As they closed on the village, she was glad for her failure to envision the demon. It was unsettling enough being harried by the gibbering of frogs, the cawing of crows, and the buzzing of mole crickets from every mire, every branch and bough, every crevasse clothed in the pall of darkness. It was the end of the road. Ahead was forest and shadow, beyond that the pagan den and—all going well—twenty-some clerics lurking in the black of doorways with hammers adorned in velvet. Then it happened. A scream from the village ushered forth Jael’s fantasy into reality. The attack had begun, and in moments a hundred desperate pagans would run howling from the tree line, shades in the umber. Yet they did not come. There was only the Cross and a dozen Watcher’s waiting, the quiet perforated by periodic shrieks too distant to be distinct over the squire’s pounding heart.
Ba-Bum! Ba-Bum! Ba-Bum! it beat like the march of a war drum. A minute passed; the horses stirred, nervous. The men began to whisper—words of worry and words of trepidation. Even the captain seemed disturbed by the unnatural stillness at the edge of the woods, the enduring silence, minutes now since the last shriek sounded.
Then the first of them emerged: wan, shirtless youths stumbling night-blind through the mud, blood stained up to their elbows and clutching crooked spears. And more were funneling onto the road as Trey summoned forth a storm of hooves. Before Leonhardt could think, the horses vaulted forward and hours of practice in the yard took over as she bore her sword point on the first body in reach—felt her hand jam against the guard, then a jerk as the steel released the tumbling corpse as she charged on to another. Her first kill, so quick, her only impression was of shock at the ease of it. He never even saw her, like she was death, and death was the wind, and she with her companions a tempest. The few pagans who stood and fought fell and died. Their crude weapons could not hope to penetrate plate nor maille, nor could their bare feet hope to escape the stampede on their heels. The Cross pursued them, through the thick of wood and out the other side, riding down the rout one by one till the last of them stood surrounded at the foot of the village. Jael was nearest then, and knew that meant that he was hers, the fourth to die by her sword that night. And thus she charged, winding high and cleaving for the neck just as her victim turned. Too late in the dim of the moon she saw the grimace of an old woman, wrinkled and terrified—permanent—the botched cut stuck inside, rattled Leonhardt’s arm and tore the sword from her grip.
She panicked, pulled too suddenly on her horse’s reins and was thrown from the saddle. The world became a whirl of black and brown. She hit the ground on her belly and gasped into the mud, half from the blow and half from what she saw. “Jael!” the captain bellowed, yet as she staggered to her feet, she stared as if unaware of the voice calling out to her. It was the horror she left behind: the old woman, the whole of what lay between her and the forest. In the rush of it, the fleeing pagans each seemed the same as that first bloodied savage with the spear in his hands. Now, however, the moon had revealed the truth of their ambush. She saw a boy lanced through heart, a headless old man, a woman prone in a mire with a bundle of swaddling buried beneath her. There was an old crone and pair of children and a dead pagan walking, half his head caved in after a cleric’s stroke. Trey finished him off as he bolted passed to where Jael staggered, dazed.
“Jael! Are you harmed anywhere? Can you hear me? Are you alright?”
“Yes. I’m fine,” Leonhardt coughed, unable to catch her breath so thick was the air with humors. It stung her eyes and sinuses and flavored her tongue with the taste of sulfur. But when she went to rub the run from her nose, a jolt sharp as a dagger erupted from wrist to elbow. Broken, she knew without looking. She could see it on her captain’s face—a grimace like that old woman’s. The throes of nausea roiled Jael’s stomach. She started to double over, but Gildmane stood her straight.
He said, “We need to get you ahorse. Now. Can you still ride with that arm?”
“Wasn’t that the last of them?” she asked, still dazed. “I need to retrieve my sword. I can’t leave it.”
“We’ll come back for it,” Trey promised, his face pale, his voice strained—his whole countenance shaking as he gazed toward the village “Take my horse and tell Troy I said to take Brandon with you. God damn it, this was a mistake.”
It was a massacre, Leonhardt witnessed for herself. Scattered throughout the village as far as she could see corpses steamed in the bleak, the blood still warm, still oozing to the surface of skinless bodies. Some were piled in heaps, others hung from trees, but the worst was the one slung over the back of a cleric’s horse. The beast’s eyes had been plucked out, and it ran heedlessly, braying, rounding close enough for her to see that the rider’s face was left intact. It was Elder Frampt.
It was the mist.
It rolled in from behind them, from the forest and from the village, white as snow and just as cold. It choked the hope from all of their lungs. Jael could hear her companions screaming, riding aimlessly lost and calling their names, but the captain and his squire did not respond. They would not draw anymore victims near where the demon lurked, concealed by fog, encroaching, cautiously, as if it were just as blinded as they were.
Jael glanced back where she
