November 1069
The final split was that all the footmen stayed behind and the two knights, or milites, or milite, or whatever, went with us. I also managed to snag a "backup horse" for Salazar. Hubert and his unfortunately redshirted friend Henri didn't look too pleased to be following us on their own, but to their credit they rode out with us without complaint.
It took us a few minutes along the western coastal road to get out of sight of the castle. About a minute later, we came by Salazar standing by the side of the road, looking like he normally did – that is, older and leathery. He took one glance at us and made a face.
As we cantered up to him, I waved in his direction. "This, sirs, is my… companion, Salazar. He's been doing some independent investigation."
"That explains why you argued for the extra horse," Hubert said. "Why not just tell Lord Reginald the reason?"
"They haven't even fully explained why we're going with them," Henri grumbled.
New opinion: I loved these guys.
"Yes, why are they going with us?" Salazar asked archly, stressing that last word.
"Conditional backup, and an early warning system for the others if things go horribly wrong," I explained.
"That makes me feel so relieved," Henri muttered.
"And look, I got you a horse," I said, gesturing at the rouncey we'd loaded up with some supplies.
Salazar made a sound that was somewhere between a sigh of disgust and a groan of annoyance. "Fine. Let's just get going."
"What are we hunting?" Hubert asked once Salazar had mounted the horse and we started off again.
Seeing as how Salazar looked like wanted to ignore them out of existence and Malfoy was still feeling jumpy around Salazar, it fell to me to explain. "Our current going theory is a draugr," I said, glancing over my shoulder at the two knights. We were riding in a kind of wedge formation, me at the front, knights behind me, Malfoy and Salazar behind them.
I saw Hubert and Henri quickly glance at each other before looking back at me. "That a kind of walking corpse?" Hubert asked, drawing another, longer look from Henri.
"Basically," I said. "The slightly longer explanation is undead wizard."
The look the two knights gave me was a cross between bewildered and unamused.
"They're stronger, tougher, faster, can turn into various animals, and some are immune to weapons. We have no clue if this one is."
Hubert and Henri both looked at all of their weapons – namely spear and sword – before looking back at me. "And how are we supposed to contribute?" Henri asked.
"Ideally, you won't have to. Ideally. Less ideally, the draugr isn't immune, and so you can try stabbing. Even less ideally, you have to try wrestling and pinning."
"Like the Nemean Lion?" Hubert asked. "Ignoring that we're not Heracles."
I thought about that for a few moments, then nodded. "Yeah, basically. Only since it's dead it won't need to breathe, so throttling it won't do anything." I shifted further in my saddle. "Gotta say, I'm a bit surprised we've moved past the magical walking corpse bit without any yelling or denials."
"Would it do any good?" Hubert asked.
"Might make you feel better," I said with a shrug.
"Going back and forgetting about this death march would make me feel better," Henri said.
"You can if you want," I offered.
Henri thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. "If it is what you say it is, I die either way. Unless I run for the east and don't look back." He rolled his shoulders. "If it's an animal, how can we tell?"
I looked further at Malfoy, who sighed. "It will be very obvious. Flayed skin, broken back, mutilated ears, blue eyes, missing tail, some combination of these features."
"How can it move with a broken back?" Hubert asked.
"Magic," I replied.
"That's not really an explanation," Hubert said.
"Magic's rules are often weird and outwardly nonsensical. Like the requirement that a loup-garou be slain by a piece of inherited silver. Oh!" I snapped my fingers and looked at Malfoy. "I forgot the loup-garou!"
Malfoy looked at me with wide eyes. "You claim to have fought a loup-garou," he said slowly.
"And killed it, eventually," I said.
Speaking of which, I should look into the MacFinns at some point, when I had the time to take an extended trip to Ireland. A hereditary loup-garou curse was worth checking out, if only to confirm that the story I'd been told regarding its origin was wrong and there wasn't some poor guy cursed to turn into a killing machine every month. And if there was, well, maybe I could set up a heavy-duty containment circle for him and his descendants.
Malfoy slowly turned his head to look at Salazar, briefly forgetting about the one-way enmity. "Is he insane?" he asked.
"Quite," Salazar said, his enmity also briefly forgotten. "The only question is how much."
I deliberately ignored them and instead focused on the knights. "Look, you're here for mainly two reasons. If it is a draugr, and you can't help, then to carry back word of our failure as fast as you can. And if it isn't a draugr, to carry back word of what it is and how to deal with it, assuming we fail."
"And what would our chances be, in that scenario?" Henri asked.
