“Be at ease,” Vasen said to them all. “There’s nothing to fear.”
He pulled Byrne aside. He felt Orsin’s eyes on him all the while.
“There’s a village on the other side of that rise.”
Byrne chewed the corner of his moustache and nodded. “I know. Fairelm, it was called.”
“It is called Fairelm. I’ll go ahead and have a look. Keep the pilgrims here for now.”
Byrne took Vasen by the arm and pulled him around. “Perhaps we should just avoid it. I don’t want to compromise the safety of the pilgrims, and the doings of Sembia are not our concern.”
“True,” Vasen acknowledged with a tilt of his head. “But if something has happened to the village, someone there could need help. Our calling is more than just escorting pilgrims, Byrne.”
“A light to chase darkness,” Byrne said softly. His hand fell from Vasen’s arm. Distant thunder rumbled, as if the sky disputed Byrne’s sentiment.
“A light, indeed,” Vasen said. He thumped Byrne on the shoulder.
“I still dislike putting the pilgrims at risk.”
“As do I,” Vasen said. “Take them over to that wood.” He pointed at a nearby stand of broadleaf trees that swayed in the wind, leaves hissing. “Do what you can to put their minds at ease. I’ll return quickly. The light keep you.”
“And you, First Blade.” Byrne turned and started gathering the pilgrims.
“Come, folks,” he said, filling his voice with false cheer. “Rain is coming. Let’s get under those trees and take a meal. . ”
As Byrne shepherded the pilgrims toward the wood, Vasen hefted his shield, turned, and found himself face to face with Orsin.
“Gods, man. You move like a ghost,” Vasen said.
“I’ll accompany you,” Orsin replied. “Not hungry, I suppose?” Vasen asked with a smile.
“No,” Orsin answered with a grin. “Not hungry.”
“I’ll be grateful to have you.” Vasen signaled to Byrne that Orsin would accompany him. Together, the two of them hurried toward Fairelm. Orsin dragged his staff behind them, carving a temporary groove into the whipgrass and mud. The caw of crows pulled them onward.
Vasen smelled the faint, sickly odor of death before he and Orsin reached the edge of the rise.
They crouched low, and looked down at the village, maybe a long bowshot away. Small plots of farmland surrounded a core of single-story, sturdy wooden buildings, themselves built around a central commons and a large pond fed by a small stream. Several ancient elms stood here and there throughout the village, a dozen maybe. Vasen imagined the trees predated the Spellplague; they appeared to have come through unchanged. Two small rowboats bobbed on the wind-whipped water of the pond.
“There are many dead here,” Orsin said, his voice a somber whisper.
A child’s swing hung from one of the nearest elms, swaying eerily in the breeze, as if ridden by a ghost. The elms’ canopies whispered in the wind.
“I see them.”
Pieces of bodies lay scattered among the buildings. Vasen could make out heads, arms, torsos, the bloody flotsam of a slaughter. He noted the twisted forms of women and children, even livestock had been torn apart. Blood pooled in dark puddles on the road, stained the grass, spattered doors and the sides of buildings.
“What happened here?” Vasen whispered.
Orsin said nothing. He simply stared, as still as a statue, as still as a corpse.
Crows gorged on the feast, their cries a grotesque accompaniment to the quiet of the dead. Now and again a few would take to the air, cawing at one another, before they again alit and feasted.
“This isn’t the work of an animal,” Orsin said.
“No,” Vasen said.
“The Shadovar, then?”
Vasen shook his head, shadows curling around him. “When the Shadovar wish to teach a lesson, they do so with magic and leave no doubt of their involvement.”
“What, then?”
Vasen didn’t know. There were many predators that prowled Sembia’s dark plains, but this, this was something else. .
Whatever had attacked the village had reveled in blood, in murder. He looked back to Byrne and the pilgrims. He could barely see them, huddled as they were under the broadleaf trees. A soft light flared-Byrne’s holy symbol, light in the darkness. Perhaps he was leading them in prayer.
Vasen stood and drew his blade. Anything to be done in the village would require hard steel, not soft prayer. The weapon’s edge glowed faintly in the shroud of Sembia’s shadowed air.
“Come on,” he said, and started down. Shadows gathered around him, a reflection of his anger. To keep himself centered, he concentrated for a moment and put his faith in his shield until it began to glow. The soft, rosy light warmed him but did nothing to dull his anger.
“If the attackers remain, they’ll see your light,” Orsin observed.
“Let them see,” Vasen answered.
They walked through fallow barley fields, under several of the towering elms, and into the bloody streets. Somewhere a loose shutter or door slammed repeatedly against a window sash, like a pulse, like the dying heartbeat of a dead village.
The crows took wing, cawing in anger, as Vasen and Orsin neared the first of the bodies-an elderly man pressed face down in the mud. They kneeled beside him and flipped him over. His abdomen had been ripped open, his throat shredded. His wide, terrified eyes stared up at the dark sky.
“The claws and teeth of something large,” Orsin said. “But he is not fed upon except by the crows.”
“Just murder, then,” Vasen said. He removed his gauntlet, placed a hand on the elderly man’s brow, and with his other hand held his glowing shield over the man’s face so that its light reflected in his eyes.
“Whomever your patron, let Amaunator’s light help guide your way to your rest.”
The other bodies and pieces of bodies they found on the outskirts of the village showed similar wounds. Vasen’s heart ached over the dead children, who had spent their final moments in terror and pain. He prayed over everyone he found.
He and Orsin made slow progress, checking the bodies for signs of life, checking the interior of cottages for someone who might have hidden from the attackers. They found nothing but blood and the dead. Livestock had been slaughtered in their pens, cows flayed. Chicken feathers floated here and there in the wind like snowflakes.
Neither Vasen nor Orsin called out for survivors, although it would have made sense to do so. Breaking the quiet seemed blasphemous somehow.
He looked for tracks, some clue about the identity of the attackers, but the rain had washed them away. By the time they neared the center of the village, Vasen had resigned himself to finding neither survivors nor perpetrators.
“Ages turn, the world changes, but there is always horror,” Orsin said.
“And sometimes beauty,” Vasen said.
“But none here,” answered Orsin, his eyes distant.
A shout shattered the quiet, a rage-filled roar that originated from somewhere ahead, the commons, perhaps. The sound summoned Vasen’s anger. Shadows exploded from his flesh.
“Move!” he said to Orsin, and ran for the village center, blade ready. He channeled his god’s power as he pelted through the mud, empowering his blade and shield. Both glowed white. But the shadows around his flesh remained. Light and shadow coexisted in the air around him.
“Wait,” Orsin said, but Vasen did not wait.
When they reached the commons, shaded by the canopy of one of the large elms, they saw a woman slouched against the bole of the elm, her mouth slack, her eyes open. She looked alive. A man crouched beside her, head bowed, one hand on her shoulder, the other around a longbow. A sword hung from his belt. He had not noticed them.