The moment Axehand threw off his cloak, grunted, and buried his axe-hand in the tree all the way to the forearm, many different things happened at once.

  The surrounding guards froze; two of them screamed and ran away, while the others reached for their weapons, roared, and attacked. Boney also took off his cloak and grabbed the sword hanging from his waist. Taking up position behind Axehand, he pointed it at the incoming guards—he used to be a bandit, too, and was somewhat familiar with swordplay.

  “Come, and you’ll join me in death,” he said. They hesitated.

  Jerry, knowing that Boney wasn’t too good with the sword, led his two remaining undead into a charge. With a bone-chilling bellow, Headless grabbed a spear and jumped on top of Boboar. The two of them unleashed themselves at the battlefield.

  Jerry himself approached much more silently, trying to remain unnoticeable—unlike his undead, he was quite fragile—while severing the soul of any guard unfortunate enough to enter his attack range. His soul had grown stronger than it used to be. When facing humans, nine feet was the range he needed for the weakest of wills, while particularly determined or powerful individuals could resist his magic even at point-blank.

  Boney, Boboar, and Headless got entangled with the eight remaining ground guards in a shower of blood and flesh and gore. Bodies went flying, people were screaming at Headless’s severed head, which screamed back—especially terrifying at night—while Jerry assisted from the shadows.

  As for Axehand himself, he kept hacking away at the tree, shaking it so violently that a shower of leaves cascaded from above. He grunted between swings, and if one listened carefully, they’d be able to make out a jolly tune in rhythm with his hacks. He was, after all, a lumberjack.

  However, he’d grossly underestimated the number of swings he needed to fell the tree; he was already at five, and the poor thing held well still.

  The screams and sounds of battle naturally reached the treehouses, but the people there were equally busy.

  Eight terrifying forms had descended from the branches above, moving with the ease of monkeys despite their considerable bulk; they bore wounds grievous to any human, yet fought with wild abandon. Even the slowest of bandits could understand what they facing: zombies. A necromancer. A living nightmare.

  The bandits screamed as they were assaulted by the gorilla-like Billies, and a few handfuls of them fell in the initial skirmish. The more authoritative bandits stepped up to organize their people; the complex network of wooden platforms and hanging bridges soon turned into an intricate battlefield, with a bald, sizable bandit leading one side and Captain Reymond leading the other.

  The Billy squad was vastly outnumbered but held every other advantage. They were not surprised, unarmed, undressed, or just awoken; they moved through the wildly rocking hanging bridges with the grace of monkeys; they had time to prepare a plan beforehand, and they possessed leadership an entire league above their enemies. Captain Reymond, after all, was a veteran war officer.

  Moreover, the Billies’ morale was infallible, much unlike their enemies, a good number of whom screamed and fled in blind panic.

  “Fight, my men!” Captain Reymond shouted, standing in the middle of their occupied area and scrutinizing this unorthodox battlefield. “Show them the might of the Billies!” He had reluctantly accepted the name.

  ***

  Foxy, meanwhile, had taken advantage of the ruckus to stealthily approach the long hanging bridge connecting Jericho’s treehouse to the rest of the network. She stuck out a claw—

  And an arrow whistled through the air, tearing apart one of the ropes that supported the bridge. The entire thing turned on its side, hanging by a single long rope. Foxy peered down, snorted, then cut the remaining rope; the wooden bridge tumbled to the far-off ground, landing on a couple unlucky bandits in a cloud of dust and splinters.

  Then, turning around, she swaggered over to help the Billies. Unseen from behind, she could claim quite some lives.

  ***

  Billy One—formerly named Rudolf—swayed with the bridge as he hacked and slashed at the unfortunate people facing him. He barely knew how to use the sword, but so did they.

  A terrified bandit fell to his blade, cleaved cleanly in two; Billy One pushed his weight onto the side of the bridge, making it move like a swing before using the next bandit’s loss of momentum to strike against—

  A blade met Billy One’s, parrying it in a shower of sparks. Under their illumination, the zombie’s gaze found a bandit in a black bandana gazing coldly back. The zombie roared, thirsty for battle.

  On a wildly swinging bridge fifty feet off the ground, Billy One and his black-bandana opponent traded blows.

  All eight of the Billies, some fighting alone and some in pairs, had met resistance in the form of black-bandana bandits. These were better armed, better trained, and vastly more experienced than their peers; they were Jericho’s elites. Against the terrifying Billies, they held their ground, and slowly, the Billies weren’t that terrifying anymore.

  Finding a moment of respite, the rest of the bandits calmed down enough to realize they had crossbows. One bolt after another was shot, most missing but some finding purchase, and the Billies roared with each hit; a few crossbow bolts weren’t a problem to the undead, but too many of them would be.

  Captain Reymond hid behind his shield as he observed the battle; things were turning grim, but that wasn’t a surprise. They never hoped to win in the first place; all they wanted was to last long enough for Jericho to fall. Then, they might have hope.