"Pretty abysmal," I admitted. Then I frowned. "Actually, give me a second." I brought Shadowfax to a halt and quickly started rummaging through my saddlebags. "Did I make and pack that… yep, here it is." I closed the flap of the saddlebag and turned back to the knights. "Okay, which one of you is more comfortable with the idea of wrestling a walking corpse?"
Hubert and Henri both looked at each other, waging a silent argument with their eyes. After a few moments, Henri sighed, dug around for a bit, and finally took out a half-penny. He shuffled the reins until they sat properly, then put his hands behind his back and shuffled the half-penny around before bringing both hands back around, curled into fists.
"Does winner pick or does winner fight?" Henri asked.
"Loser fights," Hubert said.
Henri sighed and nodded.
"Right," Hubert said.
Henri opened his left hand, which had the half-penny.
"Ugh," Hubert groaned as Henri put the coin back. "Why do you ask?"
"I have a potion that'll give you the strength of a horse," I said. "Not for very long, tenth of an hour at most, but if the fight lasts that long we're all dead anyway."
Both Hubert and Henri paused at that. "Should've led with that," Hubert said.
We traveled the rest of the day and through part of the early twilight before wandering off the side of the road and making camp along the edge of the woods, tying our horses to the trees. Then, while the knights set about making a campfire, the three wizards in our group started wandering around and setting up wards. We didn't want to get ambushed at night, and if we were, we wanted as big of an edge as we could get.
The watches were split among us three wizards, with me taking first, Malfoy taking second, and Salazar taking third. The two knights didn't take much issue with not getting woken up for night watch.
Nothing really happened during my watch, just the usual creepy woods-at-night noises. Sounds without a discernible source, rustling leaves, haunting breezes, shifting shadows, all the classics. Four hours passed without note, and I went to sleep.
My dreams were disjointed, bizarre, and brief. Flashes of Maggie, Susan, some blue-eyed corpse, frustrated yelling, and otherwise general darkness mixed with a throbbing in my head that came from the wards forced me awake. I opened my eyes and sat up, groaning slightly at the ache that came from sleeping in my duster, and grabbed staff and sword. Malfoy turned to look at me.
"Dreamwards went off," I said.
"Ah. Then definitely a draugr," Malfoy said, sounding faintly pleased and also worried.
"What, they do nightmares?" I asked as I got to my feet and started waking the others.
"That they do."
Bizarre nightmares didn't mean the draugr was coming, of course, but with invulnerable zombie wizards there was no point taking risks. Salazar, Hubert, and Henri woke up with minimal grumbling, and armed themselves in their various ways. Salazar pulled out a brown wooden wand, Henri his cavalry spear, which he took in two hands, and Hubert stuck his spear into the ground butt first before taking the potion I'd given him and grasping, but not yet pulling, the stopper.
We waited for what felt like hours, the tension steadily mounting, a distant rumbling in the sky steadily getting louder and louder, before our horses started whinnying and thrashing in their sleep.
"Does that mean it's getting closer?" Hubert asked.
"Yes. Keep an eye out," I said. At least I assumed so in the moment; it seemed a safe assumption. It turned out to be a valid one.
About a minute or two later, all of the proximity alarms we'd woven into the wards went off – with nothing else triggering. That prompted us to look at each other in confusion.
Then, a few moments later, Malfoy made that resigned "oh fuck" face that comes when you realize you've forgotten something. Then a giant burst out of the ground.
It came out swinging in the center of our camp, sending burning logs scattering through the air. Its wild haymakers caught both me and Henri and sent us flying backwards into trees, splintering the bark and, at least in my case, giving me flashbacks of having my spine broken.
As I crumbled to the ground, I shakily waved my staff and yelled, "Lumios!"
A sphere of light lightly seasoned with soulfire shot forth from my staff to hang over the campsite like a lamp, illuminating the scene. The draugr was ugly, enormous, and ugly. Ugly really couldn't be repeated too much in this instance. It was a swollen, blackened, hideous corpse the size of a troll, and seemed to strike with the force of one if the pain in my ribs and back was any indication. Henri yelled and tried sticking it in the back with his spear, which didn't accomplish much besides getting the spear snapped when the draugr turned around, roaring.
Salazar followed that up by silently throwing out a writhing bolt of cutting red force, splitting the muscle of the draugr's right shoulder and drawing out another roar, this time of pain. As it rounded on Salazar, arms pulled back to smash, he yelled, "Look away!"
I did so immediately. It meant I didn't immediately notice what Salazar had done, and it took me a few moments to realize I wasn't hearing the expected smash and crunch sound of the draugr's fists impacting anything. Angling my head slightly, I looked to find it mostly frozen, its limbs struggling to move.
