Chapter 944: What Remained

The orders reached the border garrison shortly before dawn, and by midday Captain Vlad had roughly forty armed men on the road. He would have preferred fewer. A smaller force moved faster, attracted less attention, and did not make every farmer they passed assume a war had begun. Unfortunately, the report contained the phrase possible foreign incursion, which had transformed an ordinary investigation into a matter requiring royal attention.

The attack had taken place in western Lotostra, close enough to the roads leading toward Astoria that nobody could confidently identify where the assailants had come from. The only survivor to reach an Imperial patrol had been dehydrated, burned across one arm, and barely coherent. He remembered dark-skinned men wearing loose clothing, carrying curved blades and, in some cases, bows.

That description could mean raiders from the Kingdom of Sands. It could just as easily mean men born twenty miles from the village. Darker complexions became increasingly common farther west, and plenty of trading families in Lotostra had ancestry stretching across the border. In Astoria, those connections were even more common. Skin told Vlad nothing useful, and clothing offered little more. The problem lay in what frightened witnesses remembered and what equally frightened officials assumed afterward.

The recent truce with the Kingdom of Sands had ended open hostilities, but treaties bound rulers more effectively than everyone living beneath them. Displaced soldiers, rebels, mercenary companies, religious factions, and nobles dissatisfied with the new Queen could all act without permission from a throne. So could ordinary criminals who understood how much confusion a border created.

If armed foreigners had entered Imperial territory and massacred a village, Lotostra could not ignore it. If local bandits were responsible, treating the attack as the beginning of an invasion would create an entirely different problem. Vlad preferred bandits, and nobody in his column had expressed a different opinion. War tended to sound impressive to people who had never marched through one.

He rode near the front with six mounted knights. Behind them came two dozen infantrymen, four battlemages, three priests attached to the garrison, and a small group of mercenaries hired for their knowledge of the western roads.

Harven, the youngest knight riding beside him, had spent much of the journey adjusting his reins and looking for a conversation. He was a good rider and a competent swordsman, but nerves made him talk.

"Captain, if it really was Sandsmen who attacked the village, what are we supposed to do?"

"First, don’t call them that in the report. If this becomes political, some clerk in Lufondal will spend three pages explaining how your vocabulary nearly started another war."

Harven looked ahead, considering the warning with more seriousness than Vlad had intended. The captain suppressed a smile and let him work through it. A little caution over the wording of a report would serve the young knight better than whatever heroic response he had been imagining.

"Soldiers from the Kingdom of Sands, then. If they crossed the border and attacked our people, do we pursue them?"

"We determine whether they were soldiers, then whether they acted under orders. Once we know enough to say anything useful, I write a report."

Harven turned toward him with an expression of unmistakable disappointment. Vlad had seen the same look on young officers before, usually shortly before they discovered how much of military service involved waiting for someone else to make a decision.

"Unless you have a private army I don’t know about, that is the extent of our authority. If they attack us, you may write fewer reports."

One of the mercenaries riding behind them laughed. Harven did not, and Vlad returned his attention to the road. His orders were straightforward: investigate the attack, identify those responsible, recover evidence, and avoid escalation unless necessary. The final instruction had been underlined twice. Nobody wanted to add a border massacre to the already unstable situation with the Kingdom of Sands.

Vlad would much rather discover that thirty local thieves had decided desert clothing made them intimidating. Those could be hanged without diplomatic correspondence.

By late afternoon, the road had begun climbing through less cultivated land. Fields thinned, trees became sparse, and the wind carried a smell that made Vlad raise his hand. The column slowed behind him while he breathed through his nose, separating the faint traces of smoke from the ordinary dust of the road. This was old smoke, settled into wood and earth, with something rancid beneath it that he recognized from too many battlefields.

One of the priests covered his mouth as the smell strengthened. Vlad kept the column moving until the road curved around a low ridge and revealed the village. The palisade had burned through in several places and collapsed in others. Blackened frames stood where houses had been, their roofs fallen into heaps of ash. Near the entrance, an overturned wagon rested on a wheel burned almost to its hub.

There were no voices, no livestock, and no dogs moving between the ruins. That troubled Vlad almost as much as the destruction. Something usually survived a village attack, even if it was only a chicken beneath a cart or a half-wild dog refusing to abandon its owner. Afterward came the rats and crows. Here, nothing moved.

"Formation. Four men to the eastern side, another group along the western road. Nobody enters a building alone."