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  Of the several black-bandana bandits, a few had fallen already, but the Billies weren’t invincible either.

  The bandit leader commanding the men, that bald giant of a man, stepped onto a bridge. A black bandana had just fallen, and the bald man met Billy Three; in merely two exchanges, the zombie was disarmed, beheaded, and flung off the bridge. He landed with a sickening thud.

  The bald bandit crossed eyes with Reymond, then pointed his greatsword over. The captain felt his tension melt into energy. Years of experience came back, reminding him of the hot-blooded young warrior he used to. Under his mustache, Reymond showed a savage, gleeful grin as he unflinchingly met his enemy’s death stare.

  Both leaders had deployed their troops. Now, it was time to fight.

  With a bloodthirsty roar, Captain Reymond stepped onto the hanging bridge, crossing the bald man’s blade. His blood boiled, and his mind was empty, save for one thing: The will to fight!

  ***

  Headless swung his brutal spear around, smashing through the guards just as Boboar did below him. The two were unstoppable, and the remaining guards were already teetering on the brink of collapse. Reinforcements arrived from above, but the undead had established their advantage and weren’t giving it up anytime soon.

  Headless suddenly saw a guard glance at where his master hid. In panic, the zombie tossed his head at the guard; it smacked against his throat and bit away an important piece of flesh.

  The guard screamed, his attention returning to the unstoppable duo. Headless had fulfilled his purpose, but he was now left completely headless. The head lay fallen a bit farther away, gazing at the battle in a slanted angle. There was no time to retrieve it. He’d need to fight like this, massively weakening himself.

  Behind Axehand’s happily chopping form, Boney was occupying two guards by himself. One was the overzealous woman who’d first stopped them, and the other, the refined-looking man who served as her pair.

  The two of them repeatedly clashed against Boney, who, despite his previous bravado, was getting his ass handed to him. It was only his natural durability as a skeleton that kept him alive—or undead—but even that wouldn’t last forever.

  Suddenly, he was disarmed, his sword flying away.

  I’m sorry, Master, he thought, watching the blades approach. I did my best. Live a good unlife.

  Then, suddenly, they halted. The older man fell dead on the spot while the woman clutched her head and screamed, dropping her weapon. A smiling figure walked up from behind them, his calmness seeming out-of-place on the battlefield.

  “Good job, Boney. Thank you for holding them back.”

  “Master…” Boney lacked the ability to shed tears, but if he could, he would have cried a river. “You saved me!”

  “Of course I did. How could I let my beloved butler die?”

  Right then, with a final happy grunt, Axehand’s jolly humming reached its crescendo, and the tree moaned.

  It wasn’t a simple sound. It filled everyone’s being and rocked their souls, turning even their thoughts silent. Then, with a second, even more otherworldly moan, the tree tipped over.

  ***

  The battle took time to describe, but from the moment Axehand landed the first chop to when the bald bandit leader clashed with Reymond, to when the tree fell, less than half a minute had gone by.

  On Jericho’s treehouse, the door suddenly flew off its hinges and a half-dressed, wild-haired giant walked out. His gang was under attacks, and even worse, someone was assaulting the large tree, his brother, at this very moment. This was unacceptable—Jericho’s rage seethed and bubbled, making his long hair hover and his entire body glow green.

  For a single second, his eyes glazed over as he took in the battle, then the destroyed wooden bridge; the closest platform was at least twenty feet away. He could jump that far, of course, and that’s exactly what he prepared to do, but not before announcing his presence. Taking a deep breath, he roared:

  “WHO DARES—”

  And then the moan came. The all-encompassing death throe of his brother tree. He was an earth spirit; to him, this sound was soul-wrenching, reaching all the way to his soul and paralyzing him. It took him a moment to recover, and then came the second moan.

  “NO!” he screamed in despair, his voice echoing for miles, but it was too late. The tree tipped. The floor slanted under his bare feet, and he turned around only to see his treehouse topple toward him. From where the door used to be, books and paper rained out, and his entire desk slid downward. He didn’t care about those, they were merely material possessions, but his tree brother was falling!

  “NO!” he bellowed again, utterly despairing. In his panic, he chose to stand his ground, placing his gigantic palms against the walls and pushing with all his superhuman strength. He wanted to right his fallen brother, to save it.

  Which was, of course, impossible. Jericho was standing on the tree he was trying to push.

  The fall continued unhindered, the wooden platform turning more and more vertical below Jericho’s feet until they were falling, and the massive tree trunk loomed over him. He could not fly, could not right himself.

  He bellowed one final, desperate time.

  Then, with a massive, earth-shaking thud, the entire behemoth of a tree landed on the ground, raising dust and shaking the world.

  Or, to be more precise, it all landed right on Jericho’s head.