* * *
North of the Tree, Harold Brown reached his brothers. Thomas stood rigidly, his black coat trailing down like long feathers. Richard crouched, half-wolf and half-man.
Harold nodded and hitched his decaying fingers into the pocket of his apron. ’Ello Thomas. Richard.
“’Erro Harold,” said Richard, though the wolf’s mouth.
“’Ello Harold,” said Thomas.
What’s the citation? asked Harold.
“We’re waiting for your boys to clear us a path through them dogs,” said Thomas.
’Ere, you’ve done sommit to your hair.
Thomas touched the long, dark locks. “D’you like it?”
Harold shrugged his shoulders. Part of one dropped off. Our mum wouldn’t. Since he’d first talked of leaving the farm, Harold had put up with a lot from his brothers. It felt good to judge instead of get judged for once.
“She never did like you, with all your wacky ideas,” Richard told Thomas. “Sheep, hmfph!”
“My Barbaras did very well,” said Thomas. “Much better’n your cows, if I remember every fair since we were twenty.”
“Except that one—”
“Yes, all right, when we was thirty-four your ladies came second and my Barbaras came third. But the rest of the time…”
He trailed off. A few feet away, the humans, zombies, wolves, and vampires bickered. Harold knew where every one of his zombies was, could see through their cloudy eyes and feel their longing for brains, and it made him hungry. That Mainlander had been a darn good meal, the best he’d come across – so much experience, so much knowledge, so many rich thoughts… so much promise. So much better than the dull lives of the Archians he’d eaten. They had such small lives compared to what was out there: the wide world, ripe and ready for harvest.
And Harold could feel, just beneath his rotting flesh, the promise of the Tree. The need for him and his brothers to each touch their side of the rock and be taken inside it, and to come back out one creature. Perfect. Unstoppable.
But first they needed to get these humans out of the way. The Mainlanders were doing well, given the opposition. The wolves and vampires were harder for Harold to track via the horde, both because they darted around more and because they weren’t food, so Harold’s zombies had no interest in them.
Is this going to take long, d’you think? asked Harold.
“Why?” asked Richard.
Them humans are making my stomach growl.
The Three Brothers watched the three Mainlanders.
“One each,” said Richard. “Seems almost… destinied.”
“Adonis said we were to wait here,” Thomas said in a tone that suggested being given orders was beneath them, let alone actually following those orders. Harold suspected that, once the dust had settled, his eldest brother would have fun putting Adonis in his place.
Rules are for the living, said Harold, starting toward the humans. He heard Richard stomp along on his right and Thomas move soundlessly on his left.
A single sneer spread across three faces and the Brothers Brown joined the fight.