Quoted By:
[Meanwhile, elsewhere]
The vast estates are silent, except those manned by surley locals waving swords and spears at us form their walls as we pass. Korsas cajoles them, praises them, tries to rally them. Saccerdotessa and the aspirant-retinue of the Coaldousers have less time for words. They fight a different foe. The northern orchards and vast fields, dry from the late spring heat, are an ocean of roiling flame, let loose of any constraint.
You stalk the vast agricultural landscape, coming across snapshots of moments too surreal to contemplate. Bucket brigades organised by one small estate keep the flames at bay. The neighbour manor, of some young rich thing, lies a smouldering ruin, its guards slaughered in lightning ride. A weeping farmer tries to save his prized apple orchard. Six quiet horsemen glare at him from a nearby drying tiny rivulet, taking bets on his success. The 338ths ride to drive them from the field but the Wasponi outriders, swifter, take flight over the smoke-stained landscape. And then two of them collapse, the victims of pittraps and falls dug across the fields, hidden by swirling smoke and low fire. Another dies from an arrow shot as a militia band charge from a larger building. The smoke swirls. Voices on the wind. We lose contact. We check the building. A horseman bangs on the gate, but inside? Ash-stained skeletons dead for hours.
Choking, coughing outriders dismount from scared, scarred horses and pull labourers from collapsed granaries. Form a circle around a prying, probing band of lashing attackers trying to strike down a group ferrying water to a firebreak. Men are lost in the smoke, soldiers walk down alleys and find sparks or Sparksworn.
And then the wind shifts, the clouds break, and nestled among it are eight rows of pristine, unmolested apple trees succulen with the sun-soaked promise of soil and loving hands. And the five outriders, gorging themselves, who die, apple cores for weapons as you ride them down.
Sacerdotessa and her retinue walks fields. The scant pockets of organisation out here, she talks to, meets, attempts to organise. Sometimes, the Empyreal spawns unruly children, hungry, ravenous and without restraint. Do not hate them, those building-eating, life-destroying dancers in orange. They are what they are. Sacerdotessa cajoles, compels, commands, whispers, intones, prays, begs, offers, and sometimes the ocean of sparks and smoke and flame flit elsewhere. Sometimes, one must use buckets. Sometimes, they die out, from lack of fuel.
All fire is a friend. Sometimes, it just loses its way, and we mus show them the path.
But for the hours of hot, humanitarian work, for the few citizens reached, the fields saved, for all that . . .
Listen. Do you hear that warbling sound?
Warhorns. On the wind.