The soldiers spread without further instruction. Shields moved forward, archers took positions behind them, and the battlemages withdrew toward the center of the formation. The mercenaries drew their weapons while one of the priests began a quiet protection prayer. Vlad dismounted and led the remaining men through the broken gate.

Ash crunched beneath their boots. Inside the village, the smell became strong enough that several soldiers covered their noses. Charred timber and soot lay over something sour, but the first houses contained no bodies. Neither did the next row. Vlad crouched beside a burned doorway where a considerable amount of blood had dried across the threshold. He touched its edge with two fingers, judging it several days old, then looked into the empty room beyond.

Harven caught his attention and pointed toward the square. Two figures waited near its center, putting every soldier behind Vlad on edge. Swords rose, and one of the mages lifted his staff. Vlad held up a hand while he studied the pair.

An aging priest knelt beside a broad stretch of disturbed earth. His religious robes were faded beneath a travel cloak, and the ground before him had been turned over along a trench far too large for a single grave. A young man stood beside him in plain clothes and dusty boots, with an old sword hanging at his hip. What little of the blade remained visible above its ill-fitting scabbard was marked with rust.

The boy noticed the soldiers first. His gaze passed over the knights, mages, priests, and mercenaries before settling briefly on Vlad. There was no visible fear, but neither was there relief. He simply assessed them and returned his attention to the kneeling priest.

Vlad lowered his sword once he realized the man was praying. A younger soldier shifted forward impatiently, then stopped when the captain looked at him.

"Hold. Let him finish. They’ve waited through whatever happened here; we can wait another minute."

The prayer continued too quietly for Vlad to make out most of the words. When it ended, the priest touched two fingers to his forehead and chest, then placed a hand against the disturbed soil. Only afterward did he stand and turn toward them. His face looked tired, without the fear or gratitude Vlad might have expected.

"Greetings, good men of the kingdom. I am Father Pedri, of the Church of Romulus."

Vlad stepped forward, removed one glove, and placed his hand against his chest. Behind him, one of the garrison priests stirred at the name of the church.

"Vlad Renor, Guard-Knight Captain under the authority of Lotostra. We received word of an attack here."

"The Church of Romulus? Father, that church burned. We received the notice at the garrison."

Pedri turned toward the priest who had spoken. His hands settled around his walking staff, and he gave a small nod.

"I know. I was its father."

Several expressions changed. Vlad had read the notice himself, along with the reports that followed. The destruction of the Church of Romulus had initially been attributed to bandits, though later accounts had become less certain. He looked from Pedri to the long grave and then to the young man waiting beside him.

"What brought you here, Father? Were you looking for someone, or did you hear about the attack before you arrived?"

"We were passing through. I had heard of another attack, but not this village specifically. I fear that may be part of the problem."

Vlad’s attention sharpened. Pedri studied the soldiers for a moment, resting both hands over his staff before continuing.

"I received a revelation. It led me to this young man, and afterward we began traveling toward Solania."

Nobody laughed, although several of the soldiers looked at the boy with renewed curiosity. He remained an unpromising subject for divine attention. Dust covered the bottoms of his trousers, his cloak had been patched twice, and the sword at his hip looked barely suitable for cutting vegetables. If the gods had blessed him, they had apparently considered presentation unnecessary.

"A revelation concerning him? What is your name, boy?"

"Vask."

Vlad waited, but Vask seemed to regard that as a complete introduction. The boy met his eyes without looking away or volunteering anything else. Pedri smiled faintly at the silence.

"He isn’t particularly talkative. The revelation indicated that he had been touched by divinity, though I am still trying to understand what that means."

One of the battlemages quietly began a detection spell. Vask’s eyes shifted toward him at once, and the mage stopped before completing it. Vlad noticed both reactions. Whatever else the boy might be, he had recognized the spell without needing to see an obvious manifestation.

Pedri continued before anyone could comment. His attention remained on Vlad, giving no sign that he had noticed the exchange.

"The revelation took me to a settlement near the Church of Romulus. I arrived after its destruction and found him among the ruins."

He named the settlement, and Vlad recognized it immediately. Its report had crossed his desk three weeks earlier. The captain’s expression hardened while Harven moved a little closer.

"That town had a plague and was burned down three weeks ago. We were told there were no confirmed survivors."

"There was one. Vask survived the attack, though he was in a terrible state when I found him."

Vlad looked directly at the boy. Vask stood with his hands loose at his sides, showing none of the reactions the captain usually saw when survivors heard their losses discussed. It might have been exhaustion, or simply the result of having endured too much.

"How did you survive?"

"I didn’t die."