It was hard for Simon to believe that the old man was a traitor.

  Heimar had been a mentor to a number of the younger men, and he had never shirked in his duties. Strange as it was to think of it this way, he seemed too conscientious to side with the beastfolk and with a necromancer. Too steadfast.

  Sergeant Indus had said he was a traitor, and the miners who had fought alongside the Sergeant said he was a brave and honorable man. That was part of why they had supported Indus and his trio of surviving soldiers in taking command of the miners’ facility.

  Still, it was too unpleasant an idea for Simon to believe easily.

  He and a few of the other younger men got together and approached the Sergeant directly. It would have been intimidating for Simon to do it on his own.

  Sergeant Indus had been calm since his outburst on the day he’d arrived, but there was something about him that gave Simon the creeps. Perhaps it was just the fact that he had such cold eyes. You could tell that he was a killer just by looking at him.

  “Sure, you boys can go and see Heimar,” the Sergeant said, his lips curled in a sneer. “Hear the truth from his own lips if he’s willing to repeat it. He’s in the sick area, since he’s down with this twice-damned sickness. Just don’t be surprised if you don’t like what confronts you in there. He confessed under torture, you see.”

  “We heard,” said Ralston, one of the men with Simon, scowling.

  Simon turned back and gave him a look, but Indus just laughed.

  “Nice to see that one of you boys has a spine,” he said. “You take good care to keep it inside your body. We’ve seen some odd sights since we’ve been out here. I’m sure the other men have told you.”

  “Then the rumors…?” Simon left the question hanging, unfinished.

  “Oh, yes, they’re true,” the Sergeant replied.

  “A necromancer?” Ralston asked, voice dubious.

  “You haven’t seen what I’ve seen, kid,” Indus replied contemptuously.

  You’re barely older than me, Simon wanted to say. But that only made the fact that Indus had found himself in charge of all these men and survived a necromancer attack seem more impressive. I wonder what the necromancer looked like. Was he human, beastman, some sort of monster?

  There were all sorts of rumors flying around.

  “Speaking of people who ought to have seen some of what I’ve seen, make sure that if any of you see that guy Raybeck, you tell me or one of my men, got it?” Indus added, eyes narrowed. He sounded as if he was trying to be charming, almost cajoling, but his tone was closer to threatening.

  “The word was passed to us, Sergeant,” replied Simon.

  “What exactly is he supposed to have done?” asked one of the other men, Bartholomew.

  “Never you mind, you just make sure to tell one of us immediately, and keep him from leaving. Until I speak to him, he’s to be treated as dangerous.”

  “And the reward?” Simon asked.

  Indus gave him a hard look, then nodded. “I would hope any of you men would restrain him as your patriotic duty, but yes, there will be a reward that the men who capture him will share. I expect command will authorize a bounty of fifty silver pieces or more. It’s important, you understand?”

  Simon nodded.

  That’s a pretty hefty reward, he thought. Enough to get out of this place and set up a little shop or something, maybe. Most importantly, more than enough to buy out the debts that landed me here. I just wish I knew why exactly they want to capture Raybeck.

  “Once the men get well, we’re taking everyone who wants to return back to the Kingdom proper,” Indus added. “Including any miners who wish to travel. But only if we’ve got Raybeck in custody.”

  Simon frowned. That was almost a threat.

  A bout of sickness had overtaken the camp. All of the sick men were confined in one bunkhouse together, though that had not stopped the disease from continuing to spread. Getting back into the heart of the Kingdom could be the difference between life and death for some of the men—perhaps all of them, if this illness proved deadlier than the typical flu.

  Even Sergeant Indus looked a bit sweaty, a little feverish, though perhaps it was the desert heat.

  “This will pass,” Indus muttered to himself. “It will pass. Has to. The bastard can’t have…” His voice trailed off, his eyes staring off into the distance as if he saw something that wasn’t there. His mind seemed focused very far off, on someone who wasn’t present.

  The bastard?

  But the Sergeant had approved of Simon and the others visiting Heimar. They went to the old man immediately, before Indus could change his mind.

