Simon walked outside to find the med version of Kell’s little merary pany that he’d seen to date. It was easy to see what had happehe Butcher’s Bill had certainly lived up to their oday and paid the pribsp;

  Instead of being over a dozen men and women, the little cult of personality was down to 5 members, a horse, and a cart piled with the bodies of the dead. The fact that they were at least bringing their dead home for burial touched him a little, though he worried about the possible biohazard.

  Simon sighed and used a rag to wipe the soot off his fad his hands as best he could. He was soaked i from the work he’d been doing, and he was sure he looked like a wild man, but he really didn’t care.

  Not at first. When he saw that Freya’s hand had a bloody bandage on it, though, well, his flinty heart melted a little. At least, it did until he saw that they’d tied up a zombie and put it in the cart they were lugging with them. That used up most of the sympathy he had right there, but the rest of it died when he looked closer and saw that it was Kell.

  “He’s the ohat bit you, isn’t he?” Simon asked, pointing to the bound zombie that was still squirming on the pile of the dead. It wasn’t really a question, though. He already k was true. “You tried to save a zombie instead of killing one, and now you’re screwed.”

  “I…” Freya said as tears started to tumble silently down her dirty fao matter how angry he was, that was still enough to twist the knife in his soul.

  “We have to save him,” she tinued. “Surely someone knows a way. It’s just a temporary madness. Perhaps a priest could—”

  “That man,” Simon said, pointing at the squirming corpse, “Is not mad. He’s dead, and dead is dead. There is ning him back. All he do is get free, kill other people, and o the same fate.”

  The words were harsh, but he didn’t know what else to say. He knew more about magic than anyone he’d ever known at this point, and though there might be a way t back the dead, he did not yet know it.

  “I told ya,” Garth shouted. “We should put him out of his misery and be doh it. We bring the bodies back to—”

  “You should burn the bodies,” Simon said, looking over the group. In addition to Freya, it looked like the big man in the back, Hodge, had also been bitten. “You should kill the zombie, burn the bodies, and put those who've been bit out of their misery before they start to turn.”

  That caused all of the survivors to start screaming at each other. Some of them even drew bdes as their accusations got louder, but Simon ighem. Garth was a good guy, but he didn’t really care who lived or died in this group. He’d put them down himself if he had to. It would be easy.

  Well, it would be easy for most of them. “Tell me how long ago he bit you,” Simon asked Freya, taking her hand and unraveling the bandage.

  “L-st night,” she said haltingly. “H-he… he tur night. We’d lost half the pany, but then a few hours ter, some of the wouhey…”

  She wasn’t able to get the rest of the story out, but that was fine. He had all the answers he needed. Her bite was already eight hours old, and the skin around the ragged wound was already goiic. It robably too te for her, but it probably wasn’t good enough where Freya was ed.

  Simon studied her pupils, the pallor of her skin, and every other detail he could bring to bear from the years he’d spent as a healer as he tried to figure out what the right answer was here. Experience said that she was fucked, and that she’d only sted this long because the bit was on a limb so far from her heart and her brain. Sce said that something about the way that magic wiped out the virus or the bacteria was inplete. It said that the repse was caused by some reservoir of evil somewhere else in her body that caused it to fre back up.

  It’s not sce, though. He corrected himself. It’s magibsp;

  Was that the problem? Had he been so ed with g the body instead of the soul that he’d used magiake people’s bodies whole while the rot spread on some more etheric level? Not for the first time, he wished he had that sight that let some people see the miasma that was his soul. However, before he could go further down that rabbit hole, there was a cry of arm that derailed his train of thought.

  Hodge has been warding off his oime friends with a bde, but before things could escate further, he fell to the ground and started vulsing. That made the men who had been about to kill him pull ba arm, which was something that Simon might have thought was funny under any other circumstances. Instead of smiling, though, he shouted. “You kill him on the ground now, or you kill him wherying to kill you ihan a mihe choice is yours.”

  That stirred them to a. Instead of standing around trying to figure out what was happening, they started stabbing the maedly, and though most of the blows were iive, eventually, one of them went through the neck, and the dead man stopped twitg.

