<<Needed to work on magic system, so this is a bit disconnected to work through how it’ll function in practice>>
My husband’s corpse is cold as the earth he was buried in, but I still curl myself against him the way I used to. Casval, my castle against the world. For a moment, I can almost pretend I’m still in those heavenly days, back when I actually thought I might have some control over my life. I don’t cry; I very forcefully do not cry.
The morning is awful. I wake up from a nightmare of what I did last night, soaked and starving and lost, covered in aspen leaves and grave dirt, my body scattered in bruises and sore aches. I split off the path before we slept, worried Casval would kill someone in my sleep, and now I can’t find my way back to it. In the end, the best I can do is to keep heading north-east toward my mother’s old tower, working off the sun. It takes effort not to give up and crumple to the ground.
After what I did, I’m not expecting the inquisitors to give me a chance to plead my case if they catch me. If they take me in, Casval will stay this hate saturated husk until something destroys him. That’s not going to happen. I just have to find a real necromancer, and they’ll have some way to fix him, to make him into more than this. They have to be able to do something.
After hours of marching through the forest’s leaf cluttered hills, I have to stop and catch my breath again as we come over an ancient stone bridge. We finally found a path. Maybe the angels haven’t abandoned us after all. Casval comes to an easy stop beside me.
I’m still bent at the waist, clutching my chest, heaving at the ground, when I hear his boots scrape as he launches himself forward.
Fuck fuck fuck—but it’s just a deer. Thank Heaven. He bolts into the forest after it, holding our wood axe at the ready. He doesn’t need to breathe, and can keep up a sprint forever. The undead are fucking dangerous. He’d be able to catch it. Eventually.
But who knows what else he might catch along the way.
I reach out and snatch his spirit with a hand, like catching a leash, and yank him to a stop. He slows beside a towering bone-aspen, feet crinkling the brilliant fuchsia leaves.
The deer vanishes while Casval strains against my grip. It takes another half minute before that visceral hatred fades and he goes vacant once again. This isn’t a well travelled path through the woods, but it’s still a miracle we haven’t run into any people.
Panting, I release my hold and whip a loose curtain of sweaty copper hair out of my face. “Could you come back here, Castle?”
Casval stalks up to stand silently beside me. Birds chirp frantically overhead. He makes animals extremely uncomfortable—for good reason—and birds are no exception. The panicked chirping started with the sunrise, and it’s been following us ever since.
“At least you don’t chase after the birds unless they get really close,” I say. “If you did, we’d never have made it out of the valley.”
He, of course, is completely unresponsive.
I’ve been talking to him ever since I dug him out of the ground. It’s probably not a healthy habit to fall into, but talking to him makes it easier to pretend he’s still in there. It’s like he’s going to be sick for a little while. That’s all. He’s still my Castle. At least my Castle doesn’t have to eat anymore; he always had the appetite of a particularly gluttonous bear. My own hungry stomach is proving difficult enough to handle.
I probably should have let him chase down that deer.
Around noon, I finally spot some meager semblance of civilization: an isolated moss drenched hovel. It’s a blessings I saw it from so far away, because it’s far enough that Casval doesn’t lose his mind with hatred for the living. If there weren’t a trail of smoke seeping out of the chimney, I’d have thought it was abandoned. The hovel is a mess.
I move my husband’s animated corpse out of sight and have him stay here so he doesn’t needlessly murder anyone. Our reserve of copper chits is worryingly small. I only take a handful out of the pack I’ve got him carrying for us.
Alone, hoping it’s not immediately apparent what I am, I walk down to the clump of hovels, calling out when I’m close, hoping I don’t get shot through with a crossbow before I reach the front porch. You never know with woodsmen.
A filthy young man—maybe nineteen, hardly more than a boy with some disgusting facial hair and a mess of acne—spots me while he’s poking a dead mouse with a stick, lets out a startled yelp, and bolts back inside.
Charming.
The dead mouse tugs at my attention, but I forcefully ignore it.
I stop where I am and wait. The bone-aspen tremble in the breeze, fuchsia leaves rustling. Distant birds caw wildly on the ridgeline, fluttering over Casval. I’m sure having a trail of cawing avian panic is going to be a problem at some point, but for now, I force a smile on my face and ignore it. I need food. Everything else can wait.
The boy comes back out with a paring knife, followed by a scrawny man with a beard like a clump of moss. The man is bearing an obviously broken crossbow, arms chipped and stringless. I hold my hands up and pretend I can’t tell. My horrifically bruised body is a reminder that calling a bluff has an awful way of setting people off.
“Pardon me, but do you folk have any food to spare?” I hold up the coins in my hand. “I have coin.”
“I tol’ you pa!” the boy retreats behind the old man and sneers at me around the man’s shoulder. “Needs ta gutter.” He holds up the rusty paring knife.
Gutter? Oh. Gut her. Not a great start.
“You think I’m gonna sell my boy to a deadwitch?” the man says.
Well, fuck. I really need to find a better mirror than Casval’s axe blade, because I have got to see what’s going on with my eyes if it’s that immediately obvious what I’ve become.
“Not much meat on him,” I say. “Any chance you’ve got something a little less stringy? And maybe some bread?” Going off his expression, that’s going to be a no. “Or maybe I should leave?”
