The Toad's Path was not a place; it was a slow digestion. For three days, Geneviève's vanguard did not see the sky. The marsh reeds, three meters high and sharp as razors, formed a vegetal tunnel that stifled every sound except the splashing of hooves in liquid mud.
There was no silence. There was a constant whisper. "Help us... join us... it's cold out here..." The voices came from the water. Pale, bloated faces floated just below the surface, vanishing when anyone looked directly at them.
The first attack did not come with a war cry, but with a gurgle. They had stopped on a seemingly solid mound of earth to rest the horses. Suddenly, the mud beneath the sergeants' feet exploded. Skeletal hands, still covered in shreds of rusty uniforms from past eras, grabbed the men's ankles. Swamp Zombies. Slow, inexorable, smelling of methane and old meat.
"Wake up!" roared Geneviève. Her sword, Vesper's Light, hissed out of its scabbard. The holy stone in the pommel lit up, flooding the clearing with white light that burned the zombies' retinas. Geneviève was everywhere. She didn't sink in the mud. She leaped from one root to another, her blade tracing arcs of holy fire. She decapitated three zombies with a single spinning slash. She kicked a fourth in the chest, caving in the rotten ribcage with her Gromril boot.
But there were many. Too many. A horse screamed, dragged down into the black water by five corpses biting its belly. A young squire from Bastonne slipped. Before he could scream, muddy water filled his mouth and cold hands pulled him under. He did not resurface.
"Form a circle!" ordered Baldrick the One-Eyed, swinging a spiked mace. "Back to back! Don't look at the water, look at the enemy!"
The clash lasted twenty interminable minutes. In the end, the ground was covered in pieces of inert flesh that no longer moved. But the cost had been paid. Five men were missing. Three horses had been put down because they were lamed or bitten (and a zombie bite infects the wound in minutes).
The following day was worse. There were no more zombies, but there were Dire Wolves. Flayed beasts, made of muscle and bone, running fast through the reeds, striking the rearguard and vanishing into the fog before the archers could nock arrows. They bit the horses' hocks. They tore tendons. The vanguard bled. Not a fatal hemorrhage, but a constant dripping that eroded morale.
Geneviève rode back and forth, not to heal fatal wounds, but to remove "Grave Fever" from those who were scratched. She saw the arrow boy, the one whose fletching she had straightened two days ago. He lay on a makeshift stretcher, face grey. A wolf had torn out his throat during the march. Geneviève stopped. She closed the boy's eyes with her iron-gloved hand. "Your arrow was straight, soldier," she whispered. "Now fly where there is no fog."
Tristan de Quenelles rode beside her, pale as a sheet. He had vomited twice. "They never stop," murmured the young noble. "Why do they never stop?"
"Because they don't get tired, Tristan," replied Geneviève, hard. "They have no hope, so they have no despair. We must be harder than bone."
At sunset on the third day, the vegetation suddenly thinned out. Geneviève signaled to halt. She dismounted Duraz and crawled up a rocky ridge covered in black moss, followed by Baldrick and Tristan.
Before them opened a flooded valley, an artificial lake of stagnant water created by blocking the natural course of the River Grismerie. And in the center was the objective. The Black Sluice Gates (or Dam of Laments). It was a massive, ancient structure, built with cyclopean stone blocks taken from elven ruins, but desecrated with necromantic glyphs glowing with sickly green light. The gates kept the water high, flooding the lands to the north and preventing Tancred's heavy cavalry from advancing. If they destroyed the lifting mechanisms, the water would drain, turning the lake into a traversable mud plain and sweeping away defenses downstream.
But when Geneviève looked closer, her blood froze. It was not an outpost. It was a fortress.
Around the dam, camped in tomb-like silence, were the legions of Mousillon. Not disorganized zombies. She saw regiments of Skeleton Warriors in ordered ranks, with rusty but solid spears and shields. She saw patrols of Grave Guard (Wights), the undead elite, wrapped in tattered cloaks and armed with magical weapons glowing with cold. She saw spectral knights on fleshless horses (Black Knights) motionless as equestrian statues.
Geneviève used her keen sight. She counted the banners. She counted the corpse-fires.
"How many are there?" asked Tristan, voice trembling so much it was barely audible.
Geneviève remained motionless, calculating. "Two thousand skeletal infantry," said the gravel voice, analytical. "Five hundred Grave Guard. At least two hundred heavy cavalry. And I see... war machines." She pointed to catapults made of whalebone and giant tendons positioned on the dam walls.
Baldrick cursed under his breath, a long and creative blasphemy. "There are three of us hundred, Sir Gilles. Minus the dead and wounded, say two hundred and eighty. They are nearly three thousand. And that elite guard... a single Wight is worth ten of our sergeants."
Geneviève stared at the scene. In the center of the dam, on a raised platform, she saw a figure wrapped in a red robe channeling dark energy into a large black crystal. A Necromancer.
It was impossible. A frontal attack would last thirty seconds. A surprise attack was unlikely with all those sentries who never slept.
"We can't fight them," whispered Tristan, backing away. "We must go back. We must tell my uncle the way is closed."
Geneviève turned. The green light of necromancy reflected on her black armor. "If we go back, the main army will bog down and be slaughtered piece by piece," she said. She looked at her men down in the brush. Tired, dirty, scared. Then she looked at the dam again. Three thousand monsters. It was a death sentence. But it was also the only key to open the door to Mousillon.
"We won't fight them all," said Geneviève, and a mad plan began to form in her mind. "We just have to make them angry. We have to make them look at us, and not at the gates."
She gripped the hilt of Vesper's Light. "Baldrick, take all the skins of oil we have. Tristan, ready the archers. Tonight no one sleeps. Tonight we ring the dinner bell for the dead."