Author Archives: steinulfr

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By the time I went back to the inn, the sun was sinking to the west, and the rain was coming down heavily enough that it looked like night. I was soaked to the skin and shivering a little, and from how the storm looked it wasn’t likely to move out before morning.

 

It was funny to think that a week ago this storm would have had people grumbling to each other over drinks. Farms needed rain, but this was the kind of rain that could and did cause floods, and it had already been a bad year for flooding. A week ago, having a storm like this roll in would have been bad news.

 

Now, with everything else that was going on, it was hard to care too much.

 

I walked in, and found the taproom still and empty. Corbin was sitting by the bar, Black was sitting by the fire. They weren’t talking, and I didn’t get the impression it was because I’d interrupted anything.

 

“Silf,” Corbin said, looking in my direction. “You want some hot cider?”

 

I nodded gratefully, sitting at one of the tables. He went to the fire, and then a few moments later set a large wooden mug in front of me. There was steam coming off of it, and it smelled like apples and spices.

 

Normally fur was more than enough to keep me warm. But this was a cold rain, the sort of rain that reminded you that autumn was getting close and winter wasn’t so far behind it, and it brought the wind with it. After a while of sitting still in that weather, I got cold, same as anyone else.

 

I sipped at the cider, singeing my tongue, and then I sat and looked at the cup, the floor, the wall–anything except the people in the room with me. “What’d they decide?” I asked at last, almost surprising myself with the noise.

 

“Nothing,” Corbin said with a heavy sigh. “They ended up deciding to wait for Hideo to give his orders first. Which he did, an hour ago. It’s all pretty typical stuff for martial law. Curfew at dusk, no one is to leave the wards, a handful of rights suspended.”

 

“Bloody tyrant,” Black said. Growled more than said, really. She was staring at the fire, and her hands were clenched at her sides like she was imagining wrapping them around Hideo’s neck.

 

“They’re not bad ideas,” Corbin said, in the patient, slightly annoyed tone of someone saying something he’d said ten times in the past hour.

 

“Doesn’t mean he should be able to make them,” she retorted. “Just walk in and take control of all these people’s lives without so much as a please or thank you? You can’t tell me that isn’t a system that encourages corruption and abuse.”

 

Corbin frowned, and didn’t say anything.

 

I sat, and drank cider, and thought. I thought about Hideo and his legionnaires. I thought about what I’d seen when the Whitewood burned. I thought about bloody coins and screaming. I thought about stains that didn’t come clean.

 

When the cider was gone, I went upstairs. Black and Corbin stayed in the taproom behind me, carefully not looking at each other, and not saying a word.

---

The rain had done something to help, but I still felt filthy, and sore, and now I was chilled as well. So I decided, before I went to bed, to take a bath.

 

The bath, like the mirror, was a luxury that I’d inherited when I moved into the former mansion, and one that probably no one else in the village had. It involved some very expensive, very complex alchemical engines. I didn’t understand how they worked; my knowledge of alchemy was almost nonexistent. It involved a set of gears designed to amplify physical force, and heating coils which siphoned some of the energy to heat the water.

 

The end result was that I turned a handle in the water closet in my rooms. The device amplified that force and used it to power a set of pumps, drawing water up from the well and heating it. A stream of steaming hot water poured into the tub a few moments later.

 

Turning the handle to provide the initial force was a bit of an effort–more so than it was supposed to be, according to Corbin; he’d said something about how it hadn’t been designed to work within the wards. But it was far, far easier than carrying water in, let alone heating it.

 

In my experience, people see that I’m Changed and they’re quick to see that it makes my life harder in a thousand ways. But they tend to see the ones that are large and dramatic. They ask things like whether I’ve ever been beaten, and whether it makes me prone to sickness, and whether I had to change my lifestyle when it happened. And those are, obviously, important things, and the answer to all of those questions is yes.

 

But what people don’t tend to see is the hundred tiny ways it makes day-to-day life more difficult. These things aren’t glamorous, they aren’t dramatic, but they ultimately affect me far more than the things that are. People tend not to think of things like having to sleep on a hard bed because my back isn’t quite the right shape for walking on two feet, and it hurts as a result. They don’t think about how I have to wear over-large clothing and sit on stools instead of chairs, because even a small tail is horribly uncomfortable otherwise. They don’t ask whether I need a different amount of sleep than I did when I was human, not because they don’t care, but because it simply never occurs to them to wonder.

 

Similarly, most people don’t seem to consider how fur changes grooming habits. Unlike some of the Changed, I’m not completely covered–my face has only patchy fur on it, and there’s none at all on my hands or parts of my chest and stomach. But I have more than enough to make it a consideration.

 

To those people, then, it would have been a surprise to see the array of things I took from the cabinet while the water cooled to a more bearable temperature. There were brushes and combs, since if the fur wasn’t kept orderly it tended to tangle and mat uncomfortably. A small pair of scissors–I couldn’t really get rid of the stuff and I wasn’t sure I even wanted to anymore, but I could at least keep it neat. A soap I made from lye and tallow, scented with lavender and mint.

 

Corbin had been surprised when I planted the stuff in the garden behind the inn, and more so when I told him why. When I explained that he could choose between that and me smelling like wet dog, though, he came around readily enough.

 

I took all of these things and set them next to the tub of water. It took a few trips. Once I had the water was a comfortably warm temperature rather than scalding, so I got into the tub.

 

By the time I’d finished washing out the dried blood and grime, the water was an unpleasant brownish shade, I wasn’t feeling cold, and my wounded leg wasn’t aching. I drained the water, which flowed out another set of pipes to the garden, and then drew a fresh bath to actually get clean without soaking in that soup of filth.

 

It would be wrong to say that the bathing made me feel good. There was too much looming dread, too much fear over everything that had happened and everything that might happen, for me to really feel good. But being clean again, and the routine, almost ritualized act of bathing, certainly made me feel better. I felt calm and relaxed as I finished, wiped most of the water off with a towel, and went to bed. I thought I might actually be able to sleep without nightmares tonight.

 

I was woken in the middle of the night by screaming.

 

Once again, my old instincts took over almost instantly. Before I’d even realized what woke me, I was on my feet and moving. I didn’t bother with clothing at all this time. There were higher priorities. I grabbed Black’s axe in one hand, and a fistful of coins with the other. It was tricky to manage the lock with both hands full, but I managed, and then I was in the hallway and going downstairs. I was faster than Black or Corbin this time. Considering that the screaming had been quiet even to me, it was possible they hadn’t heard it at all.

 

Downstairs, I ducked out the back door. It had fewer locks than the front, which made it easier to open in a hurry. I was moving at a run, now. The leg appeared to be healed; it didn’t even twinge as I ran.

 

The scream had come from the center of town, so that was the way I ran. A part of me was disturbed and confused at the fact that I was running towards the probable disaster. The rest was of the quite reasonable opinion that with how things had been going, being present for the disaster was better than not knowing what was happening.

 

It didn’t take me long to find out. I hadn’t even reached the city proper when I saw someone lying on the ground, and I smelled blood. Up ahead people were moving, and shouting. I could see light, shifting and dancing madly. This wasn’t the perfectly even glow of an alchemical lamp, or even the steady flame of a lantern. No, this was a torch, and one that was being swung wildly at that. It was guttering in the rain and the wind, barely alive at all. The shadows leapt and spun so strangely that it would have been confusing at the best of times. While still half-asleep and panicking, it was absolute madness.

 

In that chaos, I could barely make out what was happening. But what I could see was enough to make my blood run cold.

 

The ghoul-things were here. Four of them, inside the wards, in the middle of town. They were advancing on the house that had been converted into a legion headquarters, and they weren’t alone. There were half a dozen villagers around them, and more coming out of their houses now. People were shouting, and someone was screaming in pain, and dogs were barking.

 

As I was getting close I saw the figure with the torch–Ketill, I realized after a moment–swing it at one of the monsters. The creature flinched away instinctively, leaving itself open for a strike from the farmer’s other hand. What looked like a fire iron hit the monster in the side of the neck, hard.

 

It staggered, but didn’t fall, and a moment later it snatched the iron out of his hand. Ketill barely managed to duck away from its claws in time.

 

I stopped and stared. I suddenly didn’t feel so confident that I was happier being here than not.

 

I wanted to do something to help, but I wasn’t at all sure what it would be. Even if I could channel effectively here, it wasn’t exactly precise, and the fight was a chaotic, clustered mess; I wasn’t at all certain that I could do anything to the monsters without doing worse to the people. I still had the hatchet, but evidence suggested that getting close to these things didn’t end well for me.

 

As I stood, frozen, the door to the legion headquarters finally opened. Andrew stepped out, looking less asleep than I felt, a towel tied around his waist. He stood there, rubbing at his eyes, and I got the distinct impression that he was planning to ask what in the black gods’ name people thought they were doing making this kind of ruckus in the middle of the night.

 

Then he saw the monsters. His hand fell away from his face in a moment. His other reached towards the torch, beckoning.

 

Channeling was far more difficult within the wards. But if you were a trained, legion-grade channeler, and you had a good channel, that didn’t necessarily matter. It would make things harder for him. It would limit what he could do somewhat, and what he could do would take more out of him. But he was still a very, very dangerous man. Even with the wards, even with the rain still falling, he was a dangerous man.

 

He beckoned, and the flame answered.

 

The torch blazed up two, three times as high, so bright I had to shade my eyes and look away. It was roaring like a furnace now, like a bonfire. Ketill flinched away from it with a shout, but he managed to keep the torch held high.

 

Then the fire reached out and enveloped one of the monsters. It wrapped itself around the thing, and consumed it. There was no other way to put it. One moment there was a monster there, and the next there was just a burning husk falling to the ground.

 

The torch died a moment later, the air around it so utterly consumed by the momentary blaze that it couldn’t even smolder. Andrew, though, wasn’t done yet. He clenched his hand into a fist, letting out a shout that sounded like equal parts effort and pain as he did, and the flames on the corpse burst into similarly intense life. A tongue of flame reached out for another of the monsters, and another of the monsters fell to the ground on fire.

 

I cringed away. I was breathing hard and fast now, and my heart was pounding on my chest. I tried to scream, and all that came out was a pained, breathy hiss.

 

The rest of the monsters seemed hardly any better off than I was. They fell back, not turning away from the fire channeler. Someone–I couldn’t see who, not with so little light–fell on one of them with an axe, swinging like he was splitting wood and removing one of its arms with similar ease.

 

Andrew stepped out of the building entirely, trying to keep the monsters in his sight. It was common knowledge that channelers needed to see something to hit it, and fire channelers in particular struggled otherwise. They could sense body heat to aim, but once they got started there tended to be so much heat in the air that the warmth of a living body got lost in the noise.

 

And that was his fatal mistake. Andrew was a dangerous man, and he had a terrifying amount of raw power at his fingertips. But he didn’t have the experience to use it well.

 

The second monster he’d burned wasn’t dead. Horribly maimed, burned beyond any recognition or hope for recovery, but not dead. And as he stepped too close to it, confident that it was as good as dead, it showed him wrong by grabbing his foot in one clawed hand, and pulling.

 

The legionnaire fell, instantly, with a shout of surprise.

 

The other monsters reversed their course, so rapidly and smoothly that the retreat must have been a feint in the first place. They fell on him, in a mass, with claws and teeth and fists and spines.

 

It was quick. His death wasn’t clean, or pretty, or painless. But at least it was quick.

 

I thought that it would be irritating to put out the fires, now that the fire channeler was dead. Then I felt guilty for thinking that, and then I wondered why I felt guilty for a legionnaire.

 

While I was having that little personal crisis, the monsters finished their work. And they stood up. And they turned towards me. And they started moving.

 

There’s nothing quite like the prospect of imminent dismemberment to shake you out of a personal crisis.

 

As they started to move, so did I, running to the side. But my reactions were slow, and confused. I stumbled over my own feet. I was coughing, the smoke and the burning meat acrid and too sharp in my sinuses. It was hard to see. My feet were slipping on the wet ground. Everything felt too familiar.

 

I wasn’t sure what happened to the monsters. It was hard to track what was going on. All three that were still standing had turned in my direction, but now I was moving and they were moving and only one of them was bearing down on me, hands the size of my head swinging loose at its side.

 

I threw the handful of coins I was holding at it, and pushed on them. But I wasn’t a legion-trained channeler, and the channel I was using was just a handful of coins. Just a few scraps of iron. They hit it, but barely harder than if I’d thrown them with muscle alone. They might, possibly, have penetrated the skin. They didn’t stop it.

 

I lashed out with the axe as it got close, a short, clumsy stroke at its arm. I managed to connect with it, which surprised me on some distant, abstract level, but there was no real force behind the impact. It cut into the monster’s arm, it drew blood, but it didn’t matter. It kept coming.

 

It threw itself at me in a diving tackle, and we both hit the ground. My hand hit a rock, sending a spike of pain and numbness up my arm, and the axe spun out of my grip. We rolled, and the monster ended up on top of me. It wrapped both of its arms around me, and squeezed.

 

I was maybe half its size. Overpowering it was not a thing that was going to happen. But I was small, and agile. I could squirm around in its grip, at least enough to keep it from crushing me instantly.

 

But I couldn’t breathe, and I was trapped, and this couldn’t last. It was just a matter of time before it broke me like a twig. I clawed spastically at its face, its throat, and my claws were drawing blood, but it was too slow. One of my claws caught wrong on a particularly thick fold of that leathery skin, and snapped.

 

The monster set its grip, and started to squeeze tighter. I could feel something straining in my back, an odd sort of pain not quite like anything I’d felt before.

 

And then something hit the thing from behind, and caved its skull in like an empty nut.

 

The strength went out of those arms, instantly. But it wasn’t as much of a relief as I might have guessed. The corpse went completely limp on top of me as it did, and it was still twice my size. It was still crushing me under its sheer weight. I couldn’t breathe–considering the smoke, I wasn’t sure how long it had been since I’d been able to breathe properly. My vision was going grey around the edges, not that I could see anything except the corpse on top of me anyway, and my chest hurt. My body bucked against the weight without me telling it to, trying desperately to drag in a breath, and nothing happened.

 

It felt like a small eternity passed before I saw hands on the monster’s shoulders, half dragging and half rolling it off me. The second the weight was removed enough I took a deep, ragged breath, and then laid back still, breathing hard and struggling to keep some veneer of control. I could dimly see Sigmund standing over me. His forge hammer was on the ground next to him, the head stained with blood and brains.

 

“Silf?” he said, panting a little. Even for someone as strong as the blacksmith’s apprentice–the blacksmith now, I supposed, since his former master was quite dead–hauling that much dead meat off me couldn’t have been easy. “Are you all right?”

 

I didn’t trust my voice at all, for a multitude of reasons. So I just nodded, shakily, and then once more.

 

Sigmund’s shoulders slumped, some of the tension running out of him. “Oh, thank the white gods,” he said. “When you went down, I was sure it was…I thought you were gone.”

 

I smiled in what was hopefully a comforting manner, and pushed myself to my feet. I stumbled, and would have fallen if he hadn’t caught me.

 

It was easy to see why the other two monsters hadn’t joined in attacking me. They were both quite busy. One of them–the one that had been maimed earlier–was facing off against the same man who’d taken its arm off with an axe. I recognized him now as a farmer who worked in one of the apple orchards, and harvested wood from the forest the rest of the time. Small wonder he could chop a ghoul-thing up, then. This one looked to be just about done.

 

The other one had made it farther, running in the direction of the inn. Then it ran into Black and Corbin.

 

Black and the monster were grappling on the ground. The monster was on top, but it clearly wasn’t in control of the situation; it was lying on its back on top of her, and she had all of her limbs wrapped around its, holding it down. It bucked wildly against her grip, but as I’d seen, Black was phenomenally strong, and she was clearly actually trained at this. It didn’t have a chance.

 

There was an arbalest bolt sticking out of its hip. As I watched, Corbin walked up to it, holding the arbalest casually in his hands. He reloaded it.

 

Reloading an arbalest was not an inherently easy thing to do. They made models that used alchemical mechanisms to do most of the work, now, but Corbin’s wasn’t one of them. Most people used a winch to pull the staves back; at a minimum, you had to use the muscles of your legs, or brace it against your body so you could use both arms and your back.

 

Corbin just grabbed the staves and pulled them together in his hands, making it look easy as breathing. He slotted another bolt into it as he walked up to the pair on the ground. He sighted, slow and steady, looking completely unhurried.

 

A part of me, having heard something of the story behind them, and seen how they treated each other, wondered how Black would react in that situation. On the ground, fully occupied with keeping the monster busy, Corbin standing over her with a loaded arbalest? It was…to call it a vulnerable position was an understatement, to say the least.

 

But she didn’t so much as flinch as he pulled the trigger. And the bolt slammed into the monster’s eye, perfectly aimed. It jerked, and went still.

