Three Weeks

Smoke from the fire drifted upward into the trees. Light played patterns on the bottoms of leaves, and trunks cast shadows far into the night. Elrik felt a tear slide down his face leaving a trail of clean skin beneath the layers of grime. A bath would be nice. It’d probably been 3 weeks since his last one. It had been three weeks since he’d even seen a person. Three weeks since so many things had happened. Elrik could smell the smoke that burned his eyes and added to the tears dripping down his face. The smoke smelled like poison. He hated smoke. The putrid smell it gave off brought back memories he wanted to forget. Memories that would tear his soul to pieces if he let them. Is it even possible to forget the one night that changed your life forever? Hopefully.

Three weeks ago Elrik had been a stable hand. His life consisted of feeding horses, saddling them and cleaning their stalls. The hardest thing he would ever do would be to clean a horse’s hooves. He slept in a common room with 20 of the other stable hands at the manor, ate 3 meals a day and had a holiday once a month. Master Fraend had many friends among the merchants and other manor lords in the district.

One of the merchants was returning to his land from a trip north. Fraend asked him to be his guest for a night on his way back. No one wondered why he had so many guards; everyone took extra guards north. Northerners can’t be trusted. While the moon was high Elrik woke to the sound of a scream ripping through the peace of the night. Sounds of steal ringing on steel echoed through the halls of the manor house into the stable hands’ barracks. Elrik grabbed his dagger and so did the other hands. They poured into the hall and that’s when Elrik smelled the smoke. The sick smoke. No different than any smoke he’d ever smelled before but this smoke came from the building. The manor house was burning and so was much of the town bellow it. A band of screaming stable hands dashed down the hall into the gathering chamber where Fraend held trials and social dinners, dances and many other gatherings. It was large enough to hold 200 men, women or children. Now it was filled with bodies. Fifty or sixty corpses, mangle d and bleeding were piled in the hall. The floor was dark with blood that flowed out of gaping wounds. Several of the men around Elrik vomited.

Rage burned in the eyes of the men around Gallan. He felt the blood rise into his head pulsing with his swiftly beating heart. Gallan saw Elrik and a few of the other men start searching for living in the piles. The door at the other end of the room burst open and armored men began dumping bodies onto the floor. Gallan flew across the room. This room wasn’t just the sight of a massacre; it was a dumping ground for bodies. Gallan’s dagger punched into one armored man’s chest before he had even dropped the woman he was carrying. Elrik was right beside him hacking away at one of the other men. Two other stable hands had one the armored men on the ground while they beat him with his own mace. The other two armored men ran down the hallway. Crimson blood from the victims they had carried into the room was dripping down their armor. A dozen stable hands poured down the hall after them. Screams of rage echoed in their wake. A few stayed behind to search for survivors in the room but there was no point.