they manage it?

  “We will mourn him,” the Commander said.

  “There’s another thing…”

  “Out with it,” Volusia said flatly.

  Enough with this teasing. Give me all of the bad news, damn it!

  “Given that there’s someone out there making undead, I deemed it relevant to take a head count of the dead as well as the living. Five bodies are missing.”

  “Damn it.”

  They even made up for the loss of their five creatures, then!

  “Including Sergeant Remus.”

  “Motherfucker!” Volusia’s fists clenched, and he had to resist the urge to take a swing at something. Specialist Curtis was just the messenger, and he looked stressed out and scared shitless as things stood.

  I do not need to fight Remus one on one as part of this mission… Half of the squad is dead now, and even a third of us reanimated would be a disaster. But Remus in particular would be a nightmare. He’s the only member of our team who I could imagine actually fighting me and having even a shred of a chance of winning. Not counting our twice-damned, absent-without-leave fire mage…

  The two stood in silence for a few seconds while Volusia collected his thoughts.

  “Who else went missing?” he finally asked.

  “Bastian, Sivan, Jeno, and Baldwin.”

  All of them, and Remus, the men on guard… except Baldwin.

  “Well, have the remaining bodies burned,” the Commander said, his voice hollow. “No more feeding the enemy bodies. They’re relying on our dead to build their force up. We won’t allow it. And have someone watch the guardsman who you said ‘they probably thought they killed.’”

  “Sir?”

  “We leave nothing up to chance now,” Volusia replied simply.

  If someone looks near dead, but they’re not, maybe there’s something wrong with them that we don’t know about. It might not just be a mistake by the enemy, leaving someone alive. But maybe they’re infected with some illness, or they’re secretly undead already…

  “Understood, sir.” Specialist Curtis saluted, did an about face, and marched toward the sick huts.

  Volusia had to take several more deep breaths once Curtis was gone, before the Commander had quelled his impotent rage. He had to think.

  So, we’re dealing with a necromancer. He’s a step or two ahead of us, since he kept the secret up until now and has been preparing for us out here, maybe for years. How did he get his creatures into our camp? I have to think like him… He got into the camp earlier, too. There’s no way the attack tonight and the attacks on Jackson and Lorenzo aren’t connected. His mind flashed to the bodies of the undead he had decapitated. One of them had definitely been Lorenzo, raised from the dead. He growled to himself. This fucker was so confident he could get past our lines every time. How?

  He closed his eyes, sat down on the ground, and thought about it.

  In that posture, it suddenly felt obvious.

  There was an undead among us this whole time, even before he turned Jackson and Lorenzo. That’s the simplest answer. Whoever it was is gone now, at least. If he isn’t, I’ll hear Curtis and the others fighting and screaming any second now. This undead wouldn’t stay silent and simply be burned with all of the other bodies. Unless he’s still pretending to be among the living…

  Volusia needed to come up with some way of testing.

  Well, I do have a proven undead right here.

  He returned to the hut where he had left the dismembered child’s body. The torso still lay there, albeit with pieces missing. Private Xavier held the boy’s head in his hands. His bloodstained spear and dagger lay on the ground beside him. The man looked tired and worn down.

  “Good to see you, Commander,” the severed head said.

  Volusia gave the boy a little grunt in response. He imagined being made to wait would be annoying for a child of that age, even an undead—especially with his head detached from his body. Nothing to do if no one would talk to him.

  The Commander walked past and reached down to touch the torso of the dead boy. Sure enough, there was no heart beating in the chest. The body wasn’t warm either. It had taken on the cool temperature of the desert at night.

  All right. Confirmed. The undead aren’t like us. They’re bits of animated flesh and bone. They look like us. But no functioning heart. I can use that. He considered the severed head that had just spoken to him. It was speaking without having any connection to lungs, veins, or arteries. So, no functioning anything in any sense we would understand. Just puppets moved around by dark magic. An imitation of life.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “Thank you, Private,” Volusia said. “You’re doing great. I’ll be back.”

  “Yessir,” Xavier said, the words slurring together from exhaustion.

  The Commander stepped out of the hut, walked ten paces, and then called for Curtis.

  The Specialist came running.

  “Sir. You wanted a report on my progress, I suppose? The bodies are stacked up, and the men are breaking down a few of the huts for kindling—”

  “That wasn’t it at all, actually, but good work,” Volusia said. “I wanted to ask some questions, but first…”

  He put a hand to Curtis’s chest and felt the beating in his chest.

  “Um, sir?”

  “Check every surviving member of the squad and confirm they all have a pulse,” Volusia said. “Assuming they do, we’ll know it’s unlikely any of them is undead. Come back after you’ve checked them and started burning the bodies.”

  Hopefully. Although there are at least two varieties here, and whatever creature the boy is definitely functions differently than the zombies I killed earlier. But let’s assume I’m correct…

  “Yes, sir,” Curtis said, saluting. He rushed away.

  Assuming none of them are missing a heartbeat, the undead infiltrator is probably already gone.

  Of all the dead whose bodies had gone missing, Baldwin was the obvious most likely candidate for the undead who had been lurking among them.

  He was the only one who hadn’t been killed in tonight’s attack. The other bodies were all fresh, perhaps a positive in the eyes of a necromancer.

  Does that mean the bastard was in on it somehow too? Or maybe the beastfolk injured him, then killed and raised Baldwin, and sent them both back together. Having a living person for cover would help them get away with sneaking in a dead man.

  “We only really paid attention to the injured man at the time…” he muttered to himself.

  Volusia continued musing to himself for a few minutes, until Curtis came rushing back up. The smell of burning flesh had begun to rise in the air.

  “Everyone’s alive, Commander!” the Specialist said excitedly. “All the living, I mean.”

