We came up the stairs with the dead behind us and found a man standing at the top.

He was short and wide through the shoulders, with a round shield up and a broad blade in his hand, black against the gray daylight. He had been about to go down. We were about to come out. He looked us over, and looked at what was coming up the steps after us, and said we seemed to be in a bit of a pickle. I said I did not see what the situation had to do with condiments, but if he wanted to help, he would be welcome. He said his name was Horde. Nobody laughed. Nimue got it a minute later and told me not to make jokes like that when she has had four hours of sleep.¹

They swung at us once more before we got clear, one to a man. Anister's came down hard and would have ended him if it had been a little harder.² Mine landed on the shield Nimue had bought me the night before, and the shield came apart. I had owned it one day. Anister dropped his own at my feet without a word so that I would have one, and I picked it up on the run. Nimue said she still had enough put by to get me another. I am keeping count of what I owe her.

Horde asked, very politely, whether it seemed to us that we needed to leave. Nimue told him he could stay and fight them himself if he liked. He said he would rather not. He had been hoping to join our merry band. She said he could, and that we were going this way, and that was the whole of his hiring.

Olsted pushed Nimue up the last of the stairs. Nimue said she had already been at the top of them. He said she was his favorite.

They did not follow us out. We ran a good while on the road before one of us looked back and saw the barrow mouth quiet and nothing behind us but weather. The dead do not leave their ground, it seems, or these do not. I had not known that. It is worth knowing.³

What was left

Everybody was blowing like a horse except Horde. He shook every hand he could reach and said he hoped he could be of use, for a share of the treasure and whatever else came to a man in a company like ours. He said we seemed to be a man down. Somebody said she had been a woman. He said he was a dwarf, a fighter of some renown, and Anister answered him in Dwarvish, and the two of them went on in it for a while. I do not have the language.

I prayed over us in the long grass. It is easier to ask for mercy when nothing is chasing you. I told Silvanus we had run so that we might come back another day and put these dead under his black earth where they belong, and I asked him to close us up. He closed Anister up. He closed me up on the second asking. After that I asked once more for the others and he had given what he was going to give.⁴

Nimue had hardly been touched, and said so. What troubled her was that her magic had gone out of her again, and she told us plainly that without it she was no use to anyone. Anister chewed a pinch of something he says keeps a man from being surprised, and this time it took. He was wound tight all the way back to Helix and said nothing could sneak up on him, and nothing tried.

It was half past noon. We had been under the ground a half hour all told and had nothing to show for it. We went back to Helix.

Helix

We were in by half past four, early enough that the market was still up. It is not a side of the town I see often. Stalls in front of the well, people buying and selling. For a minute it looked like a place where people lived.

Anister bought a shield, and arrows at five copper apiece. Nimue paid for things out of what Irulan had put by. Irulan was saving for plate and never got to buy it. Nimue said she was spending it keeping the boys in shields. I thought that was probably what Irulan would have wanted. I did not say so.

Olsted came to us at the inn and said he had seen some things. He is a torchbearer, and what he wants to do is carry a torch and go home. He asked for a gold for the next day and a couple more torches to go with it. Anister paid him in silver, ten of it, which is a gold. Olsted bit a coin and said that would do. He took all four torches to bed with him. He sleeps with them. I have given up asking why.⁵

Horde said he would see us in the morning.

In the morning Horde was dead in his bed. His heart, I was told. A man who had come out from under the Barrowmaze without a scratch on him, and he died in a bed in Helix, of nothing. I stood in the door of his room a minute. I do not know what to make of it and I did not try very hard. We had counted on him, and now we would have to count again.⁶

It was the first day of summer. They say the peat oil rises out of the swamp on that day, and it does. A shine comes up on the standing water out past the barrows. They say that is how the bog keeps what falls in it, and how a good many of the dead there got to be dead. I asked Silvanus for a blessing on the day, over bacon and eggs. The pig had given his all and the hen had only been involved. Silvanus did not give it. I took that to mean he thought I could manage on my own.⁷

Charlotte met us at breakfast. She had gone on ahead of us up the stairs the day before and kept going. Whatever she had done with the night she did not say, and nobody asked. She had the lead when we set out, the way it falls to one of us or another, and she did not want it. She asked what we were all thinking, putting her in charge.⁸

She wanted the temple with the columns, up at the north end. I said if it were up to me I would go back for the skeletons. We had cut them down some, and that room had never been searched, and I did not like leaving it. Anister had a plan for it. Charlotte looked at the two of us and said we could do what we wanted. So we went back.

Purple robes

Nothing troubled us on the road. At the top of the barrow Anister went down the stairs alone, slow, with no torch, and listened. He heard nothing. He climbed back up and said so. He had chewed another pinch of his powder on the way down and nothing had come of it. The verdict of the company was oregano.

While he was telling us, a company came walking out of the mist toward us. Several people, all in the same purple robes, all with the same sigils stitched on the breast, all carrying adventuring gear. Nimue knew the sigils. She said they were from an arcane academy, though she could not say which one.

