Garrett Graves counted his dead and came up short again. Nine had followed him out of the marsh last night. This morning, only four stood in the wet grass, jaws slack, hands twitching at nothing. The rest had wandered off in the dark, drawn by a fox or a smell or their own rotted memory. Somewhere out there, hunters were already dragging pikes through the reeds. If he lost another night like this, he would have no horde left to lead to the refuge he'd promised them. He was dead himself, or close enough. His skin had gone gray at the knuckles a month ago. He still thought in full sentences, and that was the trouble: the others didn't. They shambled where he pointed, then forgot they had been pointed anywhere. He needed a leash he could not carry in his hands. He headed for the old cemetery on the hill. Iron fencing leaned inward under moss. Pointed arches framed a stone yard cracked by roots. Behind the tallest marker, half-buried in ivy, crouched a shrine the living had stopped visiting a long time ago. Garrett had been here once as a boy on a dare. He remembered the smell. It had not changed. He pushed through the gate and called his four across the stones. They came slow, bumping markers, catching on the fence. He led them to the shrine and made them sit. Then he began to search. He turned over broken urns. He pried a slab loose with a rusted rod. Under the slab lay a tall wooden container, ringed in bone, painted with green runes and crowned with skulls. A hollow mouth gaped down its front. He knew what it was without being told. His hand knew. He dragged it upright in the grass. Beyond the far fence, deeper in the yard, the ground had opened years ago on something the town had wanted forgotten. Ribs the size of rafters arched up out of the dirt. A long skull rested sideways in the weeds, teeth still in the jaw. A dragon, dead so long its bones had gone the color of old paper. Garrett had heard the name for it once. He did not need the name now. He needed the size. He carried the container to the ribs and set it against the spine. He cut his palm on a skull tooth and pressed the blood into the hollow mouth. The runes woke green. His four zombies stopped twitching. Their heads turned together toward him, then toward the container, and stayed there. He felt them, faint, like fingers on a rope. Then he felt more. Farther out. The five he had lost in the dark. Cold pulls at the edge of the rope, one already gone still. Garrett stood in the ribs of the dragon and closed his hand around the tether. Four he could move as one now. But somewhere past the trees, a horn sounded, and it was hunting his stragglers first.