Written in Blood by Span Ryan A

Author:Span, Ryan A. [Span, Ryan A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gryphonwood Press
Published: 2015-12-20T00:00:00+00:00

Only the Household Rangers could take a castle with three dozen men. Not much of a castle, granted, and the war had drawn off almost every male between fifteen and fifty, but still. The garrison numbered at least seventy, including the dead. Half had simply surrendered.

We paid a price for it. Nine of the Rangers lay dead. Four wounded, and one of them wouldn't last the night. And then... Adar.

We found the boy's body lying naked in the castle's refuse heap. Dry eyes locked open in awful surprise. Corpse flies clouded thick around him, taking their meal. Beaten and broken as we were, it took three of us to lift the boy out, and even then Sir Erroll did most of the work. We washed the body down with buckets of water until we could approach it despite the lingering smell of decay.

Aemedd stepped forward, leaning heavily on a walking staff, and studied the body from under half-closed eyelids. The scholar was a pale shadow of a man, even thinner than I remembered him, like a collection of tent-sticks supporting a dirty robe. He broke into another violent hacking fit as I watched.

“If anyone desires to speak,” he intoned, the words ritual and all too familiar, “make your voices heard.”

Faro moved first. He knelt by Adar's side and laid a hand on the boy's breast. He fought to swallow, tears on his cheeks, voice thick with grief. “He was... my friend. May God take pity on his soul. Grant him peace and life after life.”

“I would've died,” I said as I knelt painfully. I placed my hand on top of the squire's. “He saved us all, whether he meant to or not. May God take pity on his soul. Grant him peace and life after life.”

One by one, the others joined our semi-circle and spoke their own words. Only Yazizi kept quiet as she added her hand. She'd be offering different prayers to different gods, later.

Aemedd finished the chant. “We consign this boy into Your care, Merciful Father, imploring You to absolve him of the sins of the world and allow him to know Paradise.”

We carried him to a grave the Rangers had dug for us, lowered him gently into the hole, and gave him back to the earth.

The impromptu funeral broke up in a matter of moments. Sir Erroll excused himself, no doubt to go search for his shield. Aemedd followed him. I couldn't really blame them, I felt the same tug to get my breastplate back, and left the others to do the mourning. I still wasn't ready to tackle those feelings. I did my best grieving with a bottle in hand.

Most of our kit turned up in a ground-floor storeroom, in a crude pile. Anything valuable was already gone. The Duke's boys knew how to loot and pillage. The bronzes, however, weren't there. We went through the entire keep before we found a secret cubbyhole in the room Penn had been using for himself.

A collective sigh of relief went through us.

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