 

I realized, dimly, that the door to the legion house was closed again. They hadn’t even come outside, the bastards.

 

“Gods,” someone said. “What happened?”

 

Ketill snorted. He was busy smothering the last of the fires with what looked like a heavy wool blanket. “What do you think?” he said.

 

“But how did they get through the wards?”

 

I could almost hear the pause as the farmer considered that–likely for the first time, since the middle of a fight was a bad time for thinking about questions like that one. “That I don’t know,” he admitted after a moment.

 

Things fell silent. The fires were dying, between the rain still falling and the efforts of the villagers.

 

I stumbled over to the group, feeling a little more steady on my feet now. I had my breath back, mostly, though my ribs would be a single bruise by morning, and my hand hurt where I’d snapped the claw off. Two in a week.

 

I found Andrew’s body, and stared down at it. It was…mangled felt like too mild a word. Shredded, perhaps. If I hadn’t seen it happen I wouldn’t have realized it was him. I’d only have given it even odds that it was human.

 

Gunnar, likely realizing that I was naked, took off his cloak and draped it around my shoulders. I accepted with a quiet sort of gratitude. The rain was cold, and I was starting to shiver in reaction.

 

Something was bothering me about this whole thing. And not just that they’d been able to get inside the wards. Something about the way they’d acted. There was something here, something important.

 

And then it clicked.

 

These things, whatever they were, they were smart. Everything pointed to that. All I had to look at to be sure was what they’d done to Andrew. When he stepped out of the legion house, they’d recognized that he was the single greatest threat to them, and they’d acted on that understanding, instantly. They lured him out, tripped him, and swarmed him while he was down. That was a remarkably intelligent tactic, planned and executed almost instantly.

 

So why had they then attacked me? I wasn’t exactly a major threat. Even outside the wards, I wasn’t nearly as dangerous as someone like Ketill, or Black, or the legionnaires.

 

At first I thought they’d just gone after people who could channel, whether that meant anything or not. Then I realized that they hadn’t attacked me, not really. Only one of the three had actually attacked me, and that might just have been because I was in its way. The others had seemed more concerned with getting past me.

 

They hadn’t been running at me. They’d been running for where I came from. And it hadn’t had anything to do with the inn, either.

 

I started to talk, and coughed. With how much my ribs hurt, that was not much fun, and it left my throat feeling even rougher than before. When I did manage to get the words out they were a barely audible rasp.

 

“I know how they got in,” I said.

 

Everyone, no exceptions, turned towards me at that. The few who hadn’t heard looked because everyone else was looking, and then they realized what I’d said and they were staring at me the same as the rest.

 

I felt like I should have flinched away at that, and there was a part of me that really wanted to. But I was just too damn tired to act on it. So instead I turned and started walking back towards the inn.

 

“Bones and ashes, you can’t just say that and walk away,” someone said. After a few seconds I realized it was the mayor–Egill, rather, since he wasn’t the mayor anymore. Even if the legion hadn’t taken control of Branson’s Ford, you needed a town to be a mayor, and I was increasingly doubtful that this one would exist for more than a handful of days longer.

 

“If she said it, she’s got a reason,” Corbin said, cutting Egill off. “Might as well follow her. It’ll be simpler than trying to make her explain.”

 

I ignored the conversation, and kept walking. After a few seconds the entire group fell in behind me. I was just as glad, since if I was right there might be more monsters in front of me without warning.

 

At the inn, I went in, and found an alchemical lamp. I went back outside, and kept walking. I could tell that people were getting increasingly confused, but I didn’t say anything. It would be simpler to show them than explain my suspicions, even if I could talk, and right now I most definitely could not.

 

I kept going, into the woods out back of the inn. I found the gap, the hollow place like a missing tooth, where one of the warding posts wasn’t.

 

I didn’t expect that anyone else noticed that. Why would they? This wasn’t an area that people went to, as a rule. Certainly not often enough to notice something slightly off about it. That was, I suspected, the whole point.

 

I turned to the left, walking to the place the next warding post was supposed to be. As I’d expected, there was nothing there. This time, though, I could just see the light of the alchemical lamp glinting off something in the grass where it was supposed to be.

 

I walked over, and set the lamp to the side, and squatted down to pull the grass aside. A pall of total, horrified silence fell over the group as I did. I didn’t say anything to fill it. I didn’t need to.

 

Everyone could clearly see the shattered pieces of the warding post lying on the ground.

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We headed for the inn, out of habit and to inform Corbin of what just happened. It might be some time before anyone thought to tell him otherwise.

 

Before we even got close, though, I heard voices talking, loud and agitated. As we got close, I realized there was a bit of a crowd gathered outside the inn.

 

All of the imperials were standing out front, moving towards town. Aelia looked dazed from the drugs, and Sumi was almost unconscious, being carried by Andrew and Marcus. They were all there, though, and moving.

 

Behind them came a small crowd of villagers, led by Corbin. They were clearly nervous, or even afraid; they were shifting and fidgeting, murmuring in hushed, anxious voices. At first I wondered how they’d already heard about what happened when a group tried to leave. Then I realized that they probably hadn’t; there were, after all, plenty of other things to be nervous about.

 

If they were already this on edge, things would only get worse when they heard our news. Much worse.

 

“You’re insane,” Corbin said to Hideo as we got close enough to hear clearly. “He’s in no shape to travel.”

 

“You made it abundantly clear that you’d rather we not stay in your inn,” Hideo said cheerfully. He was marching along at the head of the whole procession with such a casually arrogant stride that I could almost think it was a deliberate parade and he was the leader. “Well, I do try to be polite, you know, so it’s only reasonable that we move on, don’t you think?”

 

“You can’t seriously mean to take them out on the road.” Corbin’s voice was openly hostile, now. “That’s a death sentence.”

 

“Oh, not at all,” Hideo said. He passed us, not even glancing in our direction, and we fell in with the group following along behind him. “No, I assure you, we aren’t leaving town at all.”

 

“Then what on earth are you playing at with this?” Corbin said.

 

“Well, it’s quite simple, really,” the surveyor said brightly. “This situation is clearly out of control. As such, by the power vested in me as a commissioned officer of the imperial legions, I’m declaring martial law, effective immediately. I’m also appropriating a building to serve as our temporary headquarters.” He pointed at one of the houses, seemingly at random. “Let’s go with that one.”

 

“That’s my house,” someone in the crowd said. After a moment I recognized the voice as belonging to Ilse, the closest thing Branson’s Ford had to a merchant.

 

“Not anymore,” Hideo said brightly, opening the door. It wasn’t locked. “I’ll be setting up our headquarters and reviewing resources. The first dictates will be posted this evening.”

 

He walked into the house, followed by the legionnaires. A moment later the door closed, and locked.

 

Ilse started to walk towards her house, looking like she was seriously considering lighting it on fire. After a moment Gunnar and her husband Otto caught her arms, holding her back. Their expressions were bleak, unsurprised, and hopeless. It was like looking at a kicked dog.

 

Nobody said a word, or made a move towards the building. They looked angry, but it was a blank, impotent sort of anger.

 

It was funny, in a way. They outnumbered the legionnaires, by far, even counting Aelia and Sumi. The legionnaires were better equipped, and probably better trained on the whole, but it was easy to see that any conflict between them would not go well for the imperials. But I was guessing that if Hideo were to walk back out, sentence someone to death for crimes against the state, and execute them on the spot, no one would lift a finger to stop him. They’d been shown that fighting back against the legions ended in death so many times that they couldn’t see any possibility for change.

 

“Typical imperial,” Ketill said under his breath. “Couldn’t even be bothered to take an empty house.”

 

Black and I both laughed quietly at that. I thought that there were plenty of empty houses in Branson’s Ford now, and then immediately felt guilty for thinking it. It could just as easily have been me that died, and I knew it.

 

“We need to talk,” the mayor–former mayor–said into the silence after a few moments. “Everyone, come along.”

 

I fell in with the crowd as we left. Ilse stared at her house for a long while before she followed us.

---

I wasn’t entirely sure where I’d thought the mayor was planning to go, but I hadn’t expected it to be the inn. It made sense, though. It was one of the few buildings in the village that could fit everyone, and given that it was starting to rain, they didn’t want to do this outdoors. It probably helped that the legionnaires, based on Hideo’s comments, almost certainly weren’t going to be dropping in there.

 

Corbin started handing out soup and bread as people found seats, and then started finding places to stand when all the chairs were taken.

 

Otto took one look at the food, and shook his head. “Don’t have money,” he said. “We were tight already, and then getting locked out….”

 

Corbin hesitated for a moment, and then said, “Don’t worry about money. It’s all on the house, tonight.”

 

I’d never seen Corbin waive payment before. He might stand a round on the house on special occasions, or take payment in kind when someone was in a rough patch, but nothing like this.

 

Oddly enough, that was what drove home just how bad things were. Why worry about payment? He might lose it all tomorrow anyway, to imperial requisition or ghoul attack.

 

“I know it’s bad news on top of worse,” Ketill said, as people settled in. “But I reckon you got to know. The folk were going to the city, they ain’t making it. Weren’t out of sight when the ghouls were on them. Killed them all.” He paused, letting that sink in. “The beasts were using bows. Bows and arrows.”

 

The taproom had been quiet before. It went dead silent at that.

 

“How?” someone said, barely above a whisper. Even with my hearing, I doubted I’d have heard it if things weren’t so very quiet.

 

“Why is the question,” Gunnar said, more loudly. His tone was grim, to say the least. “Nobody was attacked until the other day. Why now?”

 

I glanced at Black where she was sitting by the fire. She met my eyes across the room and nodded, very slightly. We both knew what was going on. But she couldn’t be the one to say it, not when she was an outsider to the village. And I wasn’t going to be saying enough to explain the situation. Not today. Today was a bad day, and I’d already strained my throat talking to Black. The soup was helping, but not enough.

 

Eventually Ketill spoke up, probably because he realized that no one else was going to. “It’s the same as what they did out there,” he said. “Control our movements, put us in a position where they can hit us hard. We’re safe behind the wards, but that means they know where we are and where we’d have to go to leave.”

 

“Are we even sure the wards will stop them?” someone asked. After a few seconds I recognized it as Samara, a rather shrill imperial woman whom I wasn’t particularly fond of.

 

“If the wards didn’t stop them, they’d have killed us all by now,” Ketill said flatly. “There’s no motive for them to have left us alone if they didn’t have to.”

 

“That gives us a certain amount of safety,” the mayor said. “But we can’t wait in here indefinitely, and help likely isn’t coming. We need to decide what to do now.”

 

“Oh, come off it, Egill,” someone called from the back of the room. “You’re not in charge no more, remember? That legion fellow is.”

 

“Is anyone confident in the legion?” Egill asked. I presumed Egill was his name, at least; I couldn’t remember having heard it before. He was just the mayor. “Half of them have been maimed fighting these things already, and one of the others isn’t more than a boy. Do you want to leave your lives in their hands?”

 

He paused. No one said anything.

 

“As I said,” he continued, with a faint smile that suggested he’d expected that response. “We need to decide what to do now.”

 

“Could take my plan,” Ketill said. “Take the initiative, wipe these things out.”

 

“How confident are you you’d win?” Corbin asked suddenly. “They’ve killed a lot of folks already.”

 

I saw the room react as that sank in. People looked around, looking for who was here, and thinking of who was already gone.

 

It was something I’d already thought of. There were around forty people in the taproom, by my estimate–far more than were usually here, but not exactly an army. I couldn’t think of many people in Branson’s Ford who weren’t here, either. A handful of recluses, people like Jakob’s friend, who’d come back broken from the war. A few herders who, given that they worked alone outside the wards, were more than likely dead already. Other than that I could only think of children.

 

Though I supposed I should count them too. If things kept going like this, they’d be holding spears with the rest of us before the end.

 

It was a line of thought I’d already followed. But I could see it hit Ketill as he realized what I already had. His face dropped as he suddenly saw, probably for the first time, that we might lose. That the whole village might be wiped out by these things that were most definitely not ghouls.

 

You didn’t hear about it often. I’d certainly never heard of one quite like this. But it did happen. Even with the warding posts, sometimes something went wrong and a village was slaughtered by Changed monstrosities. Everyone knew it happened.

 

You just…always assumed that it would happen to someone else.

 

“Numbers aside,” Egill said, breaking the silence before it could really make itself at home, “there’s one reason to think we can’t fight them and win. They don’t think we can.”

 

“Are you people sure you aren’t giving these things too much credit?” Ilse asked. “They’re clearly more intelligent than average ghouls, yes, but the way you talk about them you’d almost think they were people.” Her tone was angry, with a hint of hysteria.

 

“What I am saying is that they appear to have a considerably better understanding of our capabilities than we have of theirs.” Egill, at least, seemed completely calm. At times like this it was easy to see how he’d ended up as the mayor. “And given that they attacked, they obviously think that they’ll fare well in a confrontation. We’d be fools to ignore that fact.”

 

“We could wait for the legions,” Gunnar said, sounding like he was sucking a lemon. “We can stay in the wards for a long while.”

 

“The messengers were killed, remember?” Ketill said. “They don’t know we even need help.”

 

“They know.” It took me a moment to realize that it was my own voice saying that, and when I did I was as surprised as anyone. Thought I doubted that more than about half a dozen people heard, anyway.

 

One of those people was the mayor–Egill–though, and he turned to face me. “What makes you say that?” he asked, ensuring that everyone’s attention would be focused on me.

 

I flinched back slightly, then shrugged. “They know,” I said. “They’re here.”

 

“She’s right,” Corbin said, loudly enough to pull the focus of the crowd onto him instead. “They knew something was going on. Otherwise they wouldn’t have sent anyone at all.”

 

“That was a coincidence,” Samara said. “They were here surveying for the road. It was just a coincidence they ran into those…things.”

 

“Don’t be naive,” Ketill snapped at her. “The road was a dream they held in front of us to keep us from asking questions. It was never going to happen. I thought they were here for something else…but no, this must be it. They were asking about monsters, remember?”

 

I could tell that a few people did. They suddenly looked like they felt sick.

 

“What do we do, then?” Ilse asked. She sounded like the anger had run its course, and now she was just tired. Exhausted. “We can’t win ourselves, and the legions aren’t coming to help us.”

 

Nobody seemed to have an answer. People didn’t want to make eye contact, and a lot of them were drinking in earnest now. Corbin was pouring drinks from bottles that he usually didn’t touch at all, and nobody said a word about payment, now.

 

It was funny, in a not-very-funny sort of way. I’d wished for the taproom to be packed like this more times than I could remember. Now that it was, it didn’t feel good at all. There wasn’t a celebratory atmosphere at all. The people looked desperate, broken, hopeless.

 

It reminded me of the Whitewood, in the last few weeks. We’d been surrounded by that point, besieged by the legions. People had felt trapped, then, helpless and unsure of what to do. We’d thought things were as bad as they could get, until the fires came and proved us wrong.

 

It wasn’t a comfortable analogy to make.

 

I didn’t have any better answers than the rest of them, but I couldn’t stand there and watch it any more. It was too crowded, hot and close, and my grip on the present was starting to come loose. I set the empty bowl of soup on the table, and grabbed that bottle of the imperial rice-drink from behind the bar, and walked through the kitchen and out the back door. Corbin watched me go. I was guessing he knew exactly what was running through my mind.

 

I got out, and I ran.

---

I wanted to go to my secret place in the woods. But that was well outside the wards, and I wasn’t so foolhardy that I’d risk that now. Not after what I’d seen earlier. For all that I’d accused the villagers of underestimating these things, I saw now that I’d been guilty of the same thing. I probably only made it through that safely because they were busy getting ready for the group of messengers.

 

Instead, I wandered around the village. It looked like a ghost town, empty and silent. It was strange seeing the fields empty in the middle of a field day.

 

Ilse and Otto’s house was closed up, completely, the doors locked and the windows boarded over. I wasn’t sure what the imperials were doing in there. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

 

I let my feet wander where they liked, not really paying attention. I was lost in thought, another place and another time and another me. When they carried me to a rock looking over the water, I was almost surprised.

 

Almost.

 

I sat, and looked out at the river. It sparkled in the sunlight, a slow pattern made of a thousand other patterns. I could feel the breeze brushing across my skin, through my fur. The rain which had been threatening for some hours was falling, soft and quiet.

 

It felt peaceful. It was a toxic sort of peace, the calm before the storm, the quiet moment before the fire caught. But still. Peaceful.

 

I took out an iron penny and rested it on my finger, balanced between fingertip and claw. It caught the light dully. The metal was stained an ugly red-black. I’d never washed the blood off it after it…after I put it into a ghoul, and pulled it out again.

 

I could barely feel the coin I was holding. The magic was always weak, inside the wards. It left me feeling numb and tired, and it made channeling nearly impossible. A trade everyone in the village made without a second thought. It was worth it to keep people from being Changed. To keep them from being like me.

