The sweet aromas of the tulips, mint leaves, and cinnamon stuffed into the beak of Giradin's mask proved little comfort when the gates of Isselhan creaked open between the brick walls. A wind blew through those streets, carrying miasmic air out to the plague doctors standing outside the city. Even his mask couldn't keep out the horrible, rancid stench of death. Bodies of the infected littered the cobblestone, their eyes staring up into the charcoal skies above, as if pleading with God: "Why?"

"Help... us..." came a weak voice from within the city.

Giradin heard the cranking of crossbows behind him as his comrades prepared their weapons. Giradin did the same, turning his attention to the source of the cries.

What he'd previously believed to be corpses, covered in the black spots and bumps of the plague, crawled towards him with desperation in their eyes.

The plague doctors formed a line in front of the city's main entry.

"The plague must not spread!" called out the Master. "Stop them! Whatever it takes!"

One of the infected stood and ran for the open gate, and soon many more did the same. Giradin's weapon shook in his hands as he raised it to take aim.

A snap and a whistle.

A bolt flew past Giradin and lodged in the chest of one of the infected.

Giradin pulled the trigger on his crossbow.

The bolt pierced the leg of one of the charging beggars.

Seeing their fellow citizens fall only angered the remaining survivors, who now clenched their fists as they ran.

More bolts zipped through the air, finding their way into the plague victims' flesh. The infected cried out from pain and betrayal as they fell.

Giradin fumbled with his crossbow and the next bolt. The gauntlets he wore made handling his weapon all the more difficult, as did the terror which gripped his heart as more of the infected barreled towards him.

One of them shrieked as she drew close to Giradin, causing him to jump and drop the bolt in his fingers.

She was only a few strides away, this twisted creature who would surely condemn Giradin to death if only for a few more moments of life. Half of her scrawny, mostly naked body was covered in black sores, and where it wasn't her skin was sickly pale.

A spear thrust past Giradin and impaled her. Her body fell limp on the shaft.

Giradin glanced back at Fulk, his rescuer, breathed a sigh of relief, and immediately produced a new bolt from his quiver to reload his crossbow.

The carnage was over within a few seconds, but by the time it was done Giradin was certain he'd grown old.

As the fire in his blood died down, Giradin stopped to look upon those poor souls he and his comrades had slain. They lay upon the ground in pools of blood, their hands outstretched towards Giradin and the others as if begging to be pulled from a raging river. All they wanted was rescue from the certain death they faced within the city, but Giradin and the other doctors could offer them no such thing.

Contain the plague.

That was the order given to them.

We save more lives than we take.

That was the justification every doctor gave when they went to purge an infected city. Yet Giradin so rarely saw the lives they'd saved, only those they'd ended.

He looked down upon the face of the infected girl who'd nearly attacked him. She couldn't have been much older than fourteen, for the signs of womanhood had not yet fully developed. The lack of a hemp ring on her finger meant she'd not yet been married. Giradin imagined her coming back from the well one day, carrying a bucket of water for her parents, only to notice a strange bump on her arm which hadn't been there before. When she first laid eyes upon this letter from Death himself, saying he was coming soon to take her home, she surely covered it up with her sleeve, and didn't tell a soul. After all, had she spoken a word she would have been thrown out of the city. Left to starve in the wilderness, or be killed by bandits or beasts.

"Is anyone in Isselhan still alive?" shouted the Master. "We are going to burn the city! If you wish for a painless death, come and find us!"

Giradin sighed and looked away from the dead girl, turning his attention instead to the task at hand.

Giradin and the other thirty or so doctors, each clad in steel crow masks and chain-mail armor under black coats, turned to their Master to await his next orders.

"Spread out." The Master gestured to the city streets with the spear in his hand. "And prepare this city for the pyre. If any infected citizens seek you out give them the quick death they desire. If you see any rats or any Vermin," he spat the word with utter hatred for the monsters, "you are to call for help immediately, don't try to fight them all yourself, for where there is one Vermin there are surely many."

Why would the Vermin linger here? Giradin thought. Those beasts have already destroyed this city, what more could they hope to gain?

But he kept his questions to himself. What insight did anyone, even the Master, have into the minds of those wicked monsters? And the Master always hated to look like a fool, so it was best not to ask him questions he couldn't answer.

The Master continued, "Anyone still in that city is surely infected by now. Show no quarter."

Some invisible force tugged downward on Giradin's Adam's apple.

