I rolled off his back as Wilson leapt into the centre of the swarm of undead and came to my feet. As I was rising, I snatched one of the zombies by its leg with my left hand and carefully avoided gripping too hard. I didn’t want to turn the limb into paste like last time.

  I spun in a circle, using the ambulatory corpse as a club to scatter its compatriots while I drew my sword with my right hand. I released my now badly brained club, and the body went spinning away from me into the crowd. Wilson had become a snarling blur of bronze teeth and fur as he savaged the centre of this minor swarm. I strode after him, my silver blade flicking out to slice through or impale skulls.

  Wilson bucked, and the three creatures attacking his rear were thrown clear. I cut them into pieces as they sailed past me. The Fangs would be here soon to tidy up, and I wanted to try and catch up with Mulius. The mutated giant had taken his transformation much better than I’d expected, but he could cover much more ground in very little time now. He occasionally stopped to feed on the undead as he stomped through the horde. Over the last couple of days, he’d begun grumbling that zombies didn’t taste good and were affecting his bowels.

  A zombie lurched at me, so I punched it in the face, hearing the satisfying noise of bones splintering and being driven back into the brain they were supposed to protect, as it was launched away from me. I ploughed through the horde to get to Wilson and cleared a space around him. As soon as the horde was driven back, I leapt onto his back just as Jandak, Kos and Mune slammed into the horde from north, east and west.

  “The next ones are in the southeast!” I yelled at the Fangs, who waved at me in acknowledgement as they continued to thin the herd. After another few minutes, the lancers would catch up to roll over whatever was left, and then they’d all chase after Wilson and me. Wilson leapt, going from standing still to sprinting through the horde, battering the undead out of his way as he pushed his way clear to the south.

  Reanimated Humanos slain x56

  Eight hundred and Forty Souls harvested.

  The last few days of slaughter had been good for my Soul balance, and I was back up to twenty-three and a half thousand. I’d spent some Souls along the way, buying mana potions every time they came off cooldown.

  I borrowed Glimpse's eyes as he flew ahead. This next horde must have caught Mulius's attention as he passed by. There were giant footprints with a layer of suspiciously grey-pink looking material at the bottom, and clear evidence of once living things being kicked hard enough to turn them into sprays of mist. The arcs of gore were impressive, and my qualms about what I’d done to Mulius were beginning to fade.

  This time, as we neared the horde, I hitched my feet up under me and leapt ahead of Wilson, drawing my sword while I was in the air, I smashed through first zombies. No need to let the wolf have all the fun. These creatures were just chaff to me now.

  Reanimated Humanos slain x27

  Four hundred and five Souls harvested.

  I moved away from the mess left over after the fight and sat down. I pulled some jerky out of a storage ring and looked up at the sound of a plaintive whine. Wilson was staring down at me, his tongue hanging out of the left side of his mouth. I pulled out a couple more kilos of dried meat and tossed the strips to him. He caught a few of them and then settled to lick up the rest.

  “We should slow down,” I muttered around a mouthful. “The Legion and the cavalry are too spread out, and they need a break.”

  Wilson glanced up and chuffed before snatching another lump of meat and wolfing it down.

  “Yeah, I know, mate. But they can’t fight for as long as we can. Hell, even the Fangs are slowing us down! The Legion is being held back by the cavalry. It’s best we don’t get too strung out, though. We’ll get picked off if we’re in little packets.” Wilson yipped in reply and rose to stretch, having finished his meal. He looked at me expectantly as I sat chewing, and a feeling of eagerness came through the bond. Glimpse cawed above me and reinforced the wolf’s animus. They both wanted to press on. Whether that was because I wanted to and they were reflecting my emotions back at me, I couldn’t be sure.

  “Nah. We need to wait. Let's hang fire until the main forces catch up and secure the flanks. We’re carving a line, but the horde is just flooding in behind us as we go.” I lay back and stared at the clouds scudding across the sky above me.

