Chapter Twenty Three

Muscles.

Lilia still couldn’t get the sight of Cinna’s muscles out of her mind, and more annoyingly, she also couldn’t figure out why. She’d never had this happen before. Growing up, Lilia saw people of all ages nude while bathing in the river during the warmer months, but that had always just been a mundane sight she quickly forgot about. Even the ones her age failed to stir much of a reaction in her. Farmers had plenty of muscles, too, but always seemed unimportant before.

So why was it that, even days later, Lilia couldn’t stop thinking about Cinna’s stupid, muscular back? Maybe it was just because it had been the first time she’d gotten a look at the knight without the armor in general. Before that day Cinna had never even removed her coif, which hugged the outline of the woman’s face so closely that even the shape of her jaw was hidden.

Underneath it, Lilia had found Cinna to have sharp-edged facial features and a lithe, well-trained body. Cinna had honed her body into a deadly weapon. Her musculature seemed subtly different from a farmer’s in ways Lilia couldn’t define. She moved with grace, yet always gave the impression of a coiled snake ready to spring at the slightest hint of danger.

She did her best to hide it but every time Cinna looked her way Lilia had to avert her eyes and fight to stop herself from blushing. Fortunately Cinna didn’t seem to have noticed. Otherwise she probably would have said something by now. In Cinna’s position Lilia knew she would have done so, after all.

Instead of dwelling on the topic, which wasn’t getting her anywhere fast, Lilia chose to immerse herself in Directions’ point of view. He’d gone off to scout ahead, so his vision provided an entirely different panorama than Lilia’s own, making it easy to focus on that instead. Right now he was far above the ground and at least a few kilometers ahead.

Lilia and Cinna had left the wooded north behind two days ago and were now walking through one of Selkarc’s rocky grasslands. According to Cinna this area used to be forested as well, but the lumber there had been harvested long ago for use in construction and as firewood. Then livestock such as sheep and cows had used these grasslands to graze. Even they had disappeared now, though, with the few that remained under close watch due to the fear that if one died it might kill the rest in turn.

It took every scrap of willpower in Lilia’s body for her to not point out that they couldn’t technically die.

All Lilia could see through Directions’ eyes were grass and rocks, but they did look breathtaking from above. Occasionally she caught sight of a fjord which stretched just far enough inland to appear on the horizon. Very, very rarely she spotted a lone tree towering above the grass. When she finally noticed something new in the distance Lilia immediately recalled Directions. While he flew back she considered how to tell Cinna without giving herself away.

“Um, Directions says he spotted a town. And there’s undead wandering around it. Even in the fields outside the walls,” Lilia informed Cinna a few moments after Directions landed on her shoulder.

“Really? I didn’t hear anything,” Cinna replied curiously, turning to look at the bird on Lilia’s shoulder.

Crap. She’d forgotten to have Directions chirp as if telling her something.

“You must not have heard!” Lilia countered with a nervous grin.

“Fair enough. Still, I’m surprised to hear you can speak to animals. Quite an unprecedented gift. You might be the first I’ve heard of aside from Livetha’s priesthood,” Cinna remarked jovially. “A shame it’s only come to light after so much of the world’s wildlife has been wiped out.”

For a moment Lilia thought she’d picked the wrong cover story, but Cinna seemed to have accepted it after all. Hopefully that meant Lilia could relay information to her the same way in the future.

“So…what do you want to do?”

“A good question. You said they are wandering around outside the town, not merely inside it? That will make it difficult to go around without encountering any. We could cut across the grasslands, but it would mean going quite a bit out of our way,” Cinna said more to herself than Lilia. “I believe our best option is to give the town a wide berth and use the hills for cover. We may not be able to avoid them all, but hopefully we can avoid getting bogged down.”

“…sure?” Lilia replied, not having understood what several of those words even meant. She assumed Cinna knew what she was talking about, though, so she wasn’t going to argue.

Cinna led Lilia off the road and into the hills long before the town ahead even came into sight from the ground. They traveled in relative silence. With the local wildlife devastated, all Lilia could hear was the rattling of Cinna’s mail, though the plates themselves seemed surprisingly quiet. She wondered how Cinna planned to keep her armor from giving them away. Did she know undead could hear? Surely she did.

Though now that Lilia thought about it, wasn’t this a great opportunity for her to pitch in? She couldn’t assist Cinna last time because she’d been far away and any intervention would have been unmistakable. Now, though, they were trying not to be noticed. Cinna would never be able to tell the difference between wandering undead not noticing them and Lilia making them not notice.

