“Demons are beings of the Aether, just as we are beings of flesh. Though we have souls, they are bound to our bodies and ascend into heaven or descend into hell once this connection is severed. Demons, though spawned from hell, live in the Aether and come in many forms. Hellhounds are ravening beasts that devour dead souls. Imp are a little like a monkey in that they are passing clever. Other demons are altogether more terrible.”

Ciornio of Atratra, a discourse on humanity and the divine.

Hans Draiger. 5 September 1582 AAA. Foothold.

He saw their souls of the militia coming before he saw their bodies. Half a dozen mounted soldiers, some of them armoured in buff coats or padded jacks, and armed with swords, fowling pieces, pistols and a few hunting spears. They were riding up the road from Foothold, straight towards his house, partially concealed from view by hedgerows and the natural undulations in the ground. By the look of the soul one of them was a witch.

They’d made it eleven years in Trackford before anyone had tried to murder them. They’d have to restart that count now, he thought bitterly.

He gave their guns one last check over. They each had a 16 balls rolling musket(1), lightweight hunting pieces, while the massive 8 bore rest musket he’d bought for killing reapers and a double barrelled fowling piece were propped up against the wall. Their priming was in place, and the balls rammed down. They’d be able to fire five shots without needing to reload, and horses were big targets, while they had solid cover.

Besides him, Uln checked the edge of her falchion.

He shut his eyes again. They were barely a hundred yards away.

He peered around the edge of the doorway. Four of them-the ones with long guns, he noted-were dismounting while the other two took their horses. He blinked, matching their souls to the body. A blonde woman with a padded jack hurriedly thrown over her dress was the witch, he realized. He didn’t recognize her soul. Not a local.

That’ll make it easier, then.

“Shoot the witch first, if it comes to it. The one in the dress.” Hans said, jabbing his finger at her. “They come through the door, you hold it, I’ll keep them off you with witchcraft.”

“Yeah.” Uln grinned viciously, though Hans could tell she was afraid. “Kill their witch, protect my witch.” She sheathed her falchion and hefted her musket.

He blinked again. There were more souls coming, two dozen at least, at the edge of his third eye’s vision, and he could make out movement as some of them crested the low rises in the ground.

Mob.

They’ve got horses; we can’t run. They’ve got us outnumbered god knows how many to one; we can’t fight. They’ve got a witch, we can’t hide.

Fuck it, we’re going down together.

He remembered something he’d told Uln once. If they got caught up in another riot, and it was him or her, he’d rather be the one killed. At least his killers would face justice.

That was irrelevant now. If they couldn’t hold them off long enough for Eidre and Lorne to intervene, or if the O Mathunas didn’t intervene, they were both dead.

“We want you alive” someone called out.

“You’ve already tried to kill me. Liar!” Hans called back.

He glanced out the door again. Connor had moved up to twenty yards away, crouching behind a tree stump, with the other three dismounted fighters taking cover behind a rail fence, weapons levelled. A clump of men and women on foot with bills and muskets and longbows were coming into view, some of them arguing with one of the mounted militiamen.

He tried to make himself think clearly, even though his bowels were waters and his hands were beginning to shake.

“Come out, or we’ll fire your house!” Connor yelled.

“Fucking try it, murderers!” Uln yelled, and then Hans joined in with a yell of “Fuck off!”, and people were yelling “Kill the bastards!” and “Traitors!” and “Kill the woose bitch first, make him watch!”

There was an edge of real violence in the air, one that he’d felt before.

Someone hurled a rock, though it fell short, and then another that cracked the wooden slats of his window, and he heard the crack of a musket.

Hans made ready to fire.

“Down arms now!” someone screamed, and then a man on horseback galloped into view, between the house and the mob, and reined his horse in.

Hans recognized him from his balding brown hair. Lorne.

“Get out of the way, he sold us out to the wyverns.” Connor growled.

“I can assure you, he did no such thing.” Lorne said.

