An Ugly Thing Happened On The Way To The Grave
An Ugly Thing Happened On The Way To The Grave
A campfire popped and crackled pleasantly a few feet away, and Echard's firelit
form moved about the camp, occassionally returning to the fire to tend the
narrow pan from which the fishy aroma sprang. His sword hung within easy
reach from a sturdy, low branch of an old ash tree that sulked over the
camp.
"Moom?" Moom whimpered.
The zombie sat dejectedly on the ground behind Virtok, away from the fire.
His arms dangled limply from his shoulders, both of them obviously disjointed.
It would probably be very painful, if he were alive...
Pain. O, the pain. Delicious, savage, a cruel reminder of life wrought
from the raw stuff of chaos and misery. Before him the Gates of Hell blazed,
cackling a song of soulful mayhem. Despite his best efforts to be a good
man, a strong man, he found himself here at the last. His arms, the bodily
instruments of all his worldly doings, for good or ill, had been torn from
him by harpies and devoured before his eyes. The pain consumed him, but
still his eyes focused on the Gates, awaiting the arrival of He Who Would
Judge.
... but luckily zombies were free from pain by design. If nothing else,
taking his arms out of their sockets kept Moom from stabbing himself.
"Feeling better?" Echard asked cheerfully.
"Moom!"
Virtok glowered at his servant and replied darkly, "Oh, of course. A little
nap is just the perfect thing after being stoned by a mob." His head, he
noticed, was in fact throbbing painfully, a discomfort his ire did little
to relieve. "I could only be better if I were being tended to by a delusional
mass murderer."
Echard obviously missed the point. "Ah, but would someone like that have
raked all the rocks out of your sleeping area?" He seemed very pleased with
his own good nature as he lowered the pan a little closer to the coals.
Virtok's ire, however, continued to mount; idiot heroes belonged in idiot
hero stories. They had no business interfering in his trip, not even to save
his life. After all, he had a perfectly suitable zombie to protect him.
"Regarding good cures for stoning," Echard continued, "I'm afraid I'll have
to trust your judgement. I don't know much about being stoned, being a
paragon of justice, and all. But I'm glad you rested well."
"Yeah, about that 'paragon of justice' thing. You do realize you just
murdered fifty villagers who had a somewhat arguable case for my execution?"
"Admit not your guilt to me, friend!" Echard straightened from his duties,
gesturing for the necromancer to be silent. "It is not my task to act as
judge now. Only the King can fulfill that role."
"My guilt?!" Virtok shrieked.
Satisfied that he had settled things to the utmost of his ability,
Echard knelt by the fire and flipped the fish.
Stunned disbelief, trauma, hunger and migraine pain were not the ingredients
for a pleasant evening, not even for a necromancer. After a few moments,
the magnitude of Echard's audacity sank in, and Virtok was jarred back into
his
earlier fury.
"Now look here, you moron!"
"Do you like the skin on your trout crispy?" Echard asked.
"Yes, please. Now look here," Virtok went on, not to be distracted, "Not
only are you a psychopath, not only is the King dead, and long dead at that,
but you're just flat out dealing with the wrong man! I'm a practitioner of
dark arts. Unholy arts! I've studied lore that would curdle your blood.
I have incantations to turn your brain to slime. Well, maybe that's
not so much of a threat to you, but believe me, if you push me, the torments
of a thousand souls will not compare to a moment of what I'll do to you!"
"Mm-hmm," Echard responded patiently, seasoning their dinner. "I thought you
said souls don't really exist."
Were it not secured as jaws are, Virtok's would have dropped with a crash to
the plate Echard handed him. As Echard tasted his half of the fish, Virtok's
mouth hung open dumbly, as though a retort were forthcoming but his body was
incapable of carrying it out.
"I can put it back on if it's not crispy enough."
"Mooom!"
Dinner would have passed silently, were Echard not the most irrepressibly
cheerful and good-natured table mate. He talked of the weather, the horse
he rode as a boy, and the state of affairs in the non-existant royal court.
