The horizon was a bruise of gold and pink, the half-moon still hanging stubborn and pale amidst the drifting white clouds. A bitter wind howled through the village, carrying the greasy, heavy scent of woodsmoke and roasted pine.

At the first crack of dawn, the charred, barred doors of the temple finally buckled. The invaders, driven mad by the heat and the encroaching flames, came bursting out side-by-side in a desperate charge, like a stampede of buffaloes fleeing from lions.

No doubt hoping to use their superior numbers to their advantage.

But with only one road open it was easy enough to take countermeasures.

He watched with a cold, detached clarity as the rats finally bolted from their hole.

"Loose!" he commanded, his own bow singing in harmony with the others.

The first man in the charge, an axeman with soot-blackened skin, died before his boots hit the fourth step. Thalien’s arrow caught him in the throat, while two more from the rest line buried themselves in his belly. He had no shield to save him, and he toppled forward with a moan.

Behind him, the others were wiser, emerging with brown-rimmed shields raised high against the morning light.

It didn’t matter. Thalien’s bowmen and the Voghondai auxiliaries maintained a relentless rhythm, raining shafts and javelins into the thick of the desperate crowd. Iron-tipped wood shattered linden-wood shields, skewering the arms that held them and nailing bellies to the very earth.

Then came the roar from the flanks. Thalien’s secondary force smashed into the enemy’s sides hiding deep into the houses of the pillaged village.

The bit on the flanks like a pack of hyenas against a wounded lion.

The Voghondai mountainmen screamed a war cry that sounded like "Swim Mornin’" just before the clash of steel. Their blades kissed the invaders again and again until the dirt was more red than brown.

A small knot of horsemen that Thalien had brought to the call to arms as a personal retinue, thundered down the main thoroughfare, their mounts’ hooves crushing the spines of those who tried to flee the pincer.

The butchery was brief but sating.

Those who stood were cut down; those who fell were finished where they lay. Only a handful of wounded men, or those quick enough to cast away their steel, were spared for the ropes.

As the sun climbed higher, a few of Thalien’s men picked through the smoldering ruins of the temple, searching for anything of value. They instead returned with grim faces and a burden wrapped in soot-stained cloth.

"There are dead boys inside, my Lord," one of the levies said, his voice hushed. "Dressed in white."

The soldiers laid the small figures at the feet of the priest, Utt.

He recognised them well enough for his face to collapse.

Down he went to his knees, his hands trembling as they hovered over the boys’ pale foreheads.

"My acolytes," he whispered, the words breaking into a sob. "The savages... they held them as hostages when I came out to plead for sanctity.’’

"No doubt they died in terror. Look at their features, my Lord," Ser Malovio drawled. He had appeared at Thalien’s shoulder as if birthed by the smoke itself. The knight stepped forward, his boots crunching on the ash as he loomed over the boys’ originally white, now blood-spattered garbs. "A hideous way to meet the gods. Trapped in the dark, hearing the wood groan, knowing the fire was coming.Seems like it were blades that did the deed instead of the flames..."

Thalien looked from the boys to the priest. A familiar bitterness rose in his throat, the old resentment for the holy men he was forced to became.

"Some might say you killed them, Priest," Thalien accused, his voice as cold as the morning wind. "You knew the fire was the only way to clear that house.You knew what the invaders would do to them. You traded their small lives’’

Utt looked up, his eyes swimming with tears, but his voice possessed a terrifying, quiet iron. "And they would be right to say it. I am the shepherd who burned the sheep to kill the wolves. It is better they died clean than have other suffer what the invaders intended to more people. Let us be the only sacrifices for these beasts. The gods will take care of them now."

"The bastards may have swung the blades," Thalien spat "but you were the one who struck the spark.The last of your flock are dead by your call."

"I am guilty of all you say," Utt replied, closing the boys’ unseeing eyes. "I will tend to their last rites, and then I shall join them. What use is a shepherd when-?"

"his herd his ash?’’ He bulled over him ’’As long as thou live, thou then to thy sheep. When they flock endeth so thou will...." Thalien muttered, the ancient scripture of his childhood rising unbidden to his tongue.

Utt’s head snapped up, surprise flickering through his grief. He hadn’t expected the lord to know the liturgy of the priesthood. Thalien didn’t offer an explanation; he didn’t tell him about the years spent in a cell-like room, memorizing prayers he never believed in.

"One order from my Lord, and I will satisfy the false priest’s wish for penance," Ser Malovio proclaimed. He took a half-step toward the old man, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword, drawing the steel just enough to let it catch the morning sun. "He wants to die, my lord. Why make him wait for the rope?"

Thalien raised a hand, stopping Malovio’s advance. His eyes were fixed on the priest.

"If I may petition your Lordship for one last kindness," Utt said, his gaze drifting to a massive, ancient oak tree that stood to the left of the smoldering temple. Its branches were thick and dark, reaching out like skeletal arms. "Allow me to witness the hanging of these monsters. No need to linger here for the burials; I will tend to the dead myself. Then, when the work is done... I will join my acolytes on those branches."

