Why Your Cities Burn, Part V

...A jolt ran though the broken men, like wraiths they rose, streamed for the door, Gobayth waved them on until nobody remained anymore. They raced on towards the small hut where all of the pick-aces lay, some guards were starting to notice, running about every which way. Gobayth wished the poor men luck, but he did not follow their path, and instead ran to the side gate the guards used to go out and back. It was little more than a door, and Gobayth figured these keys might just be what could open it, one of them did, and he was free! He heard the fight behind him race, but raced toward the stables dark, ducked low as two guards raced by, the sight nearly stopping his heart. He slipped in and grabbed a lean horse, didn’t bother with a saddle, rode it out and cantered northwards, by the stars, through night, he travelled. Come day he hid in deep forest, usually laying low by a stream, he’d eat whatever he could find, then make ground under the moon’s beams. Several days brought him to the moors, the great, rolling plains of his youth, he wanted to cry out in joy, but came to see a brutal truth. The grass was blackened, turned to ash, only some young seedlings poked through, fire had consumed everything, at least everything in his view. He saw no horses, cattle, goats, no herds ambling through their home, but as he pushed on he soon saw scattered heaps on animal bones, And further still, charred, half-burn tools, seared rawhide, skeletal ten frames, whole families were set ablaze, very little of them remained. He rode to where his family usually grazed this time of year, the landscape didn’t change that much, his stomach was a knot of fear. Then he found a burnt-up lodgepole, a falcon totem on the top, the metal bird, his family’s crest… Gobayth’s heart and reason stopped. Around the site were scattered bones, picked over by the scavengers, what remained of the ones he loved, Which were his sisters? His mother’s? On the bones he saw deep sword-cuts, this hadn’t just been the fire, people had killed them where they stood, a massacre had transpired. He searched the grass around the site, trying to find some sort of trace, he found a broken, steel spearpoint, the kind the Black Flint people made… CONCLUDES IN PART VI.