  “What about her,” Garth asked, “She’s bit tht?”

  “She is,” Simon agreed. “But if you try to kill Freya, you won’t live long enough to wonder how I murdered you.”

  She probably o die. He khat, but he wasn’t going to let a stranger brutalize her like that. For a moment, he thought about using magic to behead her quid . It would have been the kihing to do, but he was too weak for that. Instead, he was going to try to save her. All this work carving runes had given him an idea.

  “Kill the zombie in your cart araveling south,” Simon said finally. “I’ll take care of your friend, one way or the other.”

  “But Frey’s part of the pany,” one of the other men protested; at the same time, Freya said, “No, you ’t kill him!”

  She tried to break away from Simon’s grip, but she was too weak for that now. She didn’t have a lot of time left. It was certainly less than an hour, but it robably less than ten minutes before she was on the ground writhing and spitting as the evil cimed her body.

  “I admire your ses,” Simon said to Garth as he lifted Freya into both of his arms, “But I’m going to try something to save this woman and won't waste any more time talking. Go wait a mile down the road if you like, or follow me and die. The choice is yours.”

  With that, Simon turned and walked back toward the bcksmith shop. He needed his mirror, and then he needed some spao one followed him.

  “What are you going to do to me?” Freya asked softly. She was sweating now.

  “Whatever I ,” Simon said. Part of him khat he should be devoting more time to making her feel at ease, but there was no room for that in his mind. He was already trying to figure out how he could more thhly purge her body of the disease or the curse that was ravaging her. He imagihat would be something like the summoning circle that was used to bind hell but with a few key differences.

  He just needed a sort of spiritual isotion chamber that he could flood with power so that not a single speck of evil could get away to blossom a sed time. He’d ried to save someohis far along, but even if it cost him a few years of life, it would be worth it; he owed her that mubsp;

  Once Simon had his mirror, he headed for a barn not so far from the bcksmithy that had been his home base for a while. “Alright,” he expined. “I o draw something on the ground, and then we’re going to try to do a little magic to save you, okay?”

  “Witchcraft,” she breathed. “Was it you that did this? Did you create the zombies?”

  Simon suppressed the smirk that came with it, remembering the st time he’d dohis level. Instead, he shook his head and said, “I swear that the only thing I’ve ever doo zombies is kill them.”

  “So then yoing to steal my soul?” she asked weakly. Freya, as frightened as she looked, sat where he left her.

  “I’m probably going to give you a pieine,” he said after he whispered a few quiet ands to his mirror and brought up a diagram of the circle iion.

  He quickly discarded all the aspects of summoning or dispt. Instead, he started dragging his heel around in the dirt, scratg iline of a circle. Then, ohat was done, he started roughing in the ruhat would seal the space with the handle of a pitchfork. Once he had all of those added, he started adding the runes freater cure and greater healing. It was only as an afterthought that he added runes for trao the thing.

  It wasn’t a spell he didn’t think he’d ever cast personally again, but it was crucial for the power circuits of these plex circles, and in this case, it would draw power from the surrounding world. That probably included him, of course, but this way, he could share the load with the nearby trees and animals and whatever else, which should blunt the blow.

  “This is magic?” she asked in fusion.

  Simon ighe question. None of this was magic. It reparation, and it was ugly, but only for a moment. He was going as fast as he could, but even as he did so, he wasn’t sure that it was fast enough.

  “Vosden,” he said after a moment of tration, fixing it all in his mind.

  The runes he needed weren’t ugly things scrawled into the dirt. They were crisp, straight things that existed in his mind. Fortunately, he had a way he could carve something like that into the earth fairly quickly.

  Suddenly, all the ugly squiggles he’d made melted into the earth as liraightened and curves meshed more clearly. In seds, all of his ugly preparations had faded. They were repced by something that looked sort of like a crop circle or a particurly plicated piece of graffiti.

  “None of that was magic,” he said with a smile, ign the stri look on the woman’s face. “That’s what we're going to do .”