Simon thought about leaving the pte mail behind under a pile of branches in the woods because of how heavy and bulky it was, but he decided against it and instead loaded it along with the rest of his meager supplies. He might not e back this way, depending on what he found. The st time, Freya had painted him as the vilin, and there was no guarahat this time would be any different, so there could be a lynch mob waiting for him in a few days, or maybe even something worse.

  He would have holy preferred to skip Schwarzenbru the way back. That, however, would have been difficult. It might even be impossible. The entire reason it was an important city was because the rge stone bridge that the town was named for was one of the few good crossing points for quite a ways. He would be crossing there or not at all. Those were all ter problems, though, and right now, he o focus on the now sihe forest was still crawling with the dead in pces.

  Simon wasn’t worried. Fresh zombies could be frighteningly vicious. Older ohat started to dry out and decay, though, you didn’t even have to outrun those. You could just out-walk them. The only reason that he bothered to put them down when he found them was because he knew what a mercy it was.

  Freya had no idea how much she was tormenting the man she loved by tying him down to the cart for half a day instead of putting him immediately out of his misery, but Simon remembered it all too well. He'd never fet it. She could never prehend that hunger and he hoped that she would never have to, despite the fact that with this many lives, tless versions of her had ended up as zombies by now.

  That thought saddened him, but at least this one was saved, probably. It ossible that in a day or two, she could still turn. He khat; he just tried not to think about it. Her remaining friends seemed to have the right amount of wariness. They’d put her down if it came to it, and if they didn’t - well, he could save Schwarzenbruck again. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  The trip to the barrows was easy enough now that he knew about where it was. The only problem was findiively safe pces to sleep at night without someoo stand watch. There were just enough dead wandering around that if he did nothing about it, he was likely to wake up teeth in his throat.

  So, he slept in trees both nights and thankfully, as much as the sound his mule made attracted them, the zombies made no attempt to attack the thing. The same couldn’t be said about the reverse, though. Both ms, Simon woke up to find one or two zombies on the ground with their head or their skulls caved in by a good hard kibsp;

  “Yeah, I’ve been there,” he nodded, remembering the ky dohat had taken him out like that.

  He was very mindful of where he was standing iion to paimals and horses now. Getting killed that way once was a little amusing, but dying like that repeatedly would just be sloppy.

  If I’m going to get killed again, it's going to be by something new, he promised himself. That meant no zombie bites, no donkey kicks, and most certainly, ing crushed to death by the barrow again.

  So, when he found it, he approached it very carefully. First, he checked around outside and on the grassy slope on top.

  There was nothing there, but then, he didn’t expect there to be. So, he tethered Daisy to one of the closest trees a inside for a closer look.

  The pce was very nearly undisturbed, with the exception of the rubble at the entrand deeper in some zombies that had been killed and y strewn around the floor. Other than making sure he didn’t see anything that looked like a magical trap, though, he ignored all of those. He was here for a handful of reasons, and all of them were in the tral chamber.

  There, in the tral sarcophagus, was a single zombie struggling to rip free of the bde that inning him down like a bug. Ohing's head was the ade of folded paper that he’d e for. Still, he knew better than to go take it. He’d already seen this roof colpse twice, and once was already ooo many.

  For now, he ignored both the paper and the zombie and studied the sword before moving to the dles. Someone had stabbed this guy hard enough that it had embedded iohat told Simon that magic was involved, but that was nothing new since he already knew magic was involved with the cave-in.

  The sword in, long sword that was a little on the short side. It was about the same size as the bdes he preferred, but there were no signs that the magic was in the bde. It was just pin steel with a cheap hilt that had seen a fair bit of use.

  That meant someone had cast a spell, using the words for force, earth, or something new he hadn’t yet discovered. If he moved the zombie out of the way, he would definitely get a better idea, but for now, that was bsp;

  Instead, he moved to the dles, and a clumsy circle traced in the ground around them. It was only on a sed look he saw that the circle extended all the way around the tral sarcophagus. It was an ugly, rushed sort of job that Simon would not feel fortable trying, but it seemed to be fairly straightforward based on the way he read the ruhere was nothihere.

  If its boundary was vioted, it used the energy of the person that vioted it ter ah ruhat eled power to the near wall and brought the whole dome down. It was a trolled demolition of a sort. The only plicated part about disarming it was that it was only at the st minute, when he reached for the transfer ruo strike it out, that he realized that if he did it with his hand, it would likely trigger it as he did so.

  Instead, Simon searched the dead warriors that had already been sughtered in life ah, and then when he found a broken spear, he wiped the whole thing out from a distan case he o run for it. The moment was anticlimactid when the runes were obliterated, nothing happened. Leaving him free to explore the rest of the pbsp;

  The first thing he did ut the poor bastard that the tomb beloo out of his misery. All it took was a couple hard bashes against the stoo brain him, aopped moving ond for all. Simon picked up the paper and, noting that the message was identical, pocketed it.

  Sorry, I o borrow this. Maybe we meet again in your life and discuss why. Even taking a moment to sider the words.

  “Well, I’m here, buddy; where in the hell are you?” he murmured to himself as he searched the tomb.

  There wasn’t much here, though. The warlord or King or whoever it was that was buried here had a golden tor his arm and a few golden rings. Simon pocketed those, only feeling a little bad. Call it a put you out of your misery fee, he thought to himself. Grave robbing was wrong, but it was a victimless crime, and he was low on cash. This would be enough to tide him over nicely for what he o do.

  What it didn’t do was offer him any answers. He’d figured out the trap but not who left it or why. He didn’t even know who this dude was or why he was important enough to be buried in a tomb like this.

  Simon sighed. He almost didn’t want to cut this dude in half to look at the sword, and it was only when he rocrastinating about that and studying the leathery, decayed visage of the tomb's oct that he noticed something.

  The rings he’d removed had left marks from where they’d been on this man’s half-mummified skin for decades or turies. The same sort of marks were visible on the man’s head and the wispy remains of his matted hair. It didn’t match the paper that Simon had takeher. Whatever had made it, it was thinner… like a diadem, as opposed to the kier that came to mind when he pictured the word.

  “So it’s what isn’t here, huh?” he said to himself as he realized the shape of the note had been the clue and not its tents. That made him feel pretty stupid.

  “Why didn’t I figure that out the first time,” he asked rhetorically. “Oh, that’s right, I was crushed to death by the ceiling.”

  He still didn’t have an answer, of course, but now, at least, he had a question. Who was this guy, and why would his be worth stealing? That might be enough to point him at whoever had dohis, whi turn might be enough for Simon to figure out who was taunting him. It was a tenuous pn, but it n. There would be libraries or monasteries arouhat would know the answer, and if they didn’t, there would be bards or drunks in taverns that would. He could figure it out, but not today.

  “I didn’t spend all this time w on that armor to bail,” he sighed. Simon used a word of earth on a silver in his pouake a mirror and spent several minutes expining all that he’d learo it just in case something bizarre and awful should happen.

  I o get in the habit of using save points, just in case, he thought to himself with a smile as he walked out into the sunlight to fetch his mule.

  As he left the barrow, he sidered looting or at least searg some of the other ones just in case for clues but decided against it. If the zombie pgue started from this one, and whoever had do hadn’t broken them open as well, then they probably weren’t too important. Besides, he’d had enough of the dead and was heading south. Solved or not, he was doh the pce for a while.