An Ugly Thing Happened On The Way To The Grave
An Ugly Thing Happened On The Way To The Grave
Rocks, Virtok thought, why does it always have to be rocks?
Quicksley, it seemed, was another location to be safely removed from the roster of potential sites
for a College of Necromancy, or Dead School, as the other wizards called it. Virtok, however,
would resent anyone referring to the village of Quicksley as "safe", as he was currently running
for his life from said "peaceful hamlet".
Again.
This seemed to happen at an unlikely (and unfortunate) majority of the towns and hamlets he visited.
It was almost as if the simpletons had some kind of attachment to their corpses.
"So what," he muttered under his ragged breath, "if she used to be your grandmother?"
A thumb-sized chunk of rock whizzed by his temple, and he redoubled his efforts at speed.
Thankfully he didn't have the entire gathering from the town square on his heels. Roughly half had
stayed behind to decapitate and incinerate Moom, as usual. The zombie would inevitably pound his
way through them and wander to Virtok later that night, guided by some kind of magical affinity.
Virtok often wondered how that affinity would affect him if a mob somehow managed to
overpower Moom someday.
His ill-timed ruminations were brought to a rude halt as a slung stone, just shy of fist-sized,
suddenly brought him to his black-robed knees. Dimly he realized he was very likely a dead man.
He wondered if one of his brothers might someday zombify him. He hoped they did a more
professional job than he had done with Moom.
A shadow passed over his eyes. This is it, Virtok thought with only a little gloom. Death wasn't
nearly as depressing or mysterious to a career necromancer as it was to most people. Having seen
and often undone most kinds of grisly human dismemberment and death, the idea of being stoned to
death seemed quite a clean way to go, if painful. Irrelevantly he thought back to some of his
classmates at the Universal Academy of the Arts whom everbody called the "mushroom heads", and
almost laughed at what being stoned to death would mean to them. Then he closed his eyes and
waited. He really hoped he turned out better than Moom.
Suddenly a voice boomed out from directly in front of him, irritatingly heroic. "I am Echard, the
most perfect swordsman in the land, and I demand that you desist in your unlawful persecution of
this man!"
The sounds of heated pursuit halted, to be replaced some seconds later by sounds of bemusement and
some degree of shock. As a cloud of still-moving dust surrounded him, Virtok raised himself to his
elbows and glanced back at the uncertain mob of villagers before assessing his savior.
The man before him was clothed head to toe in soft velvets and linens of expertly matched shades of
deep red, and held a bare sword of superb quality in his left hand. He was smiling at the mob,
hoping to disarm them first with his charm rather than his blade. His teeth were perfect.
Irritatingly heroic.
He was also outnumbered fifty to one.
Virtok sighed and stood up, dusting himself off and checking his body for injuries. Better to
be saved by an idiot who lived in an imaginary epic than to die at the hands of an angry mob,
he thought. He crossed his arms and stood back to watch things unfold, showing much more dignity
than he had hope.
"Um," the leading villager managed intelligently.
"Whatever trespasses this man has visited upon you, the punishment of stoning is strictly forbidden
by the King!"
"'Eh King died thutty yeahs agoo!" countered a daring mobster from the midst of the crowd.
"Yea and verily," Echard continued, ignoring the interruption, "all capital offenses are to be
overseen and judged by an appointed Magistrate and a council of peers..."
"Bah! Oothah wizahds 'ould just let 'im goo!" Many in the crowd muttered in anger.
"... and not by a council of disgruntled rabble," Echard finished with a dangerous flicker in his
eyes. Virtok groaned. So much for charm. The mob was certainly unimpressed by the swordsman's
appelation of them as rabble, despite his apparent knowledge of obsolete Kingly law, and they were
most expressive of their opinion. Like most villagers in the timberlands, they were hard-working
and proud to be so.
"'Im, 'e made me granny-mum git up and walk-aboot!" someone yelled.
"That sounds wonderful!" Echard replied. "How could you be so angry with so fine a healer?"
"She wus deed!"
Nobody said anything for a moment. Virtok's eyes shifted nervously from man to mob as he
considered the possibility that he would have to resume his flight from fifty lumberjacks and one
most perfect swordsman in the land.
