by Geoffrey Hart
in Issue 142, November 2023
The head of the rotting corpse rolled in front of Freya, who kicked it under the feet of another advancing corpse. That one tripped and went down, taking several of its fellows with it.
“Another man’s lost his head over you,” Freya panted, slashing one arm from her opponent on the upstroke and severing its other arm on the downstroke. She booted the corpse backwards to join a pile of the others she’d already reaped, her foot making an unpleasant squishing noise as it struck the dead flesh. She ground her foot on the befouled cobblestones, vainly trying to clean her boot to improve traction. Now would be a singularly bad time to lose her footing.
“And I see you’ve not lost your disarming personality where men are concerned,” Mouse replied, neatly detaching two arms from her headless opponent. The corpse continued advancing on her, but without arms, it posed little threat; it was their touch, they’d learned from observing the fate of others, not the foul air that accompanied the shambling dead nor yet their bite, that transmitted the curse. Still, one didn’t want to be bitten; dental hygiene wasn’t much of a priority among the dead. She pivoted nimbly behind the disarmed corpse, kicked it hard behind one knee, and stepped back as it toppled.
“Still, it’s telling that the corpses are all men.”
“Telling what?”
Freya hesitated, then cut a corpse in half through its midsection, the two halves falling to the same side from the force of her blow. “To be frank, I’m not sure, other than perhaps that it reflects the overabundance of men in the military profession, and thus, their overabundance amongst the dead.”
“It’s why I keep telling you: the carefree life of the freelance swordswoman is safer and more lucrative.”
Freya pivoted and cut downwards, neatly bisecting one of the corpses that had approached too close from brain to boots; half fell to each side. Harnessing the sword’s momentum, she continued her motion, ending with a neatly timed double-stamp of her foot on the ankles of the first corpse, which had been slowly crawling towards her on its knees, pushing its head before it along the ground. “Until today, I would have granted the carefree part, but lucrative is perhaps a matter for some debate.”
The two had temporarily cleared a space around themselves, and paused to draw breath. In the shadowed side streets, disturbing silhouettes moved, their motion punctuated occasionally by throat-rending screams as they attacked an incautious resident of Losthaven. Mouse wrinkled her nose at her friend, but her eyes kept moving. “That’s because retail slaughter carries a higher cost in time and risk and should be compensated accordingly. Wholesale slaughter, on the other hand…”
“… should provide a correspondingly greater return on investment. That’s the excuse they use for making war in the first place.” Freya grimaced with distaste at the substances that smeared her blade. She wiped her blade on a convenient awning. “You’re saying we should seek the original cause of this army of the dead?”
“Aye, and convince someone to pay us for eliminating it in a single stroke.”
“Wouldn’t that be retail slaughter?”
Mouse shrugged. “You split hairs. Slaughtering one is retail; slaughtering the army of the dead is wholesale. I suppose it depends on one’s perspective.” She grunted and lunged past her friend, taking a reaching corpse in the throat. Freya spun and cut across its midsection, severing both arms at the wrist.
“And that one might pay us as if it were wholesale slaughter?”
“Indeed.”
“Shadowseeker?”
“None other.”
“Then lead on before we’re once again forced to debate salaries and the freelance life with more of these unpleasant fellows.”
“You’ve always been more eager than I for the debate.” Mouse swept a bow. “Follow me, Madame.”
***
The door swept open as they approached, and the torches lining the hall burst into flame, providing enough light to see the hallway receding into darkness. The torches extinguished as they passed, replaced by more lights farther ahead. Mouse snorted. “Cheap visual effect. He’d do better with lamp oil.”
Freya’s hand darted out and caught Mouse’s shoulder.
Mouse slapped away the big woman’s hand and turned towards her. “I wasn’t even thinking…”
“The silver candle snuffer in your hand provides a thoughtful proof of your lack of thought.”
Mouse frowned. “He’s a wizard. He’ll never miss it.”
“He’s a wizard. He will miss it, he will never forget it, and he will make both our lives miserable.”
Mouse sighed. “You’re doing that debating thing again. Mayhap I should try mastering it, purely out of self-defense.”
