Chapter 1330: Rain and rot(2)

The rain had finally stopped by the time they reached the slaughter. That was the only good grace the day had left to offer.

Two empty baggage wagons stood upright in the middle of the track, their wheels sunk deep into the mire. A third cart lay flipped onto its side instead dragged down by a dead pack horse that lay twisted in its harness, a black-fletched arrow buried deep into its bloody flank. The beast’s long tongue lolled out over its teeth, its milky, dead eyes wide with a final expression of terror and disbelief.

"Gods be good, gods be good, five gods preserve us," the coachmaster kept whimpering, his frantic chanting grinding on everyone’s raw nerves. Looking around as if he could sniff out the attackers.

He didn’t stop until one of Rosh’s sellswords shut him up with a slap to the back of his head.

"If your gut turns over a few cold corpses, go back to your bench and get the horses ready for departure," the mercenary cursed, wiping the spray from his face.

In the meantime, the caravan master had yet to show his face at the front of the line. Vilon doubted the man ever would. While the rain had ceased, the sucking mud remained, and from the little he had gathered of the merchant’s delicate nature, he knew the man simply could not abide getting his fine leather shoes dirtied by the brown muck.

Or perhaps, more truthfully, it was the raw sight of his massacred colleagues that his wealthy stomach could not suffer.

Dead bodies were sprawled across the trampled grass and the mire like the broken toys of some pampered child. The butcher’s work was absolute. Some bore deep gashes across their stomachs and chests, ruined wounds that laid bare the pale, wet insides of a common man for all the world to see.

Others had been brought down in full flight, iron-tipped arrows still protruding obscenely from their ribs and necks. One corpse was missing its left arm, while another lay twisted in a small ditch, a shattered white bone sticking out cleanly through the torn wool of his forearm.

Rubbish was clattered over the highway just as thickly as the corpses. The road was a graveyard of them: splintered chips of wood from smashed wagons, jagged shards of expensive pottery, and shattered storage urns. Vilon even spotted a fine carpet of woven silk, threaded with silver wire, stomped flat into the mud and forgotten there, either dropped in the bandits’ frantic haste or dismissed from the dirt. Burst barrels and shattered crates littered the ditches, every single one of them thoroughly rooted through and looted of its core treasures.

Yet, there were no weapons. Not a single rusted dagger, broken spear, or notched shortsword lay near the guards. Vilon could hardly believe any merchant was so profoundly foolish as to take the southern roads without a proper company of armed men. Clearly, the killers had stripped the dead of their steel along with whatever else was of worth.

"They slaughtered even the ones who didn’t fight back," Vilon muttered, dropping to one knee beside a corpse whose clothing and flesh had been sheared open by a single, brutal downward stroke. "And they hunted down the ones who tried to run. Bandits don’t leave a field any less clean."

He raised his eyes as a pair of heavy leather boots squelched into the mud near his hand. Looking up, he saw Owen standing over him, the boy’s massive hand hovering over the hilt of his shortsword. The weapon looked absurdly small in his trembling grip.

Vilon didn’t fault his squire. He wasn’t the only man at odds with the stark reality of death. He began to summon a few kind, reassuring words of comfort, but he stopped himself; he quickly realized they were entirely unneeded. The boy wasn’t shaking from fear. He was trembling with fury.

"Even the women?" Owen muttered, his voice thick with disgust as he stared at the broken, mud-stained form of someone’s wife or mother. His face fell even harder as his gaze drifted a few feet ahead, locking onto a much smaller, equally still sack of flesh half-hidden by a ruined wheel. A single arrow to the nape of the neck had sent the child off into the dark.

"Better dead than alive, boy," Rosh remarked coldly, stepping over a puddle of red water as he rose from inspecting a guard’s corpse. He wiped his bloody fingers on his trousers. "What do you think those bastards would have done to them if they captured them alive? A quick death is a mercy compared to that.Don’t need to be a woman to know that surely."

"How long have they been dead?"

A sharp, high-pitched voice rose from behind the guard line. Vilon turned in surprise, catching sight of the rotund, waddling form of their host. The caravan master had finally abandoned his dry wagon, though he was currently standing on his tiptoes to keep his boots clear of the mire.

