The sky had grown ominously dark by the time Azlok the Black’s
body finally stopped twitching. Franck’s muscles relaxed as he stepped back
from the corpse.
“He’s dead,” he muttered with grim satisfaction.
“Finally!” Meertal the javelineer moved forward to retrieve
his spear, but the tunnel fighter stopped him.
“No, leave it in just in case.”
“We should burn the body,” said an older man in apothecary’s
robes, looking up from his grisly work of extracting a bone dart from a prone figure.
“I don’t trust necromancers to stay dead.”
“Hah!” Another figure snorted from the shadows. “Never
thought I’d hear a sawbones say that!” He moved towards the body, fishing a
tinderbox from a pouch. “Leave it to me…”
“Hmph, well you owe me a new javelin then!”
The trap expert grinned, poking the corpse with his toe. “Tell
the boss to take it out of my wages.” He bent over his former employer. “Maybe
I’ll leave a little surprise here too, in case you do manage to get up again…”
Franck wiped the dark blood from his cutlass and studied his
surroundings. “So what now? We need to get out of here that’s for sure – I don’t
like being out in the open like this…”
The prone figure besides the apothecary coughed and pushed
himself up into a sitting position. “Yes we must leave,” he muttered in the thick
accent of the steppe tribes. His keen gaze swept across the bruised horizon, where
one of his crows was noisily wheeling around as if battling an invisible
opponent. “Azlok’s essence still lingers here.”
“Well I vote we head to the nearest inn – we need to find a
new boss fast,” Meertal spat. “We’ll never work again if word of this gets out…”
“Perhaps it should,” The trap expert sniggered. “Teach any
bloody wizard not to try and turn us into revenants.”
“What about the dog?” Meertal nodded towards a cleft in the
rock, where two beady eyes were watching them intently.
“Oh, he knows what side his bread’s buttered on.” Franck
flourished a piece of dried meat and tossed it. A small but muscular bulldog crept out
of it’s hiding place, snaffled up the meat and then ambled over to the tunnel
fighter, tail wagging.
“C’mon then, let us away,” grunted the trap expert, lighting
a piece of rag and casually dropping it onto the corpse. “Hey boss, I resign,” he
chuckled as greasy flames engulfed the unmoving figure.
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