Connor hefted his musket.

“Just do it.”

“No. Down arms.” Lorne said.

The mob behind them had fallen silent.

Killing a traitor and a woose, sure, but killing the husband of the most powerful woman in Foothold… even an outraged mob drew the line at that.

“DO IT!” Connor screamed, his voice breaking.

Lorne’s horse skittered nervously, and he drew his sword.

“No.”

Connor aimed his musket at Lorne, cocking it with an audible creak.

“You’re making a mistake. Do this, you’ll hang!” Lorne said.

The militia sergeant hesitated, and then someone at the back yelled out “They’re coming!”

What?

Connor turned around. “Who?”

“Miss O Mathuna. She’s got riders with her.” someone called.

“Took her long enough.” Uln muttered.

The mob stood still for what seemed like an eternity, then he saw Eidre on horseback, with rapier drawn, and his third eye told him that she had fighters of her own coming up with her.

Connor was bellowing something at his own mob, and the yelling only increasing in loudness. He could make out words here and there-“Stand down!” and “bugger off, let justice be done”, but mostly it was a tide of noise, fifty odd voices merging into one roar. Eidre’s group edged in closer and closer, shuffling into something vaguely resembling a fighting line.

Everyone had their eyes on Eidre now, and their backs to Lorne.

Lorne backed off, glancing nervously at the mob, riding up to their door. “You’d best run. Get out, let them cool down. Get a head start on getting to Kasilisk.”

“Can’t do that until they’ve gone.”

“You in cahoots with those two as well?” someone yelled at Lorne.

Connor. The man was approaching Lorne again, his musket still held ready, apparently ignoring Eidre’s militia behind them.

“Oh, for fucks sake, I don’t approve of murder. Of humans or wyverns.” Lorne yelled back.

He vaguely heard Eidre shouting about nooses and Wooses behind them.

“Oi, Lorne. Give me one reason that Han’s innocent, will you?”

“The fact that you’ve no evidence any of this happened, besides hearsay. The fact that Eidre recruited Hans to go out there. The fact that we aren’t currently being raided by a war-skein. They fly faster than boats, you know.”

Connor spat. “And? You’ve no proof he didn’t. Besides, if he’s innocent, why’d he use witchcraft on me?”

Hans resisted the urge to yell out “Because your wife drew a falchion on me!”.

Reminding Connor that he was still right there would likely result in his own wife having to draw a falchion on Connor.

“You were the ones who started shooting.” Lorne said.

Hans glanced at the crowd. They seemed to have shrunk a little, people slinking off now that there was a real risk of facing consequences, and the fight had gone out of them.

Behind them, he heard a yell of “advance!” as Eidre and her militia began to push forwards, levelling bills and musket barrels. No shots were fired and no swords were swung, the mob quickly parting as Eidre wedged through the middle of the group. Attacking one of the biggest landowners in Foothold was a rather poor idea. They about faced after they broke through, putting themselves between the mob and his house.

Eidre broke off from the group and dismounted.

“Best get out of here. We’ll catch up to you on the road, or in Kasilisk.”

“Won’t leaving make us all look suspicious?” Hans asked, pushing his musket to half cock.

Eidre shrugged. “Better than getting lynched. If it happened as I suspect it did, Connor will have you killed by a marksman if he can’t do it with a mob.”

“Aye.” Hans agreed. “Just get that lot to go home and we can be gone within an hour.”

They were quite capable of carrying everything they needed to survive on their backs, and did it every summer trapping season. They’d lived rough on the road before as well, after the silver riots, and that was without it being a relatively short journey. Those had been hard times, but they’d survived.

We always do.

1: A rather odd notation of calibre, equal to the number of balls it takes to make up a pound-so the same as gauge, except not because the balls have to roll down the barrel. It’s terribly confusing comparing calibres between texts where one author has listed it as balls rolling and the other as balls to the pound, especially since there’s no clear way to convert them.