The wood thrush continued, then petered out. A stiff breeze came up and shook the willows and maples. The sound of leaves rustling was akin to the crashing of the surf. Still nothing.

Toede pulled his legs up and wrapped his arms tightly around them, rocking slightly, thinking mightily. He was back, and it was a good guess that six months had elapsed since his last sojourn in the world. The question was, what to do with his restored life this time?

"Live nobly," the voices-sea-wide and mountain-tall-had said again, leaving it at that. Thank you very much. Perhaps this time, Toede reflected, he would concentrate on the first word, and let the second word come along at its own speed.

The first time, he had gone downstream and turned left at the swamp, found kender and trouble, and died soon afterward.

The second time, he had gone downstream and turned right at the swamp, found gnolls and scholars and trouble, and died soon afterward.

So this time, perhaps he should head upstream, into the hills, find some cave and hide there for a few years until he was certain that no one was left to capture, lure, or ambush him.

Or he could remain where he was, which had the added benefit of not having to travel far, and in the likely event he died and was restored again, he wouldn't have to go to much effort.

Toede looked at his surroundings with the eye of an amateur camper sizing up a potential resting spot for the night. The willows by the creek were supple enough to form a rude frame, like those the kender used. And the maples could be easily stripped of their bark for cross supports. He could lash bundles of grass to it, at least until he got good enough to catch and skin a beaver or moose or other suitable furbearer (He had never skinned a wild animal skin before, but how different could they be from a human?). He'd have to locate berry bushes and other edibles. Perhaps even launch a small raid on the kender encampment, if it was still there…

There was a sharp snap of a breaking branch, and the brush behind him and to his right gave a brief, animated shake. Toede saw it from the corner of his eye, and instantly was alert and on his feet. Subconsciously he reached for the dagger jammed in his belt. When his fingers closed on empty air, he made a mental note to die with a scabbard on, next time, so he would be reborn with a weapon handy.

The brush continued to shake. Toede saw that someone or something was trying to force its way through the brambles. He could see an arm wielding a sword that glinted in the sunlight as it came down, hard, on the underbrush ahead of it.

Toede cursed. Bending halfway over to conceal himself as best he could, he made for the sidelines. Somehow, he just knew he should not hang around and hope no one would bother him. He dived into some brush about the same time the figure worked itself into the open.

Toede held himself very still in the tall grass and weeds, crouched under a particularly large bush. From his vantage point he could see little, but the thrashing to his left indicated that the intruder was now strolling the bank where previously Toede had been.

Toede saw a pair of boots-calf-high and made of some dusty gray leather-pass by. A set of trouser legs, once blue but faded into a sea-gray shade, was stuffed into them. Nothing else was visible, and the human (or elf, Toede allowed) was facing the opposite direction.

The boots went past his hiding spot and stopped, then turned around and went past again. Again, three paces past him they stopped, and turned around yet a third time. This time they stopped in front of Toede's lair. Then they turned directly toward where Toede was hiding. Toede exploded from the brush, head down, arms together and ahead of him, hands clenched in pudgy fists, literally diving upward at his pursuer. He hoped to catch his visitor in the stomach (or perhaps a little lower) and to knock him senseless enough to either affect an escape or grab his foe's weapon and turn the tables.

He was not expecting his adversary to explode at first touch into a cloud of fluffy gray tomb dust. Nor for the upper torso of said adversary to pitch backward from the force of the blow, leaving the legs standing there for a moment, then to collapse slowly onto themselves, twisting slightly as they did so.

Toede the victor stood over his conquest, coughing and sneezing on the dust that danced and sparkled in the spring sun. The battle had all the excitement, and the precise results, of kicking a puffball mushroom.

His vanquished foe lay face-up in two separate pieces on the river bank. Toede looked in the face (what remained of it) of his opponent, and saw why the creature put up so little fight.

The face of his would-be stalker was nothing more than a gray mask of dried skin, pulled tightly over the yellowed remnants of skull. The lips were slightly parted, the creature's teeth like pegs knocked out of their peg-holes, all askew.

A zombie. He was in the middle of the wilderness, caught between gnolls and kender and gods-knew what else, and here he encounters an armed and armored zombie in the first five minutes of his new life. What, he thought bitterly, had he done to deserve this?

And more importantly, he added to himself, who had he done it to? One suspect rose immediately in Toede's mind. The

fabled necromancer could call up a single zombie, or a dozen, in his free time between tea and supper, without even breaking a sweat. However, said necromancer would not know exactly where Toede's location was when he reappeared, nor would the death-mage have any particular reason to want Toede dead.

Toede went through a mental list of individuals who might want to see him restricted to shambling on undead feet through some unlit passageway for all eternity and was distressed to find that it was so long.

Or it could be someone else entirely.

It could be a chance encounter; maybe this zombie got bored doing his mundane tasks and decided to go for a spring stroll.

Toede smiled, but his a smile was without mirth. He took the long sword and the dagger from the undead creature's deathlike grip, snapping a few finger bones in the process. The dagger he shoved in his belt, and the scabbard he slung over his shoulder, since if he wore it on his belt the tip would leave a faint furrow in the soft ground.

Then he headed north, upstream along the creek, wondering where he could find some kind of defensible place to call home.

The climb was relatively easy, as the stream divided into two smaller creeks, and the rightmost creek into two smaller brooks, and the rightmost brook in a series of rock-strewn trickles and tributaries.

As the creek bed rose above the vale below, Toede turned and regarded his world. He was facing south and could see a landscape dotted with the light greens and cyans of new buds, and a sprinkling of wildflowers. Far toward the horizon was the accursed swamp, a thick miasma of haze blurring its outlines.

Toede resumed climbing, congratulating himself on his cunning. Were someone like the necromancer pursuing him, he would assume Toede took the easiest route: downstream.

The tributary Toede had been following finally ended in a natural spring bubbling up from the rock. The brush had surrendered utterly to rocky ground, dotted by a few gnarled, ancient trees. Not the best territory to eke out an existence, but sufficient for protection, Toede noted.

Whatever fates there existed were with him when he spotted an old, half-tumbled hovel halfway up the hill above the spring. It was little more than an entrance hall, and ran about fifteen feet back into the hill, with a low ceiling that sloped downward in the back to join the floor. The cabin had been abandoned. The rotted remains of a musty bedroll, tarnished platterware, and termite-infested wood littered the small one-room interior. The dry smell of food that had spoiled, rotted, or evaporated hung heavy on the air. An open sack of flour stood on one low shelf. Toede tested it with his dagger point; it had solidified into a powdery white brick.