Little can be said of the Unholy Lagoon, for it was a terrible place, filled with secrets that cannot be spoken and best left far from the hands of men. Let it be known only that Diamond Cascade escaped, his life and the lives of his companions intact, though scattered we became, and what fate befell the mighty warriors who fought beside him he did not know; by the skin of their teeth alone, Diamond Cascade and his friends took the terrible magics that lay in that place and tore a hole though space itself, fleeing in one sorcerous bound across the land to the ruins of once-brave Mektropica!

Tricky, this. Turns out the Unholy Lagoon of the Bitch Queen isn’t quite what it’s cracked up to be. A lot less peril than expected and a lot more don’t-tell-anyone-what’s-actually-here. Old friends were met and uncovered as being not quite the people I thought they were (except the blind elf monster-hunting idiot Tiarth, who is pretty much what he say on the tin, even if he’s now somewhat more suitably employed as the lagoon’s ferryman). And it’s true that Caleb Knight of Something and Crazy Dwarf vanished in the night, and now I’m surrounded by elves. Wizard Daftboy is still here and so are the two idiots from the North Coast and now there’s some fellow who hasn’t even bothered to introduce himself.

No sign of Shifty. Can’t do anything but assume that he went down with the ship. I hope he didn’t but I have to be realistic. So I’m the last one, and Gammersbridge seems such a long time ago. It was nice to see Emmet again, even if he wasn’t as dead as I’ve spent the last year thinking he was and even if it turns out he’s been part of some great plan that’s been playing me all along. I can forgive him that. He was a good friend for a while and he taught me to play. The rest of them, the ones he’s with, now there I’m not sure. How far does it go? How long have they been setting me up for this? I have no idea. If they have anything to do with what happened to the Scales, if they have anything with what happened to Nomonic or any of the rest of my family, well then I might just be sailing back out to sea and diving down and looking to get back that amulet I cast aside.

There’s no sorry, no apology. There are some gifts and some hospitality and an expectation that we’re going to do something, although of course, we’re all free to do as we please. There’s no please, no thank-you, just here’s-some-stuff-get-in-this-teleporter-and-come-back-with-what-I-want. So now we know. It really is the unholy lagoon of the bitch queen. Just not the one I thought it was.

NEXT WEEK: EPISODE 50: THE ASCENT OF STUPIDITY!

Though the mighty sea-beast was slain, the damage wrought upon the proud ship of Diamond Cascade and his companions was grave. Valiantly though they worked, they could not save the stricken vessel and she sank slowly beneath the waves at the foot of the inhospitable Cliffs of Insanity. With all his strength, Diamond Cascade fought to save the lives of his companions from the cruel sea, yet even he was helpless against its strength as the current carried them inexhorably towards the cliffs – yet worse was to come! For it was not to dash them to pieces on the unforgiving rocks that was the sea’s intent, no, for they were carried, powerless despite their struggles, down the Great Channel towards the Dreaded Lagoon, sacred place of unholy Umberlee herself, from where no man has ever yet returned!

For companions, read horses. As in I got them out of the hold and tied some sealed barrels to them to keep them afloat and kicked them into the ocean before they got sucked down with the rest of the ship. And then I Alter Self’d into something that could swim and breath under water and dragged them, kicking and whinnying towards the shore. And my stuff, in another barrel. What, am I the only one who can Alter Self?

The thought of scaling the five-hundred feet sheer sides of the Cliffs of Insanity was a tempting one, just, well, just because there might have been some Spanish dude with a sword at the top and I could have shown off my off-handed fighting. Unfortunately horses don’t climb cliffs and by then I’d managed to un-lose my dear friends, who had apparently requisitioned the one and only longboat, kicked out all the sailors to swim for the shore (and presumably drown) and, more than luck than judgement, failed to capsize it.

What? Oh surely someone else can Spider Climb?