 

Sometimes people go there to get clean, Sumi had said.

 

It felt like it had been a long time since I was clean. I could wash away the blood, I could wash away the soot, but it seemed the stains never really went away.

 

I’d almost thought of them as people. I’d seen the things that set them apart from the mass–Aelia’s nightmares and the happy face she pasted over them, Sumi’s quiet philosophizing, Andrew’s anxiety. I’d let it fool me into forgetting. But no. Things never changed. They were still legion. Aelia might have bad dreams about putting a bolt into a boy trying to flee the fires, but that didn’t change the fact that she’d pulled the trigger.

 

It was easier to hate them when they weren’t people. When they could be just…enemies, helmets without faces underneath, the collective group that had destroyed my life. Things were simpler if they weren’t individuals, people with hopes and dreams and fears and regrets and loves and hates just like mine.

 

It seemed things were seldom simple.

 

I tossed the coin out into the river. It disappeared beneath the water without a trace.

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I ran as fast as I could on the way north. The only reason that Ketill and Black could keep up with me was the damage to my leg. I wasn’t pushing myself as hard as I usually would have been able to, and it still didn’t take all that long before my leg was burning with pain.

 

I had a sinking feeling that I would be too slow to matter, anyway. It didn’t matter how fast I was. It had been too late before I realized what was happening. I was running the numbers in my head as we ran, and it was impossible to avoid that conclusion. Ketill would have left the meeting as soon as it was over, and I didn’t get the impression that he’d been waiting all that long.

 

But the people who were being sent to fetch the legions wouldn’t wait, either. Not when things were this urgent. They would stop to collect supplies–food, weapons, the various small things you needed on the road. And then they would have left. There was no reason for them to wait longer than they absolutely had to before they got on the road.

 

No matter how I tried to bend the numbers, I couldn’t avoid the conclusion. They’d already left.

 

We passed a few people on the way north. Most of them watched us go by curiously. A handful, who knew that when things were bad you followed anyone who looked like they had a plan, fell in behind us. Mostly they couldn’t keep up. Ketill was breathing hard by now, I could hear it, but the old farmer was still keeping pace surprisingly well.

 

We reached the fields, and I saw the group ahead of us. Half a dozen people and three horses, they were just pulling themselves onto the shore on the opposite side of the Blackwater. I could recognize most of them, if only because they were the people I would have expected to go on a trip like this. Karl and Lily Anders, who went to the city more often than anyone else in Branson’s Ford. Jacek, a Changed shepherd who was strong as a ram and damn near as big; it was always hard to miss him. I thought one of the others was one of Jakob’s friends, though I’d only seen him a handful of times. He came back broken from the war, and these days he was virtually a hermit, spending more time in the forest than in town.

 

“Oh, no,” I said, pulling up short.

 

It was too late. It would take time for us to get across the river–the ford was relatively safe, but that was a rather significant qualifier when it came to walking across the Blackwater. And they were already well outside the wards.

 

“Silf?” Black said, stumbling to a stop next to me. “What’s wrong?”

 

“They’re smart,” I said. “They plan. Do you think they didn’t plan for this?”

 

She frowned slightly. “I think you might be overreacting a bit,” she said. “They’re clearly smarter than the average ghoul, but I think you’re giving them a little too much credit.”

 

“Hope so,” I muttered darkly, staring after them. If not, it was too late to do anything about it now. Even if we were to shout a warning–I couldn’t manage anything remotely that loud, but Black might be able to–it was too late for them to do anything about it. They were well outside the wards, now.

 

They were in the enemy’s territory.

 

Moments rolled past, and I thought that maybe Black was right. Maybe I was just being paranoid. It wouldn’t be the first time that happened, not by a long shot. I’d barricaded my door shut at night for my first few months in Branson’s Ford.

 

Then Karl Anders fell, tumbling off the horse and to the ground with a scream.

 

At first, I wasn’t sure what had happened. It didn’t look like they were either. They stopped and milled around in the middle of the road, like they weren’t sure what to do. Karl wasn’t standing up.

 

I saw the second one, a flicker of movement in the air. That one missed, but a few seconds another one followed, and this time Jakob’s friend was the one to cry out in pain.

 

Arrows. They were shooting arrows at them.

 

Whoever was shooting, they weren’t a very good shot. Arrows kept falling, and most of them went wide. The first shot that had dropped Karl in a heartbeat looked to have been a lucky fluke; even most of the ones that hit didn’t seem to do that serious of harm.

 

But they wounded, and the villagers were scared. I couldn’t blame them. Caught by surprise in the open like that, being shot at, it would scare anyone.

 

Including the horses.

 

They weren’t cavalry mounts, not by a long shot. Those animals were more accustomed to pulling a plow than carrying anyone. They weren’t trained to hold steady under fire. They could smell blood, and people were screaming around them, and probably at least one had been shot by now, and they panicked.

 

Whether because the people managed to get them to follow orders or simply because they wanted to go home, the horses bolted back towards the river. The people followed after them, though rather more slowly. Karl had been the only one of the group to be mounted; it looked like they’d been walking the beasts across the river.

 

It was a foolish thing to do, exactly what the monsters must have expected. I would have been more critical if I hadn’t done equally foolish things under pressure myself. It was impossible to think clearly and work through the logical consequences of your actions when people were screaming and bleeding and dying all around, and a stray arrow might claim your life at any moment.

 

The horses were around halfway across the river, and the people were in the shallows, when the water exploded into movement. Clawed arms reached up and dragged them down, into the water. It was hard to guess without seeing more of them than that, but from what I could see I was guessing there were only two or three of the monsters in the river.

 

The people were panicked, already wounded, caught by surprise, and up to their thighs in water. Two or three was enough.

 

Ghouls had to breathe. Everyone knew that; they were living things like any other, they had to eat and sleep and breathe like anyone else. I wasn’t entirely sure whether that applied to these things–I wasn’t feeling sure of anything when it came to them–but it seemed likely. But they could hold their breath for a time, and with how much diversity there was among ghoul bodies, some inevitably wound up with features that let them move underwater effectively.

 

One of the horses made it across safely, though it was limping badly with an arrow in one haunch, and it was anyone’s guess whether the thing would live. The rest of the group went down, and didn’t come back up. The Blackwater would carry the blood out to sea.

 

“Arrows,” Black said, her voice barely more than a whisper. She sounded distant, shocked, almost like she was in shock. “Bones and bloody ashes. Since when do ghouls use bows?”

 

“Those were Jakob’s arrows,” Ketill said. He didn’t sound a lot better than she did. “He has a special way of fletching them, says it’s good luck.”

 

“Some of the people with us earlier had bows,” I said. “Some of the ones they killed.”

 

“That would explain it,” Black said. She did not sound pleased. “I guess you were right. I’m sorry for not listening earlier.”

 

I shrugged. “Wish I weren’t.”

 

Ketill snorted. “Ain’t that how it goes,” he says. “Come on. We need to figure out what to do next.” He turned and started walking south, towards the center of town. After a moment, I followed him.

 

Karl’s body was still lying on the road. The ravens were starting to circle over it.

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Nightmares were not unfamiliar to me. They were very familiar, in fact. But that was because the vast majority of the time they were the same nightmares, the same scenes playing out inside my head again and again and again. They were nightmares of fire and death and screaming, blood on the ground and bodies in the streets. There was nothing ambiguous about them, nothing unexpected. The fact that I never seemed to be able to deal with them, that I couldn’t move past the things that had happened, didn’t make them any less predictable. There was nothing unclear in my nightmares.

 

This was a very different sort of nightmare. This was darkness and fog, limbs that wouldn’t move and eyes that couldn’t see. I wasn’t even sure what was going on, wasn’t sure why I was scared. I had a vague feeling, more an instinct than a thought, of being trapped and helpless. There was something bad out there, lurking in the darkness just out of sight, and it was closing in on me, and it was far too late to run.

 

When I woke, that feeling lingered. I was quietly desperate, unable to shake the cloud of dread that hung around me like a cloud. My fingers fumbled as I pulled on clothing. I was mostly dressed before I realized that I was putting on the same filthy, blood-soaked clothes from earlier, and I pulled them off almost frantically.

 

Not that it mattered. I was filthy; my fur was caked in dried blood and filth. I could smell myself, a foul, almost rancid odor that permeated the room. Usually I was very cleanly, but I hadn’t bathed in days, and they’d been rather intense days at that. But even if I wasn’t any cleaner than they were, I didn’t want to wear those clothes today. There was something about it that was just…morbid.

 

My steps were short and quick as I left, locking the door behind myself, and hurried downstairs. The feeling of dread from my dream was still lingering, pressing down on my like a cold weight between my shoulders. I felt like I should be running, and I wasn’t sure why.

 

The kitchen was the same as always. I could smell bread baking, and there was a pot of soup cooking. But it felt…hollow, somehow. The sunlight coming in the window was wan and pale, and the air felt too thin. I continued out into the taproom without pausing, and found Corbin standing at the bar and polishing it. There was no one else there.

 

“You slept almost a full day,” he said, not turning around as I came in. “I was concerned.”

 

“Sorry,” I said. “We were supposed to win.” I grimaced, feeling the tightness in my throat already.

 

“I don’t blame you,” he said.  “You weren’t in a position to know better.” He sounded about as convincing as a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

 

I frowned, but dropped it. “What happens now?”

 

“They’re still deciding that,” Corbin said. “Ketill and a few of the other villagers want to take the fight to the ghouls. Bring everyone, push out with wards and exterminate them. The mayor is pushing to wait for legion support. And that surveyor wants to wait and see what they do next before we commit to anything.”

 

“Who’s winning?”

 

He shrugged. “They’re still talking about it now. Most of the village is there, I think. But my money is on the mayor. It’s hard to argue against putting the responsibility on someone else.”

 

My frown deepened slightly. Something about that seemed…wrong, to me. It was like an odd taste in a soup; I couldn’t place what was off, but something wasn’t quite right with this picture.

 

Not that it mattered. Even if I’d been able to put words to my feeling, I couldn’t have convinced anyone. There was a reason Corbin wasn’t at this meeting, after all. We were both relative newcomers, and in a place like Branson’s Ford that meant everything. In a village like this, you were an outsider unless you had family going back at least two generations.

 

“Why were you so upset?” I asked quietly. “Why do you care what happens to me?”

 

“Because you deserve better than you’ve gotten,” Corbin said, staring at the surface of the bar. I suddenly realized that he was drunk, something I’d never seen before. “Because I thought I could save one person. Just one person. But it seems even that’s beyond me.”

 

I stood there in silence for a minute, then turned and walked out the door. He didn’t ask where I was going.

---

On some level I knew it was foolish to leave the safety of the wards at a time like this. But the looming sense of dread from my nightmare was still following me, and I needed a refuge like seldom before.

 

I was on edge as I made my way out into the trees, ready for an ambush at any moment. I wasn’t entirely sure what would happen if a ghoul-thing did jump out at me. Running seemed like a poor choice; with what they’d done already, it seemed rather likely that I’d run into another ambush, or a trap. But I wasn’t at all confident in my ability to fight even one of them, either.

 

I didn’t see or hear any sign of them, though. There were no traps, no sudden ambush leaping out of the shadows. As far as I could tell there weren’t even any unusual signs of passage in the area.

 

I slipped into the pocket in the rocks, and found that I wasn’t alone.

 

“I thought I might find you here,” Black said. She was looking slightly off to the side of me, not meeting my eye. “I owe you an apology, I think.”

 

“Corbin was upset,” I said. “He spoke in haste.”

 

“Which doesn’t make what he said any less true,” she said dryly. “I’ve lived a violent life, Silf. Even when I was young, killing was all I was good for. And Corbin was right. That life hasn’t exactly worked out so well for me. It was never good. I wouldn’t wish that life on anyone. I shouldn’t have pushed you to start down the same road I did.”

 

I was silent for a moment, walking over to sit on my favorite rock. Black moved aside to leave room for me. “Not sure either of us has a choice,” I said softly.

 

Black laughed, a harsh, bitter sound. “True enough,” she said. “It never seems to matter what I wish.” She glanced at me. “Life has carved out a particularly hard niche for you. You’ve been through so much already, and now this.”

 

I shrugged. “Life is hard.”

 

“You said you stayed here because you got sick,” she said. “What were you planning on doing until that happened?”

 

I was quiet for a moment. “Didn’t…plan, exactly,” I said. “But thought I’d go south to Aseoto. They say the Changed can get by there.”

 

“We can,” Black said, in a vaguely warning tone. “But it’s not easy. They put up with us, but one false step can end with you bleeding in a gutter. The guards tend to look the other way when someone causes trouble for us. And it’s hard to find work where you don’t get robbed.”

 

I looked away from her. “Thought I’d work in the water trade.”

 

Black was quiet for a few seconds. “Selling your body?” she said at last, sounding like she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.

 

I shrugged. “Or dancing. Or fighting.”

 

“I never worked in the water trade while I was down there,” Black said. “But…yes, the Changed can almost always find work there. We’re exotic down there, and while people might say they’re ashamed of the exotic, that never seems to stop them from paying to see it on display.” She paused again. “Not sure I should encourage you to see yourself as a commodity, though.”

 

“At least I’d be able to decide what happened to me,” I said. “More than some get.”

 

She sighed heavily. “Too true.” She was quiet again, and I got the distinct impression that she was struggling to frame what she said next. “I understand if you’d rather not answer,” she said, hesitantly. “But…were you attacked in the camps?”

 

I shook my head. “Some tried,” I said. “In the city, and then before I met up with the other refugees, I tagged along with a legion camp for a while. But I’m faster than they were. And…”

 

“And?” she prodded gently.

 

I stared at the ground, trying not to remember. “Nobody expects you to fight back,” I said, barely above a whisper. My throat felt raw and tight, and I wasn’t sure how much of it was the usual problems and how much was just that it was hard to talk about this. “I don’t…look like much, you know? But I’m fast, and stronger than I look. I have claws. And…there’s usually some metal around. A coin, a pin, something.”

 

“You killed people when they tried to attack you,” Black said. “Didn’t you?”

 

I nodded. “Three or four.”

 

Black sighed again. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That isn’t enough, but I don’t know what else to say.”

 

I shrugged. I didn’t say anything.

 

“Yeah,” she said. “Never helped me, either.”

 

I laughed a little. “What about you?” I said. “How did it start?”

 

Black was silent for a few moments. “My parents were hunters,” she said at last. “Killing was a fact of life. It was something we did every day. The first time I killed a person was an accident, an argument in a bar. I just meant to push him, but I was angry, and you saw how strong I am. He hit his head, and that was that.”

 

That was that. I pushed him, and he hit his head, and that was that. I stuck a spike in behind his ear, and that was that. Such a simple story, for something as profound as ending a life. It seemed like it should be harder.

 

“It’s hard,” I said. “Remembering what I did.”

 

“It gets easier,” Black said. “We told each other that it didn’t, in the war. Guess we told ourselves, too. We didn’t want killing to be easy. But the truth is that it does get easier.”

 

I wasn’t quite sure whether I should be glad to hear that, or a bit disappointed. I thought probably a little of both.

 

“We should be getting back to the wards,” Black said, breaking a silence that felt as vast and deep and cold as the ocean. “This place isn’t safe anymore.”

 

I nodded, but it was a few moments before I could make myself move.

---

On the way back, I paused just inside the warding posts. Something wasn’t quite right. Black stopped right next to me, though she didn’t seem to know why.

 

It took a couple seconds for me to place what was wrong. When I did, I stared at the place where one of the trees wasn’t quite right, the shape of it just slightly wrong. I didn’t try to conceal what I was doing.

 

Ketill dropped from the tree a moment later, landing in a crouch and straightening in a moment. He was light on his feet, precise and confident.

 

The old farmer looked…not younger, precisely. It was more like the time weighed him down as heavily as ever, but the years had peeled away, and exposed what he’d been a lifetime ago. He looked lean and hard, eyes that were hard as flint and had just as much mercy in them.

 

I knew what I was looking at. Ketill had lived as a simple farmer in Branson’s Ford for a decade now, give or take. But old habits didn’t die. Scratch the paint, scrape away the life he’d made for himself, and the man he used to be was there, like it never went away at all.

 

He didn’t have his scythe. But I noticed that he was carrying a different knife on his belt than usual. This one was long, and heavy, and old.

 

“Good eye,” he said to me, not looking at me. His voice was very, very quiet, and rough. “Been looking to talk to you.” This was clearly directed at Black, not me.

 

“How’d you know where I went?” she asked.

 

He snorted. “You’re good,” he said. “But I did my time in the war. I know how to track a body, and I know these woods better’n anyone alive.”

 

She nodded. “Fair,” she said. “So what do you want to talk about?”

 

He glanced at me. “Might be better we were alone,” he said.

 

Black shook her head. “Silf can stay,” she said.

