I was freaking out during the attack, of course. Unlike the idiot at the front this time I didn’t have a nice set of full plate, let alone Thaumaturgically enhanced stuff, and I certainly didn’t have his training. What I did have, however, was a penchant for dodging responsibility and exerting my cowardice. This meant that when we were ordered forth, despite my size, I was managing to slip my way further back with every stride.

  This worked right up until a strong hand closed about my wrist. Gruin’s fucking strong hand.

  “Come on lank,” he grinned, “let’s get killing!”

  Gruin had rather a different experience getting through the crowds than me, and, I noted, a different tactic too. He just smashed people aside like he was some bloody cannon ball ripping through the ranks.

  I had to follow of course, the devastation to my reputation would be untenable if I didn’t after being invited so clearly, and so I slipped through the cavity he left in his wake and joined him in striking at the front lines. Once again, I saw the difference between Gruin and every other man present.

  His own armour was different, mostly improvised by layering chainmail as no breastplates had been sized for him. That made it heavy and ineffective compared to the resilience of pure plate.

  On the other hand, Gruin needed that resilience less than any of us. I was almost sure his own bare torso already provided more protection than most shirts of mail, and that hammer of his was moving fast enough now that nobody seemed able to even approach. I winced as the iron head broke open shambler bodies and crushed their heads, dropping one every other swing. Gruin’s short arms meant he had all the room he needed to work, and I was soon beside him to help with cutting back the enemy.

  Between the two of us, we actually made quite a dent. Somewhere along our travels, I realised, we’d become something of a pair of experts in matters of the undead and magical. A disturbing fraction of what we fought belonged to that rather obscure group, after all, and experience was adding up.

  It wasn’t so hard to kill shamblers, not really. But the biggest obstacle was never about their physicality or unliving nature—it was the fact that every man who saw one was fighting his own mind before anything else. Fear of the undead came more strongly and deeply than most others, an ingrained revulsion borne from seeing the natural order twist before one’s very eyes.

  I’d gotten over that long ago, I’d had no choice. If Gruin had ever been bothered by such things he certainly wasn’t now.

  Maybe it helped him to be fighting reanimated humans rather than his own kind.

  A shambler bit down on my arm, rotten teeth chipping themselves against the steel links shielding it. I snarled, lashed an elbow out to make room by stumbling it then bringing my sword down hard on the crown of its head. We’d left poleaxes back with our carts and mounts, not wanting to laden ourselves too much, which meant it was the inferior close-cutting weapons only. Mine was doing just fine at least.

  Gruin’s hammer, which he had somehow been permitted to bring against orders, was doing better still. Blunt instruments are the way to go with shamblers, doing heavy structural damage to things like bone and muscle that are needed for movement. It’s hard to kill an undead, but you don’t need to if you can just stop them from attacking long enough to catch your breath.

  If that was part of some subtler plan on Gruin’s part, I couldn’t tell. As far as I could see he was just having the time of his life smashing their heads open.

  I had to admit, I was starting to feel my own fear recede at least. With three times the numbers we’d had before and a great deal more cohesion, things were far less desperate and far more hopeful than our initial attack had promised. The shamblers’ numbers were starting to thin as we pushed forwards, and it seemed the momentum of our fight lay solely on the side of humanity.

  An idiot, I was. I should’ve known better than to be hopeful.

  The ghuls seemed to realise their defeat incoming, too, because they chose that moment to engage us themselves. This is where the true terror of an undead is found, not in the mindless shamblers but in the higher beasts, the ones with half a wit to use their physical advantages. A dozen of them were all that attacked us, but with arms and armour on their side, and the shamblers pressing our formation as well, it was far from a skewed fight.

  I saw one man go down with his head almost torn off where a thick spear smashed into the chainmail and burst through, strength and running momentum proving more than a match for the steel links. His blood spurted high, painting the men beside him as his body crumpled. The other ghuls performed just as well, attacking with a sort of scattered frenzy that struck most of our side by surprise. They didn’t fight like men, didn’t even fight like animals. Like the shamblers, there was no sense of self-preservation or fear to be seen, no reluctance in lunging after armed men ready for violence.

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  All the basic tactics used to stave off a massed assault were flawed against things like that, but not useless. The sheer facts of physical space bound them as tightly as anything else. And they still died of course.

  But that didn’t mean Gruin and I weren’t quick in re-absorbing ourselves within the ranks behind us.