Virtok made an excrutiating effort to occupy himself with the trout, which
he had to admit was irritatingly perfect. Upon finishing his meal, he had
little choice but to engage at least minimally in conversation.
"So," he asked warily, "where'd you learn to use a sword like that?"
"Are you familiar with the game of checkermen?" Echard asked.
"Of course. Anyone who wants to use their brain seriously knows how to play it.
What has that got to do with swordplay?"
Echard looked to the starry sky and said, "The school I attended outranked every other
school. None of the standard ratings did us justice, so my master billed us as post-elite.
Shortly thereafter, we were barred from all competitions in the land." Echard sighed at
the memory. "With no other means by which to test our skills, my fellow graduates and
I swore to use our hard-learned abilities to right wrongs and free the kingdom of injustice.
At least until they let us back into the tournaments."
"And now the link to checkermen is instantly apparent. Thank you ever so much,
Master Swordsman. You are a divine teller of tales," Virtok sneered.
"Yes, checkermen. That game served as the basis of our education. Anyone can pick
up a long sharp thing and wave it around with some likelyhood of killing someone.
That wasn't the point of Master Minator's school. We learned how to kill smoothly,
efficiently, in the proper way. We did this by memorizing and solving checkermen."
"What?!?" Virtok exclaimed. "You can't solve checkermen. There are thousands,
millions of possibilities every second. Eons-old dragons couldn't solve
checkermen! It's just impossible."
"Really?" Echard asked with a slight smile. "If that is so, present me with a situation,
any situation, in the game of checkermen, and I will deduce the Doomsday in five seconds."
"Moom! Get my checkermen board!"
"Moom..." Moom whimpered.
Virtok looked at the zombie, remembering that its arms were useless. Irritably he stood
and fetched the crude board from his pack.
"No peeking, now. You get five seconds, no more," Virtok warned as he began to unwrap
his collection of hand carved figure.
Echard turned his back as Virtok set out the pieces on the board. The
sorceror pondered every placement, attempting to create as implausible as situation as
he could imagine. Eventually he instructed Echard to survey the board.
The swordsman glanced at the board briefly, taking in the entirety of the game
in an instant. "Not bad, but still simple. Gray nun takes red cavalier."
Virtok wasn't expecting that, nor did it make any apparent sense. He'd thought the best way to a
Doomsday would be to take the red jester with the second gray liontamer, and he said so.
"That's the most obvious attempt, but against a good player it wouldn't work." Echard then
described in detail the possible next four turns, illustrating how Virtok's choice would lead
to a sneaky counter-Doomsday that would spell the end of the game for the gray player. He then
went back to explain how taking the red cavalier set up an inevitable Doomsday in three turns.
"Amazing..." Virtok whispered. "You barely looked at the board. I can't believe..." He
shook himself abruptly. "I still don't see what this has to do with sword fighting."
"Master Minator taught us to apply the tactics of checkermen to the battlefield. His
students can look at a group of opponents, gauge their strength, interpret their positions,
and determine how best to dispatch each of them in the shortest time possible. That is how
I was able to rescue you single-handedly."
"You're putting me on. How could you know?... what if?... But there were fifty of them!"
"I feel obligated to admit," Echard said, " that fifty opponents nears the upper limit of my ability.
But those were only peasants, armed with the simplest of weapons. Had I faced fifty men-at-arms, I
may have needed as much as another minute."
Virtok remained silent for a long time. Sensing his companion's unwillingness to continue the
discussion, Echard quietly cleaned up the remains of dinner. Wanting to distract himself from
thinking on his escort's prowess, Sleyfest eventually picked up his game board and repacked it.
From the pack he drew a needle and thread, and a small pouch of magic stones, and seated himself
by the defunct zombie.
"Moom," Moom rejoiced.