 

Ketill grunted. “Your call,” he said. “So. You’re the Lady in Black.”

 

Black didn’t so much as blink. “I’m flattered,” she said. “But the Lady in Black is a myth. A ghost story the legions came up with to put a name to what troubled them during the early years of the occupation.”

 

“That’s the official story,” Ketill said. “I expect you’re glad for that, and I ain’t going to be the one to tell it otherwise. But I was there at Karlton, on the hill. Didn’t recognize you at first, but when I saw you fight out there I knew it was you.”

 

Black went very still now, and then sighed. “Fine,” she said. “Yes, that was me. But that was a long, long time ago. It’s just Black now.”

 

He nodded. “Like I said, I ain’t going to tell nobody. We all got things we don’t want to remember from back then, and I reckon you got more than most. But there’s a thing I got to ask you, seeing as you’re here.”

 

“Ask.” Her voice was very flat.

 

“You going to stay this time?” he asked.

 

Apparently that wasn’t the question she was expecting. She blinked. “What?”

 

“You saved our asses at Karlton,” he said. “But you didn’t stay. You never stayed, that’s the story, everyone said so. After the fight was won you moved on, and the black gods care what happened to us after.”

 

“Ah,” she said. “And you’re afraid I’ll leave you high and dry again.”

 

He nodded.

 

“I’m staying,” she said. “For now, at least. If those legionnaires figure out who I was, I might have to leave whether I want to or not.”

 

“Why?” he asked quietly. “What’s worth staying for here when you left us hanging after Karlton?”

 

“I’m tired of running,” she said, her voice as quiet as his. “I’ve been running for a long time now. And I’m tired.” She was silent for a few seconds.

 

Ketill was silent for a few seconds. “I ain’t entirely satisfied with that,” he said. “But I guess beggars can’t be choosers, and Branson’s Ford is going to need all the help it can get, I reckon.”

 

“The mayor got what he wanted?” I asked.

 

He nodded. “A few folk are going to fetch the legions,” he said. “Or try, anyways. I ain’t so confident they’ll come to help, but I suppose there’s a chance.”

 

I nodded, and then paused. My eyes went wide as the vague feeling of dread that had been haunting me since I woke up finally coalesced into a clear thought.

 

“They’re going north?” I asked. It was the quickest way to the city–across the river, and northeast along the old trade road.

 

Ketill nodded.

 

“We’ve got to catch them,” I said. “Hurry.”

 

Ketill clearly didn’t know what I was talking about. But he was a soldier, and if there was one thing you learned in the war–one thing that even I’d figured out, while the Whitewood was burning–it was that if someone said something in that tone, you listened first and asked questions later. He took off to the north, with Black and me right behind him.

 

I had a sick feeling that we were already too late.

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The worst part was that it wasn’t that much of a surprise. It wasn’t exactly a brilliant scheme, and it wasn’t unfamiliar. It was, in fact, what the people of Branson’s Ford did on the occasions when the ghoul numbers around town actually did grow high enough to be a threat. Bait them in somewhere, and then trap them there and turn it into a killing ground. I’d seen it done enough to recognize.

 

It wasn’t so fun to be on the other side.

 

The trees didn’t all fall at once. The first one was near the rocks behind us, and then they started falling all around, one and two at a time, dragging more to the ground with them.

 

I realized, on some level, what must have happened. The monsters had undermined the trees, digging out the roots and collapsing the ground under them. It left them standing, but unstable, with nothing but inertia keeping them upright. The falling rocks had shaken the ground, upsetting them further, and then after a few seconds they started tumbling under their own weight. There were likely more of the things scattered through the forest to give them an extra push if they looked to be taking too long about it.

 

It was, on some level, admirable. A part of me had to respect them for the sheer ambition of the undertaking.

 

The rest was too busy dodging falling trees.

 

We were in a relatively open area within the woods, which was why I’d been able to have a clear view of the group from above. But under the circumstances, “relatively” open was a very serious qualifier. There were still more than enough trees around to be a major threat.

 

I’d barely reached the others when the first of the trees fell, and then a few seconds later another toppled in our direction. I had warning, and I was light on my feet, even with one leg still hurting. I ducked to the side easily enough, and easily avoided it; no one else was in a position to be threatened.

 

The divide in our group was showing, now. People didn’t know what was going on; they were shouting, confused, questioning what was going on. Hideo was trying to get them in order, but he couldn’t shout over them, and he clearly didn’t have any better idea what was going on or what to do than anyone else.

 

Another tree fell, this one on a course that took it straight towards our position. I saw it coming in plenty of time to move. The villagers were used to these forests, and they knew the threats here; they were watching for more trees.

 

But the legionnaires weren’t from around here, and not all of the villagers were able to move fast enough to be safe. This time Sumi went to the ground, his leg pinned under the trunk of the tree and obviously broken. Friedrich was right next to him, but the blacksmith was even less lucky; the trunk came down solidly upon his back.

 

Suddenly Black was standing next to me. She still didn’t have her spear, but she didn’t look wounded, and she was keeping her composure better than almost any of the rest of us. “Silf!” she shouted at me, from a couple feet away.

 

I stared blankly at her. Some part of me was aware that she was talking to me, but I couldn’t seem to connect that thought to anything, much less to a coherent response.

 

She grimaced and clapped her hands right in front of me. The sound was painfully loud, loud as a quiet explosion. It left my ears ringing painfully.

 

But it left me feeling a little less disconnected. I shook my head, clearing it, and then looked at her.

 

“Which way do we run?” she asked, sharply, speaking over the sound of another tree falling, this one further away.

 

Instantly, I pointed to the right. It took me a couple seconds to figure out why, but when I did follow my own thought process, it was a reasonable one. Right was north. North and a touch east would take us to the wide-open fields, and everyone knew that ghouls didn’t like open spaces. I wasn’t sure if that applied to whatever these were, but either way, staying in the trees was a bad idea, and that way was also the closest the wards came to where we were now.

 

“Good enough,” Black muttered, then bellowed, “This way!”

 

I winced again. From how quiet Black usually was, I would hardly have guessed that she was capable of being that loud.

 

But it did what it had to do. It got people’s attention, made them look at her and imposed some kind of sanity on the crowd.

 

They didn’t look pleased when she started moving north. I couldn’t blame them. It felt like a bad idea, viscerally, to move into the trees and start uphill. But waiting here wasn’t an option, and they didn’t know a better way to move. Lacking a better idea, most of them followed her.

 

I was with them, and then in front of them. I was still moving in a daze, watching from the outside as my body scrambled through the brush and up the hill, and it didn’t occur to me that being out in front on my own was a bad idea. Behind me I could hear a scream, and then the sharp fwoosh of flash paper and channeled fire. I wasn’t sure why. It didn’t occur to me to turn around and look.

 

I was faster and more agile than almost anyone present, even on a maimed leg. Black was probably the only one who could have kept up with me, and she didn’t know the terrain. Likely she was also taking it slow enough that the humans–and the Changed, I remembered that one of the farmers was Changed, but not in a particularly fast way–could keep up.

 

I was the first one to the top of the hill. There was another ghoul–or rather, another thing close enough to a ghoul that getting them mixed up might still be the death of all of us–waiting for me.

 

This one looked different from the last in every particular, and the same in generality, as was typical of ghouls. This one looked almost quadrupedal, with hugely overdeveloped arms. Instead of claws, it had oversized hands that looked strong enough to literally tear me limb from limb without trying. Instead of a lamprey-mouth, it had broad jaws lined with short, jagged teeth. Its eyes were huge and red.

 

I fell back a step, involuntarily. It took a step forward, staring straight at me. I thought about turning and running.

 

Then I remembered that I had nowhere else to go, and a more primitive, feral side of me took over. This wasn’t Silf of the Whitewood, the Changed girl who faced the same trials that a Changed girl anywhere did but was, in the end, a happy enough child. It wasn’t even Silf of Branson’s Ford, the scarred girl who lurked in the shadows and didn’t talk, who woke from nightmares and tried not to think too hard about yesterday or tomorrow.

 

No, this was the Silf that was born in the refugee camps. This was the hard, violent girl that lived her nightmares out in the light of day. I’d thought–hoped–that time and distance had killed her, that the gentle life with Corbin had turned that part of me into just a bad dream. But no. Old habits didn’t die. She might have gone to sleep, but scratch the paint and there she is again.

 

She stepped back again, quick and controlled, one hand going to the pouch at her side. She pulled out a handful of coins–iron, and here and there a glimmer of bronze. She tossed them into the air, shining in the sunlight. For just an instant, the barest sliver of time, a stutter-step between heartbeats, they hung motionless in the air.

 

They were beautiful.

 

Then she reached through them, through the gleam of reflected light and the scent of iron in the air and the ringing chime of metal on metal and the hard edge of the half-penny still in her hand. She reached through all those things and so many more, everything that made up the concept of metal, and through them she touched the magic.

 

Channeling is not, by nature, a precise art. When I channel, I’m tapping into an enormous and chaotic force, and trying to force it down a hole that’s far too small for it. The result is a clumsy and vaguely focused spray, and while people who were truly skilled at it could refine the technique somewhat, there were limits. It wasn’t like alchemy, with its mathematics and measurements and exacting care. It wasn’t even like directed Changing, a slow process of give and take and adjusting to situations. Channeling was far cruder and more simplistic, and not something that lent itself to delicacy or detail.

 

I opened the channel, and the handful of coins shot forward like bolts from a crossbow. They weren’t really aimed, as such–that was why I’d taken a handful, rather than a single coin. Some of them missed, shot wide and hit rocks or dirt or trees behind it.

 

Most didn’t.

 

The ghoul didn’t stop. But wounds blossomed on it, blood spraying from its shoulder and its chest where half a dozen bits of metal had just slammed into it. A bronze penny slammed into its throat at an angle, tearing it open and leaving the wound to flap obscenely. One of those crimson eyes burst, blood and humors splattering across its face, the cheekbone underneath shattering as the coin deflected into it.

 

It kept coming and I danced around it, light on my feet and faster than it had expected. I ducked under its reaching arm. I fumbled for the hatchet Black had given me, and I slowed, and it grabbed my wounded leg and squeezed. Stitches tore.

 

I gasped in pain, a raspy, breathy sound with no real force behind it. But the pain was…detached, somehow, not quite real, not penetrating to me. It didn’t stop me as I brought the hatchet up, channeling to put more force behind it than muscle alone could deliver, and buried it under the monster’s chin.

 

Blood fountained out, drenching me. So much blood. It had never occurred to me, until the Whitewood burned, just how much blood a person had in them. The ghoul–the monster, whatever it was–had enough to cover my face and torso almost entirely, fur stained scarlet and clothes soaked through to the skin.

 

But the ghoul stopped moving.

 

It collapsed on top of me, crushing me to the ground. I squirmed and pushed and, after a few seconds, crawled out from underneath. I was coughing. My eyes were stinging, and when I tried to wipe them clean my bloody hands just made them even worse.

 

It had taken a few tries to figure out how to channel the magic to undo this. But I’d had to learn. Back in the camps, I’d had too little money to waste any of it; a handful of iron half-pennies was a small fortune. Now, money wasn’t so much of a concern, but there might be more of the monsters between us and home, and I couldn’t afford to lose the metal.

 

I reached out, and found the coins buried in the ghoul’s body. A quick burst of magic tore them back out with noise of ripping flesh, and left a small cloud of metal around my hand, stained with blood and worse.

 

I grabbed the coins, gagging at the feeling of the monster’s innards in my grip, and shoved them into my pocket.

 

The rest of the group caught up a few seconds later. They saw me, covered in blood, bleeding from the leg. They saw the monster.

 

A few of the villagers nodded, and made vaguely respectful noises. They weren’t surprised. They’d known what I was capable of–I had, after all, been there when they culled the local ghouls a time or two. It wasn’t such a surprise.

 

The legionnaires looked to be more surprised. Marcus was looking at me oddly, and Andrew was staring at the monster like he was trying to figure out what I’d done. Sumi wasn’t looking at anything; they’d cut his leg off, and cauterized the stump with Andrew’s fire channeling. It had been faster than getting him out from under the tree, presumably.

 

Friedrich, who had been fully caught under the trunk, was nowhere to be seen. Neither were two of the villagers who’d been too injured to keep up. I would remember their names later, probably.

 

We kept going north, silent and scared. Black walked next to me, letting me lean on her; in truth, she was almost carrying me. I was too frightened and sick to mind.

 

I was sure that we would walk into an ambush at any moment. But we didn’t see any more of the ghoul-things on the way back. The walk passed in tense silence, until a few minutes later we were safely ensconced behind the warding posts.

 

A few seconds after we made it to the fields, I felt suddenly, violently ill. I stumbled away from Black and fell to my knees, and I threw up. I puked until there was nothing left in my stomach to bring up, and then I stayed there on my knees, coughing and trying to find some last trickle of acid to throw up.

 

I was expecting someone–one of the legionnaires, probably–to make a joke about how I seemed a lot sicker here than I had out there, or at least comment on how it was lucky timing for me to have a breakdown after we made it to safety if I had to have one. But no one said a word.

 

When I finally managed to stand again, people were standing around, arguing about what to do. I ignored them, and stumbled off towards the inn. Black was next to me in a couple of seconds, and now that we were safe I did just let her carry me; she was more than strong enough for it. I was starting to feel dizzy, anyway.

 

She walked in the front door, carrying me in front of her like a child, and found Corbin alone in the taproom, polishing bottles that already sparkled in the light of the alchemical lamp.

 

He looked at us for a long moment. I could see, as if from a distance, his expression. It was very, very blank; his eyes were hard as flint, and the muscles in his jaw were tense.

 

It was the expression that made the villagers want to run away when he got angry, in short.

 

When he finally spoke, his voice was very tight, and very cold. “Explain,” he said, biting the word off like it was a distasteful piece of meat.

 

“We went out to keep an eye on the people hunting the ghouls,” Black said, setting me down on the floor. A twinge of pain went through my leg when my weight landed on it wrong, but I shifted slightly and it went away. I mostly just felt…numb. The pain, the inn, it all felt very far away.

 

Corbin was dead silent for several seconds. When he spoke this time, his voice was still tight and cold, but now it sounded like he was taking a moment on every word, to make sure that he didn’t say something he would regret. “You took Silf out hunting monsters,” he said. “Knowing that they were dangerous enough to cripple a trained legionnaire. Knowing that there was a chance even her supposed allies would turn on each other.”

 

“And they might have all died if she weren’t there,” Black said.

 

“Bones and ashes, you think I care?” Corbin asked. “They can rot. You got Silf hurt chasing monsters.”

 

“She’ll be fine. The stitches tore a bit, but it’s nothing urgent, and it’ll heal in a few days. It was a measured risk.”

 

“Since when is that your choice to make?”

 

“Since when is it yours?” Black countered. “Children have to grow up sometimes, Corbin. You’re doing her no favors by trying to coddle her.”

 

“Whereas you’re trying to force her into the same life you’ve led,” Corbin said. If his tone was cold before, it was positively icy now. “And we both know how well that ended for you.”

 

Black flinched away as though she’d been struck. She stood there for a few seconds, looking hurt and confused. I got the impression she was waiting for Corbin to apologize.

 

He didn’t. He stood there, and looked at her, and didn’t do a thing to lessen the impact of what he’d just said.

 

Black shivered, a sort of spasm running through her shoulders, and then looked away. She didn’t argue. “Those stitches need fixed,” she said instead, not responding to what he’d said at all.

 

Corbin nodded, and went to get the medical supplies. I laid on the floor and stared at the ceiling. It seemed much further away than the actual distance accounted for. I idly wondered whether it had moved away from me when I wasn’t looking, or I had somehow moved away from it.

 

I welcomed the anaesthetic eagerly this time when Black put it to my lips. The notion of taking a break, and letting the world turn without me for a time, was tempting like water in the desert.

 

Things faded to white without Corbin or Black saying another word to each other.

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For the second time in a handful of days, I was following a group of people through the forests west of town with Black. This time, though, felt entirely different. Before I’d been afraid, but it was a vague, uncertain sort of fear. I knew that something was wrong, but I wasn’t sure what it was.

 

Now, I was scared, and it had none of that comforting distance. I knew what was wrong, and it was everything. There was nothing about this situation that wasn’t wrong and ominous and threatening.

 

I hadn’t told Black about the warding post being gone. I wasn’t entirely sure why, except that I was still too confused myself to feel comfortable talking to anyone else about it. Warding posts didn’t just disappear. They were solidly built, dug several feet into the ground and anchored into rock. It was only every few years that one came loose and fell over, and I could only remember one breaking once. And either of those would have left the post on the ground nearby, which it hadn’t been.

 

That left, essentially, two possibilities. The first was that someone had removed it. The second was that I was wrong about there having ever been a warding post there.