Before I left the ship, I dug out the old scarab token from the lot who work for the “Green Dragon” – I think they left it as a: ‘If you change your mind about working for evil, call us’ sort of thing, or maybe I just ripped it off one of them and was keeping my options open. Well no more. I bent it up as best I could and tried to smash it and pissed on it when that didn’t work and threw it into the sea with a great deal of shouting and cursing and generally yelling abuse at the powers of darkness and pledging myself to kicking their unholy butts at every possible opportunity.

In hindsight, this may have been a mistake.

NEXT WEEK: THE UNHOLY LAGOON OF THE BITCH QUEEN

Great and terrible were the perils faced by Diamond Cascade and the courageous crew of his noble ship. The drowned dead minions of Umberlee rose from their watery rest to crawl aboard and were repelled by Diamond Cascade and the valiant Caleb. When the foul undead did not dissuade our ship from its course, the wrathful goddess set a great tempest to wreck us or else turn our crew against their captain, yet she did not reckon with the indefatigable strength of both. But these were but the start of the Bitch Queen’s wrath, for when her stormed failed, she sent against us the greatest of horrors, a monstrous five-headed dragon of the deep. Long and hard the battle raged, and grievously hurt was our sturdy vessel, yet in the end the dragon fell, slain by blows from all sides by Diamond Cascade and his comrades. With the mighty power of his sorcery, with dragon-blood still dripping from his sword, Diamond Cascade was able to staunch the gaping wounds bestowed upon out ship while our bold captain steered course for the nearest shoreline where shelter and place to make repair could be found: The Cliffs of Insanity.

I don’t actually know what this ship is called. That seems vaguely shameful. It would seem more shameful if it had any chance of reaching another port in one reasonably-sized piece. About a third of the crew are dead and we have a five-headed-dragon-sized hole in the hull below the waterline, currently plugged to dubious effect by an old sail and a web spell.

That would trouble me more if I wasn’t already troubled by wonder why in the name of all the gods that most of the story I’d tell of this, if I happened to live, which seems unlikely, is true. Yes, I stood and fought the undead of the sea along side men, dwarves and elves I barely even know. Yes, I dived into the sea to fight the dragon as it tore at our ship, alongside Caleb, Knight of Something (one of us had gills and webbed hands and feet and lightweight armour of the non-sinking kind and the other one of us… I don’t know – extensively brown-nosing his god seems the only possible explanation of his continued existence). But why? Why am I doing these stupid things? Gods – I could have been hurt! I could have died!

This is all Stalker’s fault. Gods of evil, you brought war to my life and you took away my family and then you finally gave me the closest thing to a friend I’ve ever had. Chances are I’d have followed Stalker in almost anything, purposeless thing that I was. And then you made me be the one who had to turn him in and left me with nothing better to do than find some point to my life. So I’m choosing the other side, the lot who you stand against, and a good chunk of the reason why is that the the hot dragon-woman with the coppery skin is, well, hot. The goddess of irony is one of yours. She can explain it to you.

Actually, what I’m most troubled about right now is that the place we’re limping to for shelter is called The Cliffs of Insanity. I guess the ‘of’ doesn’t sound too threatening. No, wait, yes it does.

NEXT WEEK: INCONCEIVABLE!

Dear Umberlee, aka Vengeful Queen of the Sea, aka The Bitch Queen,

The clue’s up there in the titles, isn’t it. So look, if it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to set a couple of things straight.

Firsty, the small matter of the black pearl that your loyal and devoted servant and worshipper had asked us to retrieve for him. Look, we had NO IDEA AT ALL that this was all some part of your great plan, not that mere mortal fellows like us could ever possibly comprehend such things in the first place. Obviously, if we had, we would have returned it right away to its rightful owner. Or at least, to the person who would have been its rightful owner once we’d given it to them, possession being nine tenths of the law, blah blah. But the thing is, even if we had known, none of us knew that we’d even found it. I mean, we all came out of Mr Were-Shark’s cave in a shroud of gloom thinking that had been a complete waste of time and possibly the half-git’s life (although arguably that was an up-side). None of us had ANY IDEA that Shifty had found and taken it, NONE AT ALL, because if we had, obviously we’d have made him hand it over right there and then so we could give it back. Right?

