laneys.info Beware of Yankees, drunks, and loose women.

Sceva staked Victor near some trees and removed the bit so he could graze. He patted the horse's neck. "We'll probably be here a while, so enjoy the break. I'll find some water when we leave." Victor snorted gently in agreement and went to work on the grass at his feet.

The apothecary's preparations were doing quite well in healing the infection, and Sarah would definitely survive now. Devin, her husband, had not left her bedside since the attack. Sceva couldn't say that he blamed the man. "The hard part is still ahead," he thought. "How do you pick up and move on from something like that?" He dreaded what would come later, when he couldn't put off the interview with Sarah any longer.

Sceva turned and looked at the small house. It was a small, one-room house, typical of a frontier farm. The wilderness was already trying to reclaim the land in the short time that both its occupants had been staying in town. He strode slowly to the door, scanning for clues. Both Devin and the local sheriff assured him that nothing had been touched other than those things necessary to get Sarah the medical attention she needed.

There was no sign of a struggle outside or of the door having been forced open. He pushed the door open and stepped inside. He quickly stepped back out and held onto the door frame to steady himself. He managed to take another few steps into the grass before vomiting.

He sat down in the grass and used his waterskin to wash his face. He had been around blood and death, both during his training and in the years since he became a knight. He had worked in the infirmary during his first aid training. He had seen severed limbs. Hell, he had severed lots of things himself during battle. It seemed to him that the small cottage contained too much blood for a single person's wounds, much less wounds that proved non-fatal.

He returned to the door and steeled himself for what lay inside. The nausea washed over him again as he entered, but this time he managed to control it and look around. The house had been ransacked. The table and bed were the only furniture still in one piece, the table because of its weight and the bed because of its utility. It appeared that the destruction of the house's contents took place before or during Sarah's assault, meaning there was more than one assailant involved. There were several footprints visible in the blood on the floor. Sceva knelt down to study them. Most were typical of the townspeople, but at least one was different. It appeared to be a soft sole, like some kind of moccasin or deer skin boot.

As he looked up from the footprint, a gleam caught his eye. He reached under the bed and retrieved a silver necklace from against the wall. It was short, either a choker necklace or for a child, and made of simple links. The clasp was broken, probably from where Sarah had broken it off the neck of an assailant. Opposite the broken clasp were two silver ornaments separated by a red bead. The ornaments were each about two inches long, tapered to a point at the bottom, and curved slightly inward so they resembled fangs. Sceva placed the necklace in a pouch and returned the pouch to a pocket inside his cloak.

As he stood and turned to leave, he saw the wall next to the door for the first time. A giant eye of Sater stared at him from the victims' own blood.