Accounting for the dead took Queen Heketi far longer than she wanted to think about. The dead of the frogmen army were thousands upon thousands, breaches in the line had taken place well out of her sight, the militia, elders, and very young were not fit for the fight. Worse, in a siege, the frogmen’s powerful jumping abilities were rendered near useless, and their typical preference for fighting was spears, not clubs.

Made even worse, the undead were armored knights.

Magic casters were few in her ranks and were used to shore up the weaker positions, and even some of those had died in the clashes when the desperate numbers struggle failed and the undead broke through.

Hour after hour they worked, dragging the undead knights out of the interior and piling everything into the lake outside of their great settlement.

Then there was the task of killing their own a second time. Living frogmen gathered the dead and lined them up in long rows while others bearing clubs walked on behind the heads and clubs rose and fell, bashing into the skulls of dead frogmen to ensure that they would not rise as new undead enemies.

The splashing of their legs through the red waters was a constant, weary, broken trudge. Exaltation of victory had given way and been replaced by the grim reality of the toll that victory had taken on the frogmen population.

While many had been able to flee, those who were fit to fight had largely remained to protect their homes, and paid a terrible price.

The few frogmen magic casters capable of healing magic established a single fixed point for the wounded, with priority going to the worst injuries to be brought to them.

The intact living carried the dying in their arms, trudging more than jogging to bear the weight of their comrades to be healed.

Healers did their best under Heketi’s own eyes, and yet their mana continued to drain away. And so under the eyes of the Queen, the dying victors became the freshly dead.

They were then dragged by their feet through the low water and laid to rest at the end of the long and growing line of dead frogmen to have their own skulls smashed in turn.

Victory tasted too much like defeat as the rows continued. ‘How many, how many, how many?’ Heketi asked again and again inside her mind while the survivors took stock of their numbers.

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They paused long enough to eat, slowly shoveling mushy animal meat into their mouths, their tongues barely having the strength to dart the few feet away to draw it into their mouths.

When the healers ran out of mana, they resorted to binding the wounds and packing them with moss known to have minor healing properties, good enough to keep the rot and sickness at bay until mana could be restored and another spell could be cast.

Crude leaf bindings were applied around countless bodies at arms, legs, heads, hands, and even bellies.

The wounded who could not move but wouldn’t die soon, were picked up and carried by slow moving comrades to be put somewhere safe within a common hut, to wait there for the restored mana of their casters to come and help them again.

It took nine huts to hold the crippled numbers, even packing them side by side with no room to lie down.

Heketi went immediately to the place where the eggs of their common young lay. Chiefs and elite warriors lay in a dead heap where they fought to protect the common futures of their race. She looked down at the common nest, undead corpses yet to be removed, lay piled over one another where they’d fallen to the clubs of some of her best people.

The chiefs in their vine armor were covered in wounds, blood still seeping down into the shallow water. It was a red pool before the unhatched young and already the flies and other insects were coming to eat their fill of her fallen people.

‘They were some of my best… I needed them…’ Heketi’s troubled thoughts filled her with anxiety as a few intact survivors approached and began to drag away the dead. “How are we looking?” She asked reflexively without even looking at the warrior or worker themself.

“At very few, my Queen, at very few.” His throat bulged and contracted as he breathed harder, she asked nothing more and allowed him to work.

The metal would be useful at least, but the lives. The clink of metal on metal was suddenly much louder as the pile of metal toppled over. The stripping of the knights paused and her people scattered to avoid injury from the landslide of metal swords and armor. Cursing voices could be heard, and then the splash of corpses being thrown into the deep water to feed the fish. ‘Maybe that will provide a boost to our food supply for a little while at least. I suppose this has solved the problem of how to feed all of my people… but this is not how I wanted to solve it.’

Heketi continued to tour the large settlement, stopping to talk with survivors, “Well done, well done…” She said it again and again as she tried to convince herself it was indeed ‘well done’.

She went to the huts where wounded frogmen curled up, groans of pain would haunt her dreams for ages. Of that she was sure, but they perked up when she ducked beneath the door and stood over them. “Our young survived, all of them.” She said, and they held out shaking, bloody green hands to touch their exalted Queen as she passed and praised their courage.

Weak cheers were feeble only for their wounds, but she could see that they meant it louder in spirit than they made it in reality.

“Don’t worry…” She said and wrapped her webbed hand around one stalwart warrior’s arm. The unfortunate she deigned to touch had his other arm tourniqueted where it had been severed entirely, he was covered in tears, gashes, cuts and wounds, a testament to his ferocity and an image that was only enhanced where one eye had been severed in half. But with his good eye, he met his Queen’s face and nodded. “We will recover, finish the lizardmen, and win the whole of the Lake. We will have a future like none other that you have ever dreamed… I promise you.”

She said it, and meant it, and the warrior whispered out, “My… Queen…” He gasped a feeble cheer as best he could from his torn up and half shredded throat, and it was picked up again.

Then she left the hut, visited the next, hoping that she was telling the truth, but no longer sure if she was.