Yes, one or two of us might have had our suspicions, but we didn’t know, okay?

ALL RIGHT, yes, one or two of us might have been pretty damn sure we’d actually found it and who had it. But casting such aspersions, that’s no way for a civilised fellow to behave.

Bugger this, look, it was SHIFTY! HIM! HE TOOK IT!

Secondly, on what I’m sure is an almost trivial matter of our captains disrespectful behaviour and, well, once can only say things like blasphemy and heresy when talking about how he addressed you, so perhaps not so trivial after all, but listen here, we’ve had words with our captain, I must say. VERY STRONG WORDS. And he promises not to do it again. In fact, I overheard him talking with his crew and, while it’s early days and I don’t want to promise anything, but I think you might be getting a new convert very soon, if you know what I mean.

Oh for pity’s sake: It was HIM! It wasn’t US! We didn’t say anything!

Finally, on the tiny tiny business of our quest to retrieve various lost artefacts from the civilisation you destroyed centuries ago (and wow – destroying a whole civilisation, how awesome it that, I mean we’re just speechless at your godlessly power right there!), I mean, that’s all in the past, right. All forgotten. We’ve moved on, right? It’s all just some dusty old ruin. Well, soggy old ruin probably. Not interesting to someone as mighty as yourself at all, right?

So, no reason to be mean to us. Not looking for any special favours here, mind, just trying to clear up any potential misunderstandings.

Please leave us alone? Please please pretty please?

NEXT WEEK: DOES THIS RAFT MAKE MY BUM LOOK BIG?

With the great evil of the North Coast slain and put behind them, Diamond Cascade turned his thoughts to the even greater evil that plagued the whole land. What force was it that drove the dark elves, the foul orcs and all their kin from their dank places far beneath the earth? Throughout the sages of the north, Diamond Cascade sought wisdom and enlightenment, and through the wise words of an old elf, found the clue for which he had sought, that would unlock the riddle left to him by the sly king of the gnomes. To sea he would go, to the south! To the ruins of once great Mektropika, destroyed long ago by the vengeful sea-goddess Umberlee, famous for its three great bells, where an ancient artefact awaited the one who would restore peace and balance to the land! So there would be our destination, steered by none other than the great Captain Mimosa!

Where a great treasure awaited more like. Maybe. Damn but I’m glad to see the back of this place. I’d have thought, from everything I’d heard, that the North Coast would be heaven. A real home from home, a place where a man like me could have whiled away his life in an endless parade of one debauched orgy after the next. And maybe it could, if we hadn’t managed to piss off such a spectacularly large number of different people in such a spectacularly short space of time. So now there’s a bunch of pirates who think we owe them a ship, the bloke who runs the harbour who turns out to have more clout than I care to think about and who thinks we owe him a black pearl, and then there’s all the people who hate him but think we must have been working with him to go and stuff Mr Were-shark. So we’ve about burned all the bridges we could possibly have had in this place in the space of about three days. Way to go. And I don’t even quite know how we did it.

Krystal’s gone. Off chasing after the vampire that killed her parents. I sort of wish I’d gone with her. The half-git, Lena , she’s gone mad. Apparently she took a big lungful of some poison gas cloud trap on one of Mr Were-Shark’s treasure chests. We have about enough money from that fiasco to buy ourselves a tent and a blanket. Yay. With Stalker and Holly gone as well, Shifty’s the only one left.