  “First good news I’ve had tonight,” Volusia replied.

  Although it would be nice to have another undead to question along with the boy.

  “Next thing I need to know,” Volusia said. “When the bastard came back injured, you examined him, correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you check his pulse? Vital signs?”

  “Yes, everything was normal.”

  So, not undead, at least not then.

  “How about Baldwin?”

  “He seemed fine. I didn’t check him. Um, should I have? Did—did Baldwin have something to do with—”

  Volusia waved him off. “Don’t worry about it. If Baldwin did get turned, it’s not your fault for not seeing what none of us were looking for. Go and keep doing what you’re doing. I’m getting my plan for our next move together. Thank you for the answers.”

  Specialist Curtis saluted and walked off.

  The Commander returned to the hut with the undead child’s body in it.

  “Give me the boy’s head.”

  “Sir?” Xavier asked, raising a tired eyebrow.

  “You look like you’re about ready to keel over,” Volusia said. “Go lie down for a while, get a nap in. I’ll watch the kid. I have questions for him anyway.”

  “Yes, sir,” Xavier said. He handed the boy’s head over to the Commander, extending it so that Volusia could use the child’s hair as a sort of handle.

  The Commander waited until Xavier had left the hut to speak. There were still a few wounded in the space, but the remaining ones were unconscious. Since they were confirmed to be alive, he didn’t have to worry too much about what they might overhear anyway.

  He noted that the boy’s cheekbone, which Volusia had shattered with his slap, seemed to have reconstituted itself.

  Of course it did.

  “We caught your friend Baldwin,” Volusia said. He delivered the words with a triumphant grin.

  “You ought to let him go,” the head replied calmly. “The master won’t like that.”

  That sounds like confirmation to me. I need to figure out if he’s telling the truth. If he’s just a child, he won’t be particularly good at lying. Is he being puppeteered directly, or does he have some agency?

  “What about Tybalt? What would the master think if we caught him?”

  “Who? I don’t know the names of all our creatures. The master is building a great army. Only the ones who can talk, like me, are really important.”

  If that’s true, I need to recapture Baldwin right away, before he reunites with the rest of the undead. Take as many important pieces off the board as possible. And it sounds like, at least as far as this creature knows, Tybalt and Sperry are still among the living. Or they probably were the last time I saw them.

  “What does your master want?” Volusia asked.

  “Lord Andric just wants you to leave the beastfolk in peace. If you do, he will spare you from being consumed by his undead horde.”

  Volusia struggled not to laugh at the obvious bluff.

  If he had any kind of significant force, he would have drowned our little camp in undead flesh and crushed us under their weight. There are hardly any of us here in the first place. You can’t even pretend this was meant to be a warning, when your maneuvers have all been nighttime sneak attacks. You only act in such a cowardly way if you have little other choice.

  “If you wanted that, why did you come attack us tonight?”

  “You have to be reminded that every night you spend here, you’re unsafe. You’re in our territory. Uninvited. Unwelcome. Unwanted.”

  Volusia scowled. “Kid, you’re not even a beastfolk. I guess you don’t have any agency about taking their side, but it’s hard to listen to a traitor to his own kind.”

  “Who says I’m talking on behalf of the beastfolk?” the child replied. “Maybe I speak for the dead. That’s my kind now…”

  Something about the cold, matter-of-fact way the boy spoke those words sent a shiver running up Volusia’s spine. It reminded him of the hundreds—was it thousands?—of beastfolk he had personally killed over the course of his career, as well as the thousands whose deaths he had directly ordered. Whenever they had popped their heads up in the Salt Waste or the Barrier Mountains, he and his men had been there with fire and spears, for decades.

  Most of the time, they had hardly even fought back. That was how he’d gotten complacent, he saw now. How he had ended up in this situation, where he was underprepared for a counteroffensive.

  It was the beastfolk’s fault for being so weak. He had underestimated them, because he had grown to implicitly believe their men were less courageous—almost spineless.

  But he still felt a touch of fear.

  Maybe the dead were about to get their revenge. He could picture it in his mind’s eye.

  “Anything else you wanted answered, Commander?”

  The boy spoke the words in a slightly mocking tone.

  “Silence, brat. I’m thinking.”

  “I don’t feel like being quiet, though. You finally spend quality time with me, and you just want me to be quiet.”

  The words felt like a boy chastising his father, and it was incredibly creepy to hear them from a severed child’s head. That, plus the fact that the boy’s tone continued to convey a quiet note of mockery, was all it took to set Volusia off.

  Before he knew what he was doing, his dagger was out of its sheath, and he was stabbing the child in the head, again and again. The undead eyes went unfocused, the mouth stopped moving, yet still, Volusia kept going.

  “Told you to shut up,” he muttered.

  The blade went in once more.

  Then something snapped.

  “Ahh! Fuck!”

  Volusia looked down at his hand in a mix of pain and surprise. The dagger had broken, and one of the pieces had cut his non-dagger-wielding palm, the hand he was using to hold the head in place. The cut wasn’t bleeding much. He was high enough level that he wouldn’t need bandages or stitches. It would heal by the end of the day, same as the stab wound from Private Xavier’s spear. There was more gore on his hands, and forearms, from the boy’s head. He’d pulverized it into ground meat.

  As he stared down at his hands, the child’s brains smeared across his skin started to clean themselves off, pulling slowly back toward each other. Of course the magic that bound the creature to this world could not be undone by his dagger.

  “Fuck…”

  I’ll try and have these bits burned, Volusia thought. No, first, I’ll find out if the bits Xavier burned came back together. There has to be some way. And I need to think… about how we’re going to fight these creatures. How many like this boy are there going to be? Immortal? If it’s more than five or ten… gods help us.

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