Page 136 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

“Here’s our answer, then. Hakkon had his eyes set northward.” She shook her head and spit, eyes flicking to Cirri and Miro. “The wargs are long gone. He took them late last night. Folk down Fog Hollow way thought they heard a signal horn, but they didn’t send anyone to check until sunrise.”

I rose up, brushing my filthy palms on my trousers. They’d be covered in worse soon enough. “Of course they didn’t,” I said, gritting my teeth, wondering what waited on the other side of that sad, half-collapsed wall. I almost wanted to turn my back on it, to let it all rot.

What was the point of shouldering responsibility for all of them, for their survival, if they were more content to wallow in the dirt with their cold iron charms for protection? If they were willing to put off opening the mines for fear of ghosts, knowing that their defenses had crumbled so far past service they might as well be a hindrance?

But I had accepted it when I took the throne, and now I would walk through the horror that awaited me and take all the guilt onto my own shoulders. I’d sworn my life to it.

“It’s exactly what you expect,” Visca said flatly. She looked at Cirri in full. “It’s bad, my Lady. Might be best for you to stay outside the walls.”

Cirri set her lips flat and signed in the terse, simplified movements used by the Silent Brothers.I’ll do what I can.

In truth, I was glad she was with me. I couldn’t empty Tristone of the dead while worrying every second that Hakkonwould be slipping around to take the keep. I only hated that she would see the carnage in full.

“There’s nothing to do. I’ve got a full legion on corpse duty, and another digging the pits.” Visca stepped through the breach in the wall, and I followed.

It was like walking into the past, but all the more sickening for how fresh it all was.

My eyes went straight to the church, where the wargs had painted, as they liked to do—leaving their calling card everywhere they spread destruction. The scent of their piss was strong, burning my nose; the bodies were at least preserved by the cold, the reek of decomposition not quite as terrible as it could’ve been.

But thesight… that was terrible. The wargs had not just painted, but built a totem from some of the bodies, pieces of flesh strung on wire, the wire twisted around splintered poles, the poles dug deep into the earth. The configuration in the middle of the town was like a tree, the frost-stiffened limbs its drooping branches.

Visca pulled her lips back in a feral sneer.

“No graves.” She kept her voice quiet. “Fuck, we can’t even figure out which piece belongs with whom. Better to have a pit.”

I turned back as Miro rode through, followed by Cirri. She looked up, already apprehensive, and her face went blank. Skin pale as the snow on the ground, all blood draining from it.

“Stay in the village,” I told her, no gentleness to my tone. “Keep the legions in sight.”

She nodded, but almost absently. Still terribly blank.

“You need do nothing,” I said, softer now. “But I must help bury them.”

Another nod. Miro dismounted, looking around with wide eyes, jaw set tight. “Where do you need me?”

I gestured expansively. “Corpse duty.”

The snow was so red. An auspicious color, in normal times.

Not so for these people. I took in the carnage, the abattoir the wargs had made of my people.

“Might be time to consider taking the fight to him.” Visca sidled closer.

“To where? The Below?” I looked at my commander. “We could hunt down there for years, and earn nothing for our efforts but a loss of our own. For all we know, he’s found a city of his own down there to reinforce.”

“Right. It was just a thought.” She sighed, but her eyes were hard. “This can’t go on forever. Hakkon, his little death cult of wolves… they need killing, Bane.”

“I know it,” I muttered, and helped her as she took a man’s corpse under the armpits. His iced-over eyes stared up at her, wide with shock and horror.

“Maybe we need to risk the loss. To go Below again anyway.” She sucked at her teeth, then spat again, clearing her throat. “This fuckingreek. It’s not much of a choice, but it’s better than this stalemate between us where everyone else pays the price.”

I looked at Cirri one more time, sitting frozen on her horse, staring at the slaughter. I couldn’t leave her alone. But I couldn’t always stay, when I had promised these people I’d end it.

Sometimes there weren’t any good choices. Sometimes there were no choices at all.

Chapter 33

Cirri

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