From just outside the gate, Itchy could tell little about the state inside the walls of Glowigham. Smoke spiraled out from several focal points of flames, but they did not seem to originate from the very front of the city. They appeared to rise from what Itchy would have characterized as a midline across the diameter. In front of him, about fifty soldiers mingled on the road and the grass that led up to the city, but with almost 200 troops of his own, the soldiers did not trouble Itchy.

Trying to enter the gate unnoticed would prove trickier, and so Itchy took a small contingent of men and made a circuit around the city. In several places, the landscape rose, and the ground rested significantly closer to the top of the wall. He and his men could easily mount the barrier and safely reach the other side. After testing the theory and ascertaining that he would not send his men into attack or fire, Itchy returned to the mass of men who awaited his order. He couldn’t help but grin at the thought that leading men proved not so different than leading dogs. Itchy only need look the men in the face, speak with a sharp tongue and a straightforward command, and have no fear.

After giving clear directions to the men he left with the rear guard, Itchy led the forward contingent through the largely abandoned city gate. The rear guard would utilize the wall breaches. The city lay in ruins, but Itchy did not let the men stop to consider the devastation. Eventually, they would encounter opposition, but until they did, the contingent needed to minimize collateral damage.

“Spread out,” he commanded. “Our foremost goal must be to find and lend aid to our leader. On the way, instruct as many as you can as to the ways they can escape. Point out to them the roads upon which you entered and then continue on your way to find Friend Jess.” Even now, Itchy dare not refer to Jameson by his real name. Although some among the troops knew his identity, many did not. Plus, in such an insecure environment, news could find many avenues by which to travel to the enemy.

When he considered the mad excursion his master had undertaken with his troops, Itchy realized that perhaps Capigan had stumbled on a brilliant idea. Men who would run into a blazing furnace for their leader would likely hold no difficulty facing a mundane skirmish with soldiers, and so the Glowigham rescue mission would prove an excellent trial run for the coming battle against Maximus. Plus, men who had already handed their allegiance to a leader would take little persuasion to believe him nigh a king. You’re a wily one, Friend Jess, Itchy smirked as he surveyed the scene before him.

After a minute, Itchy followed his own advice to the troops and began to scour the city for any sign of Jameson. Perhaps the young man had already accomplished his purpose and had fled through some unknown means, but Itchy must do such diligence that he remained with no doubt. Along the way, he could help those who presented themselves in need. Though several buildings still burned, most in the second row had smoldered down to a shell of stone, and the troops scuttled rapidly through the streets in search of their leader.

Within a few moments, Itchy found himself on the backside of the fires in an oven of untouched houses. Any second, these too would erupt into flames, but the manifold skirmishes that had sprung up along the route seemed destined to delay the destruction of Glowigham.

++++++++++++++++

Though Malchus’s men searched diligently, they found no sign of Edrick or his mother until they reached almost the back edge of the town. When Edrick did appear, he offered no information that would prove helpful to Malchus or his cause. A man who had stupidly betrayed his own mother had seemed unlikely to possess the fortitude to resist physical suffering, but even after a few well-placed backhands from Malchus, Edrick would tell the soldiers nothing.

“My mother is not here!” he kept insisting, but Malchus felt confident in Kirk’s original information and made sure to punish the errant soldier for his lies.

Before long, Malchus tired of the fruitless efforts to break the faithful son’s allegiance. “Beat him some more,” Malchus barked. “If he breaks, come and find me. If he does not, tie him up in one of these buildings before you set it on fire.

Edrick lay beyond tears, his body taking him past his pain, and his mind wandered to his mother. After all he had suffered, she must live. He could not know for sure, but his dying soul grasped onto hope and used it to keep his heart beating. After almost half an hour of torture, the soldiers dragged Edrick’s body, broken and bleeding, into a nearby house before setting the home ablaze.

