Swords & Heroes Story #16

The Necroman by Adam Parker

Jan 07, 2025

S&S One Story at a Time

Although there are no swords in “The Necroman” there is definitely sorcery - and of the most nefarious kind! I was gripped by Adam’s story from the opening sentence: “That night, against her wishes, he brought his wife’s body to the Necroman.” Now if that doesn’t light your eldritch fires, you may be reading the wrong zine! So without further ado, let’s jump into the first Swords & Heroes adventure of 2025. Happy New Year and happy reading! + Ed.

The Necroman by Adam Parker

That night, against her wishes, he brought his wife’s body to the Necroman.

Even as she drew her last rasping breath, Grold had decided to go through with his plan. When she’d finally breathed her last, he made no apologies and quickly did what he intended.

He crossed the plaza at midnight. The clack of his handcart’s wheels on cobblestones and the soft clink of the potted jars covering her body were the only sounds heard. Leaving the vill, the shadow of a sentry crossed the rampart, up on the hilltop spire, but took no notice of him. At the crossroads, beyond the sight of any guard, he lit his lantern and took the cart path through the fen and into the woodlands.

It was just a short distance, but he held his breath, rehearsing his excuses. If he met a guard on patrol, they would certainly take him for a poacher and search his cart. He had a ready answer. Perhaps they would believe he was taking the body to his old family farmstead, down in the lowlands. It was still their custom to bury family members beneath the floorboards of their homes.

He dimmed his lamp. He held it low, weighing the risks. Then pressed on.

As Grold rounded a deep tangle of trees, all ambient light was swallowed by the dim. Continuing on until the woods thinned, he made it, at last, to a crevasse fissuring the landscape, an unnatural feature that sent shivers down his spine. Cliff fragments cracked away and dropped sheer to the checkered fields of the valley below.

He hid the cart behind the stump of a fallen tree. Carefully moving the pots aside, he took the wrapped body from the cart and carried it down the steep winding trail.

Huffing from the descent, he took the goblin-faced brass knocker and struck it thrice. After some time, just as he was about to go, the door flashed blue then swayed open soundlessly.

He was greeted by the faces of the Necroman’s assistants, both dressed in red robes. The eldest he recognized from the time of the insurrection, before he had switched allegiances. She seemed to have lost all the bulk that he had gained in the intervening years. But her countenance remained the same, as well as that certain fetid aroma that was her signature. Degrid the Putrid gave him a gum-lined grin and bid him inside. The younger acolyte stepped back courteously as he entered. He recalled her from market day gossip. Movis Mortis was as disarmingly attractive as his neighbors had said.

After the formalities, Grold was led down stone carved steps that were expertly laid with a skill lost to millennia. They entered a highly vaulted chamber that served as a laboratory. Movis hurried back up the stairs while Degrid led him to an altar where he laid his wife’s body down.

An infinite series of moments later, the maiden returned. Idzbin the Necroman followed directly behind her, drifting in his black and silver spangled robe, head held supremely high. As he pulled back his hood, the arrow of his chin whiskers seemed to point right at his guest. Yet those blank, incurious eyes met Grold from behind a face strangely younger than his reputation told. The maiden and the crone unwrapped the blanket covering the dead woman.

A quick observation concluded that yes, it could be done. Then there was the look, and both knew there would be a steep price to pay. The Necroman put one hand on his shoulder and whispered the price in his ear. After a sullen nodded approval, Degrid led him out, unsealing the door again with a certain motion of her hand. It flashed blue and opened silently.

~*~

He left his cart, his potted jars, and hurried back home. There, he took up the large axe that hung above his mantle. Her name was Lament, as fine an instrument as had ever been made. Grold still kept her half-moon blade sharp enough to fillet a fly. He also took with him a precious gemstone, the last of his family’s wealth. He was back in the Necroman’s cave before dawn, hiding the axe beneath the potted jars if need arose.

The preparation had begun. As the Necroman worked at attaching a series of tubes to his wife’s back, Movis and Degrid bade him leave the room. He insisted to the two acolytes that he wanted to be there, had to be there, when they brought her back. When denied, he’d simply barged into the laboratory. The Necroman continued his work, indifferent.

They let him be. Grold studied the process but could not make sense of it. His eyes wandered around the room filled with anxiety, and with curiosity. He focused on his beloved. As the process continued, the Necroman took up an antique book and began to read aloud. The language that the Necroman chanted made his hair stand on end. The words were unearthly.

His wife’s body lay naked, pierced a hundred times. Metal and glass bled fluids in and out of her. He wanted to scream, to bellow from his deepest being. Then, the last of the incantation echoed through the stony room. The Necroman turned to him, palm out. Grold placed the green amulet in it. The favour had not been easy to part with. He hated admitting it to himself.

Then fatigue washed over him. He joined the maiden at a table in the corner. The Necroman fastened the amulet around his wife’s neck and continued chanting from the old tome. Looking around, he wondered where the old crone, Degrid, had gone. But sleep soon overtook him, the uncanny voice now lulling him away and he passed out, head in hands.