With creaking wheels, a wagon rolled in through the city gates. In the driver's seat sat another doctor in a crow mask, and the oxen pulling the wagon wore similar muzzles. The doctors hurried to the back of the wagon, each taking with him a small barrel marked "Dragon's Bile."

Giradin took his barrel and slung the straps over both shoulders, allowing him to carry it on his back. He always felt nervous, carrying such an explosive package, but knowing the Vermin were just as afraid of fire as he was gave him some comfort.

The city streets were silent as Giradin walked them alone, spraying Dragon's Bile all over the houses around him. Gothic buildings towered overhead, each once a home to not one but many families, all living in tight quarters. On a street corner, he spotted a house with an awning stretched out over an anvil and a smelter against a stone wall behind it. He imagined the local blacksmith, his hands covered in blisters as he worked on horseshoes. On the opposite corner, he noted a cobbler's shop, as evidenced by the sign with a shoe painted on it. For a brief moment, he wished he'd remained a cobbler's apprentice. Until he saw the bodies of the cobbler and his young assistant lying in the doorway.

In one hand Giradin held the hose attached to the barrel on his back, in the other he gripped his seax. He stepped over the bodies of the dead, using all the willpower within him to avert his eyes from theirs. If there was a Hell, it had come to visit Isselhan, and it was the plague doctors' job to purge it with fire, since God would not step in to do so.

"Doctor..." a small voice called out to him from a nearby pile of filth.

Giradin immediately returned the hose to the side of the barrel, ceasing the fuel's flow. "Yes, child?" Giradin said, lowering himself to his knees. "I'm here to help. Come out."

The filthy pile of blankets and clothes fell aside, and a girl of about ten years, whose face was covered in black sores, hobbled towards Giradin. His heart sank at the sight, and he bit his lip hard.

"Help me, please!" the girl begged. "There's still hope? Is there?"

Giradin fought to hold back the tears at the child's question. The answer was simple: no. There was no hope for her. There was no cure for the plague, and this girl was far past the point of any treatments which might have helped her recover on her own. No leeches could ever rid her of all the infected blood in her veins. Even as new as Giradin was to his job, he had learned this much from his training.

He knew the only solution he could offer, and the thought made his stomach turn.

"There is one thing we might try," said Giradin, swallowing the lump in his throat. He reached into his black coat and produced a small vial with a green liquid inside. "Take this. It will strengthen your body, and help you fight off the disease."

The girl took the vial, looked it over, then looked up at Giradin with despair in her eyes. "This is poison, isn't it? Meant to kill me quickly so I don't suffer any longer?"

For a moment, Giradin was tempted to lie to the child. It was bad enough someone so young had to die like this, at least he didn't want the child to die without hope. But Giradin was never good at lying, and as he looked into the girl's eyes, he found he couldn't bring himself to speak any more falsehoods to this child.

Giradin sighed and nodded. "Yes. Yes it is. I'm sorry I lied to you."

Again, the girl looked at the vial. Tears welled up in her eyes, she sniffled, and her lips pulled downward into a grimace of anguish.

"There's no reason to be afraid." Giradin tilted his head to one side in an attempt to make his masked face look slightly less terrifying. "The place God made for us is a realm where there is no more pain, no more sickness, and no more hunger. A paradise where we will all live in peace forever. A place so much better than any of this."

"Is that a lie too?" the girl looked up at him with a raised eyebrow. "Grown-ups lie all the time..."

Giradin stammered for a moment, then said, "It's what the Scriptures say, child."

"But do you think it's true, doctor?" pleaded the girl. "Please, tell me. They say doctors know everything. Are the Scriptures lying?"

"Doctors don't know everything," said Giradin with a sigh. "I really wish we did. I don't know if the Scriptures are true or not, but I believe."

"Why?" asked the girl.

"Because... because I have to," said Giradin. "Look around you..." He gestured with both hands at their macabre surroundings. "All this suffering... Don't you think that if there's a place which can get this bad, there must also be a place which can be just as good?"

The girl peered around at the bodies littering the street, nodded, then popped the cork on the vial and drank the green liquid inside. She gulped hard on every drop, forcing it down into her skinny body. Mere moments after she'd ingested the poison, her eyelids drooped, and she sat down on the ground. She mumbled something under her breath, then laid down on the street as if asleep.

Giradin's instinct was to grab whatever sheets or blankets he could find and pull them over the girl, as if to tuck her in, but he'd been warned time and again not to touch anything which might be infected, if he could help it. With a heavy sigh and a sinking heart, Giradin stood and left the girl's body there, taking comfort in the thought that someone so innocent was surely in a better place.