++++++++++++++++

Finally, Aylee felt confident that she had reached every house she could manage without placing herself too close to the fire. Perhaps, she realized, the fire would not have burned so intensely if not for a complex building project that seemed to have blanketed the city in wooden scaffolding. Somehow, the crowd had grown even beyond her and Chester’s effort – perhaps they had begun to awaken each other. Most of the townsfolk she had encountered by this time had fled the town through the makeshift gateway that Chester had hacked out of the wall’s conduit system. As Aylee headed toward the opening, she reached for an elderly woman who could barely hold herself up in the gently flowing stream of water.

“Aylee!” came Chester’s cry. “Aylee! I'll be right back. I hear a goat!” he insisted. “Just over there a few houses over. It’s nowhere near the fire, so I’m going to go save it.”

“Chester, wait!” she replied, though she knew he would not listen. Glancing around her, Aylee spied a broom that some ineffectual cleaner had placed upon her doorstep. Turning it upside down, she placed it under the old woman’s arms and guided her to a little cluster of women with their infants. “Take care of her,” Aylee insisted. She rushed after Chester, determined to bring him with her whether he had found the goat or not. Instead of a goat, though, Aylee encountered a wholly unexpected scene when she entered the home into which her brother had disappeared.

Lying on the floor rested a middle-aged man, his face covered in blood and his body bruised and bleeding in several locations. He did not look as if a fireshot had caused his injuries, but numerous clubs and sticks instead. One of his arms lay at an unusual angle, and though she had never suffered from a weak stomach, Aylee found herself forced to look away.

Chester seemed in his most natural state, bent over his patient, examining wounds. For the first time since she could remember, Aylee admired her little brother.

“My mother!” the patient gasped. “You must...my mother!”

Though she had glanced away before, his words and vehemence moved her, and Aylee found herself kneeling beside him, her ear to his lips. “Tell me again,” she commanded.

“My mother is in the chapel. Save her! Save her!” The final “save her” choked on its way out, and Aylee reached her hand to the patient’s to offer him solace.

“Who is your mother?” Aylee demanded.

“Miss Joffrey! Go!” he commanded, and Aylee scramble to her feet, dumbfounded.

Miss Joffrey? Everything in Aylee erupted in chills. Miss Joffrey was this man’s mother? A man who held more than a decade on Aylee herself?

Jess had told her the truth.

He had told her the truth, and she had pulled a knife on him. Something like guilt erupted in her chest at the realization. Still, how did he explain his presence among Malchus and his troops? How did he explain why he wore the same seal? No, he had told her the truth once, but that did not prove him an honest man. Did not deceivers bear the truth as a mask? Well, whether the honorable Jess were going to save the woman or the ignoble Jess were not, Aylee could not take the chance with a woman’s life.

“He’s right,” Aylee informed her unhearing brother. “Chester, he’s right!” she insisted with more force, and her brother looked away from his patient for long enough to peer gravely into his sister’s eyes. “Malchus only has one more row of buildings to burn, and this man seems to believe that his mother needs help. You can’t stay here to treat him, so move your patient as soon as you possibly can before you both cook in the flame.”

“But I can’t -” Chester tried to protest. A fire had consumed the northern corner of the roof and was fast approaching the door. The eaves would soon collapse into the home.

“There is not time to argue, Chester!” Aylee gestured to the eaves. “Drag that coverlet over here and you and I can place him upon it. Once he is there, you drag him to the conduit. Perhaps you can use a board as a ferry to carry him to safety. “Just, go. I will meet you after I retrieve his mother.”

Aylee turned to go.

“Sister,” Chester called her back just before dragging the man through the door. He lay the man gently on the stone of the courtyard before approaching her. As her father always did, Chester placed his hands on both of Aylee’s shoulders and peered straight into her eyes with intense ferocity. “Be careful,” he commanded. “You are my sister, and I love you.”

To her knowledge, Aylee had never heard her brother say those words, and the sweetness of the situation brought a huge smile to her lips, even in such dire circumstance. “I love you, too, little brother. I will meet you at the horses.” She wrapped him up in a massive hug before bolting from the house. With a maze of fire and smoke before her, she needed to focus all her faculties on finding the “chapel.” She prayed that she would not encounter Jess there, not find further proof of his infamy. If she returned home with only her imagination of the truth, she would consider it a gift.

