The sweet scent of tulips, mint, and cinnamon, stuffed into Giradin's mask, was a feeble shield against the miasma that seeped through the creaking gates of Isselhan. A wind, heavy with the stench of decay, whipped through the city, carrying the plague doctors' fears ever closer to despair. Even his mask couldn't fully block the rancid odor, a constant reminder of the horror that lurked within the fallen metropolis.

Bodies, twisted and contorted, lay strewn across the cobblestone, their vacant eyes fixed on the charcoal sky, as if pleading for a mercy that had long since abandoned them. A weak, desperate cry echoed from within the city.

As his comrades readied their crossbows, a chill ran down Giradin's spine. He turned to face the source of the sound, his heart pounding in his chest.

What had once appeared to be lifeless husks, covered in the black blotches and festering sores of the plague, now crawled towards him, their eyes filled with a haunting desperation.

The plague doctors formed a line, their faces grim, their weapons raised.

"The plague must not spread!" the Master's voice boomed, echoing through the city. "Stop them! Whatever it takes!"

One of the infected lurched to its feet, its movements jerky and unnatural. With a guttural scream, it sprinted towards the open gate, its black-spotted skin glistening in the dim light. Soon, others followed, their movements a grotesque parody of human locomotion.

Giradin's hands trembled as he raised his weapon, his aim wavering. A cold dread settled over him as he inched his finger toward the trigger.

A snap and a whistle, followed by a sickening thud as the projectile connected with its target. But instead of falling, the infected creature merely staggered, its eyes wild with a feral rage. Before Giradin could react, it lunged at him, its fingers outstretched like talons, its breath hot and fetid.

Another bolt flew past Giradin, piercing the infected's forehead. With a guttural growl, the poor soul crumpled to the ground.

Seeing their fellow citizen fall only angered the remaining survivors, who now clenched their fists as they ran.

More bolts zipped through the air, finding their way into the plague victims' flesh. The infected cried out from pain and betrayal as they fell.

Giradin fumbled with his crossbow, his hands trembling. The gauntlets he wore, designed to protect him from the plague, made handling his weapon even more difficult. His heart pounded in his chest as more and more infected creatures closed in.

One, a woman, shrieked as she lunged towards him. Startled, Giradin dropped his bolt.

She was a mere few strides away, a grotesque parody of humanity. Her body was covered in black sores, her skin a sickly pallor. Her eyes, once filled with life, now burned with a feverish madness.

Just as she was about to reach him, a spear thrust past Giradin, impaling her through the chest. Her body slumped lifelessly onto the shaft.

Giradin glanced back at Fulk, his rescuer, breathed a sigh of relief, and immediately produced a new bolt from his quiver to reload his crossbow.

The carnage was over in a heartbeat, yet it felt as if years had passed. Giradin was certain he'd grown old in those few terrifying moments.

As the fire coursed through his veins began to subside, Giradin forced himself to look upon the fallen. They lay in pools of their own blood, their hands outstretched in a silent plea. All they had wanted was escape, a chance to survive the horrors that had consumed their city. But Giradin and the other doctors could offer them nothing but a swift, merciful end.

Contain the plague.

That was the order given to them.

We save more lives than we take.

That was the justification every doctor gave when they went to purge an infected city. Yet Giradin rarely saw the lives they'd saved, only the countless ones they'd ended.

He looked down at the face of the infected girl who had nearly attacked him. She couldn't have been much older than fourteen, the signs of womanhood barely evident. The absence of a hemp ring on her finger indicated she was unmarried. Giradin imagined her returning from the well, a bucket of water slung over her shoulder, when she noticed a strange bump on her arm.

She must have covered it up, terrified of what it meant. If she had spoken a word, she would have been cast out, left to starve or be devoured by beasts. The letter from Death had arrived, and she had kept it a secret, a silent companion in her final days.

"Is anyone in Isselhan still alive?" shouted the Master. "We are going to burn the city! If you wish for a painless death, come and find us!"

Giradin sighed and looked away from the dead girl, turning his attention instead to the task at hand.

Giradin and the other thirty or so doctors, each clad in steel crow masks and chain-mail armor under black coats, turned to their Master to await his next orders.

"Spread out." The Master gestured to the city streets with the spear in his hand. "And prepare this city for the pyre. If any infected citizens seek you out give them the quick death they desire. If you see any rats or any Vermin," he spat the word with utter hatred for the monsters, "you are to call for help immediately, don't try to fight them all yourself, for where there is one Vermin there are surely many."

