Denny jogged for a good couple of hours before he took a break. Sitting on one of the distance markers that appeared now and again, he rested in the late afternoon sun, getting his breath back and watching the surrounding landscape warily.

He could see a fair distance across the dry savannah that comprised most of the Rangelands, and it was clear as far as his eyes could see. The occasional fresh breeze ruffled Denny’s hair, and in the clear sunshine, it was difficult to believe the last few hours had even happened.

Not that he doubted it had. His clothes were still marked with blood from his battle with the Covetous Dead, and her face was there every time he blinked.

Nonetheless, the sunshine and fresh breezes finally took a little of the tension from his body.

As the adrenaline pumping through his body finally faded a little, Denny found his muscles starting to tighten up.

“Get your ass moving,” He growled to himself, “Or you’ll just lock up right here.”

Taking his own advice, he got to his feet, only to wince and stumble.

Looking down, he finally remembered the foot he had hurt last night.

It looked bruised but was only a little swollen.

Sitting back down on the range marker, he pulled it up and checked it over, pushing gently in one place after another as he checked the bones, and… there it was.

He had a broken bone in his foot.

Just for a second, the farmboy felt like this was a step too far.

He had miles to go and miles more after that. Now that he was aware of it again, the damn thing started to throb painfully.

Denny wanted to simply sit here, waiting for someone, anyone, to come along.

But that was the problem: who even knew if there was anyone coming?

“Fuck!” Denny yelled at the heavens and clambered to his feet.

“If Madga was right, and this is all some kind of judgment,” He muttered to the sky as he hobbled off down the road, “I just want you to know I consider this all a MASSIVE overreaction to some Farmboy wanted to get his pecker some use!”

Almost an hour later, Denny O’Conner sat next to a small tree and methodically sawed through the base with his pen knife. He had been at it for twenty minutes and was almost through the inch and a half of base.

It took a while with ironwood trees, he knew, but it would be worth it for a decent walking stick.

His foot was slowly getting worse as it swelled more and more, and he needed to keep going.

“Sun’s getting real low there, Denny,” He muttered to himself. “Don’t want to be out here all night, do ya?”

That was not a joke either; the sun was almost at the horizon. In an hour, it would start to get dark.

The closer it got to darkness, the more and more sure Denny O’Conner became. He was suddenly, completely, and irreversibly scared of the dark.

The small tree finally gave up and fell, snapping the last fifth of an inch pretty cleanly.

While he stripped the few branches and scanned the area with increasingly frantic glances, Denny felt his pulse slowly increasing as darkness crept closer.

When a sound came from behind him, the anxiety had built so high that he had turned and tried to cast Flare before he had even blinked.

A pain seared in his chest, and the spell died before he had even started to gather the magic.

His hand waved in front of a small drake that screeched at him, pulling the small pile of discarded twigs he had cut from his walking stick towards itself.

Denny laughed as it kept one eye on him, grabbed the kindling, and flew off, a few leaves dropping from its claws.

Crawling back up the slight rise to the roadway, he worried about his spell.

The walking stick certainly helped, and he got a little of his speed back by leaning his weight on the walking stick as he made his way toward the town he knew was just on the other side of a narrow pass up ahead of him.

The Drover’s Gap, as the pass was known, divided the Rangelands from the areas around the city. The Gap was the only way through the wall of razor-sharp rocks that marked the boundary of its influence.

The city core was powerful, and a long time before even Denny’s father’s father was born, it had been a seat of power. The lands had been wild then, so the city summoned a mile of thick, jagged, sharp rocks to protect those within.

The Drover’s Gap was the only passage into or out of the city. It had apparently been made to allow cattle and such to go out to feed in the surrounding areas.

There had been nowhere near enough people for it to be necessary in living memory, but the pass remained.

The pass was almost two miles long, with small rest areas carved into the sides every half mile or so.

Denny knew it was possible to make your way over and between the rocks instead of using the pass if you didn’t have a cart or animals with you.

As he stared into the gap, barely three carts wide and growing darker by the minute, that was exactly what Denny wanted to do.

Maybe spend the night in the middle of all that sharp, dangerous glass-like rock.

He could climb up one of the larger bits and sleep on top of a flat bit.

Safe.

It was a grand idea, except… this family would be coming this way. Through the Gap. They weren’t due to come back tonight, but what if they started out early? What if the city already knew, and his Dad was even now driving their slow old cart horses into the Gap to come to check on him?

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Denny hesitated outside the Gap for almost half an hour before finally stepping into the darkness. The deciding factor had been his growing feeling of exposure in the failing light.

At least in the pass, things could only come at him from one direction. In front or behind, at least the sides would be safe. The rocks here were formed into smooth walls. There were still gaps, but not big enough for anything to step through.

Staying close to one wall, he tried to cast Flare again. Pain ripped through his chest again, and no light came. Whatever he had done when he cast the spell twice was bad, but the pain felt lesser. Maybe it would come back.

All Denny knew was that he felt naked without it. The Flare spell was only a basic one, not even deemed a proper spell in the old days. After last night, and today, he would beg to differ. He had managed to use it to see, to distract the zombies and get to safety, and even to kill that thing in his room.

Flare was the best spell ever.

And he missed it.

If he could cast it, even once, the city was close enough to see it. They would send out someone to investigate… and he would be killed anyway.

The Paladins of the Church had a famously straightforward approach to spellwork.

If you could cast a spell, they killed you.

End of story.

Magic was strictly off-limits. It was only one of the strictures they placed on people within their domain. Even Denny, with his limited schooling, could tell the reason behind the strictures. The priests said it often enough.

“Only the Words of the Lady may offer the path to perfection,” Denny whispered as he crept along the left wall of the Gap. As a farmboy with more than a slight hatred for the church, he often wondered if that was true or if the church didn’t allow anything else simply to control everyone.