That idea remained in the back of Lilia’s head as she and Cinna got closer to the town. Directions took to the sky again, giving Lilia a clear view of the area ahead. She couldn’t pay too much attention to it, though, since she needed to pay attention to her footing. The lack of trees and bushes didn’t mean the area was free of obstacles; there were plenty of rocks capable of tripping her if she missed them. Some were hidden by the grass, too.

Lilia had much less experience with grasslands than she did with forests. Much less these rock-studded hills. Finding the right footing took more focus than she initially expected. She quickly found that she had to watch her feet closely or risk twisting her ankle. Sometimes she stepped on a rock that looked nice and flat at first glance but tipped over the moment she put her weight on it.

“Stop,” Cinna whispered suddenly, breaking Lilia’s concentration. Lilia froze, which was definitely a mistake considering she’d been mid-step when Cinna spoke. She barely managed to suppress a yelp as she stumbled, but Cinna noticed and caught her before she could fall.

Had she missed something? She hadn’t spotted anything close by, but she also hadn’t been looking too closely at Directions’ point of view. For that matter, Lilia had been so focused on the ground that she only just then got a good luck at her own surroundings. They were in the shadow of a low hill with a sheer face. The next hill along their path looked to be a good twenty or so meters away, which must have been why Cinna had called for a halt.

Once Lilia had a chance to check Directions’ perspective, though, she quickly relaxed. None of the undead in the area were anywhere close, though she did see a pair walking in her and Cinna’s general direction. As long as she and Cinna went now they would make it across long before those two arrived.

“Let’s go. Quickly,” Cinna urged, apparently having come to the same conclusion. She waved Lilia on and then jogged into the open. Lilia followed close behind, mimicking Cinna’s head-down stance. At this pace Cinna’s chainmail rattled against itself and her plate armor more, causing enough of a ruckus that Lilia felt glad no undead were close enough to hear. The worst of it seemed to be coming from her coif, so Lilia wondered if her helmet would have normally muffled the sound.

Either way they managed to make it across the gap without being seen or heard.

The closer Lilia and Cinna got to the town, though, the denser the undead population grew. Their first stop had lasted less than a minute before Cinna determined it was safe to proceed. Each grew longer from there until Lilia eventually gave up trying to stay standing until it was time to go.

Sitting in the depression between four hills, Lilia idly plucked blades of glass from the ground and pulled them apart piece by piece while watching the area through Directions’ eyes. From her friend’s vantage point she saw Cinna lying prone just beneath the crest of a nearby hill as she scanned their surroundings.

Lilia could have told Cinna the positions of each of the undead around them, but Cinna looked to have found them all anyway. She’d already split her attention between all the ones Lilia saw nearby.

Which wasn’t to say none of them were a threat. One dressed like a priest shambled across the foot of one of the hills sheltering Lilia and Cinna as Lilia watched, easily close enough to hear if either woman made too much noise. Lilia kept a close eye on that one, ready to send it an order if it got too close. Then Directions circled around, revealing a soldier making its way up the opposite hill.

The instant she saw it Lilia’s back straightened and she opened her mouth to warn Cinna, then reconsidered at the last second. If she spoke loud enough to be heard by Cinna several meters away then the soldier would almost certainly hear her as well. Plus, she’d told Cinna she could talk to animals; how would she explain away knowing about this soldier with Directions still flying far above them?

Even though Lilia had thought now might be a good time to intervene without being noticed, she still hesitated. But it was now or never; if that undead soldier reached the top of the hill it would mean a fight that would probably draw in even more undead. Swallowing her misgivings, Lilia decided now was the time to use her necromancy. If she did it right Cinna would never know.

So Lilia focused her soul sense on the soldier and checked it for any spells left by another necromancer. This one seemed to have risen on its own, though, and no one had interfered with it since then. Lilia could probably have severed its soul from its body even at this distance, but that would be too obvious. Instead she sent a pulse of mana towards it with a command to turn around and go the other way.

Instead of turning around immediately, the soldier paused. Seeing that, Lilia double checked the undead soldier’s soul, but she didn’t see anything she’d missed—his soul hadn’t been tampered with. She’d been right. For the first time a fully independent undead had failed to immediately obey a command she’d sent it.

After a good five seconds of deliberation, the soldier finally turned and walked back down the hill, but his departure didn’t bring Lilia much relief.