“First, you should master the art of returning stolen goods.”
Mouse sighed, this time more heartfelt. “And there we have damning evidence that I need more practice in the art of debate.” She replaced the candle snuffer, but pocketed the glowing crystal that sat beside it. Freya failed to notice, her attention on the hallway.
After they’d taken enough steps to get the point that Shadowseeker’s home was far larger inside than it appeared from outside, they entered the wizard’s audience chamber. Shadows stood patiently on either side of his raised chair, resolutely immobile despite the flickering candles. Between blinks, the wizard appeared on his chair, one leg folded atop the other.
“To what do I owe the… pleasure… of your visit?”
“Perhaps you’re aware there’s a plague of shambling corpses swarming through the streets?”
Even from the raised dais, the wizard had to tilt his head upward slightly to meet Freya’s eyes. Had he visible eyes, they would undoubtedly have been frowning. “Of course. It’s not easy to miss, even for the sightless. Yet I fail to see how it’s my concern.”
Mouse looked up. It had always been uncomfortable to stare into the void that was the wizard’s face, and had grown no easier with practice. “Presumably you’d miss the company of your fellow citizens of Losthaven. Or perhaps not, and you’d merely come to regret the stench of being surrounded by rotting corpses forevermore.”
Shadowseeker reflected a moment. “Your error is twofold: First, you assume I live here to take pleasure from human company. I do not. Second, you assume that I’m bothered by the scent of corpses. That would be an intolerable weakness in a wizard.”
The women exchanged glances.
“Still, your logic isn’t completely wrong. Whoever’s animating the corpses is clearly a powerful sorcerer. Indeed, a powerful necromancer. If they seize the city, that could become inconvenient for me. It’s been said, with some justice, that I don’t share well, and there are certain strategic virtues to this location.”
Mouse couldn’t quite repress a victorious grin. “For a small fee, and a bit of information on the source, we can make your problem go away.”
“I’m amply familiar with your small fees. Like you, their size is deceptive. You shall have no money from me.” The pause while he pondered the situation stretched uncomfortably. “But I can provide you with this.” In his hands, two wooden amulets appeared, and floated over to the women, acquiring a neck-string from out of the darkness before they arrived. “These should protect you from the touch of the dead and let you draw close enough to the necromancer to… debate… the wisdom of their course of action and provide the necessary rhetorical correction.”
“And you’ll help us no further?”
“Bearing my amulets into the necromancer’s presence will communicate all that’s necessary about your allies. Should you return, that will be proof my message has been received. Should you not, then I shall be forced to exert myself.”
Freya snorted. “That’s hardly a great deal for us.”
“The gratitude of your fellow citizens should suffice. That, and the crystal your friend has in her pocket.”
Freya glared at Mouse, who assumed a look of childlike innocence. As she’d had considerable practice, and her stature reinforced the childlike image, it was compelling to anyone who didn’t know her.
“Time is wasting,” Shadowseeker observed. He inclined his head slightly, and the shadowy room vanished.
***
The foul city was replaced by what would normally have been the fresh air of the fields. Today, though, that air bore the taint of carrion, and the two women looked around them alertly. A large flock of crows had convened on the dimly lit branches of the sparse trees that bordered the nearest field, and watched them expectantly but in unusual silence.
“Know you this place?”
Freya looked around. “Unless I miss my guess, it’s the Field of Sorrow, where a great battle was fought two generations ago. Thousands of corpses, and many of the survivors chose to be buried here when age claimed them so they could spend eternity with their fellows. Perhaps as many as 10,000 corpses found their final rest here.”
“Cheery thought.”
“It was your idea to seek the source of the corpses.”
“I confess’t to be so. Still, there’s hope. The sun is shining, that murder of crows is silent, and we’re not closed within the city walls with a… a…” Mouse licked her lips and glanced nervously at the crows. “What do they call a horde of corpses?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. A ‘fester’, perhaps? But I wager she’ll know.” Freya nodded her chin at a hill behind Mouse, who turned swiftly, hand on sword.
