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“I disagree,” Simon answered with a shake of his head. “You can see these trappers here are freshest, and then these farmers and traders are at least a couple weeks older. That tells me that it spread to the villages along the main road before circling back into the wilderness, which was a stroke of luck. If they’d kept going south—”

“But what does that have to do with the warriors?” Kell asked in frustration. “They’re practically skeletonized. Are you saying those came first?”

“Logically, yes,” Simon nodded.

“But how do ye’ know they weren’t like.. Dug up and reanimated by evil magics?” Garth asked, joining their little conversation while everyone else got busy stacking bodies or stacking firewood.

“I kind of think they were… in a sense,” Simon said, trying not to give away too much about his own magical insights. “I mean, I have no idea how this stuff works. I’ve heard the same stories you have, but I know armor, and this stuff is ancient. Look at it. It’s not just rusted through. The designs are all wrong. It’s something that your grandfather’s grandfather might have worn.”

Both men nodded at that, and finally, Kell said, “So it started with them and then spread to the northern villages before going back into the forests? Are you saying this came from the north of the pass, or…”

“Nah, not that far north,” Garth said with a shake of his head. “The style is all wrong. I’d wager someone dug this up from the old barrow mounds. Maybe it’s not even a warlock. Maybe it’s just treasure hunters who woke up some ancient curse or somesuch.”

“I was thinking something like that too,” Simon nodded, glad he hadn’t been forced to lead the horse all the way to water before they’d put the pieces together. The less he seemed to know, the better. He could already feel the way people were looking at him after he ‘predicted’ zombies instead of beastmen, and they appeared almost like magic.

Kell quickly took the ball and ran with it. A few minutes after Kell started telling Simon and Garth what to do, he explained the whole situation to everyone else as if he were the one who had figured it out, which was practically ideal.

“Be sure to keep a careful count!” he admonished the men as they started stacking pyres. I’m going to make sure we get paid for every bloated corpse we dispose of when all this is done.”

They spent the rest of the twilight hours until morning dawned, arguing about where they were going next and how far this might have spread. Garth argued, quite logically, that if this had started at the Barrow Mounds, that should have been their next stop, but there was no way of knowing if going to their source would get them all. Simon was pretty sure that getting all of them wasn’t required as far as the Goddess was concerned, but he said nothing.

After all, the last time he’d cleared this level, he’d only saved Schwarzenbruck. He’d never even gone north. Helades didn’t seem too concerned with saving everyone. She just wanted to save a few very specific people, so history went the way it should. Simon was a bit pickier in that regard, but even he acknowledged that there were going to have to be sacrifices.

“If trade stopped, then this has spread to at least Bahamed Pass, right?” Hodge asked, interrupting his brooding after the final pyre was lit and dawn was shining through the oily black smoke the greenwood was giving off.

Simon merely shrugged. That was somewhere he’d never been either, but maybe he’d fix that this run and add it to the minimap that he was slowly building in his head.

The group watched the fires burn from upwind, but they didn’t start traveling again until they’d had a little ceremony for Riggs, and Kell had talked to everyone as a group about what was going on. After that, they continued north.

That first night, they camped at a farmstead after they cleared out three more zombies. Two days later they found a hunting camp devoid of life, but later that night, the village that they stumbled upon at the edge of the moors made up for it by swarming with zombies.

Simon spent half the night trying to keep everyone in their motley little crew alive. At times, the fighting was desperate, but even so, he was fairly successful until Garth was bitten by a corpse that hadn’t been completely dismembered. It was then Simon was faced with an ugly choice.

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He could go down the road of the old wives tale and ‘heal’ the man with salt and wood ash, but that would get someone killed one day when they tried it, and he wasn’t around to use magic to make a fake cure real. The other option was just to let the man die, though, because his friends were certain to kill him when they learned the truth, as they should.

Instead, Simon chose the third option and healed the man with a word cure and of lesser healing, making it so that it never even happened. Garth looked at him with shock, but Simon merely shook his head and insisted it wasn’t as bad as the other man had thought. “I’m telling you, your armor stopped it,” he said, acting confused. “Lucky thing, too, or you’d be one of these poor bastards here in an hour or two.”