 

I didn’t like either of those explanations. The first simply didn’t make sense. Animals had no reason to interfere with the posts, and anything more Changed than I was couldn’t get near the things, let alone actually damage them. A person could have removed it, I supposed, but why? It was simultaneously too risky for a prank and too ineffectual to be sabotage. One post being gone wasn’t enough to leave a serious vulnerability in the wards, even if someone had a reason to sabotage them, and I had no idea what that reason might be.

 

At the same time, though, I knew this forest. We were close enough to the inn–and, more specifically, to my hiding place in the woods behind the inn–that I’d been through this area quite often. I knew where the warding posts were. It was like when I Changed, almost. I hadn’t ever spent that much time looking at my hands, but when I glanced at them and saw claws, it still felt profoundly alien. Similarly, I didn’t really focus too much on the warding posts, but seeing a gap in their sequence was incredibly jarring.

 

So those, basically, were the possibilities I was confronted with. Either something absolutely bizarre and inexplicable had happened, or I was going crazy. I wasn’t entirely sure which was more frightening.

 

Black set a fairly hard pace, keeping to the less-used paths through the hills. She didn’t ask me for directions, and she knew exactly where the paths were. Clearly, she’d been getting better acquainted with the area over the past few days.

 

“Do you have the axe I gave you?” she asked, when we’d been out of the village for a few minutes.

 

I nodded. I’d been carrying it more or less constantly since she gave it to me. I still wasn’t convinced it would help–I wasn’t any good with it, after all. But I couldn’t deny that the weight of it was comforting.

 

“Good. And metal for channeling?”

 

“Coins,” I said.

 

Black glanced at me. “That must get expensive.”

 

I shrugged. “Iron is cheaper than blood.”

 

Her lips twitched in a brief, wry smile. “True enough,” she said. “Hopefully it won’t be necessary, but it’s good to have in case.”

 

“What are we doing, anyway?” I asked.

 

“With luck we’re just here to watch,” Black said. “There’s an outside chance they’ll be able to deal with this as well as they think they can. If not, well, we’ll have to see what this actually is before I can really say what to do.”

 

I nodded. It made sense. I didn’t know much of anything about fighting monsters, but I knew that trying to do the same thing with different beasts could land you in a very ugly place. The magic could take things in very strange directions, sometimes, and some of the Changed needed special treatment. Doing the same thing with a basilisk that you would with a shade was a very good way to become very dead.

 

It wasn’t much longer before we heard the villagers coming. They weren’t being very subtle. The whole crowd of them was stomping along, talking and rattling weapons. It wasn’t a good sort of talking. I couldn’t make out words from here, but I could make out tone, and the tone was an ugly, aggressive one.

 

I’d thought that Black was underestimating them. That made me less sure of that. Any chance they had of sneaking up on the ghoul-things out here was ruined if they were talking. It wasn’t even useful talking, laying out a plan or something of that sort. They were just talking to make themselves feel brave.

 

“There we go,” Black said, not sounding surprised to hear them. “Do you think that you can follow them closely enough to have a decent view of what’s happening without them seeing you?”

 

I smiled a little, and climbed into one of the trees. They wouldn’t be looking up there, not when they were basically hunting ghouls. There were monsters that moved through the trees, but ghouls weren’t one of them.

 

Black grinned broadly, and disappeared. I didn’t bother asking how she would follow them without being noticed. Black was a hunter, and I was getting the distinct impression that she was the sort to sneak up on people in the war, too. If she didn’t want to be seen, they weren’t going to see her.

 

Moving through the trees was harder than usual, with my leg still giving me a bit of trouble. But I was pretty good at this, and it wasn’t terribly hard to figure out a way to work around it. It just meant that I did less jumping than usual, and I let my other leg carry a little more of the weight. Nothing that difficult.

 

It was easy to find the villagers. I winced when I did. They looked…almost painfully rustic. A couple had actual weapons and armor, legion-issue, though even that equipment looked ancient, and obviously hadn’t been maintained well. It was still better than the rest. Most of the villagers had no armor at all, and their weapons were…eccentric at best. A couple of them had spears. Friedrich was carrying a forge hammer. Ketill had a scythe, of all things.

 

Black gods. Even I was better armed than this lot.

 

They weren’t moving too quickly, and I was able to keep pace easily enough, looking down on them from the treetops. They didn’t even look up, as I’d expected. And if they did, what of it? Grey fur and brown clothing faded into the branches and shadows easily enough. It just wasn’t terribly likely that they would see me.

 

I caught a glimpse of Black, every now and then, lurking in the trees just off the path. I didn’t doubt that it was because she wanted me to see her, to know that I wasn’t alone out here, since otherwise she might as well have been invisible. It was…not as comforting as she likely intended it to be.

 

Things continued like that for several minutes, as the villagers gradually fell silent. Then I saw something up ahead. They’d taken pains to hide themselves from the ground, but not from above, and from my vantage point I could pick them out readily enough.

 

I debated warning someone. Then I decided against it. This should be entertaining, and relatively harmless.

 

The villagers were taken completely by surprise when they walked past the legionnaires. The funny thing, though, was that the legionnaires were also taken completely by surprise by the villagers. Their hiding places had been very thorough, but also designed in a way that didn’t offer much visibility from inside.

 

When they leapt out of hiding, they did so ready for battle. Andrew was holding a strip of flash paper, and both Sumi and Marcus had their swords out. Even Hideo was holding a sword in one hand, and looked far more comfortable with it than I would have guessed. Naturally, the villagers responded by falling back a step and bringing their own weapons to bear. It was equally impressive, I thought, if only because they were far more numerous.

 

I giggled. Hopefully they were too preoccupied to notice.

 

After a second or two, Hideo lowered his sword to his side, prompting people on both sides of the “ambush” to lower weapons and shuffle around sheepishly. “What are you doing here?” Hideo demanded, sounding distinctly irritated.

 

“Hunting ghouls,” Ketill said in response, his tone almost openly hostile. “Or whatever you got out here.”

 

“We’re dealing with it,” Hideo said. “Go back to your little village.”

 

“You’re dealing too slow,” Ketill said. “We ain’t got time for you to play around with mapping the bloody hills.”

 

I could almost see Hideo take a deep breath and let it out. “I suppose more bodies can’t hurt anything,” he said, in a very pleasant, level tone. “You can come along, then. Just don’t get in the way.”

 

The tense standoff continued for several seconds longer before Ketill nodded stiffly, and the tension eased slightly.

 

I was guessing that Hideo was using the villagers as bait. They were disposable, people he could throw to the monsters without really losing anything. I wondered if they realized it.

 

“So what now?” Ketill asked.

 

“We’ve been waiting for the ghouls to pass through for us to ambush them for some time,” Hideo said. “As you are in such a hurry, though, I doubt that tactic will appeal to you. I suppose instead we should split out and search the area for a trail of some sort.”

 

“Better idea,” Ketill said. “Jakob was hunting a bit northwest of here today, and he ran across them. So we go out that way and see if they’re still there.”

 

“Sounds reasonable,” Hideo said. I noticed he didn’t ask what happened to Jakob. “Lead on, then, good sir.”

 

The villagers ended up taking the lead as a group, with the legionnaires following behind. I suspected it wasn’t an accident.

 

I also suspected it wasn’t an accident that Sumi, at the very back of the group, looked directly at me as they started moving. But that was something to worry about later.

 

The villagers had already stopped with the boasting and chatter. But their mood had still been fairly light. Now, it was…very much not. The mood was tense, and people were spending as much time watching each other as the forest around them. Even following at a distance, I found myself feeling distinctly nervous.

 

After around ten minutes of the whole lot of them marching west, they paused. “That’s not right,” Ketill said, quietly enough that I could barely make the words out. I probably couldn’t have, but we were in a narrow valley, and we were in the right respective positions for the hills to direct the sound in my general direction.

 

“What is it?” Friedrich asked. The blacksmith sounded nervous.

 

“Those rocks,” Ketill said. “Been through here before, and those don’t look right.” He paused, and then turned around. “Bones and ashes,” he shouted. “Run!”

 

He’d barely started moving when the rocks that he’d been looking at shifted. More specifically, they started to roll.

 

There were trees in the way. But those rocks were very large, and they had a fair amount of momentum by the time they hit the trees. Things splintered, loudly enough that I winced where I was sitting. For a few seconds I was concerned for the security of my own perch, but it looked like the only rocks moving were well in front of me, and while the falling trees dragged some smaller trees down with them, it didn’t extend anywhere close to where I was.

 

The people on the ground weren’t so lucky, though. Those rocks had more or less completely blocked off the valley. No one was getting past that blockage without doing a fair bit of climbing.

 

At almost the exact moment the rocks fell, I saw movement under my tree. Dirt and debris flew up, revealing pits dug into the ground, and a dozen monstrosities burst out of them.

 

I stared. They’d dug themselves into the ground, buried themselves in to keep the pits from being visible, and arranged a rockslide to give themselves a perfect ambush.

 

These were not ghouls. I didn’t know what they were, but they were not ghouls.

 

I had to admit, I was impressed again with how quickly the legionnaires reacted. They were attacked out of nowhere, from a direction they thought was safe, at the same moment that the situation in general changed dramatically. They still reacted in a matter of seconds.

 

Andrew, somewhat to my surprise, was the first to respond. He was already holding a strip of flash paper. It only took him a heartbeat to tear it, setting off the alchemical compounds in the paper. A gout of emerald flame bloomed.

 

I couldn’t use fire as a channel. I had no connection to it at all. So I couldn’t feel what he did at that point.

 

But I saw the fire suddenly blossom, spreading through the air in a broad cone of light and heat that completely encompassed one of the things and scorched another badly. Both of them fell to the ground, smoldering.

 

The rest of them continued, and found the legionnaires waiting for them. Marcus and Sumi were standing ready, blades already drawn, with Hideo and Andrew behind them. The legionnaires didn’t do much to really hurt the things–it didn’t look like they were even particularly trying to–but they held them off, pushed them back. It was easier to go around them than through.

 

The same could not be said of the villagers behind them.

 

The leading monsters hit the villagers, and just kept going like a hot knife through butter. The people of Branson’s Ford had come here expecting to fight ghouls, and they’d gotten something completely different. These things were smart, even on an individual scale. They didn’t just throw themselves at people teeth-first. They feinted and pulled them out of position, tripped them, maneuvered to make people get in each other’s way.

 

Black had been right. You had to know what you were up against to make plans. They’d made theirs before they had any idea of what was out here, and that was a lethal mistake.

 

I barely even saw that, though. I had a death grip on my tree, hyperventilating, barely even aware of what was going on. I could smell smoke, and burning meat, and I could hear screaming, and I was a million miles away.

 

Andrew made another tear in the paper, bringing up more fire and sinking my claws even further into the tree’s bark, and sent the flames to consume another of the monstrosities. The rest of the legionnaires seemed content to hold their defensive position for the moment, as the things continued to rip into the villagers.

 

And then they reached the front of the line.

 

Earlier, I’d thought it ridiculous that Ketill had a scythe. It was a farming implement, not a weapon. No one in their right mind would bring a scythe to a fight.

 

I had, perhaps, forgotten that he was a farmer, and had been all his life. He knew his way around a scythe.

 

More importantly, he’d spent a year living as a rebel in the middle of the bloodiest, nastiest theater of the war in Skelland.

 

The first of the monsters to reach him dropped instantly as he put the blade of the scythe through the side of its skull. He stepped around it as it fell, dodging the claws of the next, and bashed it on the side of the head with the haft. It stumbled back, stunned, giving him enough time to slice out its throat, and then catch the third with an upward stroke that slit it open from groin to throat.

 

All right, I thought, with the abstract part of my mind that wasn’t occupied with remembered terror. So some of the villagers know what they’re doing.

 

On the other side of the path, Black stepped out of the trees, spear in hand. She threw the spear, putting it completely through one of the monsters, and kept walking.

 

I’d known that Black was strong. It was something that could happen to the Changed. Having a drastically different physiology meant that you could be far better at something than a human. I healed quickly; Black, I’d seen, was stronger than a person of her build could possibly be.

 

I hadn’t realized quite how much stronger.

 

She didn’t have a weapon. She didn’t need one. She picked the monsters up bodily and threw them around like toys. One, she snapped over her knee like a stick; another she slammed to the ground hard enough to cave its skull in. She was fast, stepping away from their attacks, but it was nothing like Ketill’s precise dance. She was just so damn strong that she didn’t need to worry overly much about precision.

 

Between those two and the legionnaires, they made short order of the rest of the things, dropping the last of them to the ground in a few seconds. I finally managed to make myself move, climbing through the trees towards them, though I was still hyperventilating, and gripping the branches more tightly than was strictly necessary. I was looking around constantly, feeling inexplicably certain that someone was sneaking up behind me with a knife.

 

I was, as a result, quite possibly the only person present who saw what happened next.

 

Behind us, at the other end of the valley, half a dozen more of the monsters stepped up and pushed more rocks, sending them rolling down to block that side of the valley.

 

I realized what was happening as the rocks started moving, and scrambled down, almost falling in my haste to reach the ground.

 

The things had hurt us badly, probably already killed half the villagers. But more importantly, they’d made sure we were all here, bunched up and stopped.

 

I’d just made it down when the first of the trees fell.

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The next time I woke up, it was morning, the sun was glaring in my window, and I was hungry enough to eat a horse. I’d eaten very well the previous night, but that sort of hunger was rather common when I was injured. I healed very quickly ever since I was Changed, but it took something out of my body to sustain that effort.

 

It was worth it, though. When I tested the leg this time, there was only a dull ache, and it could hold my weight without any weakness. It would be another day or two before the pain was fully gone, but it was already almost completely functional.

 

I went through my usual morning routine and then made my way downstairs. I was barely limping when I made it to the bottom of the stairs, a far cry from last night.

 

Corbin was already working on cooking something, which seemed somewhat more ambitious than the usual soup. A slab of meat–likely the rest of the venison from last night–was sitting on the counter, along with some herbs and a handful of pans, and I could hear noises coming from the cellar. He’d clearly anticipated that I would be hungry, though; there was a plate sitting out with a slab of bread covered in butter and honey, and a large cup of milk. I took them and carried them out to the taproom.

 

Normally I would have expected it to be empty so early in the morning. It was hours before any of the farmers would be in for lunch, and the legionnaires were out hunting something that only looked like ghouls. Black…well, it was anyone’s guess where Black was or what she was doing, but she didn’t seem to spend much time at the inn.

 

I’d forgotten, though, that I wasn’t the only one wounded. Aelia was in the taproom, sitting at the bar. She was drunk, and in the process of getting drunker; the cup of vodka in her hand was plenty of evidence for that.

 

Her left hand was a mass of bandages. It was obvious that she wasn’t going to be doing much with it.

 

“Oy,” she said as I walked in, looking at me. Her head was a little loose, not quite in a steady upright position, and her words were slightly slurred. “Silf, right? Pull up a chair, I could use some company.”

 

I took a seat a few feet down the bar from her, and started eating, taking small, quick bites of bread. “How do you feel?” I asked. It was easier than it often was; my throat barely even gave a twinge.

 

“Hurts like a bitch,” she said frankly. “But a bit of sedative takes the edge off, and vodka takes care of the rest.”

 

“Sumi said you would lose the hand.”

 

“I will,” she said, with just a trace of bitterness. “You want to see?”

 

I was silent for a moment, then shrugged. I wasn’t entirely sure why I did.

 

Aelia grinned, and started unwrapping the bandages. It took a while.

 

When she was done, I regretted asking. Her left hand, from the wrist down, was ruined. There was simply no other way to put it. The bones were shattered, the flesh torn; the fingers were bent and tangled into knots.

 

“That doesn’t get better,” she said, turning it back and forth and staring at it with an expression of vague disappointment. “Just waiting for a medic to take it off. Might do it sooner, don’t want it to get infected.”

 

I stared, unable to look away from the mess of meat and bone that had once been a human hand. “You don’t sound upset.”

 

“Oh, I am,” Aelia said, beginning to wrap it again. She flinched slightly as she started winding the bandages around the maimed extremity. “Never shoot again. But this was my last run anyway. Ready to be done.”

 

“How long have you been in the legion?”

 

“A long time,” she said, glancing at me. “Sumi said you were in the Whitewood.”

 

I nodded.

 

“I was there,” she said. “Got sent to the river. Put arrows in people while they were trying to swim away from the fires.” She took another drink, almost emptying the cup. “I still remember the way they screamed,” she said. “There was this kid, had half his face burned off. He was carrying a shovel, trying to fight with it. I put a bolt through his chest, but he didn’t die right away. Lay there in the mud bleeding out with people dying all around.” She was silent for several seconds. “I see him when I sleep sometimes.”

 

I shivered. Just hearing about it was…it was ugly. I could almost smell the smoke again.

