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  He walked her with him and approached the closest doorframe. It was more intact than some of the others, although most of its wall was burned away around it. His boots crunched on bits of shattered, misshapen glass. He ran his finger along the wood of the doorpost, and it came back black from ash. Under the char was another color that he had seen and that had stopped him. He leaned closer and scraped at the wood with one fingernail. The paint was cooked on, but had been applied very shortly before the fires reached the doors. He knew enough from the battlefield to recognize the trails of blood. He scraped in more spots around and over the jamb. Blood had been painted above and around the doorposts on both sides.

  He stepped away and scanned the doors of the surrounding ruins. Where the black, blistered damage didn’t reach, he saw the lines of flowing blood where they had run and then dried from the heat. “You painted the doors in blood before you set them ablaze, and then burned the owners in front of them. What kind of monster are you?”

  No answer came from the crack of dying embers and the roar of the wind scattering pillars of smoke.

  He stayed on his feet and pulled the horse along beside him. The street opened into a broader, central square around a well. The sculpted stone wall of the well stood intact in the midst of the burned ruins. More bodies lay scattered and burned in the remains of carts and booths. These were not orderly murders like the ones closer to the edge of town. Broken weapons around a few of the bodies told Nisero that these men, and boys by the size of some of them, had fought and fallen before being burned with the rest of the village.

  Nisero kicked a spearhead and a cheap, pig-iron blade out of his path. Another sword stood with its hilt up above the edge of the well, actually driven into the stone. A bloody scarf billowed from its hilt like a flag. The tip of the blade drove through another cloth atop the stone lip of the well.

  “Perhaps some of the women put up a fight, too. Good for you, dear, brave maidens.”

  Nisero heard a piercing cry echo through the streets from the distance. He slung onto his mount and rode hard in pursuit of the only voice left in Patron’s Hill.

  ***

  Berengar sat on the street, staring through his tears at the wreckage of his life. The top floor had collapsed into the bottom floor, merging the bedrooms with the kitchen and living space. The hearth stood lonely and intact. The ends of boards hung in notches that his grandfather had carved into the stone to support the second level, before Berengar was born. Before he was married. Before he had children. Before they grew up. Before they were burned to death while he drank ale in celebration.

  He wondered if they were screaming in the dark while he drank. He only heard an endless ringing in his ears, and he did not understand where the sound had gone. He opened his mouth again and his throat burned with a fire of its own, but he could not hear his own screams even inside his own skull.

  He stared through the smoke, seeing smoldering straw from mattresses scattered on the broken table. He saw a wardrobe shattered on the drainage basin of the kitchen. The cabinets were burned away around it, but the basin lay on its side with Berengar’s wife’s clothes cast around, and burned away of their beauty—burned away of her. The carved hearts on the doors of the wardrobe still showed through the black. Those were hers from her family before she was born—before she died.

  Berengar looked down at his hands. They were caked with blackened filth. Pink slime showed through the muck on his fingers. He smelled death—burned death. It wasn’t the first time, but it was on him. He felt the stickiness of it on his face. He tasted it on his lips and gagged.

  His eyes focused past his fingers and he saw the body in front of his knees. The chest was broken open and the ribs showed through the flesh that was split when he tried to pick up the body. He didn’t remember why he had tried. The teeth showed white in the mouth, opened so wide that the jaw had broken. The eyes were gone, but he saw the remains of the leather cord around the shrunken neck, and the rough beads strung through, sinking into the melted flesh of the chest.

  Berengar remembered why he had grabbed the body, to lift her out of death and pain, and he opened his mouth in another scream he couldn’t hear. He saw the shadow pass over him through his tears. Some primal part of his deep brain tingled and tried to activate his muscles. His arms and legs twitched with the instinct to spring into action, but sorrow washed through his body like hot acid and killed all his training and instinct in that shocked moment.

  Death had returned to finish the job. The dark spirit had come for Captain Berengar, and had taken the entire village in a mad search for his soul. He heard Berengar’s silent screams and had returned to take his prize. The captain could not come up with a good reason to resist him.

  He stayed on his knees, his marred hands spread open in front of him. When the touch lighted on his shoulder, he was jolted loose and sidled away on the ground. He stopped just shy of the second body with his back to it.

  The sound rushed back into the world. There was not much to hear, but in comparison to the ringing deafness it was loud and overwhelming. The fires still popped and crackled in the far corners of the surrounding houses. The light wind stirring the smoke was the roar of the gods’ angry breath. The horses scraped their hooves on the hard path and it made the hair on his arms stand up.

  Berengar stared up into lieutenant Nisero’s face. It was blank and devoid of emotion. The captain opened his mouth to explain what had happened, so that his friend would understand why he was like this. Berengar found no words. The world around him was screaming with every tiny noise now.

  Nisero did not speak either, but drew a cloth out of his saddle bags and held it out to the captain. Berengar just stared at it and shook his head.

