“How hard can this be?” Andre whined. “It’s a whole bloody army. We’ve got to be catching up to it.”
“I didn’t encounter anything other than undead. If the whole army is that way, they can march day and night. We can’t.”

We kept jogging along the road, trying our best to keep a reasonable pace. Even if they were undead, they had a significant number of zombies and skeletons with them. The mindless undead would tend to wander off and zombies were fortunately slow. It would keep them from setting a blistering pace, even with their advantages of not needing food or rest. Our only hope was to outpace them as best we could and pray that they had some living beings among them that would require them to camp for the night. It had already been half a day of jogging and we’d seen no evidence of a camp.

“What is that?” Andre puffed and pointed.

Ahead of us were several overturned wagons. Horses and people lay intermingled among the detritus of battle. We slowed our gate as we approached the wreckage. Nothing moved except the flies. Dozens of bodies were broken on the road.

“You’d better call your friend,” Andre said.

I nodded. Strxick was great in a fight, but trying to run with the two of us while maintaining our bond would just slow us down. It was better to let him roam the elemental planes until I needed him. I hoped I didn’t, but manifested him anyway. He appeared next to me with a crackling pop.

“Did you find them already?” he asked, looking around.
“No, but I’m thinking we’re on the right track. It looks like they killed an entire caravan,” I answered.

We came up to the first wagon, which was upended, cloth and linen strewn over the road. The next cart was similar, with flour and sugar piled on the ground. The third cart was completely empty.

“What do you make of this?” Andre asked.
“I think they looted everything that looked valuable and left the rest,” I answered. “Food doesn’t do much for the undead, so they left that. Who knows what they took.”
“Could this just be a raid? Maybe it isn’t a full invasion.” Andre’s face didn’t show the same optimism his question voiced.
“Maybe,” I said. “But killing basically everything in their path isn’t a great way of doing that. Horses are expensive, too. If this was just a raid, I think they would have kept them alive. Even the dead can be mounted, after all.”
“Then what are they after?”

I didn’t have an answer. I just continued to search for anything of use in the wreckage.

“I think we should bury the bodies,” Andre said.
“I think we should head on,” I replied. “They clearly took everything that had any value. We need to catch up.”
“We can’t just leave these people here.”
“It will take us hours, maybe a day. We’ve got to get going.”
“Let’s make a pyre then. Your elemental can light them on fire. That won’t take long. We can’t just… We can’t.”
“Help me get them piled up,” I said.

Andre went to the back of the caravan and I went to the front. I grabbed the first body by the arms when its eyes snapped open. I leapt back in time for another body to animate behind me. Before I could react, Strxick slashed at the zombie in front of me, severing the arm that was reaching for me. The one behind me punched me in the head and then grabbed me from behind. Strxick slashed at the creature, freeing me. Stunned, I was unable to do anything other than step away from the thing. It followed me, swinging and hitting me in the stomach. The other one punched Strxick with its one good arm, the blow pulling me up short. Strxick slashed at the armless zombie, taking its head off. Summoning my magical energy, I pummeled the other with stones from the road until it lay still.

“What happened,” Andre said, running up.
“Zombies,” I answered, my back and stomach throbbing. “We need to make sure they are actually dead and stay dead if we’re going to raise this pyre.”

Andre nodded, drawing his sword and looking disturbed. In less than an hour, dozens of dismembered bodies burned, inky black smoke rising far into the sky.

“Well, if they didn’t know someone was behind them, they do now,” I said.
“Maybe they’ll think that there’s a lot of us and double back,” Andre answered. “It would give us a chance to get around them.”
“It could also get us in a world of trouble,” Strxick said, his voice crackling. “I don’t know how many of them there are, but it didn’t take much effort for them to destroy the entire village and they didn’t have any trouble leaving a lot of skeletons to clean up afterward.”
“An army means scouts,” Andre said. “They might also have skirmishers. They could be smaller than we think.”
“Or bigger,” I said. “I’m still thinking an invasion force. It doesn’t matter. We still need to catch up and get around it, or Highgate is going to be in the same situation as our village and this caravan. Let’s get moving.”