The dream he had right before waking seemed to be of a race between a group of chickens and a dragon. The more he rooted and wished for the chickens to win, the more of them the dragon ate. They flew, as one, but did not get…where? It was all forgotten in the next instant, and, waking, he was met by the familiar smiling face of his loving wife.

She swayed a little, and he rose to hold her in his arms. She stood firm. Behind her, Idzbin the Necroman, crossed his arms proudly, the faintest smile appeared gratifyingly under his neatly twirled set of moustaches.

The maiden, Movis, appeared. Her eyes were red and puffy now, Grold noticed, as she led them out. He thought better than to ask. Once up the hill, he set his wife in the back of the handcart. It was almost early morning now, and he brought her home safely, no guards in sight.

~*~

They both spent most of the day sleeping. Not one word was spoken between them, yet sometimes they would smile and gaze into each other’s eyes. His wife—Rhiel—she’d had a way of looking up at him. With hope. That light was no longer there. It was obvious that something was off. That was to be expected, he supposed. But what was wrong exactly, there seemed no way to tell.

After a few days, he got Rhiel to speak again by telling stories of their son. From before the war. But she only told him to be quiet. The flames that leapt into her eyes were enough for him to listen. She always did blame him for the boy’s death, he knew, even if she had never said it aloud.

Then, one night at the grog hall, as the season was cooling, the bald blacksmith who had recommended the Necroman to Grold arrived with long scratch marks down the side of his face. He got a lot of comments about the scratches but made no replies. Grold confided to him, drunkenly, about his wife’s ‘lingering illness.’ Before leaving, the bald man made a quick comment for Grold to keep an eye on his wife.

This warning sunk slowly into his head, prickling in, only slightly at first, but then saturating his mind, like his wife’s condition, until it permeated his entire being.

In the coming days, he would flinch at her chopping vegetables for their stew. Or, when washing, if she plunged her clothes into the tub with too much thrust. But then she would put her small hands in his or stroke his mange of hair and all would be well.

Except for the smell. Like something rancid inside, the stench expressed outward from her skin and hair.

Then one day, she laughed again, at a goose chasing a child down the lane. The laugh, he was certain, was not hers.

That night, as the moon shone at its brightest, he was awakened by a sound outside his house. His wife was gone from the bed, and he got up to peer through the shutters.

She was in the front courtyard bent over something. She turned and it was clear in the moonlight, she was eating a goose, alive, tearing chunks from the wings and legs, choking the noise from its throat. It thrashed, then kicked, then quit with one last jolt. She opened the body, tearing, to get at the organs inside. They oozed onto the cobblestones.

The sky opened too, and it started to rain.

~*~

The next day, he went to speak with Idzbin the Necroman. He was led inside by Movis and shown to another chamber, a cozier room used as a study. He explained how differently his wife had acted the night before. The Necroman chided him. Change was to be expected. The pressure endured along the voyage to the Other Side and back was no small matter.

When Grold mentioned the strange laugh she now possessed, even imitating it, the Necroman’s interest perked up. He ordered Grold to repeat the laugh again. He cackled as best he could. With that, the Necroman insisted on accompanying him back to his house.

With what seemed to be a test, or a summoning, the Necroman drilled his wife in that strange language from the antique book. She could not withstand it, seemed to shrink at the sound, unable to make eye contact. Finally, she answered back in the same tongue. With that, the Necroman took her wrist and started to lead her out. She pulled back, resisting.

Grold grabbed the Necroman by the arm, twisted him off his wife, and threw him to the ground. There, the Necroman reached into a pouch tied about his belt and retrieved a vial. It was broken. Grold leapt towards Lament, now back upon the mantle. Before he could return with a swing, the Necroman vocalized gutturally. A vile curse. He pressed a green glowing hand to the floor. Then, rising agilely, he grimaced before disappearing in a cloud of black smoke.

The mighty chop of the axe blew right through the disappearing haze. Choking and coughing, Grold and his wife made it outside. The street was deserted. The air swiftly cleared and they returned inside.

They took a seat opposite each other, Grold still holding his blade. A heavy silence filled the room. There was no relief when, as he began to speak, a definite scraping began emanating from the floorboards. The sound soon escalated to a harsh banging.

One board cracked, then burst back powerfully, then another. And another. Grold leapt to his feet with the axe. Approaching in a crouched position, he glanced movement in the hole. He heard a soft chittering. He gasped.

The corpse of his son punched through the final chunks of wood and emerged, worm eaten and rotten, but recognizable in his old soldier’s outfit. The mark of the noose was still burned into his neck. Enchanted with unnatural strength, the mindless zombie of the boy rushed towards his mother and wrung his bone-protruding fingers around her neck.

Grold buried the blade in the boy’s head unflinchingly. But it did nothing. He brought it down again, cleaving the head off, but the hands kept pressing on, strong and relentless. Grold dropped the axe and tore his son’s fingers loose, snapping them one by one. In desperation, he wrenched the arms free of their sockets.

