Red Beard took a dozen steps into the meadow. His men followed, leaving gaps between the trees that were quickly filled by more barbarians. Their muscled arms raised a forest of spears and broadswords, flashing sunlight. Spiked maces swung from thick wooden handles and axes practiced head-cutting sweeps while gruff voices raised more insults.

    "You’re nothing but worthless swine!"

    "We’ll cut your heads off for trophies, you armored weaklings!"

    "Come to the slaughter! This day, you die."

    Hate rose with the taunts, gap-toothed mouths slapping together as though anxious to taste blood. The only thing that held them back was the necromancer’s advantage of higher ground.

    A broad-shouldered knight strode out from the necromancer’s troops and dropped to one knee before his commander. He bowed his head, showing a grinning skull etched on top of his helmet. The quiver of arrows on his back was destined to empty into the enemies’ stinking bodies. Raising his head, he squinted in a patch of reflected light from the silver mask. "The troops are ready, sir."

    Strange black designs swirled around the necromancer’s dark blue robe, changing shape, stretching and curling their way through the folds like living things. He turned his lean body and saw his troops assemble in perfect lines, according to experience, swords and javelins at their sides. They were clearly outnumbered.

    The necromancer wasn’t interested in winning. He only wanted bodies, and his own fallen men would be easier to claim. The enemy usually carried off their dead, the fools, and sometimes burned them, making the bones completely unusable. Broken bones were worthless, too, but sometimes that couldn’t be helped, especially in war.

    The necromancer gave a single flick of his black-gloved hand. The knight rose to his feet. "Remember," the necromancer said, his voice low. "No matter what happens, you and your brother must stay close to me."

    "Yes, sir." The first knight bowed while another huge knight stepped in beside him and nodded agreement. The bodyguards were there to carry out the necromancer’s deadly orders because he never killed with his own hands. Killing took power from the soul, and he needed all his power. It took strong magic to work the spell that would make all the difference.

    Slowly he raised his gloved hands and pointed to his armored soldiers. Loud cries arose from the waiting barbarians, their decaying teeth gnashing in frenzy. Then the necromancer spoke the deadly words. "Begin the slaughter."

    His knights grabbed the halters of two young dremi, their snake-like bodies squirming in the grass behind them. The dremi’s triangular heads tossed gray-blue manes over powerful shoulders, held up by two forelegs, each as tall as a man. The rest of their bodies slipped behind them in a column of muscle ending in a pointed tail. The knights swung their armored legs up behind the dreami’s large pair of leathery wings while the dremi stepped impatiently, their knees locking and unlocking, long toes sifting the grass. A smaller pair of wings flapped further back along each of their dark, scaly bodies.

     "Attack!" cried the knights, pressing the smooth, glossy scaled dremi’s necks with urgent hands. The long creatures came to attention, opening their wide mouths to show teeth as sharp as pointed daggers. They surged forward, dragging their writhing tails with powerful strides of their forelegs, forming a protective barrier before the necromancer. Two glistening streams of liquid shot out from the backs of their throats. When the liquids touched in front of their pointed noses, two bursts of bright orange flame rose into the air.

    At this signal, the front lines of the necromancer’s army lowered their javelins, raised their swords, and marched down the hillside. The barbarians let out a wild roar and pounded toward their enemies, flattening grass and flowers into a morbid carpet beneath their filthy feet. When the necromancer’s warriors reached flat ground, they released a volley of javelins. The first row of barbarians fell, screaming, but more swarmed forward to replace them with wide open mouths and raised weapons. A few seconds later, the two armies crashed together in the meadow. The necromancer watched the furious battle from the hilltop, his wrinkled heart leaping every time a soldier fell. So many lovely dead bodies.

    When the battle ended, the victorious barbarians gathered their fallen leaders, leaving the rest to their fate. The enemy retreated just ahead of sunset, Red Beard bobbing lifeless above the heads of his warriors until disappearing into the dark shadows beneath the trees. The necromancer looked out over the corpse-covered meadow, barbarians sprawled alongside his own armored men. A few survivors contorted their wounded bodies or raised weak arms, begging for help. His dry lips set in a line as grim as the mask he wore. He would most certainly help them with their suffering.

    He turned to the knight standing nearest to him. "Bring in the wounded," he said. "Leave the dead."

    The knight gave the order, which was carried out by the dozen soldiers who’d escaped serious injury. They carried their bleeding and broken comrades into a tent set up for their care. With skin walls too thin to shut out the moans and cries of distress, the irritating sounds squeezed inside the necromancer’s withered ears, filling his head until there was no room to think. He strode away, the black designs chasing each other around his dark robe. Both of his bodyguard knights followed at a respectful distance.

     Suddenly the necromancer whirled, stabbed his finger at the tent, and roared, "Leave me! Go see to them!"

    The knights bowed. "Yes, commander," they answered, then left to oversee the administration of the poisonous medicine they mistakenly thought would help their broken comrades. Only the necromancer knew that none of the wounded were expected to survive.

    The necromancer turned away and walked alone. Once the cries of pain were far enough away to be of no consequence, he stopped and looked at the bodies, stained blood red from the dying sun. There were so many, more than he’d hoped for. He slowly raised his black-gloved hands above his head, his hard heart pumping with dark excitement as he moved his curved fingers in slow circles. "A los morte com ta corpus," he chanted.

