“Then they should have called for a deacon or a frater, not this unholy weaving and binding.”
Their party did not tarry but rode past nervously. There was not even a carrion crow in sight. Alain heard no birds at all. Once the clearing lay behind them, Ildoin looked back at Arcod, who was riding at the back of the group, before judging it safe to speak to Alain.
“I’m glad your hounds are with us. It fair gives me the creeps, it’s so dead and quiet here. I wonder where all the farming folk have gone.”
“Fled, most like,” said Alain. “Gone to find kinfolk who will take them in. If anyone will take them in. Didn’t you pass this way just a fortnight ago?”
“In rain and wind,” agreed Ildoin, scratching his stubbly chin. Like the other clerics, he was letting his beard grow rather than struggle to keep it shaven on the march. “We were housed and fed hospitably enough. By Vespers we should come to a little river where there’s a village. They put us up for one night. When we came north, the murrain hadn’t reached them, although we brought them rumor of it from what we’d seen on our journey south of the river.”
“I wonder where the birds have flown,” said Alain, “and what they’re so afraid of that they’ve stopped singing.”
The village had a tiny wood church, a mill, and six houses in addition to the dock where a ferryboat was tied up, but it had no people and not even dogs or chickens. Every door had a wreath of plants and carved amulets hanging above the threshold, but these protective measures had not spared the inhabitants. There was no sign of any living thing.
They hurried through the commons and down to the riverside. The hounds were skittish, sniffing the air as though they sensed danger but could not place its locus. The sturdy ferry rope should have ridden taut between the deeply driven posts on either side of the narrow river, but it had been cut. The near end flapped in the current, dancing in water running high with spring rain and distant snow melt. Alain dismounted and drew the cut line up to shore. The end had frayed with the beating it had taken in the river, leaving a sodden mass of splitting rope in his hands. To cross the river they would have to row, or swim. He examined the silent village while Arcod sent two pairs of men to reconnoiter. The hounds would not sit. Rage growled low in her throat. Sorrow whined nervously.
“There’s a trench dug out there.” Ildoin pointed to a patchwork of fields beyond the outermost house. “It looks fresh.”
“Mayhap there’s a shovel to be found—” said Alain.
“No need to probe so closely,” said Arcod. “You and I and the lad will go. The rest can stay here to watch over the horses.”
Leaving the other clerics in the road, Alain, Ildoin, and Arcod walked out across four unplowed fields laid down in long strips, to the fifth field, which was still stubbled with the remains of last autumn’s wheat. The smell hit before they got close enough to see what the long mound of fresh dirt concealed. The stench of burned flesh was made worse by the stink of putrefaction. Ildoin gagged as all color washed out of his face. Arcod covered his nose with the tip of his sleeve.
“Rage! Come!” Alain commanded, but she sat down at the edge of the field and whined, head cocked in the direction of the men waiting by the horses.
“It is the murrain,” said Arcod as Sorrow got the top layer of dirt dug away. The smell of burned flesh billowed up from the trench. Sorrow nosed among the tangled, scorched legs of sheep with strips of skin still hanging from bone. The poor sick creatures had been burned in haste and buried before the job was properly finished. But the hound scratched, seeking another scent that teased and eluded him. As the dirt spilled down on either side, maggots swarmed out of the earth, a writhing mass of them that scattered to safety and vanished back into the disturbed earth. At the sight of them, Ildoin staggered back, fell to his knees, and vomited onto the ground.
Sorrow uncovered a boot. It still had a foot in it. Sorrow nosed at it, then gripped the leather toe in his teeth and threw it sideways. It tumbled over to reveal a gaping putrid wound where the foot had been hacked off at the ankle. Bile churned in Alain’s stomach, but he forced himself to probe for the rest of the body. No person deserved to be thrown out like rubbish.
“God help us,” said Arcod, looking stricken and white. He hung back, unwilling to get any closer.
“I can dig better if you would give me your staff,” said Alain. “I don’t really want to dig for the rest of the corpse with my bare hands.”
Arcod seemed not to have heard him. “What manner of brute chops up a man as if he were a cow?” He was shaking so hard that his death grip on the staff was the only thing keeping him upright.