Atop a low hill, a figure stood. From its silhouette, it was clearly female and as they watched, she knelt and reached into the soil. When she arose, she clutched a corpse hand and drew it from the soil. She released the hand, looked closely at the face, then released the hand. Instantly, it pulled itself fully from the soil and shambled toward the swordswomen—but veered off well before it came within sword range. The necromancer paid them no heed, even when Freya cleared her throat and shouted a greeting. Given the swordswoman’s mighty lungs, it was impossible the woman could have failed to hear, yet she carried on as if oblivious.
The two exchanged glances. “Perhaps we’re in need of a sharper form of address,” Mouse said.
“We could approach and try to talk with her first…” Freya began, but Mouse was already gone. As the necromancer rose once more from her crouch, Mouse appeared behind her and the tip of the small woman’s sword emerged from the rising woman’s chest. Unperturbed, the woman stepped forward, the blade sliding from her flesh and Mouse’s mouth forming a broad O of surprise. The unperturbed woman ignored the insult to her person and knelt to draw another corpse from the ground. Mouse pivoted and cut at her neck, half severing it, but even as she watched, the flesh knitted together as if nothing had happened. She looked to Freya, shrugged, and turned her hands palms upward, as if she had no further ideas.
Freya stepped forward into the necromancer’s path. At nearly 7 feet in height, and a proportional width, she made a formidable barrier and not one that would be moved lightly. Indeed, when the sorcerer rose to her feet, she nearly collided with Freya.
That made her frown. She took a step back, and looked up. “You thwart me at your peril, young woman.” Her skin was whiter than a fish belly, but still the smooth skin of youth. Her face was striking rather than beautiful, but it was a pleasant place to rest one’s eyes despite the deep-graven lines of concentration that furrowed her forehead.
Freya took a step back so she could more comfortably look down on the woman and raised her amulet. “And yet, as you can see, your creations keep their distance, and even should they overcome our protection, we are well armed against them.”
“So I see. I recognize that aura. Did He send you?”
“No, we came of our own volition. Your creatures disturb our home, and we desire to be free of them.”
“I see. And what possible interest could I have in ceasing my activities?”
Mouse had moved to Freya’s side, and patted the hilt of her friend’s enormous blade. “The interest of not being cut into pieces so small it will take you a century to reunite them.”
The necromancer snorted. “Think you a necromancer would be bothered by such inconsequential things as swords? That which is not living cannot die. It would be a minor inconvenience at best.” She sighed. “But a sufficiently annoying one, I confess, that I’d have to eliminate the distraction so I could continue my work in peace.”
Mouse and Freya exchanged glances.
Freya grimaced. “Perhaps if you explained what you were seeking, we could find a compromise.”
“Well…” She examined their faces more closely. “You’re women too. Perhaps you’ll understand. Do you promise you won’t find this silly?”
“I don’t know yet. You haven’t told us.” Freya kicked Mouse firmly in the shin. “What? It’s true!”
“True, yet unsympathetic.”
“I concede your point.”
The necromancer cleared her throat. “If I might continue?” The two swordswomen nodded. “I’m seeking my lost love. He was called away to battle, and fell upon these fields.”
“That would make you… more than 60 years old?”
She snorted. “Closer to 200. It wasn’t the most recent battle in which he fell, and it took some time before my studies had progressed sufficiently I could raise him.”
“You look surprisingly good for your age. Ouch!” Mouse glared at Freya. “That’s also true.”
Freya sighed. “What my friend meant to say was that we sympathize for your loss. And we wonder whether there might be a more efficient way to find what you seek than hauling the dead from the earth one by one.”
“The dead have near-infinite patience. I’m sure I’ll find him eventually.”
“Yet in the tween-time, the dead you’re releasing from their earthen graves are infesting Losthaven.” Seeing the woman’s lack of comprehension, she continued. “The city that took the place of long-lost Falorn after it was claimed by the desert. In any event, that city’s our home, and we prefer it uninfested by a plague of corpses who transform anyone they touch into fellow travelers.”
“An unavoidable side-effect of my magic, and not one that concerns me.”
