“What do you think?”
She left him gaping behind her as she climbed onto her horse and looked over at Fallon. “If you still want to see, follow me.”
“Lead on.”
In the end, they took a party of ten that included Shea, Eamon, Fallon and Caden. It didn’t take long by horseback before they were cresting the hill. The villagers had cut the forest back, leaving a small clearing at the top that looked down on the small settlement.
“The ancestors take them,” Eamon breathed as he pulled his horse up beside her.
Shea had no words to respond. The sight broke her heart.
Pikes rose from the ground like grim headstones in a macabre imitation of a cemetery. Bodies in various states of decomposition were tied to each one, some with their hands above their heads, others wrapped so they were facing the pikes.
Even with the wind blowing in the opposite direction, the smell was over powering. Shea’s nose hairs felt singed from the smell of decay.
A few of the bodies had been here long enough for the elements and beasts to strip them of all flesh, leaving only white bone behind. Others were newer. That was somehow worse, because those had been half chewed and were missing hunks of skin and organs.
No wonder the revenant pack had been so large. They had a steady meal to sustain them. They wouldn’t have needed to hunt.
“What is this?” Fallon asked quietly, his voice holding the beginnings of a thunderous rumble.
Shea’s chin wobbled as she caught sight of the smaller bodies in one corner of the clearing. Forms the size of toddlers or young children. The worst were the small bundles of blankets that had at one point cradled babes. No remains were left, only the little blankets their parents, the people who should have protected them, had wrapped them in.
In a calm, steady voice totally at odds with the rage inside, Shea gestured before her. “It’s a sacrificial altar. This is in the territory of those revenants we passed a few days ago. The villagers believe if they leave a sacrifice the beasts will spare them. Looks like they started with their young and moved on from there.”
“Does it work?” Caden asked.
Shea shrugged. “Until you run out of people or until the beasts figure out there is a lot more warm blooded, delicious meat down the hill.”
“This is- this is. I don’t even have words for what this is,” one of Fallon’s men said, shaking his head in disgust.
“And they call us barbarians,” Caden said, looking at the scene before them with absolute loathing.
“I wouldn’t think this fazed you,” Shea commented. “You were thinking of destroying the village.”
“This is different,” he told her, his intelligent eyes pinning her in place. “You don’t hurt the people in your clan, and you certainly don’t hurt children. They look to you for protection. Do whatever you want to people outside your clan but never do this to people you call your own.”
Shea looked back at the clearing, “Hmm. Interesting sentiment. Not sure I agree with all of it, but some I agree wholeheartedly.”
“Burn it, salt the ground and kill them all. I won’t have people such as these in my ranks.”
“All of them?” Caden asked.
Fallon took one last look at the scene in front of them. “Leave two alive, brand them as slaves. They can be a warning to others. The rest let this happen; they can join their young in eternity.”
Fallon wheeled his horse around and touched its sides with his heels. As he rode away, he gave Shea a sharp nod before his attention turned forward again, dismissing her.
Shea lingered as the others followed. Eamon guided his horse until he was next to her, giving her time to speak if she wanted.
Such a waste of life and for such a stupid reason. What the villagers were attempting with the sacrifices wouldn’t work. It would have eventually backfired. The beasts would have wised up, gotten hungry and gone hunting in one of the huts in the valley. That or the villagers would have eventually run out of people to sacrifice and begun turning on themselves until they were so weakened they were easy pickings for what lived in these hills.
Shea would have to live with the bloodshed about to be spilled as a result of this atrocity. It was enough to make her tired. She agreed with Fallon’s course of action. Her own people would have implemented similar measures, not with the swords and burning and such. Their methods would have involved bait for the beasts and cutting off all access to the village.
It was a slower method, and in some ways more brutal as the village withered and died a slow, agonizing death versus the short abrupt one the Trateri offered.
She didn’t know which method was worse. Not knowing disturbed her, robbed her of the belief that she acted in good stead.
“I suppose we should get back,” she told Eamon, turning her horse to face away from the remains. That left her facing the village nestled in the valley. So picturesque from up here. How deceiving.
“We can take our time,” Eamon said as he guided his horse to face in the same direction.
“Afraid I’ll object to what he’s ordered?”
“Not so much, but there’s also no reason for you to be a part of it.”
“Won’t they think less of me?”
“Do you really care?”
A brief flash of a small smile graced Shea’s face. Not so much.
Together, they soaked as much clarity and tranquility as they could from the quiet forest around them as they, accompanied by the sacrifices, watched as the village caught flame.
Only when the village was engulfed in a towering column of blues, reds and oranges and the fields surrounding it had followed the same fate did they leave the clearing.
If Shea had been given to flights of fancy, she would have said the chilly air and miserable atmosphere of the clearing lightened and warmed the higher those flames climbed.
Chapter Thirteen
One month later
Fallon leaned his head back and sighed. It had been a long day.
The campaign against the people of the Lowlands was successful. The Trateri had rode right through the pitiful armies that mostly consisted of peasants armed with pitchforks with little problem. They were already in position to control most of the western lands if they could just lock down their trade routes.
The beasts were making that impossible.
This land was very different from the plains the Trateri hailed from. Not only were they dealing with a rugged terrain that wasn’t easily traversable by horseback, but these beasts were more fierce than most of what they saw on their plains. It was making for a much more difficult campaign than anyone had anticipated.
Fallon wasn’t too worried, instead seeing the situation as a testing ground to develop a fighting force the likes this world had not seen since ages past. With each encounter his men became stronger. Leaner. Hungrier. It was everything a Trateri warrior could hope for. To prove his mettle on such a bloody battlefield.
The elders of the four clans, however, were of a different mind.
They wanted the spoils without any of the work. Nor did they want to take the time to build a lasting legacy for their children. They didn’t see that if they held the Lowlands, their people could finally flourish rather than tear themselves apart in pointless battles over limited resources. They wanted victory now and if that wasn’t possible, to pack up and head back to clan lands.