Dear Diary,

Am I paranoid if, after all the shit that's gone down, I just can't relax and assume that we're actually beating this fucking plague?

I mean, for a value of 'beating' defined as 'we still have four functional cities and more people who survived than people who died'. Fucking Apollo. If that motherfucker decides to pick up a bow and start shooting that shit again, I will not rest until I catch him and feed him his own eyeballs. Rectally.

In brighter news, other than being kinda winded at the start of the whole march, yesterday's march went pretty well. The end of the day? Not so much. So limited 'brighter news', I guess.

The first bad sign we saw? Where Holder Norville had his guys clear the road for a good four hour walk from his farmstead? This place had sort-of cleared a one person wide lane. By sort-of cleared, i mean they'd obviously dug out that path, but equally obviously the snow since then had put maybe a solid foot of snow at the bottom of the cleared path, and that snow had a couple inch thick layer of ice underneath it. We didn't even hit that crappy trail until late afternoon; maybe two hours out from the farmstead.

When we got there, we came up from behind the farmhouse. "Hey, Larry?"

"Yes, Commander?"

"Gotta ask, how do they decide which way to point the houses and bunkhouses?"

He chuckled a little. "I'm surprised you haven't figured it out yet."

I rolled my eyes. "Well, obviously I haven't. You know how clueless I am. Spill it."

That earned me a look, but he said, "the courtyards point east."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "I've heard two different 'reasons'. The more mystical is that the ancestral lands of the Dan are to the east, the homelands of the Celts. The more practical is that it lights up the courtyard from first light until at least mid-afternoon in most places; by then things are usually winding down anyway for anyone not working in the fields. Honestly, though? It's mostly tradition at this point. Not that we've built a new farmstead in my lifetime."

"I thought you said you'd lost one now and again?"

"The people, yes. some of the farmsteads might lie empty for a while after the plague, unless we can convince some folks from Phileo or Camden Yards, or I guess even New Amsterdam and Newark, to come give farming life a try."

I replied quietly enough for my words not to carry to the troops. "Might be rough, what with most of the people looking for opportunity being Bag and all."

He nodded. "Yet another entirely pragmatic reason for our traditions to change. Some of them at any rate."

That got a raised eyebrow for him from me. "Which ones are the ones you don't intend on changing?"

"Well, some of them might want slow change. Housing unmarried men and women separately does make certain offenses more difficult."

That kinda floored me, because I hadn't even thought about that angle. Hell, if that's how the whole 'women's rooms' tradition started, it might not even have been just some kind of evil sexist plot. "Yeah, okay, I can see that, so long as there's not any prohibition against people marrying who and when they want."

He sighed. "Another tradition that might need gradual adjustment. The Holders will expect recompense should one of 'their' women marry."

"You want I should apply boot leather to ass if somebody can't get the idea that women aren't property?"

That got a chuckle out of him. I'm glad it did, because we hadn't heard a single thing from the bunkhouse as we trudged through the snow alongside it. The windows had their shutters closed, so we couldn't see in, either. At any rate, he replied, "I may take you up on that offer in some cases, but I think in this case the coffers of House Lancaster may prove a smoother method of transition."

"So, what, you're just going to buy up all the broads? Corner the market on coochie? Own all the ovaries?" By this point he'd gone through a sudden embarrassed blush and transitioned all the way to scandalized laughter. I finished up with, "Larry Lancaster, Lover of Ladies."

His laughter dissolved into a final snort, and as we turned the corner into the courtyard he replied, "you're one to talk."

"Hey, I earned mine the old fashioned way, by being too sexy for my clothes." I followed that up with some bodybuilder poses. Which, if I hadn't been wearing my uniform jacket or blouse, might have been kinda impressive, what with my duBois honed physique.

Larry snorted out another laugh, but it died as we took in the courtyard. The one person wide sort of shoveled pathway let out into a courtyard which had been swept free of snow, but still had a layer of ice covering the pavers. It also had a row of ominous snow piles in front of each bunkhouse, as well as a shorter one in front of the farmhouse itself. Every window had shutters drawn, every door closed. I turned to the troops and said, "okay, ladies and gentlemen. It looks like there might be some troubles here. Don't touch the snow piles, but see if you can clear the ice out of the courtyard and get enough road cleared that we can camp there if the houses aren't safe."

"Yes, ma'am!" The troops didn't shout, but their reply still echoed a little in the silence.

I turned to Larry. "You're the local head honcho, and you've got the twig and berries. I think they'd respond better to you taking the lead?"

