Chapter 63 - Holy moly [Book One Complete]

Having shouted myself hoarse rallying my cavalry to reform outside the Areskyn encampment I ran back and forth chivvying along the more bloodthirsty stragglers. It took ten painful minutes as I watched the rest of the tribes disperse the face of what could only be described as a tide of undead. The shambling masses had rushed the other tribes and the dead, both the reanimated variant and those who had fallen during the fighting, littered the plains around the artificial barrow of Hellath.

My lancers trotted forwards, the chariots on their immediate flanks with the archers safely protected behind us. I’d hopped up into the chariot Kril was driving, nudging Jagapan over to make room.

“I won’t be staying, don’t worry,” I told the other king in a ruined voice. “Kril, my throat is fucked. We barrage with enchanted arrows, cut our way through and then move north to meet up with the others. Don’t fuck about on this, no stopping to kill for funsies. We don’t know for sure that this is the last arrow in Mortimer’s quiver,” I croaked. Kril mumbled and nodded as he carefully held the vehicle in position to the right of the wedge of lancers.

I couldn’t help but notice there were fewer of them than there should have been. In the heat of the fight I’d lost track of the links in my mind snapping away as my warriors died. I checked as I yanked a spear with a steel shaft from the fixture in the chariot. The bright red banner streamed out behind as I swung the tip down to point behind me.

I’d lost perhaps one in twenty of my soulbound servants thus far. Five percent might not sound like a lot but seeing as I had so few fighters to begin with every loss hurt more than perhaps it should have done. Was I getting soft? If I was going to command these people in a war, which now seemed both inevitable and less of a cakewalk than I’d been envisioning, I would need to harden my heart again.

Glimpse metaphorically pecked my mind to get my attention and I snapped back to the overhead view he was providing. The dead were congregating ahead of us. Why couldn’t it be slow zombies? Why did they have to be able to run tirelessly and reposition themselves? If I could locate whoever had animated them, or wore the rings used to animate them, I could stop this in moments but Mortimer must have schooled his necromancers to avoid notice once the fighting began.

Glimpse focused on the party from our camp that had fled the battle right at the outset. They hadn’t had time to completely escape buried zombies lying in wait for us though. They had gotten bogged down, half the mounted warriors were either dead or dismounted and the chariots had gotten bogged down, forced to an awkward circling motion so the wheel mounted scythes could fend off the worst of the swarm from the warriors.

My pregnant wife defending my warriors was not acceptable to me and my blood ran cold at the sight of hundreds of undead closing in on her group. Spear in hand I leapt forward, rocking the chariot and eliciting squawks of indignation from Kril and Jagapan. As I landed my feet flashed and I shot off ahead of the remains of my forces.

The tip of the spear was largely unused as I ran. I swatted bodies aside, using it like a seven foot long club, as I charged forwards. Glimpse circled overhead and I borrowed his sight as I hastily made my plans.

Two hundred of my remaining mana vanished as I casted Burning Skies twice, shaping the spell into long lines ahead of my forces. The sky darkened then glowed red as the clouds gathered and fireballs reigned down, fifty metres apart, to either side of our line of retreat.

For once I was grateful to the ever-cursed Shop. I bought a pair of normal mana potions, willing them to appear in my free left hand as I paid. I chugged one, pulling the stopper out with my teeth and tipping it down my throat.

Mana: 350/430

Excellent. The earth stirred around me as I used my Earth shaping spell and my legs stopped pumping. I rode forward on a wave of dirt and soil, pulling it in from the edges of my reach and from ahead of me. Zombies were tumbled off their feet and left fully or partially buried in the ground as I shot forward faster than I had ever moved in my life.

Half a kilometre later I cast two more Burning Skies, creating another set of burning railway tracks to either side of me. I glanced back to check on my troops and they were funnelling through the perfectly smooth and hardened lane I’d left in the dirt. Any zombies near the edges or miraculously still standing were cut down as the Mondyn warriors chased after me.