  Nisero knelt in front of the captain and took hold of one of the older man’s wrists. Berengar’s eyes unfocused and he turned his head back to the blur of his ruined house. He tried to remember it whole, but he couldn’t sort out the rooms. They blended in his mind the way they now blended in the ashes and debris. He could not sort the features on his family’s faces. His children, Hallen and Arianne, were fading from his memory. The love of his life, Ari, was only blackened death that he had broken trying to lift one last time.

  Nisero wiped as much of the burnt filth from the captain’s hands as he could. He brought a clean swatch of the cloth up to the captain’s mouth where the man had smeared his face. As soon as the cloth touched his cheek, Berengar flung his arm and swatted the material from Nisero’s hand. It fluttered up into the air and dropped to the ground in a bunch, before folding back open. Nisero made no move to retrieve it.

  “You can’t wipe this away.” Berengar’s voice came hoarse and broken.

  Nisero swallowed and nodded. He stayed on his knees in front of his captain.

  Berengar lunged forward and grabbed the front of Nisero’s shirt. Nisero startled, but kept his arms down at his sides as Berengar shook him. The sticky muck that remained on his hands clung to the material of the lieutenant’s clothes. Berengar felt the tackiness of it, but the lieutenant did not move the captain’s dirty hands away.

  “It won’t wipe away,” Berengar said. “It will never be better.”

  Nisero nodded and stared.

  Berengar lumbered to his feet and forced the lieutenant up with him. “It will never come up. Tell me you know this. It can’t be cleaned away.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Berengar shoved Nisero and the younger man staggered back a couple steps. “Just leave. Go back to the King’s service and leave me here to die.”

  Berengar turned away and looked between the two bodies on the ground. His knees bent and threatened to buckle. He quivered and shook, but he couldn’t make himself fall again. He couldn’t scream. He just stood and stared.

  Berengar saw movement near the house and he raised his head. Nisero knelt where the door had been and picked up charred pieces of the frame. He scraped at the wood and brought it close to his eyes before taking up another piece a
nd repeating the process.

  Berengar stared at the road beyond his house leading out of the village. He turned and looked back through the smoldering structures toward the road they had used to approach. He couldn’t see it from this side of Patron’s Hill.

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  Nisero stood from his investigation of the door and whispered. “No, sir.”

  “There are two roads into the village. It is protected by hills and rocky forest. It is out of the path of traffic and trade. They should have been safe here. We have always been safe here. Why? Why did this happen?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  Berengar reached up to wipe his face, but stared down at his hand. He rubbed his face against his sleeve instead. “Maybe someone got away. There may be people who know what happened.”

  “Maybe.”

  Berengar looked at Nisero and swallowed on his dry, aching throat. “Don’t just agree with me. Answer me.”

  Nisero nodded and sighed. “No one passed us on the road as we came in.”

  Berengar looked back toward the heart of the village. “No one. That makes no sense. Someone would have come to tell of the destruction—to call up the army. Someone from a nearby village would have come because of the smoke.”

  “Maybe it just happened.”

  “The smoke is white.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Berengar looked to the road leading out to the mountains. “The ones that did this left that way, and I will pursue.”

  “We should tell the men. They will want to join us.”

  “They can want whatever they like,” Berengar said as he stared at the blue rock in the distance, through the trees and mist. “They serve the King and I don’t command them to do anything.”

  Nisero took a step toward the captain and stopped. “Then let’s petition the crown to set the Elite Guard after these monsters. The King wants to protect his holdings from murderers and thieves—and these are the worst kind. He will agree; I’m sure of it.”

  “That may be, but it will take time,” Berengar said. “You go back to see to that, and I will pursue before their trail grows cold.”

  Nisero dropped his hand to the hilt of his sword on his belt and said, “I will ride with you. I came to see you home and that job is far from done.”

  Berengar blinked on moisture that threatened at the edges of his eyes in response to the words of his brother-in-arms. “I appreciate that more than I can tell you, but I am free now to ride as far as I like to seek vengeance. You still answer to the King for your time and service.”

  Nisero shook his head. “I am not leaving your side before this is done. This is in the King’s service whether he knows of it yet or not. We will send word as soon as we find a reliable courier.”

  “This may never be done.” Berengar barely spoke the words on a puff of breath.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Berengar’s eyes flashed to the ground and he looked back and forth between the bodies. Nisero licked his lips and took another step toward the captain as he watched his face.

  Berengar’s eyes went wide. “One body is missing. She survived.”

  “Who, sir?”

  “My daughter, Arianne, is not here. There are only two bodies.”

  “With respect, sir, and please excuse the offense, but you are sure her body is the one that is absent?”

  Berengar swallowed and nodded. “My wife’s jewelry and my son’s two broken teeth from fighting when he was younger. Arianne is the one absent. She must have fled. She wouldn’t have stayed on the road with the villains retreating that way. We did not pass her on the way in. She must have fled into the woods to hide until it was safe. We must search for her.”