    Two huge figures lumbered out from a copse of dark trees. Each walked into the meadow on two thin legs beneath bodies that were twice as tall as a man and three times as broad. The bone golems appeared to be scarlet lacework gone horribly wrong, with wide spaces between woven sections. Wobbling skulls sat on top of the bone skeletons and turned with quick jerks to find bodies to stack in their giant arms like sodden firewood. Only when the sun buried itself beneath the horizon did the monstrous bodies gleam sickly white in the moonlight. The bone golems’ jerky movements came from a random attachment of bones. Never stopping, they used their strangely fitted joints to silently carry out the grisly task until not a single body was left in the trampled meadow. Then the golems deserted the bloody battlefield, disappearing beneath the dark trees with their grisly burdens.

    The necromancer clasped his black-gloved hands behind him and headed back toward the tent, where a final feeble cry shot up toward the dark sky. Then all was silent. It had been a very worthwhile battle.

"Derrik!" Tweaks yelled, jumping up and down like a freckled grasshopper. "I did it!"

Derrik put his big, square hand on Tweaks’s head, forcing his friend to stand still, but that didn’t stop Tweaks’s ears from wiggling up and down as if trying to break free of his head. "Stop that," Derrik said. "You look like a stupid mooncalf."

    "What is it?"

    "A machine to collect dit eggs."

    Derrik snorted.

    "Come on, Derrik, this could free kids everywhere from having to gather eggs. Besides, when have my inventions ever failed?" Derrik opened his mouth, but Tweaks quickly added, "And the time my water heating machine exploded doesn’t count. There was a newt in the water."

    "All right," Derrik said, crossing his arms. "Show me your wonderful invention."

    "Okay, but it’s not here," Tweaks explained. He started down the road, his eager face turned back over his shoulder. "Come on."

    Before Derrik could follow, the front door of his rough board house popped open and his mother, Mali Sparks, stood in the doorway. Her intense tawny eyes looked at the boys through tendrils of soft brown hair that were forever escaping the braid around her head. She sent a puff of breath through rounded lips, sending the hair dancing over her upturned nose. She was small enough that Derrik could have picked her up and sat her on a shelf, but he would never dare try. Her temper would have her serving him dry bread and scummy water for a week if he did.

    "What are you doing out here?" She looked from Derrik to Tweaks, then broke into a smile. "Gerret, is that you?" she asked, using Tweaks’s given name.

    "Good," Mali said, her voice light. "You can help Derrik bring in water. Two buckets, please. And be quick about it." Then she flapped her small hand at them and shut the door.

     "Great," Derrik said.

     "Let’s hurry so we can see my invention," Tweaks urged, trotting ahead. Tweaks had barely disappeared around the corner of the house when he suddenly bounced back and tumbled to the patchy grass. Derrik heard an, "Oof!" Then his father staggered around the corner, his hand pressed over the leather blacksmith apron he wore across his stomach. "For such a small guy, you are solid as stone," Willan Sparks said, sticking out a large hand to help Tweaks up.

     "Sorry, sir," Tweaks whispered. He stared at the big hand a moment before raising his own hand to meet it.

    Willan glanced at his son over the top of Tweaks’s head. Except for the beard and lines by his father’s eyes, fifteen-year-old Derrik may as well be staring at his own reflection. Wavy brown hair hung nearly to their shoulders, dark eyes sat under eyebrows that drew two straight somber lines. Both had noses a little longer than most, although they weren’t out of proportion, and their full mouths were set in jaws strong enough to crack bones. Willan’s biceps bulged as he easily pulled Tweaks to his feet.

     Willan nodded.

     "Do you need my help?"

     "No, son, it’s just a small repair job on your mother’s stove," Willan said. "Won’t take but a few minutes."

     Willan snorted. "You and your always empty belly." He nodded toward Tweaks. "You ought to be sharing your food with your friend so he can grow taller." Willan ruffled Tweaks’s hair and said with a smile, "You could help yourself by standing up straight, young man."

     "Yes, sir," Tweaks murmured, keeping his eyes down.

     "Tweaks and I were going off," Derrik said.

     Willan’s voice was firm when he said, "Not to the woods."

     Derrik sighed. "I know, Da, you keep telling me that."

     "And I’ll keep on telling you."

     "What’s really so bad about the woods?" Derrik asked.

     Willan shook his head. "Your mother wouldn’t want me to say."

     Derrik pushed back his shoulders. "I’m practically a grown man, Da."

     "Even grown men don’t go there," Willan replied.

     Tweaks looked back and forth between Willan and Derrik, chewing his lip.

     "I’ve seen men cutting trees in the woods," Derrik protested.

     "They don’t go in the woods," Willan corrected him. "They pick at the edges, working in groups, removing one layer of trees at a time as quickly as they can." Willan popped his knuckles and gazed into the distance beyond his forge. "I wouldn’t want to be there on the day they finally reach the center of those woods."

     "Why?"

     Willan looked at his son with clouded eyes. "Because there’s something in there."

     "Wh-what kind of thing?" Tweaks whispered.

     Willan sighed. He looked toward the house, then back at the boys. "Are you sure you want to hear this?"

     "Yes," Derrik said. Tweaks merely dropped his chin, a sign that Willan took for assent.

     "No one who’s come out alive knows for sure," Willan said.

     Tweaks shivered.

     "But it wasn’t always so," Willan added, as if that would soothe Tweaks. "Those who built the village a hundred fifty years ago floated downriver in boats, studying the shadowed depths between the forest tree trunks with worried eyes for any sign of wild animals. If that was all that ever lived there, they should have been glad. They cleared trees, built homes, fenced fields, and when they went into the woods after wandering livestock, they discovered sink grass."

     "Sink grass?" Derrik asked.

     "Mama sent us to fetch water," Derrik answered.

     Derrik asked, "What’s to be afraid of in Bylon after dark?"

     "Me!" Willan roared, his beard split with a grin.