Though the roads tangled in a maze of directions, the maze eventually cleared, and Aylee found herself on the ultimate road at the back of the city. It ran parallel to the back wall and had no intersections leading away from it. As she broke through past the wall of homes, Aylee peered back and forth along the road to determine the location of the chapel. At the western end of the road, she could make out an open expanse - what looked like an extensive plaza or courtyard.

She balked when she noticed the soldiers. Though not large in number, they all wore a ferocious aggression on their faces, and several carried torches. Cries of “spite the peer!” and “death to nobles!” punctuated the air, largely shouted by retreating villagers, and Aylee’s worries rebelled against her disinterest.

Before her arose a terrible image: the picture of Edrick beaten and bloodied, tied up and thrown into a burning house. Her traitorous mind replaced Edrick with Jess. Jess beaten, Jess bound, and Jess burning. Why did she care? She could not answer that question. He’s in charge of the troops. They will protect him.

Shoving the thoughts to the depths of her mind, she approached the clearing that lay before her. Abruptly. she became aware of a new sound, and looking around her, she noticed that the soldiers had stopped burning buildings and found themselves forced to fight. To her relief, she registered the presence of a series of armed men – perhaps a village militia – engaging in battle against the uniformed forces. Her residual instinct of connection to Jess worried at the new development, but her reason forced her to celebrate. Whatever their source, whether a dissident militia or determined citizens, they would fought against Malchus, and Aylee could not lament the fact.

The fights resulted in significant difficulty for the troops – Jess’s troops – and she changed her pace of approach, beginning a stealthy slink along the nooks and crannies of the buildings she passed. Her only fear now lay in interfering with one of the militia who would stop the burning of the village. From what she could tell, they struggled against mounting odds since the fire had begun to lick to the top of the edifices near the chapel. Soon, all the men would have to flee to avoid death by flame.

Though she wanted to turn around, Aylee had promised the poor, battered man that she would help his mother. Still, she could not access the chapel from the large wooden doors in the front. Not only would that require that she pass, exposed, by several sets of fighting soldiers, many of whom she thought she recognized, but she could also see a cluster of the uniformed soldiers right at the entrance, apparently intent on opening the door and getting inside.

From her position on the outskirts of the courtyard, Aylee could see nothing behind her, but she began to feel the heat that radiated from the newly set fires. The fire had not yet reached its full blaze, but the heat had grown almost unbearable. Though they tried to hold their positions, the soldiers began to flee to avoid the sweltering air, and the militia followed soon after. A face caught Aylee’s eye, and her step faltered. Landro? Why was Landro inside the village – fighting a man wearing Jess’s seal?

So many things didn’t add up. Unfortunately, with fire blazing around her, she could not take the time for anything but accomplishing her task and surviving. Aiming her sights at the chapel, she dashed from her hiding place and out into the clearing.

+++++++++++++

Itchy would have loved to clear out of the rapidly expanding furnace that seemed to bake the earth around him, but he could not abandon Jameson to whatever fate the soldiers had in mind. As the rest of the soldiers had absconded, Itchy simply exited the shelter of a house and rushed out into the courtyard with its cooler air.

When the soldiers had begun to stream out from the burning streets, Malchus Lorne's temper had risen as high as the flames. He had not come so far just to see a group of cowardly soldiers thwart his plan. Of all of the responsibilities with which Maximus had tasked him, Malchus recognized his most vital as that of finding the rogue noble. The pillaging and burning was concomitant to the real objective. If Malchus returned to Capigan without news of the noble's location or identity, Paulus would find someone else to further his plan. That could not happen.

