Zombies

Zombies are necromancy at its cheapest and most honest: the recent dead hauled upright and pointed at the foe. They come on in moaning, stumbling waves, feeling neither wounds nor fear, and though a single zombie is barely a threat to an armed man, zombies are never single. They exist to drown a battle line: to absorb volleys, foul charges, and drag down shields and spear-hafts with cold fingers while the Grave Guard and the counts themselves do the artful killing elsewhere.

For the soldiers of the Empire, the horror is rarely the smell. It is the faces. The counts raise the dead of every field they contest, and a Stirland halberdier may find last season's casualties, or last generation's, walking back toward him under a new banner. In Sylvania, the lords are frank about the arrangement: the peasantry owes service, and death is no excuse for shirking it.