The bandit hideout was not what it sounded like.

  When someone hears about a hideout, they imagine a shack hidden in the shadows, a rundown basement, or, at best, an abandoned, dusty, barely standing mansion.

  What these bandits had was an entire array of treehouses nestled on dark-bark trees. Wooden platforms were constructed around the barks, using thick branches as support, and on these platforms, the bandits had built their wooden cabins. Flimsy ladders climbed each tree, giving the bandits access from below, and the different trees were connected to each other by hanging bridges, rocking at the barest hint of wind.

  Jerry’s group had even caught sight of the bandit leader walking around the wooden network. The bridges groaned under his massive bulk, and the bandits respectfully gave way, while his bright emerald eyes were visible even from this distance. They’d also caught sight of Brad, and Derek clenched his bow so hard his knuckles turned white.

  Uncaring of its occupants—or its ambitious invaders—the canopy above served to cast the entire wooden network in shady, spasmodic lighting, forming a complex painting of bright light and deep shadows.

  It was beautiful, in a way, though most of the assault team could only watch from far below and afar. This colorful description was provided by Jerry, who’d shared Birb’s senses.

  “How the hell did they build that?” Derek asked, narrowing his eyes as he peered above. “They’re pretty impressive for base criminals. Did they have a biomancer help out?”

  “No.” Boney stuck out his empty chest. “Just determination, camaraderie, and a bunch of hard work. Admirable, really; makes my bones shiver in pride.”

  In his previous life as Tom, Boney used to be one of the bandits. He knew all their ins and outs. He could have even described this place in detail, if he had to, but getting a personal look was bound to be better, especially since Birb’s surveillance ensured they would face the bare minimum risk.

  “Admirable, but still fallible.” Captain Reymond’s eyes narrowed in calculation. “I’ve seen a similar structure in my youth. Back then, we just set the whole thing aflame; hard to invade means hard to escape.”

  “Let’s not burn the entire forest, Captain.” Derek raised a brow. “There are villages in every direction; wherever the wind blows, someone’s bound to get in trouble.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting that, just reminiscing. I can think of other ways, too. Climbing on nearby trees and using the topmost branches to reach the bridges is one option; we could also try blitzing them in the night, under a bow’s cover, or even remain hidden and shoot them all to death.”

  “You’ve seen a lot of things, haven’t you, Captain?” asked Jerry.

  “My fair share, I guess,” Reymond replied. “In my youth, I was part of the army’s elite forces. We carried out many operations like this… Oh, I still remember old Jones, our commander. A remarkable man, unrivaled with the blade, and with a manly, bushy beard… Too bad it was flammable. The use of fire was discouraged after that incident.”

  Reymond was a decisive man; after deciding to ally with Jerry’s team, he’d quickly warmed up to them. On his suggestion, they’d stopped advancing and spent a few hours getting to know each other—necessary to operate as a team, he’d said—during which he’d told them many stories of his adventures.

  His favorite part to talk about—and the worst to live through—was his term on the Damn Wall, the border between the Three Kingdoms and the Dead Lands, where the wild undead of Ozborne festered. Defending the Wall was the most glorious and deadliest of duties, pitting humanity’s best against the ever-evolving hordes of wild undead, over and over, until there were no more walking corpses to destroy.

  The Wall was a nightmarish place where only half the soldiers survived, but this half were elites, veterans who later went on to bolster their Kingdom’s military.

  “Imagine this, gentlemen,” Reymond had said, and his words had been carved in Jerry’s mind. “Thousands upon thousands of undead rushing through the Black Belt and swarming our defenses, screaming with tormented madness, heedless of our siege weapons and pots of burning oil. They sizzled under it and fell by the swathe but still pressed on, climbing the Wall with their broken fingernails like frenzied spiders until we met them body to body. Some of them flew, too, with wings made of warped, misshapen flesh. And, if you were unlucky enough to meet one of the elite hordes, the ones carrying fleshy giants capable of throwing their cursed brethren over our fortifications… Well, then you just prayed that Manna and Samudil were with you.”

  As he recounted the horrifying reality of the Wall, he’d been looking at Jerry, directly and unflinchingly. Jerry, however, was too engrossed in the story to care. He only had a mind for the potential new kinds of undead he could create, as well as the difficulties he’d face in trying to integrate himself into society.

  Above those, he couldn’t help but lament for Ozborne’s failure, the curse that turned half a continent into a wasteland and forever stigmatized necromancers as villains—which, incidentally or not, most of them ended up becoming.

  “It’s unfair,” was all he’d said, and Reymond had nodded seriously. Whether he understood or not, for some reason, his opinion of Jerry had improved from that point onward.

