Free Bone Magic by Brent Nichols Page A

soldier who
danced back out of reach.
    "Neris preserve
us," Tam squeaked. "What do we do, Tira?"
    She watched as
Murf flung himself into the fray, striking down a soldier and
hacking at another, distracting him enough that an undead man was
able to dart in close and stab the soldier in the leg. The battle
was turning against them, and quickly. She thought about joining
the battle and rejected the idea immediately. Her duty was to get
the children out.
    "Forget the
cart," she said. "We're taking horses. Mikail, I need you to open
the gate."
    The boy gaped
at her, then dropped the reins he was holding and took off at a
run.
    She turned to
Tam. "We'll take one girl each." They ran to the back of the cart,
swung the back panel down, and lifted out the wide-eyed girls. Tira
climbed onto her horse, then pulled Sari up behind her. Tam carried
Lina, and they headed for the horselines.
    The cavalry
mounts were frightened, milling and tossing their heads, but they
were well-trained and didn't panic. Tam set Lina on the haunches of
a roan gelding and swung up into the saddle while Tira chose a bay
mare for Mikail and leaned down in the saddle to untie the
reins.
    Mikail, heaving
with all his might, dragged the palisade's heavy gate open. Tam
raced out, Lina clinging to him from behind. Tira paused long
enough for Mikail to clamber into the mare's saddle, then handed
him the reins. He dug in his heels and the mare raced out through
the open gate, Tira and Sari right behind.
    She paused just
outside the gate and looked back. She could see Carmody, flanked on
either side by another soldier, sword in hand, hacking desperately
at a circle of his own men now trying to cut him down. He drove his
sword into the side of a man's neck, and in the moment of respite
before another attacker stepped in, he looked up and saw Tira. He
gave her a nod, then turned his attention back to the battle.
    Tira wheeled
her horse, dug in her heels, and followed the others away from the
palisade and into the night.

Chapter 7
    It was not a
restful night. They galloped madly down the road for a mile or two,
then turned off the road and walked their horses across the open
grasslands. A dip in the ground revealed a small stream, either the
same one that passed the palisaded fortification or one just like
it. They picketed the horses by the water's edge where the ground
was low enough to keep them out of sight, and unrolled their
bedrolls.
    The girls
hadn't seen the worst of the horror, and they eventually went to
sleep. Mikail paced back and forth, muttering about the battle and
the undead and the escape. It took him an hour or more to walk off
the worst of his nervous energy, at which point he collapsed on his
blankets and fell almost immediately to sleep.
    Tira had no
desire to sleep, and Tam seemed to feel the same way, so they
wrapped themselves in blankets and sat side by side, looking up at
the stars and talking quietly.
    "This
necromancer, whoever he is, seems to be able to animate a corpse
really quickly," Tam said. "It didn't take as long as you said it
would."
    "He shouldn't
be able to do it from a distance, either," Tira said. "All we saw
were dead people and Carmody's soldiers. The wizard wasn't even
there." She drew the blanket tighter around her. "I wonder what it
means."
    "But they
didn't all come back to life," Tam said thoughtfully. "Murf did,
but the man beside him didn't. Maybe the wizard could only turn a
certain number?"
    "That could be
it," Tira agreed. "He only had enough magic for the first five or
six bodies."
    They sat in
silence, lost in their dark thoughts. Then Tam shook his head. "I
saw Miller turn. That was right before we rode out. He got stabbed
in the leg with a sword, and he fell down. Then the man picked up a
knife off the ground and stabbed him right here." He indicated the
back of his neck, his fingers pointing downward to show the
direction of the blow. "He got up right after that, with the knife
still sticking out of him, and