The torso dropped to the floor then, legs kicking aimlessly. The arms flexed, hands grasping. His son’s face made the automatic action of chewing, or perhaps, he thought, it was trying to make words. Slowly, the animating power faded. Still, Grold took his axe and chopped the body into a thousand pieces.

He fed them into the wood stove as his wife rubbed an ointment on her bruising neck, both toiling mindlessly. Their shock at what had just occurred rang soundlessly in the room.

~*~

After that, they left the vill, passing through the fen, then on towards the forest.

At the crossroads, his wife broke down, pleading for them to turn back. Axe in hand, Grold insisted he must proceed to the cave and finish off the sorcerer. She vowed to follow him, even if he told her no. They walked side by side on the dark path; before long they were at the crevasse, facing the spindly trail down the hill.

Before they could descend, they were set upon.

They could only hear it at first, a screeching in the air, like the angry voice of a wind spirit. Rhiel was struck to the ground, then Grold. All that could be seen above the moonlit pasture was a speeding, streaking of black nothingness—a void that sometimes coalesced in the corner of their eyes…with horns that charged. And hit hard, catapulting him upward.

There was a sickening moment, suspended in the air, before Grold could perceive the force of gravity. His landing was a miracle. But, as he regained his footing, another blow struck him down again.

He wondered, quickly shaking the thought from his head, if this was the same force that had so legendarily split the landscape during the war, creating the unnatural crevasse before them. If so, how could he think to survive against so great a threat as that which brought down the legendary Kingdom of Mabash?

The wife rose and called out to the nothingness in that dead language. Immediately, that space of black void melted into the forest, disappearing from sight.

They once again started down the hill. At the cave, upon a motion from his wife’s hand, the door unsealed for them with a flash of blue. Realization struck. The woman beside him was not his wife. The unwelcome odor, her unearthly words. Still, he followed her inside.

They found the Necroman in his laboratory. He had Movis Mortis strapped down upon the altar. She was frantically squirming in her bindings. Seeing them, Idzbin halted his chant, thoroughly surprised. He restarted the ritual, chanting louder. The flames flickered threateningly in their sconces.

Acting before the shadow-beast from the void could reappear, Grold hurled his axe at the Necroman. It landed square in his chest, toppling him to the ground. He rushed toward the sorcerer.

The Necroman—lying on his back, eyes closed, hands clasped over the green amulet—chanted one last spell. The sorcerer opened his eyes and baring his teeth finished the last few guttural phrases.

Grold pulled his blade from the Necroman’s chest, raised it high and chopped his head clean off. The head began to laugh. He raised Lament once more and cleaved it in half. The laughter echoed off until the doorway to the laboratory filled with shadows.

As the fringes of the room grew dim, the heat withdrew. Grold’s breath misted. Then something was upon his wife, appearing as a ripple, like a field’s horizon on a hot summer’s day. It drew from her directly. Before Grold could take two steps, she was falling. Her skin turned cold blue as she collapsed to the floor.

He reached for his wife, but all that remained was a disappearing puff of smoke.

Movis cried out. Grold strode to the altar and chopped at the rope, freeing her swiftly. She thanked him through tears. He found her red robe and she lifted it on. When she was covered, the young woman knelt by the sorcerer’s body. From his detached and bifurcated head, she took the green jeweled amulet. Payment for service was only fair, Grold supposed.

Ascending the hill above the cave, he held his axe bravely in hand. Yet he felt its futility. The road and all the land about it, he knew, conspired against him. They walked steadily homeward.

Movis talked in nerve-wracked snippets. In explanation. In appeasement. On and on. How she had gotten tired of it all. How Idzbin would not let her go. About it all being a way for them both to escape. Her and Degrid. Together.

But the crone had remained with Grold. For some reason. And the Necroman said he needed her essence. Her energy, her fire. That she would now live on in him. As others had lived on.

Had she lost her chance at immortality?

He remained silent, knowing it was not him she addressed.

They made it up the hill and she was finally quiet. They remained silent all through the forest and into the wetlands. The first glimmerings of dawn appeared at the crossroad to home. There, they could see the shape of the town, its night too was becoming day.

A sudden wind gusted behind them, and a screeching filled the air, like an angry voice from the Other Side. Movis ran screaming back into the forest.

The void creature neared, slowing before its pounce, as predators do. The wind raged, and this time it hissed, “I told you not to bring me back.”

Grold dropped his axe and leapt clear of the path. The shadow-beast lunged and bit off his face. It threw him head over heels into the reeking mud where his body sank and eventually decayed.

The bones of Rhiel’s husband were not found until the following year’s corvée workers were draining the fen to make way for the new town wall.

The Necroman © 2024 by Adam Parker (3000 words) All rights reserved. You may restack this story via Substack but please do not republish elsewhere. Banner and clipart by Gilead, used by permission.

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