A week earlier, Paszar had been a thriving village tucked into the shoulder of the hillside, bright with Midwintertide decorations. Now, charred timbers and stone walls jutted from a black, ashen stain in the snow. Dawn’s bloody light spilled across churned mud, conveying Lumestra’s wrath at the slaughter.
Bile thick in his throat, Zephan Tanor slowed his steed as he reached the gate’s remains. Haste helped no one now. He barely noticed the knights of his thin column do the same. They’d ridden hard from the Tarvallion vigil on unbarded horses – the 7th mustering in their wake – without time to don more than gambeson and breastplate. Few matched a knight’s romantic ideal in such a state, much less Zephan himself. He knew all too well that below his shock of black hair his face was lined and weary.
“I want sentries to the east,” he shouted. “If the shadowthorns return, they find us ready, do you understand me?”
Though if the Hadari returned they’d gobble up thirty knights no less easily than the half-dozen who’d fought and died alongside Paszar’s militia at the ford.
The rear ranks peeled away. Zephan spurred on. Bodies lay where they’d fallen. Some were burned beyond recognition, charred, skeletal hands scrabbling at filthy cobbles or reaching skyward. Others bore only the spear thrusts that had stolen their lives. Once the one-sided battle had reached the gate, it had become slaughter.
Taradan trotted his horse alongside Zephan’s, his expression grim. His left arm, bandaged about the wrist and hand, twitched in its makeshift sling; blood crusted his hair. Unlike the rest of the column, he wore full plate. A shieldbearer stationed at Paszar’s tiny vigil, he’d carried warning to Tarvallion. His fellows had joined the defence and thence gone to the Raven’s keeping.
“I should have stayed.” Emotion absent from Taradan’s face crackled in his voice. A knight had a family of steel as well as blood, and there was no family tighter than that of a vigil. Especially in these days of Essamere’s waning.
“They’d have killed you too.” Zephan clasped his shoulder, receiving a taut nod in return. “You did right.”
Zephan was far from certain he’d have done the same. Sometimes it took more courage to run than to fight.
He wheeled his horse about and gazed back at the column Taradan’s warning had rousted. Thirty men and women. Nearly half the knights left at his command, and most of them yet to see a twenty-fifth summer. All bore expressions similar to Taradan’s, though few were as accomplished at concealing emotion. Sorrow, frustration… and above all, rage. The same corrosive brew ate away at Zephan’s labouring heart. The Essamere of old, of Orova, Izack – or Tassandra, under whom Zephan had learnt his bloody trade – would have stopped this. The Essamere of today – his Essamere – would be fortunate to avenge it. The grandmaster’s circlet felt heavier than ever.
Perhaps it was time to set it aside, as Sarella’s letters insisted. To leave the futility of the border to another’s care, and return to their manor house on the Karakeld coast. Raise daughters he hardly knew and worry over quarrels of fisherfolk and winter storms. He was yet to reach middle age, but the last five years had ridden him hard. And grandmasters of Essamere seldom made old bones. Would it really be so wrong to think of family first?
But that was the problem. He’d two families, and the family of steel needed him more than the family of blood he almost never saw. What right had he to speak to his daughters of honour if he abandoned those in need?
The circlet grew more burdensome still as they reached the church’s remains. The trampled mud of the lychfield bristled with makeshift gibbets fashioned from beams and lamp posts – a man-made forest, hung with bitter fruit of ravaged bodies. Fifty or more in mismatched and ill-maintained armour, and the stag banner of Redsigor flying at the very centre. Not villagers. Something else.
“Merciful Lumestra,” breathed Taradan.
Back along the column, someone retched. Zephan urged his steed closer.
Taradan spurred to join him, face hard. “Who do you suppose they were?”
“Wolf’s-heads,” Zephan replied. “Trying to do what we couldn’t.”
Taradan leaned over in his saddle, examining the ground. “Wagon tracks in the mud. These were brought here so we’d find them. It’s a message.”
“Or a reprisal.” Zephan halted, his gaze on a slender woman hanging in the centre of the grisly display. Snapped arrow shafts bristled from her torso. The spars of a shattered longbow hung from her shoulders, the bowstring wound tight about her neck. The face, he knew from bounty posters. “Silda Drenn.”
Taradan gave a low whistle. “So the shadowthorns finally caught up with her?”
Pressing a forearm to mouth and nose to stem the graveyard stench, Zephan dropped from the saddle. His pace quickened as he threaded the forest of corpses, searching for a face he hoped not to find. A hulking fellow, his beard plaited in Thrakkian style. An older woman, her face crosshatched with old scars. A grey-haired man, clad in a grubby phoenix tabard older than Zephan. A parade of strangers, forlorn and pitiable.
No Rosa. Thank Lumestra and Lunastra both.
He glanced back at Taradan. “She’s not here.”
The other narrowed his eyes. “Who’s not here?”
Belatedly, Zephan remembered that Rosa’s departure to Morten’s Rock was far from common knowledge. It wasn’t his secret to share, or his rumour to feed. Even if it did add another grim duty to the day.
“It doesn’t matter.” Swallowing his worries, Zephan pulled himself into the saddle. “Take charge. I have to speak to Governor Orova.”
“About this?” Taradan jerked his head back towards the column. “Send Resadov.”
He could, of course. A herald would be easier than delivering tidings in person. And not just because Resadov was a swifter rider. Murdering refugees from the conquered Eastshires was one thing, but razing a village in the Marcher Lands marked a brutal escalation. And then there was Rosa, who Zephan’s instincts screamed was caught up in this. Better Sevaka heard that from a friend, even if all he could offer was uncertainty.
Zephan shook his head. “Some things don’t fit in a letter. I’ll be back before noon. The 7th will be here before then.”
Taradan clasped his good fist to his chest. “At your command. What would you have us do?”
Zephan took in those the shield of Essamere had failed to shelter.
“Take them down,” he bit out. “Bury them with their faces toward the dawn. And keep your swords close.”