Thaumaturges were a strange breed, and nobody really liked them. This wasn’t just bigotry, that needs to be made clear. Nobody liked them because they were unhinged weirdos who had a tendency to create country-threatening magical experiments on an almost per-Thaumaturge basis. Reckless arseholes who were a danger to themselves and everyone.

  Come to think of it, a giant horde of slobering undead was just the sort of calamity they might—

  —”Did you do this!?” My father barked, gesturing around at the whole town as he said it. Morlo the Great and Terrible looked at the destruction, then shrugged.

  “I don’t think so, why?”

  He said it like it was some triviality, and even my father didn’t seem to know how he ought to respond for a while. He recovered quickly at least.

  “Becuase my son almost died!” he gestured to me as he spoke, hand balling up into a fist.

  I really wished he hadn’t, because it sent the Thaumaturge’s eyes right onto me.

  “Ah, you, the hero.” He marched forwards, getting within a yard of me before Jeeves stepped in front of him. The Thaumaturge shot a look at him and cackled. “What do you think you’re doing? Get out of my way or I will OBLITERATE YOU with my MAGNIFICENT powers.”

  Everyone froze instantly. The threat of a Thaumaturge was nothing to scoff at, ever. My father and I were not ignorant and mindlessly fearful like so many others, our education gave us a good deal more knowledge of such people’s limits and dangers, but we were far from confident.

  Jeeves paused a second, then slowly stepped aside. My father glared at him but apparently did not hold nearly enough wealth to make obedience worth it now. My heart almost stopped as the Thaumaturge stepped towards me, reached out a hand and grabbed my face with surprisingly strong fingers.

  “Looks functional enough,” he noted, “should do nicely.” My indignation finally won out over my uncertainty, and I smacked the man’s hand off me.

  “Don’t touch me,” I snapped. The Thaumaturge threw his head back cackling.

  “And prideful enough to get himself killed for no reason, oh perfect!”

  Before I could ask for clarification about that, or perhaps punch the unstable fucker, the Thaumaturge was turning back to my father. “You want to stop being attacked by undead, yes?”

  The old man blinked at the other old man, his chins practically vibrating with confusion.

  “I…What?”

  “Shut up,” the Thaumaturge practically impaled my father with his voice and then kept speaking so quickly his outrate didn’t have time to fester, “I am asking you if you want to be attacked again? Because the undead will not stop coming while this boy remains here.”

  I went cold as the grave.

  I wasn’t stupid, not that stupid at least. Hearing what I had, it was easy to infer the obvious and work out that, according to what this Thaumaturge believed, I was in some way attracting the undead. On the long list of things you don’t want to hear, that was somewhere between 'you got her pregnant’ and ‘your legs are about to fall off’.

  “Why!?” I snapped, lashing out with the question. It drew another round of laughter from Morlo the Great and Terrible.

  “Ha! Why he says!? Saw the Dungeon with a big hole in its roof, was that you?”

  I shut up.

  “You are asking me to let my youngest son walk off with a total stranger,” my father growled. I could tell he was working hard to restrain his temper, and actually worried that he’d lose that personal battle. If he snapped here then God knew what the damned Thaumaturge would do.

  “Yes!” Morlo grinned as he nodded enthusiastically.

  “I do not want him to do that,” my father growled again. The Thaumaturge’s smile dropped off instantly.

  “Do you think you can stave off the undead forever?”

  “Just leave,” the merchant snapped. For a few moments their eyes just met and nobody said or did anything.

  “I will remember this you tiny wretched creature,” Morlo said cheerily. Without another word he turned and started walking away, practically skipping as he went. It was fucking bizarre. At the time I thought I’d just had my first encounter with a madman. A magic-wielding madman. Had I known the truth, I’d have been far more scared.

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  “Fucking weirdo. Jeeves, I want you to have that one watched. I don’t want him coming anywhere near us, understand?”

  “Yes sir,” Jeeves nodded like he always did. There were a few wounds on the old servant, though none seemed to impede his movements in the slightest. Seeing them reminded me of my own.

  Being reminded of my own left me suddenly dropping down face-first into the dirt, crying out and convulsing. My leg was on fire, a deep fire that seeped down past the muscle and almost to its bone. The smaller cuts littering my flesh all barked their protest even at those meagre motions I could make.

  Vision blurred as my eyes filled with tears, tightened shut with pain. I tasted acid—puke. My guts were squeezing up their contents. Nothing solid, I realised only then how little I’d eaten the day before. God I was so tired, everything was so hard and heavy and…

  …And the pain was receding now, or maybe I was just getting used to it. Finally it abated enough that my head cleared, and I looked up to find my father staring down at me.

  “Get up,” he snapped, “you look like a fucking idiot.”

  It took a few more seconds before I was capable of that, and my mood soured in the effort. Father’s sympathy tended to do that.

