Raybeck wiped sweat from his brow and suppressed a nervous smile.

  It’s working, he thought. It’s real.

  It was nearly the end of the second day after the necromancer had infected him and Heimar. After successfully persuading the other miners that the Commander wanted them to wait and prepare further for the attack on the beastfolk rather than joining his squad immediately, the next day and a half had been spent in such preparations.

  They gathered supplies, they sharpened their pickaxes or, in a few cases, even turned them into short spears, and they practiced with their medical gear, so the men who knew how to properly bandage injuries would be up to the challenge when the moment came.

  Then the miners decided to rest up.

  The Army might call on them at any moment, after all, as far as anyone other than Raybeck and Heimar knew. The miners might as well bank some sleep. It wasn’t as if they could do much mining when they might be pulled from their work at any moment.

  As he lay in his bunk, Raybeck felt the beginnings of a fever. Finally, the event he had both anticipated and dreaded was coming to pass. Their symptoms were progressing.

  In the next bunk over, Raybeck heard a man cough, and he wondered, You, too? How many of us are there now?

  That had to be one of the hardest things about his and Heimar’s mission: not knowing how many they had successfully passed the undeath virus onto. The necromancer could probably tell them, but Raybeck hadn’t heard the man’s voice in his head yet.

  Which made sense, since the salt miner was not actually undead at this point. The necromancer himself hadn’t known exactly how long that would take. Another day or two, perhaps.

  But Raybeck could feel the process working. Parts of himself were turning. There had been some pretty sharp pangs of pain in his stomach a while ago, and now there was no feeling in the region at all. The same had happened to his liver, kidneys, lungs. He guessed that soon it would reach his heart.

  When that happened, he wasn’t sure if it would become difficult to hide.

  At least the old man and I are together in this, Raybeck told himself.

  Heimar had been, if anything, more energetic about the mission than Raybeck himself.

  Raybeck had woken on the first night back to go and take a leak, and he had spotted Heimar coming back from their supply cabin.

  “What are you doing?” Raybeck had hissed at his friend. “What if someone sees you?”

  “I don’t care,” Heimar replied. “Soon none of them will be left. Only us.”

  “Still, why are you taking risks right now?” Raybeck asked. “If we’re killed, the virus might not finish the necromancer’s work on our bodies. Assuming it actually works. You could end up dead permanently!”

  The pair had already sharpened the handles of picks and deliberately spilled their blood on them; surreptitiously added their blood to several barrels of wine and ale the camp had open for common use; and had even bled, as much as they could without affecting their physical functioning, into the camp’s well water.

  Anything they could think of that might help spread their infection.

  “I thought it would be wise to contaminate the medical supplies,” Heimar said. “No one will kill us even if they catch me doing something strange, Beck. They don’t know what we are. We two are to be the first of our kind in this world, based on what the young mage said.”

  “If we trust the necromancer…”

  “Why would he lie to us about that, of all things?”

  Raybeck shrugged. “I don’t know. I just think we ought to be careful.”

  “Don’t worry about a thing, my friend,” Heimar said after a long, thoughtful moment. “Maybe I’m being a bit reckless with my own decisions. I’m eager to get our task accomplished, and perhaps I could stand to be more cautious. But I’ll take care of you. If trouble comes for us, I’ll take the hit. You just be careful the next few days. I’ll do the dirty work.”

  The words sounded genuine and friendly. The old man didn’t seem to fear death much, while such fear had motivated Raybeck’s decision to be infected rather than killed in the first place.

  So Raybeck had relaxed and let the other man be the agent of chaos.

  And now he could hear the fruits of Heimar’s labor.

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  On the other side of Raybeck, another man coughed.

  That’s Utred’s voice, isn’t it? he thought.

  With these signs, which had repeatedly appeared without him even looking for them, Raybeck felt confident that he and Heimar had infected a large share of the miners.

  He sat up in bed, thinking he might look around and see if he could spot others around the bunkhouse sporting the telltale forehead sheen of a fever.

  That was when he heard cries from outside.

  “The Army!”

  His blood ran cold.

  Shit. I thought the necromancer would have taken care of them. What do I do now?

  Raybeck slid out of his bunk and toward the door. A small, irrational part of him expected someone else in the bunkhouse to stop him, pin his arms behind his back, and drag him before the Army to account for himself.

