After the riveting tale, every noble was committed to witnessing the slaying of the white gator, their excitement for the following day was the only thing on everyone’s lips—recent feuds at least temporarily put aside.

Hugh fretted. His best efforts against Roderick had undercut him, of that there was no doubt, but the man was not so easily thwarted. A poor test if our opponent crumbled at such efforts. He crafts a story and casts the die, but it was we who forced his hand. Now his entire claim rests on the hunt for the beast which eluded his father.

But even the excitement the next day promised was not enough to keep the camp active for long. Nobles retreated to tents or, the bold few, to their bedrolls under the stars. But just because the masters day was done did not mean the same for the servants.

At Grumb’s behest Hugh hauled sacks of the ‘compromised’ food away from the camp for disposal. Step by step he left the dwindling lights of the camp behind, and his eyes adjusted to the light of the stars. He thought about the weight of the bag in his hands, enough food for several days. He wondered if he had done enough. There would be little opportunity for him tomorrow, not unless he exposed himself to far greater risks, and Hero had told him they would be reunited soon. Perhaps this was his moment, his chance to disappear and rejoin his true master?

He was so lost in thought he almost didn’t hear the tentative step behind him. Beware!

Hugh waited until the last possible moment, then dropped the bag and turned on his pursuer. He ducked low to avoid any incoming blow and lunged forward. His tackle took them around the waist and the pair of them thudded onto the soft ground. Hugh scrabbled up and pushed his attackers flailing arms above their head, the years he’d spent hauling in the kitchen coming in service as he found it surprisingly easy to pin them against the ground. Hugh reared back to get a look at his assailant.

There beneath him, her chest heaving against his own, was Henrietta. Hugh stared at her, baffled. She wasn’t struggling, if anything she seemed terrified by the sudden violence. Hugh realized suddenly how very close their faces were. He jerked back quickly and began to beg an apology.

“My lady, I—I didn’t realize it was you. I’m so terribly sorry, I thought you were an attacker. P-p-please forgive me.” Hugh pulled her to her feet as he attempted to appease her. But she remained silent, watching him wring his hands fretfully. Hugh wondered if he’d need to abandon the camp for other reasons. The wrong words against him would see him dead in an hour, it all depended on how the noble lady decided to take his action against her.

Henrietta remained quiet, and Hugh let his apologies halt in turn. He stood straight and looked her in the eye. Then it was just the pair of them, quietly examining each other in the night.

Hugh knew how he looked. He’d always been small for his age, coming up half-a-head short to most of his peers. He had mousy hair, which was more likely to be dusted with flour or singed from oven work than properly clean. The only noteworthy part of him was his long fingers, clever and graceful even if they showed the myriad small scars and callouses of menial work. He tended to fold his hands under his arms, a habit developed from the times they’d been noticed, and commented upon.

He hadn’t looked closely at Henrietta earlier in the day. He’d judged her inconsequential. Unlike Jessi she didn’t have any obvious use to him, and so he’d duly let her pass out of his mind. Now he gave her a more rigorous assessment. She had dark hair, darker than his own, cut to her shoulder and styled with a carefully maintained and controlled wave. That was the sense he now had of her, someone who lived in world of careful maintenance and control. He recognized it, even if he never imagined someone in her position would ever feel such a need. She was pretty, he was surprised to realize. She’d done very well to hide it in plain sight.

“I know what you did?” she said.

Hugh only looked at her. She did not come here for an accusation.

If she was unnerved by Hugh’s silence she didn’t show it.

“You gave Jessica all those rumours? She didn’t see it—I didn’t see it, not at first, but you led her by the nose. She doesn’t trust just anyone you know, she’s not stupid? Others have tried to do what you did, stir up trouble through her.”

“And she sees through them,” Hugh said.

“Of course! But you were so...so insignificant. She didn’t suspect a thing, thought she stumbled on a year’s worth of gossip in an hour.”

Hugh said nothing.

“Th-then you went back to the cook and...I don’t know what you did but I’m sure there’s a reason why we’re eating five different kinds of roast meat and little else.”

Henrietta began to pace as she warmed to her topic. Hugh noticed how as she grew engrossed fewer of her sentences ended in awkward non-questions.

“I realized you didn’t begin with Jessica. You started last night. You made Patril and Tomen careless, brought them bottle after a bottle, stole their aubles and planted them. Then you ingratiated yourself, everyone spoke so fondly of the loyal assistant who threw himself at Roderick’s feet for his master. You did it all!”