I drank the other potion as the surrounding dirt slipped from my mental control. Back to three hundred and fifty mana. Mana potions were arguably worth the candle, I begrudgingly accepted. I was ignoring the kill reports for now but I was confident I’d end up well in profit after this shitshow of a day. I’d been supposed to put myself forward as not only an accepted tribal leader but as a warlord fit to lead all the tribes south against the real enemy. That plan had turned to ashes thanks to fucking Hakubin selling out his own people to the shit-sitters.

Earth Shaping let me move over a kilometre in fifteen seconds. I wasn’t far from Fay so I bought another mana potion and cast another pair of burning lines in the sky that fell to the ground to thin the undead herd. Then I rose up on a tsunami of dirt and crushed my way through to secure Fay and her group.

As I skidded to a stop I spun, smacking the nearest zombie away with the spear, which was now looking a little bent and worse for wear, and drank the third mana potion. Glimpse had circled down and was zipping in and out of the melee to take zombie eyes which he gobbled greedily. Sprinting around the circling chariots I cleared the immediate area through brute force then turned to Fay’s driver. The lancers would catch up in a moment but Fay’s party needed to regain their momentum or they’d snarl everything up. I took a few bites and slashes as I cleared away the heavily armed zombies but nothing that slowed me down. From now on the only things I really had to fear would be my fellow contestants it seemed.

“Go! Let the lancers overtake you!” I yelled, pointing north and Glimpse landed a passing peck to one of the horses backsides as he flew past. The beast startled and the driver cracked the reins at my command, launching the animals forwards into a rattling charge. The horde had been thick enough to slow and eventually stop a handful of chariots and twenty horse archers but now they had an opportunity to get back up to speed and would be able to cut through the fringe of the swarm.

I planted my feet, leaning my weight against the spear in my right hand as the rest of my forces caught up. I waved them on and they split like a stream around a pebble as they continued their mad dash north. Kril skidded to a halt next to me, his horses were blown and lathered in sweat. The stink of their fear might have been infectious to the other ponies but to me it smelled like motivation to get the hell out of here.

“Don’t fucking stop!” I croaked at him.

“Told you!” muttered Jagapan.

“What about you?” Kril snapped.

“I’m the rearguard. You can’t outrun me and besides, I might as well make the most of all these free Souls Mortimer has given us, right?” My grin was caked with dirt and blood which must have only made me look even more savage.

“Aye!” yelled Kril as he whipped his ponies back into motion, leaving me alone in the cloud of dust. Glimpse landed on my shoulder and I reached up to ruffle his feathers.

“Now all the civilians are out of the way, how about we do some real damage?” I whispered. He cawed and shot off to fly above me.

The horde had been badly disrupted by our passage through them. Thousands had died, or been killed again, and the Brownian motion of the mob was being sucked away from attacking as they tried to fill the sudden smoking gaps in their formation.

Two more mana potions appeared in my hand as I cursed the Shop out of habit. I drank one and made the sky glow once more, targeting the densest concentrations of zombies shambling in the wake of my army. The ground erupted throwing bodies or parts thereof into the air and incinerating more of the swarm.

I strode closer. I wasn’t going to run. Well, I was but not yet. I was angry and it was time to take what I could to turn this situation to my advantage. The gods had seen fit to make it so I got stronger by killing and Mortimer had provided me with an ideal opportunity to put it into practice. I chugged mana potions after every three casts but every cast killed hundreds of reanimated humans, earning far more Souls than I spent. I’d found an infinite loop: as long as the horde was sufficiently numerous, and I didn’t need to eat or sleep, I could keep going continuously.

I burned my way back to the hill, excising an arc of the horde from reality as I went. When I got there I found the horde trying to climb the steps carved for giants but they were being held off by the chiefs and their Dreamers.

A fireball cleared the immediate area and I leapt in to take over as the exhausted mortals backed away in fear. The now twisted spear in my hand flashed back and forth, splitting skulls and breaking bodies.

