Edwin held his thigh before they put the leather straps on him. They reeled his arms back against the white bed and filled the notched holes one size too tight. The veins bulged from his arms. They stuck a piece of bark in his mouth that he spat out at first, then begged for at last. Men and women in white cloaks shuffled through wearing headwraps long and down to their waist. Virgil looked from the corner of the room, unblinking. He closed his eyes and shook his head and rubbed his forehead. The doctors grabbed a saw and started down on his knee. The blood sprayed down the blanket fort they’d set above his leg. A canopy that stained itself with squirts of red. Doctors shuffled. Tools changed hands. One broke bone. The other tore it. One cut flesh, the other sowed it. And when it was all over and the cut was neat and all extremeties exposed with suckling desperation, with Edwin too tired to scream and facing Virgil, the man with the hot plate arrived. An iron that was steaming in the air, bright red. They brought it close to Edwin and told him - “Easy. It’s over now.”

Edwin looked away and up the tent. He took a deep breath and -

I walked out of the tent and rubbed my face. Sylas whistled at me, arms crossed.

“How’s he doing?” He asked.

He wore his green cloak. The hood covered his eyes and left a gaunt shadow where his face should have been. His head hung low. He stood against the tent post, the sun was against us both but I could not feel the heat.

“How do you think?” I asked.

“It sounded bad. Will he make it?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a relief.”

“His leg is gone.”

“Does his brother know?” Sylas asked.

“No. Not yet.” I said.

“I’ll tell him.”

“No. You won’t. I will.” I said. “It’s my fault, it’s my responsibility.”

“I am the Captain. It’s a Captain’s duty.”

“Please. As if anyone believes that.” I turned to him. “All of them trusted me as the Captain. I will honor that trust with the heat of the blame I deserve. That man will never walk because of me, not you - me.”

Sylas stood up against the post. He turned his face away.

“Alright. You want to shoulder it? Then go ahead.” He said. “It’s a hard road to walk. I just wanted to offer you at least something of an escape.”

“Escape?” I asked. “Escape what?”

He said nothing of it turning his shadowy face towards me and slinking away into the rivers of man that passed us by. And what a river it was in this little gap in the hollows of the rocks. Men looking for their helmets, looking for their weapons, all with some renewed contempt in their eyes and a heat in their breaths that could only go away through the cold of death. They made streaks in the cracked earth for their horses, they tightened their bowstrings, they laughed and they groaned. I waited at the front of the tent for the shadows inside to stop moving, for the shouting to cease and for the operation to be complete. Not that I could talk to Edwin post-amputation, but that I could at least see that it went as well as I could. I peeked inside for a moment and saw his leg wrapped in bandages. Edwin was unconscious with his head slanted to the side of a makeshift bed. His armor lay underneath, the beads of sweat rolled down his face. A nurse kept them padded off and traced the shape of his face with a warm towel. It seemed more than a simple gesture, a caress for the cripple. She turned to me and out of instinct I closed the curtains.

“Don’t drive yourself crazy with what happened.” Virgil said. Not that the words would help or could help my situation. I was already crazy, and you don’t drive yourself further past where I was.

“Yeah.” I got on my horseback. My men in front and in back of me. The other Captains (those we’d taken at least) organized their men and went forward. And for once Vincent and I followed their loose trail watching the clouds of dust form and dissipate in front of us.

“You two cleared them out at least. I sent another scouting team. None of them found a bomber.” He said.

“Yeah.”

“You killed two of them. What do you want to do with the other six?” Vincent asked.

“Kill them.”

“That’s good to hear from you.” He said. “You’ve got the bloodlust. But we can’t do that quite yet.”

“I want them all dead. The prisoners too. Every single one of them.” I said.

Vincent turned to me. His eyes growing wide, the depth of color of his ruby eyes growing brighter. Perhaps it was the sun reflected off his face or perhaps it was something worse, something within him. The furnace crackling with embers renewed.

“No. Sorry.” Vincent said. “But there’ll be plenty more, I believe. And a hunt greater than those before waiting for you in the caves.”

“Caves?”

“Oh? They haven’t told you?” Vincent asked. “The scouts found Duvall.”

“Then lets go.” I hugged the horse and braced to gallop fast through the crowds of men marching down the path. Vincent held my reign and took my hand off it.

“No need for that, friend.” He said. “We found him retreating into a cave. There’s nowhere for him to go.”

I turned to him and saw him smirking. Bright and straight teeth, his cherub face and button nose and hot-blooded lips, his rosy cheeks and platinum hair. The look of an angel with a fiendish expression on himself. A progenitor of evil; infant angel of death. Vincent leaned into me, my face close to his own. There was no embrace and no love, no kiss or hug. Nothing of that sort here. He leaned to me with wide ruby eyes open and bright.

“We will starve them and slaughter whatever remains.”

I reeled back.

“For Edwin, of course.”

“Of course.” Vincent said.

The path lead through those same trails, through those same explosions. I saw the morning’s story unfolding before me with my marching army. The barrels that had ruined the sides of mountains, the patches of cactus and expanding width of the road. The two plateau’s giving way to smaller gaps where pillars of stone rose high in varying colors of orange and yellow, the sediments and minerals across their faces sparkling like gemstones interred. Creatures so awed by the presence that they froze to the earthquake of our synchronized walk. We came to the two bodies. Neither had been cleaned up. I’d ordered the desecration. Vultures had already started pecking at them, flying away as we came up to spoil their meal. Bits of their cheeks had been devoured, their teeth showed in the gaps of their wounds.

Upon the younger man, the one I had cut against the face, I could see the purple and yellow illness that’d formed on his face. Raised bedding of flesh like a collection of boils. It deformed his eyes, spreading them further away. It almost looked like mushroom growth across his face. I spat on the floor and kept to the march.

We eventually stopped at around midday with what remained of our men waiting in a circle around the mouth of a cave. Men haggard and bitter, men with bandages on their eyes and legs and arms, men tired and grunting, holding their weapons against their breastplate and tapping at the floor with their feet. Vincent and I waved through them. The Captain’s had already set up before the mouth and watched over their soldiers toil through the wreckage.

For right in front of that cave mouth, wagons and stones had been placed and barricaded it. And behind that barricade stood even more wood. One of the soldiers took out a wheel and rolled it down the floor, his hand approached what seemed like a gap. A spear jutted out and he jumped out of the way.

“Be careful. They’re desperate.” I said.

Something of stone, perhaps a small rock, filled the gap from beyond the barricade. It was a small mouth, no larger than a few men. And as such, the few carts they had was enough to settle a barrier. Clean axe cuts had been taken at the frames, they’d been chopped to pieces and forced to fill every inch of open space. And between that, more rocks and dirt and mud.

“How long do you think they’ll last in there?” I asked.

“I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know what they took with them or how many are truly left.” He said. “We sent the fast ones up ahead, turns out there’s a narrow cliff way. Somewhere in the bend, I guess we all took the wrong path. Which means they probably reached that point and realized they were cornered, so they fled here to shell-up.”

“Why didn’t Duvall leave? Just him?”

“You don’t know who Duvall is. Do you? Running away from Blackwater must have been the hardest decision of his life. I doubt he’d make it twice.”

“So you know who he is?” I asked.

“In a way. Don’t think too much about anything. We’ll have plenty of time for that.” Vincent turned to his army. “Set up watch guards. Set up scouts, I want ever other cave entrance explored. We will drown these rats out.”