Hugh smiled, “The day of departure actually. Or did you think so many absences were simple accidents? What I wonder, however, is what you’re doing here.”

Henrietta’s crazed smile suddenly fell, and doubt crept back along her frozen hands and towards her heart.

“I-I’m going to expose you?”

“Is that a question?” Hugh mocked.

“I’m going to expose you,” she said, tightly controlling her voice.

“WRONG!” Hugh shouted, “You could have taken your suspicions to Roderick instead you came to me. You came alone. You came defenceless. What are you doing here?” He snapped.

“I want to know why!” She yelled back at him.

“No! Why? Why?! My motivations do not matter to you. Am I resentful servant? Am I an agent of Elskia’s? You don’t care. You want to know how.” Hugh stopped to let that sink in, but she didn’t understand, not yet.

“You told me how, I figured out how!”

“No again! Look at me, what do you see?” He spread his arms wide, showing himself as clearly as he could before her.

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

“I see a traitor! A weak, snivelling whelp from the kitchens running full tilt to their own death! I see nothing! Less than nothing!” Henrietta raged.

“Exactly,” Hugh whispered, letting his arms fall to his sides, “you see yourself.”

Henrietta said nothing, but Hugh could see the tears threatening to fall—the only part of her face she could not control.

“You don’t want to know how I did it. You want to know how I did it. Because you saw it, didn’t you? The truth of me. You recognized everything you hate in yourself and so you knew I was what I seemed. But then you saw what I’d done and you wondered, how could I be you and achieve such things? What made me different? And then you needed to know, needed to learn what made me into what I’m not, and in turn what could make you... not you,” Hugh waited, breathing hard, and met Henrietta’s unblinking gaze with his own.

“yes,” she whispered, and he knew she’d never wanted anything more.

“His name...is Eroh.”

----------------------------------------

We had made good time through the day, even with the less than efficient route dictated by the squirts. Well, it was incredibly efficient if one ignored all terrain obstacles, but we did not live in such a gentle universe. Fortunately, encounters with utterly impassable objects could be cleverly circumnavigated through the efforts of the Numbskulls.

Late in the day we found ourselves led up a gentle slope for over an hour, only to find the hill ended in a stark cliff, as if a huge chunk had been cut away. Far below I saw the remaining evidence of a rock-slide, perhaps a few decades old.

“Well that was there before,” the Admiral said.

“It will take hours to find another way down,” I said.

“Right you are, best use this one then. LADDERS!”

With scarcely a moment of delay the Numbskulls ran for the edge, chattering excitedly. Many dived over the ridge only to be caught by the ankle at the last possible instant, others simply scrambled down the rock face like lizards—headfirst and at speed.

Bone-Head body blocked his wife from joining the resultant chaos.

“Stop husband! I yearn for the sweet release of ladder! Let me become rung! Oh to feel the step-step of descenders upon my frame!”

“No wife! You make an ill rung!”

“Take that back! I am sublime! I scarcely pinch at the buttocks of living and keep rude innuendo to a quiet murmur!”

“Both failures of the essential purpose of altitude conveyance! Leave it to the professionals!”

They continued in that manner for some time, but I saw that Bone-Head had managed to effectively distract her by pulling her into a routine.

Meanwhile, the design of the Numbskulls materialized. What started as a scrambling mass slowly extended down the cliff, and soon there was a chain of skeletons wedging themselves into whatever nooks and crannies available and locking their joints into a massive bone ladder. When the final skeleton positioned themselves the whole structure seemed to shiver for a moment and then, with frightening synchronicity, every skull turned in unison to look directly at me.

Chat-ter! Chat-ter! Chat-ter!

They clicked their teeth in a distinctive rhythm, dark skeleton gazes unwavering.

“The ladder beckons,” the Admiral gestured.

I approached the edge, my growing proximity stirring the bone-chant to quicken. A bouquet of arms reached over the side and groped lasciviously in my direction.

“None of that,” I snapped, the arms froze mid-mime. “Taking your cues from Funny-Bone! You know better!”

“I resemble that remark!” a voice called from behind.

The arms repositioned into a welcoming spread. I nodded curtly and patted the squirts, “We’re going on a ride! Yes we are!” The squirts squirmed happily at my touch, oozing only a little, the cretins.