He’s the one who gets our ship sorted out. We never found the magic black pearl we were supposed to be looking for, or at least that’s what everyone thinks, but I reckon I know better. I reckon that’s what got us a ship out of there. I don’t know what it was, what it does, and I don’t care. I’m just glad to be gone. One last night spending as much gold as I can on every vice I can possibly find and then we’re down to the docks, in a hangover haze, down to the ship that Shifty’s friends have waiting for us to take us to Mektropika. There’s some trouble with us leaving. Apparently our new good friend Captain Mimosa has no truck with paying harbour dues and tithes and whatnot to our recently acquired enemy the harbour-master. For once, we get to stand and watch while other people shout at each other and it’s not our fault. At least, I don’t think it is. Damn but this hangover hurts.

There’s some shouting about how our good captain doesn’t give a fig for the queen of the sea, Umberlee, and her servants. That name rings some sort of bell. Don’t know what. Can’t think. Bad things are said. Threats are made. Nothing to do with us.

The sea. Never been to sea, not unless you count that one day. Not sure what to do, but at least the sea has fewer intervening hordes of darkness.

Probably.

I have a bad feeling about this. Me and Shifty and a whole bunch of folk I barely know, half of them elves, all bound on some quest now that none of us understand except there’s supposed to be some treasure at the end that none of us will want to share or have the first idea what to do with. Bound to end well then. I have a bad feeling about that name, too. What the captain said. Can’t place it though. Gods but I need to lie down in a dark place.

Isn’t Mimosa some sort of drink?

NEXT WEEK: THE SEA IS A BITCH

…the corruptors of children,…

In the morning, I followed the trail of that ogre I shot in the night. Blood, dripped into the dirt and plenty of it. Followed him up into the hills, into the winter mountains full of snow, into tunnels filled with goblins. Slimeys. A cut them down as a scythe cuts the harvest. They were making things, nasty little wooden things, little soldiers and swords and wooden horses. There were hundreds of them, and stone floor of their cave ran red with goblin blood. At the far end, sitting in a great chariot, sat the ogre. His clothes were stained crimson from head to toe with his own blood. Finishing him was easy. Strange thing though, when I caugfht up with him – I don’t remember him having that big white beard when I shot him. Or the silly hat.

So it was a dream and I must have got some sleep later that night on that wind-blasted gods-forsaken cliofftop after all.

Ho ho ho.

Shit. And now I keep having premonitions about a bunch of really annoying elves.

Number One sniffed the air. Humans. You could always smell humans. Smell their unwashed rancid stink from miles away. The question usually was whether you got to hear them first, always arguing and shouting in the raucous way. Today it was the smell. The unchecked stench of bodily functions, wafting out of their primitive little settlement. Number One shuddered.

“Right,” hissed Number Three. “There’s one bunch of humans who have houses with wheels and another bunch of humans who have houses that sit on the ground. Best I can tell, the wheelies showed up yesterday. The groundies reckon the wheelies made the dead rise. Looks like the groundies had a bad time of it last night too. Anyway, there’s lets more groundies than wheelies and they’ve got torches and pitchforks and they’re all hard at work building an Angry Mob. Let’s go watch humans fight each other!”

Number Two shook his head. “Nah. You know how it is. They’ll accidentally burn their own town down and then blame it on the first elf they see. Let’s just go. We know what we wanted to know.”

“What was that?”

“Whether the humans had zombie problems too.”

“Makes you wonder where all these zombies come from,” mused Number One. “I mean, there can’t be lots of nearly-fresh corpses permanently littering the moors. Yes, there have been lots of battles over the years and I suppose I can understand the skeletons, but the zombies? Wouldn’t they rot?”

Number Three kicked at the snow under their feet. “It’s cryogenics, that what it is. Keeps them fresh.”

“Right.” Number Two pointed randomly eastwards, away from the village. “That way then.”

“I want to buy a bow,” said Levincious suddenly.

There was a long pause.

“What?”

“I want to buy a bow.”

Unthall’s face screwed up into a blancmange of horror and disbelief. “You want to go into the human village. To buy a bow?”

“Yes.”

“You’re an elf!”

Levinicious looked himself up and down. “Last time I looked.”