  Safety in numbers and all that. Well in this case that safety was thinning by the second, and within another minute I was left uncertain as to whether we’d come out of this fight at all. We did, obviously, you can tell by reading this account now. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a greater carnage than most any I’ve crawled through, though.

  It also doesn’t mean that my growing fear was at all universal, because Gruin seemed to be enjoying himself just as much as ever, despite, or perhaps because of, the growing brutality. More men started dying as many more shamblers still joined them, and another ghul fell. I sensed that things weren’t sustainable at that rate, saw how our numbers were thinning too fast for us to out-last the enemy’s endless horde.

  Something needed to change.

  What I did next was not an act of heroism, it was simple pragmatics. I’d not learned to grow a single altruistic bone in my whole cowardly body, despite my months of constant exposure to danger, but I had gotten used to handling that danger in a way that was at least more productive than most. I knew, intellectually, that we would likely lose if the ghuls kept fighting in their current numbers. Which meant that, since I would almost certainly die alongside everyone else, the best way for me to save my skin long-term was to take care of that myself.

  I kept fighting, waited for my moment, and saw it approach when one of those ghuls closed to attack the men sidelong during a particularly distracting lunge of shamblers. I ignored the lesser undead entirely, trusting Gruin to disassemble them with his usual enthusiasm, and focused on the greater one.

  Armed and armoured, it proved far deadlier than the unprepared bout me and the exploratory party had first encountered before. My initial swing was parried by an arm so strong it would’ve been well placed on a marble statue.

  Fortunately, that arm did not come with any appreciable amount of skill. A swift twist of my own limb sent the ghul’s shoddy blade flicking out of the way for my shield to come up and smash hard against its face. The heavy steel rim served just fine as a bludgeon, sending the thing off its feet and to the ground. Shamblers closed fast, but not as fast as me. My blade came down hard on the ghul’s neck before I could be interrupted.

  The stab bit through chainmail and severed something important, ending the thing’s movements instantly.

  So that was one more down, progress made towards crawling out of there alive. We just had ten or so left.

  Gruin got to work on those once he worked out what I was doing, and once again I found myself reminded of how effective the Grynkori was at…just absolutely smashing the shit out of things. It was a shame Devyne wasn’t present, actually, because whatever respect that idiot had for violence would’ve surely warmed him up to the man as a result.

  It certainly warmed up the other soldiers to him. I heard cheers ringing out as we started to solidify our position while Gruin smashed his way past another three shamblers and fell upon the next ghul. He had less trouble than I did, slower than me but advantaged by not needing to concern himself with what order of hit he landed. Any connection at all was a deathblow, from that bloody hammer.

  He’d killed two of the creatures before the rest seemed to finally realise what was going on, starting to wade their way through the killing to try and find him and put an end to it. That left me with another choice, because cohesion was starting to break and men beginning to scramble around. I had the opportunity to move as I needed to without being bollocked back into formation.

  If I wanted, I could save Gruin the death I knew was after him now. Or I could uselessly die in the effort. Or I could scramble back and hope he’d already done enough damage that we could win even with his being taken out of the fight.

  It didn’t take long to decide, and damn me for this—I chose to help him. Trouble with thinking ahead was it so often meant doing what you don’t want to. For me that pretty much always boiled down to going closer to a dangerous thing and poking it with sharp steel. Today was no different.

  Just as one ghul came up behind Gruin with its axe raised high, my sword shot out and smacked right against its wrist. Not a cut, the metal links turned away steel and left a shock to run up my arm, but I threw off its swing before Gruin could get his head split open and bought the Grynkori more time to tangle with his own opponent.

  Which left me to tangle with mine. Fortunately the other soldiers kept me shambler-free long enough that I dispatched it easily enough, actually finding the fight a good deal easier than some of my recent tourney showings, and stepped back from the twitching corpse.

  Two more ghuls, that, it turned out, was what it took to shift the remainder of our combat thoroughly into the favour of my own side. Bloody good thing, too, because my injury from the last fight was starting to play up.

  Our only surprise was that the remainder of the undead, maybe half a dozen ghuls and twenty shamblers, broke and ran from us rather than continuing to fight and die once it became clear which way the wind was blowing.

  I didn’t spare much thought to wonder about why of course, being far too preoccupied worrying about my aggravated wound and feeling sorry for myself as usual. Fortunately the throbbing was no more than a bit of stiffness while it closed itself, and I worried over nothing.

  Unfortunately, that meant I still wasn’t bloody exempt from duty. And with only eight casualties and three deaths from the attack, our idiotic leader was just as eager as ever to delve deeper into the fort.

  What could I do but follow?

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