He had never expected a moderate hamlet to lie so well-protected, to maintain a standing army within its walls. Certainly, no noble lived within the broken-down walls, and he knew from Bennigton that a community militia rarely held a high level of capability. Yet the well-trained soldiers Malchus had conscripted ran from a flame while the city’s defenders ran them out. His troops should have had better sense - why had they forgotten about the planned escape corridor, well laid out and intentionally fire-free. It lay clear and cool along the northern wall, and they could easily have made their egress after accomplishing their task rather than run away in a panic.

Of course, Malchus would not acknowledge that the city's troops had prevented the soldiers from following any of their protocols. The men felt lucky that they had managed to set the fires at all. Now Malchus stood basically alone, the commander forced to carry out the mission that should have been managed by the foot soldiers. His rage simmered as he turned toward the small cadre of his few competent soldiers who still attempted to force the chapel door open.

Now that he saw it, Malchus knew that this location would prove the most logical place for the traitorous Edrick to stash his mother if he were to protect her from the fire. He needed that old woman’s knowledge! He needed the noble! Plunging into a melee that had broken out a few feet from the door, he prepared to bolt rapidly past the mass of bodies clashing amidst the roar of flame. To his utter amazement, he caught sight of a young woman on the edge of his vision. His initial instincts lay in the thought that he witnessed a desperate escape attempt by a nearby villager, but as he got closer, he caught sight of the face attached to the feminine form.

Aylee Hembry.

A wicked grin spread across Malchus’s handsome face.

Staring into the courtyard at the figure on the other side, Malchus felt a rush of excitement burst through him. For weeks, he had set aside his deepest personal ambition to embrace a broader plan with promise of epic payout. Still, now the paths of his two great ambitions had merged, and he could not have imagined a better moment. More than the old woman, more than the noble, more than Maximus and his scheme, Malchus wanted Aylee. He had always wanted Aylee, and she had spurned him and rejected him despite his unambiguous advantages over her. Now that he had her in his sights, he intended both to possess her and to exact his revenge on her. To his delight, she stood exposed before him, completely unprotected by any outside force. The fire would prevent anyone new from entering the area, and the men were entirely too engaged in battle to interfere with anything Malchus might resolve to do. Inside of a minute, Malchus Lorne stood only a stride away from his prey.

Intent on the chapel, Aylee did not see Malchus until he stood within a yard of her. She could not believe her eyes, though the presence of the scoundrel should not have surprised her. Had she not come to the city knowing of his presence within? Still, to see him appear so close and without preamble nearly felled Aylee's strength without a blow. If Aylee had feared his expression back when she stood in that alley, the fury in his eyes now surpassed it tenfold. It sapped every ounce of courage that she possessed; how could anyone hate her so profoundly?

Before she could cry out, he had dismounted his horse and had his arms around her, throwing her over his shoulder and heading directly toward a small shed which lay aside the chapel. When she did find her voice, her screams dissolved into the roar of the fire, and she knew that no one would hear her against such tumult as reigned in that courtyard. With everything within her, she fought against the power that pulsed through the massive frame of Malchus. No amount of hair in her fingers or blood under her fingernails seemed to deter him, however. In fact, the more she kicked and flailed, the stronger became his grasp, and when he at last grew tired of her attacks, he simply threw her to the ground and bashed her across the face.

The effect was instantaneous. As if impotent, Aylee spiraled to the ground, her mind unable to process anything but the burning pain of the strike against her cheek. A few moments later, the noise of the soldiers had faded, the crackle from the fire, and the intense heat had all melted to a dull ashy grey. As she swam in blackness, the vice grip of Malchus Lorne hoisted her the rest of the way into his arms and away from her own consciousness.

Just before Itchy crossed to the chapel, an unexpected sound drew his attention away from the door upon which he had set his sights. The sound. A child? An animal? A scream of some sort, just brushing past the roar and crackle of the blaze. When he turned to find the source, he froze in indecision. Before him lay an untenable situation, and though he instinctively knew his only option, the realization sickened him. Aylee Hembry, screaming and struggling and fighting as she was dragged into a shed by Malchus Lorne. If anyone else saw the pair, they either didn’t care or couldn’t stop their own battle to intervene. Only Itchy was free to stop the horror that was unfolding before him.

