carried a hunting knife. Fil did not look like the boy he remembered, he seemed to have aged many years in one night.
“I think so,” Jonas nodded slowly, solemnly, his eyes huge as he tremulously voiced the question, “Wh-what happened?”
Fil didn’t know how to tell the poor boy that his mother was dead and that their town was destroyed. He was never great with words so he just kept it simple. “Everything is destroyed, Jonas. Our town is gone. The Banthra and the cavalier both died in the fight.”
“And my mother?” Jonas asked, although he knew the answer even as he asked the question.
“She is dead. Everyone is dead. My family…everyone is gone.” Emotions finally claimed Fil for the first time. Tears poured down his face and he didn’t fight them, he let them come. He allowed grief to overwhelm him, for he knew that this would be the last time that he would grieve. The tears spilled forth, as he wept unabashedly for each member of his family and for all his friends and neighbors who had perished.
Jonas fell to his knees, his grief grabbing him roughly and weighing him down. He crumpled to the floor and cried in anguish. Fil stumbled towards him and held him in his arms as they both wept, trying to break the dam of pain and grief with a torrent of tears.
***
Jonas didn’t know how long he had laid there; time seemed to stand still. The tears were finally gone, replaced with numbness. He was empty, his mother was gone and there was nothing left.
He got up and slowly hobbled into the main room. He looked around at the carnage and saw two bodies against the wall, both with wool blankets covering their forms. Jonas stumbled past them in a daze, walking through the destroyed door into the fresh air.
All around him was blood, death, and despair. The carnage was beyond belief. He had never seen a dead body before, and now they were everywhere, torn and ripped, blood splattering the churned up snow and mud. Some had been eaten beyond recognition. He had to step over bodies, boargs and townsfolk both, some cut with swords and others killed by teeth and claw, the images burning in his mind, finding a permanent spot on his shelves of memories.
Jonas made his way to the south wall and saw two charred forms seared together in death. The snow had been melted in a perfect circle around them that must have been thirty paces in diameter. Jonas saw the cavalier’s dead horse, its underside burned horribly and its leg broken at an awkward angle.
As he scanned the destruction he saw faces that he recognized. Braal was dead, cut cleanly in half, many dead boargs surrounding him. Jonas stumbled to his knees and heaved uncontrollably, the contents of his stomach splattering the bloody ground. He knelt there panting for a few moments before he could stand back up, scanning the carnage again. There was Galen the hunter, Mason the leather maker, Jhol, the son of Bain, and many others. Everyone was dead.
As he looked around and made his way through the many bodies, he caught flickers of sunlight reflect off of something. He moved towards the shining object and saw a beautiful hunting knife about as long as his forearm lying on the ground. The handle was carved bone and the blade was so shiny and polished that it almost blinded him, the sunlight sparkling off its mirror like finish. Jonas recognized the blade. It was the cavalier’s.
Reaching down he picked it up. It seemed wrong to leave it resting in all the destruction. It was warm to the touch, as if it were alive. He slid the blade into his belt just as he saw Fil move toward him, his face hard and determined, carrying a huntsman’s pack on his shoulders.
“We have to go, the boargs may come back and all this blood will certainly attract animals and who knows what else.” Fil had a short sword strapped to his side and a bow and quiver was lashed to the pack that he wore. He still held his spear in his hand.
“Where are we going? I can’t walk fast enough to keep up with you,” Jonas said with apprehension.
“I know. But I will not leave you. We are all each other have now. My plan is to head into the mountains. My father has a cave that he uses during the summer for hunting. I know