  Back to the present, the captain caught himself reminiscing and stopped. “Where was I?” he asked. “Ah yes, the bandit hideout. My friends, we must admit that charging in swords swinging won’t get us far. We need a plan. Any other ideas?”

  The entire team was currently crouched behind a thicket of tall bushes, and there were plenty of them—both people and bushes.

  There was Jerry, Derek, and Reymond. That was the entire living part of their company. The dead ones included Boney, Axehand, Headless, Boboar, Foxy, and eight newly risen zombies, the Billies. There was also the cart full of back-up skeletons, but Jerry was already strained to his limit with the addition of the Billies.

  They were not a discreet company. If not for Birb alerting them to patrols and guard stations, they couldn’t have come within a mile of the hideout unnoticed.

  “I have an idea,” Jerry said. “We find a bunch of cloaks and disguise ourselves in them. We sneak in their midst, and then, bam —they wouldn’t know what hit them.”

  Silence ensued.

  “As delightful as that sounds, Master,” Boney said, “I’m allergic to plans which involve disguise, mostly because they tend to fail spectacularly. Let’s come up with a better alternative.”

  “Plenty of them wear cloaks though.” Jerry pouted.

  “As I recounted, there are many ways to assault them,” said Reymond. “However, the chief problem remains Jericho himself. He’s practically invincible; unless we find some way to kill him in his sleep, I really don’t see this working. Trust me; the army has tried.”

  “Alright,” Derek said. “Who do we have that can sneak all the way to his bed?”

  Jericho, as the leader, lived in the tallest, broadest treehouse. He occupied the centermost oak tree by himself, a ninety-foot-tall behemoth made of dark bark and bright leaves. Most treehouses were fifty feet above ground; his was at sixty. Moreover, there was only a single bridge leading from his house’s platform to others, always guarded on both ends, and the foliage was pruned to make crossing on the tree that way difficult.

  “As far as I’m concerned,” Reymond said, “Jericho’s treehouse is a stronghold by itself. How do we approach that?”

  He gave everyone time to speak, and when nobody didn’t, Reymond kept talking.

  “Maybe the skeletal fox can do it,” he proposed. “It’s light and knows its way around branches. If anyone can make it there, it’s the fox.”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “But she lacks something critical,” Boney said. “Opposable thumbs. How will she open the door?”

  At night, Jericho closed all doors and windows of his treehouse, fearing an archer’s attack. Opposable thumbs were needed to turn the round doorknob.

  Axehand, who hoped to personally slay Jericho, grunted sadly as he looked at his axeblade hands. Jericho had once beaten him, and Axehand’s competitive spirit was second to none; he dreamed of returning the favor. Alas, he, too, lacked opposable thumbs.

  Suddenly, a new idea shone in Axehand’s mind, and he grunted in exclamation.

  “No, Axehand,” Jerry said, “you cannot chop the door down. He’d just wake up; not to mention that you can’t sneak all the way there anyway.”

  “If only I had flesh again.” Boney sighed. “Most of these bandits are dumb as furniture; I bet I could get all the way there unobstructed.”

  “But what if you wore a cloak?” Jerry reiterated his previous idea.

  “Wouldn’t work, Master. They would never let me reach Jericho like that.”

  Reymond spoke up. “It looks like we’ve reached a dead end. I don’t see any way to successfully assassinate Jericho. Unless you do, let’s gather more information; maybe something will come up.”

  That’s what they set to do; desperately observe the bandits. There were dozens of them, living in eight-person houses, but the group already knew that. There was also a guarded storage house and a prisoner house, containing mostly young women; they also knew that.

  For a long time, nothing came up, no matter how they stretched their eyes. Even Jerry—watching through Birb’s advantageous vantage point—failed to find anything of worth.

  The mood was terrible, and everyone was downcast; they had come all this way hoping to exterminate the bandits. Derek could snipe or assassinate Brad and escape, but he was now part of the team. He would definitely have his revenge, but if they could get rid of the other bandits as well, he would help.

  They could always start picking off the random grunts one by one, but that wouldn’t do much; they would eventually be discovered and hunted down by the invincible Jericho, while, over time, the bandits would slowly regrow to their previous numbers.

  As long as the head remained, the snake would not die.

  The minutes passed, and they took a break, tired and disappointed. It was during this break that Jerry was still gazing at Jericho’s treehouse through the leaves, searching for weaknesses, because he really wanted to get revenge for Shorty and help Derek do the same for Holly’s mistreatment. He also deeply desired to help the people of Pilpen, his new neighbors, as well as everyone the bandits troubled.