“If I clear the way, will you run? Get back to your tribes. Come to Palliat Pass in the north if you want to take revenge for this betrayal by the Areskyn and the shit-sitters to the south!” I snarled over my shoulder. All the yelling and smoke inhalation had made my voice guttural and harsh. I sounded every bit like the monster I must have seemed.

“Mond? Which way?” snapped Calpakter. I was glad he had survived. He’d seemed like a decent bloke for a primitive savage when we’d spoken before.

“Cut east a short way then north. I’ve killed most of the horde in that direction. I’m going to clear this immediate area, fireballs will fall from the sky. Run that way-” I raised an arm and pointed the way I’d come from, “- it will be easiest there then get back to your tribes. Urkash has declared war on the tribes and I’m going to teach the ‘King’ that this was a really fucking stupid decision.” Calpakter gave me a fierce smile and waved his spear over his head as he turned to the men behind him.

“Warlord Mond will clear our escape. I’ll guard the wise man,” he shouted.

“I won’t be going anywhere. I’ve lived fifty winters on Hellath and I won’t run!” snapped the old man who’d led the ceremony earlier.

“I can’t stay here to finish them all. I’m going to get most of them but my own warriors are disorganised and escaping. I need to get back to them.” I gave Calpakter a pleading look and the man slipped his mace from his belt to knock the old priest unconscious with a single blow.

“Oh dear, he fell asleep. I guess I’ll just carry him. Anyone else feeling tired?” Heads were quickly shaken among the remaining priests. “It’s better to live and get revenge than die pointlessly. I’ll carry him.” The mohawk sporting chief's voice had grown surprisingly gentle as he scooped up the old man.

I drank another mana potion and launched another barrage of fire from the sky. I worked my tongue around behind my teeth. The potions tasted funky and the aftertaste reminded me of Sambuca or something similar. Heavily aniseed in flavour. I had always hated aniseed. The only useful item from the Shop and it tasted like ass. Typical.

“Now!” I yelled and a blast of Aresk’s aura washed over us, giving the seemingly broken men a much needed morale boost. They took off at a sprint into the smoky cratered ground I’d left behind me as I cut my way back to them. Glimpse trailed overhead, occasionally zooming down to remove an eyeball from an errant zombie that somehow survived my assault.

I gave them a minute, batting away any zombie that came close with a fist or the spear, as I waited for them to get ahead of me. Glimpse could see my army break free of the encirclement and a wash of relief flooded through me. Fay was clear as well as the bulk of my forces.

I had hoped my return would lure out the necromancers and the Soulbound perhaps even Mortimer himself if he was here but it wasn’t to be. No living person was left in the area, only the rotting corpses of men enslaved after their deaths.

Sprinting after the escaping tribal leaders was a surreal experience. It was all smoke and craters and shambling dead men. The zombies didn’t groan or demand access to my brains. This lot had all been concussed by my earlier attacks so they shuffled along like typical movie zombies rather than the bandaged men I’d grown used to.

I called out as I sprinted past the chiefs and moved ahead to keep their route clear of serious threats. I didn’t have to use Burning Skies again. Seen from above the devastation I’d wrought was appalling. Multiple square kilometres had been blasted from the heavens leaving them ruined and burned. Fires had caught in some of the grass and threatened to spread but I ignored that as a problem for anyone dumb enough to still be here in an hour to deal with.

Once I was confident the remaining tribesmen would escape I took off north after my own people and counted my “winnings”. This didn’t feel like winning. I’d lost my opportunity to unite the tribes and no amount of Souls would make up for that. I checked my kill tally and stumbled before skidding to a stop, leaving furrows in the dirt with my bare feet.

Reanimated Humanos slain x6403

Ninety six thousand and forty five Souls gathered.

Holy moly. I was so stunned I was unable to swear for a moment but then a barrage of profanity erupted from my lips in a rasping, gasping chuckle that built rapidly into howling cackles. Glimpse orbited my head adding his own cawing laughter to the mix. Poor old Mortimer had fucked up with style. He was down most of one zombie army and I was up enough Souls to make the Sykareskyn nomads into absolute terrors. I might even spend some Souls in the Shop for once.