“And you want to buy a bow. From humans.”

“Look, I haven’t got one. . .”

“When the best bow-makers in the WORLD are about half a day’s walk back behind us.”

“But we’re going this way. . .”

“So. You’d rather buy some grotty, ill-made human bow. You could have something made of sapient pearwood strung with the ligaments from a unicorn, but you’d rather have something made OF STRING? AND YOU CALL YOURSELF AN ELF?”

Number One looked at his own bow. “Unicorn ligaments? Ew. . .”

“Running away, remember?” hissed Levinchius under his breath.

“Because of you and the chieftain’s wife,” growled Unntha.

“Because of you and your magical accident,” grated Levinichius. He looked up brightly. “Come on, escort. This won’t take long!”

“Yay! We get to watch the humans fight!” squealed number three. He pulled a bag of oiled corn seed out of his pack and waved them at Uthaal. “Got a Burning Hands going spare?”

They walked into the village, holding their noses. The hubbub of shouting drew closer. All the humans, it seemed, had joined the mob.

“Go away!”

“Don’t want your kind here!”

“Sorcerers!”

“They eat babies!”

“Get your curse away from us!”

“This is silly.” Number One shook his head. “These wheelies, if that’s what they’re called, clearly have nothing to do with the walking dead. Look at them! They look. . . Well, they look more respectable than the rest of this rabble.” Number One cleared his throat. “I say! You! You humans! Peasanty types! Blaming them is stupid! I say! Are you listening?”

Number Two scrunched up his face. “Number One, do we need to have that conversation about you not talking to strangers again, because. . .”

That was when someone punched Number One in the face.

NEXT WEEK: BLACK PEARL? WHAT BLACK PEARL?

Number One looked about him. He was the last man standing. There were dead bodies everywhere. Or, rather, un-undead bodies. Except, no, that would mean brought back to life. Proper life. Wouldn’t it? Re-dead. Was that a word? Multiply life-challenged?

He reached for a bottle of wine. Wine always helped when he felt a headache coming on. Then he looked outside.
Number Three was in the tree next door, where Number Three, Levinchius and Unthal were watching nervously.

“Good shot?” suggested Number Three.

Number Two was standing up in the snow below the tree-house, looking confused. A minute ago, he’d been face down in the snow, not moving, about to be eaten by zombies. Now there were just a lot of dead zombies and some skinny-looking woman with slightly scaly, slightly coppery skin who Number One had never seen before. Who shouldn’t have been there. Who was. . .

Who was really, really hot.

Number One swallowed hard. “Hello there, mysterious yet unusually beguiling lady of slightly draconic appearance.”

She was standing next to Number Two. Number Two was, unexpectedly, not dead. Not half-eaten. The unusually beguiling lady of slightly draconic appearance, she’d. . . She must have cured him! Which meant. . .

She’d touched him.

Number Two grinned up at him. “’Awright?” Number One shuddered. Never, ever in his life had he so wished that he had been the one to be pulled bodily out of a window by a tree-climbing zombie, plummeted twenty feet to the ground, missed all available snow-drifts and landed head first on the only rock for miles around in the midst of a horde of ravening zombies.

“Oh for pity’s sake!” The woman vanished in a flash of light and appeared in the tree-house. She had Number Two beside her.

“Whoa. . .”

“Shut up!” She pointed a finger at the three elves in the other tree. “You let, get over here.”

It was, Number One decided, time to try again. “Hello there, mysterious yet unusually beguiling lady of slightly draconic appearance. . .”

The woman rolled her eyes. “And you,” she said, and then ignored him.

The other elves crossed from the other tree. There was a rope. Number One didn’t remember there being a rope, but apparently one of the newcomers had found that to be a more useful thing to do than stay and fight the hordes of the undead. Ah well. That was diplomats on secret missions for you.

“My name is Ublosda,” said the woman as soon as they were across, “and now that I’ve saved your skins, I’ve got a job for you.”

