If Katya were here, she might have told me that sending a quarter of my entire battalion (to be specific, the understrength cavalry company and what part of my infantry I could mount on muleback in a pinch) after a single scout was foolish and wasteful. This wasn’t going to help me achieve my claimed mission and ran the risk of serious losses (far more serious than a single scout).

Then again, had she shown any such signs of calculation when she rescued me?

I thought back to my dark days in captivity in the hands of the rebels; my time spent chained to the wall, and staring down the barrel of a pistol as an all-too-young girl tried to work up the nerve to execute me. The rebel girl had lost her nerve, but I had no illusions about where I would have been if Katya hadn’t ridden out to save Ilya: Buried in a shallow unmarked grave. She and Vitold pulled off a rescue against great odds to save me.

The grave of the ancient king came to my mind as well. Katya had ridden into danger to save my life then, as well, appearing from above like an avenging angel to smite the undead. All she knew was that a bird had stolen her hat; and when she arrived to find a hole full of undead terror, she didn’t flee, as Quentin had; instead, she entered the fray and saved my life. Again.

I thought back to the crushed look on her face when she discovered that Ilya was dead; I thought back to our time together, and the love she had shown me; and I shuddered. Katya had saved my life more than once, against terrible enemies and terrible odds; she was my lover and my hero rolled into one petite package. I had to save her or avenge her if she was beyond saving. The cost did not matter.

This is why people make infernal bargains even when they ought to know better. Sometimes, price is not an object. I kicked my draft horse to a canter, and the mules followed suit, startling several of the riders. A tickling sensation danced along my arms, in tune with the branches brushing mules and riders; I mentally pulled at what felt like a thread inside of me, and the sensation eased. The men whispered to each other superstitiously, and I realized I had spurred the placid draft horse to a full gallop.

Sooner than I expected, we caught up with Quentin, who had posted himself halfway up a hill. He startled when I cleared my throat to get his attention, nearly falling sideways out of his saddle. Evidently, he hadn’t seen us coming. I was beginning to reconsider Quentin’s suitability for an officer in charge of reconnaissance when he redeemed himself by giving a full report on the position and disposition of the enemy. He had scouts posted around them; the ogres had stopped by a stream on the other side of the hill and were presently enjoying a mid-day feast of freshly caught boars.

He had not, he added, spotted Katya; or at least, not an intact Katya. He allowed for the possibility that Katya might have been in a stewpot, or divided up into non-recognizable portions. One of them, he pointed out, was at least twice the height of a tall man, and there were a dozen of them, a piece of information that I might want to become aware of and which he thought ought to lead me to reconsider confrontation.

I told him I already knew I was dealing with ogres, though I didn’t mention I hadn’t dealt with ogres before. I dismounted, and between Quentin, myself, and Fyodor, we sketched out the camp and a plan of attack. First, we would lead the mules and the draft horse over there, a safe distance from the action, and I would convince them to stay put. The rest of the men would stay just behind the crest of the hill while I alone advanced along the stream offering parlay. I did not say it, but this would also allow me to see if Katya were present but hidden; at that moment, I trusted my own eyes more than those of Quentin and his scouts.

If the ogres returned a still-living Katya to me without incident, all would be well. If they attacked, or if I gave a signal to indicate they were not going to return an intact Katya to me, it would be time to lead a charge down the hill and have bloody vengeance upon them. Quentin and Fyodor exchanged a quick look when I said that, and then looked up. Crows were starting to circle, either in anticipation of leftovers from the boar feast or in anticipation of leftovers from battle. Quentin expressed doubts about the wisdom of taking on massive ogres without mechs on hand. Fyodor joined in, pointing out that we had no cannons with us, only arquebuses and pistols.

I gave them both a look and told them that if I died, they should feel free to retreat after that event. Until and unless that happened, however, I commanded their support, and I had every confidence in their ability to shoot one ogre to death while I handled the other eleven if necessary. When Fyodor pointed out that only half of his men had brought halberds, I allowed that perhaps it was better that he and the best arquebusiers of the lot parked themselves on top of the hill with arquebuses steadily aimed on hook-rests while Quentin covered himself in glory with a cavalry charge.

When Quentin started to talk about how the ogres were massive enough not to be ridden down by horse, I allowed that perhaps the first thing should be a concerted volley of fire from Quentin and Fyodor’s men alike, but that the cavalry and every man with a halberd should follow down the hill quickly. This was, I reminded them, only a contingency plan. Ogres are more intelligent than many give them credit for, and it was entirely possible they simply had Katya tied up somewhere out of sight and were willing to release her given a little bit of negotiation on my part.

I had a pouch filled with coins and jewelry for exactly that purpose, but I expected instead to die. As much as I tried to cling to the thin sliver of hope, I was coming around to the belief that Katya was dead. My heart’s desire was not to live, but instead to extract a blood price for her death. I eased myself quietly down the hill to the stream, out of sight of the ogres, and then walked downstream right into the middle of them.

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The one I guessed to be the leader, the shortest one, had a familiar-looking rifle slung across his back. A fine weapon for hunting even large game, like boar. Katya’s weapon. I could see easily enough that Katya herself was not there; and when I quietly whispered the question to Yuri at my side, his answer was a simple negative confirming what I saw: He did not hear Katya, nor scent her.

Ogres will eat anything. For a moment, everything in the world stopped, and my last thread of hope snapped.

