2. Patience

I lay Patience’s barrel on the bark of the fallen tree, sighted down the scope, and put the crosshairs on the back of the wight’s head.

It-- he, I guess?-- was backlit by the torches, walking back and forth behind the orderly ranks of marching corpses as they hit the barricades at the edge of the village. The townsfolk had done great with what warning they had: I grinned as I saw long farm tools jab out past the crates and overturned wagons at the first wave of the undead horde.

“Just as I thought,” my partner said, setting my binoculars on the log next to me. “That thing took out the traveling priest last week so the village graveyard wouldn’t get its blessing renewed. Now he’s raised the lot of them.” I heard cloth rustle as Vissy shrugged off her cloak, and metal on leather as her swords came out, but I was too busy tracking the wight’s head to look up. It’s not like I had to look, anyway — with as long as we’ve known each other, I knew what I’d see.

“Think you can get its attention?” I asked, as the wight began barking orders to its troops. “I think if I can shut that thing up the villagers will have a real chance, but I need a clean shot, and it won’t stop pacing.”

“Of course I can get its attention, Kellian,” she answered. I didn’t need to look to see the eyebrow I knew she was raising either, or the wry tilt of her horns. “I still think we’re missing something, though. I’m sure there’s something else here.”

“If we don’t do something soon, it’s not going to matter,” I said. “Those guys down there have guts, but rakes and pitchforks aren’t going to do the job if that thing gets sick of supervising, gets off its ass, and hits the line.” I reached to my rifle’s selector switch. “What should I use for this one, do you think?”

“Just bullets should be fine.”

I left my hand where it was for a moment, still tempted to go for something heavier, but Vissy said bullets, so bullets it was. She knows her undead, Vissy does. “We’re pretty safe up here, anyway,” I pointed out. “With all that brush and rocks on the slope between us and them, it’ll take forever for that graveyard full of stiffs to get to us. We can take the wight between us, no problem. What’s to worry about?”

Before she could be paranoid at me any more, the argument settled itself. One of the corpses on the line got a grip on a villager’s shirt and hauled him halfway across the barricade. It all turned to chaos, people dropping their weapons to help pull him back, undead reaching in to grab at them too.

Just as the wight started toward that part of the line, Vissy stood up on a big rock, held her sword up in the air, and did that trick where she covers it in freaking solar plasma or something. The whole place lit up like noon.

Yep. She can get their attention.

“I am Visandra Decalos, and I bring Corona’s light to this place.” Her voice boomed out, and she cast her scorn at the wight like it was a weapon. “Face me… thing.”

Naturally, it whipped around and stared at her with its glowy green eyes.

Best partner ever.

Patience made a “thwook” sound and the left half of the wight’s head exploded into a thick mist. Not quite what I wanted, but close. I shifted a little, squeezed the trigger again, and most of the thing’s neck was gone too.

I’m pretty sure there wasn’t actually a spine in there. How the hell do these damned things work? I swear what was left of its mouth was smiling at us.

The mist was already pulling back together into body parts again, but at least it had stopped shouting orders for a minute. The villagers pulled that poor guy back in and started to rally.

I was lining up a shot at the thing’s knee when I heard a creaking sound under me. That’s when the log I was leaning on reached a rotting branch up, grabbed me by the neck, and slammed me into the ground.

I couldn’t see what Vissy was doing, but I could hear her still taunting the wight, full volume.

I’d managed to keep hold of Patience pretty much by luck. I fumbled the selector to “incendiary” but another branch pushed the rifle out of line as the tree thing stood up over me, looking down at me with those same glowy green eyes the wight had.

“Umm. Vissy?” I croaked past the thing’s grip on my throat. “Little help here?”