Chapter 1388: Face to face(1)

It took them two and a half agonizing days in the saddle to reach the refugee camp of Sevariorari.

It was every bit as foul as Vilon recalled. Even from outside the timber gates, the stench hit them like a wet sack of manure, and the sheer, chaotic din rising from inside the walls was enough to make Vilon’s skull throb with a vicious, rhythmic agony.

To add insult to injury, it was truly not their day. It wasn’t just that Vilon’s side hurt like a bitch in heat, nor was it the lingering pool of sour bile at the back of his throat that kept him on the verge of vomiting; it was the infuriating fact that they had just wasted nearly a full day riding hard to the wrong godsforsaken place.

"Sorry, friend," a guard in rusted mail and a dented kettle helm muttered, shrinking back as Mariol eyed him with the exact same warmth he would offer a fat cockroach at the bottom of his boot. "They moved out."

"Moved out?" Mariol repeated.

From his side came his companion "Aye, packed up and marched. Done so two days ago. You lot should probably have been a bit quick—"

Crack.

Captain Saron didn’t even let him finish the word. His gauntleted fist whipped out, breaking the guard’s nose in a sudden burst of red before the one-eyed commander casually mounted the horse and wheeled his mount around, signaling for the rest of the detail to do the same.

"Fucking waste of air," Saron spat, mimicking the wheezing guard. "’Should probably have been quicker.’ Your mama should have been a bit quicker when she popped you out, you half-baked sack of pig-shit!"

Saron turned his lone eye onto the second guard, who was staring in absolute terror at his whimpering comrade bleeding into the mud. "Where did the host march?"

The terrified man thrust a trembling finger toward the horizon. "E-East! That way!"

Saron tracked his gaze to the eastern treeline, a dark chuckle escaping his throat. "They really were on a quick schedule, weren’t they?" He turned back to Vilon, whose face was the color of curdled milk.

"Can we... can we stop for a brief visit with a physician?" Vilon rasped, gripping his pommel until his knuckles turned white. "I feel as though my ribs are filled with hot coals.I should probably got it looked at."

"Sorry, ser, no can do," Saron laughed, shaking his head. "And besides, do you truly think the fucked-up butchers they left behind to tend this refugee ditch are worth a damn? They’d cut off your arm to cure a headache." He clapped his horse’s reins against his palm and raised tow fingers. "It’s just another two days’ ride to catch the main column, and we have all we need right here in our saddlebags. The sooner we reach the host, the sooner a real camp leech can stuff you with poppy milk. Chest up, friend! Pain is but temporary!"

With another roaring laugh, Saron kicked his horse into a trot, leading the pack back onto the high road.

Vilon would have wept, but he lacked the energy to manage the tears. He simply let out a low, pathetic whimper and willed Chestnut to fall in line behind the Hounds’ tails. It was a mercy he had never dismounted in the first place; in his current state, it would have taken him half a day to climb back into the stirrups.

They spent the remainder of the daylight eating dust and pushing their horses. Just before nightfall, they reined in at a small, miserable hamlet along the road. The Hounds promptly commandeered two cottages, ousting the peasant families to go bunk with their neighbors for the night.

Vilon felt a pang of deep guilt over displacing the local folk, but Mariol merely shrugged as he unbuckled his girth. "Look at it this way, ser, we’re taking their beds whether they like it or not. Since the harm’s already done, you might as well take advantage of the straw. Don’t go bleeding bleeding-heart blood over a roof."

Vilon’s gut didn’t lighten much at that, and he slept terribly. Every tiny shift in his sleep sent a white-hot spike through his stitched flank.

He changed his dressings twice a day, once in the morning, and once by the firelight. Selm would take the soiled linen and drop it directly into a small iron pot of boiling water while wrapping Vilon’s side in fresh, clean rags.