A faint glow was visible now, almost a half mile ahead of him.

That meant at least one rest area was occupied. Denny grinned, feeling his pulse race as he could almost see his Dad sitting before a pair of tired horses with that impatient look he got.

Hurrying on brought him to the area that he had been dreading the most about the Gap.

The Narrows. Any pass needed to be guarded, and the city had included a way to guard this one. A narrow passage exactly one cart width and several dozen feet long. The walls were riddled with gaps, each large enough to reach through to slash, stab, or otherwise injure any passing through.

A small path on the city side of the stones led to a broad, smooth area where guards could camp.

If a horde had passed this way, some were guaranteed to have gotten stuck in those areas.

And they might still be there.

Denny O’Conner moved into the middle of the path, creeping forward as slow as glacial drift as he tried to pass completely silently through the Narrows.

He didn’t make it more than a few steps before he put his walking stick down on a stone, sending it skittering away.

Denny held still, not even breathing, as the stone bounced and clacked across the cobbled path.

Nothing happened.

Maybe the horde had gone the other way?

He let out a relieved laugh, standing straighter for a second only to hang his head as the groaning started on both sides of him.

In the moon's dim light, Denny saw the dozens of arms reaching for him, grasping at the empty air.

Fixing his gaze on the floor in front of him, Denny took one step after another, doing his best not to notice the hands reaching for him only a few inches from his shoulders.

All that mattered was not falling or drifting out of the middle.

It was a long walk, slow and careful, while his ears filled with the groans and snarls of the undead, and their fingers occasionally scrabbled at his shoulder when he misjudged the center of the path in the dark.

The moonlight guided him as his pulse pounded so loud in his ears it could almost drown out the horrors reaching out to him.

Right now, at this moment, Denny wished he believed. He really did. If anyone ever needed a little divine aid, it was Denny O’Conner at that moment.

But he didn’t believe.

Even if he did, Denny had cast a spell. All mages were damned; the church was very clear on that.

So he put one foot in front of the other and edged his way through the waving arms of the undead and closer to the light at the end of the Narrows.

His knees gave out as he finally cleared the tight confines and grasping hands.

He let his breath out in a whoosh, covered in sweat from the pure tension.

He was through the worst of it, and surely everything would be smooth sailing from here.

Taking a few deep breaths, he climbed to his feet and fixed his clothes as best he could. Just in case it really was his parents in that rest spot ahead.

With a final check of himself, Denny moved past the edge of the wall and looked into the resting place.

Seeing their battered old wagon with its faded cloth covering it, his heart leaped. He hurried forward; it took him a second to notice the details.

The fire was cold, and the bed rolls scattered.

“Dad?” Denny called. “Mom? Anyone?” Hobbling over to the back of the cart, Denny threw back the cover and screamed.

He hadn’t screamed like that before. It was a sound of pure agony that came from his soul.

As he stood there, staring at the remains of his family, Denny felt like his mind was going to crack like an egg.

The pale glowing moss that lit a rest area when occupied gave the sight a yellowish tinge.

He could see his mother, bite marks on her hands and arms, lying in the opening. Just like his Ma to try and plug the gap with her own body. Denny felt his tears begin to fall.

A sword mark showed on the back of her skull.

His Dad had done that, he knew. It must have broken him to do it. They’d often talked about how they knew each other as kids. Denny’s Mom had walked up to his Dad when they were both only six years old and taken his hand. She told him that he was her future husband.

And she never let him go.

Behind this mother’s body was his sister; she had a dagger in each hand, the blades buried in the skull of the thing that had torn her open.

“Good for you, Sis,” Denny choked on the words. “Took one of the bastards with you.”

His sister also had that same sword wound but on the top of her head this time.

It took Denny a minute to find his Dad.

The strongest man Denny had ever known lay in pieces on the far side of the cart. He had been pulled apart. There was so little left of him that the reanimated corpse could do nothing but gnash the teeth of its half-eaten face at him as he stood over it.

With numb fingers, Denny prised the sword from the severed hand and, with a sigh that he felt in his soul, stood over his father’s corpse. He didn’t say anything as he wrapped both hands around the hilt and stabbed it into the zombie’s head.

The body stilled.

Denny numbly stumbled away from the ruin of his family, walking almost unseeing along the road. The sword was clutched loosely in one hand but fell from his fingers along the way.

He didn’t think or even really notice his surroundings as he walked determinedly on. All he knew was the pain in his foot, the agony in his heart, and that he was headed for the city.

Denny had no idea why. His family was dead, and Magda was dead. That accounted for every person in his small life.

He was alone in every way as he trudged on through the night.

Lights ahead of him heralded the city he had walked so long to warn.

There was no point.

Piles of undead lay all about the tall, strong walls. Lights burned brightly on the walls, and figures moved to and fro.

He heard laughter on the walls.

Warmth, light, and life called to him.

“H-” Denny tried to call for help, but there was almost no sound. It only came out as a strangled grunt. He shuffled forward, reaching out and trying so hard to ask for help.

An arrow thudded into his chest, missing his heart but finding a lung.

“Got one!” A voice called excitedly from the wall as Denny collapsed.

“You have to shoot them in the head!” Someone called angrily. “They won’t go down otherwise.”

“Well, this one did!” An argument started as Denny gasped and gurgled on his back.

He heard a distant creak.

“Lady’s Grace!” A familiar face appeared over him. That old traveling farmhand in a guard uniform filled his vision. “Denny!” He looked away. “Call a healer!”

“It’s too late,” A voice said sadly. “I’ve seen that….”

Denny drifted away as whoever it was kept talking. Despite the pain, the tiredness, and the loss. He fought on, trying to cling to life.

But in the end, he heard his mother’s voice… and turned towards it.