Drake, Gallit and the others reached the ruins south of the field, hid behind a broken stone wall and waited for Resalintas to join them. Drake peered over the top of the wall to watch the battle between him and the flying wizard and cried out in shock when he saw the old priest struck by half a dozen firebolts. He started up to go to his aid, but Gallit pulled him roughly back down. “No, you bloody idiot!” he hissed. “He can take care of himself!”

     Drake nodded in agreement, but watched in helpless agony as the battle progressed and he saw the old priest struggling to deflect one vicious attack after another. Eventually, however, he saw the truth of Gallit's words as Resalintas Holy Word lit up the whole area and struck down the enemy wizard, who was finished off a moment later by a stroke from the priest's sword. He cried out again, however, when he saw the horde of Shadowsoldiers who had gathered to watch give a collective cry of dismay and anger and chase him off to the west. The others watched in breathless silence as his retreat was apparently cut off by a dozen or so who appeared from nowhere in front of him, only to breathe a sigh of relief as he cut his way through them, leaving three writhing on the ground with mortal wounds. They hid low as hundreds of shologs, goblins, humans and buglins ran after the old priest, but after a few minutes things quieted down again and they cautiously emerged to look around.

     There wasn't a single Shadowsoldier in sight. Every one of them in the area had gone after the old priest, their tenuous discipline and organisation evaporating in the excitement of the chase. Drake started going in the direction Resalintas had taken, but Gallit stopped him. "We're going south," he told him. "The Captain's deliberately leading them away to give us a chance, and we've got to take it. We'll stick to our original plan and head for the marshes."

     Drake knew he was right. He knew what Resalintas’s reaction would be if he found out that he'd refused to take advantage of the opportunity he was providing. He could almost feel his anger, and could almost hear the old priest's voice, telling him to get the Hell out of there while he had the chance. Reluctantly, therefore, he turned to the others. "All right. Let's go, quick, before they see us." He looked back one last time, muttering a prayer for his mentor under his breath, and then turned towards the south.

     They crept their way carefully through the city, sometimes having to hide for an hour at a time when they saw Shadowsoldiers or zombies in the area, so that they were still within a couple of miles of the scene of the battle when night fell. They spent the night in the basement of a ruined house, but none of them was able to get a wink of sleep, and they were up and on the move again as soon as what passed as daylight in the Shadow returned.

     About an hour after setting off the grikon returned. It appeared from out of the west, flew over them a couple of times as if making sure of their identities, and settled happily on Pars’s shoulder, exhausted and panting heavily. "Boris!" said the ranger joyfully. "Good to see you, old buddy!" He noticed that it had a note tied to its back and, carefully removing it, opened it out to read it.

     "Message received and understood," he read. "We are returning home immediately. Good luck." He passed it around for the others to read. "Well, that's it then," he said. "Now we're really on our own."

     "At least we knew they're safe," said Gallit. "This is the kind of operation I like best, no-one to worry about but ourselves. No responsibilities, just a long walk home. Don't you just love it?"

     I wish I was as optimistic as he is, thought Drake. This place still terrifies me. He realised with a shock that the reason the others were in such high spirits was that they were still under the influence of the power of Samnos, invoked by the prayers of Resalintas. They wouldn't be for much longer, though. The blessing had to be renewed every day, and now that the old priest was no longer with them, it would soon wear off. What would happen then? Poor Bushel had gone mad with fear even with the blessing, and they had all been close to the edge before he'd invoked it. We've got to get as far away from here as possible before it wears off, he thought. We've got to get as close to the edge of the Shadow as possible. No, that would mean going west, and they'll be waiting for us that way. All right then, we'll just have to get as far away from the city as possible, which means travelling fast. Out in the wide open grasslands, they'll be able to cope with the fear better than they can here. It shouldn't be too bad, anyway. I've had to handle this accursed place with my own willpower, without the help of any blessings, and if I can do it, so can they.

