Page 46 of A Crown of Lies

“They friends of yours?”

“Not exactly.” Rowan stared after them, watching the dust settle. “Tell you all about them, provided the undead don’t rip us apart where we stand.”

Ewan’s mouth turned up in a smirk. “Betcha I can kill more than you.”

Rowan snorted and yanked a sword out of one of the dead bandits, backing up. “I’m not taking that bet. It’d be unfair to make you strain your back, old man.”

“Watch and learn, lad!” With a battle cry, Ewan spun forward, smashing his hammer into a skull. He brought the other around to bear, ramming the clawed end into the corpse’s neck.

The dead man barely seemed to notice, reaching for Ewan with a groan.

“Maiden’s tits, do I have to do everything myself?” Rowan jumped in, kicking the dead away. “Peter! Fire!”

“You’ll burn the goods!” Ewan shouted, smashing the arm clean off another dead man.

“Fuck the goods! Burn them!”

Peter nodded and lifted his fingers. His taps flared a bright orange and a column of flame swept through the Dagh Cairn, burning the bodies.

They didn’t stop coming. Not even as the fire devoured their burial shrouds and their rotten flesh.

“Great idea,” Ewan scoffed, smashing the knees of another undead. She went down only to crawl after them. “Now, not only do we have to fight the bloody undead, but now they’re on fire!”

“I don’t see you coming up with a better plan.” Rowan swung his sword, cleaving a flaming dead man in half. Both halves stayed on the ground briefly before resuming their crawl toward them independently.

“I’m starting to see why the elves only keep the heads,” Ewan said with a tired grunt. He stomped on a burning skull, and finally, it stopped coming for him.

“Da!” Gregory shouted from above. Two ropes dangled from the high walls leaning over the cairn. “Climb up!”

Rowan and Ewan each grabbed a rope, and the boys pulled them to safety. A skeleton wearing a long white gown grabbed Ewan by the ankle and tried to yank him down. Rowan kicked hard, knocking its head clean off, but it didn’t let go of his foot, not until he smashed the fingers to dust.

Gregory and Connor pulled them to safety, and a third rope lowered by Liam pulled Peter out.

Rowan turned, peering down at the gathering dead. They’d begun climbing over each other, trying to get to the living humans their mistress had ordered them to kill. “We can’t just leave them like this. They’ll get out.”

Ewan grunted. “That’s the last thing we need. Bloody undead terrorizing the farmhands.”

Peter tapped Rowan on the shoulder. “Get clear,” he signed. “I’ll blow it. Bury them for good this time.”

“This is a sacred burial site,” Ewan protested. “You’d be destroying thousands of years of history with a single spell.”

“We must look after the living now. Let the dead see to themselves,” Rowan said, and pushed away from the opening in the rock. “Blow it.”

They retreated to a safe distance, leaving only Peter and Ewan behind. From under the rowan and wych elms, Rowan watched as the ground opened, swallowing the final resting place of his ancestors. When the ground closed, only a few smoking ruins remained, the ancient burial mounds little more than grassy lumps over a crack in the ground. Peter teetered and nearly collapsed, but his da caught him and propped him up so they could make it back.

Only a few horses had escaped, and they put Peter on one, along with Liam, to ride back ahead of them.

Ewan shouldered a bloody hammer. “Best get goin’ if you want to be back by dawn. It’s a long walk back to the castle.”

Rowan sighed. What a mess that had been. They cleared out the bandit stronghold and reclaimed the land, only to have to destroy it. The bulk of the bandits had escaped, Simeon and Divina among them.

Simeon… Divina…

Of all the faces he thought he might see in Dagh Cairn, theirs was a surprise. Though perhaps it shouldn’t have been. Simeon and Divina detested him. Their paths had crossed before at The Temple in Trinta on more than one occasion, but this… This was a new low.

He hadn’t known Divina was a mage. She must’ve been in hiding from the College. The Brotherhood never would have suffered a necromancer to live.

“So, who are they?” Ewan asked, as they walked.

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