  I found the link to Mulius and was about to send an order for him to wait down it, when I realised he was already hurrying back north. Must have bumped into something he couldn’t just eat…

  Getting up, I turned to the north as I brushed the muck off my legs and back, resulting in getting my hands covered in gore and bits of zombie. Damn. I needed to get back to camp and have a proper wash. Hot showers couldn’t be that difficult to invent. Klip and Sulk should be able to knock together a basic version fairly easily. I found the threads to them in my mind after searching hard for them, but nothing had changed. I guessed they were still locked in competition for Velkit’s favour.

  “Gonna have to ask Kril and Fay if there’s anything we can do for whichever of the poor bastards loses,” I muttered, shaking the worst of the mess off my hands. I waved as the Fangs jogged towards me.

  “Mond! You didn’t leave us any?” Kos asked, looking around and stopping to lean on his spear.

  “There weren’t many here, bloke. Wilson killed most of them.” The wolf cocked his head one side and gave me a look that made it clear I shouldn’t try to blame things on him.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “So what’s the hold-up? Why stop now? We’re only a few days from Hellath if we can keep this going!” Jandak laughed as he pulled a skin from a ring and passed the water around. We all drank greedily.

  “The big guy has hit something and bounced off. All I can think is he’s found some of Mortimer's pet wizards. That’s the only condition I gave him to make him retreat,” I said, taking the skin from Kos as he passed it my way. I nodded in gratitude and took a drink.

  “So, finally, a real challenge! This undead shit is boring! The cavalry might struggle if they get bogged down but the Legion has saved their arses every time it’s happened,” added Mune. He wasn’t wrong. The Legion were terrifying in battle. They advanced in tight formation, the shortest Huskars wielding large rectangular shields and short, stabbing swords in the front line. Taller giants armed with six-metre-long spears formed the second and third ranks.

  As the horde washed against the shields, the spears stabbed down over the frontline, and together they slaughtered the zombies. They were every bit as professional as I would have expected the real Roman army to be.

  The cavalry archers formed Cantabrian circles on the flanks, maintaining a constant stream of arrows and javelins on the zombies. Once they had thinned the numbers enough, a unit of lancers would smash through while the archers moved to the next group. It was becoming routine for the combined forces.

  The first couple of days on our way south had been easy. Then we'd started to push into the true body of the horde. It was a vast array of undead that stretched across hundreds of miles. The groups varied in size from a few dozen to hundreds. Mortimer must have emptied every cemetery from every major city in the south. That or he had killed hundreds of thousands of people to turn them into his undead scourge.

  “How long?” asked Jandak. I raised an eyebrow to prompt him to clarify. “Until the freak gets here?” I checked the bond.

  “He’s slowed down. We’ve probably got an hour or so. Shall we cook something? I’m tired of cold rations,” I suggested.

  We set up a basic camp, fire burning merrily away as fresh meat was pulled from storage spaces and spitted over the flames. Wilson lay down and stared at the meat as Kos slowly turned the spits.

  “No! Bad dog!” He earned a growl on the word dog. “Wolf! Whatever! Mond, the wolf is growling at me!” Kos complained.

  “Then don’t call him a dog,” I answered lazily. My attention was on Glimpse. I’d sent the crow ahead to see what had happened to Mulius, and the bird was now orbiting a few hundred feet above the giant.

  He’d been in the wars. He didn’t need weapons or armour anymore. Anything he punched or kicked ended up dead. Quite often, they ended up as a spray of red at the end of a three-metre-long footprint. Something had knocked the wind out of his sails, though. His left tusk had been snapped off, and that side of his face was swollen up, the eye almost sealed away. I sent Glimpse down for a closer look.

  Mulius’ chest was a mass of bloody wounds, and patches of his fur had been burnt away. The fur was partially metal; a lot of good steel had gone into his construction, and the now visible grey skin that should have been protected by it had been scarred, bubbling up in places. Something had burned him badly.