  When Simon saw Heimar, he immediately wished he hadn’t.

  The old man was a shadow of himself. He had a score of open wounds large and small, which the soldiers who’d tortured him had not bothered trying to bandage up. He was bound with chains in the sick area, though he had his own space a little apart from the others.

  “Nice of you to come see me,” he said softly. Sweat beaded all over his face, and his shirt was soaked through with it.

  “We c-came to ask,” Simon began.

  “Ask if it was true?” Heimar finished for him.

  Simon nodded silently.

  “Sure. The necromancer offered me all sorts of inducements. Beautiful vampire girls to dandle on my lap. A mountain of my very own topped with a castle made of bone. A pool of gold coins to swim in.” He let out a dry, rattling laugh that quickly turned to a cough.

  “This is no laughing matter, Heimar,” said Virgil, one of the other men, grimly. “We came to confront you with a serious question, and you’re lying there playing games.”

  “I already answered you, didn’t I?” Heimar asked. “I may have tried to lighten the tone, but it’s true. The necromancer offered me or, er, us—” he coughed—“inducements that we considered good and sufficient to betray our country and the living. That was why Raybeck and I returned and told the camp not to bother showing up for the squad.”

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  “You betrayed the gods, too,” Simon said stiffly.

  “Oh, the gods, too, I can’t forget them,” Heimar replied. He fixed Simon with a serious look. “You may put too much faith in the gods, Simon. Bless you, but remember, even our own scriptures will tell you, the gods favor a man who helps himself. What does that say for the gods?”

  “Come on, Simon, let’s leave this old fool,” said Virgil angrily. “This traitor.”

  The young man turned away, but Simon stayed riveted, staring Heimar in the face.

  “What do you know about this illness that’s swept the camp?” he asked, looking the old man directly in his eyes.

  Heimar flinched, and that perhaps told Simon all he needed to know.

  Then the old miner started talking.

  “I know being sick and having the soldiers sick has stayed my execution for another day or two, while we all get well,” he said. “There’s probably a sort of cruel joke there somewhere. Thank the gods for pestilence and disease, eh?”

  Simon frowned and turned away.

  “I’m sorry, Simon,” came Heimar’s voice in a contrite near whisper. “I know I must have disappointed you. All of you young fellows…”

  But the young man did not turn back around.

  Die alone, he thought. A fitting fate for a traitor. He would devote no more thought to understanding.

  The next time he saw Heimar was the next day, at the old man’s funeral.

  “Died in his sleep last night, can you believe it?” asked Virgil, beside Simon in the front of the crowd. “Lucky for him. Before they gave him a worse death.”

  Simon nodded vaguely and wished Virgil would stop talking.

  Someone else had said, earlier, that Heimar had died from having his throat slit. With the body on display now, Simon could see that wasn’t true.

  He had told himself that was the only reason he bothered walking out when the Sergeant announced they were burying Heimar.

  Just to see if the rumor was true.

  But now that Simon saw Heimar’s body, he felt the weight of the image hit him like a punch in the gut.

  He barely heard the perfunctory words that Sergeant Indus uttered as the men behind him dug a hasty, shallow grave.

  “We are gathered not to pardon Heimar the miner but to put him at rest… Whatever his faults, he has paid the ultimate price now. The gods enact justice in their own way and in their own time…”

  The next morning, the word came down, passed from man to man. Sergeant Indus had instructed that the able-bodied go about their work as usual. Until the time came to return to the Kingdom as planned, the men who weren’t sick might as well earn their keep and do the job the mine owner was paying them for.

  It seemed like a bizarre order to Simon, but apparently, the Sergeant was feeling unwell himself and wasn’t seeing many people. Perhaps his judgment had been compromised.

  In any case, the miners obeyed. It was good to have something to keep oneself busy.

  Another couple of days passed.

  More men died and were buried—enough to frighten Simon—but the miners kept at their work. It was hard to know just how many were suffering and dying, since they weren’t able to properly quarantine anymore. They didn’t have enough bunkhouses. Compounding the mystery of quantity, the dead were mostly being buried at night now, to limit the harm to morale.

