Read The Undead King: The Saga of Jai Lin: Book One for Free Online Page B

himself over and saw no bite marks, no scratches or scrapes, his nerves calmed. As long as the skin wasn’t broken, you wouldn’t turn, his father had always told him as a child. It was why Willis Crane had worn such heavy armor against General Godwin’s army, in the style of the sprocket knights of Ithaca, years before Mercer was even conceived. It was a necessary precaution for all soldiers to wear armor, as Godwin had an army of dead men at his disposal and had been able to make them do his bidding. Godwin had been a z ombie-tongue , or so the stories went.
    “Well, we found Darnell.” Brook was eyeing the corpse Mercer had pushed into the corner. Darnell wore a heavy burlap smock and was a beer keg of a man. Mercer now understood why he had been knocked over so easily. Besides the place where the glass shard had embedded itself in his head, Darnell also had a large wound on his forearm, what looked to be inflicted by a pair of ravenous teeth. “Poor man. He had such a kind heart.”
    “It doesn’t make sense,” Mercer said, standing up. He took his blood-soaked shirts off and threw them into the corner of the room. He could see more clearly now, his eyes having adjusted to the darkness. The room was in chaos from the melee: two tables had been upended, broken glass carpeted the floor while Darnell’s blood coated the walls like a fresh layer of paint. “Why are there dead men in the Green Lands?”
    “I don’t know,” Brook said, her voice sad and distant. She wondered if there had been any of Darnell left in the living corpse she had just killed. Had some of her friend still been in there, a prisoner to a nightmare he had no control over? Or had Darnell died, the killim in his place merely wearing the metalworker’s skin as a vestment for its insatiable appetite? None of the thoughts comforted her.
    “Perhaps the Bastards or some other slavers passed through here and left killim behind?” Brook proposed. “Slavers have been known to catch dead men in the Borderlands and keep them as pets. I read that they put their necks in harnesses and attach them to wooden rods so that the dead never get close enough to bite or scratch them.”
    “That’s true, but I don’t think that’s what happened here. Slavers are vicious, true, but you saw how the Wandering Bastards were back there. They were absolutely terrified of dead men. No, I think there’s something bigger at play here. I just don’t know what.”
    “Where there’s one killim, there’s going to be more,” Brook said. “We should get out of here before any more find…” Her mouth opened and her eyes went wide. “Oh no, Leo! Come on!” There was a sledgehammer with a long handle propped up by the door which Brook grabbed as she ran outside. Mercer followed right behind her, Jai Lin in his hand.
    Brook was right to be alarmed. Leo was gnashing his teeth and darting out of the way of a group of five killim. He was unhurt but these dead men were fast and a few swipes of their claws came within inches of the dog’s black fur. They moved as if their joints had not yet grown stiff, as if they had only just turned.
    Mercer caught the dead man closest to him off guard, lopping off the corpses head before it could even smell the sweat on his skin. A fountain of blood spurted out from the dead man’s neck, the dark red of a summer sunset. Brook swung the sledgehammer deftly, knocking the lower jaw off the fastest of the killim. It didn’t stop it; the green-skinned woman with fiery red hair turned quickly and was upon Brook before she could dodge out of the way. Leo was quicker though, biting the corpse woman’s leg and dragging her off. Mercer finished what his Black Wing companion had started, finding the dead woman’s skull through her tangle of red hair with one swift movement of his sword.
    They were all three back to back in the center of a circle of limbs and unmoving dead bodies when they were finished, panting heavily. “Well, that sure