"Well," Echard finally said, a little uncertain. Virtok cringed at the sound of his voice and
prepared to sprint. "That does seem a little... unethical. Did he dig her up?" he asked hopefuly.
"Naw, she wus a-layin' on a plank inna shrine. We's a-buryin'er tommoruh," the offended grandson
offered helpfully.
"Oh," said Echard, "that makes it tricky. Grave-robbing is an established crime, but
reanimating..." he began to chew his lip in thought as his heroic brain considered the matter.
Several minutes passed. Many of the villagers began to mutter restlessly, despite the authority
of the other's naked steel. Virtok worked at making himself as inconspicuous as possible, and
nearly jumped out of his robes when Echard finally spoke.
"It seems to me," he said slowly, obviously still pouring all of his faculties into the problem,
"that the King himself should look into this affair." Virtok winced. The leader of the mob
looked stunned.
"You damned loony! The King is dead! Or are yuh gonna have Black-Robes 'ere wake 'im oop fer yah?"
"No, no," Virtok answered despite himself. "That wouldn't work. It would just be meat. No mind.
Personality vanishes after death. Poof! Soul dissipates..."
"Granny!!"
Virtok halted his speech, but it was too late. He had damned himself. Now the fifty angry men,
their faces twisted back into the familiar masks of hatred at the prompting of their neighbor's
anguish, hefted their stones and tools and began to move in for the kill.
Quickly Virtok looked to Echard for help, but the warrior was already moving. Faster than a cobra
he moved, and screams of pain and horror erupted from the mob. With flawless efficiency and
matchless grace, his sword moving almost too fast to see, Echard skewered each member of the mob
neatly through the chest with practiced ease. In less than a minute all fifty villagers lay dead
of a pierced heart. Only a few lay away from the rest, caught in an futile attempt to run from
their nigh-elemental executioner. As he inspected his fallen foes, Echard absent-mindedly slashed
his sword through the air with such speed that every drop of blood was flung from it, and returned
it to its sheath as clean as he had drawn it. With a proud but subdued smile he walked over to
Virtok.
"Pleased to be of service, sir."
"Buh... wha... huh? You... they..." Virtok stammered. He had made headless corpses walk, and
occassionally even speak, but this was truly astonishing. He hadn't thought a man could be so
quick. Even as he thought the word, he knew "quick" was a gross understatement.
"I believe it is now my duty to take you before the King," Echard said, breaking off Virtok's
string of imcomplete replies.
"Um... yes." Virtok said, finally getting a loose grip on his wits. "That would probably be the
best thing." He was willing to say they should go to the backside of the sun, as long as that man
kept his damned sword in its sheath. So what if the King was three decades dead and this moron
couldn't face it? Virtok had over fifty miles between Quicksley and the capitol in which to make
his escape.
Echard smiled and turned away to pick up Virtok's pack where it had fallen some feet away. His
heart pounding, Virtok took a few steps towards the woods, in the hopes that perhaps he could slip
away now. He could do without the pack. He could get more incense, more oils. As long as that
man didn't look his way. Just a few more steps. Freedom right there. Sweat fell freely from his
face. Dying to stones was one thing, but nobody wanted to die looking at the perfect smile of a
human force of nature. It may even be scarier than most deaths, but besides that it was just too...
condescending.
Echard was bent over, his hand on the pack. Only seconds left. Only a few more feet. Must run
now. Last chance. Now!
"MOOOOOM!!!" cried a voice inches from Virtok's ear.
Echard turned with a smile on his face just in time to see his freshly rescued young necromancer
faint at a zombie's feet. The zombie's eyes were sad, and its arms hung limply at its sides.
"Say, you wouldn't be Granny, would you?" Echard asked politely.
He felt a little bad that he had killed the woman's grandson, even if he was in an unlawful mob,
and even if she was really, really ugly.
Sunset painted the serene hills in a hundred shades of red and violet as happy, puffy clouds
sailed by. Birds chirped, animals scampered, and nature enjoyed one last peaceful moment before
settling down for the night. At the south end of a nearby valley, a small dustcloud arose,
attracting the attention of some deer before they crashed away into the pines. Had they stayed to
observe, they would have eventually made out the form of a slight man with dark hair running at the
head of the cloud, followed at a not-too-great distance by a considerably larger dustcloud.
To Part III