“Some clans do that,” Kassani said, climbing into his saddle. “They make ornaments out of dogs’ skins.”
“Urch, come down!” one of the sergeants shouted.
“Wait, commander, smoke!” cried Urch, pointing toward the center of the village.
“Thick?”
“No, I can just barely see it.”
“What’s burning?”
“I can’t see for the roofs of the houses.”
“Come down!”
Urch climbed down the ladder and got onto his horse.
“We move forward. Stay alert. We cover our back,” said Fer, and lowered his visor with a smooth movement.
“You know, Harold,” the goblin said in a whisper. “I’m beginning to feel afraid that we’ll run into orcs.”
“Me, too, Kli-Kli. Me, too.”
We caught the charred smell twenty houses away from the site of the fire. A huge barn belonging to a well- to-do peasant was burning. Or rather, it had already burned down. What we found was a heap of ash, still smoking slightly.
The smell of smoke and ash was mingled with the smell of burned flesh.
“Check it,” Fer rumbled from under his helmet.
One of the soldiers covered his face with his hands and walked to the extinguished fire. Walking across the cold embers and stepping over burnt-out beams, he stirred the ash with the toe of his boot and ran back to us. His face was pale.
“They were all burned, commander. Nothing but charred bones. They drove them into the barn and set fire to it. More than a hundred of them.”
Someone sighed loudly behind me and someone else swore.
“How could this have happened?”
“Someone will pay for this!”
“Stop sniveling! Forward, at a walk,” Fer said harshly. “Crossbowmen move up into the front line.”
“What about the dead, commander?”
“Later,” Fer replied.
We found the other villagers on the small square, where there was an inn and a wooden temple to the gods —more than twenty-five corpses. All the bodies had been gutted, like fish, their heads had been cut off and heaped up in one big pile. The stench of blood and death hammered at our nostrils and the buzzing of thousands of flies rang in our ears. It looked as if a crowd of insane jesters had run through here, splashing blood left and right out of buckets.
One of the soldiers dismounted and puked violently. And to be quite honest, I almost followed his example. It cost me an immense effort to keep my breakfast in my stomach.
Things like this just shouldn’t happen. Things like this have no right to exist in our world!
Men. Women, old people, children … Everyone who had not been burned in the barn was lying in the square, which was covered in blood.
“There,” said Marmot, with a nod.
There were seven bodies hanging on the wall of the inn. Their hands and feet had been nailed to the planks, their stomachs were slit open, and their heads were missing. Two women had been hanged on a rope thrown across the sign of the inn, and their bodies were swaying gently in the light breeze.
I heard a chirping sound and turned my head toward it. A small creature with gray skin, no bigger than a baby, broke off from devouring flesh and raised its bloody face toward us, blinking eyes that were like red saucers. A second one noticed that we were watching it and hissed maliciously.
A bowstring twanged and the first creature squealed and fell, pierced through by an elfin arrow. The second scavenger went darting away and Ell missed it. It disappeared behind the houses, chirping viciously.
“Gkhols, a curse on them!” Deler growled.
“The corpse-eaters are already feasting…”
“Take down the bodies,” Fer ordered his soldiers.
They started cutting through the rope holding up the two women and taking down the seven bodies off the wall.
“I don’t like the smell of this place,” Kli-Kli groaned.
“I don’t either, Kli-Kli.”
“The ears have been cut off all the heads,” said Eel, examining the corpses dispassionately.
“The Grun Ear-Cutters,” one of the soldiers told us. “This is their work.”
“Ear-Cutters?” Hallas repeated, raising one eyebrow.
“Punitive detachments. They like to collect ears.”
“I see.”
“Fer, tell me, could anyone have been left alive?” Alistan Markauz asked the commander of the column.
“I doubt it,” the Border Kingdom warrior said somberly, watching his men carefully setting down the dead bodies removed from the wall. “Hasal, how long ago did this happen?”
“Yesterday evening, commander. The ash from the fire is barely smoking, the blood has all congealed.”
“We need to get to Cuckoo as soon as possible; we can still overtake the Firstborn and have our revenge.”
“We need to check the rest of the village; the orcs could still be here,” Miralissa said with a shake of her head.
“Why, Tresh Miralissa? What would they be doing here?”
“Who can understand the Firstborn, Fer? Farther on the street divides, which way do you intend to lead the detachment?”
“One-Eye, you’re from here, aren’t you?” Fer asked a soldier with a black bandage over his left eye.
“Yes.” The lad’s face was greener than a leaf in spring. “My aunt, my sisters … Everyone…”
“Pull yourself together, soldier! Where do these two streets lead?”
“They run separately to the end of the village, commander. The rich people lived farther on, and the orchards start there…”
“I’m thinking of dividing the detachment into equal halves, Milord Alistan. We need to explore both streets. What if there is someone from the village still alive, after all?”
“Dividing up your forces may not be wise.”
“But even so, I think it’s the best way.”
“Act as you think best, you are in command here.”
“Grunt, Mouth, take your platoons down the street on the left. Eagle, Torch, you come with me.”
“Yes, commander.”
“Ell, Honeycomb, Hallas, Eel, Harold, Kli-Kli, go with Grunt,” Alistan Markauz ordered. “Lady Miralissa, Egrassa, Marmot, Lamplighter, and I will follow Fer’s detachment.”
“Is it a good idea to split us up, milord?” Deler asked peevishly, testing the keenness of his battle-ax blade with his thumb.
“We can’t weaken one of the detachments. They might need our help.”
“Let’s move,” Fer commanded. “Mouth, we’ll meet at the end of the village.”
“Yes, commander.”
“If anything happens, blow your horns,” the knight said, and started his horse.
“Mind your beard, Beard-Face!” Deler boomed to Hallas.
“You worry about yourself,” the gnome replied good-naturedly, adjusting his grip on the handle of his mattock.
We moved into the street, following the two platoons of Fer’s somber and wary soldiers.
“Crud, Brute,” the sergeant said to two twin brothers, “go in front, thirty paces ahead, where I can see your backsides. Keep your eyes peeled. If you see anything, come straight back.”
The two soldiers moved ahead on their horses, trying to spot enemies.
