Chương 21: Chapter-21

Huberlin was no longer a king, but he still wore a crown. He had thought that the old one was the heaviest burden he would ever wear. He was wrong. The new crown sat even heavier on his brow. It was the crown that had once sat on the butcher of Palandrias, Prince Rials. But the crown did not mean authority. Huberlin the Third had traded his authority for the safety of his people, and he did not regret the trade. The first tithe had pained him, but less so than a battle would have.

He had saved lives by surrendering, he knew that. And yet he felt hollow when the young men and women were led away to a distant land, only to be murdered by unfeeling corpses. One hundred and thirteen of his countrymen. Versus all of them. He knew he had made the right decision. He knew the lesser sacrifice was the correct one. But listening to the cries of those young people and their families had made him feel complicit. He could not get the sounds out of his head.

The new crown he wore allowed him to direct the undead. He was no longer king, but a general in the Tal-sha-shenk army. His army had not been dispersed. They marched for Zozheim. The last nation to fall to their new undead overlord was, ironically, the one that had created it. Whether Tal had saved them for last intentionally Huberlin couldn't say. He supposed it didn't matter.

Every league they pushed the border toward the capital, every yard they conquered in Tal's name, the domain of the living grew that much smaller. And Huberlin was helping it happen. He had a fowl taste in his mouth. He spat, which didn't help, and took a sip of water from his waterskin, which made it worse. Frowning, he threw the waterskin to a page.

"Get me a new one," he said.

"This one is rotting." The page ran off. Huberlin tried to remember the child's name. He was the son of some lord or another from one of Polkaeni's neighbors. Their nation had bent the knee as readily as Polaeni and the tide had swept over them as swiftly. The child had likely been disinherited, his family's assets seized by their conquerers. The child was likely lucky to be alive at all.

Tal only left the old power structures in place when they served him, and the aristocrats in the boy's nation had swollen to the point of bursting before being conquered. He had heard that many of the families had been converted as they had attempted to play their old games under these new rules. Converted. What a polite word for murder. Surveying the army, Huberlin spat again. He checked the sun for the time, then pulled a skull from his pack. He didn't know whose skull it was.

He hadn't asked, and he didn't think it mattered. At least it was an old skull. A century or more. Before the dead had begun to stir. He held the skull and waited. It would be soon. The boy returned with a waterskin and Huberlin washed his mouth out with the clean water, spat, and nodded at the child.

"Go about your tasks."

"Yes, Your Majesty," the boy said, dashing off to do…he'd find something, Huberlin was sure. There was always work that needed doing and nobody was shy about bossing the pages of the camp around.

"You are smiling," a cold voice said. The skull in his hand turned warm, and the eyes lit up with violet light.

"Why?" Huberlin swallowed.

"My lord," he said.

"I was amused by the child and reminiscing about my own childhood. I spent much of it as a page, and then a squire, in the previous wars against Zozheim." The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"And this brings you happiness?"

"No. Nostalgia," he clarified.

"They were not happy times. They were far more desperate. The mad emperor would have slaughtered us, slaughtered me, if we had let up the defense for an instant. But nostalgia is a funny emotion, especially with regard to childhood memories. I was not happy being bossed around by the knights and older squires when I was young, but seeing someone else wear those shoes, it's amusing. Like seeing a small part of the cycle." The skull looked at him with those unreadable eyes.

"Report," it said finally.

"We've encountered no resistance as we march inward. The scouts report no signs of organized military. Whatever forces we do find are presenting themselves for surrender. We have been incorporating them into the line of battle, at the vanguard," Huberlin explained.

"They seem eager to fight against their countrymen, My Lord. These were lands that were hit hard by the body harvests of the first war. The soldiers I have spoken with are eager for vengeance against their empire."

"You have not converted them?" the skull asked.

"I saw no need. They fight willingly, and will rise in battle if they fall anyway."

"And if they're spies?"

"We're an army a hundred thousand strong. There are going to be spies among our ranks no matter what we try to do. Unless you order me to convert every single soul, the Empire will know how thoroughly fucked they are as we approach, and they won't be able to do anything about it," Huberlin said. The voice in the skull was silent a moment.

"Why do you lead living men to fight for the unliving, Huberlin?"

"You ask me this now?" Huberlin asked, laughing.

"Because, My Lord, it's the end of the world as we knew it, and the only way to influence the shape of the new world is to serve. The only way to survive is to serve. You bade me serve as a general and so I serve as a general. If you had ordered me to serve as a stall-mucker, then I'd be shoveling horse shit."

"And if I had made your execution a condition of the surrender?" the skull asked. Huberlin stopped laughing.

"Then my people would have known the depths of my determination to keep them safe. You would have one less general and one more corpse. Whether my people would love you more or less, I cannot say."

"I wonder, sometimes, if it would not be easier to convert the entire population and be done with it," the voice said offhandedly.

"The need to govern takes up so much of my time." Huberlin felt a pit in his stomach.

"If you did that, My Lord, then you would be ending the world. Eventually, the corpses of the lesser undead rot and stop moving. Only those like you would remain. A few thousand undead in the entire world, that's all that would be left."

"I do not see the point you are trying to make," the skull confessed.

"But it is not Vorulsht's will that I exterminate the living, or the shape of this war would be very different." He had forgotten, sometimes, that this undead monster claimed to be the true prophet of Vorulsht.

"And what is Vorulsht's will? Why does the god of death want to rule the living?"

"I haven't asked him," Tal admitted.

"And if he told me I do not recall. It is enough that he asked me to do so. When I have conquered all the world, I shall ask him what comes next." Huberlin closed his eyes as he processed the information.

"What if he asks you to convert all that you have captured?" Huberlin asked, terrified of the answer.

"Would you obey?"

"Obey? No. I do not obey anyone, any longer. But I would listen to his argument, and I can see scenarios in which he might convince me one way or the other. I would be most curious as to his reasons. I think I understand gods even less than I understand the living. Regardless, I have stayed overlong and you have distracted me from my purpose. The report."

"Of course," Huberlin said, and he began formally reporting the status and disposition of the army as it marched west, going into as much detail as he could recall from the reports he'd read himself earlier in the day. He finished, and the skull was silent a moment.

"You are to continue to the city of Urik-nab, conquer it, and convert its entire population," the sorcerer-king commanded eventually. Huberlin paled.

"My lord. I-I beg of you stay your hand."

"Oh?" The skull's eyes flashed. With interest or anger Huberlin could not say.

"Why? It is just thirty thousand."

"Let us spare the women and children," Huberlin said.

"What purpose will that serve?"

"It will be good for morale. It will show that you are reasonable, and just. Your detractors who call you a genocidal tyrant will have to explain this act of mercy when they argue that you cannot be reasoned with. You—""Very well," the voice said.

"Convert the men and women of Urik-nab, but you may spare those under the age of fifteen. Let Urik-nab become the city of orphans, and we shall see what my enemies think of me then." The eyes of the skull went out, and Huberlin waited a moment before placing it back in his saddlebags. He looked around at the officers who were standing at a distance, too far to hear but close enough for him to beckon once the meeting with their lord was complete. He did so now. And he relayed his orders. He had been a king, once.

A just man. A maker of laws. Now, he was the maker of orphans.