They did not care about us. They were walking north.

Nimue stepped out of their way and pointed them down the left hallway and told them it was a great way to go, that we had found so much good stuff down there. The one in front stopped and looked at her the way you look at a fool in a market. Then he sniffed and kept on, toward the temple with the columns. Nimue muttered to Charlotte that they would clear out the other barrow for us. Charlotte said she supported it, so long as they did not get killed first.⁹

We went down. The secret door stood open, and the skeletons that had caught us on the way out had gone back into their holes.

Waking them again

Anister's plan was the one he has had every time. We wake them, and he and I hold the doorway, and I turn them where they stand, and if I cannot turn them we run. Nimue tried to put her armor of air on and it would not come. She lit the brim of Anister's hat instead. I put Silvanus's shield on myself, because it does not last long and I wanted it on before the fight and not during.¹⁰

I said I would go in first. I wear the most iron. It was my idea of how to do it.

I went in and stepped twice on the wet floor to see what it would wake. Nothing. There were two of them in the niches that I could see, and a couple on the floor where we had left them. Anister put an arrow into a niche and nothing came out. He put another into the far corner and it struck something in the head, and then they came out of the walls headfirst, down the stone like lizards, and dropped to the floor and came on.

Charlotte slung a stone at the nearest one and the cord of her sling gave out in her hand. Three of them came at me. Two scraped across the plate and the third missed me clean. The one on Anister did not miss. Nimue raised her hand to send her bolt of force into another, and nothing came out of it, and that was the last of her magic.¹¹

Then I held up the symbol and called on him. I asked him to drive them out, to render them down to the bone meal and the minerals they came from.

Nothing came. It went out of me and into the room and nothing in it slowed. They kept coming. I have prayed in that place before and been answered by silence, and it is no easier now.¹²

Anister said, "Seriously. Let's just run away." I did not argue.

Nimue was already on the stairs with her skirts hiked up, walking fast. One of them went through Anister like he was a gate and made for her and Olsted. Another caught me as I turned, and I felt it through the plate for a long time after. Anister took the lead and we went up.

I do not remember the rest of the climb. We got out. That is what I can say.¹³

Arforth

It rained the next morning. Everybody had a cloak that kept the water off, except the hireling.

The new man was named Arforth. He was a quiet man with a long sword and a cold in his nose, and he said it was only his allergies. He wanted to hear everywhere we had been and was much taken with all of it. He had a particular interest in the dead. I mean that the way it sounds. I will not say more, since he is not able to defend himself.¹⁴

We went down the hill and lit one torch and no more. They cost enough as it is.

At the foot of the barrow stairs there was a sound I have learned to know. Leather wings, a great many of them, in the hall below, about thirty paces off and coming toward us.

Anister asked Arforth if he knew what a stingbat was. Arforth said he had never heard of them, and asked whether they were dead. Anister said they were not, but they would make you dead if you let them sit on you. Mosquitoes the size of a dog that would drain half the blood out of a man before he got his sword up. Arforth said ah, mosquitoes, he knew those well.

Then Anister cupped his hands and made a noise at the dark. It was the cry of a bat, but a bat of a size to eat stingbats, and pitched so high I could not hear it, only see him doing it. The wings stopped. Then they turned around and went away the way they had come.¹⁵

Anister said that from now on, whenever he ran away, it was to be set down that he had done it gallantly, on account of his name. I have set it down.

The quiet room

We went in together this time. I asked Silvanus for fire on the blade and he did not give it. I asked for the shield and that he gave. Anister swallowed another pinch of his oregano and said it did nothing for him. I would have been surprised if it had.

Anister told Arforth what was in the room. Skeletons in a crust of stone, four of them, and they would come out of the walls, and we would try to turn them, and if that failed he was to run. Arforth said we should not be hasty. He asked how hard they could be. Charlotte stepped up close to him, she is the taller, and asked him if he saw her scars. The two of them down her face, and her eyes set back in her head the way they had not been before the skeletons. She told him where she got them. She told him she had died of them. Anister said that if four of them hit him he would find out for himself, and that was the end of the talk.

We went to the room with the skeletons in the walls and stood in the middle of it with our weapons ready, and nothing came out.

Anister shot into the niches again and again. Three arrows glanced off the stone crust and two of them broke. Nothing moved. I called on Silvanus once, only to see, and this time it came, strong, the way it is supposed to, and went out into an empty room with nothing in it to take it. I would have liked to have had that one the day before.¹⁶

We stood about for some time while the water ran down the walls. Then Anister said somebody would have to go and rifle through the barrows to wake them up by hand, and nobody volunteered. Charlotte said Arforth wanted to talk to the dead, and he could go and do it.

Arforth said he would be glad to. He took a skeleton down out of its niche and carried it into the room across the way, in the dark, and then we heard muttering. Anister went and looked in the door. Arforth asked for his privacy. Anister did not tell me what he saw and I did not ask him. He came back and said, "Put your pants back on," in the voice of a man who has said stranger things to worse companies. Charlotte said there were children present. There were not. Arforth came out after a minute. He said this was the best company he had ever kept.

We told him he could stand at the door and watch the hall, and that was all we wanted from him.

Fifty minutes

So we did what we should have done the first time and searched the room.

Fifty minutes, we reckoned, moving the dead from their niches one at a time. Arforth guarded the door, when he was not slipping back across the hall for a few minutes with another one. He asked, very politely, whether we would pile the bodies together in the middle, neatly and a little spread out, so that he could talk with several at once. We piled them. It cost us nothing and it kept him in one place.

Partway through we heard rats. A long way off, a great many of them, and we held still until the noise went on by. Arforth told us to calm down. Then it came back. They were at the door, eight of them, hissing at Arforth with their teeth showing. He drew his long sword and stood in front of them, and they did not come in.

Anister said they were only animals. He went to the pile for an armful of the old bones, and Arforth said wait, those were usable, and pointed him at some others he said were nasty. Anister took what he liked. He made some chittering noises and threw them to the rats. They fell on them and began to fight each other over them. A couple wandered off. Most stayed and ate. Anister scooped up more to throw past them, down the hall, and stumbled and dropped the lot, and then kicked them, and they flew across the room the right way, by what looked to me like luck. The rats took off south after the bones, and we heard them fighting for the rest of that hour, further and further off.¹⁷

Nobody was bitten. Arforth said it was a shame about the bones, and that he still had plenty to work with. He asked for a break.

When the hour was up Anister found it. He had gone around behind one of the skeletons, and it had something clutched in its stone hand. A pouch, half rotted. The skeleton did not wake and it would not give it up. He pried it loose with a dagger, one finger at a time. He had wanted to use a pick.

Thirty gold.

I have seen men fight over less. Nobody did. I asked if we were dividing it now or later, and Anister said later, in case one of us died.¹⁸

Anister said he felt it settle into him as he held the purse, as if something he had been working at for a long time had finally been made to fit. He is quicker now and surer on his feet, and he says the proper name for what he is has changed. He is a strider. He said it as though it meant something.¹⁹

Arforth did not want a share. He said the two gold was fine.

Bats

We went back to searching, since the first hour had given us so little. I said we should try the room across the hall, the one with the broken door, since nobody ever had. Arforth was in it, with his dead. He said it was his space and we should go away. We asked him to go and stand guard while we looked, and he said all right, but we were not to talk to Patrice. We did not ask which one was Patrice. Nimue stood at the hall and kept her eye on it for the rats. Charlotte came in to search with us.

Then the wings came back. Arforth walked over and said, "Anister, the bats are back." He said it the way you would say it had started raining. We had not heard them. He had. They were already in the room.

They poured in. I have no better way to say it. A dark flapping mass of them, and they went straight for whoever was nearest. Three went for Nimue and one drove its beak into her neck and held on. Two took Arforth, and I saw it happen. He said he finally understood what death was about. Then he said he did not like it.

Nimue went down after him, quickly.²⁰

The rest was a bad few minutes. Charlotte tried to shove past Anister to get clear, and the thing on him beat her about the face with its wings until she gave it up. Anister swung at it and chipped his own blade on it, and cursed. I swung at it and hit it and it held on. Charlotte put a dagger in it from where she stood and went past him on the second try. Anister finished it with his sword and went for Nimue, and could not get a shot at the one on her without hitting her.

I came up behind him and put my sword through it, through and out the other side, and it came apart.

There were two left. One of them went for me, and a beak slid in under the plate at my neck. I felt it go in. I felt it drink. It was the worst feeling I have had in that place.

Charlotte put a stone into it from where she stood. It dropped. My blood came off me all at once, like water off a roof.

Anister finished the last of them with an arrow. Then it was quiet again.²¹

Nimue

Charlotte got to her first and turned her over. She was lying where she fell with a half dozen bites on her, and the ones on her neck were still running.

She was breathing. Charlotte got down beside her and tried something of her own, a word and a hand, I do not know what. It did not take. Nimue went out and did not come back.²²

Anister said her name, once, and nothing else. Charlotte said it too.

We put Arforth in with the others, in the room he liked. It is where he wanted to be. Nimue's cloak is a good one, and it keeps the rain off. I took it. I had the room for it.

The torch had a little while left in it. Anister said the room was not finished. We went back to the searching, the three of us who were left. Charlotte stood the door. I put my head into the wall in the dark, hard enough to feel it in my teeth.²³ Anister said we would have to come back and do it all again.

Nimue paid for my shield, the one that lasted a day, when I had four gold to my name, and said she would do the math on it later. The thirty from the dead man's hand is still in the pack, undivided, the way Anister wanted it in case one of us died. One of us did. I mean to count fifteen out of it for her. I do not know who to give it to.

I will write the rest when I know it.