Cutter nodded. “Where’s the inn?”
“Can’t miss it,” the guard said, swallowing. “It’s the only buildin’ still has a roof.”
“Thanks.” He hesitated for a moment, thinking he should say something, but the words would not come, so he only nodded again. He glanced at the others, saw Maeve studying him in a way he didn’t like, then motioned them into the village.
They all started forward save Valden who remained with his hand on the guard’s shoulder.
“Priest?” Cutter asked.
Priest met his eyes, gave him a small smile. “I will remain here, for a time. I will catch up with you all soon.”
Cutter glanced between the man and the guard who had hung his head and was now sobbing quietly, then he grunted. “Very well,” he said, then he turned and led the others deeper into the village.
Cutter and the others walked through the hollowed-out corpse of Ferrimore, past men and women who looked as stunned and lost as the guard at the gate. A great fire burned at the village’s center, and even as he passed, men and women pushed wooden carts carrying their dead toward the blaze where others waited to haul one body after the other into the flames while the families and friends of those who had died looked on and wept.
Cutter was not surprised to see such a burial by flame. Others who had not fought the Fey, might have thought it disrespectful, but those who had met the creatures knew that the only things they truly feared were salt and fire. So then, the heaving of the bodies into the flame was a promise, one he had seen made several times throughout the war. A promise that those bodies cast into the blaze would never again be ravaged by the Fey but would remain ever beyond their reach.
He and the others paused for a moment, watching the grisly spectacle, then he grunted. “Come on—we need to find the inn. We all need rest.”
“Are you truly so cold?” Maeve demanded.
Cutter met her eyes, then looked over to see the boy and Chall, both watching him, waiting for what he would say. He said nothing though, only turned and started deeper into the village. The guard had been right about this much—it was not a difficult thing to pick out the inn. It was the largest building in the village and the only one with a roof. Wounded lay on the ground outside on sheets splattered with crimson stains, some moaning, others blessedly unconscious, as men and women who looked nearly as bad as their charges tended to them as best as they were able.
Cutter had seen the aftermath of a battle—or, in this case, a slaughter—before, had been on either end of it too many times to count. He had seen, had inflicted and suffered, a variety of wounds, and so he was faced with a cold truth. Out of the six wounded being ministered to on the ground in front of the inn, only one would live for sure, with another having a chance—albeit a small one—to pull through. But he did not bother saying as much to those men and women tending them, men and women who, judging by their quiet looks of panic, would have been more at home tending to their livestock than their fellow villagers.
Six wounded. Not so many considering that several hundred men and women called the small village home. But then, another thing Cutter had learned about the Fey from hard, bitter experience was that the Creatures of the Wood never left many.
Cutter stared at those wounded, those dying men and women, and hesitated, frowning. No matter what Maeve thought of him—thoughts for which he, of all people, could not blame her—he was not immune to the pain and suffering of others, and he wished that he could help, that he could offer some healing or, if not that, than at least some hope, vain or not. The problem, though, was that Cutter knew only how to hurt, to kill, and knew nothing of how to save. As for hope, for most of those lying there now, the only hope was that the world beyond the Veil would be kinder than this one, a hope Cutter felt was destined to be shattered, for he had sent many men and creatures on that journey himself, and none, to his recollection, had smiled as they went.
“We should help them,” Chall said softly, and Cutter turned to see the heavy-set mage staring at the wounded and those struggling to at the very least make them comfortable. A tear was gliding its way down his cheek.
“Do you know anything of healing?” Cutter asked him.
The mage winced. “No. No, I don’t.” He glanced with hope at Maeve, and the woman gave a sad shake of her head.
“Neither do I,” Cutter growled, “so stop your fucking crying. That, at least, you can do for them.”
The mage recoiled as if he’d been slapped, but he nodded, running an arm across his eyes. Cutter gave him a moment to gather himself, then he gave a nod of his own and led them toward the entrance of the inn.
The healers and the wounded paid them little attention as they made their way past, the latter too busy dying and the former too busy trying desperately—and vainly—to stop the inevitable to notice them. Closer to them, their cries of anguish, their desperate pleas, struck him almost like a physical blow, and the smell of blood and death filled his nostrils. Cutter felt something rouse within him. Fury. Rage. A beast which had slumbered for fifteen years. A fitful, uneasy slumber, but a slumber nonetheless, one which the sight of the ruined village, the