I dismissed Strxick and we took off down the road again at a jog. Somehow, the work of the afternoon making the run easier on us.

It was late in the night when we finally couldn’t run or even walk anymore. We stopped together without a word and started to set up camp. We had no idea how far ahead the army was or if they had set up a rear guard. We couldn’t risk a fire. We ate cold rations from jars in silence. Andre and I then huddled under a wayward pine to try to get some sleep.

I looked around and saw two eyes staring in our direction. I nudged Andre and pointed. He nodded, slowly drawing his sword. He shifted to my left while I moved forward, concentrating on manifesting Strxick again. His flames could give away our position, but it was a risk I had to take. Just as I was ready, the eyes sprung forward. A rat the size of a coyote raced toward me. Strxick manifested between the two of us. Pouring power into him, Strxick slashed with preterhuman strength, slicing the rat in two. Andre jumped out, beheading it to make sure it was dead. With the undead around, one couldn’t be too certain.

“Well, if there’s anyone out there, they know where we are, now,” Andre said. “Maybe Strxick could help with a watch?”
“If I’m asleep, he goes back home. Sorry.”
“Damned inconvenient, but I guess you can’t have everything.”
“I could stand watch while you tie yourselves into a tree,” Strxick said. “Getting off the ground and into cover is probably the safest place for you.”
“We’re getting tired,” I said. “We should have thought of that.”
We spent the rest of the night uncomfortably in a tree, but exhaustion allowed us to sleep.

“We should go back,” Andre said the next morning. “We didn’t search the town, there could be wounded. There could be people who need rescuing.”
“We need to warn Highgate,” I retorted. “There are thousands of lives on the line.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know how big this army is, anymore than I do. For all we know, there are only a few dozen.”
“There weren’t many bodies when we left. They wiped the whole village out without significant casualties, and likely were bolstered by their unholy magic. You don’t do that with a couple dozen zombies and skeletons. This has to be bigger than that. Plus, they aren’t moving toward any of the other villages. They are heading down the road to Highgate. You don’t do that unless you know you can siege the city, or at least attempt to.”
“But Highgate has a garrison, food stores, walls and defenses. They can hold off an army. They don’t need us. There could be people back there who do.”
“They stand a much better chance if we warn them. We know that they have magic. Who knows what they could do to sneak up to them. They could have infiltrators. There is no choice, here. We need to get to Highgate before that army. The more time they have to prepare, the better the chance they have to survive.”

Andre went silent as he packed the rest of his rations.

“If we’re going to get there, let’s get there,” he said.

We headed back to the road, jogging all the way.

After four hours of travel, we saw a figure in the road. From its gait, it was clear that it was a zombie. Fortunately, Andre made short work of the creature without any difficulty. Unfortunately, ahead of us was a mass of bodies in a pile. I motioned to Andre and we snuck to the pile. The stench of rot seethed into their noses.

I looked around the pile to see several more zombies wandering around. But in the center of a crudely drawn circle was a man, chanting over a body. Two others knelt on the ground, swaying back and forth in time with the chant. The song ends with the body twitching and another zombie slowly sits up, then stands. It moved to attack the man, but with a blasphemous hissed spell controlled the creature.

“Get me another, filth,” the man shouted. “Lichlord Jerith is impatient to be have his army bolstered and I have no patience for creating zombies all day. Move it!”

The two men jumped to their feet and started coming toward the pile of bodies. Their faces were partially rotted away and somehow the stench grew as they came toward us.

“Ghouls,” I whispered to Andre. “Two of them.”
“Who is the other?”
“Priest of Tark, I think. Powerful if he’s able to create and control all these zombies.”
“What do we do?”
“He’s bolstering the army with more undead. They must be close by.”
“So, we move on?”
“No,” I said, looking him in the eyes. “We stop him from turning any more of our village into these abominations.”