“We are. . .” began Number One. The woman shot him a look that was like being very slowly grated through a really sharp cheese-grater for a very long time and then rolled in fresh lemon juice.

“What’s your name?”

“I am Number One,” beamed Number One proudly.

“Your full name.”

“Er, Private Second Class Expendable Border Guard Number One.”

“Right. Think about that while you shut up and ponder your utter irrelevance to me.” She shook her head in exasperation

Uthan was sniggering.

“And don’t think you’re much better.” She rolled her eyes to the sky. “What on earth possessed her to use you as her tool of choice is quite beyond me. I can only assume she’s lost all grasp of sanity. But then I suppose I should have seen that coming after the last lot she picked. I mean really, if ever a more shambolic disaster of an adventuring party stained this beautiful island, it has been mercifully wiped from history. Right.” She turned to look at Uthan and Levinchius. “This should be easy enough that even you two can remember it. This is what you have to do. Go to the north coast. Find a bard called Vale, a Knight of. . .” she scratched her head and looked slightly embarrassed for a moment. “Something and an elvish wizard. And a few others I can’t remember. Finding them should be easy enough. Look for trouble. Then run away from it to the nearest tavern full of whores and cheap spirits. You’ll find the bard there if nothing else, and there can’t be that many elvish wizards on the north coast. Got that.”

The two elves nodded. “North coast. Elvish wizard. Bard called Vale. Knight of Something.”

“Right. Then give them a message.” She rounded on the border guards. “You lot, you can help. Right. Don’t dawdle.” She snapped her fingers and vanished in a flash of light.

“What’s the message?”

The elves looked at one another.

There was another flash. “Just tell them. . . Just tell them to get on with it!”

She vanished.

The elves looked at one another some more, before a disembodied voice called out in the night. “And tell that bard that he’s useless!”

NEXT WEEK: INTERLUDE ON THE ELVISH BORDER PART FOUR

“And stay out.” Number One sidestepped neatly as the last zombie in the border post lunged , tripped and went over the balcony. It landed head first in a deep drift of snow, legs flailing helplessly in the air below. Number One carefully sheathed his sword, picked up his bow and drew back an arrow. Then changed his mind and picked up a second arrow. Double shot. Oh yeah…

(Yeah, yeah, lame I know, three weeks without a proper story. Deadlines! Snow! Christmas! GMs-with-transport-issues! Live with it until new year, damn you.)

NEXT WEEK: INTERLUDE ON THE ELVISH BORDER PART THREE

“I reckon they’re diplomats on an important mission. I reckon they’re in disguise.” Expendable Elvish Border Guard Number One began to lower the ladder down from their lookout post, high up in a tree on the edge of the forest, looking out towards the hills and plains of North Horn Reach, land of human abominations.

“I reckon they’re lost.” Expendable Elvish Border Guard Number Two stopped for a moment and cocked his head. “Do you hear something?”

“No.”

“I hear you two making a load of noise,” grumbled Number Three from inside.

Number Two frowned. “I swear I hear something.” He got up, went to a window.

“I’ll just lower this on my own then shall I,” muttered Number One. He finished lowering the ladder. Down below, the two unexpected visitors tied their donkey to the tree and started to climb. At the top, they brushed the snow off their cloaks and shivered.

“Well met.” Number One eyed them carefully, looking for clues that they were who he thought.

“Well met.” The first elf peered into the tree-house. There wasn’t much to look at. “I’m Levinchius. This is Unthal.” The second elf up had all the looks of a wizard in the making. The first one, Number One thought, looked a bit shifty. Ah well. Diplomats.

“There is something out there,” said Number Three. “I saw something.”

“We saw something too. Or heard something,” muttered Levinchius. “That’s why we came up.”

“Oh. Not because it’s freezing down there and night is falling and everything is covered in snow then?”

“And that.”

“There!”

“What was that?” Number Two and Number Three were both peering out the window.