“Yet it concerns us, and perhaps more dangerously for you, it concerns Shadowseeker.”
The woman pursed her lips. “He’s of no concern to me. He won’t interfere with my work if he knows what’s good for him.”
“Wizards, it’s said, don’t usually know what’s good for them. Ouch!” Mouse put a hand on her sword and glared at her companion. “I’ll have that foot next time!”
Freya ignored her companion’s glare. “It seems to me there should be some wizardly means of finding your lover.”
“You’re a practitioner?”
“Heavens no. I’ve just read broadly. Can’t you, I don’t know, use a spell of some sort to locate your lover?”
The necromancer hung her head. “My focus on magic has been exclusively on death and the associated spellcraft, first so I could survive long enough to find him and second so I could bring him back from the dead, that we might spend eternity together. I’m not interested in power for its own sake; just the power I need to bring him back.”
“If you had anything that was once in contact with him, the principle of contagion might help.”
“I fail to see how plague might solve my problem.”
Freya rolled her eyes. “No, the other principle of contagion: once together, never parted?”
The necromancer shook her head. “Not a form of spellcraft I’ve studied.”
“But Shadowseeker has undoubtedly studied that and other subjects.”
“I’m reluctant to seek aid from another wizard as powerful as I am. Wizards rarely play well together.”
Mouse took a judicious sidestep beyond Freya’s reach, and grinned triumphantly at her. “Oh, he’s not so bad once you get to know him. Fairly easy to manipulate in fact. Most like, all you’d need to do is explain that you’re not going to be competing with him in the city and he’d be happy to help for a small price. Well, for small values of happy and large values of price.”
The necromancer sighed. “I’d be willing to try. I did say near-infinite patience. After nearly 200 years, that patience may be wearing somewhat thin.”
Freya’s brows knit in thought. “The challenge, then, is to convince him of your good will and then bring him here. Mouse, do you still have that crystal?”
Mouse produced the crystal, which glowed faintly in the dim sunlight.
Freya raised her voice. “Shadowseeker! I know you’re listening. Bring yourself here at once so we can…”
Mouse startled as there came a pop! of displaced air and the wizard stood beside them. The two sorcerers faced each other for a moment like dogs disputing pissing rights to a lamp post. The necromancer was first to break the silence. “To prove my good intentions, I’ll dispose of the shambling dead.” She closed her eyes a moment, drew a deep breath, and spoke a Word. It hung on the air a moment, then dissipated, and it was as if the pressure that preceded a thunderstorm had abruptly vanished. Shadowseeker lowered his hands, which he’d raised defensively.
“You’ll swear, by the power that binds you, you have no interest in Losthaven?”
“I so swear. My only interest is in being reunited with my lover.”
Shadowseeker nodded. “Very well. Do you possess anything that was once in contact with him?”
She reached inside her robes and withdrew a locket from around her neck, then opened it and removed a lock of hair that was still miraculously intact and didn’t crumble at her touch. “Touch it not. I trust you, but only so far.”
Shadowseeker nodded. “Understandable. And, to be clear, I you. In any event, it shall be no challenge to my powers. His hood turned towards the hair, and a tiny spark of light flared above it. He followed the spark as it moved slowly across the ancient battlefield, trailed by the three women. The spark rose until it crested a small hill, then halted.
Mouse took a judicious step to the side, side-eyeing Freya. “Good thing we brought Shadowseeker. Left to your own devices, you’d have been here another 200 years reaching the top of that hill one corpse at a time.”
Freya sighed. “Can you draw him from the earth?”
The necromancer knelt and passed her hand into the soil, but this time it was trembling. When she arose, the exposed hand kept a firm grasp on her wrist. As they watched, the corpse of what must once have been a handsome young man emerged. Before their eyes, flesh clothed his bones and color returned to his face. With a shuddering gasp, he opened his eyes, and upon seeing his lover’s face, threw himself at her and wrapped his arms tightly around her.
Mouse and Freya turned away.
“That can’t be hygienic.”
“No, I imagine not.” Mouse turned her attention to the wizard. “Why, Shadowseeker: I wouldn’t have thought you the romantic type.”
