Chapter 102

Heketi was in her private hut, the privilege of leadership, behind the egg hut where the young of the tribe were held. Survivors who fled the undead were starting to return, retrieved by fast hoppers who shouted their victory over the undead for all the wetlands to hear.

They would trickle in, weary and hungry, over the course of hours yet, but Heketi focused on the matter at hand. With most of the chiefs dead, she still had to take stock of the situation as a whole.

"So how bad was it?" She asked in the bluntest possible terms, the water around her rippled, her body shook with the aftermath of battle still leaving its mark on her. The same was true of the other frogmen who sat arrayed in front of her.

Ripples of water from post-battle shivering drew no comment, not even from the hardest of the surviving frogmen. The malice and hatred of the undead could shake even the bravest to their core.

"Five thousand." The answer came, and disbelieving relief filled her body. "Five thousand dead?" She asked, it was a brutal loss. 'We've never suffered losses like that… but it's survivable.'

The frogman's throat bulged out with deep, gasping breaths, "No, my Queen. Five thousand remaining. Our dead… I counted a thousand at least fifteen times… and that is our fighting force. Thousands more among the tribes are missing elders, and we can't know how many might have been lost to monsters when evacuating…"

Heketi barely heard him, the words were an echo in her mind, her shaking intensified, nor was she alone, if anyone was saying anything, nobody heard it. The final cost of fending off the dead… 'How can so many die in one fight…? It just doesn't seem possible. Will the spirit realm ever glut itself enough!'

"How many eggs do we have… between all tribes?" She asked another young advisor.

"Not that many…" He admitted.

"How many fertile females do we have?" Heketi asked another pertinent question, suddenly every female of their race became more valuable than food.

"Across all tribes, before this fight we had five thousand, after, we think there are two thousand, but we haven't divided the count between male and female yet." The advisor explained.

"Withdraw all females from the fighting, we will add any older males to the numbers. For our attack on the lizardmen, if we wipe them out, then we have years to recoup our losses and a whole lake to spread out over." She gave the order, and there was a decisive and hopeful nod, but pursed, tight lips.

'Do they blame me? No, probably not, we won after all.' Heketi told herself, even while she put the blame on her own shoulders.

"How many wounded?" Heketi asked.

"There are two thousand wounded who have yet to be attended to, they have mostly belly wounds, though they have been packed with pain killing moss and all injuries temporarily treated. The casters need all day to replenish their supply. I took the liberty of asking and they say they can heal one thousand in a week. More if we acquire healing potions." The advisor stated.

"So two weeks… will they survive that long with those wounds?" She asked, 'Every life is suddenly far more valuable…' She thought, knowing full well that hundreds more could die of their wounds before all was said and done no matter the best efforts of her healers.

"Most, yes. A few hundred may die and some show evidence of rot beginning. We will amputate, cauterize, and otherwise stave off death as long as we can to allow the healers time to work… but I fear some of them are so scarred mentally, that they will never fight again." The advisor said as truthfully as he could, and all their eyes went down to the waters around themselves.

"It's bad enough that we must use fire…?" Heketi shuddered, nor was she alone in that.

"It is, my Queen. It is. Fire or death…" Silence followed the answer.

"How could this have happened… how? So many undead, I've never seen anything like it…" A frogman asked.

Heketi had an answer to that at least.

"They were dressed like knights of the Baharuth Empire, so I am sure they're the dead of the battle they lost some weeks ago, but the important question is how they came here, who sent them… and why? Baharuth doesn't practice the abominable art of necromancy… So who does?" Heketi asked the true question and nobody answered.

"How soon can we be ready to move on the lizardmen? We can't wait for them to starve now, our numbers are too close to even, they may be mere animals but they are brave animals, and they have great treasures to help any fight they might be able to muster up." Heketi asked the next most important question, and the frogmen looked around at one another with uncertain eyes.

"My Queen… the warriors are exhausted, even if we rest all day and all night… their fighting spirits need time to mend, we need to recover, they need to recover. Can we let them rest for a week, it will do them good to see another thousand swell their ranks?" One of the six asked, one could even say they 'begged', but Heketi shook her head.

"No, we can't, there is simply no way we can let the lizardmen have a week to operate freely, maybe they turn on each other and hide in their last stronghold, maybe they eat away at their remaining reserves, but maybe they go bold when we go this long without striking at them. Maybe they find we've abandoned the other places, maybe they realize we are weakened. And if they see our numbers have dwindled, assuming they don't already know… then what?" Heketi pressed the point home.

The weight of her argument stilled their tongues, they looked up at their towering Queen and sought a counter to her words, but found none. The same frogman spoke again, "If we allow for the minimum amount of rest, we can attack tomorrow morning if we allow for the remainder of the day to rest and a full night's sleep with good meals as well."

"Then we will do that, set the non-combatants to all essential tasks, including the females we aren't sending back to the fight, the warriors we are keeping will rest for the remainder of the day, feast to the dead tonight, and tomorrow we will wipe out the lizardmen, any slaves we take, we can no longer keep, we are too few, we will sell them to the empire or slaughter them after they surrender. Let them die here, or far away from home, but we cannot share any part of this lake with the two legged animals anymore. The ones guarding the captives that we were going to work to death… send a swimmer to retrieve them. We need everyone capable of bearing a spear to be ready for tomorrow."

"At once, my Queen." The frogman stood and ran to have her orders carried out.

Smaller matters began to occupy her attention for a time, and for at least one hour, it was as if all was normal and a disaster of unparalleled size and scale had not taken place.

Until the screaming began afresh.