Chapter One

  Death Is Just Down The Lane

  Twilight was upon Vurun. The city was bathed in the soft half-light that persists fifteen minutes after sunset but before darkness takes hold. Indigo dust hovered over the horizon, a haze left behind from growing and refining aethium. That indigo colour permeated everything; such was the scale of the magical drug’s production in the valley. Major Dryden sat on his horse. He was leading this evening’s patrol. The second company of the third squadron of the 13th Dragoons was making its way around the city's outskirts. It was, perhaps, an excessive patrol, but it was intended as a show of force. There were six squads or three companies of the regiment stationed in Vurun and another three in Andaban on the other side of the Korum mountains. Of course, it wasn’t only the 13th stationed in Vurun. A whole brigade was there, and another two regiments of V.A.C Company troops beside. Their job was to hold the city, control the population, and ensure the steady flow of aethium, the magical drug that powered Vastrum’s war wizards.

  Sergeant Locke rode next to Major Dryden in silence. Somewhere up the line, a horse snorted. The city was quiet. Doors were shut around them. Citizens did not want to be caught out when the 13th rode past. The regiment had a reputation in Vurun. The area they rode through now was poorer than most. The houses were built of mud brick, daubed with more mud, reinforced with frames of old timbers, and thatched with dry grass. Most of the people here probably worked in one of the several aethium factories nearby. Dryden knew the patrol route well. Though he usually left command of the patrols to the squad’s captain or lieutenant, he occasionally went with them to get a sense of the city. A good officer knew the lay of the land. “You can’t pick good ground if you don’t know what’s what.” His old commander had told him often.

  “Oi!” Sergeant Locke shouted at someone ahead, “Get that bloody cart out of the street!” Locke was a stout man. Short, stocky, black hair, red face, and a furious temper. He rode up and hopped off his horse. “You there! Get that fucking cart out of the fucking road!” He shouted at the crooked and bent old man whose cart it was. He was a sergeant who found bellowing obscenities worked best for communication, especially for breaking through language barriers. Like most Vastrum soldiers, he knew not one lick of the local tongue.

  The elderly man had a kind of fear in his eyes, and it seemed not only because of the furious sergeant bearing down at him. The man was panicked in the manner he was trying to move his mule and cart. The Vuruni man began to point in the direction they were headed and sputtered with an urgent and pleading tone. Dryden knew only a few words of Vuruni and could not keep up with the man’s speech. The Major turned to his translator, who was riding behind him, “Chatham, what’s he saying?”

  The translator was a young local man named Chatham. He had the handsome dark face of a local but the bright blue eyes and pale blonde hair common in the West. The young man had a knack for tongues, spoke both Vastrum and Vuruni fluently, and had been with Major Dryden since he arrived in the province. “Sir, he’s speaking a southern dialect. It’s hard to understand. What he’s saying doesn’t make much sense. He’s saying death is coming and that it is just down the lane there.”

  Dryden raised his eyebrow at that.

  Locke was still yelling at the man to get out of the road. The sergeant raised his riding crop in a threatening manner. The old man clearly didn’t understand the Western tongue, but his face said he understood the threat.

  “Sergeant.” Dryden said dryly and calmly with a slight air of reproach, “The wheel is stuck. Perhaps some assistance…” He let the suggestion trail off.

  Locke turned his fury from the old man and began yelling at nearby troopers to get off their mounts and help the old man with his cart. A minute later, the cart’s wheel was free. The tired old mule, the elderly man, and his cart slowly moved along and out of the way.

  The men remounted, and the column of cavalry rode slowly on. Their goal had been to make it to one of the small outlying forts around the city by nightfall. Vurun was one of those sprawling cities that had grown slowly over time. It had no walls to protect it. Only a handful of forts stood for its defence. Between several stops and delays, the patrol was coming in late. The sun had set, the sky was turning dark, the stars were coming out, and they would be in the fort in perhaps an hour’s time, provided there were no further delays. This land did not operate on a strict military schedule. Two years in Vurun and Dryden had found nothing had ever gone to plan.

  “Quiet night,” Locke commented, looking up at the first stars. It was perhaps the first comment he had made all day that resembled small talk.

  Almost immediately, there came a wretched scream from somewhere out in the darkness of the slums. All heads instinctively turned to look in the direction from which the noise had come.

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  “Sergeant Locke, investigate if you please. Take six men.” Dryden ordered.

  Lieutenant Brine came riding back from the front of the column, “Sir?” The lieutenant was a pale young man of perhaps seventeen. High cheekbones and a weak jawline marked his boyish face. His slightly unkempt, long red hair stuck out from under his shako in an almost ungentlemanly way. He had recently purchased his commission. Despite being young, he had, thus far, turned out to be a moderately competent officer, at least in the estimation of Lieutenant-Colonel Havor. Dryden wasn’t so sure, not yet.

  “The sergeant will look into it. Dismount. Form up.”

  It was better sometimes to fight on foot, especially in the cramped conditions of the city. Most Vastrum cavalry had transitioned to fight as hussars, or lancers, who fought only on horseback. The 13th Dragoons were equipped in the old style. They fought mounted with sabres and on foot with carbine muskets. They were deadly with both. You had to be adaptable out in the colonies.