"Don’t know the trick of it, honestly," Mariol admitted when Vilon asked about the boiling pot, watching the steam rise into the night air. "They taught every Black Stripe to boil the rags before drinking their water or putting a knife into someone they don’t want to die. After a big scrap, you always see white smoke rising over the medic bays, they waste half the bloody Allendino River boiling pots for sheets, bandages, and whatever iron they’re about to shove into your meat if you got some bleeding. Something about it be killing the rot in the water, or some such sorcery. Whatever the case, I stopped having the watery shits once a week after I started doing it, so I figure it works. That, or it’s the soap.Whatever the case we don’t have the soap for you as of now."

From the look of things, Vilon’s side wasn’t turning sour. There was no foul yellow pus, nor was the skin around the neat thread swelling into a angry red bulge. He had seen enough men die of it to know that an infected wound was a slow death sentence.

To be safe, Saron even leaned down over the bench and ordered Owen to give the wound a proper whiff.

"Does it smell like old cheese, lad?"

Owen blinked, leaning in cautiously with a puzzled scowl before sniffing the linen. "I... I don’t think so?"

"It doesn’t," Saron declared, straightening up with a grin. "Trust me, boy, if the rot had taken root, you’d know it from a pace away. Good news then, ser, you’re not rotting just yet!"

Next, the captain inspected Vilon’s hand. The skin across his fingers was raw and pink, throbbing with a sharp ache every time he tried to curl his fist.Still he could move them, so that was good.

Mariol offered a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "Nothing to fret over there. Just needs a few weeks for the hide to toughen up and regrow, though you’ll carry the seam to your grave."

"I think they look rather grand, ser," Owen chimed in from the hearth, trying to sound confident.

"Aye, the lad’s got the right of it!What’s a knight without a few scar?" Saron barked, turning the spit over the fire where a plump, and of course stolen chicken , was beginning to glisten a rich, golden brown.

Of all the men in the room, the one-eyed captain certainly carried the most authority on the subject of ruined flesh. "Scars give a man spirit, ser! So long as they aren’t completely hideous, they don’t even ruin your mug. Imagine the next time you disrobe before a pretty maiden, you’ll actually have something interesting to talk about, especially if your cock ain’t much to be looked at!"

Saron winked his single, dark eye, his ugly scarred face breaking into a wide, yellowed grin. "Women blush at a good war-story, ser. Trust me on that."

When Mariol judged the chicken browned to perfection, he tore off a massive leg with his teeth, chewed thoughtfully, and flashed the rest of the circle a grease-stained thumb up.

They all fell to eating like wolves.

"Hey, Cap, which house are you taking tonight?" Selm asked, turning toward Saron. Their heavy wolf pelts had been peeled off and stacked in neat, dark piles against the stone wall.

Saron pointed a grease-coated bone at the thatch-roofed cottage just behind them. "That one. Smells less like sheep-piss than the rest."

"Excuse me... may I ask you something?" Vilon queried, his tone hesitant, his eyes darting between the hardened men.

"Ask away, ser," Selm grunted around a mouthful of meat.

"Do you always commandeer village houses when you go on patrol?"

The four Hounds traded a brief, half-second glance around the campfire before Mariol gave a slow nod.

"We surely can’t bloody well sleep in the open," Mariol said casually. "One band of desperate rogues catches us snoozing in the tall grass, and that’s five dead legionnaires and five stolen warhorses. We always requisition a village.

It’s a whole sight safer. Initially, the locals threw a bit of a ruckus over it, but they learned how the coin flips soon enough. Now they keep their mouths shut and hand over their keys for the night." He swallowed a thick bite. "You wouldn’t believe the nerve of some of them at first, though. You’d think we were dragging their daughters into those beds with us."

"Still..." Vilon hesitated, his chest tightening. "Aren’t these the very same smallfolk whose fields you burned during the push? I understand it was war, but... I don’t think I could sleep in a man’s bed, knowing I had put his harvest to the torch."

The easy, wolfish smiles hanging on their faces vanished in an instant.

