Ushan’s servants bore him off, leaving Faen standing upon theflowery grass. With an irritated sweep, Faen banished the illusion. He now stood upon honest moss, pacing up and down as he furrowed his brows.
Two days until the wedding. Faen walked and watched the Nightshade palace, his brows permanently creased into a scowl.
7
In the abandoned village amidst the giants’ bones, themorning seemed miserably quiet. Outside in the frost, the Justicar practiced with his sword. The huge black blade made fast slices, thrusts, and parries. Stripped to the waist, Jus rehearsed his savage combat style, matching blade work with kicks, punches, head butts, and elbow strikes. His breath steamed as he worked, coming in harsh puffs as he repeated his movements for the eleventh time. Sitting on a pile of stones beside him, Cinders hung limp and desolate, sniffing softly at a tiny little faerie vial.
Inside the tavern stables, Polk and Enid leaned on a windowsill, the human dwarfed by the freckled sphinx. Both looked equally miserable. Both sighed listlessly and stared blankly into the morning air.
Polk sighed yet again. His usual bluster was faded and gone. “I left my bacon to cool this morning. No one stole the crunchy end bits while Iwas gone.”
Enid’s tufted tail hung limp as an old wet rope. “There was adirty ditty folded up in one of these old books, but there’s no one to explainit to me.”
Both companions sighed unhappily, feeling as though a vast weight were crushing their souls. They could hardly bear to look as the Justicar fought shadows in the tavern yard.
His hard work seemed sad and futile. He was using action as a substitute for grief. Enid and Polk both nodded wisely, then turned away from the window with a sigh.
On the tavern table lay a little bundle of goods-a tinyleather dress, gloves and leggings, plus a bundle of papers. Rather than magic scrolls, Escalla’s gift to Jus had simply been her own spell-books, and wrappedwithin them had been her battle wand.
Polk reached for Enid’s currycomb to brush her pelt, butinstead fell into apathy as he saw the sad pile of papers on the table.
“I guess she’s really gone for good.”
Out in the courtyard, Jus could be heard sluicing himself down with water. He stomped into the tavern dripping wet, breathless, dark and brooding. He dropped his sword on the table and proceeded to dry himself vigorously with a villainous piece of old sacking. The Justicar’s heavy bodyshowed a pale network of scars. Magic healing left few traces, although reknitted wounds looked less weatherbeaten than the rest of Jus’ skin.
He took the small silver mirror that always hung about his neck and propped it on a windowsill. Taking a razor from his pouch, Jus warmed it briskly in the tea kettle, then squatted down to peer into the mirror as he shaved his head.
The harsh scrape-scrape-scrape of the razor set Enid’snerves on edge. The big sphinx arose and began pacing back and forth, swishing with her tail. She sighed in agitation. Jus shot the sphinx a look, turned back to his shaving, and finally knocked his razor clean against the windowsill.
Perfectly calm, Jus drew in his breath, looked out the window, and then drew his brows into a frown.
Smoke smudged the skyline.
Jus shrugged on his tunic, keeping his eyes on the skyline. He found his armor and tugged the black dragon scale cuirass into place. He tied his sword belt with one hand and swept Cinders about his back with the other.
The distant smoke had a broad base, deep black and unmoving. It was a village burning, not a forest fire. Jus had seen enough towns destroyed in his time to know the signs. The big man checked the edge of his sword and then flung open the door.
“I have to look at something. Stay here and get ready tomove. I’ll be back by midday.”
The Justicar slammed the door behind him as he left. He took a deep breath of forest air and looked about the abandoned village. Only the birds and squirrels were stirring.
This was how it used to be-alone except for Cinders, alone inthe silence. Jus closed his eyes for a moment and tried to savor it. The cool, the quiet, the isolation… He held it in his mind, but the old perfection ofit had gone.
The ranger turned and strode down the trail toward Sour Patch, moving at a grim and silent speed. Still a ways from the village, he sank into the woods, feeling the breath and movement of every tree.
Autumn had left the trees stark. Leaves lay in deep drifts, wet and heavy, muffling every footfall in the gloom. Jus moved fast. In the damp, sound carried badly, and few ears were sharp enough to hear him coming. He crossed three miles in brisk time, keeping his eyes on glimpses of the smoke cloud that smudged the sky.
A scent struck him, and he dropped. The wind had changed, and with it came a foul bestial reek. The stink of it hit like a hammer, and Jus lay instantly invisible among the leaves.
Nothing moved in the forest. There were no footfalls, no bending twigs. Even so, the stink seemed to come from an animal-or a vast swarmof animals. It smelled like a thousand putrid menageries, like rotting flesh and rotten fish and unwashed bodies festering with slime.
“Cinders?”
No moves. The dog winced. Smells bad!
If it moved a hell hound nearly to tears, then the reek was bad indeed. Rising into a half-crouch, Jus sped forward from cover to cover and followed the source of the breeze.
A towering hill of manure steamed in the chill. It marked the edge of Sour Patch, a town that now stood beneath a haze of smoke made from burning homes. Jus slithered on his belly though a patch of leaves, raised his head, and looked at the ruined village in silence.
The tumbledown refugee cottages were all gone. Here and there, flames leaped high, but most had already slumped into a sullen smolder. The fires had burned for at least two hours-time enough to sink into ashes.
Every roof had gone. Most of the shacks were burned, though damp and rain had kept the fires miserably small. Doors in the crowded shantytown lay smashed where something had battered its way into every hiding place.
Nearby, a body lay face down in the mold with a feathered javelin jutting from its back. Jus took careful stock of the silent village, then slithered forward and inspected the corpse.
It was one of the half-orc guards. Jus rolled the body over, looked at the obsidian javelin head that stood out from the corpse’s chest, andthen let the body lie.
From here, he could see other bodies. These had been physically torn apart, their heads and organs splayed in shocking patterns all over the mud. Jus moved silently from cover to cover, then squatted down to stare into a dead face.
It was an old woman. Beside her lay an old man. The other corpses all seemed to be the aged, the crippled and infirm-here, a boy oncrutches, there a veteran warrior missing a leg. Someone had culled the villagers with an obscene, callous brutality, discarding those that failed to meet their needs. The hundreds of survivors had been taken… where?
There were tracks in the mud-human and… something else.Jus knelt and inspected his find. The non-human tracks were long, clawed, and smeared occasionally by what looked like a heavy tail.
Lizards.
The bestial stink filled the air. Jus approached a broken door and carefully inspected a smear of oil that smudged the wood. The oil gave off a strong whiff of the stench. It gleamed slightly, showing where a large oily creature had shouldered open the door.
Inside the burned house lay the charred skeletons of babies. The Justicar breathed deep and slow, feeling the old, cold fire spreading into his soul, filling his very essence. Cinders growled, deep and feral. Jus narrowed his eyes and lay a hand upon his sword hilt, looking back across his shoulder as he backed into the street.