Malovio said something at that, but Thalien gave him no heed as he instead turned to deal with the prisoners.

The interrogation had been a hollow formality. They had dragged the survivors to the center of the square, but the men had little to offer. They spoke of thinning gruel and watery broth, of a campaign that was rotting from the stomach outward. It was information Thalien already possessed but it was of little tactical value. If they couldn’t provide the location of the main baggage train or the disposition of the knights, they were merely mouths to feed.

So, they instead became feed for the ravens.

It was entertaining to see them struggle and fear taking hold of them.

Some of the invaders fought with a pathetic, feral energy, kicking and thrashing as the rough hemp nooses were cinched tight against their windpipes. One man, his face a mask of soot and tears, shrieked for "Mercy!" in a thick, wet Habadian accent that grated on the ears.

Another tried to bargain for his life, babbling about a cache of silver buried beneath a hearth three villages back. A third, desperate and hollow-eyed, claimed he would be the finest scout Thalien had ever seen if only they would give him a chance to live longer than the others.

That one got to be hanged first instead.

Among the rabble stood a single knight. He did not beg; instead, he raged. He cried out about the laws of war, about the rights of noble prisoners and the ransom that surely awaited him. Thalien watched as they saved him for last.

He was granted a final rite for his blood, before the stool was kicked away, one of the hulking auxiliaries, stepped forward while the man struggled and began to unlace the knight’s fine leather boots. One of Thalien’s own levies started to protest, having already laid claim to it, but a single look from the auxiliary made the boy relinquish the claim. Better to lose a pair of boots than a throat.

Each man was stripped, bound, and hoisted in turn. Their legs flailed against the empty air, their faces deepening from a frantic red to a slow, bruised shade of purple.

Through the entire gruesome parade, Utt kept on praying. His voice was a drone that the soldiers largely ignored. Later that night, around the campfires, some would swear they heard the priest begging the Five to roast the executioners for all eternity, but in the moment, it sounded like nothing more than a shepherd mourning a lost world.

Before the first body had even grown cold, the ravens appeared, settling onto the gnarled branches of the great oak like heavy, black fruit. They cawed incessantly, their black eyes watching the spectacle as they waited loudly for thier bloody dues.

The soldiers began throwing stones at the birds. One of the auxiliaries, Malakii or an Aranuaii, Thalien could never tell the tribes apart as they looked the same, slung a rock and hit a raven true squarely on the beak. The bird fell limply to the mud, where the man casually retrieved it, snapped its neck, and offered a bloody smile to the onlookers before gesturing to his mouth.

Utt whispered a prayer for the heretics. Malovio simply leaned closer to Thalien.

"Masterfully done, my lord," Malovio said, spitting toward the swaying bodies. "They came to rape and pillage, and they leave with nothing but a length of hemp and a cold grave. You truly are the defender of the flock.The prince will be pleased no doubt."

"They ought to call me the defender of corpses," Thalien replied, his voice hollow. "I defended nothing that still draws breath."

"Better than the false priest who sentenced his own acolytes to the fire," Malovio countered. "You have avenged them; he murdered them. You are ten times more true than that man. I say we end his misery now. He wants to be a martyr; let us help him to the dust before he can cause more trouble."

A raven cowed louder than the rest.

"My lord," Utt interrupted, ignoring the venom dripping from Malovio’s tongue. He turned his bruised face toward Thalien. "If I might ask one last kindness. If you could spare one man in a week’s time... let him come back to take my body from these branches and burn it. You would be doing the gods’ work one last time."

Normally, Thalien would have delighted in the death of a priest,he hated them to the passion, but the weight of the morning felt different. Something about Utt’s quiet resolve felt... wrong to extinguish.

"We could use a priest in our fellowship," Thalien offered, surprising even himself with that offer. "You could give the last rites to the fallen, break bread for the mass."

"I broke two lives instead of bread, my lord," Utt said, his voice trembling and yet thankful. "I have lost my flock. I will make the Father’s words true in my own way. But I thank you for your kindness. May the gods bless you, Defender of the People."

"And Maker of Ashes," Malovio added. "The difference is only that we gut those in mail while he poisons those in prayer.’’ He chuckled ’’ I’ll bet my armor he turns tail the moment we’re out of sight. We should make him bloody ourselves and burn the lot before we march."

Thalien ignored the knight and his peculiarities.

He led his men away from the smoking ruins and the swaying dead. A week later, he sent a scout back to the village.

The report was brief. The priest had made true on his word. He was found dangling from the same great oak, his body swaying gently in the cold wind alongside the murderers and the rapists he had helped to kill.

Somehow for Thalien, that felt like a loss.

Still was rare to see a man that saw shit through the end, and that night he raised a cup in Utt’s honor.