  But that was ridiculous, of course.

  None of them know I lied, but they will. He placed his hand on the doorknob and stood there indecisively for a long moment. I have to get out of here before the Army gets wind of why they didn’t receive backup. I need to find Heimar.

  He turned his head back and quickly scanned the bunks he’d just walked past, but he already knew to a near certainty that the old man wasn’t there. His eyes just confirmed it.

  He turned the knob and stepped outside.

  There was a hubbub.

  An angry, red-faced man who Raybeck recognized as a soldier stood at the head of a group of beaten-looking men dressed in battle-worn gambesons. The ones in the front of the party bore fresh cuts and bruises, while the angry man leading them had a long cut on his arm that looked to have partially healed. Raybeck could see where blood from the wound had soaked the gambeson. It had only semi-dried.

  Positioned opposite the soldier and his men were a few dozen miners who had been outside and now stood and listened to the Army man rant.

  “—refuse to believe it!” the angry man was finishing as Raybeck stepped out. “I’ll have all of those responsible brought up on charges, and I’ll take pleasure in extracting the identities of those individuals out of whoever I need to! You people have dozens of deaths on your heads…”

  Well, I guess the necromancer gave them a very hard time at the least, Raybeck thought. From that man’s face and choice of words, I’m guessing the rest of his squad died out there.

  Raybeck didn’t know every miner instantly by sight, but he assessed that only a handful of soldiers had survived. The people standing and confronting the miners were almost entirely other miners.

  Those conscripted miners were still following the angry man, though. That gave him some power.

  And the miners that had gathered to meet the incoming party of soldiers and fellow miners looked frightened. Their body language, even from behind, appeared submissive and cowed. They leaned away from the lead soldier as if worried he might strike one of them at any moment.

  The miner who was speaking with the soldier started to turn in Raybeck’s direction.

  It was Daven, a man Raybeck had worked with directly many times. Daven’s eyes widened as they locked onto Raybeck’s.

  And Raybeck could practically see the thought process going through Daven’s head.

  Beck is the one who told us we didn’t need to go help the Army. There’s your man right there!

  “Hey!” shouted a bluff, hearty voice from off to the side, cutting through the chatter.

  The soldiers and miners who were outside all simultaneously turned and looked.

  All except Raybeck. He quickly slid around the side of the bunkhouse he’d come out of and began moving toward the back of the building. Once he got there, he could slip into the mines and hide, or he could try to make a more definitive escape.

  The voice belonged to Heimar.

  Thank you, Raybeck thought. He knew it was no accident that the old man had come out and started behaving distractingly at the same time that Raybeck was about to be fingered as the traitor the Army wanted to punish. Heimar was deliberately sacrificing himself—or at the very least risking his own safety—so that Raybeck could escape and live another day.

  Raybeck beat a careful retreat, looking around to make sure no one could see him or was following behind. He was almost to the mines before he found himself unable to resist the urge to look back.

  Heimar had been his mentor, and now the old man was putting his life on the line for Raybeck’s. He couldn’t help but want to see what would become of his friend.

  As he turned, Raybeck could see everything. The figures were small, but not ants. More like marionettes in his hands.

  Heimar was still talking to the soldier. Still trying to express himself in a distractingly over the top way, with big gestures and vocalization loud enough that Raybeck could almost hear it from the mines.

  The lead soldier was nearly silent. His mouth barely moved as he responded. The red hot anger that had animated his face shortly after his arrival had vanished, giving way to a calculating quiet that Raybeck found far more unsettling.

  The miner felt a cold prickle at the back of his neck, seeing the way the soldier looked at Heimar.

  He knows. That man knows something is up. Damn it! Run, Heimar!

  Without any warning that Raybeck could discern at the distance he had retreated to, the soldier hauled off and punched Heimar in the stomach. The old man collapsed in a heap in an instant.

  The lead soldier issued some instructions and pointed at Heimar, and two more soldiers grabbed him by the arms and dragged him off into one of the bunkhouses.

  Raybeck swallowed and forced himself to stop watching. The sooner he left, the safer he would be. It was only a matter of time before Heimar was forced to give him up in some way. Perhaps the old man could blame Raybeck fully in whatever story Heimar would concoct.

  But for that to happen, Heimar would need to believe that his friend was out of harm’s way.

  Raybeck retreated into the darkness of the salt mines.