 

Aelia seemed to realize the effect her words were having on me, and stopped. “Anyway,” she said. “I’m ready to be done. That wasn’t what I had in mind when I went out for the legion.”

 

“What did you have in mind?”

 

She was silent for a few seconds. “Guess it was my only way out,” she said. “My parents were fishers. We could barely afford food a lot of the time. I wanted more than that out of life.” She went to take another drink, and frowned when she realized that there was nothing there. “I’ve got citizenship coming after this,” she said. “Going back to the homeland, I think. I’ll buy a shop or a farm or something, settle down.”

 

“With one hand?”

 

She shrugged. “There are alchemists that make new hands,” she said. “Not perfect, but they work. I should be able to get one, since I lost mine in the legion. Veterans get a lot of respect back home.”

 

I nodded. “It sounds nice,” I said. “I hope it works.” I stood, taking her cup, and filled it from the barrel behind the bar.

 

“Thanks,” she said, taking the cup back and sipping at it. “What about you? How’d you end up out here?”

 

I shrugged. “Wasn’t much to stick around for after the Whitewood burned, so I went south. Got sick here, got stranded, and stayed after I got better.”

 

“Bit of a fall,” Aelia said. “The Whitewood was a beautiful city. I didn’t see the inside until…well. But it was beautiful. One of the most amazing cities I’ve ever seen. This, well, isn’t.”

 

I snorted, and nodded. “Have you seen many? Cities, I mean.”

 

She shrugged. “Some. The Whitewood, of course, Brunwich, Gansburg, Parcia. None of them hold a candle to the capital, of course.”

 

“The capital of Akitsuro?”

 

Aelia nodded. “Old Aseoto,” she said. “There’s nothing like it. The Whitewood was the only thing I’ve seen that came anywhere close, and it’s gone now.”

 

I leaned forward slightly. “Tell me about it,” I said. “Tell me about Aseoto.”

 

Aelia’s eyes lit up at that, and she set the vodka aside, forgotten.

 

I spent the next hour or so listening to her talk about the city. It was fascinating, and if I hadn’t been so very hungry I suspect that I’d have forgotten to eat, too enraptured by what she was saying. I’d heard of Aseoto before–everyone had, it was the heart of Akitsuro and Akitsuro had made itself the heart of everything. But I’d never spoken to someone who had actually been there.

 

Even accounting for the exaggerations of the drunk and patriotic, the picture she painted was an amazing one. Walls around the city a hundred feet high, every stone carrying the same alchemy that went into making the warding posts. Towers high enough to touch the clouds. A harbor that stretched so far that the masts of the ships looked like a forest. Alchemical lights so plentiful that the streets were bright at night. Festivals that went on for days.

 

More than anything, though, what struck me was the passion in her voice. It might have just been that she was drunk and on some kind of alchemical sedative, but I didn’t think so. Aelia loved the city; it showed in every word, every gesture. She loved the sights and sounds and smells, loved the streets and the canals, and as she described them it felt so real that I almost imagined I could see the capital around me.

 

It reminded me, almost, of home. Of the way my parents had spoken about the Whitewood.

 

Corbin was present for the whole thing. He wasn’t cooking now; I couldn’t hear him moving around. But he stayed in the kitchen, leaving us well alone.

 

Aelia could, I suspected, have gone on in that vein all day if I’d sat and let her talk. But she was still injured, and badly. Eventually the drugs and the drink and the exhaustion of her wounds caught up with her, and she pitched over onto the bar asleep.

 

I looked her over, feeling concerned, but it looked like she was just asleep. It seemed like the best thing for her, so I sat back, and drank the last of my milk.

 

Corbin walked out of the kitchen a minute or so later, and set another piece of bread in front of me. “Sounds like she’ll be all right,” he said. “Eventually.”

 

I nodded, and started eating the bread. I was still hungry.

 

After a few moments of silence, I paused in eating. “Have you ever been to Aseoto, Corbin?” I asked.

 

He didn’t answer for a few moments. “Yes,” he said eventually. “Once.”

 

“While you were in the legion?”

 

“You’ve been talking to Black,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

 

There didn’t seem to be much point in denying it, so I nodded and took another bite.

 

He sighed. “No. That was before I joined the legion.”

 

I nodded, and finished eating the bread.

---

Aelia woke up after another hour or so, mumbled something, and stumbled upstairs to her room. Corbin and I busied ourselves with the usual work of the inn. Things had actually been somewhat busy lately, which meant that the cleaning and maintenance we habitually did was actually necessary. Mikhail Karlson came by with a load of apples from their orchard, which looked rather tired; it hadn’t been a good year for them. Corbin bought most of what he had anyway, and then we spent some time sorting them into those which could be stored, those which had to be cooked or eaten promptly, and those which were already only good for cider.

 

Time passed. It was what time did.

 

Midday came, and a handful of people came for food and drink to break up the monotony of their days. Black came in with them, smelling like sweat and forest, and looking rather pleased with herself, and sat by the fire.

 

Then we heard the screaming.

 

People were up and moving in a matter of seconds. You didn’t hear screaming in Branson’s Ford, as a rule. Oh, the occasional yelp or shout, but not real, full-throated screaming. The villagers were a hardy lot, and stoic; it took a lot to get a genuine scream out of them.

 

Corbin hung back–it would have been strange for him to leave, and people would want to be able to find him at the inn. But he gave me a pointed look that let me know in no uncertain terms that he wanted me to go with them and find out what was happening. Since that was what I would have been doing anyway, I didn’t hesitate to do so.

 

The screaming was coming from the west, and a bit north, out in the fields. We probably wouldn’t have been able to hear it all the way to the inn, but there were quite a few people screaming, shouting, generally making a great deal of noise. It carried.

 

We ran over in a mass to see what the commotion was. People were running over from other fields, but we were the first to reach them, and see what they had.

 

Jakob was lying in the field, and he was a mess. Blood was flowing freely from his face, where it looked like something had torn away his cheek and eye. His arm was visibly broken, and there was more blood on his arm, his chest, his leg. He still had his bow with him, but it was cracked, almost broken.

 

He looked more dead than alive. I had to check again to be sure that he was still breathing.

 

It didn’t take long for most of town to be gathered there, looking down at him. A couple of people who had some idea what to do went to work, binding the wounds, but there were far more people there than could help, and mostly we just stood and looked at him.

 

Ketill was the first to speak. The grizzled old farmer had looked shocked when he arrived, but that expression had darkened as he stood there, and now he looked furious. “He was hunting out west today,” he said. “About the same place you got hurt, Silf?”

 

I nodded. It was, and I’d already made the connection.

 

Ketill spat to the side. “Them legionnaires are out there,” he said. “Stirring up trouble.”

 

“You reckon Jakob ran into the same ghouls they did?” someone asked. I couldn’t see who, and it wasn’t a voice I heard enough to recognize.

 

“Piss on that,” Friedrich said. The blacksmith had been late to arrive, having been in the middle of hammering out a plow, but he was here now, stinking of smoke and with a sheen of sweat on his skin. “I thought it was strange legionnaires lost to some ghouls, but I figured they were raw recruits or something. But I’ve known Jakob all my life, and there ain’t a ghoul alive that could have done this to him.”

 

I hesitated for a few seconds, then said, “Maybe they weren’t ghouls.”

 

Every eye turned towards me, and I shrank away a bit under the attention. “You was there,” Ketill said. “You ought to know.”

 

I shrugged. “Was a little busy,” I said, which got a laugh from a few people. “The surveyor said they were ghouls, but I’m not quite so sure.”

 

“Figures,” Ketill said darkly. “Legion don’t even know what they saw.”

 

“Let’s not go pointing fingers,” the mayor said. It was the first thing he’d said the whole time, and the first thing I’d heard from him in months; he wasn’t the sort to come to the inn. “Won’t help anyone anyway.”

 

Ketill grunted. “Maybe,” he said. “Don’t matter anyway. What we’ve got is something out west can take down Jakob.”

 

“The legion is taking care of it,” Sigmund said.

 

Ketill snorted. “Letting the legion take care of it might have got Jakob killed,” he said. “We gave them a shot. It’s time we deal with this ourselves.”

 

There was a generalized murmur of agreement, and within a matter of seconds the crowd had completely shifted focus. Two people were set to carry Jakob to the inn, since that was one of the few places in the village with a public room to put him in. A handful of others were sent to carry the news of what was happening to the handful of people who weren’t here, bring in the people working too far from the village center to be safe, and such.

 

Around a dozen of the remaining people went to get weapons to go out and kill the “ghouls.” They were mostly older people, old enough to have fought in the war. It wasn’t a group that I often saw together, because…well, they’d fought in the war, and not all for the same side.

 

I had to appreciate the speed and coordination with which the response was organized. Branson’s Ford was generally divided, to say the least. There were wounds in this town that would never heal. But when there was a genuine emergency, all that went away, and they closed ranks. The mayor took charge and coordinated things, but for the most part they barely needed it. It was almost like the villagers were acting as a unit rather than disparate individuals.

 

I waited until it had been decided what would be done, and who was doing what. Then I left to tell Corbin what was happening.

 

I was just over halfway back when Black materialized next to me. I wasn’t sure where she’d come from; one seconds I was walking alone, and the next second Black was walking next to me. “Silf,” she said. “You heard what happened?”

 

I nodded.

 

“You heard what they’re doing about it?”

 

I nodded.

 

“Good,” she said. “Less I have to explain. Come on, we want to get ahead of them.”

 

I paused. “What?” I asked. “Why?”

 

“They’re going to get massacred.” I must have looked dubious, because Black sighed. “I’m sure they have their skills,” she said. “But those ghouls took down an imperial legionnaire in a fair fight. These villagers are not prepared to deal with that.”

 

“So what are you doing?”

 

“We,” she said, emphasizing the word, “are going to even the scale a bit.”

 

I eyed her skeptically. “They can’t do this, but we can?”

 

“I have a plan,” she said. “Trust me.”

 

I thought for a few seconds, then shrugged and nodded. Black smiled, and then started west, into the forest.

 

I followed her silently, and then paused. Something was…not quite right.

 

Black kept going for a couple seconds before she realized that I’d fallen behind, and turned towards me. “Silf?” she said. “Is something wrong?”

 

I shook my head, and started moving again. I’d realized what was bothering me, anyway.

 

One of the warding posts was missing.

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Waking up was slow, and hard. Normally I woke up all at once, the transition between unconsciousness and awareness passing so fast that I wasn’t even aware of it happening. I’d always had a tendency towards that, especially after being Changed, but it had really gotten to be a habit in the refugee camps. In that environment, people that didn’t react quickly to changes in their surroundings tended to come down with a nasty case of death.

 

This time, though, I spent what felt like hours on the cusp between sleeping and waking. I woke, considered opening my eyes, and then drifted off into hazy dreams again. It got to the point that I wasn’t even sure what was real and what only existed inside my head.

 

What eventually drove me out of the fog was boredom, more than anything else. There was only so long you could spend half-asleep before it got tedious, and since it didn’t seem like I was going to be lapsing fully into sleep again any time soon, I thought I might as well wake up.

 

I was in my room, lying on my bed. Judging by the light coming in my window, it was late afternoon or early evening. I could hear activity downstairs, people talking and walking.

 

My first reaction was one of near panic. I’d lost consciousness down in the taproom, so clearly someone had been in my room to move me up here.

 

After a few moments, though, I relaxed. The door was locked, the box was locked. The books on the dresser were still where they belonged. Everything was where it belonged. I was even still wearing the same bloody clothes from earlier. It looked like whoever had carried me in here had just set me on the bed and left.

 

My breathing calmed again, and I was able to consider my own situation clearly.

 

The wound in my leg still hurt. It was more or less just a dull ache, something I was aware of, but not something that overwhelmed my world. My back was actually more uncomfortable, likely from being dragged back to town on a travois over rough ground.

 

I was more interested in what had been done to the injury, though. I’d seen medics suture wounds back in the camps. The stitching on my leg looked as neat anything I’d seen them do. It was better than anyone could reasonably hope to do without specialized training.

 

I stood, carefully, testing the leg before I put any real weight on it. It turned the dull ache to a sharp, burning pain, and I could feel the stitches pulling a bit, but the limb seemed functional, and I couldn’t feel anything actually tearing inside me. On the whole, not terrible.

 

I stripped out of the filthy clothing I was wearing, giving it a critical look as I did. I was guessing it would have to be relegated to the rag pile. It was all irreversibly stained, and physically damaged, too. The leg where the ghoul’s claw had caught me was almost shredded, nothing left but ragged threads, all stained a dull red-brown.

 

I shivered a little as I looked at that. It was hard not to. I’d come uncomfortably close this time. Had that claw landed slightly differently, or cut even a little bit deeper, it might well have hit a major vein. I didn’t think that I’d have made it back if that had happened.

 

It was an unsettling feeling, realizing that my choice of clothing that morning had quite likely saved my life.

 

I tossed the clothes to the floor, and grabbed fresh to pull on instead. It hurt a bit to get dressed, but I managed it. I left, locking the door behind myself.

 

Stairs were hard with a wounded leg. I leaned heavily on the wall getting down, and I was still pale and shaky by the time I made it to the bottom of the stairs. I paused for a few moments to recover, and then limped out into the taproom.

 

It wasn’t as busy as I would have expected. Not empty, by any means, but not busy the way it had been for the past few days. It was back to a more typical evening crowd here at the inn, which meant not really a crowd at all.

 

Corbin turned and stared at me as I walked in. “Silf?” he asked, sounding surprised. “What are you doing up and about?”

 

I shrugged. “Heard you down here,” I said.

 

He rolled his eyes. “Sit down, at least,” he said. “Bones and ashes, I wasn’t expecting you to be awake until tomorrow.”

 

I shrugged, and took a seat at the bar. I wasn’t going to say it, but the truth was that I was just as glad for the chance to take a load off my leg. It hurt more than I would have guessed to walk.

 

The conversation had gone silent when I walked into the taproom, perhaps unsurprisingly. It wasn’t every day that someone got mauled by ghouls, and my particular history just made it more awkward.

 

“Heard what happened,” Gunnar said after a few moments, breaking the silence. “Glad you made it all right.”

 

My head whipped around to stare at him. I wanted to scream at him for his hypocrisy, but my throat seized up at just the right moment, and it came out as a sort of sullen, strangled grunt instead. Just as well, probably.

 

Gunnar got the message, though. And, credit where credit was due, he had the good grace to look ashamed. He flushed, and looked at the floor, and mumbled something that I couldn’t make out.

 

Sigmund was the next to speak up. “What were you thinking, going out there?” he asked. Then, before I could retort, he looked away. “Sorry,” he said, sounding more sulky than sorry. “It’s just…we were worried about you.”

 

“That’s sweet,” Black said. She was sitting almost on top of the fire; I hadn’t even seen her when I walked in. “But I need to check Silf’s stitches, so we’ll be going now.”

 

She stood and stalked over to me. The villagers moved out of her way without even seeming to realize it; Black just moved with a confidence that assumed the world wouldn’t get in her way, and they assumed she knew what she was talking about. When she reached me she took my hand and led me behind the bar, into the kitchen, and up the stairs.

 

I was a bit startled by how strong she was. Black didn’t look like all that, but she almost carried me up the stairs, and she didn’t even look like she was trying.

 

“The stitches are fine,” I said quietly as we started up the stairs.

 

“I know,” Black replied, just as quietly. There was no way anyone back in the taproom would hear it. “Thought you might want to get out of there. It was getting…tense.”

 

I snorted, nodded. “Thanks,” I said.

 

“I should check them, though,” she added. “And make sure there’s no sign of infection.”

 

I shivered, and nodded.

 

Black unlocked the door of her room, and waited for me to go in, and then locked it again behind us. The room looked almost exactly as it always did, empty and impersonal. Black hadn’t done much to the place, hadn’t really left any mark on the space. There were a couple of bags on the floor, one of which I recognized as one of the bags which had held weapons during our little training session. The rest weren’t familiar.

 

“Sit down,” Black said, pointing at the bed. As I obeyed she opened one of the other bags, a plain black one, and took out a smaller pouch which was black marked with a bright red circle. “How does it feel?”

 

“Hurts a bit,” I said. “Bit unsteady when I put weight on it. Not bad otherwise.”

 

“How bad would you say the pain is, on a scale of one to ten?”

 

“Two or three,” I said. “If one is low.”

 

She paused and stared at me for a second. “Two or a three,” she said. She snorted and shook her head. “I think your scale is broken, Silf.”

 

I smiled, and shrugged. It was entirely possible that she was right.

 

“All right,” she said, pulling a few metal tools out of the bag. There was a needle, and forceps, and what looked like a set of probes. “Let me take a look at it, then.”

 

I pushed my pants down, letting Black get at the wound, and looked at the wall. I wasn’t too uncomfortable with having it happen, but actually watching her prodding at me felt…awkward. “Where are the legionnaires?” I asked, mostly just to have something to talk about.