Malfoy cried a second later and a blob of caustic liquid splashed against the draugr's head, sizzling and popping. The draugr only managed a slight grunt, and in the relative silence that followed I heard the rumbling intensify.
"Lightning!" I cried as I stopped trying to force myself up and instead threw myself to the side.
A second later I heard the draugr's grunt turn into a roar for the fraction of a second between Salazar presumably throwing himself aside and the lightning coming down. There was a brief moment where the lightning hammered against shields and wards, and then it broke through with an ear-splitting crash. Even with my eyes closed the blast was blinding and deafening, and by the time I rolled around and blinked my eyes open I saw a triple-layered image of the draugr pulling a leg back to stomp.
"Forzare!" I cried, aiming in the general direction of the spinning legs. I hit, somehow, and the draugr's leg snapped out with a crack and sent it tumbling around as it spun, unbalanced. Then, somehow, someone stuck it in the head with the broken upper half of a spear and its roar killed my ears as it spun around again.
"Come on come on come on," I muttered without hearing as I let go of my sword and fumbled around for my blasting rod. I withdrew it a second later as a burning branch turned into a burning snake and leapt at the draugr, and brought my blasting rod around. "Pyrofuego!"
This time around my aim was off, and rather than burning through its head or its chest I instead cut a hole through its side, the tree behind it, and the tree behind that.
The draugr turned, glowing blue eyes mad with pain and rage, and started shrinking to the size of a man and sinking into the ground. When it was down to just its upper torso and a second away from disappearing entirely, Hubert fell forward with a grunt and hooked his arms under its elbows, inaudibly yelling in pain as he shoved his arms between a rock and a hard place. The draugr stopped sinking however and snarled, its arms starting to balloon out in size again. Another splash of caustic water hit it in the face, this time in the eyes, and instinct caused it to start wiping and rubbing at its face rather than reaching back around to crush Hubert.
Then a bolt of red scythed through one of the draugr's hands and cut it off at the wrist. The draugr swung wildly, and started both rising and shrinking incredibly quickly. In the span of a second and a half he went from being a giant linebacker to Mister-sized cat, sans fur, skin, and tail, and he kicked off Hubert's face as he leapt at Malfoy. The cat struck with the force of a cannonball and sent Malfoy hurtling to the ground with a single bat of its paw. It landed at the edge of our wards, which were still barely functional, and I could feel the rumbling of gathering lightning shake my bones, my ears still ringing and deaf to the world.
If it blew the wards apart then it would leave and stalk us. Pride and habit had caused it to attack us directly; staying in the ground or at a distance and harassing us with lightning would be its next trick. I couldn't let it get away.
I dropped my blasting rod and thrust my staff forward, yelling "Laqueus!" as I did so. A cord of glowing white light bolstered by soulfire wrapped itself around the draugr-cat's back legs. With my left hand, I dug into my pockets and retrieved my iron baseball. Then I started slamming it against the side of a nearby tree as hard as I could in a steady rhythm.
I'm not going to copy Kemmler and pen down the secrets of necromancy. Hell, I don't even like thinking about the fact that I resorted to this, or what I learned in doing so. But the draugr was on its way out and if I didn't stop it, it would keep killing.
So I started drumming and hoped that the draugr could hear it.
The draugr was a thinking, if not breathing creature, and so couldn't be controlled just with a drum, necromancy, a connection – like the cord of soulfire – and some will. But I could send contradictory commands, screw with its movements and actions. I could have done more if I wanted to. I probably could've seized control of it. I didn't want to.
I was too busy feeling disgust over the way soulfire and necromancy mixed so well to want to do anything other than kill it.
The draugr-cat started thrashing and twitching and hissing, transforming and dissolving into some horrific blob with a head. The electric tang in the air writhed in time with the rumbling of the clouds, as if they couldn't decide whether more lightning should come down or not. Another bolt of cutting red light came out, narrowly missed my cord, and tore free a chunk of rotting flesh. Then, from the center, Hubert and Henri stumbled forward, the latter supporting the former. Hubert had a sword in his hand, and as he came within striking distance he swung the sword with a half-heard scream and got halfway through the draugr's head. He tried to pull it out and overdid it, falling over backwards and carrying Henri down with him.
I kept drumming, steadily bringing the cord higher and higher, towards its neck. Then a line of water whipped out and cut into the gash Hubert had made, and decapitated the draugr. I felt it try to marshal its magic, get out a death curse, and poured more energy, will, and soul down the cord to smother the attempt. The death curse guttered and writhed and fought against itself and me, before finally blowing apart the cord of soulfire, sending a lance of agony straight up my arm.
I blacked out from the pain.
Author's Note: Draugar have such a fun grab-bag of potential powers.