Chapter 23
The Consistory’s Man
The Gumiren village was a smoking ruin, overrun by Vasylli warriors in little more than half an hour. Not a single man, woman, or child was left alive.
Voran sat on a boulder next to the head man’s former house. There was nothing left but the outline of the house’s foundation of stone. Voran smelled char and more terrible things he did not want to imagine, but he could not move. He was chained by his bad leg to the rock, left there to watch as the dogs finished their work.
He could not call them Vasylli. He couldn’t even call them human beings, these hand-picked warriors of the Consistory with the shriveled dog-heads on their belts. They didn’t even kill for the pleasure of it. That would have made them at least like some of the larger predators who like
