Wilson had skulked over to where I lay and licked my face. He whined slightly, but I reached up a charcoal-black hand and patted his snout.

"No worries, bloke. Not your kind of fight," I muttered as I pulled myself upright and leaned against the wolf's shoulder. "Where the hell is–" I began before something slammed into the back of my knees, sending pain echoing all the way up my spine and knocking me off my feet.

"Fayala would have expected no less of me than to punish you like that, brother." Kos extended a hand, and I carefully pulled myself upright again.

"Just make sure you tell her I've already been punished. Where are the others?" I asked wearily.

"They're clearing out any stragglers. YOU THERE!" Kos yelled at the small group of Huskar who were still keeping their distance, lurking by the ruined town. Kos snatched his hand back to wave at them, and I fell back on my ass and lay back, letting the green grass cushion my fall. One of them got shoved and pushed until he reluctantly shuffled over to us.

"What?" he snapped.

"This is your lord!" Kos barked. The giant looked down at me, naked bar a pauldron that was as black as the rest of my skin, with all the ash coating me. I lay stretched out on the grass, a wolf, a man, and a giant all looming over me, and I found I wasn't particularly bothered about anything at the moment. I fought down the post-battle and pain-induced endorphins to narrow my eyes on the Huskar. I flicked the thread binding our souls together, and he flinched. He bowed his head reluctantly.

"Apologies, little lords," he said.

"What's your name?" I croaked. His broad face creased for a moment, as though it was a struggle to remember.

"Kandik, lord," he said slowly. This one was probably not officer material.

"What happened to Gruth?" I demanded.

"He died in the explosions. You ordered him to carry out the stunties, and the pair he grabbed went boom. Bits of him are still there, just north of this worm farm." He waved a hand back towards Gethanel. Shit. Gruth had seemed like the kind of Huskar I didn't want to lose.

"Get your troop together and keep an eye on that thing." I waved a hand in the direction the abomination had fled and saw him wince. "You won't need to fight it. Bob will finish it off, just stay close, and when it falls, set up a camp and keep an eye on the area." The Huskar nodded and turned back to his own people, bellowing orders that got them moving, albeit reluctantly, after the monster. Maybe not an officer, but a decent NCO for certain. His troopers leapt to follow his orders.

"My sister is not going to be happy with you. And by extension, also more importantly, with me!" Kos chuckled as he threw Heal Other spells at me. I cast Heal Self again.

Health points: 443/600

"Enough, Kos! I'll sort myself out from here on!" I pulled one of my limited supply of health potions from my pocket dimension and poured it down my throat. It tasted like washing-up liquid, but as soon as it hit my stomach, I was back to full health. The pain didn't go away, though, and I pulled myself back to my feet like an old man who'd taken a tumble down the stairs.

"You ok?" he asked, and I grunted noncommittally.

"I'll live. Ah, looks like Mune and Jandak are done having fun with the stragglers," I said as my other Fangs charged over and slid to a stop in front of me.

"Mond. Put some fucking clothes on!" said Mune. I pulled a fresh tunic out of my storage space and shucked off my pauldron so I could hide my shame.

"I need a bath. Or a hot shower! Where's the rest of the lead elements?" I was shoving the pain aside. I was now confident that the number of hit points I had reflected a total damage capacity, and the pain I felt was connected to the proportion of them that I lost. I rolled my shoulders and sighed as I reached for the pauldron.

"You're not going off on your own again. You're taking us with you. And the golems. Where the hell is Bob?" asked Jandak. Their own golems had arrived behind them and stood like statues in their shadows.

"He's having fun," I waved a hand towards the south. "Did you see that bastard?" They shook their heads.

"We saw the titans start running and figured you'd bitten off more than you could chew," said Mune.

"I did. It was another fucking ambush. Baited with shit-sitters," I complained as I fixed my pauldron into position. I was getting better at connecting all the little buckles on my own, but it was still awkward.

"So, just cast Burning Skies on every town? No need to fret about the southerners." Jandak's voice was firm and cold.

"We can't just kill them–"

Undead Amalgam slain x1. The Amalgam was composed of 9231 Reanimated Humanos.

One hundred and thirty-nine thousand, eight hundred and fifteen Souls Harvested.

"--God damn. Bob got the bastard, and I got the Souls! Why the fuck? No… maybe it was the fire that got the kill? Here." I offered a hand to Jandak, who grasped it, and I dumped ten thousand Souls, paying twice that overall. I did the same for the other Fangs.

"Spend them wisely. It should be enough to let you take this kind of fucking thing on solo. We don't have any counter to amorphous mounds of zombie flesh other than me at the moment, and I'm knackered. We see anymore of those shits try to let me get the kill, it's really profitable. Nearly ten thousand humans were melted into the damn thing," I said.

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"How many people lived in the shit-sitter towns?" asked Jandak as the red letters above his head shifted to Body A+, Mind A, Souls F.

"Not enough for that! Maybe that many in a dozen of them? But we've already killed thousands of the buggers wandering about the steppe. There aren't that many people in the world!" said Kos, a note of fear running through his voice as he took my arm.

"What about further south? Settal, Urkash itself?" wondered Mune.

"I think we need to speak to our Dreamer. And then Pertabon about the previous Shikrakyn. And then some asshole is going to build me an Aresk-damned shower! I'm covered in soot mixed with baked Zombie juice, and a cold wash with a barrel of water isn't going to cut it this time."

***

"So a shower is doable?" I asked in exasperation.

"Of course, Legate. We don't have any scaled for your kind, but our engineers can no doubt work around your lack of stature." Pertabon sounded suspiciously smug. I glared at him, and he smiled politely in response.

"Kril, how many?" I turned to my mentor and fixed him with a look. The old man shrugged and glanced around the camp walls that surrounded us.