He continued down the streets, spreading the Dragon's Bile over piles of bodies to ensure they'd burn with the city. Every now and then, he stopped to check the shadows on the ground, knowing that if he was gone too long his fellows would burn the city down with or without his return.

The broken windows on the ground floors of every house and shop spoke to the looting which had taken place here when the people realized the city had been overrun with plague. Fools. Rather than fleeing death as quickly as they could, had stopped to try to make a profit on their way out.

How stupid they must have felt when the count's men had sealed the gates shut to contain the infected until the plague doctors could arrive.

Giradin tensed when he heard the sound of teeth gnawing on a bone, and he tightened his grip on his seax. Please, God, let that be a dog. Please let that be a dog.

When he peered around a corner to see the source of the unsettling noise, his eyes beheld a beast the size and shape of a man, but covered in brown fur. The creature had a long tail, resembling a giant worm, round ears upon its head, and a long snout in which it chewed upon a femur which had been picked clean of all meat.

The Vermin snapped its head back and glared at him with black eyes. Its lips curled in a snarl, and it leapt to its feet, taking an axe in its spindly fingers.

Giradin put away the hose and held his seax outward, extending the blade between him and the beast. The Vermin hissed, revealing teeth like those on a saw. His hands trembled.

But Giradin recalled the girl he'd just poisoned moments ago, and his fear turned to a burning rage in his heart. These monsters spread the plague intentionally, for little other reason, it seemed, than to kill people.

The beast lunged.

The axe chopped the air over Giradin's head as he ducked.

The doctor roared and drove his blade through the Vermin's chest. The creature recoiled, clutching its bleeding wound. Giradin raised his weapon over his head and brought it down on the monster's neck with all the force he could muster. He felt the bones separate, making way for his weapon, and heard the flesh tear. The axe hit the ground.

Claws flailed at Giradin's chest, but the leather coat and chain mail kept him safe from the rodent's desperate attack.

With a great tug, Giradin yanked his blade loose from the monster's body again and brought it down a second time, hacking at the Vermin's neck. Each gruesome chop ellicited screams from the creature, and every cry brought a vengeful smile to Giradin's face.

As the monster fell dead upon the city streets, and Giradin's blood cooled again, the Master's words echoed in Giradin's memory. Where there is one Vermin surely there are many.

A choir of high-pitched squeaks and scratching noises caught Giradin's ear. He looked up from the dead Vermin, across the street to see scores of dark lumps of fur pouring out of windows, gutters, and every hole in the wall just big enough for them to squeeze through. Swarms of rats scampered about, and Giradin knew the much bigger Vermin were soon to follow.

Giradin scurried away. From his pocket he produced a handkerchief and wiped off his blade, leaving the red-soaked cut of cloth in the streets.

Rounding a corner on his way to the exit, he heard the cries of one of his fellow Crows. Another plague doctor stood amidst a horde of rats, stamping his foot down to crush their little bodies. Each stomp splattered blood and viscera around his ankles.

Giradin was about to open his mouth to tell the fool to run, but before the words could escape his throat, a Vermin charged in and embedded his axe in the Crow's sternum. All Giradin could do was flee.

When he regrouped with his fellow doctors, they marched out of the city and forced the gates shut, barricading them with stones, logs, and whatever else they could find.

A line of archers stood outside the city, flaming arrows at the ready.

"Take aim!" the Master shouted, and the archers aimed their bows high.

"Draw!" the Master yelled, and each archer drew back his bowstring as far as he could.

The doctors knew what would come next, and knelt in front of the archers with their crossbows aimed at the gates.

"Loose!" the Master cried out, and dozens of flaming arrows sailed through the air and into the city of Isselhan. Within moments, the city was ablaze, and great shrieks and cries of agony rose with the smoke.

A loud crash at the gate.

The doctors watched carefully for signs of any living thing breaking through, be they infected or Vermin.

Another loud crash, followed by squealing and the hacking of axes on the other side.

Vermin!

Giradin did his best to calm his breathing and steady his hands as the gate cracked and splintered.

But the fire overtook the beasts within before they could break through, and when the gate burned down, there lay beyond its remains fire-cleaned bones of dozens of Vermin.

Two-thousand souls drifted up on the smoke to join the saints in Heaven that day. He could only hope that he'd see them on Judgment Day, and that Heaven had taken away any desire to avenge themselves on him.