Jaya shrugged. ‘War doesn’t last for a day,’ she said.
Bel nodded. ‘At least we have Battu. It must be that he will help us. He is a delivery from fate.’ He looked back to where the others waited. ‘Stop listening in,’ he muttered, and from a distance Gellan glanced at them in surprise, then quickly turned away.
‘Knew it,’ Bel said. ‘Damn mages.’
As they neared the village, a lazy breeze stole towards them, flattening many heads of grass in a rolling wave. Riding on it was the stench of death.
‘Smell that?’ said Bel.
‘Strong,’ said M’Meska, her nostrils flaring. ‘Not one person only.’
‘Weapons out. Be wary.’
The road ran into the village between a line of wooden huts. Now they saw that some of the huts had been smashed, as if by a cyclone, while others stood completely unharmed.
‘By Arkus,’ breathed Hiza.
A headless body sprawled chest down in the middle of the road, a coagulated pool around the stump of the neck thick with flies.
‘And there,’ said Jaya, pointing, her complexion paler than Bel had ever seen it.
Protruding from the smashed-in wall of a hut was a ragged pair of legs.
Bel gave Jaya’s arm a squeeze, but she shivered and moved away. He always assumed she was going to be all right, but perhaps he was wrong to do so. Not everyone could shrug off ruin as easily as it turned out he could. Not everyone, he knew, would have a private part of themselves wishing they had been here to experience whatever had gone on.
To stop it happening , he told himself. To preserve these people from whatever befell them. Not just because my blood would have sung.
‘And there,’ said Hiza.
‘And all around,’ said Gellan. ‘Many, many dead.’
‘Stay close to me,’ said Bel, leading them forward through the carnage. ‘Eyes open.’
From somewhere towards the village centre came a wooden knocking sound. They heard something drop, followed by a curse. Somewhere else, the sound of sobbing.
Leaving the road, they stepped out onto a grassy area between huts. Bel trod on something and looked down to discover a severed hand. ‘Watch your step,’ he said. As they passed other bodies and body parts, crows hopped away, squawking.
They came to the village square, which wasn’t much more than an earthy area on which no huts were built. There a man laboured with planks of wood, taken from destroyed homes, dropping them into a large pile. As the group approached he spun with a cry, then his knees gave out and he fell. He was a stout and portly woodsman of about fifty, his face streaked with tear-tracked mud.
‘Are …are you them?’ he gibbered. ‘Have you come back?’
‘Are we who?’ said Bel.
‘I …I …’ The man glanced at the pile of wood, then gave a hysterical giggle. ‘Too many to bury, you see. Was going to burn them instead.’ His eyes widened as they fixed on Fazel. ‘What?’ he shrieked. ‘What is that?’
He scrambled to his feet and fled. Bel gave Gellan a look, and Gellan held out a hand. The man halted with a yelp, frozen to the spot, facing away.
‘Fazel,’ said Bel, ‘perhaps you can do something to make your appearance more friendly? You know, less …dead?’
Fazel gave a wave. Instantly, his charred face was replaced by that of an old man, with thin brown hair, double-pointed beard and piercing grey eyes.
‘Quite an improvement,’ said Jaya. ‘We should have asked you to do that ages ago.’
Bel approached the terrified villager. ‘Please, sir, we mean you no harm. I will have my mage withdraw his hold on you.’ He gestured at Gellan, who lowered his hand. Suddenly released, the man stumbled a few more steps in the direction he’d been heading.
‘Sir!’ said Bel commandingly.
The man stopped and slowly turned, though it was plain it took all his courage to do so.
‘I thought I saw the spectre of death amongst you,’ he said, and tittered. ‘No change there. He’s everywhere in Valdurn this day.’ He stared hard into Bel’s eyes. ‘You ain’t them? You sure? You ain’t …Oh, oh,’ he began to moan. ‘If it be true, thank Arkus! Thank Arkus!’ He reached to grasp Bel’s hand. ‘The blue-haired man! Could it be? Come to deliver us in our time of need?’
Bel struggled not to lose his patience, for the fellow was obviously highly traumatised.
Hiza stepped in to take the man by the shoulders. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘you are safe now, but you must tell us – what has happened here?’
The man’s eyes failed to focus, instead seeing the horrors of his recent past.
‘Was it the dragons?’ said Hiza.
‘Dragons?’ said the man, confused. ‘No, they don’t bother with us.’ He shivered. ‘I don’t know what they were. Monsters.’
‘I have a peep around,’ said M’Meska.
‘Be careful,’ said Bel.
‘I’m not sensing anything nearby,’ said Gellan. ‘Apart from a few more people hiding in huts.’
‘M’Meska trusts her eyes,’ the Saurian informed him, and went slinking off with her bow notched.
‘What kind of monsters?’ said Hiza.
‘They looked like men,’ said the man. ‘At first. Warriors, mercenaries maybe. Then they changed into huge things, muddy, with claws and horrible, horrible tongues.’ Tears streamed down his cheeks. ‘They called us the enemy, they …they …slaughtered …’ He broke down.
Bel turned to Gellan. ‘Sounds like Mireforms,’ he said.
The look on Gellan’s face was hard to read.
He sometimes underestimated Bel, Losara realised. Why shouldn’t his counterpart know what Mireforms were and recognise them from this brief description? After all, Bel had been educated by the Grand High Mage of Kainordas.
It wasn’t that which dominated his thoughts, however. This devastation had not been included in his instructions! Anger flared, ran through him briefly and was gone, replaced by annoyance and then grim acceptance. He hadn’t not instructed the Mireforms to do this, and these villagers had technically been enemies, he supposed, though he bore them no personal animosity. They were enemies who’d posed no threat, so why, why had the Mireforms busied themselves with such violence? Tonight he would risk stealing away, he decided, and find Eldew. After that, there would be no more unnecessary bloodshed.
‘Where did the monsters go?’ he asked the man.
‘They …left.’
‘In which direction ?’ said Bel forcefully.
Losara considered his other curiously – did Bel possess no sympathy? Certainly Losara felt it, as well as guilt over what he had inadvertently caused here. Was that weakness? Why should he care if tiny peons from the opposing side were torn asunder?
‘Into the forest,’ sobbed the man.
So, thought Losara, at least the Mireforms will reach the cave first. There was still no way he wanted Bel facing dragons, patterns or no.
M’Meska returned, bringing with her two more villagers. A little girl clutched a bloodied rag doll tightly to her chest with one hand and held onto a plump young woman with the other. That made three of the five survivors Losara could sense.
‘Found these,’ said M’Meska.
‘What are you doing, Seb?’ said the woman dazedly to the man.
‘I was …we have to do something about the bodies. Help me build a pyre?’
‘We should burn this whole place,’ the woman said dully.
‘Kera! You don’t mean that. This is our home.’
‘Home?’ She looked around. ‘What home? Who are you people?’ she demanded suddenly, as if seeing the others for the first time.
As Hiza dealt with explanations, Bel approached Losara with a dark look on his face. ‘What do you think it means?’ he said.