Everyone stared at him in dead silence. Clearly, none of the mercenaries had expected the fat merchant to bother gracing a slaughterhouse with his presence.

"Well?" the master demanded, his multiple chins trembling like jelly as he spoke. "I don’t intend to linger in this graveyard a moment longer than necessary. How long have they been corpses?"

The bald, heavily scarred companion of Rosh, a brute Vilon had come to know as Logen, muttered a low curse as if it pained him to speak. He didn’t bother looking up; instead, he callously thrust his bare, calloused hand directly into one of the deeper chest gashes of a dead driver.

"It’s cold," he judged, jerking his hand back and taking a sharp, professional sniff of his bloody fingers. He spat into the mud and cleaned the finger on the corpse’s cloth "But it’s still fresh. Not rotten yet. If I had to wager a guess, I’d say they took their last breaths yesterday afternoon or maybe early this morning."

"So, the bastards who did this must still be close," the caravan master whispered, his nose twitching up in profound distaste as the scent of the ditch hit him. "Damn bandits. Last year, this highway was perfectly safe under Oizenian prince, and now good, innocent men are slaughtered just for doing their bloody jobs."

He shook his head in disgust, a movement that made his plump cheeks wobble. "If there is nothing left to see here, get back to the carts. Every single one of you. We leave as soon as the drivers can clear the wreckage from the path. I mistrust this valley. If the five gods are good, this will be our very last night on the road before we finally deliver ourselves to our destination."

Their destination, however, was not the caravan’s. Vilon and Owen were bound for a different port altogether.

Initially, the knight had planned to stick with the merchant’s company for as long as their paths aligned. But the open, terrified eyes of that dead man in the dirt, still clutching at the gaping wound in his stomach as if desperately wishing it to close, suggested a far different strategy.

They would ride with the fat merchant for a few more leagues, but the moment they reached the outskirts of the refugee camp, they would break away. Let the caravan push on down the high road if they possessed the stomach for it; Vilon preferred to seek council from the garrison commander at the camp. Those soldiers would know which passes were crawling with rebels and which were clear. It was a minor detour, certainly, but a small measure of caution was far better than the permanent quiet of a ditch.

The hired swords immediately shuffled off to obey the merchant’s orders, leaving only Vilon and Owen standing amidst the wreckage.

"Shouldn’t we bury them?" Owen asked, his voice low, though the sharp accusation in his tone cut right through the whistling wind. "They are innocent men, Ser."

Behind them, the glassy eyes of the dead continued to stare up accusatorily at the gray, unmoving sky.

The caravan master didn’t even bother to turn around as he delivered his final verdict. "Bury them in your prayers, boy. I don’t intend to be here one second longer than necessary. Move!"

Owen’s mouth opened, his jaw setting as he prepared to hurl a fierce, dangerous retort at the fat man’s back, but Vilon’s hand clamped firmly over the squire’s shoulder, squeezing until the boy went quiet. The knight shook his head slowly.

"The merchant is right about the danger, Owen," Vilon murmured, his voice steady but heavy. "The best we can do for these poor souls is ride. The moment we cross paths with a royal patrol, we shall report the butchery. The crown will send men to put them in the dirt. Right now, there is nothing else we can do but pray the King’s blades catch the monsters responsible for this."

Owen let out a harsh, ragged breath, his chest heaving under his damp tunic, but he finally let his hand drop away from his shortsword. "And if the King’s men don’t find them, Ser?"

"Then the crows will have their fill, and the five gods will found them home in the next life,they are not the only one to suffer in this on." Vilon replied grimly, turning his back on the slaughter. "Come. Let’s get to the horses.And no more of it."

They walked back to the wagons in silence, their boots dragging heavily through the thick, clinging clay. Behind them, the drivers shouted, the whips cracked, and the remaining mules strained against their harnesses, desperately pulling the caravan away from the scent of blood. As the wooden wheels groaned back into motion, the gray twilight began to swallow the ridge, casting long, twisting shadows over the broken carts and the unburied dead.

Another day on the road was drawing to its close, but in the dark heart of this land, only gods knew whetever the long night was only just beginning or about to end, for it were left in man’s hand, it would never cease to be.