     He said nothing of this to the others, however, merely urging them on to as much speed as was compatible with avoiding and hiding from the few Shadowsoldiers searching this part of the city. They saw fewer and fewer living enemies, however, but more and more zombies, the undead warriors having apparently been detailed to patrol those parts of the city which the spies were thought unlikely to have approached. Fortunately, the zombies were easy to avoid, since they simply walked down the middles of the streets like clockwork toys, in groups of six to a dozen.

     The hideously discoloured sun was just above the western horizon, however, when they got careless and were spotted by a group of eight zombies as they tried to cross one of the last streets on the very edge of the city. They turned and ran down the street away from them, knowing they could easily outrun them, but another group of six appeared from out of a side turning ahead of them, trapping them. Drake threw one of his knives, killing the zombherd in charge of them, but he’d already blown the order to attack on his flute and the zombies shuffled towards them, raising their weapons.

     "Looks like we're going to have to fight after all," grunted Grey, drawing his sword and running his thumb along its edge. "I knew it was too easy."

     They all drew their swords. "We'll rush that group over there," said Gallit. "With a bit of luck we'll be able to destroy them and get away before the other group gets to us. Remember your training. Ignore the head and torso, hack their limbs off."

     The seven of them rushed the second group of zombies, most of them expecting to be able to just hack them down quickly and get away. Gallit, however, who alone of them had fought Zombies before and knew just how tough and dangerous they were, knew that it would be a long, tough battle in which one or more of them could well be killed. As they got close enough to the walking corpses to see their faces, however, they saw something they hadn't noticed before, something that brought a gasp of horror from the normally imperturbable Sergeant and made his four remaining men cry out in outrage and terror.

     They had noticed from a distance that three of the six zombies wore the armour and trappings of Beltharan soldiers, and had assumed that they had died during the last Shadowwar and had been wandering the Shadow ever since. Two of them were, indeed, at least that old, and their flesh had rotted completely away from their bones, leaving just animated skeletons still wearing armour and wielding old, rusty swords. The third, however, was more recent, so recent in fact that the blood that dripped from the gaping wound in its throat was still fresh, and the seven horror stricken Beltharans found themselves staring into the goggle eyed, slack jawed face of their recently deceased companion, Bushel.

     "Bushel!" cried Gallit, frozen in shock. "By the Gods, Bushel, what've they done to you?" Bushel showed no sign of recognition, however, and simply raised his sword high over his head, bringing it down with all his strength towards the place where Gallit's neck met his shoulder. So great was Gallit's shock at meeting the reanimated corpse of one of his own men that he was almost too slow in dodging the blow, and the gleaming Beltharan blade glanced off his metal shoulder guard with a shower of sparks.

     The blow brought him out of his horror induced paralysis, and he was suddenly filled with a blazing fury at what had been done to one of his men, a man for whose safety he'd been responsible. He gave a cry of rage and thrust his sword with such force that it cut straight through Bushel's metal breastplate and half way through his chest. It would have killed a living man instantly, but the zombie hardly seemed to notice and raised its sword for another blow. Gallit tried to withdraw his sword to defend himself, but it was jammed immovably in the breastplate and, cursing himself for ignoring his own advice, he was forced to release it and jump back to avoid being skewered.

     Drake threw him his shortsword, and began fighting with his heavy broadsword as the zombies closed in around them. Gallit's men broke into a berserk fury as they all tried to get the thing that had once been their friend Bushel, thinking to avenge his death by destroying what he had become, but so intent were they upon the one zombie that they forgot the others, with the result that one of the other zombies managed to kill one of them with a thrust under his shoulder guard and into his rib cage. The first the poor man knew of it was when he found that he couldn't breathe and that there was a strange weight hanging from his left side. When he looked around to see what it was, the pain suddenly hit him and he fell to the ground, where the zombie ran him through.

     Gallit, Rivan and Pars each singled out a zombie and, using their greater intelligence and speed of reflexes, cut them to pieces, while Drake's broadsword lopped the heads off two others. The decapitated zombies still tried to fight, but without their heads they couldn't see their opponents and ended up fighting each other. Drake ignored them and made for another zombie that was about to attack Pars from behind.

