We were already horsed by the time I got my answer. In retrospect, I realise why. Both Morlo and Vara must’ve known that I wouldn’t have wanted to come if I’d been told sooner, and so our mounts were already taking off at a brisk run by the time I found out shit. You learn to figure these things out as a hero, you see. You need to. Far too easy to die if you don’t get a knack for seeing through bullshit.

  Not that I ever did get one for seeing through Vara’s.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, for probably the fourth time. I was almost surprised to actually get an answer.

  “Brace yourself,” Morlo replied. I didn’t brace myself, not really. Just sort of spasmed as a new wave of fear came over me. It was one of my more rational reactions actually.

  “Where the fuck are we going?” I snapped again, turning fear into anger. It was getting to be something of a go-to for me.

  “Sheppleberry.”

  The name hung between us for all of a second before I drew the obvious conclusion, and promptly panicked.

  “Are you fucking insane? Sheppleberry!?”

  “No I’m not, and yes that’s where we’re going.” Morlo seemed to be enjoying himself even more now that I was freaking out, I felt certain of it. Of course I didn’t really know him yet, it wouldn’t be until later on, through our longer acquaintance, that I realised I had no idea just how much delight he was really drawing from it all.

  Panic set into me quickly, and it was only Vara’s presence that left me holding my tongue. I wanted to demand that we stop right then and there but…Well, what excuse would I have this time? Our town was being attacked, if I openly insisted we not go and help them then there’d be no doubting why.

  “We…Should be cautious, right?” I asked, but found myself trailing off before I could continue. Laughter was ringing out, cruel and biting, and from right beside me. Vara’s laughter.

  “Oh, there it is, always a reason we shouldn’t risk our skins eh? Or his skin, more like it.” The woman was sneering at me, which did horrible things to my young idiot ego.

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?” I snapped, glaring at her with one of my most imposing stares.

  She didn’t blink, not for so much as a second.

  “That you’re a pathetic, cowardly streak of shit who’s spent his whole life collecting unearned praise for doing nothing at all, and now you’re hoping to talk us out of saving everyone we’ve ever known.”

  I retorted to that in the best way I could.

  “Shut up, whore!”

  I know, my wit was truly a thing of legend. Well compared to the other boys my age I supposed it was hardly below average, at least. Vara was unfazed of course, and Morlo just let out a cackle that I found myself vaguely unnerved by.

  There was nothing vague about my unnerving as we approached Sheppleberry though. One good thing about travelling on horses without a wagon is that it means you make a great deal more ground over the same timeframe. One hour was enough for the animals to cross most of the way, though I noticed my mount was breathing quite heavily by the time Sheppleberry was in sight.

  So was I, for that matter. I just kept thinking back to fighting there, to all the times I nearly died. I was trembling, sweating—teeth chattering. Literally chattering. If there has ever been a moment to point at for demonstrating what a hero doesn’t look like, it was me at that moment.

  Vara loved every second of it, of course. I didn’t notice this at the time, but she was just about as scared as I was. She should have been more scared. Smaller than me by far, female instead of male and without anything close to my experience wielding a blade. She’d fought the undead at least once in the Dungeon and seen them again since, but I was the better equipped of us by far.

  “There’s a sword strapped to your horse,” Morlo told me, “keep it handy.”

  I took a second for the words to sink in, still not believing—wanting to believe—that what was happening actually was happening. When I turned to where he’d indicated I found the weapon just as he said and drew it experimentally.

  Different from mine, no doubting it. This wasn’t a fencer’s weapon, but a fighter’s. The blade was maybe a half-hand shorter than mine, but thrice the breadth. It was double-edged too. A slashing weapon with less of a taper than I saw in most longswords, heavier but still clearly made for one hand. I could manage the weight well enough, large as I was, but it was hard to imagine most men doing so.

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  “Was this…Did you have this made for me?” The question felt stupid, how could he have? But Morlo looked at me somewhat appreciatively at being asked it.

  “So that skull isn’t entirely empty then,” the Thaumaturge cackled, “yes I did. So don’t lose it.”

  He looked away and left me to continue studying the weapon. I glanced at Vara as I did, and saw that she’d withdrawn her own too. Hers was maybe a half-foot shorter and not quite so wide. I could only imagine its weight was as well-balanced for her strength as the other was for mine.

  Not that balance would mean much in the sort of fight we were heading to. By the time I’d tested my new weapon, we were a mere five hundred yards from the town and picking up a new burst of speed. I soon saw the attack and felt my blood turn to slush.

