Free I Know Not (The Story of Fox Crow) by James Daniel Ross

me from the rest of the world. I was certain that I could tell you everything we would find long before I placed one foot past the gate doors. I wasn’t disappointed.
          Historic homes became places of ambush, cover, and possible wealth. Rotting animal carcasses were only sources for disease. Bodies of the young, old, and everyone in between were little more than cause for caution lest I slip in a fluid or trip on a limb. None of it mattered to me, personally, which meant none of it mattered at all.
          Theo tried to shuffle his features into unmoved professionalism, but his young eyes failed him, “They are all dead.”
          I shot him a cold glance, but he didn’t notice. It was for the best, because to my eyes he was transformed into an expendable resource. In fact the emotional color was drained from everything in the village and I don’t know how my face would have read.
          I waved the boy guardsman to a stop in the middle of the compound, unmindful of the decapitated old woman next to a spilled wicker basket of half shelled beans. I hissed at Theo, reminding him to quit staring at the body and keep his eyes cast outward. I carefully set the loaded crossbow down in the pile of beans to keep it from going off, and then unlimbered the Phantom Angel. A quick tug parted the thong and I moved across the path carved from the gate, along the front of the houses, and over to the stone bridge.
          I set foot on the span. It was wide enough to pass a carriage, made of stones twice the height and width of a man. The blacked cracks and crevices were so tightly fit not even a razor could be slipped between them. Idly, the back of my head whispered, Dwarves built this . I reached the apex, twenty paces from either bank. I could clearly see the cold fire pit that had been dug in the center of the far square. Some kind of beast of burden had been slaughtered and roasted here for the barbarian celebration. Only the Gods knew how many survivors there had been to act as entertainment. All I could see was even the fire was not smoking, which put us over a day behind. The cold would keep the insects away, but there should definitely be scavengers here by now.
          Then the wind shifted.
          Out here, just away from the bodies I could smell something that clawed at the back of my mind. It was oily, mossy, and rotten, like a body buried inside the hollow corpse of an old oak tree. The claws grew in size, scraping down my spine as fear, real fear, reached out of the fog and filled me. Everything inside of me was screaming for me to run, to hide, but the friction of it ignited a raw, rude flame inside my chest. The terror was funneled into hate, a consuming abhorrence of all things.
          I heard a stifled yelp and spun around. Theo raised his crossbow at the hint of movement and fired. Even hurried, the boy’s aim was true and I heard the bolt slap into meat. A pig, until now spared from the slaughter, staggered drunkenly out into the road. It seemed to breathe heavily for a minute, unsure of what was happening, bolt sticking out of it and jittering in the air.
          Then it started screaming.
          The sound filled up the village, echoing from wall to wall as a traitorous tattletale. Theodemar turned his guilt stricken face toward me but before he said a word his eyes flew wide. Without hesitation, I jumped towards him and spun around, Phantom Angel singing in a deadly arc. With a forge of fury exploding in every muscle I swung the Phantom Angel and hit a weapon, in reality little more than a sharpened rusty bar of metal. Using both hands, I circled my blade over my head and hit it again, and again, each hit moved it further and further from in front of the owner. Finally, the rusty bar jerked just enough out of the way and the Angel bit flesh deeply, blood fountaining out in a black fan from an ugly gray throat.
          The thing that collapsed at my feet could