He nodded. "Not to put too fine a point on it, but you're also the Commander of the Expedition. It would be a poor job as your second if I let you walk into danger first."

As we approached the farmhouse door, I said, "aw, Larry. I didn't know you cared."

Then we had to get our game faces on as Larry pounded on the door and called. "Hallo the house!"

Something thunked inside the house, but before we could respond a high pitched voice hollered, "who goes there?"

"Laurence Lancaster, Heir to Lancaster House."

"Oh! Okay, I'll... wait, how do I know you are who you say you are?" The speaker had pitched their voice lower on that last, an obvious attempt to sound more like an authority.

It really drove that home when Larry called back in his normal high tenor, "Your choices at this point are trusting me and opening the door, at which point you should recognize me, or annoying me and forcing me to cut through the door, at which point I will, as noted, be annoyed."

A barely heard, high pitched, "shit," came through the door, followed by some more thumping, followed by a final scrape and thunk from down near the floor. "Come in! Keep your hands where I can see them!"

Larry shook his head in resignation and pushed the door open. A kid stood on the end of the table, a long hunk of wood clutched in his hands. After a few moments of staring at him, Larry said, "Terrence?"

"That's Holder Lands to you, you..." he trailed off as the sight of our jackets registered on his tiny frozen brain. I do mean frozen, because the inside of the house wasn't really any warmer than the outside. Maybe a couple degrees, and the house walls blocked the wind, but that's about it.

Larry sighed, then moved with the speed of a striking snake as he stepped forward and grabbed the business end of the kid's hunk of wood. More gently than I knew he could, he asked, "where's your father, Terrence?"

Terrence didn't answer. Almost like if he didn't say it, it wasn't true. Instead he just nodded toward the courtyard.

"Fuck." The word slipped out of me, and Terrence's eyes narrowed.

"What is this woman doing out of her quarters?"

I didn't have to move a muscle. Larry's palm met the back of Terrence's head with an audible thwack. "This is Commander Tabitha Diaz, leader of Phileo City's relief Expedition to Lancaster House, wife of the Imperator of the Allied Cities, and High Priestess and Champion of Loki. As Heir to Lancaster House, I would hate to have to revoke your Hold because you chose to disrespect her."

I watched a war on Terrence's face between relief at someone older and more adulty showing up to help and outrage at being told to respect someone he obviously felt unworthy of respect. Larry half turned to me and nodded toward the door. I reached out and pushed it closed. Terrence watched me, then turned to Larry. "But... but..."

Larry pinched the bridge of his nose. "Diaz, please tell me I wasn't this bad."

"Nah." I gave him just long enough to register that, then said, "you were way worse."

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"Ouch." He shot me a crooked smile. "Then again, I suppose I deserve that." He turned back to Terrence. "Okay, Terrence, look at it this way. Did your father tell you why General Lancaster called in the Volunteers?"

He shrugged. "A little. Something about New Amsterdam threatening our border."

Larry nodded. "They did more than threaten. They raised two armies, each larger than our own. One held the walls at Newark while the other circled around our army and attacked the walls at Camden Yards."

Terrence's face fell. "General Lancaster lost?" At this point he sounded like the kid I knew he must be under all the grime and bravado.

Larry shook his head. "No. Although I'm told he was incapacitated by New Amsterdam treachery before the battle began."

"So... what happened?"

"Those two armies? One led by a High Priest of Ares, the other ensconced behind the walls of Newark?" He let that hang there.

After a few moments Terrence broke. "Yeah?"

Larry nodded toward me. "She killed them all."

As Terrence looked at me with the same look I must have had when I saw that fucking air liner sized Dragon looking down at me like lunch, I blurted out, "hey! I didn't kill all of them."

Larry heaved a sigh. "Diaz, your modesty is ill becoming at this moment."

I shrugged. "Not modesty. Guilt, really."

He sighed. "Fine. You didn't kill all of them. Apparently more than half of their levies broke and ran after you dealt with their Heroes. How many Heroes did they have left at the end of the battle?"

I shrugged again, looking at the ceiling as I tried to remember numbers. "A hundred? Maybe two?"

He rolled his eyes. "How many capable of combat?"

"Oh. Yeah. None."

Terrence looked at me with something like awe. "She led the army when General Lancaster fell?"

I closed my eyes and winced. "No." I heaved a lungful of air in and out. "I killed them all. Thousands of levies. Tens of thousands, maybe? Hundreds of Heroes. Maybe a thousand? I don't think so. But hundreds, definitely." I opened my eyes and glared at Larry. "How did you find out details, anyhow?"

"McConno and Driver told me what they observed from the wall, and what your wife told them on one of the days afterward while you recovered."