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I waved my sword in the general direction of the ogre leader, the curved bronze blade gleaming brightly as it cut through the air.

“You! You! Die!”

I had intended to say something a little more intelligent-sounding, but as it turned out, I had been rendered inarticulate with rage. The last straw of hope snapped and apparently had taken with it my ability to communicate like a civilized human. Jabbing my sword in the air at the ogre while shouting monosyllabic words was as close as I could get.

The curved blade glittered in the light, the crow-shaped crossguard looking gaunt and hungry. The leader got as far as “What do you-” before my men took my gesture as not only the signal to fire but also as the designation of a target. Bullets saturated his position, sending him jerkily towards the ground. The other ogres bellowed in sympathetic agony, lurching to their feet. They were bonded to him.

He was fast and tough; I will give him that. He had Katya’s rifle out and fired it at me as he bled on the ground before I reached him. The bullet pierced all the way through my armor and into my shoulder; then I arrived and stomped on his face, holding his head to the ground while I parted it from his body. The ogres howled and the cavalry thundered downhill among a rain of lead shot.

My armor rattled with the sound of pellets striking it from all directions. I waded forward into the mess, my blade flashing brightly in the sunlight. The tallest of the ogres, the giant that had so worried my lieutenants, did the most sensible thing and ran away; most of his smaller kin stood and fought, proving that they were every bit as stupid as us mere humans.

Every time I struck one of the ogres with my crow-crossed blade, I felt a surge of fresh energy flow through my arms. My rage passed from roaring fury into a perverse sort of exultation. Yuri trailed behind me, guarding my flanks as I pushed forward into the enemy ranks, leaving me the freedom to swing the blade in wide arcs, faster and faster. The ogres did not fall without resistance. They struck me with heavy blows, but aside from one wielding a particularly heavy club, their blows did little to slow my progress.

That one knocked me off my feet entirely one time, leaving my ears ringing. As he bent over to see if he had killed me, however, a bolt of canine ferocity sailed over me and tore out his throat, buying me the time to roll back onto my feet and stand. Some screamed; some prayed while their guts spilled out on the ground; and one died with a lance through his eyesocket before I could get to him.

A buried part of me felt sickened, even as I reveled in the rising tide of energy I felt surge through me with each fallen foe. Had Katya screamed and prayed as she had died? If she had, they had not had mercy on her. I pushed the sick feeling away, burying it deeper as I cut and thrust again and again, the curved blade of my sword a gleaming talon spraying blood with every movement.

Then there were none left to kill; they were all dead or fled. I swung reflexively several more times as I scanned for foes, then grounded the butt of my weapon in the bloody mud and surveyed the scene carefully, the flood of energy slowly fading from my limbs.

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A dozen of my men were either dead or wounded, and half as many horses. Two had fallen while trying to gallop downhill, taken out of the action by reckless riding rather than enemy bullets or blades. The enemy dead were as numerous as our own casualties, and, on average, several times more massive.

I was coated with gore; even the blade of my sword, which usually seemed to drip itself clean when I wasn’t looking, was coated all the way from the tip past the bloated bird with an obscenely bulging stomach that served as a crosspiece between blade and haft, and the gore had even spilled several handspans down the haft from the cutting edge of the blade.

I picked my way towards the fallen leader, taking Katya’s gun and a pair of surprisingly elegant rune-carved pistols from his headless and bullet-ridden body. Near him, another ogre proved to have a reinforced box in a satchel, about the size one might place a severed head in. I picked that up, too, thinking I might find just that in it, and nearly overbalanced; it was heavy for its size.

I whistled for the draft horse. He came, dragging with him the bush he had been tied to. Fyodor came over and asked a question. I am not quite sure what it was, but when I met his gaze eye to eye he tripped over himself backwards. I am not quite sure what I said to him next, but I gather it had the effect of putting him in charge of rounding up the soldiers, seeing to the wounded, and distributing appropriate rewards. For myself, I walked into the stream and knelt, rinsing blood off my armor before mounting, because the smell was making the draft horse uneasy.

I began to talk. Not with the horse, or with Yuri, but with myself. Or perhaps more accurately at myself, because I had plenty of cause to harangue myself and little to say in response to my own angry words. There were good men and horses dead today because I had gone charging in for vengeance. And now that I had my vengeance, what was it worth? A pair of pistols, a box, Katya’s rifle to send back to her father with a sad letter? A pile of dead men, horses, and ogres? More danger and disarray?

All of this had happened because I had been careless with my words and driven her away from me. I could not even bury her body; she was eaten and gone. I had gone completely insane; I had enjoyed the butchery of the battle and I was talking to myself.

“Poor little Ognyan,” I said to myself with irony, remembering the broad and halitosis-ridden general. “Now, poor little me.”

After the battle with the ogres, I understood better how a man becomes a monster, better than I wanted to. I wanted Katya back. I wished to myself that I could at least lay her body in a grave.

Yuri growled indignantly at me, interrupting my monologue just as I was beginning to repeat myself. He knew where Katya’s scent had been, and it hadn’t come anywhere near where we had killed the ogres. If I wanted to dig a hole and put Katya into the dirt, he could help me find her. I told my horse to follow the dog, then closed my mouth and resolved silently that I would deal with this like a sane and civilized man. The world had enough insanity in it already.