 

“Out hunting ghouls,” Black said, taking a probe and pushing the fur out of the way to get a better look at the gash. “Excepting Aelia, but I wouldn’t worry about her noticing anything. She’s sedated heavily enough I don’t think she’d wake up if the building was on fire.”

 

I swallowed. “What happened?”

 

“Pure bad luck, as I hear it. She was reloading and the arbalest malfunctioned somehow, crushed her hand.”

 

I frowned. “A legion arbalest snapped?”

 

Black shrugged. “I guess so. Normally I’d expect legion equipment to be a bit more reliable than that, but I guess if you build enough arbalests, you’ll build a bad one. Her bad luck to get it.” She paused. “This is healing very well. At this rate it should be almost good as new in a few days.”

 

I shrugged. “I heal fast.”

 

“That’s good. Doesn’t look like it’s infected, either. I’ll keep checking up on it, but it’s looking like you should be fine.” Black sat back and started putting her tools back into the bag. “Do you mind if I ask you a question, Silf?”

 

I shrugged.

 

“What was the problem earlier?” she asked, apparently taking that for agreement. “Down there, when that man was talking to you. You were clearly upset, and it seemed like he knew why, but there was some context that I wasn’t catching.”

 

“Oh,” I said. “That.”  I frowned, trying to think of how to wrap the whole thing up in a few words. “After the Whitewood,” I said eventually, “I didn’t have anywhere to go. Ended up with some refugees heading south, to Akitsuro. I got burned in the city, and it got infected. In Branson’s Ford–this was back when people traveled through here a bit–it got bad enough I couldn’t walk. So they left me.”

 

“They just left you?” Black asked, sounding indignant.

 

I shrugged. “We weren’t close. And they had to keep going. Anyway, the people here tried to take care of me. But it was already a hard year. Gunnar said they should just kill me quick, since if the infection didn’t get me I’d starve anyway.”

 

Black just stared at me for a few seconds. “You’re telling me,” she said slowly, “that a sick, wounded, orphaned, Changed refugee was stranded here. And he suggested that they should kill her?”

 

I nodded.

 

“I’m going to skin him,” Black said, standing. She didn’t sound like she was kidding.

 

I grabbed her sleeve, stopping her. “He was scared,” I said.

 

“That doesn’t excuse that.”

 

“Please.”

 

Black stood there for a few seconds, then sighed and sat back down. “Fine,” she said. “But I’m doing this for you, not for him.”

 

“Thanks,” I said, letting go of her. “Can I ask you a question?”

 

Her lips twitched. “Go ahead.”

 

“How do you know Corbin?”

 

If Black had been about to smile, that smile was a stillborn one now. “That’s a long story,” she said, very softly.

 

I sat back on the bed, making it clear that I had no intention of moving any time soon.

 

Black let out a quick snort of laughter, though she didn’t sound particularly happy. “It started a long time ago,” she said. “It would have been around the time you were born, actually, down in Akitsuro. We were…not friends, exactly, but acquaintances. We knew of each other, we’d spoken a few times. And we had some friends in common whom we both loved dearly. So we spent a fair bit of time together.”

 

“What happened?”

 

Black shrugged. “Oh, nothing too dramatic. We both moved on. I went back home–I was born in Skelland, you know, only went south to see the world a bit. And then after a while the war came, and…we saw each other again then.”

 

“You fought together?”

 

Black shook her head. Her eyes had a faraway look to them, now; I wasn’t even sure she was really seeing the room around us. “No,” she said. “No, we were on different sides.”

 

Ah. She’d been at war with her friend, then. It was…a more common story than anyone liked to remember. It was that sort of war.

 

“Corbin joined the legions after I left,” she said. “And when Akitsuro invaded Skelland, I…wasn’t inclined to take it lying down, the way so many people were.” She shrugged. “I guess that’s about it. It was all…a very long time ago, now.”

 

I nodded. “Do you hate him?”

 

Black was silent for a long moment, long enough that when she did answer it came as a surprise. I’d been sure that she wasn’t going to. “Not anymore,” she said. “For a while I did. I only saw him once during the war, and then…I would have killed him then, I think, if I could. I was so angry, and I was so sure that we were in the right. Now…well.” She shrugged. “Things don’t seem so simple these days. I’m not so sure he was in the wrong, really.”

 

“They burned the Whitewood,” I said quietly.

 

“And the Whitewood sent agents to poison them,” Black replied. Her tone was very level, very calm. “Killed close to two thousand legionnaires in one night, and twice as many camp followers. I’m not saying the legions were innocent, even before the Whitewood. But things aren’t so black and white. Both sides had their sins to bear when the legions took Skelland, and when the legions took the Whitewood. And I’m guessing that even now, when they’ve made it all the way up to the Tears, things still aren’t simple.”

 

I frowned, and didn’t say anything.

 

“Now,” Black said, in a tone of obviously forced cheer. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to bring some food up for you. There’s venison and apple cobbler tonight, to go with the soup. You’re going to eat it, and then you’re going to go to bed, and when you wake up again you’re going to feel better. Sound good?”

 

I wasn’t so sure that it would go as well as she was describing. I was still…troubled by this whole thing, and not least by the revelation that Corbin had been in the legions. But I had to answer Black somehow, so I nodded, and smiled.

 

“Good,” she said firmly. “Let me go get that food.”

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Previous Chapter                                                                                    Next Chapter

 

The next clear impression I had was of warmth and shouting. My back hurt, my leg hurt, and with my hearing shouting was always unpleasant. I tried to move, whether to cover my ears or to curl up into a position that was more comfortable for my back I wasn’t sure, and found that I couldn’t.

 

That was enough to wake me up in a hurry. My eyes shot open wide and I struggled, straining against my restraints. I couldn’t budge them, and the attempt made my leg hurt a lot more.

 

In a way, the pain was good. It brought things into focus again. If before my surroundings had felt blurry, now they were crystal clear, a clarity so sharp it almost didn’t feel real.

 

I was still lying on the travois. My limbs were tied to it with what looked like leather straps, and there was a scrap of cloth tied around my thigh. It was stained red. I was in the inn, in the taproom, and Corbin was there, and he was furious.

 

Corbin acted angry rather often. There were plenty of reasons; a villager had said or done something to annoy him, or a guest ran out without paying, sickness and bad weather and accidents. There was never a shortage of things to be angry at in Branson’s Ford. When those things happened he played the part, red in the face and shouting and pounding his fist on the bar. He was very good at playing the part of the angry innkeeper.

 

I’d only seen him really, truly furious a very few times, though. And the experience was entirely different. When he was genuinely in a rage Corbin was not demonstrative and overblown. He did not pound on the bar. His voice was quiet and precise, every sound enunciated crisply. His hands hung loose at his sides. And his expression made you want to cower in the corner and hope that he didn’t notice you. That wasn’t just me, either. When Corbin got like that, the villagers had a tendency to scatter and not come back for some time. The sound of the door closing suggested that it had just happened again.

 

I was just glad that the shouting had stopped for the moment.

 

“Someone,” Corbin said, “had better explain how this happened. Immediately.”

 

“Your assistant is clearly in need of medical attention,” Hideo said. I couldn’t see him from my current position, but his voice was unmistakable. “Don’t you think that takes priority over talking about how it happened?”

 

I could just make out Corbin raising one arm to point at Hideo. “You,” he said. “Be silent. If you say another word right now, I’m liable to do something that I’ll regret.”

 

I was expecting Hideo to have a mocking response to that. It seemed like an obvious setup, and the surveyor clearly enjoyed needling Corbin, for whatever reason.

 

Instead I heard a quiet click of teeth as he closed his mouth.

 

“Silf showed us up into the hills,” Sumi said into the silence that left behind. “Wandered around a little, seeing what the terrain looked like, and then got jumped by some ghouls. One of them got its claws into her before we could stop it.”

 

“Thank you,” Corbin said. “Now kindly leave. I have work to do.”

 

“Make sure you clean that wound out,” Hideo said. “Ghouls are known to carry all sorts of illnesses. And you know what they say. It’s best to clean out an infection completely, lest it come back to trouble you later.”

 

Corbin went very still at that, and his already cold expression went entirely blank. He had murder in his eyes. It was something I’d seen before, though not from Corbin. But I’d seen others with that look to them, that intent. I couldn’t put a word to it, couldn’t say quite what I was seeing, but I knew what I was looking at.

 

Someone was going to die in the next few seconds. And I was on the floor, tied to a sled and unable to move a muscle.

 

I whimpered in fear, and pulled against the straps again. I couldn’t help it. It didn’t even occur to me to stop it; I wasn’t aware of what I was doing until it was done.

 

Corbin glanced down at me, and his expression…didn’t soften, precisely, but it shifted. “Get out,” he said. “Right now. Any of you show your faces in my inn in the next three hours and you will regret it.”

 

Apparently Hideo decided that he’d pushed his luck far enough already, because he didn’t say anything. The next thing I heard was the door closing again.

 

Corbin stood there silently for a few seconds, apparently waiting. Then he said, “I know you’re watching. Hurry up and get out here.”

 

I was confused for a few seconds. Then Black moved into my field of view, kneeling down next to my head. “Oh, my,” she said. “You did get yourself into some trouble, didn’t you, Silf?”

 

“How bad is it?” Corbin asked. His voice was tight now, still not expressive like usual, but less because there was nothing there and more because he was holding it back.

 

“Looks fairly minor,” Black said. “I wouldn’t leave her like this, but it should heal well. Unless there’s something I should know about that?”

 

I shook my head. I had some problems from being Changed, but healing had never been one of them. Rather the opposite, if anything.

 

“All right,” Black said. “Let me get you off this thing and take care of that, then. What medical supplies do you have here, Corbin?”

 

“Anything you’d find in a legion hospital,” he replied instantly.

 

Black paused, and if I was reading her expression properly, she was surprised. “Excellent,” she said after a moment. “Bring me needle and cord, tincture of iodine, alcohol, clean water, anaesthetic, and a clean dressing.”

 

Corbin nodded and left. A moment later I heard him on the stairs down to the cellar.

 

Black produced a knife from somewhere. It was a large, heavy knife, slightly curved with one edge. It had seen some heavy use. The leather of the grip was stained from wear, and the blade had a number of stains and nicks in it. The cutting edge, though, looked to be in very good shape.

 

“Sorry about this,” she said, leaning closer. “But you’ll be all right, Silf. Promise.”

 

I heard that, and saw the knife, and for a moment I was afraid. But no, she just cut the ties off. It felt good, circulation returning to my hands and being able to move again. I stretched a bit as she moved on to my feet.

 

I noted, though, that she left the blood-soaked cloth on my thigh well alone. I was guessing I knew why. The tear might be relatively small–it had to be, really, for me to have made it this far without bleeding out. And the improvised bandage wasn’t tied tight enough to be a tourniquet. But that didn’t mean that taking pressure off it was a good idea. I didn’t know much medicine, but I’d seen enough with the refugees to know that much.

 

Corbin returned a minute or so later, carrying a black wooden box. “This should be everything,” he said to Black. “I’ll be right back with the water.”

 

Black nodded and opened the box, pulling out a number of glass vials. She looked at each in turn and then selected a tiny one of very dark glass, dark enough that I could just barely see liquid inside. She eyed me for a moment and then pulled out a small metal spoon.

 

“Have you ever had an alchemical anaesthetic before?” she asked, unscrewing the cap.

 

I shook my head.

 

“It’ll make you feel numb,” Black said. “Maybe a bit sleepy, or you might feel like you’re floating. I have to stitch this closed, and this will make it so it doesn’t hurt.”

 

“Don’t really need it,” I said.

 

“Don’t argue with the doctor,” she said, with a trace of a smile. “We know you’re tough, Silf. You’ve got nothing to prove here. So be quiet and take your medicine.”

 

I debated arguing with her. Then I decided to be quiet and take my medicine.

 

The anaesthetic was a thick, syrupy liquid that looked bad and smelled worse. Black poured a spoonful of it and stuck it into my mouth. I swallowed, and immediately regretted doing so. It tasted foul, bitter and biting.

 

“All right,” Black said, standing. “Just need to wait for that water now.” She stood, taking a candle from the box, and went to the fire.

 

“It’s right here,” Corbin said, from somewhere out of my sight. “Just filtered it.”

 

“Good enough,” Black said, setting the lit candle on the table. She sat down next to me, and a moment later I felt something prodding at my leg. It was sharp, and cold, and I flinched without meaning to, but there was a sort of dullness to the sensation, almost a disconnect, like it was happening to someone else and I was just watching it. Black sat back to wait some more.

 

Corbin walked over and sat down next to me. He rested my head in his lap, and stroked my fur gently. “Bones and bloody ashes,” he said. “What happened to you out there, Silf?”

 

I stared up at him. He looked very far away. The room seemed like it was spinning, or I was, I wasn’t entirely sure.

 

I knew what an anaesthetic was. I’d never had one before, but I’d heard of them, and I knew a bit about them. Even back in the Whitewood there had never been enough of them. I’d heard the doctors there complaining about it. Alchemical anaesthetics, they’d said, were far too hard to come by, too hard to manufacture.

 

That bottle was easily worth gold. Even the dose Black had just given me was quite possibly worth as much as what all of the imperials would pay for this entire stay.

 

Why was Corbin so nice to me, anyway? It wasn’t like I was worth much to him. Just a Changed girl. Probably dead in a few years, and I didn’t exactly have a lot of skills in the interim. Everyone else had left me to die when the infection got too bad for me to walk, and he didn’t even know my name.

 

“Silf?” Corbin said, pulling my attention back to the present.

 

“Sorry,” I said, and then yawned widely. “Got fuzzy there. Nothing much happened, really. We were jumped by some ghouls.”

 

“Legionnaires don’t lose to ghouls,” Black said quietly.

 

“They won in the end,” I said. I yawned again. “We were outnumbered. Guess we just got unlucky.”

 

Corbin frowned. He didn’t say anything.

 

I yawned again, longer than before. I saw Black set the jug down and realized that she’d just washed the wound out with the water. I could smell blood. Funny that I hadn’t felt what she was doing. She was holding the needle now, rolling it in her fingers. She put it into the candle flame, almost above the flame, and held it there, passing it slowly back and forth through the fire. She held it up in front of herself and the metal was glowing yellow.

 

For a moment, I was somewhere else, another place and another time. I was trapped and I couldn’t see and the smoke was so thick and I could hear screaming and I was lost and the street was blocked and he was there and I could smell burning hair and there was blood on my hands and my throat hurt and–

 

And it was just Black. Just a needle. Just me bleeding on the floor of the inn.

 

Nothing bad at all.

 

“You look blurry,” I said, and then the darkness settled in again.

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Previous Chapter                                                                                    Next Chapter

 

Back at the inn, Hideo was…holding court, almost, was the only way I could think of it. He was standing in the center of the taproom, surrounded by a crowd of villagers stopping in for lunch, and he was playing the crowd like a violin. They were hanging on his every word, and he knew it.

 

I stood in the corner behind the bar, and watched. It was, from my perspective, an interesting performance. Hideo spoke just fast enough to keep the people listening off balance, not giving them a chance to really react to something before he was moving on. He bounced between topics, too, never sticking on one long enough for it to build into a real conversation. One minute he was talking about how a few damaged shipments in a row had caused the price of ice in Akitsuro to skyrocket, the next he was telling a slightly embarrassing but ultimately flattering story about the emperor.

 

It was impressive. Hideo was surrounded by a crowd of people who’d all come here, I was very confident, specifically to get information out of him regarding what he was doing here and the details of this hypothetical road. Instead, they were going to leave knowing nothing more about his actual purpose here than they’d known when they came. And they’d do it thinking that he was an open, outgoing, and friendly man, too.

 

I had to respect him. He had them dancing on his strings, and they didn’t even know it. That took talent.

 

Finally, just as people would have to be wrapping up here and getting back to the fields, Hideo tossed back the last of his beer and set the mug down on the table with a sigh. “It’s been a pleasure,” he said, in a regretful tone good enough that I genuinely wasn’t sure whether it was sincere. “But I have to get back to work. We’re looking for hazards today, making sure the area isn’t too dangerous for an imperial road.”

 

Immediately, the villagers started clamoring about how there was no danger near here, not a thing to threaten travelers. I wanted to slap them. It was so obviously a front. If Akitsuro wanted a road through somewhere, a few ghouls wouldn’t stop them. Worst case, the emperor could just send a full legion in and raze the entire area to the ground before laying a road over the ashes. But, of course, they were blinded by their hope, and the presentation was too abrupt to give them a chance to think things through.

 

It was a brilliant performance.