  “We’re heading off,” he told me. I suppose I should’ve been pleased that he at least waited until I could stand and hear. My body still ached, but that unexpected sledgehammer of agony had left the dull throbs I felt now seem like nothing. Easily ignored. Every problem was easily ignored after you’d been attacked by a shambler, I suppose.

  “Don’t suppose you have a spare walking stick?” I glanced at my father’s as I quipped, falling into step beside him, “I’m finding it a bit hard to move right now.”

  “Bah, we’ll get that taken care of once we reach the estate. I called on a chirurgeon from Whingrham when I heard you got yourself hurt.”

  Such a tender, loving father he was. We were past the town’s outer wall when he turned to me, almost as a second thought.

  “We won’t be staying at the estate for long, by the way.”

  “Why?” I asked, brain still slow from the fatigue and frights, stupid. Not getting the obvious yet.

  “Because we’re getting the fuck out of this region until something has been done about the Dungeon.”

  That was it? After everything I’d done, all the fighting to defend this town, I was just being whisked away the moment father decided it was too dangerous?

  “Brilliant, thank fuck!” I exhaled so much so quickly that I actually felt a shade light-headed, the relief draining all my strength at once.

  I got to rest at the estate, and better still I got to do so with my mother. The moment a closed door cut us off from everyone else she was already smothering me. Normally I’d have rebelled at that, growled for her to stop and leave me alone—big strong man that I was.

  There is no strength when you’ve almost died ten times in one night, I just let her smother away.

  “Your father shouldn’t have sent you off,” she spat. “Only good thing he did was bringing you back here after everything.”

  “Did he tell you about the Thaumaturge?” I asked, and found myself surprised when she not only answered in the negative, but seemed surprised to even hear about them too.

  She listened as I regailed her of it, and I could see the worry lines deepening on her face.

  “Your father insulted a Thaumaturge,” she said at last. I could tell that there was a deep rage simmering just below her voice, could see it in the quivering pupils of her eyes. I couldn’t remember seeing her so angry.

  “He shouldn’t have done that.” It was a statement, not a question, not an invitation to answer. She said it with such certainty that I actually found myself re-assessing the interaction.

  But there was no chance for me to do anything with this, because the door was soon open again. Jeeves stood on the other side of it.

  Jeeves actually looked about as well as he always did, despite the day’s combat. A man somewhere past middle age but not quite elderly, his silverish hair was thicker than time would normally have allowed and his musculature was thicker still. He’d changed his clothes, with the untorn fabric betraying no sight of the numerous wounds I knew he was currently ignoring with as stony a face as ever.

  “Ma’am, sir,” he nodded to us both, respectful as ever, “the carriages will be arriving within the hour. I would ask that you both hurry in preparing to leave.”

  I shouldn’t have been surprised, Whingrham was a good dozen miles from the estate. To arrive before nightfall we’d want to be leaving soon.

  The undead are after me. That thought came rushing back like a musket ball to the head, sinking in only now. Nowhere was safe. Not really, not truly. Whether here, Sheppleberry or Whingrham I’d find myself hounded by monsters wherever I went—assuming that mad Thaumaturge was both honest and correct at least.

  An assumption and a half, to be fair. But that didn’t do much to soothe me.

  “I’m ready to leave now if I have to,” I told Jeeves. I glanced at my mother and found her jaw set with resignation.

  “As am I,” she growled, “but we have an hour so I may as well prepare some luggage. Jeeves, accompany me. We will be working out the transport of our possessions together.”

  Jeeves nodded, and the two most competent people in my household disappeared at that. The hour flitted by in seemingly no time at all, carriages rattling up the road to stop closer to our house than anyone shy of the mercer’s class could have paid for.

  We headed out quickly, and I was tasked with helping to carry the luggage. I whinged, and complained, and thought, naturally, that I was being in some way tortured. All those stories about a near-death experience toughening men up are just that: stories. Heroic fighters are some of the whiniest princesses you can ever hope to meet, and it wouldn’t be for a good long while until I got over my streak of that.

  Fortunately, my father was as angry as ever and my mother, though not nearly so vocal about it, could kill a man at sixty paces with a raised eyebrow. Even I knew better than trying to weasel my way out of that. We loaded up the carriages and took off shortly.

  Afternoon had already come by the time we left the house, every mile of that journey was a new strain on my heart. I was jumpy, staring obsessively out the windows for any hint of movement, of something hiding in the shadows, of anything at all that wasn’t more green Anglysh land.

  I didn’t see anything of that sort, which, looking back on things, made me more nervous than if I had. There’s nothing quite like nothing to amp up the fear in any situation.

  Whingrham was on the horizon right about when that same horizon started turning pinkish. Frightening, that. Tense. That last mile to the city was the longest one of my life, somehow even including the mile I ran back to the estate after escaping the Dungeon. I was a great pile of jittery horror by the time we finally came to the gate.

  It was pathetic, not like anything went wrong.

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