The night air over the marsh was still—unnaturally so.
Moonlight skimmed across the mudflats, casting thin silver lines between low hillocks and crooked trees. Somewhere in the darkness, an owl shrieked, then went silent. It was the kind of quiet Tanya had learned to distrust.
From the ridge, she watched the aftermath unfold with narrowed eyes, her spyglass pressed against one gloved hand. Below, the remnants of a failed ambush littered the campfires of Jarl Arnar's northern scouts—thirty men cut down in the dark, but not by sword or spear. Their faces were twisted in death, mouths foaming and eyes wide with ruptured vessels. Poison, yes—but not a clean one. Not the sort born from northern plants or even Byzantine tinctures.
This was Mayuri's work.
Behind her, the alchemist-turned-madman stood barefoot in the mud, arms crossed in delight as if watching a stage performance.
"They died just as expected," he said, adjusting his bone-handled cane with a crooked smile. "Twitching, choking, scratching at their throats like hounds chasing phantom fleas."
Tanya didn't look back. Her eyes tracked the slow stirring in the corpses below. One of the scouts—face half-blackened from hemorrhage—began to move.
Not a death rattle. Not a final spasm.
Movement. Deliberate. Wrong.
The man's spine arched. Bones cracked with unnatural elasticity. Then, as if puppeted, he stood.
So did the others.
One by one, thirty dead men rose in eerie unison, dragging rusted swords and axes behind them like forgotten toys. Their faces were lifeless, slack-jawed—but their eyes… something remained behind them. A hunger without purpose. A shadow of movement stitched into rotting muscle.
Tanya's mouth was a hard, cold line. "This wasn't in your initial parameters."
Mayuri giggled. "Isn't it beautiful? Reanimator Gas #27-Beta. I tripled the worm enzyme this time and thinned the oxide stabilizers. The result? Autonomic resurrection sustained for at least six hours. Maybe longer, if they're kept cool."
"They're abominations," Tanya said flatly.
"Of course," he replied, as if she'd complimented him. "But they're ours."
Below, a rider came galloping toward the risen dead—likely a late scout returning from patrol. He pulled his horse to a halt too late. The undead men turned as one. They fell on him without sound, hacking him to pieces with slow, clumsy violence. Not for tactics. Not for blood. Just… movement.
"They don't distinguish targets," Tanya observed.
"No. But they obey simple triggers—noise, heat, movement. That's enough to seed panic," Mayuri explained. "Imagine it, Tanya-chan. A battlefield where the dead don't rest. No need to reinforce your line. Just let your enemies feed your second wave."
Tanya lowered the spyglass, her expression unreadable.
"It's not a weapon," she said quietly. "It's a contagion."
Mayuri's smile widened. "Exactly."
For a long moment, neither spoke. The wind shifted, bringing with it the faintest stench of rotting blood and damp soil. Then Tanya turned, walking back toward the trees where their horses waited.
"Burn the site before sunrise," she ordered. "Make sure no one traces the gas back to us. Plant a decoy talisman—something that screams 'dark magic' in a local dialect."
Mayuri clucked his tongue. "Aww. You never let me keep any specimens."
"Keep one if it helps your research. But not one that walks."
He pouted. "Fine. I'll take the head. The jaw reflex alone is promising."
She didn't respond.
---
By morning, the site of the massacre was a scorched pit. Fire and quicklime had reduced the risen corpses to ash and bone, while Mayuri's sigils—painted in old blood and false glyphs—spoke of ritual curses, not science. Already, whispers spread: that Arnar had awoken something in the marsh, that his enemies had called on forbidden gods.
The truth—far more terrifying—moved through the veins of the earth like a virus. Quiet. Waiting.
---
Tanya stood on the edge of her command post later that evening, watching the stars blink through a torn sky. The horizon glowed faintly with the flickers of new fires. Border towns burning. Refugees stirring.
War wasn't coming. It was already here.
The undead weren't the strategy. They were the distraction.
With Sigmund arming for pre-emptive strikes, and Arnar calling vengeance for his "cursed" losses, both jarls had now begun moving their main forces. And Tanya? She would be miles ahead of them both before the first longboats made landfall.
"Dead men walking," she murmured to herself, sipping the stale wine Mayuri had fermented from fermented seaweed and goat marrow.
"Something poetic?" Mayuri asked, sauntering up beside her with a sack of organs.
"Just a reminder," Tanya replied. "In war, the ones you bury aren't always the ones you're done fighting."
Her tone was dry. Almost amused.
Mayuri chuckled. "My dear Devil of Vinland, you're finally learning to enjoy yourself."
She gave him a look—flat, unreadable. Then walked away into the dark.
She wasn't enjoying anything.
But she was winning.
And that was enough.