Rega leaned back in his carved chair, fingers steepled, his gaze fixed on a point beyond his Commander. Vihan, had been speaking for the better part of an hour, his voice a low drone recounting the latest series of setbacks on the northern border. Each word seemed to add another layer to the oppressive weight in the room.
"…and the trade delegation from Dakara refuses to proceed, my King," Vihan was saying, his tone carefully neutral, though the slump of his shoulders betrayed his discouragement. "They cited 'unholy abominations' near the Blackwood pass. Apparently, a single well-aimed fire arrow from a nervous guard caused an entire… unit… to ignite like kindling."
Rega's mind, already sifting through the tedious list of Vihan's reported failures, drifted to Njiru. Ah, Njiru, his ambitious Master Necromancer, and his much-vaunted army of the undead. A faint, humorless smile touched Rega's lips. What grand pronouncements Njiru had made – an unstoppable legion, impervious to fear and pain, the ultimate weapon to solidify Rega's dominion over Liptus and its fractious territories. The reality, Rega mused, had been far less glorious.
His undead soldiers, it turned out, were indeed impervious to fear, but spectacularly vulnerable to almost everything else. They were initially an impressive terror tactic against superstitious peasants or soldiers, yes, but laughably ineffective against anyone who knew even the most rudimentary fire or holy spells. A child with a blessed slingshot or a farmer with a pitchfork and a torch could, and often did, reduce Njiru's 'invincible' warriors to piles of smoldering bones or sanctified dust. Rega recalled early reports with a grimace – entire platoons of the dead dissolving under a single cleric's chanted prayer, or scattering in flaming disarray when confronted by a determined village militia brandishing burning branches. The cost in resources to raise them, only to see them so easily dispatched, had been galling.
A waste of perfectly good corpses, Rega had initially thought. But he was nothing if not pragmatic. If they couldn't fight, perhaps they could work. And so, Njiru's necromantic efforts, and the tireless bodies they produced, were now primarily used to bolster the kingdom's labor force. The undead were currently 'serving' in the iron mines of the Dragon's Tooth mountains and felling ancient trees in the vast, untamed Whisperwood. No need for food, or rest, or wages. No complaints about the crushing darkness or the back-breaking labor. In that, at least, they were proving their worth, outperforming any living worker in sheer, unceasing output.
He had even, in a moment of what he now considered naive optimism, attempted to deploy them in the expansive farmlands along the Serene River. The reaction had been… predictable. The people of Liptus, while grudgingly tolerating the dead toiling deep beneath the earth or in distant, unpopulated forests, drew the line at skeletal hands harvesting their yams or withered fingers tending their cassava. Whispers of tainted crops and blighted earth had quickly escalated to furious delegations at the palace gates, to burning effigies of 'the Bone King' – him – and thinly veiled threats of open revolt from the powerful farming guilds. Having the undead touch their food, it seemed, was an offense even his most loyal subjects could not stomach. Riots would have been an understatement.
So, mining and logging it was. Njiru's once-feared undead legion, Rega reflected as Vihan finally wound down his dismal report, were far more useful to him as tireless, mindless workers than they ever had been as soldiers. He wondered idly if Njiru felt the sting of that irony, his grand creations reduced to little more than ase animated tools. Probably not. The necromancer was too engrossed in his dark arts, too convinced of his own indispensable power. And perhaps, Rega conceded, he was indispensable, in his own peculiar way. The mines had never been so productive.
He waved a dismissive hand, cutting off Vihan's concluding remarks. "Enough, Vihan. The undead will continue their… civic duties. Send word to the Dakara delegation that the Blackwood pass will be cleared by living patrols. And double the guard on the grain shipments. The living, at least, have the sense to fear fire."