Page 33 of The Infernal Battalion

The third corpse was a bloated thing that looked like it had been drowned, lying among a pile of broken wood where a flood had washed it. Winter and the others looked down on it from the hillside above.

“This is getting weird,” Alex said.

“One body might be coincidence,” Abraham agreed, “but this many means there was a group of people here.”

“If it was a big group, we ought to have seen tracks. Campsites, maybe,” Winter said.

“I think this one is a soldier,” Alex said. “Look at his collar.”

Winter was unwilling to get closer, but even from this distance she could see that the jacket the body wore had a military look. “I think you’re right.”

“The last one looked more like a peasant,” Abraham said.

“Weird,” Alex repeated.

After that they found bodies at least once every few hours. Some of them had been dead for a long time, leaving little clue as to their identities, while others seemed more recent, still clothed and waxy-​skinned. They seemed to come from every walk of life—young men and old women, peasant girls and Murnskai soldiers, servants in drab linen and even a white-​robed Sworn Priest. Except for the ones that had been obviously moved by animals or floods, every body looked at rest, as though they’d all taken a seat and waited there to die.

“Sacrifices, maybe,” Alex said. “The Trans-​Batariai do human sacrifice.”

“None of them seem to be wounded,” Abraham said. “Poisoned, maybe?”

“There’s another.” Winter pointed. A man in a long gray coat sat slumped against a leafless trunk, head lolling. “It looks pretty intact. Abraham, do you think you could figure out how he died?”

Alex made a face, but Abraham nodded. “If something’s killing people out here, I think we ought to know what it is.”

They trudged through the muck of dead leaves to the body. It had been an older man, with a huge, wild white beard and a fur cap. A hunter, Winter guessed, by his clothing. There was no blood on him, and his posture gave no indication that he’d been in pain. He must have died relatively recently, since there was still a hint of color in his flesh.

Abraham poked the corpse with his stick, and it wobbled. He grunted. “Still fresh.”

Winter knelt next to it. The eyes were open, staring off to the east. Have they all been looking east? She felt like every body they’d found had been facing them, more or less. Something about the rising sun—

The dead face twitched, eyes blinking once. Winter startled, falling backward. She scrambled on her backside away from the thing, her mind filling with visions of a temple under the Khandarai sands. Corpses rising, their eyes filled with green light, smoke leaking from their mouths...

These eyes weren’t green. They were red, glowing from within. The man’s head wobbled, struggling to face Winter. His lips moved, flesh splitting as they formed silent words.

Winter, the nearly dead man mouthed, and the eyes glowed brighter. Found. You.

Then the lights faded.

“Winter!” Abraham had rushed to her side, stick raised, looking at the corpse. “What happened?”

“Not dead,” Winter said, breathing fast. The sight of those crimson eyes had sent her back to that horrible night in Elysium. “Not...”

“Looks dead now,” Alex said, darkness shrouding her hands as she approached. “Want me to spear him to make sure?”

“He was one of them,” Winter said. “A red-​eye. The Beast.”

“Oh.” Abraham’s voice was very quiet.

There was a crunch as a spear of pure shadow flashed from Alex’s hand, impaling the man’s skull and the tree behind it.

“Just to be sure,” she said.

But Winter knew the damage was already done. She could picture it all too clearly—​in her mind’s eye, hundreds of heads snapped around, hundreds of pairs of glowing red eyes narrowed. Found you.

“It’s the Beast,” she said. “All the bodies. It’s been sending them into the woods to watch for me. Just letting them wait until they freeze.” She forced herself to take a long, slow breath. “It knows we’re here.”

“Balls of the Beast,” Alex swore, then frowned. “I mean, fuck. What now?”