On the one hand Varus immediately thought, ‘It’s about time!’ On the other he thought, ‘Why did it take so long?! A jogging skeleton can go on indefinitely unless something kills it, so it covered a lot more than normal people could even with horses, it shouldn’t have taken as long as all this to find a settlement…’

The wee ones remained silent at least as Varus placed his hand to his temple and took over the body of the skeletal summon.

The village was startlingly like what he remembered in his living youth. The houses were either angled wooden tiles or thatching to keep the rain out. There was nothing much in the way of a defensive barrier, just a low stone wall barely waist high, not even proper brick, but just stone and earth packed into a long wicker line that surrounded the village. It lacked even a gate to close in the event of an emergency. ‘It’s like it has never even heard of war…’ Varus thought with a wistful sense of relief.

That however, did not mean the village had no sense of danger. The villagers were obviously farmers, given that they held hoes, mattocks, shovels, scythes, and other farmer’s tools, but they held them at the ready. Their teeth were gritted and their bodies shook with what must have been an unfamiliar feeling…fear.

Fear of the undead that was now facing them.

‘Why… oh why… did I not think to allow this summon to speak?’ Varus repeated the question to himself, then asked aloud, ‘And when you thought of his lack of senses and speech the first time, why didn’t you think to just make another?’ He snorted, and a puff of air passed through the skeletal nostrils. ‘I’ll tell you why, because you go off half cocked until you’re all cocked up and only then do you realize what you should have done differently. It’s just like how you became a knight in the first place!’ He paused, he’d been reflecting on the matter too long, and the villagers, tense though they were, began to move.

They were a dirty lot, mostly well fed, muscular in the way hard working farmers tended to be.

Varus made the skeleton raise its hands up with palms out in the most nonthreatening manner he could. He began to shake its head and back away.

“What is it doing…?” A slender peasant asked, “Who in Amends has ever heard of an undead backing away from the living?”

“I don’t know… but we’d better-” Another peasant was answering, but Varus didn’t give him a chance to finish before he took action.

At once Varus dropped the summon to the ground and began to scramble to write words in the dirt, tracing out their flowing script with one finger as fast as he could.

“The magic that binds it is weakening, break it now before it gets stronger!” Another peasant shouted, and with a war cry that, in his days as a living man, Varus would have said was a credit to a cluster of knights, the little mob of a dozen or so adults attacked with all their tools.

For a few seconds Varus could see only shifting feet as the heavy tools came down on the animate body of bones, and then… nothing.

He was back to his own body as the skeleton was broken at the skull.

The peasants, looking down at the broken bones that lay crumpled at their feet, the remains were already crumbling to dust and being carried away by the little breeze, scattering to the world as did all things that dared die twice.

“What was that?” Their leader asked out loud.

“A skelly? What else, Louis?” A snarky voice said between heavy breaths.

Louis huffed, “No, not that, twit. What was it doing?” He asked and set aside his mattock to drop down to one knee. Grumbling and huffing breath were the only noises around him for a moment as he looked down at the marks on the ground.

“I think it’s writing.” Louis said and scratched his head. “Like from those books travelers sometimes sell…” His face went pale as he made out a few words that had been undisturbed in the chaos.

“Well?” The scruffy faced Martin demanded in that same snarky tone as he’d used a moment ago, Louis glanced his way, the man was still trembling, and though the snark grated on the older and graying Louis, he settled his desire for a sharp retort. ‘Fear does that to a man, and who can blame him? Nobody has seen an undead around here in who knows how long?’ So Louis forced himself to relax and answer in a calm voice.

“What am I, one of the Mother’s priest’s? Do you think I can read that quick? Besides, we mussed it up but good when we took that thing down, pipe down and give me a minute…” Louis said and began to trace his hands over the words that survived.

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And as he did so, the color drained from his face. “Well?” Martin’s response was the only one spoken, but it was merely the vocal representation of what the others felt when they saw Louis’s paling skin. The rest moved in to hover over the writing even though none of them had a prayer of reading it.

The scent of sweat and fear engulfed them all as Louis said, “Children. Forest. Taken. Give. Home.”

“What in the Shadow’s name is that supposed to mean?!” Martin demanded and grabbed Louis tight enough on the shoulder that the older man winced before shaking his younger counterpart off.

“If I had to guess, some powerful evil force wants us to sacrifice our children to the forest… and that means we’d better summon an adventurer. For all we know, this could be the beginning of the rise of a new Dark Lord or something… like something out of the old stories.” Louis shuddered, nor was he alone, “My grandfather used to say that we were only a week or two’s ride from where the last great battle was waged, if it began anywhere, around here is as good a place as any. Especially with an enchanted forest so close…who knows? Maybe the Dark Lord is the reason it’s enchanted?”