Virtok seperated the magic stones into both hands and wove them in patterns around Moom's shoulders,
until they began to glow in varying colors. When he was satisfied with the arcane effects, he
roughly massaged the limbs back into place and put away the stones. He readied the needle and
inspected his servant's body for cuts inflicted by the mob. There were only a few, and they were
small, but lacking anything better to do than talk to the insane, superpowerful swordsman, he began
stitching.
"You haven't told me your story, friend," Echard said once the camp was spotless. "Why do you
travel with a ghoul, and reanimate village grandmothers? I can only assume you are some kind of
wizard."
"He's not a ghoul, he's a zombie. Ghouls are much, much nastier. And yes, I'm a wizard. To be
precise, I'm a necromancer, a commander of spirits and empty flesh." Virtok cursed as he stuck his
thumb with the needle. He hated losing track of what he was doing.
"Again, you refer to spirits. Have you not said that souls are a fantasy?"
"Souls are a fantasy. By spirits I mean the energies that make you move, and breathe, and
murder dozens of people. Souls are disembodied spirits with memory and volition, and they are
entirely fictional. I have little time for fantasy. I pursue a science for the benefit of all
mankind."
"Don't you mean 'personkind'? It would be discourteous to not include the fairer sex in your
good-doing," Echard pointed out heroicly.
"Whatever. The point is, when people die, they are done doing things. But the energy that
made them do things in the first place is still available! It's simply seperated from the body. It
is my job, and the job of many necromancers, to re-unite that energy with the body. For the good
of... everybody. That's what I try to tell these ignorant, savage peasants." Virtok flushed with
pride at the nobility of his crusade, and with anger at the failure of laymen to comprehend his
great goals.
"But you said the person is gone. That the personality disappears." Echard seemed mightily perplexed.
"That's true," Virtok replied. "It's not the same person. But it's a body that moves, and can
work."
"Your purpose is to create workers?"
"Well, yes. It would be a waste of good materials to just let those bodies rot, or get buried. And
as far as we necromancers can tell, the supply of spirit energy is nearly infinite! Besides, there's
so much work to be done, and zombies are a far more economical choice for brute labor."
"Uncertainty assails me! How can you not think it unkind to turn the remains of loved ones into...
slave labor?" Echard was indeed perplexed now.
"Augh! You're just as bad as those peasants! Getting all attached to dead flesh. I bet you'd fall
in love with a steak if it was pretty enough! Besides, I thought you said you weren't going to
judge me," Virtok fumed.
"True enough, friend. I cannot judge you. But nothing prevents me from wanting to understand."
Echard rose and walked to his bedroll. "I can see you are upset. I will retire for the evening,
and let you recollect your demeanor."
Virtok muttered angrily as he finished patching up the zombie. He hadn't wanted to talk
to that bufoon in the first place, and he had ended up telling him things that would probably earn
him a sword through the heart by dawn. Stupid, stupid, stupid! he railed at himself.
"Virtok?" Echard asked quietly from his bedroll.
"What!?!" Virtok screamed calmly.
"You said 'many' necromancers work to create, um... workers. How do the remainder occupy themselves?"
"Oh, mostly they suck lone wanderers dry of life essence in order to spawn and empower their
supernatural horrors. Why?"
"Just wondering. Good night."
The waning firelight reflected in Moom's large, watery eyes. Crickets and frogs sang to the small
group from the surrounding darkness as pleasant evening breezes drifted through the trees.
Virtok settled himself back in his own bed, eager to escape the living nightmare of his companion.
He looked forward to dreams of graceful zombies and embalming parties with his friends, and
wondered briefly where the swordsman would lead him on the morrow.
Virtok opened his eyes to stars winking at him through the depopulated
autumnal branches above. A smell of frying fish earned the attention of
his stomach, prompting him to wake further, and he found himself laid comfortably
on a thick, soft blanket. He noticed there were no stones or
roots thrusting into his back, a sensation he had assumed was mandatory
when sleeping out of doors.
To Part IV