Chapter 130 - Necromancer’s Fortress

  It wasn’t long before we came into sight of Carver’s fortress. I had to admit that even from a distance his place was a hell of a lot more impressive than mine, at least so far. Of course, he’d been at it longer, but holy hell, he had a damned castle in the middle of downtown Burlington. That was gonna be tough to beat.

  He’d cleared away all the nearby houses, opening up a the land for about a half mile radius circle around the fortress itself. I didn’t know where all the houses had gone; maybe he’d used some of the materials for building the fort itself? All that was left were foundation holes, the remnants of cellars in the houses he’d torn down. Most of those were filled in with dirt and rubble, which made sense. You didn’t want to give an approaching enemy places to hide.

  With the buildings all cleared away, that gave me a great view of the walls and the parts of the buildings inside which rose above them. He’d built his walls in roughly the same way we were, which made sense—Carver sent one of his construction team to supervise my undead building our walls. Mine were nowhere near as complete as his, though. Carver’s walls stood about twenty feet high. They looked thick—enough so that he had skeletons walking around up top, on guard, anyway. They were made of mortared stone, and they really did look like something from a medieval castle.

  The building behind them, however, was starkly modern. It was made of brick and stood another twenty feet taller than the walls around it. He told me that he’d build his base at the site of an old nursing home with a cemetary next door. That made total sense to me, since it gave him a good supply of bodies to Animate. When the Event first happened, he must have gone after graveyards right away. It had been days before I’d stumbled across one, more or less by accident. His head start had gotten his base where it was now.

  Of course, I caught up. That’s what happens when you kill tier ten monsters. With the winning of one magical crystal, I got the power to Animate five hundred undead. It was a truly awesome power, and I still wasn’t wholly comfortable with it. I mean, I’d essentially replaced the Forgotten King that I’d killed. The main difference was I wasn’t a crazy, murderous asshole out to slaughter every living being I ran into.

  As we rode out into the open area, the undead on the walls went on the alert. The ones facing us were armed with bows, and while they didn’t aim arrows at us, they did nock them on strings. I waved to them, knowing that Gideon would both sense our approach through his connection to the Domain and probably be able to sense us through his undead as well. We stopped a decent distance out, though. Gideon was an ally, and I had no interest in pissing him off by messing up some of his undead. I didn’t want to get shot by them, either.

  The doors rumbled open after only a minute or so. He’d been expecting us, and was waiting just inside the gates as they opened. He strode out toward us, arms outstretched. “Welcome, friends! Selena, it’s so good to see you again. Please, all of you, come in. Was the trip without incident?”

  I rode Sue all the way to the gate. The dinosaur had to stoop to come inside, but we managed. I flew from the dinosaur’s new saddle down to the ground and shook Carver’s hand. “Ran into a pack of orcs, but nothing else. We killed half of them, the others ran.”

  Carver shook his head. “We’re starting to see more of those strikes. I had been hoping to build a few outlying little bases nearby. Spots we could have civilians living where they could grow food and practice trades while being protected by walls and guards. But with the orc attacks, my people are scared to leave this place.”

  “How often are they coming?” I asked.

  “Daily,” Carver replied. “There was a raid just north of here earlier today, so with your raid added in, that’s two today. I suspect they’re picking up the pace.”

  That wasn’t great news. They had a lot of troops up there, and if they were raiding with increasing frequency, that spoke to an acceleration in their pattern. “We really do need to do something about them, don’t we?”

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  “I think so,” Carver agreed. “But you’ve shown me there might be more than one way to skin that…pig. Rather a broken idiom, I guess. Anyway, you won over the ratkin. I’d been thinking they were simple monsters, something to be fought and eradicated. Then I found out you’d built an alliance with them! That was eye-opening, Selena. The idea that not all of these things are monsters is a powerful one.”

