When every breath brings pain, one learns to guard ones words.

Kolbe hadn't said much during the journey.  He'd spoken cordially but little with his fellow Knights and not at all with the commonfolk, and even now the captain's acerbic order drew only a low rumor of acknowledgement from behind the blank iron helm which hid that terrible, ravaged face.

Linus dismounted and planted the Aretan pennant in the center of the blackened ruin, driving the shaft hard into the dry earth and kicking up a thin cloud of dust.  The sapphire-and-gold banner flapped morosely in the hot breeze, specks of soot catching on its surface and marring the royal heraldry.  It was eerily quiet.

The perforated helm creaked left and right, taking in the scene.  Destruction and chaos.  Not a pillage or raid -- they'd stopped just shy of salting the damned earth.  This was the burning-brand of fear.  No human bodies.  Slaves?  Or sent fleeing, like the others flooding over the border?  Details. Like as not unimportant ones, for now.

What narrowed his mind was the timing.

They were following the King and his new wastrel friends.  The King had passed this way.  And this was all that was left in his wake.  Could be a number of conclusions a man could draw from that.  Were they here, when this happened?  Had the King of Areta been captured?  Or did...

[i]Hnh[/i].

He turned away from the thought, looking back to his fellows.  Old Falkenberg and Gerald the Giant, going about their duties and cursing the Elves aloud.  With no small reason, for that.  The further from the city's walls they'd come, the more ill rumor they'd heard of these savages and the cruel witchcraft they wrought along the river.  In the end, the only surprise was they hadn't come across this sooner--  

He felt the battle-roar in his bones almost before he heard it.  Gerald had found one alive.  Konrad was already on his feet and halfway there, ready to aid... or to mitigate whatever damage The Colossus was about to do in his fit of zeal.  Kolbe took his time, marching slowly, watching their backs.  He didn't know them well, and they like as not didn't well know him.  But instinct told him they were good brothers.  Brothers he knew he could depend on when the fat started to fry.  He'd pay them the same, in blood if need be.

The captain?  Could be that was another story.  Could be he might not be a man who'd do what needed to be done.  Time would tell.  

It always did.