Nine.
The smell of smoke awakened the paladin before dawn. Taliah sat up in her bedroll, fighting panic and a sudden wave of nausea. She'd been dreaming about Anderhal again; the undead pouring into the streets in a shrieking mass to set upon Gavinrad's three hundred men. It had been her first real combat experience and it had unnerved the girl profoundly. The men that died weren't just killed, the sheer numbers of foes pulled some of them down, their flesh torn from their still living bodies as they screamed and fought. Taliah shivered and staggered to her feet as the smoke made her lungs burn. There was something else on the wind, and it was far too familiar.
"You smell it too…" Necrucian stood on the opposite side of the fire, still as stone. His helm, a great fanged and horned monstrosity that resembled a demon skull, was clenched in his hand. The breeze stirred his shoulder length, faded brown hair and Redemption was unsheathed. They were two days out of Chillwind and everything had been quiet until now.
"Aye…smells like - " Taliah's voice was thick as she fought the urge to vomit.
"..death." The dark knight finished. "The steading on Jessa's map… how far was it?"
Taliah's jaw and the skin beneath her right eye twitched. Shoving her scabbard into her belt, the paladin whistled and Valiant appeared from the darkness to stand in the low glow of the campfire. Without greeting or preamble, she offered him the bridle and vaulted onto the stallion's back. "Taliah, we have more important matters to attend to. We can't run around playing the hero every time something happens." The beast could feel the paladin's excitement and pranced in place. She pointed a bare finger at the deathknight as though she were about to start arguing with him as Valiant bounced in an excited circle. Instead, she turned her mount south, in the direction of the smoke and with a hiss, sent the destrier off at a gallop. "Paladins…"
The steading had been little more than a half-dozen small homes clustered together around communal barns and fields in the fertile land at the edge of the foothills. It was even less than that now. The corn crop, a day from harvest, smouldered in the field. The flames that devoured the barns and dwellings roared like living things as Valiant and Taliah moved through the smoke and destruction as though walking through a waking nightmare. Only the sound of fire and collapsing timbers disturbed the scene, the flames washing everything in hellish shades of crimson and gold. The livestock had been slaughtered down to the last chicken, their bodies strewn about the yard and left to rot. She knew this wasn't the work of bandits; they would have made off with anything of value.
As Valiant's wary stride took them past the barn, they found the first body. Taliah slid from the destrier's back and Peacemaker slid from its place at her hip. Dawn was just a pink and gold promise in the east and the shifting flames made the shadows dance eerily. The corpse's skull had been crushed by something blunt and heavy. If it weren't for the shining steel in its hand and the untarnished mail it wore, the paladin may have mistaken the body for Scourge.
"Forsaken…." It took all of her control to rein in her rage. The Scourge could almost be pitied; while they were mindless and horrifying, they were also merely puppets enslaved to the will of the Lich King. The Forsaken were something else entirely. The paladin left the corpse where it lay and continued on. Valiant seemed as nervous as she did, his head up and nostrils flared, his ears swivelling, all his keen senses made useless by the fire, smoke and shifting shadows.
The bodies of the steaders lay where they had fallen, the men and the boys old enough to hold a weapon cut down with blades while the elderly, women and children lay between them and the tree line, feathered with arrows as they'd tried to escape. Taliah walked among the dead, desperately checking for signs of life, but the Forsaken had been thorough. All of the corpses sported a wide red grin across their throats, even the infants and children. It was only when her head began to ache that the paladin realized her teeth were clenched and grinding. The young woman sank to her knees in the bloody grass as she looked down at the corpse of a child not even old enough to crawl. Cold and white in death, it had tumbled from the arms of its dying mother and met its end with a blade to the throat.
Gently, Taliah picked up the babe as though it were still alive, cradling its head and holding it close, feeling tears spill down her cheeks before placing the infant next to its mother. The paladin wiped the blood from her hands onto her breeches and wiped at her eyes with her sleeve. She got to her feet, feeling the nausea more intensely now and turned away, trying to steel herself against it.
From the smell of it, some of the families had not escaped their burning homes. The light of dawn crested the hills and birds began to sing softly. The air was chill and the deathknight found both destrier and paladin steaming in the frosty air. The dead were lined up, drag marks in the hoary grass leaving tell-tales of the exhausted paladin's travails. Her hands were crimson with blood, her breeches and tunic similarly stained. Already the crows were starting to circle.
"We don't have time to bury them, Talaih." Necrucian felt nothing as he looked down at the bodies. Not even the children's corpses stirred emotion in him. He had not killed them and thus he had no reason to mourn them. It was obvious the paladin felt differently and her grey eyes flashed with anger.
"I won't just leave them for the crows." she snapped "They deserve a decent burial."
"Aye, that may be, but there are only two of us and two dozen of them. It would take days to dig a pit big enough to contain them, let alone dig a grave for each. We do not have time for this." the deathknight countered "The only reason I even gave this place a second look was to make sure you hadn't ended up on the business end of someone's sword. Your gear is still back at the campsite. Get mounted, we're leaving."
"To hell with you, Scourge." The paladin snarled "I won't just leave them like this!"
"There's nothing to be done for them, Tal-" To his right, Valiant left off his grazing, his head jerking upwards, ears pricked and swivelling alertly as the wind shifted. The two warriors left off what was sure to become a violent argument and watched the stallion trot over to the tree line with a great, blowing snort. He disappeared into the forest and Taliah stared after him blankly for a long moment before suddenly breaking into a run, pelting after the destrier. With an irritate sigh, Necrucian followed, keeping a tight reign on the deathcharger that looked over the corpses hungrily.
Valiant followed the scent of fear and the soft, mewling whimpers that drifted on the breeze. The dead leaves from the canopy above, still in the colours of late autumn, came down in a gentle shower as the destrier picked his way though a jumble of fieldstones. The stallion stopped at the source of the distress and cocked his head in curiosity. Reaching down, Valiant nosed the tiny, quivering form beneath a cedar bush. It squeaked in terror as his soft muzzle brushed against it and he looked over his shoulder as he heard his paladin crashing about in the brush in her efforts to catch up.
Taliah's feet slid in the damp autumn leaves, her eyes coming to rest on the trembling lump at Valiant's feet. "By the Light…" The paladin knelt and reached out slowly almost afraid that was she was seeing wasn't really there. The child, no more than a toddler, would not look at her, his tiny hands pressed to his dirty face. Her fingertips brushed his dark hair and the boy shrank from her touch. "I won't hurt you." Taliah's soft, gentle tone seemed to stir something in the toddler and his blue eyes opened. When he saw that she was human and not some sort of monstrosity, he leaped at her, his arms locking around her neck and burying his little face into her shoulder. Not really sure what else to do, Taliah put her arms about the boy and held him to her.