Having said that, Louis grunted as he pushed himself up to his feet, “Don’t tell anyone what I read, I’ll save that for the adventurer, if anyone knows what kind of evil is stirring out there, the whole village could panic. Just tell them it was one stray undead and there’s nothing to worry about. Right, boys?” He asked, and even the sharp tempered Martin pursed his lips shut and gave a tiny nod.

“Not a word.” They echoed, though already, looking at their fearful eyes, Louis felt the futility of the promise. Each man would tell his wife, and the wives would talk among one another, within a day or two, everybody would know. ‘Nobody keeps a secret long in a village if two people know it. But at least I can say I tried.’ Louis thought as he led the way back within to call for help, giving only a lingering backward glance over the long road.

‘In all my life I’ve never gone farther than a half a day distant from where I’m standing now, nothing farther than what it takes to hunt a deer or a pack of slimes. And even so, some horrible evil has its eyes on us, and our children and who knows what they want with us…’ He closed his eyes, steeled his spirit, put a fake smile on his face, and went back within the stone walls to lie about what he’d seen before sending a request to the nearest town for an emergency job.

Varus made a mental note to make another undead, and this time to send it with a specific message and the ability to speak and to hear, but that could wait. The first thing he did when he lost contact with his summon was stretch out the wolf pelt on a series of wooden sticks. Tuesday and Hannah watched with wide eyed fascination from down on the floor as he worked.

“When I was a knight, we had our bedrolls and blankets of course, but we also wanted a little comfort, and the ground can get muddy and nasty, which is bad for your health. So we improvised these things. You take a few sticks, bind them together at the corners into a rectangle just a little longer than the fur.” He said while his nimble fingers wrapped the strands into place, securing each stick together one after another before holding up the handiwork.

“Then, you need to do a little sewing.” He added, and after going through a drawer in his writing desk he brought out a thin needle and held it up, pausing when Tuesday raised her hand. “Yes?” He asked.

“How come you can sew?” She questioned him with no small amount of doubt in her voice, at which Varus could only think to shrug.

“I spent most of my life traveling, the war against the Dark Lord was a busy one, I often had to mend my own clothes, most of us did, every additional attendant was one more person to feed, so the more we could do for ourselves, the better off we were. Everybody could do the basics for themselves. They had to, or they weren’t much good for us.” He answered as if it were obvious, and Tuesday went quiet, watching with attentive curiosity that was so focused that she, as well as Hannah, were leaning forward while he worked.

“A strip of the fur itself works best for this,” he said, and began to weave in and out, going over and under the wood as well as through the rest of the pelt, and doing so all around the fur, pulling it taut as the surface of a drum, “then when you have it secured, you have a soft place to lie. Ideally you want it a little elevated, using rocks or something, but some people took extra sticks and made it into small beds. In your cases, I’m also going to sew one pelt to the other, so you have a nice easy to roll up bag. In the morning, you undo the knot I’m binding here at the corner, undo the strip, and use that strip to tie the fur up after you roll it. Then, there you go!” He announced and clapped his hands together before laying the fur down on the floor.

“Now you can sleep comfortably.” He extended a free hand down toward his improvised field bed, and where Hannah briefly hesitated, Tuesday scrambled to scurry into the pouchlike space created by securing one treated pelt to the other. It sank a little, but she quickly snuggled in and rolled to one side.

“C’mon, Hannah! It’s so…warm!” She cried with a gleeful smile on her face.

That seemed to be all the nekoni girl needed, her tail lashed about a little, but she quickly slid in beside her sister and after turning and twisting a little she exclaimed, “It’s pu-u-u-u-u-u-urfect!”

“Good.” Varus said and dusted his hands off one against the other as if he’d just finished some dirty work and was quite satisfied with the result. “Then if you’ll excuse me, I have a chapter to finish writing and a summon to-”

“Ah… Varus…” Tuesday said in a tiny little voice, and when he turned around to face her, she batted her eyes and flicked her fox ears around.

“Yes-s-s-s-s?” He asked, occasionally casting a glance toward his waiting unfinished pages.

“You said you were going to teach us to read… could you maybe start now? Pretty plea-s-s-s-s-s-se?” She asked, and Varus felt the sting of defeat immediately.

“Alright… why not? What’s one more interruption? I can get to work after you get to sleep.” He said, and went to get a few blank pages and extra quills to work with.

‘I’ll get to it soon enough, what’s one more night?’ Varus asked himself, and got ready to try his skeletal hand at teaching.