  He wouldn’t sacrifice himself and his undead, but he would try to help. He was, after all, a good guy.

  Suddenly, Jerry narrowed his eyes. “Hmm?” An idea began forming in his mind. It seemed crazy, even crazier than the cloak one, but it just might work.

  “Guys?” he said, turning around. “I think I have an idea.”

  They spotted the glint in his eyes. Jerry was a bit crazy, but he was also vastly different than everyone else. His ideas might hold the spark of genius.

  “What is it, Master?” Boney asled.

  “You see, Jericho is on a tree,” Jerry began, his excitement making him speak quickly. “Sixty feet in the air, to be exact. Falling from that height has got to hurt.”

  “You want to push him off the platform?” Derek frowned. “That’s—”

  “No,” Jerry interrupted. “Listen to me. He’s trapped in a sealed-off treehouse with only one escape route. A treehouse on a tree. And what do trees like to do? That’s right; fall. And who do we have on our side?” His gaze swiveled to Axehand, a hint of pride in his eyes. “The world’s greatest lumberjack.”

  Everyone looked at Axehand. The double skeleton was confused at first, then his eyes lit up with crimson flames. He raised an axehand up, grunting in laughter.

  “Axehand can just chop the tree down!” Jerry said. “Isn’t that amazing? No matter how tough Jericho is, there’s no way he can survive a fall from that height, especially if the tree lands on him. If he does, he’s immortal.”

  Everyone exchanged glances. They could all see the promise in this plan, as well as its horrendous, gaping holes.

  “You want Axehand to chop down that tree?” Derek pointed at the wooden giant which supported Jericho’s treehouse. “The tree that would need three men to hug its bark?”

  “Axehand is very, very strong,” Jerry reassured them. “Moreover, he’s a born lumberjack. I mean, maybe not born, but it’s what I made him for. What do you think, Axehand? How many chops would you need to cut that thing down?”

  The buff skeleton considered it heavily—for at least half a second—then pointed an axe blade at Boney’s hand.

  “What?” said Boney, looking at his skeletal hand, then back at Axehand. “You want me to count fingers?”

  Axehand nodded. Boney sighed, then opened his palm. “What about this much?”

  Axehand nodded again.

  “Five chops, then.” Jerry smiled again. “That doesn’t sound too bad.”

  “Yes.” Captain Reymond scrutinized the skeleton. “Let’s say ten, for good measure.”

  Axehand threw him a death stare, leading to all eight of the Billies glaring right back.

  “Be good, guys,” Jerry said. “Five, ten, it’s the same thing. It’s fast enough.”

  “But how would he get there?” Derek asked. “The bandits are idiots, but they aren’t mindless. They have guards at the ground level, too.”

  At every given moment, even in the night, there were always a dozen guards on the ground and six on the bridges. They alternated every four hours.

  “That is indeed a problem.” Reymond cupped his chin. “We could storm them, but then Jericho will wake up and our plan will be exactly one hanging bridge away from useless.”

  “Unless that hanging bridge does not exist,” Derek said, looking up. “Not to brag, but I’m a good archer with a full quiver. Given enough time, I can probably shoot one of the ropes holding the bridge up.”

  “All the way up there? In the night?” Reymond’s eyes widened. “That’s a tough shot!”

  “I grew up with a bow, Captain. I can’t promise anything, but I will probably succeed.”

  “Good man!” The captain’s eyes shone. “With a shot like you, I see hope!”

  “It will still take some time though,” the hunter warned. “I have a full quiver, but I need time to aim properly, as well as a few calibrating shots. I’ll probably need half a minute, maybe more. And it’ll have to be a windless night.”

  “A risk I’m willing to take.” Reymond smiled under his mustache, clapping Derek’s shoulder. “However,” he continued, eyes darkening slightly, “the whistle of arrows is easily distinguishable, and if we give them enough time, they will probably come up with something. The best-case scenario would be to have Axehand sneak all the way to the tree’s base and start hacking away just as Derek starts shooting. That should give us the best chances of success.”

  “Foxy can also assist,” Jerry offered. “She can sneak to the treehouse through the foliage, and with some luck, get past the guard at the bridge. If Derek can’t cut the rope in time, maybe she’ll be able to.”

  “That sounds great, but how would Axehand reach all the way to the tree unnoticed?” Boney cupped his bony chin. “The guards at the ground are lax, but they aren’t exactly sleeping on the job.”

  “If only we had someone who could get past them unobstructed,” Jerry said, eyes twinkling. The skeleton looked at his master, then shuddered.

  “No!” he said. “Anything but that!”

  “Exactly that.” Jerry smiled. “It’s cloak time!”