I looked at the kid again. "So. Yeah. I'm the big scary monster. Lucky you, I'm here to help. Are you the only one left?"

He shook his head. "The women... most of the women are fine, I think."

"You think?"

"I only see them at mealtimes. Well, I don't really see them. But they leave me food on the counter."

"Anybody else?"

He shrugged. "I'm not sure about the bunkhouses. I made sure they had food and coal for their stoves, but... There are a couple men who I couldn't lift." He nodded toward the steps. "I think they're dead? But I..."

I had to hand it to him, he managed to keep his tears from falling, but no kid should have to go through that. Shit, I'd gone through something similar not too much older than him. I stepped forward and pulled him into an embrace, shoving his face into my chest, my arms holding him there despite his weak flailing. With that tiny bit of privacy, his shoulders finally shook, and after a few endless moments some of his tears soaked through my jacket.

Larry stepped up and laid a single hand atop Terrence's head. "You did good, Holder Lands."

Terrence pushed away from me; I let him get far enough away to look up at Larry, but kept my arms around him, supporting him. "How can I have? I can't even stop her from making me cry."

Larry shook his head, but I beat him to the punch, saying, "hey, did you forget who you're talking to?"

He sniffled a little and said, "well, that's all stuff people told him. Maybe they lied?"

Larry heaved another sigh. "Fine. On the way here, I witnessed with my own eyes when a Dragon ate her." When Terrance's face went all twisted with confusion, Larry finished, "the Dragon died, and she walked out of its mouth."

Despite himself, Terrence blurted out a single bark of laughter, followed by, "now I know you're just making things up."

Larry just stared at him, face blank, until after like a minute Terrence looked up at me, then back to Larry and said, "really?" in the tiniest voice ever. Larry nodded. "Holy shit."

"Indeed. Now, Holder Lands, with your permission we'd like to see to your dead and see what we can do for those who remain."

"Okay." He reached into his shirt and pulled out an old school skeleton key with a fancy head. "This opens all the locks in the houses."

Larry took it solemnly, saying, "I will return it before we leave." He turned to me. "Commander, can you handle the Volunteers and then join me in the women's quarters?"

I nodded, then stepped outside. Pitching my voice to carry across all the men working to clear the courtyard, I hollered, "okay, ladies and gentlemen, the situation isn't great, but we've seen worse. I need half of you in each bunkhouse checking for survivors and supplies; bring anyone who's still alive and all the remaining supplies into the farmhouse. Any bodies you find can join the ones in the courtyard," I nodded toward the oblong piles of snow, "until we have time to bury them tomorrow. Get to it, people, it's only gonna get colder, and I want every living soul on this farm in the farmhouse where we can warm them all up."

With the troops moving to carry out my orders, I stepped back inside and jogged up the stairs to check the bedrooms. The first two I checked had very big, very dead men laying on the beds. I stepped them into the courtyard, laying them between snow piles. I stepped back in to find two more empty bedrooms on the north side, then stepped across to the south side, where the first room had a body that Assessed as 'critical' rather than 'dead'. Without thinking I hammered the almost-corpse with the biggest Heal I could, followed by a Cure and another Heal. Then I stepped out of the way as the woman, as it proved to be when she rolled out from under the covers, went to hands and knees next to the bed vomiting up an impressive amount of snot. In case you're wondering about how I knew she was a she? Guys usually have more going on downstairs, and most of them don't wear chest binders.

Shit, they might be a trans guy for all I knew. But the binder sure as shit wasn't helping them clear their chest, so I stepped up and ran a thin Mana Blade through it. The impressive amount of snot and bloody mucous coming out of them doubled along with their coughing, and I hit them with another Heal before scooping up their binder and Mineral Bonding it back together. I left the binder on the bedside table, said, "I'll be back, sing out if you need me." and went to the next room, where another dead body greeted me.

After leaving that one in the courtyard with the others, I made my way to the last room, where a little girl, couldn't be more than six or seven, lay wheezing on the bed. That hit me along with the relative heat when I opened the door; this was the first room I'd found where the fireplace had a fire in it. I walked over to her, said, "hey there. I'm here to help, but this might sting a bit. Can you be brave for me?"

She nodded, and I whomped a Stabilize into her. Before her eyes stopped glowing, I hit her with a Heal, then a Cure, then held her hair back while she puked up the accumulated snot in her lungs. As she did, I looked around. The bedside table had what looked like half a bowl of something with chunks of vegetables in it. On the floor nearby I saw another three bowls with increasing amounts of congealed crap around the chunks. The last one looked like it had something growing in it. The fire had more coals than wood, but a rack of wood and a bucket of what looked like coal sat nearby. I didn't think coal would really burn well in a fireplace, but despite my marvelous Academy education, we hadn't really gone into climate control systems. Killing off enemies by the truckload? Sure. Heating and cooling a home? Why would you need to do that? That's what servants are for.

