In her cellar, she’d thought it was only a skeleton. Here in the Cauldron, on a backdrop of all the lands the Blood Lord had drowned, burned and corrupted as he made war against his fellow Deathless, she saw the revenant for the monster it was.

  A troll, and she hated that it was a troll. Hated that the Blood Lord was the most famous troll to forsake the frozen north and the mountain-song sky-song of his people, and that she’d done the same, and he’d played at godliness long enough to almost become one, and had instead tried to kill the world.

  Hated that she was repaying the kindness of her new neighbors by drawing this bloody nightmare out of stories and into their lives.

  Hated that his blade fit so perfectly in her hands.

  Its armor was all but gone. What was left dangled on half-rotted, frozen scraps of chain and leather. Not that a lich—a revenant, she supposed—needed armor. It held a rusty sword in one bony hand. Its jaw hung impossibly open as it threw its head back in another silent, ear-bursting shriek.

  And then it saw them.

  Its eyes flared green. Its mouth opened again, and it roared.

  Runa roared back, and the Blood Lord charged.

  “Stay behind me,” she shouted to Severine, and spared enough attention to make sure Severine darted back and out of the way.

  Then all her senses snapped back onto the revenant bearing down on her.

  She knew how this worked. She’d killed skeletons before. They popped up about as often as you’d expect, in her line of work. All the Skeleton War’s leftovers, all the cursed followers of the Seven Deathless, scooped up with the rest of the trash and dumped in the Cauldron.

  Sometimes they were quiet, like the undead last night, watching at the wall.

  A lot of the time, they were like this.

  Runa changed her grip on the sword and crouched, keeping her center of gravity low. The Blood Lord hurtled towards her, rusty sword held above its head. She dodged, and rotated, swinging Bloodburster around to slam into the skeleton’s side. The blade howled as it cut through the air.

  Bone crunched.

  This was how you dealt with skeletons. Pummel them until there’s nothing left to hold a weapon. And put something over your mouth so you don’t end up inhaling them.

  The revenant staggered. Runa’s blow had cracked its ribcage, and it turned with slow deliberation.

  Beneath it, the Cauldron churned, frozen rock and ice converging in a grinding spiral with the desiccation of the Burnt Valley.

  Runa hefted Bloodburster. “This is what you want, huh?”

  The Blood Lord’s jaw stretched wide. It didn’t make any noise this time. Just gaped with a jaw full of tusks, broken and hungering.

  Runa gritted her teeth.

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  “Come and get it.”

  Bone ground against bone as the undead skeleton attacked her again. She parried its first, clumsy blow and swung Bloodburster in another howling arc.

  CLANG!

  She didn’t need to kill it here. Just disable it, so Severine had time to cut them further away from the village.

  But why not do it here? Runa’s thoughts leapt ahead on burning wings as she and the Blood Lord clashed again. It was almost laughable, how badly the revenant fought. As though the feared Blood Lord had lost all his martial skills along with his soft fleshy bits.

  Why not show the locals who she really was? What she was really capable of? Why not—

  “Shit!” she yelped as the Blood Lord leaned and twisted into her blow, not away from it, and the greatsword slid neatly through the new gaps in its ribs and cracked against solid rock. The shock reverberated through her bones.

  Bloodburster slipped from her numbed fingers. The revenant twisted again, snatching at the hilt with its own bony hands.

  It missed.

  Runa launched herself forwards. She tackled the skeletal troll in the chest, grabbing for Bloodburster, and they both went down. A knobbly knee caught her in the stomach. Winded, she watched the greatsword skitter downhill away from them both, on dirt that surged like the swell of the ocean.

  But that didn’t matter.

  “Severine!” she yelled as soon as she had her breath back. The Blood Lord tried to get up, and she pinned him, green eyes blazing defiance at her as the revenant screamed silently. “I’ve got him! Cut the portal!”

  And grab the sword—She managed to stop herself from saying it, and a sick relief poured through her stomach as she saw Severine move towards the sword anyway.

  She didn’t want the sword. She didn’t need the sword. But having the sword close would be…

  “Stop that,” she growled.

  The Blood Lord hissed at her.

  “Not you.”

  Wrestling the skeleton was like wrestling, well, a skeleton. Someone whose whole body was a blunt weapon with surprisingly pointy corners.

  Severine was coming up the hill. She had Bloodburster in her hands.

  Good, Runa thought, and then growled at herself about it.

  Bony fingers closed around her neck. Ah, shit.

  “You’re not meant to be able to do that,” she rasped as the Blood Lord rotated its neck the whole way around to glare at her. Walking skeletons were meant to remember being alive. They were only meant to move in ways that a living body with muscles and ligaments and skin could.

  They weren’t meant to pivot their joints like some cursed spider.

  The green fire in its eyes bulged and bubbled, like heat-waves over boiling mud. It wasn’t just fire, it was something inside the skull, glowing. A sticky, slimy mass. Like a lump of dough gone green and wrong.

  That was the sort of useful thought that struck her as she struggled for breath.

  She clawed at its fingers. No luck. “Severine—” she croaked.

  The revenant twisted, and she leaned into the roll, ending up on top of it again. But it got a hand free again, raking at her skin with fingertips like blunt knives.

  With a snarl, she headbutted it. The ancient skull snapped back. She tore free and cast around for a handy rock.

  The Blood Lord slammed into her headfirst. She tucked her head to stop him getting his horns at her neck, and locked in.

  Horn clashed against horn. Her whole skull screamed with tension. The Blood Lord’s skull face was only a few inches away, closer than when they’d been grappling on the ground, leering at her.

  There was something wrong with it.

  Normal undead didn’t have eyes that glowed like that. They stared at you through eyesockets that were windows to the empty backs of their skulls. There was something inside the Blood Lord’s head. Something that—

  Her foot skidded on loose rock. The revenant bore down on her, one twisted horn skidding along her scalp. Heat seared behind it, the sort of heat that meant oh shit I’m bleeding and that’s going to hurt in a second.

  It hurt.

  Runa dropped to one knee. The Blood Lord was bigger than her, but flesh made her heavier. She reared back, ignoring the sudden crack of pain in one horn, and the skeleton flew over her shoulder. She turned, rose, and slammed him to the ground just as Severine reached them.

  The moment the skeleton hit the ground, it got up again. Runa swore.

  “Cut the portal as far into the Cauldron as you can. Then I’ll throw him in, same as last time. You stay here, okay? I can do this myself—” Runa paused, panting. She flicked a glance at Severine and a cold hand gripped her stomach. “Severine?”

  Severine didn’t reply. With her eyes the glassy grey of mirror-polished steel, the priestess pressed the cursed broadsword into the Blood Lord’s hands.