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?”
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.
There were no tracks leading into the village from the woods. Jus walked slowly around the village, finding nothing but the body of another man who had tried to run. The woods were free of the lizard stink. Frowning, Jus returned to the village and stared at it in thought.
Prisoners had been herded together in the street, culled, then marched toward an ancient apple orchard. Jus followed the river of tracks-perhaps two hundred prisoners with half as many captors-and then thetracks suddenly seemed to stop.
The tracks simply shut off as though a line had been drawn across them. Jus looked carefully at the tracks and then stared upward at the crooked apple trees.
Something seemed strange about the bend of two trees up above. The boughs leaned inward to form a perfect arch, almost as if deliberately tied in place.
The arch rested directly above the tracks. Jus circled it, passing a hand carefully into the empty space defined by the archway. His hand tingled as if expecting to find a door, but his fingers met no resistance. He touched only empty air.
Something flickered in midair. Before Cinders could shout a warning, Jus had already turned, his sword a blurring arc of black steel. A javelin split in two as Jus sliced it from the air. He ran roaring at an apple tree that suddenly tried to blunder to one side.
Jus jammed his black sword through the bark and heard a scream. Blood jetted as he ripped the steel free, parried a claw, and hacked a savage blow straight down. His sword cleaved into a reptilian skull, and a reeking creature fell writhing on the dirt.
Colors shifted. What had once looked like the trunk of an apple tree now lay sprawled over the leaves. It was reptilian, a huge bipedal lizard with a chameleons skin. Colors faded as the creature died, its thick skull split open. Oil oozed from its hide, filling the air with its foul stench. Jus kept away from the creature’s reach as it died and wiped his sword on ahandful of wet leaves.
“Troglodyte.”
The secret of survival was knowledge. Jus had made it his business to study every creature in, on, or under the Flanaess. Troglodytes were a carnivorous lizard species-savage, cunning, subterranean dwellers. Hatingsunlight, they would scarcely be likely to venture far away from their caves.
Caves beneath this sort of soil seemed unlikely. Jus looked at the apple tree arch, knowing it was a faerie gate, and wondered just how far away it led.
Intensely stupid, troglodytes would normally have killed and eaten their prey. Were they intelligent enough to herd their meat on the hoof? Perhaps, but no troglodyte could ever puzzle out a magic gate. Jus cast about the orchard carefully then began inspecting every tree.
A flicker of motion caught his eye on a bough high above. Jus scowled, sheathed his sword, and climbed into the lower boughs.
Motion flickered again, and he found it. A single black silk thread had snagged upon the bark. Jus inspected without touching, then brought Cinders’ snout close to the treasure.
“Can you smell it through the stink?”
Jus sat in the tree for a long moment of silent thought. He carefully retrieved the fallen thread and stored it in a folded paper inside his pouch.
It seemed he had work to do.
Half an hour saw him home again. He passed a giant’scrumbling bones and then walked into weed-strewn streets. Outside the old tavern, Polk’s cart stood hitched to his rather nervous mule. Enid stood amongsther saddlebags and scrolls, awkwardly trying to fit them across her own back. Jus appeared silently, hitched the sphinx’s bags into place, and tied thestraps. She beat her huge, heavy wings to test the load and then looked back at him in alarm.
“Heavens, what’s that smell?”
“Troglodyte.” Jus went to a rain barrel and took a handful ofash to scrub his sword and his hands. “Polk! We’re leaving! Move it or we’ll belate!”
Bustling out of the tavern and looking as though he had been seeking the solace of his magic faerie bottle, Polk winced as he walked into the light.
“What is it, son? What’s happening?” Polk’s bluster wasweighed down by misery. “We ain’t late. There’s nowhere we have to be, nothingwe have to do.”