Every now and then I really wanted to find the people responsible for the state of the world and kick the living shit out of them. Then I'd think about Apollo's bow, Artemis' arms, and Odin's leg. Not a bad start, but I had so much work to do cleaning up their messes that I couldn't really afford the time to go hunting Gods for sport.

I would ask only that you do not toy with them, my most Glorious Champion.

Only 'cause I like you and you asked real nice, Boss.

The matter is as much a practical one as a merciful one, Tabitha Diaz. Some of them will lash out at those who cannot defend themselves if you give them time to do so.

Yeah, yeah, I get it.

Also, I don't think you would feel right about yourself if you did so.

Who, me?

Who cannot seem to forgive herself for killing enemies on the field of battle? Ones who attempted to assassinate her own wife?

I sighed. Yeah. Thanks, Boss.

I'm not the best anymore?

You know you are, Boss.

I still like to hear you say it.

I chuckled a little at the peevishness in his voice. I was pretty sure it was an absolute put on, but fuck it, I could afford to coddle dear old dad just a little. Thanks, Boss. You're the best.

I know.

By the time the exchange finished, the little girl stared up at me, more than a little wonder in her eyes as she laid a hand on my jacket. I saw some blood in all the mucous on the floor, so I popped another Heal into her. When her eyes stopped glowing she looked up at me and said, "are you a Valkyrie?"

I snorted, unable to keep my laughter inside completely. "Nah. I'm the mean old lady who scares Valkyries off. My name's Tabitha. What's yours?"

"Teresa."

"So, what are you doing up here in this room all alone, Teresa?"

She looked away as she said, "when I started coughing, I snuck out through the counter so I wouldn't make anyone else sick. Terrence brings me food. I'm not sure they know I'm still alive, because he doesn't bring any for himself."

I shook my head, closing my eyes and saying, "shit. Guess the kid has some redeeming qualities after all." I opened them again as I shrugged out of my jacket and draped it over her. "I'm guessing you don't have any warm clothes up here?"

"Just what I'm wearing." For reference, she had a simple dress, more like a nightshirt, really, and a pair of slippers. Neither of them really what you'd call 'warm'. I buttoned my jacket across her front, hefted her up onto one hip, and carried her out of the room. When I got down to the dining room, the first person I'd healed upstairs had dressed and stood next to Larry, glowering down at him.

When the two of them saw me carrying Teresa, Larry looked relieved, where his new friend's face mixed apprehension with resignation in equal measure. Larry spoke first. "So, Sam here tells me that Teresa there is Terrence's younger sister?"

"She didn't know any better, Sir," said Sam. "Please, I tried to put her back in the women's quarters, but I couldn't catch her."

Larry just shook his head. "I think things might need to change at this farmstead." He looked around the floor, and I realized that a few bodies lay on the floor now; at least all of them seemed to be breathing. "You've got, what, five able bodies capable of working the fields?"

Sam nodded, their expression guarded. "Yeah?"

Larry's voice held steel, for all that he spoke quietly. "That's not enough to keep this farmstead working, and you know it. Given that it seems the women, despite being distraught at losing Teresa, are all in good health, and young Terrence took such pains to keep as many people as alive as he could, despite his age, I feel it would be ill reward indeed to take his hard earned title from him."

Their eyes narrowed. "So, what are you suggesting?"

He shrugged. "Only that the women of the farmstead may have to take a more active role. I'm not sure how many are suited to field work, but they certainly can handle any of the chores at the houses themselves, the ones normally done by men."

Sam seemed a little taken aback. "You're certain, sir?"

"The only uncertainty I have is that I could be wrong about some of the women being able to work the fields. If they feel up to it, and show they can handle the work without endangering themselves or others? Let them do so."

"Truly, sir?"

He sighed. "I am not in the habit of speaking carelessly, Sam."

They nodded. "May I go tell them your intent, sir?"

Larry just nodded, and Sam scurried off toward the kitchen. I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came to me. Larry just shook his head, pulled out a chair, and flopped into it.

After dropping a Heal into each of the warm bodies on the floor, I did so myself.

If anybody told me when I joined the Academy that there'd be this much watching people vomit? Yeah, that might have been enough of a turn-off to get me to quit.

Maybe.