Darion walked over to the Bogoart's corpse and looked it over for a moment before attempting to lift it.
It was enormous up close. Even dead, drained of whatever energy had made it so terrifying thirty seconds ago, it was a dense and heavy thing, all muscle and bone and thick hide that had taken two solid strikes to get through.
He had wanted the undead to carry it, but one look told him that wasn't happening. The Decaying Tier skeleton had a strength stat of 10. This creature weighed considerably more than what a strength of 10 could manage.
That left Darion.
He got underneath it, found a grip, and hauled.
It took considerable effort, more than he wanted to admit, but he got it up and across his shoulders, staggering slightly under the weight before steadying himself. He carried it to where the horse was tied, then spent an awkward several minutes wrestling the carcass up onto the animal's back. The horse protested with its body language but held still.
Darion climbed up after it, settled himself, and cut the rope tying the horse to the branch with one stroke of the sword.
He looked at the remaining undead.
"Walk ahead of me," he said quietly. "Scout the path. Wave if anything moves."
The skeleton moved forward without response, taking position in front of the horse, and the journey back began.
Darion kept his eyes moving as they went. His instinct said the Bogoarts ranged deeper into the forest, the area where he had made the kill was further in, and creatures like that likely didn't linger near the edges close to human settlement. But instinct wasn't certainty, and the dying roar of the Bogoart had been loud enough to carry. He wasn't going to relax until he could see the tree line thinning ahead of him.
Before they reached the edge of the forest, he quietly willed the undead back into his inventory. No point arriving in Percvale with a skeleton walking in front of his horse.
——
Back at the barracks, the lanky knight was leaning against the wall outside the knights' quarters, talking with a small group who had nothing better to do than wait.
"I swear to the gods he's not coming back," he said, picking at his fingers with the casualness of someone stating the weather. "Not alive anyway."
"I don't even know what gave him the idea in the first place," another knight said, arms folded.
"I'll tell you what gave him the idea," a third said, lowering his voice slightly. "He thought we were all going with him. That was the original plan, rally the knights, go together, make something happen. When we all said no, he couldn't back down without looking weak. So he went alone."
A silence followed that, a seemingly agreeing one.
Then a knight who had clearly once been heavyset — he had this kind of frame that told you he had been well-fed at some point in his life, now made strange and loose by months of hunger — pushed himself up from where he had been sitting on the ground.
"Let's place a bet," he announced.
Several heads turned.
"A bet?" someone said.
"Yes," Hojj replied, carrying some sort of energy of a man who had just found the most interesting thing to happen all week. "Who thinks the new Baron comes back alive?"
The knights exchanged glances. A few laughed, not unkindly, but because it sounded impossible.
"That's not really a bet, Hojj," one of them said. "A bet needs two sides. You can't bet on something everyone agrees on."
"Exactly my point," Hojj said, spreading his hands. "So, anyone disagree? Anyone think he survives?"
There was Silence.
He held his hands out, inviting objection, looking around the group slowly.
Then a lanky knight stood up with a shrug.
"Eh. I think he might come back. Not with a Bogoart, that part was never happening, but back. Half dead, maybe. Limping. But back."
Hojj's face lit up immediately.
"So you're taking the alive side?"
"I'm saying he's too stubborn to die on his first day," the lanky knight said. "Call that what you want."
Hojj grinned and reached into the small pouch at his belt, producing a single iron coin, dull looking and worn thin from handling, but an iron coin nonetheless, which in Percvale's current state was worth more than it had any right to be.
"One iron," he said. "Against your word that he comes back breathing."
The lanky knight looked at the coin for a moment, then reached into his own pocket and produced a small whetstone: the good kind, fine-grained, the kind a knight used to keep an edge worth keeping.
In a barony where equipment was rotting and replacements weren't coming, a whetstone like that was genuinely valuable.
"Against your iron," he said, setting it down.
They shook on it.
The rest of the group settled back into waiting, the conversation drifting into smaller threads: complaints about hunger, speculation about where the Baron's body would eventually be found, and just talks of starving knights. The bet had given them something, at least. A small stake in the outcome. Something to watch for.
They didn't have to wait long.
A knight came sprinting around the corner from the direction of the well outside the barracks, nearly losing his footing on the dry ground, water sloshing from the bucket still somehow in his hand.
"He's back!" the man shouted, loud enough to turn every head in the vicinity. "The Baron, he's back, he just rode through the gate, and he's got a Bogoart on the horse with him!"
Nobody moved for a full second.
Then someone said, very quietly: "What?"
"A Bogoart," the knight repeated, breathless. "A dead one. On his horse. He just rode in."
"Impossible," said three voices, more or less at the same time.
Then they were all moving.
The knights poured out of the barracks and into the street, and the sight that met them stopped several of them mid-step.
Darion, on horseback, riding through the streets of Percvale at an easy pace. Draped across the horse in front of him, unmistakably, was the carcass of a Bogoart, enormous even in death, the serpentine tail hanging down one side of the animal nearly to the ground.
He looked completely unbothered.
The commoners of Percvale had already started gathering along the sides of the street, drawn out by the returning horse and whatever word had traveled ahead of it. They stared. Then the murmuring started, low at first, then louder, building into something that wasn't quite disbelief and wasn't quite celebration but sat somewhere between the two.
'He actually killed a Bogart alone? And he's back alive?!'
'Unbelievable!'
Then someone started chanting his name. Then another. Then more, until it was a proper sound rising from the crowd lining the street.
Darion raised a hand and waved.
"More will come for you all!" he called out, loud enough to carry down the street.
Hojj stood at the front of the gathered knights, staring at the Bogoart's carcass as the horse drew level with them.
Then he turned slowly to the lanky knight standing beside him.
The lanky knight held out his hand, palm up, without saying a word.
Hojj dropped the iron coin into it.