The man eyes me. “Think we’ll fall for that?” So they aren’t going to let me leave. Fantastic.
There are two corpses buried in a small clearing to my right, just outside the set of houses. I can feel the bodies. They’re like my baby sister, tugging on my skirts for my attention. The more anxious I get, the more distracting that tugging becomes.
When another man, healthy, broad, and young, steps out around the back of the hovel, hefting an axe in one thick hand, my eyes flick to the unadorned graves before I can stop myself.
All three of them follow my gaze, and they freeze.
I drop my hands. If this is how it’s going to be, then I’m not going to play like I’m scared.
“If you’re not willing to trade, that’s fine,” I say. “But I will be leaving. No need for violence.”
“Leave the coins,” the axeman says.
“That’s not how trade works,” I say. “After what I’ve been through in the last few days, I don’t much feel like letting myself get pushed around by threats.”
“Well I don’t much feel like letting you leave, so we’d best compromise.” The axeman points at the graves. “We bury deep. The bears dig ‘em up otherwise.” He hefts his axe. “I’ll get you with this before they crawl up. This here isn’t trade, deadwitch. Be glad we’re giving you the chance to leave at all.”
“Yeah, damn glad!” the boy with the knife says. He sneers and retreats back behind the scraggly old man when I look at him. A weaselly little coward, but cowards can still stab you in the kidney.
I try to make it look like a stretch as I reach behind me and give Casval’s spirit a tug to start him toward me. He can sprint forever; he’ll be here fast.
“No trade, then. But I will be leaving.” I toss the coppers into the mud and back slowly away.
“That all you got on you?” the scraggly old man says, still aiming that obviously broken crossbow at me.
Just be satisfied stealing my money. It’s not worth it.
“Six chits is all I have,” I say. “And I’ve got to say, it’s a little sick that when a desperate stranger comes to your house, you steal every coin she’s got and still make her leave with an empty stomach.”
“Gut the witch!” the boy says, holding up the paring knife.
Is the word stomach simply too exciting for him? What is wrong with this boy?
Ignoring the sadistic son of the family, I point at the chits in the mud. “Six copper chits,” I say. “That really enough to sin over out here?”
I hear a titan of undead muscle sprinting through the woods behind me. Last chance to let me go.
“Fuck that. She’s right.” The young man hefts his axe and takes a step forward with a grin. Seems that’s going to be a no, then. “Six chits ain’t enough to let some deadwitch go, eh pa?”
“Gotta say I agree,” the old man says, aiming the clearly broken crossbow at my chest. “Let’s do the right thing and put her down.”
“Gonna gut the bitch!” the sadist squeals in joy.
Yeah. Okay. Well, that makes it easy. They’re all going to die.
“Gutting me might be harder than you think,” I say with a shrug. “You should have been happy stealing my money.”
And Casval bursts through the brush. He doesn’t stop for a second to take the situation in. Still moving at a dead sprint, he bolts past me, wood axe a blur. The axeman stumbles back with a yelp.
And that little stumble is all he manages before Casval splits his skull open.
“My BOY!” the old man screams. The crossbow lets out a useless thwack. The bolt hits the ground.
With a gesture, I wrench the axeman’s still standing corpse back to life just as Casval rips the axe out of its sundered skull. I snatch Casval’s spirit, hissing through my teeth as I leash him in place. I’m not putting my fiance in danger if I can avoid it.
The husk of the axeman snatches up his dropped axe, and leaps up onto the small deck with his screaming family.
“Oh Heaven protect us!” the old man screams. He throws the crossbow at the husk, knocking the axe out of the husk’s hand. The husk doesn’t bother grasping for the axe, and just punches the old man in the throat, crushing his windpipe. The old man goes down wheezing, and the axeman goes down after him, brain matter sloshing out as he pins the old man to the ground and begins to break him.
The sadist screams and scrambles down a rickety set of steps toward me, knife outstretched. I ease the leash on Casval’s spirit, letting him bolt forward and bring his axe down on the sadist from behind, severing an arm off at the elbow. The forearm flops to the ground. The sadist takes one look at it, squeals, and drops to his knees.
Before Casval can finish him, a fourth figure—a lean, howling woman with stringy hair—hurls herself out of the hovel, past the husk of the axeman, and slams into Casval.
“Get the witch!” the woman squeals.
Casval sets himself to clubbing the woman’s guts with his fist. She huffs and vomits into the grass. She won’t last long.
The sadist looks up at me. He stumbles up to his feet, blood pouring out of his stump. He can’t seriously still be trying to kill me, can he? With half his arm gone?
I’m not going to take the chance.
With a gesture, I animate his severed arm with a raw hatred for the living. The sadist’s husked hand snatches his own ankle, and squeezes, knuckles popping as it bursts his achilles tendon, and he goes down in a squealing heap.
Casval breaks free from the battered woman, kicks her to the ground, grabs his axe, and brings it down into the woman’s chest. With a boot on her chest, he rips it free.
All the while, the sadist screams and claws at his own severed hand as it digs into the flesh of his ankle with inhuman strength. He keeps screaming until Casval strides forward and brings the axe down into his back. There’s a snap. A spasm. And nothing else but the anxious squawking of birds.
They should have taken the money and let me leave.