fully indulge their love of looting, displaying no hesitation in cutting down any householder who dared to protest the theft of their valuables. So, although most of the population survived the fall of their town, its corpse-strewn, blood-streaked avenues still made for a pitiful sight.
“Mercy is weakness, compassion is cowardice,” I heard Eresa mutter continually as we passed by successive scenes of tragedy. A young widow sobbing over the corpse of her gutted husband whilst her two children stood by in numb, wide-eyed shock. A brawny man crouched in the shadow of a smithy, face set in a stoic mask against his pain as he wrapped a bandage around the stump of his left hand. A well-dressed woman of striking beauty stood by a fountain, completely unharmed but screaming at the top of her lungs. She uttered no words that I could discern, just repeating shrieks of desolate grief.
“Mercy is weakness . . .” Eresa murmured on, turning away from the screaming woman.
“Stop that,” I snapped. “It was the priests’ creed. We no longer have need of it.”
Attempts to quiet the woman proved fruitless so we left her to her screams and moved on, finding a massacre at the turn of the next corner. The Tuhla had herded the remanants of the city’s garrison into their own parade ground, roping them together in a long line. Each man was dragged forward in turn to be beheaded, his bonds cut and the body pulled aside before the next in line was forced to kneel at the feet of a tulwar-wielding warrior of impressive stature. As was their custom, the Tuhla were making sport with the heads, using pincers to pluck out teeth to craft the trophy necklaces they cherished. The still-dripping, slack-jawed heads were then impaled on spears that would be arranged in a circle around their camp for the victory feast that night.
I was struck by the dumb obedience of these doomed souls, the line shuffling forward in dull-eyed, stooped servility, their faces sagging in utter exhaustion rather than fear. As my eyes traversed the line, I straightened in surprise at seeing a number of civilians amongst the ranks, older men in robes rather than uniforms, some women and youths too. Unlike the soldiers, most were far from compliant, weeping out entreaties to their indifferent captors or assailing them with curses. Others were more stoic; one older, bearded man in a plain brown robe in particular caught my eye in the way he stepped forward in straight-backed, expressionless rectitude, somehow maintaining a dignified air even as he knelt beneath the tulwar’s blade.
“Scholars and their students mostly,” a Tuhla warrior explained in answer to my query. It was common for captured soldiery to face execution in the aftermath of victory, but the variety of victims here was unusual. “The Darkblade’s order,” he added, grunting as he used iron tongs to lever a tooth loose from a recently severed head.
Scholars and their students, I repeated inwardly, finding it easy to discern Kehlbrand’s reasoning. Those with knowledge and wisdom are not so easily swayed by the Darkblade.
We pressed on, traversing more horrors until we came to the broad square where the Temple of Heaven resided. I was surprised to find it unscathed, the central three-storey building of slanted roofs unmarked by fire or arrow, the surrounding park of shrines and statuary intact and almost serene in the smoke drifting from the streets. But, whilst the temple itself had been spared, I discovered as I ventured inside that its inhabitants had not.
The monks lay around the largest shrine in a jumble of bloody faces and limbs, the blood stark against their pale robes of grey and white. An exact count of the dead was impossible, but it appeared that the entire order of this temple had perished, save two.
The old monk stood facing the shrine, head bowed and lips moving as he recited his cantos to Heaven, hands clasped together and a string of black beads entwined about his wrists. He paid no heed at all to my brother, who stood nearby, nor to the youthful monk who knelt to his left. Obvar stood behind the boy, a meaty hand under his chin and a knife pressed to his throat.
“One left,” Kehlbrand told the old monk, then gave an amused, slightly exasperated snort when he received no response. The monk’s chanting continued uninterrupted, his bearing never wavering.
“I know this is all mummery,” Kehlbrand said. He moved closer, speaking softly into the old man’s ear.