"What can Glimpse see?" he replied.

"He's headed south. Lots of dead towns. How many people used to live here? How many of them have we already killed as zombies?"

"Settal had tens of thousands of shit-sitters last time I passed through. I don't know, Mond! Tens or hundreds of thousands? If you start adding in the other major cities, maybe it's millions! I never asked them to line up and let me count them!" snapped Kril. I fought to keep my calm.

"This is important, Kril. For you, me, everyone with us, and Aresk! That monster was ten thousand humans melted together into an amorphous nightmare! It damn near killed me! How many more of those things do you think he has?" I snapped back. The old man stroked his beard in thought, fixing me with a glare that could have killed lesser men.

"Ten thousand?" Kril wondered aloud.

"And we've cleared at least that many from the steppe," rumbled Pertabon, leaning back carefully so that he avoided blocking the paths around us in the camp that were busy with humans and Huskar going about their business.

"We can kill as many as we need to!" barked Jandak. I wished Haylin hadn't gone back to the north. She would be more than happy to curb my friend's suicidal bravado.

"Bob, what was your threat assessment of the amalgams?"

"They're tough. I would not have been able to finish it without you having already set a self-propagating fire. That spell is especially potent for dealing with creatures like this. They are peak threats, but now we are aware of their capabilities. Your forces ought to be able to deal with them in small numbers. If the regular soldiers are faced with more than a pair of them, they will have to retreat," the golem replied.

"What makes them so dangerous?" I asked, looking from Kril to Pertabon, then finally Jandak, whose gaze I held while the golem responded.

"The beings are capable of shapeshifting any of their flesh in very short timeframes. The sheer mass of available flesh makes this their greatest strength. Acceptable solutions would include killing them with fire to consume the flesh or extremely hardy warriors capable of surviving close contact with the amorphous form and cutting away sufficient mass to weaken it." Bob's multiple, mismatched eyes twitched, and his head pivoted so they focused on Jandak. "You would not have been capable of surviving alone against the one Raymond killed, in my estimation." Jandak bristled, but I held up a hand to forestall his outburst.

"I barely survived it. Don't take it personally, brother. Now you guys should be able to counter one, but if we meet more than four, we're screwed. Which brings me back to how many bodies does Urkash have access to?" I looked back at Kril, who hissed, then cackled.

"At least hundreds of thousands, probably millions," Kril muttered. "He can't have killed them all to turn them into zombies?"

"Why not? For any normal man, a zombie is a tough opponent. If we're lucky, all he's got is zombies, a few abominations, and a thousand or so soulbound," Mune said thoughtfully. He passed a jar of yalk to his left, and Jandak accepted it. Jandak took a long drink and smacked his lips.

"Don't forget the ones he's armed with trinkets. So we need more like us? How many Souls have you got?" he asked, looking over at me. I had a lot. Enough to make at least a couple more powerhouses who could take on an abomination. How many did that real estate prick have? If he had dozens of them, we'd need more Fangs able to go toe to toe with the damn things.

If he only had a couple, I'd be better off boosting more of my cavalry and Huskars to have a touch more survivability. Uncertainty wracked me, and I felt myself lock up. No. Not my style. I didn't freeze up, I figured out how to stab the prick in the dark and get away with it. Then get paid. An idea occurred to me.

"Kril, how many worldly men are there among the tribes? Blokes who could walk into a Crathan city, or Urkash, and be able to pass as something other than a member of the tribes?" I asked, excitement leaking into my voice. His eyes swiveled to meet my own, and he gave me a gap-toothed grin.

"Not many, but there are a few of the dreamers I can think of who could pass as something other than a nomad. Why?" His eyes glinted in the fading sunlight.

"It looks like that Julpast bloke wasn't full of shit. We're looking at multiple abominations, tens of thousands of zombies, thousands of wizards, and hundreds of soulbound servants in his forces. Let's assume, for now, that he'll be spread thin. We need a group of men with a very particular skill set. They need to be reliable, really trustworthy. Devotees of Aresk by preference. We'll kit them out with the best trinkets, and when we hit the more human resistance, we send them into the enemy's camps and cities. I'm thinking sabotage, assassination, unlocking gates, poisoning water sources… that kind of thing."

"And who's going to teach them these skills? Even the better-traveled among us are still warriors, not sneak thieves and murderers?" Kril asked, but he was grinning at me as he said it.

"I can teach them what I know, and I was damn good at my job back on Earth. Think you can find a few likely souls?" I asked.

"Why not send soulbound?" asked Mune.

"Because we've all got glowing letters over our heads if the other person has also been 'blessed,'" grumbled Pertabon. "Legate, I am not certain I can approve of this course of action. We can beat them on the field. The power of our artifacts and discipline will crush them!"

"And if these shortarse can't, then Marbo and me will stomp them!" added Mulius helpfully from above.

"Old Morty won't play fair. He's shown us that much with the ambushes and the bloody undead slaves he's throwing at us. So I don't see why we should tie our hands in the name of honour," I replied carefully.

"You want us to become assassins? Knives in the dark?" called Jagapan from the side with the other tribal leaders who had already made it to the camp.

"No. But a small group, able to go where an army can't, and strike an important target before fading into the night… that's a capability we cannot ignore. How many of you could tell if your slaves had been switched with another, using magic to disguise themselves? How do you know your food isn't poisoned?" I called out in reply. Uneasy murmurs echoed around the shadows.

"I would, husband!" said Fay as she waddled into the firelight. "I have a tincture brewing in our tent to ease your pain and would appreciate your company. Now." Kril and the Fangs all cackled at the same time. The old shaman was a bad influence. I excused myself and went bravely to face the wrath of my wife. My only defence, not having died, would hopefully be enough.

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