Why would the Vermin linger here? Giradin thought. Those beasts have already destroyed this city, what more could they hope to gain?

But he kept his questions to himself. What insight did anyone, even the Master, have into the minds of those wicked monsters? And the Master always hated to look like a fool, so it was best not to ask him questions he couldn't answer.

The Master continued, "Anyone still in that city is surely infected by now. Show no quarter."

Some invisible force tugged downward on Giradin's Adam's apple.

With a groan of rusty wheels, a wagon rolled through the city gates. Another doctor, masked in a raven's visage, sat at the reins, while the oxen pulling the wagon were similarly muzzled. The doctors hurried to the back of the wagon, each taking a small barrel marked "Dragon's Bile."

Giradin secured his barrel on his back, the straps digging into his shoulders. The explosive nature of the substance always made him nervous, but knowing the Vermin feared fire as much as he did provided a modicum of comfort.

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The city streets were eerily quiet. Giradin walked alone, spraying Dragon's Bile onto the houses. Gothic spires loomed overhead, once homes to families now reduced to ashes. On a street corner, he spotted a blacksmith's shop, the anvil and smelter still in place. He imagined the blacksmith, his hands calloused and blistered, working on horseshoes. Across the street, a cobbler's shop stood abandoned, the sign with a painted shoe a stark contrast to the lifelessness within. For a fleeting moment, Giradin wished he had remained a cobbler's apprentice. But then he saw the bodies of the cobbler and his young assistant, lying in the doorway, their eyes glazed over with the vacant stare of the dead.

In one hand, Giradin held the hose attached to the barrel on his back; in the other, he gripped his seax. He stepped over the bodies of the dead, forcing himself to avert his gaze. If there was a Hell, it had descended upon Isselhan, and the plague doctors were its unwilling purgers.

"Doctor..." a small voice called out from a pile of filth.

Giradin paused, the hose still in his hand. "Yes, child?" he replied, lowering himself to his knees. "I'm here to help. Come out."

The pile of blankets and clothes parted, revealing a girl of about ten. Her face was covered in black sores, her eyes filled with a haunting despair. Giradin's heart ached.

"Help me, please!" the girl begged. "There's still hope, isn't there?"

Giradin fought to hold back tears. The answer was simple, cruel: no. There was no hope for her. The plague was a merciless killer, and this girl was beyond any cure. Leeches could not drain the infected blood from her veins. As new as Giradin was to his job, he knew this.

He knew the only solution he could offer, and the thought made his stomach churn.

"There is one thing we might try," said Giradin, swallowing the lump in his throat. He reached into his black coat and produced a small vial filled with a green liquid. "Take this. It will strengthen your body, help you fight off the disease."

The girl took the vial, examining it before looking up at Giradin with sorrow. "This is poison, isn't it? Meant to kill me quickly so I don't suffer any longer?"

Giradin hesitated, his heart heavy. "No, it's not poison," he lied, his voice barely a whisper. "It's a... a new treatment. It might help."

For a moment, Giradin was tempted to keep lying to the child. It was bad enough someone so young had to die like this, at least he didn't want the child to die without hope. But Giradin was never good at lying, and as he looked into the girl's eyes, he found he couldn't bring himself to speak any more falsehoods to this child.

Giradin sighed and nodded. "Yes. Yes it is poison. I'm sorry I lied to you."

Again, the girl looked at the vial. Tears welled up in her eyes, she sniffled, and her lips pulled downward into a grimace of anguish.

"There's no reason to be afraid." Giradin tilted his head to one side in an attempt to make his masked face look slightly less terrifying. "The place God made for us is a realm where there is no more pain, no more sickness, and no more hunger. A paradise where we will all live in peace forever. A place so much better than any of this."

"Is that a lie too?" the girl looked up at him with a raised eyebrow. "Grown-ups lie all the time..."

Giradin stammered for a moment, then said, "It's what the Scriptures say, child."

"But do you think it's true, doctor?" pleaded the girl. "Please, tell me. They say doctors know everything. Are the Scriptures lying?"

"Doctors don't know everything," said Giradin with a sigh. "I really wish we did. I don't know if the Scriptures are true or not, but I believe."

"Why?" asked the girl.

"Because... because I have to," said Giradin. "Look around you..." He gestured with both hands at their macabre surroundings. "All this suffering... Don't you think that if there's a place which can get this bad, there must also be a place which can be just as good?"

The girl peered around at the bodies littering the street, nodded, then popped the cork on the vial and drank the green liquid inside. She gulped it down, forcing every drop into her skinny body. Moments later, her eyelids drooped, and she sat down on the ground. She mumbled something under her breath, then laid down on the street as if asleep.

Giradin's instinct was to grab a blanket, to tuck her in, but he'd been warned not to touch anything infected. With a heavy sigh and a sinking heart, Giradin stood, leaving the girl's body there. He took comfort in the thought that such an innocent soul was surely in a better place.

He continued down the streets, spreading the Dragon's Bile over piles of bodies to ensure they'd burn with the city. Every now and then, he stopped to check the shadows on the ground, knowing that if he was gone too long his fellows would burn the city down with or without his return.

The broken windows on the ground floors of every house and shop spoke to the looting which had taken place here when the people realized the city had been overrun with plague. Fools. Rather than fleeing death as quickly as they could, had stopped to try to make a profit on their way out.

How stupid they must have felt when the count's men had sealed the gates shut to contain the infected until the plague doctors could arrive.

Giradin tensed when he heard the sound of teeth gnawing on a bone, and he tightened his grip on his seax. Please, God, let that be a dog. Please let that be a dog.

When he peered around a corner, his eyes beheld a creature the size and shape of a man, but covered in brown fur. The beast had a long, wormlike tail, round ears, and a long snout that was gnawing on a femur stripped of all meat.

The Vermin snapped its head back, its black eyes fixed on Giradin. Its lips curled into a snarl, and it leaped to its feet, an axe clutched in its spindly fingers.

Giradin sheathed the hose and extended his seax, the blade glinting in the dim light. The Vermin hissed, its teeth a jagged saw. Giradin's hands trembled.

But Giradin recalled the girl he'd just poisoned moments ago, and his fear turned to a burning rage in his heart. These monsters spread the plague intentionally, for little other reason, it seemed, than to kill people.

The beast lunged.

The axe chopped the air over Giradin's head as he ducked.

The doctor roared and drove his blade through the Vermin's chest. The creature recoiled, clutching its bleeding wound. Giradin raised his weapon over his head and brought it down on the monster's neck with all the force he could muster. He felt the bones separate, making way for his weapon, and heard the flesh tear. The axe hit the ground.

With a mighty pull, Giradin wrenched his blade free and brought it down again, hacking at the Vermin's neck. Each gruesome chop elicited a blood-curdling scream, a twisted symphony of pain. A vengeful smile crept across Giradin's face as his lenses fogged up.

As the monster fell to the ground, dead, Giradin's blood cooled. The Master's words echoed in his mind: Where there is one Vermin, surely there are many.

A chorus of high-pitched squeaks and scratching noises caught his attention. He looked up, his heart pounding. Dark lumps of fur were pouring out of windows, gutters, and every hole in the wall. Swarms of rats scurried about, and Giradin knew the larger Vermin were close behind.

Giradin scurried away. From his pocket he produced a handkerchief and wiped off his blade, leaving the red-soaked cut of cloth in the streets.

Rounding a corner on his way to the exit, he heard the cries of one of his fellow Crows. Another plague doctor stood amidst a horde of ordinary rats, stamping his foot down to crush their little bodies. Each stomp splattered blood and viscera around his ankles.

Giradin was about to open his mouth to tell the fool to run, but before the words could escape his throat, a Vermin charged in and embedded his axe in the Crow's sternum. All Giradin could do was flee.

When he regrouped with his fellow doctors, they marched out of the city, forcing the gates shut and barricading them with stones, logs, and anything they could find.

A line of archers stood outside the city, flaming arrows at the ready.

"Take aim!" the Master shouted, his voice echoing through the city. The archers aimed their bows high.

"Draw!" the Master yelled, and each archer drew back their bowstring as far as they could.

The doctors knew what was coming. They knelt in front of the archers, their crossbows aimed at the gates.

"Loose!" the Master cried out. Dozens of flaming arrows sailed through the air, into the city of Isselhan. Within moments, the city was ablaze, the shrieks and cries of agony rising with the smoke.

A loud crash at the gate.

The doctors watched carefully for any sign of a living thing breaking through, infected or Vermin.

Another loud crash, followed by squealing and the hacking of axes on the other side.

Vermin!

Giradin did his best to calm his breathing, to steady his hands as the gate cracked and splintered.

But the fire overtook the beasts within before they could break through. When the gate burned down, there lay beyond its remains the fire-cleaned bones of dozens of Vermin.

Two thousand souls drifted up on the smoke, joining the saints in Heaven that day. Giradin could only hope that he'd see them on Judgment Day, and that Heaven had taken away any desire to avenge themselves on him.