  Simon could only know what was happening in his own bunkhouse and what he saw when he went into the mines.

  As they walked out, Simon looked around and saw the number of men joining him was noticeably fewer than it had been a week ago at the same time.

  How many of us are down with this illness? he questioned. Could it be a quarter? A third? And does it have something to do with that necromancer?

  Even if he knew the answers to those questions, there wouldn’t be much Simon could do to act on them.

  The truth is, I’m not feeling so well myself. He coughed loudly, and another man glared at him and moved further off.

  Probably for the best. They were working in a relatively confined space, after all.

  Simon worked for a time, twenty feet from the nearest man.

  He was looking off into space, rubbing his hand—there was a small open cut there, where the rough handle of the pickaxe had cut him—when he saw something strange.

  A figure a bit further into the mine swung his pickaxe and struck his own hand. The movements were so clumsy, it was hard to believe this person was an experienced miner at all.

  That caused Simon’s eyes to focus on the person rather than just staring vacantly in his general direction. Then he saw the second strange thing.

  The hand that had been struck appeared to be open—a skin flap seemed to move separately from the hand as the figure moved—but Simon couldn’t see a single drop of blood spilling.

  He was almost thirty feet away from this man. Still, he ought to be able to see something.

  The figure turned abruptly away, placing his back toward Simon, and the injured man began walking, strangely, deeper into the mine.

  Shouldn’t he be going out to get bandaged up or something?

  The whole strange sequence of events raised Simon’s hackles. Something was off.

  Simon looked around himself, but there was no one close by. The next man behind him was too far away to have noticed anything. He turned back, and he saw the miner was almost out of sight in the darkness.

  For the first time, Simon saw the figure in profile. Just for a moment, the man reminded him of Raybeck.

  It couldn’t be…

  Simon swallowed, looked around, but saw no one he recognized and trusted. Everyone was working far apart from each other.

  If it was Raybeck, he wanted that reward.

  Maybe… he thought it would be clever to hide out in the mines. A good way to avoid capture. That’s why he’s not going out to get treated.

  The young man finally forced himself to make his decision.

  Simon rushed after the figure, into the darkness.

  Almost immediately, perhaps a minute after he had crossed that threshold into the dark, the young miner recognized he wasn’t certain where the man he had followed had gone.

  Is that shadow… no. That’s not him. It just flickered with the torchlight behind me. Well, he can’t be far.

  Simon swallowed his fears and kept moving.

  As he turned to look down a tunnel, something darted across the space in his peripheral vision, perhaps ten feet in front of him.

  He swiveled to look at it, but the thing was gone.

  It was just a bat, he told himself. That’s all. Just a…

  A cold, clammy hand pressed itself around the back of his neck.

  “P-please, I—”

  Simon didn’t even know what he was saying. He just knew that he’d been caught. The trap he’d found himself in was hard to understand completely. He had followed Raybeck into the darkness, and perhaps that had been foolish, but how could Simon have anticipated this strange sensation? This creeping numbness around his neck that made it impossible to scream?

  “Please, Raybeck, I…” The whispered words barely escaped his lips, and Simon was out of air.

  He felt the one who had hold of him drag him along. Simon was scarcely aware that he was no longer on his feet, being carried horizontally. He couldn’t move his neck, and he didn’t dare to look his captor in the face.

  The miner had almost passed out from lack of air by the time he was released. The hand that gripped him dropped him face first onto the floor of a chamber in the mine. Simon couldn’t begin to guess where it was, since he’d been facing up at the ceiling the whole time.

  Perhaps that would make it more likely they’d let him go.

  That was what he was silently praying for as he pushed himself to hands and knees, before he saw him.

  Heimar sat there on top of a large salt boulder, resting his chin on one fist, looking down at him. All around the old man stood over a dozen others who had died in the last few days.

  “Such a pleasure to see you again,” Heimar said.

  The old man’s smile looked warm, but his eyes were very cold.