As it turned out, Simon was a lot more comfortable with the personal risk of being murdered for dealing with evil spirits rather than the idea that the things he did might get someone else killed down the line. After all, for him, death was just a not-so-temporary inconvenience, and even the weight gain and the weakness it inflicted on him were easier to deal with than the weight of another death on his conscience.

It was a good thing, too, because the way that Garth spent half his watch staring at a wound he no longer had and half of it staring at Simon, he was fairly sure that he was going to be murdered before dawn. Simon still found it easier to ignore the man’s accusing gaze than the way that Freya and Kell sat extra cozily next to each other, not so far from the campfire.

Frey, not Freya, he reminded himself. She’s not my Freya.

It didn’t help, though, and by the time he could finally go to bed, part of him was praying for Garth to strike him down in his sleep. That didn’t happen, though. Instead, in the morning, the Butcher’s Bill continued on to the Barrows.

This part of their adventure didn’t look any different than the last time he’d been here. Most of the mounds were still sealed, and it was only the largest one that had been opened. Now that Simon knew what he was looking for, he saw the obvious signs of earth magic there. The stones that had once sealed the door into the depths were partially melted as someone had effortlessly pulled them aside with a greater word. That was enough to make him extra cautious.

“Be careful,” he cautioned everyone as the first men started to descend into the darkness. “A place like this is likely full of traps. Don’t touch anything!”

Kell looked at him strangely for a moment but then echoed his comments. “The new guy is right. Treasure hunting can wait until after we make sure everything looks right, and there’s nothing trying to eat us down there.”

Only half the band descended. The rest set up a cordon outside, just in case. It was unnecessary. Even eight people were overkill as far as Simon was concerned.

There was nothing down there but a sarcophagus that he was going to lack the privacy to truly explore. He didn’t know how yet, but he knew this was the epicenter of the whole level; even if it wasn’t the part that Helades cared about, it was the thing that he most wanted to understand.

So, he let the various members wander off into the dank side rooms as he proceeded directly toward the heart of the mound. It was there he found exactly what he expected. There was the sarcophagus, and the mocking paper crown on the only wriggling zombie in the place, along with the evidence of what might have been a ritual circle of some kind. Before he could tease out any more details, though, Kell, Freya, and a couple other guys entered the room behind him.

“This place gives me the creeps,” Freya said as Kell walked past him into the room.

“Yeah, we should probably just burn it or collapse the entrance and be done with it,” Simon agreed. “Something dark and terrible happened here.”

Truthfully, he was hoping they went for burying this place. Then, he could circle back in a few weeks, dig back through it when everything else was done, and finish his research. Simon was fairly sure no one wanted to take the time to dump loads of firewood this deep into the tiny dungeon.

All of that was ignored by Kell, though, who seemed hell-bent on looking for treasure of some kind to make the whole trip worthwhile. There was certainly enough gold left behind on the corpse in the center to justify the effort, after the thing was killed permanently.

For a moment, though, Kell ignored that as he got closer and said, “Why is this one still moving when none of the rest are… and what’s this note here…”

“I don’t know. Someone was obviously here before us but…” Simon started to say. When the man reached for the folded piece of paper on the zombie’s head he shouted, “Don’t touch that!”

“What? Why?” Kell said, looking at Simon in annoyance.

“There’s magic all over this room; can’t you feel it?” Simon said, groping for some answer that might satisfy the man. “I say we cut this thing’s head off and then get out of here before we—”

“And that’s why you aren’t the boss of a mercenary company,” Kell sneered. “Don’t worry. I get paid extra to make the hard calls.”

As Kell’s hand reached for the paper, Simon reacted without thinking. “Aufvarum Oonbetit,” he whispered, pushing the man back with lesser force before he could do something to break the spell in place and bring down the ceiling on all of them. He knew it was a mistake as he did it, but he simply didn’t have any other options.

“What in the name of…” Kell blurted out as he was flung against the far wall.

“Witchcraft,” Freya hissed, drawing her dagger, as Simon slowly backed away toward the door.