Once there was a battle. A bloody, close quarter battle. An eye gouging, gut spilling, bone crunching, skull cracking battle. With swords and daggers and spears and bludgeons. Weapons that could amputate, disembowel, decapitate. The field on which it was fought became a slaughterhouse of mangled corpses mired in a miden of blood drenched mud, littered with loped off limbs and dislodged eyeballs and vast tentacled yards of spilled intestine.

When it was over, and the victors had marched away, dragging their prisoners behind them, all that was left was a little drummer boy, caked in gore, trembling from the shock of it all. Ankle deep in crimson mud, he wept as he observed the acres of massacred men, all contorted in the agony of their death throes. For a while he splashed back and forth through the mire, roaring as he charged to chase away the legion of hungry crows that descended to feast on the cadavers.

Finally, though, he accepted the futility of his endeavour. The multitude of black flapping wings and sharp, snapping beaks simply overwhelmed him. There was too much carrion for the crows to be frightened off by a lonely little drummer boy. Clutching his drumsticks tightly, head bowed low, straps of his snare drum hung over his shoulders, he shuffled away, hoping against hope he could find his way back to the village where he last kissed his mother goodbye.

As night fell, he could see the campfires of the victors' garrison. He crept through the gloom and found a little copse of trees where he could lie on his belly with his chin on the rim of his drum and spy on his enemies. A vast city of white tents spread before him. Every last one of the soldiers was drunk. Celebrating their victory in a manner befitting the calculating butchers that they were.

He saw his comrades hung from trees, limp bodies swaying on creaking ropes. He saw men on wooden crosses, bleeding out from nails that punctured their flesh. He saw men tied to stakes and run through with pikes. He saw men cruelly tortured and tossed onto fires to burn alive. The slaughter that had commenced on the battlefield was continuing with unbridled fervour and bloodlust. When the garrison broke camp there would be even more carrion for the crows to feast upon.

A fierce anger burned within him at the injustice of all. He wished there was something he could do to avenge his comrades. But all he had was a drum and a set of drumsticks. What could he do against an entire army?

The only thing left to him was to flee under cover of darkness, lest he be next.

*
Away from the nightmare of the camp he found a hollow log in which he slept in exhaustion, juddering and weeping through the night as he relived the terror of the battle in his dreams.

As dawn shafted sunlight through the trees, he was roused by the sound of a woman's voice calling for help. Cautiously he crept from the log and followed the sound of the voice. It led him to a small clearing where an old, grey-haired woman was floundering, chest deep within the black, sucking slime of a glutenous bog.

'Stop all your yelling and screaming,' hushed the drummer boy. 'There's an army nearby. If they catch me, they'll kill me.'

'Help me get out then,' pleaded the old woman. 'Before I sink over my head and drown.' She raised a scrawny arm, dripping with mud. In her arthritic hand she clutched a little leather pouch. 'If you help me,' she said. 'All of the treasures within are yours.'

Maybe all is not lost, thought the drummer boy. With a purse full of treasures, I could return to my mother with some wealth and show that my endeavours have not been entirely fruitless.

He slipped his drumsticks into his boots and knelt at the side of the bog, holding out his drum on outstretched arms. 'Grab the straps and I will haul you out,' he called to the old woman.

After two or three attempts she managed to grab the straps with her left hand, still clutching her purse in her right. She holds it so tightly, thought the drummer boy. It must indeed be filled with treasures. In his imagination he saw dozens of sparkling diamonds, red rubies and green emeralds all cascading into his open hands.

Finally, after heaving on his drum, and worrying that the straps might snap, he managed pull the old lady like a wet fish onto solid ground. As she lay panting and gasping for breath before him the boy hung his drum straps back over his shoulders.

'I kept my side of the bargain,' he said.

'Indeed you did,' said the old woman, holding out the pouch for him to take.

Excitedly he grabbed it from her and loosened the draw string so he could open the neck to look inside. What he saw was not diamonds and rubies and emeralds, but a heaving, writhing, squirming pile of fat, slimy worms.

'What kind of trick is this?' he demanded. 'This is not a purse full of treasures. It's just a bag of worms. You think you can take me for a fool?'

The old woman sat up, dripping filth and covered in leaf mulch.

'These are no ordinary worms,' she told him. 'They are not earth worms, or meal worms, or tape worms. They are corpse worms. Stolen from the tombs of ancient warriors. And as such they are imbued with certain supernatural qualities.'

The drummer boy looked at the disgusting bag of worms and then at the mud caked old lady and realised that it was a witch that he had saved. 'What sort of supernatural qualities?' he asked, feeling his heart start to beat a little faster.