  Brine turned and repeated the order to Sergeant-Major Flint, a greying veteran of four wars, who began yelling out the orders and getting the men stationed around the road. Meanwhile, Sergeant Locke picked the closest group of men, and they geared up to investigate the source of the scream. Rifles and pistols were loaded. Locke pulled a blunderbuss from the holster on his horse’s saddle and loaded it—a useful weapon in close quarters. Lanterns were lit. The city was covered in the inky blackness of night now. Besides their own lamps, the only light nearby was the soft orange glow from hearth fires emanating from the nearby hovels.

  “All right, you bloody bastards.” Locke growled to his men, “We’ve a job to do.” Then, he led the small troop off between two buildings on foot. There was no room in the narrow alleys of these slums for horses to manoeuvre.

  In the flickering light of their torches, Dryden could see the grim faces of the men as they departed. Another scream cut the night as they disappeared into the city's shadows. A shiver ran down the Major’s spine. His heart raced. All the men went quiet. Horses whinnied and shifted nervously, including Rosie, Dryden’s bay mare, who was usually stout of heart.

  Sergeant Major Flint took up a position next to Major Dryden. He could not see the grizzled sergeant’s face well in the dark except for the telltale glow of the lit cigar clenched in his teeth. “Men are all in position. We’re arranged on either side of the street, and we’ve got positions set up around an intersection about a hundred yards down there.” He gestured to the end of the road that led to the fort they had been heading towards.

  A musket shot cut the night somewhere out in the slum. Then another. The direction the men had gone. There was another scream and some yelling. Dryden hadn’t the time to react when several more shots rang out, this time down the line towards the intersection they controlled. “This fucking city.” Flint growled, “I’m on it.” Then, the grizzled sergeant strolled off towards the shooting.

  There was no mistaking it when Sergeant Locke’s blunderbuss roared in the night. Dryden gritted his teeth. Waiting to find out what was happening was the most challenging part of command—giving an order, seeing your men off into the dark and hearing the engagement, waiting for the butcher’s bill. Dryden’s heart was beating as the sounds of battle grew louder down the street. He peered through the night and could see men fighting. Shapes came from the dark. They moved slowly, with a kind of stuttering motion. They fell before the muskets and sabres. It was too dark to make out details, but Dryden was sure these enemies were not living men. He heard yelling in front of him. Then, several figures burst from the alley, and he heard Locke shouting an incoherent series of curses to his troopers. The blunderbuss fired again into the alley. Seven had been sent, including the sergeant. Dryden counted the living. Seven had returned.

  “Report?” His voice was sharper than he meant it to be. Nerves.

  As he approached, Sergeant Locke snapped to attention, “I don’t rightly know how to say it, sir.” He couldn’t see the man’s face, but his voice had a tenor that the Major had never heard from him before. Was it fear?

  “At ease, Sergeant. Report what you will.”

  “Skeletons, sir.” The sergeant began reloading his blunderbuss as they spoke.

  “Come again?” Dryden asked; he might have laughed if the situation hadn’t seemed so serious and the shapes coming at his men down the street hadn’t looked so strange and horrible.

  “The dead are walking tonight.” The sergeant said, with all the fear and seriousness that such a statement might inspire were it indeed true.

  “As the old man said.” Chatham, the translator, added behind him. He was quiet, often shadowing Dryden so well that he forgot he was there.

  “I see.” However, he did not truly see, not yet in any case. He knew such things were possible, of course. The world was full of strange sights, but he hadn’t ever thought to see them for himself.

  The fighting at the end of the street came to a blessedly silent halt. The lieutenant arrived soon after. The look on the lieutenant’s face told the major all he needed to know. Before the young man could speak, Dryden cut in, “Walking skeletons, Mr. Brine?”

  “How did you…?” he began to ask, then saw Sergeant Locke standing there with his blunderbuss. Yes, sir, indeed. Just so. Two men wounded, not badly.”

  “Three wounded for our part, sir.” Locke added, “Not badly. We found some dead civilians. The skeletons were… eating them.”

  “Modern weaponry puts them down easily enough, it seems.” Brine included.

  “Good. We’ll talk to Mar when we return to The Red Fort. He’ll want to know about this, I’m sure.” Dryden said. Mar was the regimental war mage. Most larger units had a wizard or two attached to them. The 13th Dragoons currently had just one such mage. Theirs was Marten Pyke, who went by Mar. He rarely left the side of Lieutenant-Colonel Havor. He would know what had caused these dead to rise if anyone would.

  “Orders?” Brine asked.

  “We head to the fort. Get the wounded men attended to. Then, at first light, we head back to HQ with all haste.”

  They mounted up quickly and set off once more for the smaller fort. They arrived before midnight. They slept like the dead, resupplied quickly from the fort’s stocks, and let their horses rest. When the first light peaked over the horizon, they turned around and rode quickly back the way they had come. If the dead were rising in Vurun, command needed to know. The sooner, the better.