Free Bone Magic by Brent Nichols Page B

went after Captain Carmody."
    Tira dragged
her fingers through her hair. She felt like she had the pieces of
the puzzle in front of her, if she could only figure it out.
    "It was the
knives," Tam said, snapping his fingers. "The wizard, whoever it
is. He put his magic into the knives. Get killed by a magic knife,
you turn into one of his undead. Get killed by a sword, and you're
just dead."
    "I've never
heard of…" Tira let her voice trail off. She had seen something,
barely registered it in the heat of the battle. A glow, so faint it
might have been her imagination, clinging to the blade of that
first woman's knife. Tam hadn't mentioned it, and that disturbed
her. The last thing she wanted was to learn she had some sort of
affinity for magic.
    "I liked
Miller," Tam said. "He talked to Mikail about being a soldier, and
he didn't treat him like a little boy." He lapsed into silence for
a moment, then said, "And he didn't laugh at me when he saw I was
listening too."
    Tira nodded. A
lot of good men had died, or worse, this night. And there was
nothing she could do about it.
    Eventually she
lay down, staring up at the stars, unsure if she wanted to give in
to sleep and the nightmares it was sure to bring. She must have
dozed off, because she woke to early-morning sunlight and the smell
of woodsmoke.
    Tam made an
oatmeal mush for breakfast while Tira stretched, stood, and walked
up to the high ground above their camp. Then she dropped to her
knees, hissing at the others to be quiet. They immediately went
silent, and Tam crept up to join her.
    Half a mile
away, the road made a dark slash through the grassland on either
side. A familiar cart was rolling down the road. Daisy and the
other mule were hitched to the front of the cart. The top of the
cart was gone, and the back was filled with corpses. It looked as
if every one of the soldiers who hadn't turned was there, piled in
a grisly mound. An undead man, one arm missing, walked beside the
mules, guiding the cart.
    Tira didn't
move until the cart was gone from sight. It was rolling east. Raven
Crossing was to the west, so they would be moving away from the
necromancer. But she wondered just how long the village would
remain safe.
    They rode
cross-country, parallel to the road but well back from it, avoiding
buildings. Tira saw the palisade in the distance, carrion birds in
the sky above it, and whispered a prayer for the soldiers who had
died inside.
    Nothing moved
on the road.
     
    In the
afternoon the grasslands ended and forest began. There was a town
at the edge of the forest, and they rode toward it, but they pulled
up their horses several hundred yards from the town walls.
    Smoke rose from
inside the town. Not the smoke of a cooking fire or a forge, but a
thick, greasy pall of smoke, as if the whole town was ablaze. A
pair of stout wooden doors marked the entrance to the town. One
door was shut. The other hung crooked from one hinge, half
open.
    "I think we
should go around," said Mikail, and Tira nodded.
    They circled
wide around the town and took the road leading into the forest. Tam
smiled as the trees closed in around him, and the children looked
more relaxed as well. This was the same forest that surrounded
Raven Crossing. It was comfortable and familiar.
    That evening
they reached a familiar crossroad. Raven Crossing was no more than
half a day's travel away. The sky was filled with dark clouds, so
they took shelter in the ruins of a long-abandoned inn at the
crossroad. They split the watch three ways, starting with Mikail,
who promised solemnly that he wouldn't nod off.
    Tam woke Tira a
couple of hours before dawn. "Everything's quiet," he whispered,
before crawling into his blankets.
    Not much
remained of the inn's second floor. Tira crept up a staircase to a
landing. The walls had enough holes to let her see down three out
of four roads, not that she could see much in the darkness. She
leaned against a firm part of the wall and gazed outside, letting
her mind wander