  Nisero looked back at the house. “We should start here, sir?”

  Berengar looked at the house and back at the lieutenant. “What?”

  “With respect, sir, we need to be sure she is not in the ruin of the house before we spend time searching the woods. She might have been taken or could have fallen elsewhere. We need to eliminate those possibilities before we spend time searching in the wrong places.”

  “Taken? You think she was taken?” Berengar held up his hand and waved at their surroundings. “They burned everything and every person. Does it look like they took anyone?”

  “I don’t know, sir, but this is how we make sure. This is how we know who we are pursuing when we take for the mountains.”

  “We are pursuing death and his dark spirits.” Berengar shook his head. “They should have been safe here. My family has been safe here for generations. There are only two roads in, and this village has always been safe.”

  “Yes, sir.” Nisero looked at the ground between his feet. “If you want to begin the search in the woods, I can handle the work here. It might go faster that way anyway.”

  Berengar sighed heavily and looked up at the sky with thin smoke twisting up into it. “No, you are right. This is how it must be done. Splitting may be quicker, but not safer. We don’t yet know what we are dealing with. We will search the ruins of the house to be sure.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Don’t ask me questions I don’t want to answer right now, lieutenant. Let’s just get started.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They trudged into the ruins of the house, kicking up sparks and clouds of ash. Without a word, they lifted and flipped sections of wall and broken pieces of furniture too large to move alone. They separated out and stirred through deeper drifts of ash and debris searching for remains.

  Berengar disconnected himself from the scene. It was not impossible to think of this as some broken realm that was not his home. He formed the fantasy in the front of his mind that these were the bodies of strangers he was seeking. Underneath the lie, he knew the truth, and his sorrow and grief stirred like moving water under a sheet of ice that might break under him at any time. Still, he pushed it down deep so that he could keep moving—one step in front of the other.

  He looked up once and saw Nisero using the tip of his sword to probe through the ash. Berengar felt a rush of irrational rage that burned in his throat. He swallowed on the bitter taste and looked away.

  Before long, he was no longer searching, but just moving about pretending to do so. He did not want to admit he might not be up to this, but he hoped Nisero would satisfy his curiosity soon enough.

  “Captain?”

  Berengar sighed. “Yes, are we finished here?”

  “Come look at this.”

  Berengar felt cold inside. His back was to Nisero and his legs did not want to obey and move. He took a deep breath that smelled like a campfire and turned about. He prepared himself to see a twisted, blackened body he would not be able to pretend was not his beloved daughter.

  Nisero was looking up instead of down in the ash.

  “What is it, Nisero?”

  “Not entirely certain, sir.”

  Berengar waded through the ash and stepped up beside the lieutenant, who was squared in front of the lonely hearth and chimney. He looked up too, but did not see anything of interest in the scorch marks. He was about to ask Nisero what he was supposed to see, but then the letters stood out to him from the rest of the smeared surface. They were cut through the carbon, but not carved into the stone itself. It was in two lines that were offset from one another. The top line read: SOLAG SON OF. And the second line read: I HAVE.

  “Solag,” Berengar spoke the word with bitterness and his head swam.

  “Do you know him?”

  Berengar shook his head and cleared a portion of the dizzy rage. “I do not, but I will find him and I will kill him.”

  “Do you have any idea who his father might be?”

  “No. It is amazing to me that these worthless bandits feel the need to brag about their illegitimate lineages as if it carries any weight with real people.”

  Nisero nodded. “Yes, sir. It appears part of the message was lost in the fire. It might have helped us track him be
tter.”

  “It was not left before the fire.”

  Nisero squinted. “It was carved into the scorch marks. It was left after the fire had burned out. Maybe smeared by the wind or another flare up?”

  “It means he sat and watched and waited for the house to finish burning, and then left this message.”

  “That is a deep breed of evil.”

  “It was personal.”

  “How so, sir?”

  “They murdered everyone in the village,” Berengar said, “then they left this message for someone to find later. They left it in my house, after waiting for it to burn.”

  “Was the message left for you specifically, sir, or for the King’s army officers in general to find?”

  Berengar swallowed and stared. “That I don’t know. We should check the other houses for messages before we make pursuit.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Berengar cut his eyes at the lieutenant. “What are you thinking?”

  “I found blood above and around the doors of the houses in the village. It was painted on before the fires and left to dry as they burned.”

  “Is that what you were looking for in the wood of my door?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And did you find it?”

  Nisero shook his head and looked away from the message to the captain. “No. No blood over your door.”

  “No blood, but this half message.” Berengar stepped around Nisero and paced out of the ruin onto the road.

  Nisero followed. Berengar left black footprints on the street. Nisero asked behind him, “What does blood above the door mean, Captain?”

  “What do you think, lieutenant?”

  Nisero took hold of his horse’s reins and looked down at the double set of tracks they left. “A curse? A warning? An incantation?”

  “It can also mean protection. Like a ward,” Berengar said.