It’s tempting to savour your victories as a hero, but it gets you killed. Or at least it does when your victory happens surrounded by dozens—or hundreds—of slavering undead abominations with edged steel and every intent of inserting it in you. Even back then I knew enough not to let myself get too comfortable, as soon as my felled enemy had so much as hit the ground I was already turning and whipping my eyes around for new threats.

  The fighting had degenerated somewhat, while I was taking care of the big one. The remaining giant shambler was still wreaking havoc, stumbling around with arrows jutting from several gaps in its armour and swinging its own cleaver heavily enough to hack off limbs and leave it stuck fast in the wall. Around it, smaller undead swarmed like ants in a nest. The defenders were losing.

  Obviously I wanted to run, and I prepared to do just that. I could sprint away from the fighting and find one of the other steps up to the platform of the wall, then leap over. Not perfect, not at all, but it would get me out of the doomed town and let me sprint towards my father’s estate.

  Except there were issues with that. A five-yard fall was far from nothing, and taking it might well injure me beyond teh point of escaping. I’d gotten lucky with it once, I couldn’t know I would again. There was also the fact that I had no idea how many more shamblers were out there, tired as I was—while they were tireless—I might well be chased down before crossing the fucking mile-long path, assuming I could eve navigate it in the dark.

  With dawning horror, I realised I was trapped here. Boxed in with everyone else for better or for worse.

  Well fuck that, I wasn’t dying here. I was Kyvaine—the most important person here. I wasn’t getting ripped apart amid a giant pack of fucking peasants.

  Unfortunately, I did actually live in the end too. And my first step to achieving that was in moving onto the offensive. The remaining shamblers seemed to be ignoring me, perhaps having decided they were better prioritising other targets due to my fighting the giant more or less by myself. They hadn’t yet noticed I’d won.

  I politely let them know of my victory by finding a weak-looking section of their assault, where human defenders were still clubbing back the wave of undead and holding strong, before coming up behind them and swinging down into the back of an undead’s neck. I felt my sword bite into spinal bone with a jagged crack, and all at once the shambler dropped down like a puppet with cut strings. I struggled to free my weapon as the others turned, just barely managing to swing again and stave in a section of skull before they were facing me.

  Fortunately, this momentary distraction was seized by the other defenders, who quickly began beating the undead with a redoubled fury from behind.

  With the opening created, I backed off quickly. Several shamblers came with me. I parried clumsily and felt my exhaustion mounting, noting only that the monsters here were a shade slower than the ones in the Dungon—damaged already by the fighting, perhaps, or simply of an inferior make. It was still three attackers at once I was trying to defend against, and if my weapon was a longer-ranged thrusting blade against their shorter hacking weapons that advantage only did so much to keep my skin intact.

  I was on the verge of being overwhelmed again by the time the rest of the undead behind them were taken care of, but to my surprise the villagers I’d helped rushed in to my aid immediately after.

  Everything became a clumsy, scrambling brawl at that. We staggered around, bouncing off enemies and each other, swinging wildly. Maybe I killed a person or two by accident—I didn’t think so, but could hardly know. I know that some of the others had close calls regarding me, at least, but I know also that we dispatched the shamblers soon enough. Those around us, at least.

  Tempting though it was to leave ourselves out of the fight, more violence was going on all around.

  “We…Need…To…Help…” I was speaking in-between desperate pants, lungs burning more than they had during my flight with Will. It was a miracle I could even talk, and whatever shitty strength I usually managed to project into my voice was surely gone. Despite that, somehow, people were actually listening to me. Defenders stared, nodded. I thought I saw spines hardening as my words sunk in.

  Moments later, we were charging into the backs of another mass of undead.

  And that was the rest of the defence, from there. A long, agonising melee made as much of mad thrashing as it was any coherent skill or deliberative technique. People died of course, and I was nearly among them. A dozen gashes or scrapes made themselves known against my skin by the time it was done. My hands were so wet and sticky with blood that I thought the sword might slip free of them, and the weapon itself felt like a heavy lead bar as one swing after another pushed my muscles to their limits and beyond.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  But we won. Eventually, we won. Left ourselves standing in the middle of a charnal house freed up as the last of the undead—the second giant shambler—finally went down from three spearheads burying themselves inside it at once.

  I took another look around, nerves frayed and mind jumping at every shadow that caught my eye. Long minutes of frantic scrutiny unveiled no new threats around me however. That didn’t do much to relax me, I feared nothing would. Still heaving the air in and out of me like a belows, I slowly, slowly, felt fatigue mounting as the shock of combat ran its way through my system.