It was hard to be sure due to the lack of a face, but Mouse felt the wizard was glaring at her.
“Never mind. But given that we’ve solved your problem, I feel you owe us something.”
“You have the crystal. Surely that’s valuable enough?”
“It would be,” interjected Freya, “if you hadn’t demonstrated how easily you could use it to eavesdrop on our conversations. That contagion thing?”
Shadowseeker sighed. “Yes, I can see how that might be inconvenient for you. Perhaps your small friend should have thought of that before stealing it.”
“And yet she didn’t, and I’m sure she’s very sorry and is about to return it to you.” She raised an eyebrow.
Mouse glared at her.
“I said, I’m sure…”
Mouse flung the crystal at Shadowseeker’s feet.
“There. See? And in addition to returning your bauble, we’ve solved a significant problem for you. Surely you’ll sleep better knowing you’ve nothing to fear from this woman?”
“I don’t sleep. And have no fear of her. But there’s some logic to your words.”
“We’ll accept a small sum of gold that has neither touched you nor been long in your possession.”
“Very well.” He gestured and a small leather sack dropped out of the air, landing on the ground before Mouse with a clink.”
“Perhaps not quite that small.”
“You tempt my forbearance, tiny and insignificant one.”
“And yet…”
A second sack joined the first one. Mouse nodded, pocketed one sack, and tossed the other to Freya, who snatched it from the air. Shadowseeker walked over to the reunited couple.
Mouse put a hand on Freya’s arm. “One thing puzzles me. Why’d he give in so easily?”
Freya shrugged. “He’d incurred a supernatural debt. Safer by far to acknowledge and discharge it. After all, it’s not like he has any use for more gold.”
“True.”
When they turned, Shadowseeker was gone, but the couple approached them. “We owe you an unrepayable debt,” the youth said.
“Hardly unrepayable. A small bag of gold should do nicely.”
The necromancer shook her head. “Not my field of magic, I’m afraid.”
“And I confess to finding myself rather embarrassed,” her lover added.
“Then that locket will suffice. It’s an antique; it should fetch a tidy sum in the jeweler’s market.”
Freya rolled her eyes. “Please forgive my companion. Her heart’s as cold as the ice of her northern barbarian wastes, and she has all the romance of a stone in her soul.”
“Wait: She’s the barbarian?” the youth inquired.
Freya rolled her eyes. “Everyone makes that mistake. I’ve no idea what they’re thinking.”
The couple exchanged glances, and shrugged simultaneously. The necromancer handed the locket to Mouse. “Fair payment for great value. I hope it will bring you two as much happiness as it has brought us.”
Mouse held up the locket, inspecting it closely. “Perhaps not, but it will have its compensations. And what did you mean by you two?”
The couple exchanged glances, and the necromancer giggled, then held her hand to her mouth, failing to conceal a smirk. “Nothing of any import.” With that, the couple turned and began walking away across the fields, hand in hand.
Freya looked down at Mouse, who looked up at her. “Not bad for a day’s work.”
Mouse swept her arm in a broad circle, encompassing the fields that surrounded them. “As I said earlier. Slaughter is more profitable wholesale.”
“Then might we leave? Slaughtering all those corpses has left me with a powerful thirst.”
“The Knackered Boar?”
“If you’ll lead, I’ll gladly follow.”
Mouse looked around, held up her thumb to examine the angle of the sun, and wet it to feel the breeze. “This way,” she proclaimed, pointing towards the setting sun.”
“You’re sure?”
“Trust the barbarian,” Mouse replied smugly and set off in the direction she’d pointed.
“If only that were a reliable strategy,” Freya muttered under her breath. Then she shrugged, and hastened to catch up with her small companion. Behind them, the wind blew lonely across the grass that covered the mounds of long-dead warriors, sighing its lament.
© November 2023, Geoffrey Hart
Geoffrey Hart has published stories in many publications including Analog, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and previously in Swords & Sorcery, as well as in several anthologies. More information can be found at http://geoff-hart.com/fiction/short-stories/index.htm.