Chương 5

I stood up the moment I smelled them. Fear. Lots of fear.

"Smelled them, have you?" My prince asked. He patted my shoulder affectionately, like I was his loyal hound.

"Good boy, Tal. We know they're there. They're trying to steal a march on us and ambush us in the morning." I did not answer, I simply stood and awaited my Prince's command.

"We pretend to have made camp until nightfall, then when their scouts have changed shifts we will send you and your brothers to kill them," he said.

"After that, when they cannot send word, we shall ride through the night. Their army needs rest, ours does not."" You need rest, my lord," his retainer reminded him.

"You have been awake for three days."

"I feel fine," he said, dismissing the concern.

"It is the crown's magic," the retainer insisted.

"You will pay the price for this restlessness the next time you take it off."

"Then I shall let time see to my debts when they come due," the prince promised, and he waved, indicating the man should be silent. I stood in the corner of the room, listening and watching as the men looked at maps and discussed strategy. I was not curious. I did not care how many corpses we lost or gained in the coming fight as they did. I did not need to know the overall plan. I was less use in that meeting than the knife holding the maps down.

Decoration, a symbol to those would be dissenters of the prince's plan. I stank of blood, none of it mine. I had might as well have bathed in it at this point, for my leather armor was so stained that it was beginning to rot. But this was not enough to hide the scent of fear. Neither the scent of fear on the wind, or the fear in the room. And there was fear enough in the room. Only the prince did not have that smell. Finally, dusk approached.

A living scout came in to bring a report that the enemy had changed the scouts watching the undead army, and it was time to move. My prince turned to me, and he said "Tal. You are to go in that direction. Kill every living man, woman, or child, that you find. Continue to march at half-step until dawn, then return to me." I bumped my fist to my chest in acknowledgment, and slew two unfortunate souls on the way out of the camp. I think they were cooks. I made my way easily through the undead.

Unwashed and rotten, they did not bother me, and I did not bother them. They sat silently, neither watching nor looking away from my gaze. They did move to get out of my way, however. I radiated with the aura of command, for I had been experimenting with that energy which suffused me, which suffused the Prince's crown. When it was easier to send a flicker of command to a drone to move them out of my way, I did. When it was faster to walk around them, I did. It was all the same to me.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. The crowd parted, and this would have terrified even the prince, had he been there to see it. Perhaps he would have destroyed me, then. Perhaps he would have returned me to the priests to see what made me different. Perhaps he would have given me to his father as a prize. I suppose I'll never know. By the time I realized I was doing anything abnormal, the prince was dead. But I get ahead of myself.

I marched at a constant half-step, reaching the edge of the army precisely at dusk. I marched through the darkness until I caught the scent of a living man. Then I sprinted, silently, through the savanna grass until I reached him. He saw me coming and raised a whistle to his lips, blowing hard. No sound had come out, for the prince had given me a magic token. He had simply slapped it on my back as I'd left. It dampened sound around me within a hundred yards.

The scout died in silence, fighting briefly as he tried to sound the alarm. I pinned him down and slowly drove my sword into his chest, thinking of the page-boy while I did so. I could still see that face. I wonder why. He died. Then he stood back up. I brought him with me, a sliver of command binding him to my will as I continued marching in the direction I had been ordered to march. I found three scouts. I gained three followers. The enemy was warned, but not until fifteen minutes before the horde was upon them.

I wasn't there for the battle, I was marching in the wrong direction, a walking blasphemy. The undead were meant to serve, not command. Yet command I did. I did not know it was blasphemy. I saw them as the humans saw me. Extensions of my will. They were my blade, I was the prince's hand, and the prince's will moved us both. It was simple algebra to me. It should have been terrifying to my creators, but they were accustomed to things that should terrify them, or they would not have created me to begin with.

I returned to the army at dawn, and my followers were lost in the confusion and the mass of bodies. I found the prince easily just by following the lines of power to his crown. He was surveying the desolation of the enemy camp, which had been put to rout. A third of our forces were pursuing the retreating enemy. Their horses would start dying soon, and they would be overrun. Then our victory would be absolute.

"I was expecting more, for my first battle," he said, looking at his hands. He looked at me and smiled.

"Good job, Tal." I felt no pleasure at the praise. I simply bumped my chest with my fist and stood guard at his side as he began to take reports on the casualties. Or lack there of. We had gained an extra five thousand bodies, according to the estimates. Lost two thousand of our mismatched civilians, but gained seven thousand men in armor. The living officers were out among them now, counting heads. Doing inventory. The prince smiled. A great victory. His first of many.

We began the long march to the Daltian capital, leaving desolation in our wake. * Another three weeks before we met our next resistance. Our ranks grew slower than before; my prince did not dally as he had been before. Now that he had been blooded by an actual force, he found himself confident. And, as he confided to me, despite the slaughter he'd begun his campaign with, the Zozheim empire did want some actual peasants to rule over once they'd conquered the Daltians.

We purged three cities on the way to the capital, climbing over the walls en masse, pulling those too foolish to have fled out of their hiding spots, and putting them to the sword. Except most of the undead did not have swords, and so they throttled or bit or clawed them to death instead. Pain must be terrible, for the living to fear it so.

Increasingly we found that our work was done for us, as corpses simply walked into our army with ropes around their necks, or their veins opened, or their lips black with the traces of poison. The prince took a grim satisfaction in that. I felt as I always did. Detached, faintly curious, mostly disinterested. I didn't care if the living lived or died. I didn't care how the living died. I didn't even care if the living died. With one exception. The prince had never rescinded his order to ensure he did not die.

So I racked my mind trying a way to argue with entropy and mortality, even as I played idly with the curling threads of power that ran through his crown and into the army around us. Then we arrived at the Daltian capital. And the siege of Palandrias began.