  More undead than had come the first night, without a doubt, were swarming around Sheppleberry. A thousand, perhaps more even than that. Among them were no less than half a dozen of the behemoth shamblers that had battered down the gate before. None had seen us yet, which was fine by me. I turned my horse and started urging it to gallop away only for the beast to stop in an instant. I almost fell from the saddle, turning over to see Morlo and Vara smirking at me.

  “No cowardice for you, you little shit!” Morlo said cheerily, “just sit there and watch. You won’t be doing anything more than clean-up tonight.”

  Before I could so much as wonder what that even meant, I was shown. The air started to hum, quiver. I tasted something strange on my tongue. Tangy, almost sharp. It had a near-citric hint to it, and a moment later I saw what it was preceding.

  It had been the taste of thunder on the air in my mouth. Above the skies were cloudy, maybe at the infancy of a storm but not nearly there. Yet the storm was coming anyway, and it built around Morlo the Great and Terrible. Arcs of lightning leapt from his fingers, dancing along the ground uncontrollably around him as his eyes bulged and his tongue lolled out. I felt the air heat around me, then saw steam actually wisping up before him.

  All at once, the building power uncoiled like a whip cracking. A great streak of energy tore out and lashed a rank of shamblers as one, lightning in bolts thicker and more lingering than I’d ever seen from natural weather. They danced among the enemy, screamed and jumped from one body to another setting the air alight and searing the grassy ground into naked dirt scorched black with the discharge. I had to look away, my eyes were stinging after only a second and even then I found bright dots hanging in the centres of my vision.

  By the time they’d cleared, so had the discharge of energy. And so had fifty of the undead, now lying and twitching at the feet of the rest.

  The rest of them, the nine fucking hundred or so, turned quite quickly at this. There weren’t a lot of things that would be easily noticed over the sound of an entire town getting besieged, but apparently high-scale Thaumaturgy was among them. Almost as one, a great mass of the shamblers peeled off from the main force and started sprinting for us.

  I didn’t scream, but my grin of terror started planting itself back across my face. Vara was trembling and white as a sheet, while Morlo just raised his hands again. He seemed relaxed, nodding to himself as if confirming that all this was going along with some plan.

  Whatever that plan was, I suspected suicide was among its steps. I was half-tempted to jump off the damned horse and take my chances running then and there. Before I could come to a decision on the prospect, Morlo’s hands leapt out and more lightning came lunging out of them.

  Closer this time, the undead caught a much more concentrated burst. I watched some of them taken apart entirely as the bolts of sizzling power ran through them, entire rows charred and seared into uselessness. I couldn’t approximate the number destroyed in that one attack, but it was more than the first. Maybe several times more. Those that remained weren’t deterred at all, of course. Undead never were, but their numbers were thinned by no small fraction.

  And Morlo just started readying another attack.

  When this final lashing of lightning hit, there were only a bare handful of undead left in the mangled group. They shambled after us, single-digit in number and half of them damaged by getting caught at the edges of the magic.

  I stared, Vara stared, and Morlo glared at both of us, rolling his eyes and scoffing.

  “This is the clean-up part.”

  For a few seconds I couldn’t bring myself to move. It was ridiculous, I know. I’d faced down worse odds than this twice in a row, but there I was. It was Vara kicking her horse at the shamblers that spurred me on.

  Believe it or not, I’d never fought from horseback at that point. It may be the career of any rich little shit to become a cavalryman, but I’d never done any real soldiering to begin with. I instantly saw the appeal, though, as the first shambler’s spear came up for me. I twisted in the saddle, sent the horse wavering to one side as I smacked the weapon away then brought the sword down into my enemy’s neck.

  I saw then why cavalry weapons were so big and heavy compared to ones made for foot, and why a cavalry charge was considered one of the more devastating forces a battlefield could produce. With all the weight of my mount, and all the speed of its run, I took the shambler’s head completely off in that one hit. From the corner of my eye I caught Vara managing much the same, another shambler cut down with a single swing. The differences of size and strength seemed a great deal less significant while mounted.

  That still left a few of the things left, and we were cautious about cutting them down. Not that it was exactly hard—cavalry found use for good reason it seemed. Looking back on it, this being my first introduction to mounted combat would come back to bite me in the arse later. But not at the time. Not right then.

  We looked up just in time to see Morlo unleashing his latest trick. A streak of fire ran along the air and hit dead-centre in the back of an undead behemoth, bursting apart like oil from a thrown lamp and engulfing the entire creature from head to toe. I heard the sizzling from fifty paces back, and swore I could feel the heat. So this was Thaumaturgy. I watched the effects as undead fell away, burning and collapsing, their attack ruined.

  How in the fuck was I going to get away from this mad bastard?

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