     Rivan's sword was particularly effective against the zombies due to its great sharpness, and he cursed the creature he was fighting for taking the edge off his weapon as he severed its sword arm and sliced great gaping gashes through its body. It seemed impossible to kill, however, and just kept on coming, reaching out with the black fingernails of its remaining hand in an attempt to gouge his eyes out.

     Eventually, three zombies collapsed to the ground in a mass of chopped and shredded putrescence, and all six of the Beltharans turned their attentions to the other three. Under the combined assault of six swords, the abomination that had so recently been Bushel was hacked apart and destroyed, dying for the second time, but suddenly Rivan screamed in surprise and pain and collapsed with a rusty sword embedded in his back, the weapon thrust so hard by the undead muscle that it had pierced right through his armour. They had forgotten about the original group of zombies, who had crept up behind them to take them by surprise.

     The five survivors turned to meet this new threat and found themselves surrounded by eight zombies. Each of them picked two zombies and fought for dear life, knowing that if they were defeated, not only would they be dead but they would be brought back to a hideous quasi-life as zombies, as poor Bushel had been, to take up arms against their former friends and colleagues. For a moment, Drake wished that Samnos was willing to grant His followers the power to dispel and destroy undead creatures with a mere word or gesture, as some other Gods and Goddesses did, but he immediately chided himself for blasphemy. I must use the gifts that My Lord has given me, he told himself, and He has given me some powerful gifts indeed.

     "My Lord, hear me!" he cried, as he swept his heavy broadsword in a great arc in front of him, driving back the zombies and giving himself a moment's breathing space. "We are in great need of Thy help! Send us Thy strength! Fill us with Thy holy power and Thy spirit! Help us drive away this evil that assails us, so that Law and Righteousness shall triumph! Come to us, My Lord…”

     Samnos responded before Drake had even finished his prayer. The ranger, Gallit and his last two men, Cheston and Grey, felt their fear, horror and revulsion leave them, to be replaced by a burning fury that took full possession of them. They fought with a berserk rage so intense that two zombies were chopped to pieces within seconds and the rest retreated a few steps, seemingly surprised by the change that had come over their opponents even though, being completely mindless, they were incapable of any such emotion.

     The battle went on for several more minutes, at the end of which all the zombies had been destroyed, hacked to tiny pieces. Even so, however, some of the larger parts continued to twitch, the evil forces animating them still active, even though now impotent. A severed hand, the flesh so badly decomposed that the bones showed through the broken skin in several places, crawled slowly towards them like a hideous spider, and a whole arm, severed at the shoulder and still holding a sword, kept bending at the wrist and elbow like a wounded earthworm.

     Drake discovered, to his surprise, that he was quite badly wounded in the shoulder, and bandaged it with a strip of cloth torn from his robes while the others, the berserk fury that had possessed them now departing, sagged in exhaustion and leaned on each other for support. "That's the second time one of you priests has done that to me," said Pars. "I had forgotten how much it wears you out."

     "So that what it was!" grunted Grey, wiping putrescence from his sword with a rag that he then discarded with distaste. "I'd heard that priests of Samnos could do that, but I've never had it done to me before."

     "It had its advantages and disadvantages," said Drake. "You are experiencing one of the disadvantages now."

     "There's no time to talk now," said Gallit. "We must leave before any more of them turn up. None of us are in any condition for another fight just yet."

     "What about Tilus and the Corporal?" asked Cheston. "We can't just leave them here to be turned into Zombies!"

     "No bloody time to lose," insisted Gallit. "We're leaving now."

     "We can't just leave them here!" protested Cheston. "We've got to do something for them! They were my friends, and I'm not leaving them for the wizards!"

     "He's right," agreed Grey. "Wouldn't be right."

     Gallit glared at them, but then nodded, and so while Drake said a prayer for their souls the Sergeant severed the heads of his two fallen men with two powerful blows of his sword, feeling a sick horror at the desecration of his former men but knowing that it was infinitely better than what would happen to them if they left their bodies intact. They then spent one last minute in solemn silence, thinking of the comrades they were leaving behind, before hurrying away.