The old witch rose unsteadily to her feet.

'If it is revenge you desire,' she said. 'Return with the treasures in my purse to the battlefield from whence you came.'

The drummer boy gasped. She knew about the battle?

Of course, she did. She was a witch It was obvious that a witch would have an all-seeing eye.

'Gather all of the bloody corpses,' she said. 'Pile them high. One on top of the other. Scatter the worms upon the mound and say these words.

Worms worms
Twist and turn
Burrow long and burrow deep
Wake the sleepers from their sleep.
Then you shall see what you shall see.'

The boy looked down into the bag of worms and watched how they endlessly twisted and turned. When he looked back up the old woman was suddenly gone.

*
So that he could avoid the garrison the drummer boy took a circuitous route back to the battlefield.

By the time he arrived the moon was already visible in the pink hue of the evening sky. Attaching the squirming bag of worms to his belt he set about dragging corpses to a spot he'd selected at the edge of the field. Some of dead soldiers were stiff with rigour mortise and tricky to manipulate. Others that had lain in the glare of the sun had become flaccid and had begun to bloat and reek of the onset putrefaction.

He tied a scarf over his mouth to stop himself from gagging.

He worked like a dog till the witching hour. Sweating and heaving, piling corpses on top of corpses, gathering hacked off limbs and stuffing them into gaps in the mound. When he rested at midnight, he saw that his work was far from done. East to west and north to south hundreds of bodies still lay in the dirt.

He worked like a mule, hauling corpses up to the teetering summit as the mound climbed higher and higher. He didn't stop till the red tip of the sun peeped over the horizon. When he was done, he sat cross legged at the peak, caked once more in gore, muscles aching, back stiff, breathing in the stench of decay. As after a moment he untied the pouch from his belt, loosened its neck and shook out the corpse worms onto the mound of corpses.

He watched them burrow into the flesh of the corpses, some entering through gaping mouths and empty eye sockets, some by ear or into festering wounds. Then he rose unsteadily to his feet, balancing precariously on the caved in chest of one of the dead soldiers as he solemnly intoned the words the witch had recited.

'Worms worms
Twist and turn
Burrow long and burrow deep
Wake the sleepers from their sleep.'

The worms burrowed long. The worms burrowed deep. They twisted and they turned. Behind them they trailed excretions of magical mucous. Stitching sinew, melding muscle, bonding bones. Creating a single monstrous entity.

When their task was complete, they congregated at the centre of the mound, where they coiled together and pulsed as if they were the beating heart of some great beast. The mound began to twitch and juddered. Here and there bloodshot eyes blinked open. Mouths yawed wide and let out a dreadful discordant moan. Cold, waxy hands began to grab blindly at his ankles. He shook himself free and tumbled down to where he'd left his drum and sticks.

The crows, roused from their nocturnal broods by the raw scent of the carrion, came swooping like a black cloud, circling hungrily down. But when they saw the gigantic horrendous thing that the boy had created they fled in terror, dispersing like a sudden dark starburst, wings flapping in a hundred different directions, screeching in fear.

A plethora of ghostly eyes glared down at the drummer boy. The mound rose and swayed on multiple limbs. A chorus of bloody mouths bleated, struggling to form the words they wanted to speak. The boy began to gather up weapons.

Swords and sabres and cutlasses. Spears and pikes and maces.

He climbed the stinking mound, slipping through slime, using wounds and gashes as footholds and pressed these weapons into clammy hands. Marbled fingers curled around hilts and handles. Where he found only protruding legs, he tore strips from ragged flags and lashed the weapons to deathly grey feet.

Finally, he stepped back to study his handiwork. Before him stood a grotesque, gargantuan porcupine monstrosity, of contorted, interwoven bodies, spiked with brandished weaponry. Its eyes burned with fury. Its mouths groaned and grizzled over bloody teeth and frayed lips. He watched it teeter on multiple legs and arms, standing on columns of feet and the knuckles of hands clenched tightly into fists. The corpse worms pulsed, sending tainted blood coursing through a vast labyrinth of knitted veins and arteries.

He knew exactly what was expected of him.

The duty of every drummer boy was to lead men into war, tattooing a steady rhythm for them to march to. This was no different. He hung the straps of the snare drum over his shoulders and took up his sticks. Rat-tat-tat, he went, setting off in the direction of the enemy garrison. The mound of re-animated corpses followed in humongous, lumbering motion, drowning him in its mighty shadow as it rattled its weapons, roaring out curses and howling battle cries.

Rat-tat-tat, went the drumsticks on the drumskin. Rata-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat.