Bright orange lights danced with the smoke that clambered over Felhill. Like specters in a bog, the glows flickered and twisted through the thickened air. Beneath the ghastly masquerade, terrified screams and the sharp clang of blades joined the early morning birdsong. To the south and east of the village, soldiers of the inquisition steadily cut past the local militia that had roughly thrown itself together in the midst of the attack. The acrid smells of burned flesh and ash trailed between the outer rings of thatch-roofed huts, and the roads were hardly more than muck, courtesy of the rainstorm from the night before.

An animalistic snarl raised above the discord of the battle. With his axe raised wildly overhead, a Felhill tribesman covered in furs stormed towards an armed inquisitor bearing the angular leathers of an officer. The heft of the tribesman’s weapon swung down ferociously towards the neck of the inquisitor, but the attack was neatly deflected. The hammered hunk of metal slapped noisily into the wet ground. In the blink of an eye, a second saber seared by and gouged through the tribesman’s throat entirely. A splash of claret dribbled down his broad, hairy chest as he slid to the ground.

With a tired frown, the sergeant inquisitor who had flanked the axeman opened with a complaint, his tone low and frustrated. “Farming settlement my arse.” He yanked his blade from the dead man’s neck and flung an arc of red into the morning. “These are God damned savages.”

“It’s the Reach, did you expect people?” The lieutenant inquisitor who had deflected the axe spat into the mud.

Just ahead of them, a dozen and two of the inquisitors’ second platoon fought to quell the resistance from the southern edge of Felhill. A trio of the tribe’s warriors armed with reinforced wooden shields and borite spears hollered as they held back a pair of inquisitor soldiers armed with aronite sabers. Silent, the lieutenant sent his sergeant an icy glance. The two officers crossed into the fray, sprinting to the right and left flanks of the Felhill spearmen ahead.

To leave their foes no time to form ranks, the lieutenant and sergeant pair viciously slashed at the tribesmen’s shield wall. It was all the distraction necessary for the other two soldiers to push in and overwhelm the third spearman. While his shield caught one blade, his neck caught the other, and he sprayed a slather of crimson across the furs of his companion to the left. A look of horror crossed the marked spearman’s dark eyes. He largely ignored the two sabers that then lashed out and carved his abdomen, and instead loosed a rageful bellow and tackled the sergeant inquisitor to the earth. In defiance of his fate, the Felhill warrior raised his shield to the sky with a battle-cry. In but another moment, the wooden edge crunched down into the sergeant inquisitor’s jaw. He gave only a brief yelp and a short kick before his skull split apart into a wet mess that slowly joined the mud.

A silvery arc flickered across the wounded spearman’s neck from behind. He gave a quiet and baffled gurgle, then blinked twice as his head messily rolled off his shoulders. The rest of the body spewed like a grisly fountain; it leaned and poured over the corpse of the slain sergeant. Through the smog, the blaze of thatched roofs cast a sinister yellow glimmer in the dark pool that rose around the two dead men.

With a muffled thud, the lieutenant inquisitor booted the back of the dead spearman, whose weight keeled over and greeted the muck like a felled tree in a swamp. “Fucking heathen . . .” the lieutenant cursed under his breath.

After they finished off the last spearman, the other two soldiers cautiously slunk over to the spectacle. “Lieutenant Elright, was that—” one of them began nervously.

“Ser Redforge.” Knelt down, the lieutenant reached beneath the sergeant’s armor.

As Elright closed his hand, he made a sharp motion of the wrist. A tiny snap, and he pulled away and palmed the sergeant’s badge of office. For a moment Elright stared down at the eye pierced by the spire, the symbol of his God, etched into polished borite alongside the sergeant’s name—all flecked with mud and blood. Elright blinked hard with a slight pause. He breathed shakily through flared nostrils before he stuffed the badge into a pocket about the waist of his coat.

“Where’s that fucking assassin?” Elright seethed. She better have a good reason for this, he thought, as he straightened out and peered up the northward incline of the village, then to the east.

He let go of a hard sigh, then pointed at the left of the two men at his side. “Cu’Wellin, you’re my acting-sergeant. You and uh . . . I don’t remember your name—grab all the hands you can from around here, take them and join the second. I don’t see as much fire from over east, and I need to find that damned special officer. Go now.”

“Ser!” the two soldiers shouted as they slammed the thumbed side of a closed fist against their chests, just before they took off to rally east.

Elright watched them leave in brief, then started north. In the first inner ring of houses, the shrill screams and pleas of Felhill tribeswomen filled the air. In a plaza at the center of the village, just east of where the lieutenant stood, four soldiers were gleefully occupied with the insides of a hysterical mother and what appeared to be her two daughters; the family had been stripped near naked and their wrists bound. Their bodies were painted in fresh, ugly bruises and bright red cuts. Around the lot, heretic corpses were set about like an audience. They sat against walls, leaned against fences, all unable to tear their eyes from the scene unless tilted over and distracted, like the few that would rather hold their own intestines.

Teeth clenched in dissatisfaction, Elright moved to cross the stretch of wet road but caught movement out the left corner of his eye. He whipped to, where stood a young boy with a pole-sickle in hand. His face was smeared in soot and molten anger. His ragged clothes were coated thick in black. Every single one of his limbs shook, such that the blade of his sickle rattled in its fittings.

A full two heads taller than the boy, Elright brandished his long saber off to the side and threw a nod to his men in the distance. “That how it is?” He widened his stance and set his boots in the mud. “Come on then, boy. Save your family. Show me your God.”

The boy raised his pole-sickle overhead. With a scream that started at the very bottom of his lungs—so furious his voice cracked—the boy sprinted towards the lieutenant inquisitor. Elright sidestepped the farming tool’s downswing then drove his knee hard into the boy’s ribcage from the side. It sent his small frame and his sickle into a spiral before the two slid through the muck. The boy curled up in agony and favored his cracked ribs with one arm and reached weakly for his weapon with the other. He stopped as cold metal ran him through from behind, his heart pierced.

A pity, Elright thought, as he withdrew the tip of his blade and red dripped down off it. “Consider this a kindness.” He shrugged towards the plaza. “Those men would have made you watch.”

After he flicked the color from his weapon, the lieutenant resumed northward and left the boy to bleed to his end. With the last of his strength, the boy gasped and twitched his hand toward the plaza, but after a quiet breath, he stopped. Elright’s boots pounded against the mud, past two inquisitors that had cornered a group of unarmed young men into a hut that crawled with fire. Elright turned his head as the sounds of sabers against flesh and death screams tore through the crackle of thatch. However, louder in the lieutenant’s troubled mind, were the laughs and snickers of his own men, tickled as they were by the helplessness of their prey.

A ways further down the road ahead lay a junction. One way led from the village, the other up the hill to the elder’s hall. In the intersection was a masked figure of unimpressive height, crouched low to the ground. Hung about her shoulders was a bleached but bloodstained linen cloak that bore the dark-brown eye pierced by the spire. Scales of ithemianite plate were layered one over another in a full coat around her chest and joints—a layer of the pale-bluish metal as chainmail lay underneath. Reinforced leather pads and straps further guarded her legs and lower abdomen. In one of her gauntleted hands was a deeply curved short saber held backwards, and in her other was a dagger with a bladed guard and pommel.

The assassin inquisitor’s shoulders rose and fell painfully and quickly, but she was also surrounded on all sides by dead, bloody men. Just a few paces away from her, towered the second largest man Elright had ever laid eyes on in his life—the first of which had been one of the Whiteguard, one whose history and prowess left him in the annals as one of the mightiest warriors ever raised by the Church, if not the mightiest.

Donned in little more than a fur kilt, the Felhill giant comfortably wore several gashes about his body—none of the wounds seemed enough to cut through his bulk. The tribesman’s musculature had been hardened and shaped by a life of rigorous, ceaseless farmwork. Yet there he stood, fearless in the presence of one of the inquisition’s finest killers. Elright charged forward on instinct.

Like a coiled viper that had waited for just the right moment, the assassin lunged forward. An arc of black flung skyward as the Felhill giant brought his massive war axe up from the ground. With a pivot about the backfoot, the assassin spun to the right; her cloak ran a hair’s breadth out of the way of the sharpened slab of metal. Mid-twirl, she brought both her weapons around to strike but was grabbed by the collar of her breastplate with a hand that could have palmed her entire head. The assassin inquisitor lifted off the ground with but a small struggle, as if she had been little more than a misbehaved child that faced her parent’s wrath.

Elright sprinted towards the fight and cocked an eyebrow as the Felhill giant effortlessly launched the assassin in his direction. In a panic, the lieutenant struggled with his sheath for a half-second before he threw away his saber entirely. A vain effort, as the assassin crashed sideways into his chest, and the two rolled ungracefully backwards into the mud. The inquisitors pushed away from each other and unsteadily scrambled to their feet. The Felhill giant stomped towards them, his unnaturally large war axe gripped fiercely in two huge, musclebound hands.

“There’s your village elder.” While terse, the assassin’s tone was strangely serene.

Elright eyed the distance between his saber and his newest pain. “Oh, fuck me!” he griped before he started off in the direction of his weapon.

Quicker than the lieutenant, and without complaint, the assassin inquisitor took up her foe’s right. The elder of Felhill raised one of his thick brows and switched his focus to the faster of the two enemies that approached him. As the combatants crossed, the elder sent his weapon around in a whooshing arc for the head, the heft of the metal slab well-aimed. Bent backwards, the assassin slid on her knees through the mud, underneath the swing, and carved a hunk of red flesh from her foe’s leg with her saber as she coursed by. The elder clenched his venous jaw, growled in pain, and turned to face the assassin just as she fluidly took a low stance out of her slide.

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Elright regained his weapon and readied it as he dashed up to the elder’s left. But like a thunderclap, the back of a huge fist smashed into the lieutenant’s off-arm that had instinctively shot up in defense. He felt bones and mail crunch from the weight of the blow before it hurtled him backwards.

To take advantage of the distraction, the assassin leapt through the air at the elder, both weapons set to slice open his neck. Yet, the elder unhanded his axe and seized the assassin by the throat. She hesitated for just a moment as she choked, then raised both her arms to retaliate just a little too slow. A massive hand closed around the elbow of the assassin’s sword-arm. Her heart dropped into her stomach as the elder twisted. There was hardly any resistance before a series of cracks, as bones splintered to pieces. The assassin writhed in pain, unable to scream, and frantically stabbed the bladed pommel of her dagger at the tendons in the elder’s forearm to no avail.

With a roar that could have curdled blood, Elright brought down his long saber with all his strength. The engraved blade scoured clean through the shoulder of the arm that held the assassin aloft. The elder paled and stumbled backwards in confusion. As he spewed far too much of his lifeblood, he dropped his grapple. He shook the long locks of his head side to side, and with his one arm that remained, the elder swiftly moved to choke Elright.

Rather than lift someone of the lieutenant’s size, the elder slowly curled his hand. Elright’s vision immediately swam, as the mountain of a man squeezed the life from him. Elright rammed his saber through his foe’s stomach, but the elder merely groaned and tightened his grip. As the lieutenant sank to his knees, he clawed with mailed fingers at the elder’s massive hand in futility, before a messy spray of crimson splattered down between the two.

Elright looked up to see the assassin withdraw her dagger from the elder’s jugular with a vicious twist as she kicked away. The elder of Felhill gurgled, vomited red, then slumped sideways as he released Elright and dropped face first into the mud with a plop. Elright stumbled forward and clutched at his throat while he gasped for breath; he gagged violently and fingered at the dents left in the flesh of his neck.

“You fight well, lieutenant,” a calm voice issued, as a thin, gauntleted hand offered itself to Elright.

Elright froze. Didn’t even give me a moment . . . he considered in brief before he sighed and obliged. “You saved my life,” he remarked, “and your arm’s all ruined.”  His voice was a rasp as he was pulled to his feet with a small effort.

“I only do as was asked.” The assassin’s tone was calm and objective as she brought the hand that held her dagger to cover her shattered elbow. “And perhaps our healers may be able to do something about this.”

The wind shifted to the west and carried with it a warm, thick blanket of smog.

“Right.” Elright pushed up his brows sarcastically, then turned to face the breeze. “Looks like the first and second are making their way now.” He then stiffened. “Where is the rest of the third?”

“Dead, mostly,” the assassin returned deadpan, as she motioned back toward the road junction.

Elright breathed hard, nodded, and fell behind the assassin, who led him to where she had fought earlier. As they approached, the sounds of a man’s pained moans could be heard underneath the chaos all around. Elright peered about the carnage and recognized more than a few faces sprawled in the mud. God preserve us, he thought, as he took it all in.

The assassin slowed in front of a hut that had seen better days and pointed inside with the open palm of her good arm. Elright sauntered into the doorway, where three young men lay slumped against the far wall of the hut. Only one seemed to be alive. His face was pale and drenched in sweat; his white cloth tabard was wetted with blood.

At once, Elright demanded his attention, “Hektor Redforge.”

The bloodied young soldier’s voice was weak, but he returned his answer as firmly as he could muster. “L-lieutenant.”

“Can you walk?” Elright crossed the hut and knelt down next to his injured man.

Hektor’s eyes went to his own legs, then he shook his head with an inkling of terror on his face. “I don-don’t think so, l-lieutenant. It h-hurts real bad . . . He-he got me good.” His whole body shook with each stutter.

Hektor panted wearily and reached inside his clothes. He pulled away the badge from around his neck. With an unsteady hand, he offered the borite carving to Elright. “T-take this to my b-brother, w-will you?” He breathed shakily through his nostrils before he coughed violently. “He’ll ge-get it to our family. I know-know he w-will.” A fresh wash of red spread up the young man’s tabard.

Elright ground his teeth back and forth in consideration, then he pushed Hektor’s badge back towards him. “Save it. We’re getting you out of here.”

Stricken, Hektor looked up in disbelief. “L-lieutenant?”

“What’d I just say? Up you come.” Elright tucked under Hektor’s shoulder and ignored his pained cries in protest, then brought the young man upright. “I knew your legs still worked. Your brother would never let me hear the end of it if I left you. God willing you’re anything like him, you’ll make it.”

Together, the two shambled out of the gloom of the hut that Elright then noticed had begun to smell a lot like the camp latrine. “Special officer?” he sent as he stepped out into the dim morning.

The assassin turned from her watch on the roads and understood well enough; she maneuvered under Hektor’s other arm and grabbed his wrist. Now all together, the three inquisitors slowly made their way back southwards.

“You know, I didn’t give you eleven hands to get them all killed,” Elright started. The journey back will be a long one if I don’t find somebody else soon, he mused, as he peered around for a wayward inquisitor. Maybe there’s one busy fucking some heathen . . .

The assassin’s tone was nothing but collected. “They got themselves killed. These heretics were once Honorbound, but we had God with us. What excuse have ours?”

Hektor groaned in agony and exasperation but fought and kept pace with the two.

“Right.” Elright cleared his throat. “Well, your lack of information before we attacked, and your incompetence during are going to cut short this expedition, special officer.”

For a moment, the assassin was silent behind her intricate, ithemianite mask. “It is our duty to cleanse the heresy from this place,” she then argued, undeterred, “Do you question our edict, lieutenant?”

“We were told to put villages to the sword and flame in Izz’ name,” Elright hissed, “That was our edict by the Holy Commander. We can’t afford losses like this. We have to leave men behind to guard the land we take. So now, we can’t strike elsewhere, lest the lot was fucking unarmed and all children.”

The assassin’s words grew sharper to match. “Then we will die in Her service. As is our purpose.”

At that, Elright offered a single, dry chuckle. “And have the captain pray to drag my sorry soul screaming back from the dead, just so I can hear how he could have used the fucking livestock to feed the company? Not a chance.”

As the three crossed a bend in the road, they caught up to a gathering of their own. Cu’Wellin, his mate, and a number of other inquisitors had trickled towards the center of town. As the two parties met, the soldiers all got around to their salutes.

“Lieutenant Elright,” Cu’Wellin began, “most the militia has been put down, seems like. Everyone is going around—” He leaned to the side to look behind his commanding officer. “Is this all of you?”

“All that’s left of the third,” Elright delivered coldly. He pointed to Cu’Wellin’s mate and another man who stood with him. “You and you, take Redforge and the special officer back to camp. Don’t drop the lad, don’t stop, and I’ll be damned if you let him bleed out. Get the special officer something for her arm.”

The two soldiers hustled forward and relieved the haggard Hektor of his prior escort, then started their shuffle southward. Before the assassin silently took after the others headed back, she paused and gave a long look over her shoulder at Elright.

The lieutenant pushed past the other inquisitors and headed towards the plaza in the center of the village. “I want twos and threes clearing houses starting from the outside as the fires die—patrols circling the outskirts. Not a single heretic leaves.”

“Ser!” Cu’Wellin and the other men shouted in unison as they followed—some exchanged cold glances and nods.

Elright tapped the back of his hand against his acting sergeant’s chest. “I want livestock and grain stores secured. Any food we can get our hands on. I’ll head east and start gathering hands. Stick around and direct any who make their way here. When the sun’s down, we’ll head back to camp and prepare to regroup with the company south and west of Misthold . . .”

While the lieutenant inquisitor barked his orders, as he and his soldiers’ boots pounded through the wet mud and blood in anticipation, a dark tower of smoke steadily rose from the village and met with the wind like an old enemy.

~

The roads to Misthold sat soft from the hard rain just the night before. Many a stray stone and sinkhole hid in the untended muck. Perhaps a reflection of the thoroughfare’s dismal state, the skies were little more than a numb painter’s stroke of dull gray. Fog hung thick in the hills and dips of the journey; damp clung to everything it touched. There were no whispers about the breeze, and few creatures saw fit to forage or hunt. Save for the rattle of a rotted old cart and the loud suck of talons in mud, the morning had been quiet.

Behind the rotted cart’s beast of burden, two cloaked figures sat hunched over in the dark. A shattered, unlit lantern clinked and bounced on a rusty, arched coach bracket to one side.

“The nearest encampment is set up just few leagues south of this outpost?” asked the figure on the left seat of the cart, his voice low and touched with weariness.

The old draft-strider strained against the pull of the muck, and its five scaly limbs popped and groaned; the cart lurched to and fro as the animal fought to keep stride. Spittle and foam gathered around the creature’s large, abnormally lipless teeth as it plodded forward.

Patiently, the figure on the right waited for the moment to pass before she answered. “That’s right, a day’s march or so. Perhaps less for a small unit. Why? You haven’t grown craven, have you?” Her voice was cold and lacked feeling.

“The opposite. Just thinking.” The left figure slowed. “And they haven’t taken the outpost because . . . ?”

The right figure resumed the thought for him, although reluctant. “Because… we were told to avoid well-defended settlements, for now. Establish footholds in the region, then we move against the tribes.”

The left figure nodded as they chewed on the information, then supposed another thought. “Ah, and what’s that to stop those paragons of morality?”

The right figure gave the left a glance that could have cut bone. “It won’t.”

A heavy silence loomed over the two.

The left figure began to speak, far quieter than he had before, and pointed with a naked finger to the road ahead. “Once we climb this hill, we should be able to see it. We’ll go the rest of the way on foot. It shouldn’t be too hard to find a place to lay low there.”

The right figure gave a shallow nod. With a few determined whines, the draft-strider bowed its head and led with its horns as it trudged the cart and its drivers up the wide hill’s slope. Twice did the cart’s wheels meet ruts as they spun with sprays of black and brown. Before they had all quite made it, the right figure straightened up to try and see over the crest. An orange-gold glow bled through the fog like an impending dawn. Satisfied, the right figure relaxed. The left figure clicked his tongue twice and slapped the reins in his hands to the left.

With a bleat, the draft-strider veered off the mucked road into the grassy hilltop, then slowed to a halt. Both cloaked figures rifled over their persons, grabbed their packs from the narrow bed behind them, then vaulted down from opposite sides of the bench to the earth. The left figure walked to the flank of the draft-strider and patted it twice. With a small disturbance of the fog, the beast shuddered and wheezed. It crumpled limp limbed, the life gone from it as it lay still upon the ground.

The right figure raised an open palm to the cart. The rear axle and its left wheel began to melt into sludge before they plopped wetly to the grass. With a dry crunch and a cloud of dust and mold, the rest of the cart collapsed noisily. Silently, both figures fell along the road that led towards the light in the distance and left their ruined cart and strider to rot.