  “It was definitely magic that drove Mulius back. He’s about as burned as that lump of aurox,” I pointed to a spit Kos had forgotten to turn for a minute, and that was blackening on the underside. He quickly rotated it ninety degrees and sniffed at me.

  “We should have brought some of the coven with us. They’re much better cooks than Kossy!” chuckled Mune. “Jandak could have kept working on his little-” A slap to the back of his head cut Mune off short.

  “I got that sorted, thanks,” grumbled Jandak as he shook out the hand that had whacked Mune on the head. “They’re busy making forests on the steppe, remember? We’ll have to survive on Kos’... efforts.”

  “Haylin’s with child?” Kos asked. “Well done!”

  “Don’t know for sure. It’ll be a couple of weeks, but she thinks she is. And that means she’s back to being nice Haylin and not threatening to lightning bolt me every five minutes! It’s a relief if I’m being honest.”

  “Got to keep the lady wife happy!” I said.

  “Huh, so that’s why the women are getting so many Souls,” grumbled Kos.

  “You don’t want your sister to be powerful and safe?” I asked, a touch of anger entering my voice. Kos glanced up and shrugged before focusing on the cooking again.

  “Oh, I like that she can snap a normal man in half or pin him to a wall with spears of ice. But normal humans aren’t the threats we need to worry about. You know what she’s like, Mond, she’ll go up against someone like us and get torn apart. She won’t run or surrender like she bloody ought to because she thinks she’s powerful.”

  “Brother… She's with the wagons. She won’t be running into anyone like us.” I wasn’t sure who I was trying to reassure, him or me. He snorted and ignored me.

  The earth began to shake slightly. Whatever magic or skill it was that let the feral Huskars move almost silently had been lost with Mulius’ transformation.

  “Here he comes,” Jandak nodded to the south, and sure enough, a smoke-wreathed Titan was lumbering towards us. Each step carried him ten metres or so. He came to a stop by our fire, showering us with dirt.

  “What did you bump into?” I asked as I brushed the mud from my pauldron, and Kos cancelled the fire shield he’d cast to preserve our dinner.

  “Smells good. Portion looks small, I’m guessing you’ll cook yours afterwards?” Mulius muttered as he squatted down. “A bunch of fucking casters, Mond. A small army of magic dwarves. Blasted me back, so I did as you said and retreated.” A massive fart blared out as he shifted his weight on his legs. “Zombie diet isn’t good for me. Got any more of that stuff? I can dig a proper fire pit, and we can get a mastodon roasting if you like.”

  “How many wizards were there?” I asked while trying to hold my breath.

  “A couple of hundred. You’re going to want to stomp ‘em before the army gets here. Some good fighters as well. Little shits were fast for stumpies,” Mulius chuckled. “Just make sure I can have some fun when you deal with them, ok? I owe the little shits!” He pointed to his badly burned chest.

  “Doesn’t that hurt?” asked Kos as he moved the spits away from the fire and slid the meat off.

  “This? Nope. It stung a bit when they hit me, lost a couple of hundred health, but nothing too major. I’m sure the fur will grow back. Right?” he finished in a worried voice.

  “A couple of hundred? How many health points have you got?” snapped Jandak.

  “Four thousand. I’m an eater of cities, shortarse. All will fear me! I used Heal a few times, but what's the point? Ten health points per cast? Pah. I’ll have to wait for it to recover naturally. So when are we going to attack?” Mulius asked excitedly. An excited Titan was a terrifying thing to behold.

  Glimpse was circling the enemy formation. Mulius had neglected to mention that they had a couple of thousand zombies as escorts, and there were perhaps two hundred living humans at the centre of the formation. They were moving west towards Hellath and gathering up the horde as they went.

  “Tomorrow. Tonight we eat and sleep. Wilson, you can go hunting, mate, but stay close. Glimpse will watch over us. In the morning, we’ll push in, get them to waste their spells and then kill them. Don’t eat the wizards, Mulius, I want any trinkets they carry.”

  “Do you think the trinkets would come out the other end if I had already eaten some of them?” asked Mulius.

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