Vilon watched as Saron exchanged a long, quiet look with Mariol and Selm. The fire crackled in the silence, casting long, twisting shadows across the captain’s mangled, one-eyed face. Finally, Saron gave a single, heavy nod.

"Well, this next bit is officially Crown business, but I suppose a knight of the realm can hear it," Saron muttered, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly rasp. "Just don’t go preaching it to the four winds. For the most part, the smallfolk don’t do a damn thing. They know who brought the seed-corn and the timber for them to survive the winter. See this cozy little hamlet around us?"

Saron wagged a greasy finger in a wide circle, pointing at the timber cottages bathed in the firelight.

"Four moons ago, we rode through this valley and burned every single roof to the ground. Left nothing but ash and black chimneys. Now? Rebuilt.Who you think gave them the nail for that?

The King put his own hand into the timber and hay .Most folk around here know that, so they don’t go looking for trouble. Usually, it’s just some stupid brat spitting in the dirt when we ride past. We whip the boy with a leather scabbard until he goes crying to his mother, and the mother gives him a second thrashing when she realizes how close the little bastard came to getting their roof burned down again."

Saron paused, leaning forward until the firelight glinted off the wet skin of his scarred eye socket.

"Although... there was this one time. A little nameless hamlet three leagues north of the highway. The folk there didn’t quite grasp what was good for them.They weren’t a lot smarter either. Two of our Hounds went missing on patrol. A week later, when it was clear those boys weren’t coming back to camp, the legate sent us out with the hounds and the heavy horse."

The captain took a slow, deliberate tear of chicken skin, chewing slowly.

"We had the dogs sniff an old tunic belonging to one of the missing men. The hounds brought us straight to that village’s green. And wouldn’t you know it? We found the missing warhorses hidden in the elder’s barn, their saddles stripped for leather."

Saron turned his head and spat a thick wad of phlegm into the grass.

"Now, of course, the whole damn village fell to their knees, crying and wailing. Swore on the gods they had no idea how those horses got there. Claimed they found the beasts wandering the high road, begged for mercy, all that sniveling rot.As if they found horses with saddles on and thought no better than to say nothing until we found them"

He shrugged his heavy shoulders, his expression entirely hollow of emotion.

"Didn’t know who was lying and who was telling the truth.Nor who did the stealing. Nor did it matter much. We looked at one another, and we shrugged. The captain muttered that the Father would know his own, and then we dealt with them."

The fire popped violently, sending a shower of orange sparks drifting into the freezing night air.

"We burned the whole village to the ground once more," Saron said, his voice as flat as a grave marker. " We didn’t kill all of them, mind you.Of course the dogs got their fill on those we did. but we kept some alive. Got to be realistic after all on these things, we killed enough way back moons ago.Someone had suggested we burn them all inside the barn, but really...that was too much even for us...

Dragged them out, whipped them raw, and forced them to walk every high road in Oizen , we did though. We made them shout their crime and describe the ash of their home to every village they passed through."

Saron took another massive, greasy bite of his meat, licking the fat from his fingers.

"Funnily enough... we haven’t lost a single Hound on patrol since.Always good to make a proper example of the first fool who comes by. Only the lessons learnt remain etched in stone."

A suffocating, icy silence settled over the hearth.

Neither Vilon nor Owen spoke a word after that. The chicken on Vilon’s plate suddenly tasted like dry ash, his stomach twisting into a tight, sickening knot that had little to do with his side. Sitting there in the firelight, listening to the soft crackle of wood, knight and squire stared at the four men around them.

The warmth, the easy jokes, and the shared bread vanished into the dark air. In their place sat the uneasy dread: the men they had been riding, laughing, and breaking fast with were not noble soldiers of a grand king.

They were the butchers of Yarzat, callous,monsters for some who wore human faces by day, and left nothing but screaming ash in their wake when night came.

They were not good men.Not at all.And Vilon felt twice dumb to having forgotten that.