I stepped over the cliff. I was immediately buoyed by the endless array of limbs and then smoothly passed from hand to hand down the cliff. They took no liberties.

The rest of the Bone Corps and Terrence followed shortly after. Funny-Bone head first and miming a breaststroke, the rest in various states of ease, or in the case of Terrence: petrified stillness.

Once all of us arrived the Numbskull ladder began to deconstruct from the top down, slowly dissolving until we were once again amidst a sea of contentedly chattering skulls. I’d begun to understand something about the Numbskulls, they were at their most relaxed after significant activity, like children who needed to be run about before they could be put to bed.

The sky was rapidly darkening by then and I didn’t feel particularly eager to seek out masses of undead creatures in the pitch dark. The squirts had steadily shown more and more signs of our growing proximity to the source of their animation, and I didn’t think we were more than half a day’s travel away from our target and I told the Admiral so.

After a quick conference he decided to make allowances for the limitations of his auxiliaries and called a camp.

“I’ve rarely seen the Numbskulls show such good behaviour with a stranger,” the Admiral ventured, “You seem to have a fine touch with the dead...”

He was fishing, but this pond was empty: I didn’t have any idea why I held such authority either.

I was going to demur, but any such excuses became unnecessary due to the sudden high-speed impact of a raccoon about three feet to my left, a distance which left me unfortunately well within the ‘splash zone’.

When one is suddenly covered in a significant percentage—double digits without question—of the constituent internal parts of an animal, one’s mind turns to certain practical questions. Those questions, to be precise, are: ‘how can I get this off me?’ and ‘how did this happen?'.

These are universal queries; which is prioritized varies from person to person, but the primacy of one or another acts as a kind of litmus of their essential nature. For some, the overwhelming shock and disgust immediately enforces action on the former. This is a reasonable stance, but I was, in this instance at least, more disposed to the latter. This was relevant as, rather than immediately addressing the fact of being covered in raccoon bits, I looked up and so managed to see the second incoming raccoon.

I sidestepped. In quick succession I felt the wind of the RDR (rapidly descending raccoon) and then the ensuring splatter on my back upon its impact.

“Range-finding,” I stated calmly, “Admiral, I appear to be being targeted by enemy forces.”

A distant squealing could be heard, rapidly Doppler-shifting on its accelerating descent. I trotted a short distance further and just managed to avoid the flesh shower of the forest boar impacting behind me.

The explosion of raw pork broke the Bone Corps from their stupor.

“Protect the auxiliary assets!” bellowed the Admiral, “Turtle’s Egg maneuver!”

Numbskulls converged on me, layering themselves around me until my view was limited only to the barest slivers of sky. A yipping Terrence was shortly integrated into the skeleton ball and deposited at my side.

“I yip don’t yip want yip to yip be yip here!”

“Elf, the alternative is being struck in the head by a terminal velocity squirrel which, to your misfortune and mine, likely won’t kill you. Now shut up, I need to think.”

For the next few minutes the skeletal protective shield took a beating from repeated impacts. The Numbskulls did an admirable job of distributing the force, and the entire structure flexed with each blow as they cushioned the momentum.

The timing of this attack was too perfect. We were exposed on the rocky hill of the landslide, with our backs against the cliff. The nearest cover was hundreds of feet away over rough terrain. By pure luck the first raccoon had missed, a fortune I credited to an animal making a poor aerodynamic projectile.

“Why are they throwing animals?! Why not hit us with a rock?” I shouted.

“Elegra’s Momentous Flesh Slingshot,” some-bone replied, “one of the necromantic spells available to an advanced Death Engine. It only moves living flesh.”

“That’s horrifying!” I said, but another part of me was already considering the possibilities. Maybe magic would be worth pursuing after all. No one said I couldn’t dabble at least.

Another few minutes passed and the thud of animal strikes began to slow to a trickle. It seemed the Numbskulls defence had effectively overcome the barrage.

“Their cannons are dry! Prepare for boarding!” roared the Admiral.

The Numbskull ball began to disentangle, and I had a clear view when the Death Engine fired. Unlike when my squirts were raised, we were now close enough that its effect remained visible. The reanimation pulse surged into the sky, briefly dominating it with swirling purple light. The wave crested and collapsed over us, bringing a shaking chill in its aftermath.

For a moment all was still, then I felt the raccoon coated clothe on my back begin to squirm.