Unfortunately, though, Jameson lay in similar peril, and every ounce of loyalty from childhood to servant to soldier and friend pulled on Itchy with a near inexorable force. When he remembered the old woman, she offered a buttress for his conscience, that she, too, lay in dire peril. Perhaps he could manage both rescues, offering Jameson enough aid to help him out of the furnace and then make it back to help Aylee. Though if Aylee suffered before then, Itchy might lose Jameson's friendship altogether; regardless, he could not allow his master and friend to face insurmountable odds alone. In the end, he decided that he would save the two before rushing back to secure the one. He prayed that he would not be too late. The terror of nature or the terror of man? Itchy knew which was worse, but he could not abandon his master.

With his decision made, Itchy quickly analyzed the chapel from his position. He looked at the northern side of the chapel, and he could make out a small door at the back of the building, directly in front of him. Not looking around, he single-mindedly sprinted for that door. Just as he reached it, he glanced up to see, on the other side of the building, where Malchus entered the shed with the lifeless Aylee.

Itchy wanted to wretch at the nausea that overwhelmed him with his sense of powerlessness. Bursting through into the chapel, Itchy found himself at the end of a dark corridor, so dark that the pools of light from the candles seemed more like impotent bubbles completely isolated from the rest of the air.

Before he could step a few feet into the hall, a sliver of light opened at the opposite end, and Itchy saw the form of Jameson silhouetted against the outside light.

“Master!” Itchy bellowed, unwilling that his master happen upon Malchus unaware.

Completely taken aback, Jameson spun toward the darkness, certain of the owner of the voice he had heard.

“Itchy, I'm here!”

“Come this way, master. There is a clear path to the front of the city, free of fire, directly outside this door.” As he spoke, Itchy shuffled through the inky air as rapidly as he could manage. To his left, he heard a splintering sound, and as he glanced toward the noise, he distinguished the form of several soldiers where they spilled into the chapel. He crossed in front of them unnoticed and reached the shadow of the adjoining hall where Jameson met him and handed him a burden.

“Take her,” Jameson handed Itchy the hand of Edrick's mother. “Lead us out, but if I get separated, make sure you get her out.”

Rather than obey, Itchy placed his hand on his master's arm. “But, Aylee, sir,” he panted. The sprint across the courtyard had stolen his breath.

“Did you say Aylee?” Jameson begged, arresting his foot midstep. “What about Aylee?” A deep fear gripped his heart. He had seen her over the wall, hadn’t he? No. He had seen her atop the wall. Was she not just the type of person who would, for strategy’s sake, appear to concede with no real intent to do so? She could easily have watched him away and then dropped right back into the town while he was distracted by that couple in the fire.

“You must take the woman,” Itchy commanded. “I have just seen Aylee, and she is in need of my aid.”

“Your aid,” Jameson scoffed. He gripped Itchy gently by the collar to engage his gaze. “If Aylee is in need of aid, it is I who will render it.”

“You have responsibilities, Master. Your father, your people.”

“I know your duty to me.” He gripped his friend’s arm. “I know your loyalty to me. And I know you want to keep me safe, but this is Aylee.”

If Itchy forced Jameson’s hand and Aylee perished, the domain’s heir would suffer a serious blow despite his physical safety. Itchy did not protest, therefore, when Jameson handed off Miss Joffrey. “It’s Aylee, he agreed.

“You take the woman. Where is Aylee?”

Resigned, Itchy pointed toward the far door. “The shed,” he leveled soberly.

The word enveloped Jameson with a sense of dread. The shed lay the opposite direction from the fire, so the danger could not lie with flame. Any danger from the shed came in the form of human hands. Of all the terrible fates that could befall her, the seclusion of the shed might prove the worst.

Though Itchy tried to yell out the name Malchus, he could not get the word out of his mouth until Jameson had reached the end of the corridor. With the creaking of the door, Jameson heard only the echo of the voice, not the content.