The morning had arrived. Scab new its father was likely trying to make giant spiders again. Scab found its fathers fascination with the living creatures unsettling. A facet of fathers still beating heart perhaps. To Scab the dead were superior. The forms that could be sculpted of rotting flesh and bone and endless frontier.
The walking bomb before the wight was proof enough of that. The only question now was how to use it. Kill a squad of the most hated knights or blast away a square of orange coats. Both would make great targets. Imagining the shredded remains of five suits of armor brought joy to the dead priest.
The troop of solders would make for better feeding, however. The explosion would send the mass of men into disarray. If the unliving moved fast enough the rest of the formation would be devoured soon after and the number of unliving under Scabs control would increase tenfold. The knights also didn't seem to carry gunpowder. The solders would. Maybe enough for a second bomb.
Father would approve more off the mass killing than the deaths of a few knights. The pickaxes and sledgehammers would have to serve against the knights. At least for tonight. To kill the orange coats in the day would be bold move. It would also make the ambush a little harder to pull off. Better to set the stage now and wait for sunset. Bait would also be needed if the trap was to work properly. Father could be consulted. In the meantime, I will set up the site. As many unliving I can put in place before tonight.
Scab began to move its puppets. Many had arrived at the guild. Sac had them bathing in the crap and vomit of the dead masons. Most had a vomit pot nearby when they died. A few that had been stronger in life where taken aside and given the picks and hammers.
Scab would place the tool in one's hands, but it would soon after be dropped. The unliving always wanted to have their hands free for grabbing. The fact they couldn't use tools was a problem. In the absence of the hammer's it might be more effective to lash blades to their hands. That would not help them fight the knights, but is would make them scarier to the unarmored orange coats. Coat them in something nasty and even if the solder brakes away he still might be poisoned. Better yet diseased.
Scab searched for every sharp bit of metal it could find. The building had plenty of files, chisels and saws waiting to be repurposed. The blades where dipped in poop and lashed to fingers and wrists by Scab. The unliving left one at a time claws on hand for a nearby alley. There they flopped over and began to wait for nightfall.
By the time the sun was setting Scab had taken the largest unliving it could find and was trying to command it to use the hammer. The dead man was built like an ox. Whatever the body did in life must have involved lifting heavy objects. The process of getting it to carry the hammer had taken most of Scabs time. The dead knew carry and drag If Scab was there to supervise. For whatever reason the act of hitting a thing with another thing was asking too much.
When scab had asked its father for help the mage had said, "just because a dog can fetch a stick don't mean it can light a fire."
The analogy was frustrating. Scab did not care about dogs. Its interest was walking corpses. Scab took away from that its undead where beasts. The act like beasts. They might be taught tricks but come knight when instructed to fight filling deaths unending hunger was their only concern.