  Even now, years later, I don’t remember going to sleep. I should have. This night would, strangely enough, be the end of my lifetime of normalcy. Nothing would ever be the same for me from then on. Never.

  We slept in the barricaded town hall, something we should perhaps have taken shelter in from the start. People didn’t want their homes undefended to burn, I supposed. Maybe they were right to. Maybe the cold winter would have killed more than the shamblers if we’d retreated from the start. There was no knowing, and I was too tired to even care. We all retreated to the hall and we all let exhaustion turn into sleep.

  I was used to sleeping past noon, and it was no shock that I did so that day too. The air was chilly when I woke up.

  Wasn’t the only thing that was chilly. I’d passed out in one of the central chambers, tucked away in a corner. The floor I’d slept on was stiff and my whole body ached when I woke up, though I suspected most of that came from the battering I’d taken the night before. In my exhaustion I’d slept in my chain shirt, which after a night of tossing and turning felt rather like I’d spent my whole slumber being slowly beaten with a hammer. Everything hurt, everything was horrible.

  And then I got up and looked around, seeing how much worse it all really was.

  People had been laid out on makeshift beds, a lot of them. Water bowls beside them, rags on their faces. The wounded. Some didn’t look so bad, a few scratches—maybe more exhausted than hurt. One or two others were missing limbs, the work of a giant shambler I guessed. Jeeves was nowhere to be seen, I didn’t know if he’d survived or not at the time.

  Walking around I was surprised to find people staring at me, seemingly regardless of what they were doing. Even the town’s barber-surgeon paused what he was doing to look up at me with a stare of pure awe. I took my leave quickly, not having the energy to engage with whatever might be said.

  Outside was better, at least. There were far fewer people present. That was at least until I started approaching the gate, and found an all-too familiar man striding towards me. Jeeves was behind him, of course. My father was making an uncommon visit to Sheppleberry it seemed.

  He didn’t look happy, not in the slightest. Actually he looked, between his bulging features and his general flab, like he was roughly three seconds away from dropping dead on the spot. He stopped just a few paces short of me, glaring.

  “My house was attacked by fucking shamblers last night,” he growled, “what the FUCK happened!?”

  It seemed like this wasn’t the best time to be sassing him, not when he was so very obviously angry. My father had never hit me, but he’d ordered servants to. Right now the only servant within a mile was Jeeves, and his fists were the size of bricks.

  “Shamblers attacked everyone,” I replied slowly, “I was here when it happened—”

  —”Yes you were!” he snapped. “Why, why here and not back at the estate? Why did Jeeves return only after I’d already found our walls assailed by fucking undead!?”

  Ah, so that was what had him pissed. No surprise there I supposed.

  “I…Uh, I was trying to look heroic—you know, like you said.” I lowered my voice as I replied, hoping that my father would see a conspiracy in my response and, like he tended to with such things, instantly try to maintain it. There were convenient aspects to association with a lying bastard at least.

  “Well you did a fucking shit job of it,” he growled, “come with me!” He turned at that without leaving me chance for even a single other word, and I did nothing more than pathetically shuffle along after him like always. Sometimes I’d defy him, but not now. I was far too fucking tired.

  Except today I wasn’t the one seeking to go against him, no. That appeared to be circumstances themselves. We were making our way out of Sheppleberry, just halfway to the main gate, when our walk halted at the sight of a stranger. Tall, robed and shuffling on as if both of his feet were incredibly angry at something entirely different.

  I didn’t know what to make of him. Robes, I thought, were things of a monastery—and there was one a few miles away. But this man didn’t walk like a monk, nor did he quite fit the attire I’d seen there. Certainly, he looked miserable enough to be one, but there was something about him that just…Set my teeth on edge.

  Apparently, my father agreed. Jeeves was stepping in front of him and readying his weapon as we drew nearer.

  “Hold there, who are you man?”

  The man did halt, though when he looked up his face looked about as accommodating as the plague. The wrinkles on it seemed to dance and quiver as he smiled, an expression that looked innately unnatural upon his features. Not least because of the touch of madness to it.

  “Me? ME!? YOU DON’T KNOW WHO ME IS!?” The old man’s shrieking was so vigorous that it took Kyvaine a moment to clock his grammatical error, and that seemed like a small concern beside the screaming madman now standing before him. “I AM MORLO, THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE!”

  Nobody said anything, because we all got hit with recognition at the same time. The robes, the age, the mad manner of speaking, the shrieks and pride and title…It all made too much eerie sense. The stomach dropped out of me faster than it had even when those giant undead had made themselves known.

  Morlo the Great and Terrible. He was a known Thaumaturge.

  Explore more of our books — begin your journey here: