“Bro!”
“Throw ’em!”
Siegfried used the momentum from his roll to get to his feet as Etan and the others belatedly joined him. Erich had sent them along on the grounds that he didn’t want them caught up in his battle with his own monster. Siegfried had realized the weapon could kill in one hit, but decided that he would keep the heat on and not allow the enemy time to reload. The group responded to Siegfried’s command and launched their weapons.
The Fellows weren’t so poorly trained that they would ignore their second-in-command’s orders. They had learned that it was best to act first and think later. Their spears flew only an instant later. They instinctively knew where to hit when given a command like this: the enemy’s brittle back line. It would be a huge boon if they could deal damage to the mage.
“Ack!” the mage squeaked.
But that wasn’t all. By attacking the back line, they could force the front line to move to the necromancer’s defense. This way, they could simultaneously direct and waste the enemy’s movements.
“Bro!”
“Good work!”
Etan kicked the spear Siegfried had tossed aside back to him. The second-in-command followed its position with his peripheral vision and caught it in his hand without even looking. As soon as he had it, he rode its inertia into a spinning maneuver.
“RAAAH!”
Using the advantage that the enemy’s delayed movements had given him, Siegfried spun his spear above him before turning it into a sweep at the nearest zombie’s legs. The zombie’s own internal programming had already flagged the motion as an imminent threat. The calculations told it that it couldn’t jump back or to the side, and closing the gap would result in being crushed. Therefore, the only direction left to escape was up. These mechanical decisions weren’t wrong. Indeed, they would have been more than sufficient against a more amateur wielder of the spear.
However, Siegfried’s spear suddenly changed direction as it reached the zombie’s legs. The original trajectory had been a falling strike, so Siegfried hooked his left arm under the spear to forcibly alter its course. With the spearhead hooking upward now, the zombie had nowhere to run. It was about to be smashed to bits.
“Are they acrobats?!”
But the zombie managed to mitigate the damage. It had realized that it was going to get hit, and so it had used the third zombie—positioned behind it—as a springboard, leaping clear of the strike.
Despite the attempted damage control, Siegfried’s spearhead still made contact and smashed through the zombie’s groin. Maybe due to the poor angle or the loss of speed from the sudden shift in direction, the spear didn’t make it all the way through the leg, stopping in the zombie’s stomach. Although the attack had done a lot of damage, these custom zombies were too sturdy to be put out of commission by damage like this. The zombie had realized that the injury would render it unable to fight properly, and so it grabbed the spear, fixing it in place. By giving itself up to the attack, it aimed to steal Siegfried’s weapon and deny him the advantage he’d seized.
As for Siegfried, he froze in place for a moment as he watched its heartless battlefield logic resolve. His spear groaned and threatened to strike him if he let go, rendering him unable to drop it and fall back.
But Siegfried wasn’t alone. The Fellows could work as a team too.
“Hraaagh!” came a roar.
Siegfried heard flesh splitting and pulping.
As the second zombie leaped at Siegfried, ready to cut him to ribbons with its saber, a halberd whistled through the air. It was Dietrich—she had roared as she sent her weapon flying. She had still been grappling with the first zombie, but instead of attacking its unprotected lower body as it reloaded, she decided that it would be easier to take the blow and dispatch the enemy stuck in the arc of its jump instead.
The heavy halberd smashed into its mark. Even the toughest zombie couldn’t have imagined this strategy, let alone prepared for it, and so with its limbs left splayed at strange angles, it crashed into the brush. It was quite impressive that it was still just about in one piece.
“No! Fere! Picardy!”
The necromancer’s movements froze for a moment at the sight of her precious creations rendered helpless and immobile. She had put her faith in them. In her heart, her self-preservation instincts fought with her compulsion to watch.
“Surround ’em!” Etan roared.
There were few tales of a single swordsman felling a group by their strength alone.
The third zombie was currently in a deadlock with Siegfried as it tried to steal his weapon. The second zombie had been turned into mincemeat in the air by Dietrich, who had resolved to take another hit. That left the Fellows with only one logical choice: to draw their weapons and charge.
Etan led the attack, using his mighty strength to grapple with the zombie’s saber. While he blocked the attack, the other Fellows scattered and wildly attacked where they could. They left the zombies no time to draw their firearms, and slowly but surely the necromancer’s defenses were whittled down.
“Not you too, d’Herblay! This can’t be happening! How?!” the necromancer wailed.
At this stage, she finally decided that it was time to run. This decision was slow, but that wasn’t necessarily her fault. She was these zombies’ leader and their maker, not a fighter herself. She didn’t have the battle experience to make quick decisions on the fly.
“No you don’t!” Siegfried said. He kept a hold of his spear and drew a dagger with his right hand.
The dagger in his hand was a special throwing tool designed by Kaya to be used against the undead. It had a red string tied to the handle—a special marker reserved for her most dangerous creations. It was a specially made piece; Kaya had told him to twist the pommel a half turn before using it, and now his hands obeyed. He judged the distance with his fingers. She hadn’t gotten too far, but it would take some skill to get it to hit her. It wasn’t a distance he’d had much luck with during training, but he launched the dagger, hoping it would hit.
As it spun through the air, it was clear that his lack of training with throwing had led him to put too much force into the throw. There was one half rotation too many—the blade end wouldn’t connect. However, it was important not to forget Siegfried’s epithet. He was Lucky and Hapless.
“Ah!”
The necromancer was unused to this forest. Her foot snagged on a root and she froze on the spot. If she had managed to get one more pace farther, then the blade would have bounced off her as the handle hit her. However, her slipup had positioned her perfectly for the blade to find its mark.