“Can’t see. Bloody weather.”

“Right.” Number Two picked up the chamber pot. “I have a plan. I’m going to drop this on the donkey. Then the donkey will bray. Whatever it is that’s out there will come towards the noise. Then we’ll see what it is.”

“It’s probably a deer,” muttered Number One.

“Right.” Number Two shook his head. “We’re called Expendable Border Guard Number One, Two and Three, a couple of mysterious strangers show up and you reckon the strange groaning noises and the unidentifiable shape moving out in the darkness is a deer. It’s zombies.”

“What?”

“It’s zombies.”

Number Three shook his head. “It’s always zombies. Can’t it be skeletons for once.”

“I still say it’s a deer,” said Number One. “Hey!”

“Oi!” shouted Levinchius “Don’t . . .”

Number Two dropped the chamber pot. They watched as the donkey jumped in surprise and ran away into the forest.

“I thought you tied him to the tree,” said Unthal once they couldn’t see it in the gloom any more.

“Oh! Looks like that worked!” shouted Number Three. “They’re coming closer.”

“I did tie it to the tree,” shouted Levinchius. “Shit! My bedroll was on that.”

“My backpack was on that!” swore Unthal.

“Your backpack?” Levinchius shook his head. “Why’d you put your backpack on the donkey? It’s supposed to go on your back. You know, like it says in the name. Back pack”

“It was heavy!”

They stared after it.

“Zombies! I knew it!” shouted Number Three.

“Skeletons!” said Number Two.

Number One went to look. “Are you sure it’s not a . . . Oh.”

“Zombies and skeletons.”

“I need to get my backpack back!” Unthal clenched his fists.

“Well that’s us fucked.” Levinchius went and crouched in a corner. He might have been trying to hide, although Number One couldn’t quite tell who or what was supposed to be fooled.

“We’re up a tree-house,” he said brightly. “They can’t get us up here. Let’s shoot them with arrows until they’re dead. Again.” He frowned. “How does that work?”

“It works,” grumbled Number Three. “Trust me, I’ve been guarding borders since before you were born and if I’ve seen an undead horde coincidentally show up at the same time as a couple of mysterious stranger once, I’ve seen  it a hundred times. Arrows work.”

“I just shot a skeleton and the arrow went straight between its ribs and came out the other side!” said Number Two.

“In the head, obviously. Idiot.”

“Oh crap, they’re climbing the tree. How’s that work? They’re mindless undead minions, they’re not supposed to be able to climb trees. That’s ridiculous. Oh, wait. That one fell off.”

“See.”

“That’s not the point. Look, another one’s having a go! And another! How in Mother Nature can re-animated skeletons climb trees? Look! The zombies are at it too!”

Number Three paused. He leaned on his sword and looked out the window. Skeletons were indeed climbing his tree. “Let me get this right, Two. They’re skeletons. They don’t have eyes, yet they can see. They don’t have ears yet they can hear. They have neither muscles or ligaments yet they move. They have no brain, yet they can fight about exactly as well as an Expendable Border Guard. Nothing about them makes any sense or stands up to any scrutiny whatsoever. And in the middle of all that, what you don’t like, what you have an issue with, is that they’re climbing a tree?”

“All I’m saying is that climbing twenty foot of tree trunk with no branches to give you any purchase is a pretty mean feat even if you’re alive and in the pink of health. As opposed to the, er . . .” He peered down. “Sort of yellowy grey of un-death.”

“And what I’m saying is that when you stand that next to being able to sling a sword when you don’t have any tendons in your wrist or any skin to grip the hilt is also a mean feat, and one of considerably more relevance.”

“Er . . . Excuse me . . .” Levinchius had come out of his corner. He was pointing. “Don’t mean to interrupt this fine debate, but . . . behind you!”

Vale and the people he reluctantly travels with his friends will be back in the new year.

NEXT WEEK: INTERLUDE ON THE ELVISH BORDER PART TWO