Rain began to fall from the sky.
“We need to go!” Suzann said. Petro spun in a circle but saw no clean exit. Everywhere people were burning or fighting. It had taken but seconds to spiral out of control.
“Where?”
“Anywhere!” she shouted.
But there was nowhere to go. Petro spun and saw the priest lying on the ground, twitching and burning. Hank, though, was gone.
“This way,” Suzanne said, yanking his arm. Together they rushed through the crowd, ducking past one Knight and jumping over a few bodies. The rain came down harder, drenching their clothing and putting out many of the fires. The smell of burnt clothing and the sickly sweet smell of something that reminded him of pork hung in the air. They rushed past, stumbling down one alley and then another. The fighting spilled out of the main courtyard as people fled and killed up and down the side streets.
Petro took charge, leading them past a few skirmishes, through the butcher’s shop, and to his alley. His hiding place away from the world. He pulled her down into the cramped corner behind the shop and held her close to him. The rain washed past them, drenching both. They saw feet pass, then the legs of horses. They heard screams and shouts.
The night passed slowly. Suzanne shivered in his arms and they both cried, neither daring to step out and check. The rain let up finally, but by that time it was night and freezing. He felt her shivering in his arms. He had to get her warm. Or they would die.
“Wait here,” he said. She nodded her head, emerald eyes bleary and teeth chattering. He crawled out of the hole and stretched his legs, taking in the devastation around him.
Several houses were smoldering. A few men pulling a cart dragged past, bodies piled high, but they hadn’t even put a dent into the dead on the streets. Petro passed bodies at every turn. Mostly peasants, people from this town, but more than a few of them Imperial Guards and knights.
So much death. It was hard to fathom. Petro had seen people die. It was a common enough event on the streets in any town. But so many and at the same time. He’d watched the light go out of the Duke’s eyes. He’d watched the priest catch flame. The priest who forgave Suzanne.
Hank had set the priest on fire. Was hank a heretic? It seemed hard to believe, but at the same time he was glad he’d never pushed Hank too hard. Would Hank have done that to him, setting him on fire, if he’d beaten him with sticks? He’d never believed demons were real. He just thought they were stories told by priests to scare children into believing.
But now he’d watched another child barely older than him turn a man into a raging inferno. Petro was young and ignorant, but he knew that he’d been in the presence of pure evil.
“Boy,” a voice called, pulling him from his thoughts. The voice was weak and distant. He saw an old man, one he didn’t recognize, leaning against a building. He was just outside the courtyard.
The man coughed. “Boy, come here. Do you have any water?”
Petro shook his head, taking only one short step closer. “No water.”
“What about wine? Do you have any wine?”
Petro had only tasted wine a few times, and those were when his father was too drunk to notice. It was sweet and bitter and entirely too thick for Petro’s taste. But he didn’t have any of that, either. He shook his head.
“Oh,” the man said, crestfallen. “That’s too bad.”
He had a wound across his chest and a pool of blood around him. His breath was coming in ragged gasps. “I…I’ll go look for water,” Petro said.
“No, don’t leave me!” the man said. Petro continued backing away. “Don’t go!”
But Petro couldn’t stay. It was too scary. Too painful. He didn’t want to watch the man die. His feet kept on, moving past the bodies into the courtyard. Here the devastation was worse, the death toll higher. It was quiet and still, like a graveyard. Nothing moved.
Many bodies were stacked on top of each other, along with wood, and had been lit on fire. The fire was smoldering now and only a few of the bodies were burnt at all. The smell was stronger and more terrible than anything he’d ever experienced. The worst part was Petro was hungry, and the smell of burning flesh only made him hungrier.
He wandered aimlessly through the yard and found himself at the spot where the priest had fallen. The body was gone, into the pile. All around was sand and blood, smeared around rather than washed away by the rain. The guillotine had been smashed and used for firewood.
