Sea of Death: Blade of the Flame - Book 3 by Tim Waggoner Read Free Book Online Page B

settled.”
    Kirai wasn’t what most humans would deem beautiful. She wastall, lanky instead of thin, small-breasted, with bony elbows, knobby knees, and overlarge hands. Her face was plain, but when she smiled her green eyes shone, and she had full lips that Ghaji never got tired of looking at.
    “I drink a dose every morning without fail,” he said. “That’s why I finally stopped throwing up every time I guard you.”
    “Are you saying that I induce vomiting?”
    Ghaji felt suddenly flustered. “No! I meant—” He broke off when he saw Kirai grin. “Very funny.”
    Kirai continued smearing the greasy unguent on the zombie’s leathery brown flesh. The undead creature remained completely motionless, displaying no sign that it was even aware of Kirai’s ministrations, let alone that it felt them.
    “You know I have to do this, Ghaji. Stink or no stink.”
    Ghaji understood quite well. He just enjoyed hearing Kirai talk – and not only because their conversations helped keep his mind off his roiling stomach. He enjoyed the sound of her voice and the way she laughed when she teased him.
    Karrnathi zombies were more durable than ordinary undead because of the alchemical treatments they received. Those treatments not only prevented further decay, they kept the zombies functioning physically, though the undead warriors didn’t move as swiftly as their living counterparts. But the zombies more than made up for their slowness in durability and savagery, as Ghaji had witnessed numerous times in battle since he’d signed on with the Karrnathi army.
    But the harsh conditions on the Talenta Plains took a great toll on the zombies, further drying their already leathery skin and tightening their muscles and tendons. Because of this, they required almost daily alchemical treatments to continue functioning. That was one important advantage warforged had over zombies, Ghaji thought. The artificial constructs could operate in any environment—not to mention their scent was far more tolerable. They smelled of stone, metal, and wood … natural things. Zombies smelled like death. No, worse than that, for death was a natural part of the cycle of existence, but there was nothing natural about raised corpses. They stank of
un
death, and to an orc—even a half-orc like Ghaji—there could be nothing more unnatural.
    Though no one had ever come out and said so to his face, Ghaji knew he’d been assigned to this unit not only because he was a mercenary, but because he was half-orc. Who better to work with zombies than a half-blood like him? That way true Karrnathi soldiers
—human
soldiers—would be freed up for more important and less odious duties. Ghaji told himself that he was a mercenary, and a job was a job, even if it did literally stink at times. But this assignment had its positive side: he’d gotten to know Kirai well during their time working together. She was quite talkative, and he’d learned a great deal about her—more than he’d ever learned about any human, as a matter of fact. At first he’d been annoyed by how chatty she was, but he’d soon come to appreciate their often one-sided conversations and, in a strange way, to even need them.
    The other soldiers, about a dozen in all, remained inside the stone tower that lay several hundred yards to northwest—upwind of where Ghaji and Kirai worked. Because of their stench, the zombies were permitted no closer to the Karrnathi outpost, and while Ghaji couldn’t blame the humans, tending to the maintenance of the undead would’ve been marginally less unpleasant if they could’ve done it in the shade provided by the tower’s shadow. Instead Kirai and he had to stand out here in full sunlight, rivulets of sweat pouring off of them.
    A faint scuttling sound came to Ghaji’s ears from off in the distance, and he drew his war-axe.
    “Halfling riders,” he warned Kirai. Without waiting for the alchemist to respond, Ghaji whirled about to face the direction he