 

“I know, I know,” the surveyor said, raising his hands with a laugh. “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. But I can’t go back to the legate and tell him that I didn’t even look into it. You know how it is.” He paused, dragging it out for a few moments. “That said, maybe you can help speed it along a bit,” he said. His tone was alluring now, almost seductive. “If you aren’t busy, I mean. I’m sure we can manage on our own, but having someone who knows the area along can make our jobs a lot easier.”

 

The villagers hesitated, glancing at each other. I could almost see the thoughts running across their faces. They wanted to help, wanted to do whatever they could to make sure that this “road” happened. But at the same time, it was a field day. There was never any shortage of work to be done.

 

I hesitated a few moments, then raised my hand.

 

Corbin glared silent daggers at me from across the room, making it very clear that I was supposed to lower that hand right now. I pretended that I didn’t see him, and after a few seconds Hideo noticed me.

 

“Ah,” he said, looking at me. “You know your way around here, then?”

 

I shrugged, nodded.

 

“Excellent,” he said, beaming. “Thank you for your help. We’ll leave in a few minutes, then.”

 

I nodded stiffly, and didn’t move out of my corner. I was acutely aware of the weight of the hatchet under my shirt. Black had insisted I take it, even though I was quite confident I’d be better off running from any fight than trying to use the axe.

 

Minutes ticked by. The villagers settled their tabs, grousing lightly about how much more they were spending over the past few days, and left. Corbin kept glaring at me, but when it became clear that I wasn’t going to listen, he seemed to relent and went back to cleaning up.

 

I was almost sorry about that. Now that the moment was past, I was starting to regret volunteering. Having an excuse to back out would have been…not entirely unwelcome.

 

He didn’t give me one, though, and I wasn’t going to back down on my own. The idea of going out and showing a bunch of legionnaires around was unsettling, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as knowing they were out running around and doing something, but not having any idea what they were doing.

 

I was tired of being in the dark about what was going on here. It was getting old.

 

A few minutes after the last of the villagers left, Hideo stood and brushed his robes off with a smile. “I think it’s time for us to go,” he said, the words clearly directed at me. “If you’re ready?”

 

I nodded. The gesture felt stiff, and it probably looked a bit jerky, but it got the point across.

 

“Excellent,” he said, sweeping towards the door  as the legionnaires stood and followed him.

 

Outside, I was stumbling a little, a touch unsteady on my feet. It wasn’t dramatic, or obvious, but I could feel it. It felt like I was surrounded by enemies, and it was getting to me.

 

Sumi gave me an encouraging smile as he was pulling his helmet on. It helped a bit. Not enough to make me feel really comfortable, but a bit.

 

“So, madam,” Hideo said, still with a broad smile that he probably thought was charming. “You’ll pardon me, I hope, but I didn’t catch your name earlier.”

 

“Silf.” My voice was a bit stilted, abrupt, but for once I could blame it on something other than my throat being ravaged by the Change.

 

“A fine name,” he said. “A pleasure to meet you, Silf. My name is Hideo. My associates are named Sumi, Marcus, Aelia, and Andrew.”

 

The only name I hadn’t heard from that list was Marcus. Presumably, that was the other swordsman, the one who hadn’t come down to eat dinner last night. I wasn’t entirely sure what that might suggest about him.

 

“So, Silf,” Hideo said, smiling broadly. “You heard what we were looking for in there. Where would you say there are monsters in these parts?” He gestured expansively, as though to take in the entirety of Branson’s Ford and the surrounding countryside.

 

“River, sometimes,” I said. “Usually some vodyanoy, the odd serpent or rusalka. Saw a mermaid once.”

 

“Fascinating,” the surveyor said. “Not quite what I had in mind, though. Aquatic creatures aren’t generally a threat to people.”

 

I stared at him dubiously. Vodyanoy might be the name the scholars used for the strange Changed humanoids that lived in the water, but there were reasons that the common folk usually called them drowners or rippers.

 

“Well, not on a scale that would impede trade,” Hideo corrected hastily. “In any case, that’s not really what we’re looking for right now. Are there any monsters that live on land?”

 

“Usually some vargs east and south of here,” I said. “They don’t usually bother anyone, though. Occasionally a Changed wolf or bear in the forest. Jakob swears he saw a basilisk in the marsh once.”

 

“Closer, but not quite. Those sound too sporadic to really be a significant impact on commerce.”

 

I sighed irritably. “I could find what you’re looking for better if you told me what it was,” I said.

 

“I told you,” he said. “We’re trying to make sure that there aren’t any hazards in the area that would make putting a road through the area impractical. Sometimes things really are simple, Silf.”

 

I stared at him.

 

We stood there in silence for close to a minute before Hideo sighed and shook his head. “All right,” he said. “If you must know, we’re looking for a location where ghouls might live around here. Not one or two, mind, but a full group of the things.”

 

I frowned. “There are some ghouls out west,” I said. “Forest or the hills. Hills have some caves that a group could use for shelter.”

 

“The hills it is, then,” Hideo said. “Lead on, my lady.” He dipped into a low, elaborate bow.

 

I rolled my eyes and started walking west.

---

Once we were outside the wards, the legionnaires fell into the same marching order I’d seen early that morning. It made sense, I supposed. From their perspective, we were in enemy territory. I could understand why a military group would adopt a strict marching order the second they were outside the wards.

 

Similarly, I couldn’t blame them for putting me at the center, next to Hideo. I was a civilian, after all. In a fight, I was unreliable at best; at worse I was actively a detriment. It made sense that they would want to put me in the middle, as far from any attacker as possible.

 

The fact that it left me walking with Hideo was…slightly unfortunate, but not unexpected.

 

He was enthusiastic. I had to give him that; either he genuinely was a surveyor and he loved his work, or he was an incredibly dedicated actor. It seemed like he had another question for me every few seconds, asking what kind of rock a specific outcropping was composed of, or what was on the other side of a hill, or what a plant was. He was enthusiastic as a child, all expansive gestures and loud voices.

 

I answered mostly in monosyllables, when I answered at all, and let Hideo run his mouth to his heart’s content. Otherwise, I spoke only to offer the occasional course correction to Sumi. He didn’t need much help, but there were some paths in the hills that were very easy to overlook, and more efficient than the obvious ones.

 

The legionnaires were almost silent. Their attitude was more or less the same as what I’d seen earlier: very tense, ready for an attack. That was enough to tell me that, however casually Hideo presented it, their business here was very serious. The legionnaires weren’t joking the way I was used to, weren’t casually bantering. Even Aelia was quiet.

 

The hills west of Branson’s Ford weren’t terribly impressive, from what I’d heard. The closest I’d been to mountains was seeing the Tears of Kveld from a distance, though; I hadn’t even spent time in any particularly serious hills. So from my perspective they were plenty intense, all steep slopes and sudden drops. It was rocky ground, with little vegetation beyond some grasses and the occasional shrub; there were copses of trees, but they weren’t common.

 

We were around an hour out into the hills, well away from the town, when we saw the monster. I wasn’t entirely sure how something could have hidden in that sort of open ground. But it had. The first I saw of the ghoul was when it dug itself up out of the ground, moving so rapidly that it was hard to believe it was real.

 

The thing looked intimidating enough that I fell back an involuntary step upon seeing it. A bit over six feet tall, it looked like half a dozen nightmares rolled together. Its arms hung down to its knees, and were tipped with three long, pale claws. Its skin was red and raw, looking disturbingly slick; it flexed and pulsed in a way that suggested something might be pushing against it from the inside. Flat plates of what looked like bone covered its chest, legs, and neck.

 

Most disturbing, though, was its face. It didn’t really have one, not in the sense I was used to thinking of the word. It had two small, beady black eyes on the top of its head, and it had a huge, circular mouth.

 

It was, in short, a great deal like a typical ghoul. It was everything you never wanted it to be, a warped creation with very little to it but hunger and violence. There wasn’t much room in that head for a brain; it was all mouth and no intellect.

 

Things that had been extensively Changed were seldom pleasant. But there was a reason that when people wanted to complain about Changed monsters, ghouls were always the first thing to be mentioned.

 

The thing took a step forward, mouth opening to reveal row after row of chipped teeth. They pointed inwards from all directions, making me think of a lamprey, and its mouth dripped coal-black slaver.

 

I fell back another step as the stench hit me, a potent, fetid reek of rotting meat and sour milk and the stench of a life lived without any nod to hygiene. It was uniquely, indescribably unpleasant.

 

That was all the time I had before Aelia responded. The legionnaire’s reaction was calm, cool, and utterly professional. She brought her arbalest up in one smooth movement and fired, too fast to have aimed.

 

The bolt slammed home into the ghoul’s eye, an incredible shot from twenty feet away. The raw impact of it took the thing off its feet, and it hit the ground as a loose, twitching pile of limbs.

 

I gulped. That was…a rather impressive shot, to say the least. I wanted to think that it was a lucky fluke, but the way the others took it completely in stride suggested otherwise, that Aelia was simply that good of a shot.

 

“That can’t be it,” Sumi said, walking over and prodding the twitching corpse with his sword. It didn’t respond.

 

“It’s possible the stories were simply overblown,” Hideo said, walking over to the body as well. The rest of the legionnaires followed him. “But yes, I would say it’s rather unlikely.”

 

“Thing went down easy,” Aelia said. “One bolt and boom, down like a shot of vodka. Hard to believe anyone was really threatened by that.”

 

They were all focused on the corpse. I was the only one that heard the scratching noise. Not that it would necessarily have mattered–my hearing was considerably better than theirs, and I could barely make it out. But still, it suggested some things.

 

“Watch out,” I said, as loudly as I could–which, of course, wasn’t very loud at all. But it was enough to get Hideo’s attention. The surveyor turned to look at me, then grabbed Andrew’s sleeve and stepped away from the corpse, pulling the other man along with him.

 

They were just in time to be out of the way as the ground underneath the ghoul collapsed, leaving a pit ten feet across. Sumi was quick enough on his feet to jump aside even without the warning. Aelia and Marcus, though, weren’t as lucky; they both tumbled down into the hole.

 

An instant later, a pair of ghouls pulled themselves up from the pit. At the same time, another pit opened next to me, and a third ghoul climbed up from that one.

 

I stared for a few seconds, then stumbled away, towards the legionnaires. I might not like the legions much, but I knew better than most just how good they were at dealing death. There were certainly worse people for me to have between me and a ghoul than them.

 

Sumi was already paired off with one of the ghouls. I could hear the clang of its claws striking his shield, as I stumbled blindly back. I could hear screaming from the pit, not just a quick yelp of surprise, but genuine, pained screaming. Someone had gotten hurt, in the fall or after it. The other ghoul was following me, and ghouls weren’t renowned for their speed, but it was faster forward than I was backward, and I could tell that I wouldn’t be able to keep ahead of it for long.

 

And then I heard a whoosh, and a pained hiss, and I felt a wave of heat against my back.

 

I glanced back, and saw Andrew. He looked more scared than I felt, but he was standing steady next to Hideo, one hand raised. He was holding a scrap of flash paper in it, which was burning brightly from the alchemical compounds the paper was treated with. It was, clearly, the initial channel he’d used to start the fires.

 

Once they were started, he’d turned them to more destructive purposes. One of the ghouls was burning like a torch, bright orange flames licking up its body. Its skin was charring and flaking off as it stumbled around, patting vaguely at a flame that simply would not go out.

 

I bolted. I knew it was stupid, knew it was insane, but I couldn’t help it. I bolted.

 

The ghoul that had been chasing me hadn’t been expecting me to suddenly turn and run towards it instead. It hadn’t been expecting it, but it certainly didn’t hesitate to capitalize on it; after a momentary hesitation, it lashed out at me with one arm.

 

That hesitation was almost enough to save me. I was light on my feet, and small, and it was neither of the above. I almost managed to get by it before it could respond.

 

Almost.

 

Instead, its flailing arm caught me on the leg, jerking me instantly to a halt and slamming me to the ground. I felt the talons cut through cloth and fur and slice into my skin almost without any pause. There was no pain, not yet, just a shock of sensation and a wash of warmth as blood started leaking out past the claws.

 

Then it pulled me close, and now I felt the pain, as it ripped the gashes wider. I twisted onto my back, tearing the wounds even more around the ghoul’s claws, and I saw it standing over me. Its expression, insomuch as it had one, was blank and careless. Its other arm was upraised, about to descend.

 

I was sure that my time was up, that I’d had all the lucky breaks I was going to get and this was the end of the road. As the ghoul started to swing, as the sunlight gleamed off those pale claws, I caught myself wondering what target it would go for. Would it rip out my throat and leave me gasping and bleeding into the dirt? Tear my guts out and leave me to die slowly from infection? Break my ribcage and pull it open to expose my chest cavity?

 

I felt almost curious as I watched the claw coming down, waiting to see what it would do.

 

Instead, Sumi hit it from the side with a flying tackle. Its claws were ripped violently out of my leg, sending another shock of pain through me, as the ghoul was knocked to the side. The two of them hit the ground and rolled a few times, but in the end Sumi came out on top. He had a short, ugly knife in his hand now, and he punched out with it, stabbing the ghoul again and again, until the thing stopped twitching.

 

I just watched. The screaming from down in the pits had stopped, and I couldn’t hear the sound of approaching ghouls, so presumably we’d won. For a certain value of “we,” at least.

 

Sumi stood, and brushed himself off, and walked over to me. He pulled my pants away, getting a better look at the wound.

 

It took a few moments for me to clear my head enough to talk. When I did, I said, “Thanks.”

 

“No problem,” the legionnaire said, setting my leg down again. “Looks like a fairly minor wound. It’ll hurt like a bitch, and it’ll be hard for you to walk for a while, but it looks like it should heal all right.”

 

“And Aelia?” Hideo asked. It sounded like he was fairly far away.

 

“Lia’s going to lose the hand,” Sumi said. “Don’t see a way around that. But she should live if we can get her somewhere safe soon.”

 

“Let’s take the wounded back, then,” Hideo said. “I think we’ve found our ghouls.”

 

“Those aren’t ghouls,” someone said. It took a moment to realize that it was me.

 

“Excuse me?” he asked. I could almost hear his mocking smile, his slightly raised eyebrow.

 

“Ghouls don’t do that,” I said. “They’re stupid. They don’t plan, they don’t lay bloody ambushes.”

 

“I see,” he said. “Listen up, Silf, because I’m going to tell you something very important. If anyone asks, they were ghouls. They were perfectly normal, dimwitted ghouls, and we were just outnumbered and unlucky. And if you forget that, well, we’ll have a problem.” He paused, and again, I could almost hear the grin. “That said, you’re exactly right. We came out here to investigate reports of an atypically intelligent, aggressive group of ghouls. It seems they weren’t exaggerated.”

 

“Why do you care?”

 

“Why, the divine emperor cares for all of his subjects, my dear,” he said, not even hiding the mockery in his voice. “Now, unless you want to bleed out, we might want to move along. Aelia might be able to walk, but with that leg you clearly aren’t. Sumi, can you manage a travois?”

 

“Absolutely,” he said. “Give me a couple minutes to put something together.”

 

I was sure I’d passed minutes slower than those. I just couldn’t remember when they were.

 

Finally, just when I was sure I couldn’t take another minute of lying there, I felt someone scoop me up and then set me down onto a slightly more flexible surface. A moment later, it started moving; I could hear the scrape of wood on dirt under me.

 

For a while that was the whole of my experience of the world. There was pain, and darkness, and movement.

 

Then, after an amount of time I couldn’t label, I heard a voice. “I’m curious, Silf,” Hideo said. “You seem to be an intelligent girl, you keep your head fairly well. So what made you run?”

 

I seriously debated not answering. Then, because I remembered how very easy it would be for him to kill me right now, I said, “I was in the Whitewood.”

 

“Ah,” he said. “Afraid of fire, then?”

 

I nodded tensely, eyes still closed shut.

 

“Understandable,” he said. “That was a dark time in the history of our nation. Those who were responsible were sentenced harshly, I assure you.” There was a pause. “Thank you for telling me that, by the way,” he said, his tone even and conversational. “I’d wondered why Corbin had taken you in. That explains a great deal.”

 

I must have looked confused, because Hideo continued. “Come now, girl,” he said. “You didn’t really think that he’d taken you under his wing out of the goodness of his heart, did you?”

 

“Corbin is a good man,” I said, a bit tightly.

 

“That’s arguable, at best,” he said. “But does he really appear to be a terribly generous man? I mean, if nothing else, you have to wonder why he helped you. Or I did, at least. He obviously doesn’t extend that sort of assistance to every orphan girl who needs a place to stay, so what made you special? And now I know.” I could hear him smiling. “Guilt.”

 

“You’re just making things up,” I said. “Trying to drive a wedge between us.”

 

“Maybe so,” Hideo said lightly. “But if so, well, you have nothing to fear from asking, do you? Ask him why he took you in. Ask him where he was the day the Whitewood burned. I dare you.”

 

He fell silent after that. I lay on the travois until it rocked me into a troubled, pained sleep.

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