  “You think we can work with these orcs? I asked, feeling a little incredulous at the idea. “I haven’t seen them speaking English, which makes it hard enough, but on top of that these creatures seem to have a burning desire to break, smash, or tear apart everything they can get their hands on.”

  “Not everything,” Carver pointed out. “I had some scouts come back with reports last night. They’re building up their home bases. They have a Domain up there, now, and a fort of some sort, complete with pallisade protecting it. The orcs are perfectly capable of building when they want to. We just have to convince them its in their best interest to work with us rather than against us. Or at least, to not attack us.”

  “If you think it can work, we can give it a shot,” I replied. I was dubious, though. The orcs seemed more like goblins to me, and less like ratkin. The goblins were mean, murderous creatures that killed a lot of humans in the days right after the event. I wiped out one of their main bases, but they had others, and their numbers appeared to be growing again, too. I set that topic aside and asked about another one I was interested in. “Has Turner shown up yet?”

  “He did. Arrived just a bit before you did,” Carver said. “Selena, I’d like you to join me for this conference, along with two advisors. Turner has a couple of people with him. The rest of you will be well cared for; I’ll have David round you up some food and drinks, and if you’re interested he can give you a tour of our facility.”

  “Farnsworth, Kara, you’re with me. The rest of you, go enjoy yourselves,” I said.

  It only took a minute for Gideon to summon his man, who seemed enthusiastic about showing the ratkin and humans around the fortress. I ordered my undead to remain by the gate, and then set off with Carver into the main hall. We went in through the front doors, both of them ajar, probably to let air flow through the building. We were having some very unseasonably warm temperatures for early October in Vermont, which I was mostly glad of. Soon enough, things would cool off. Winter would bring snow, ice, and freezing temperatures that would challenge us in entirely new ways.

  We moved through the building quickly, hitting a set of stairs that ran up multiple levels. When we reached the fourth floor we stopped, and Gideon led us down a dusky hallway toward a better lit room at the end. There was a very large window overlooking the front gate; that was what let in the majority of the light. Small lanterns lit the walls on two sides of the room, and a handful of candles on the table which dominated the space added some illumination as well.

  The table was what caught my attention right away. It was enormous, much larger than any typical dining table. But far more interesting was what was on the table. It was covered with a massive scale-model of a city, and I quickly recognized it was showing us Burlington itself.

  I’d seen something like this once at the Bunker Hill museum down near Boston. There was a huge model of the battle, complete with tiny men on the field, showing where the battle lines had been, where the fighting took place, where defenses were, and so on. This map was a lot like that, although in some ways it was less detailed and in other ways more so.

  This one was far too large scale to show little matchstick figures of soldiers fighting a battle. Instead it focused on the buildings. Carver had laid in little houses, each about the size of a Monopoly house, to represent buildings. It was easy to spot his fortress, which had a red circle around it showing the limits of the Domain. My farm likewise had a red circle around it, as did the Guard base.

  Those weren’t the only red circles, though. Gideon had placed one up north around a collection of farms; that had to be the orcs. There was another one in a forest down on the lake shore, one north of the airport at a sharp bend in the river, another smack in the middle of downtown, and one more south of my location. Those had to all be Domains. I was shocked, looking at them. I hadn’t realized there were so many. I’d felt a couple of them when they were placed, of course, but I’d been too busy to track each one like this.

  Gideon had made time to do so, and I saw now why that had been a smart investment of energy. This map was remarkable. It gave him a ton of information about both friendly Domains and those which hadn’t yet been contacted by our fledgling alliance. I resolved to make something similar myself, once I was back home.

  “Selena, so very good to see you again,” a voice said from near one of the more distant walls.

  I turned and spotted Turner at once. He’d never been my favorite person, but now I’d given him a whole pile of reasons to actively hate me. This was the first time I’d seen the man since outing him to his people for using Charisma to make them do as he wished. Was he going to play it cool, or were we headed for a rough moment before the meeting even formally started?