The Warlord's Prize

Chapter 5 - Torched

Time passed, and all I knew was darkness, the scent of smoke along with sulfur from cannons, and the feeling of fire burning from above the ground. After that nightmare, I did not dream again for the rest of the time I was asleep. Hours went by, and to me it felt like days were passing instead. I wanted to help them, but I did not possess any means to defend myself and them against the Huns.

If this was truly a war, I still did not know whose side to choose, or should I choose to stay neutral? As I remained in a deep sleep, I could hear voices in the dark: First it was Carl, talking about how he would plan to leave this place once again, if something went wrong that is. He had no idea the Huns were going to attack this village, if he did he would have packed his things and left.

Then I heard Meiying's voice, about how she always told me not to worry, until the torches came. She was always carefree, but if she survived, she would have a reason to care what was happening.

Then there was Lan, who was always suspicious, Nai who screamed in fear, and finally General Li who saved my life. All of them, were talking to me in my sleep, they had no warning, and I did not know if they made it to safety. I tried to ignore their voices, but it was impossible. I had only been in this village for less than a week and already I had grown attached to the people who lived there. Please let them be all right.......

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Soon, after more time had passed, I opened my eyes. All was quiet, no sound of screams, war cries or battle were above. The stench of smoke had not died down ever since.

Is it over? Is it safe to go topside? I wondered, as I freed myself from the fur blanket pelt and looked around. The room was dark and quiet with ash falling through the cracks in the ceiling above. I climbed up the ladder to the trapdoor and slowly pushed it open.

Instead of the wooden roof over my head, I looked up to the sky. It was blazing red from the fire and I climbed out to find myself standing in the snow with the remains of my home around me. What was left were sticks of wood used to support the house that were now blackened, slowly crumbling into ash, and a few parts were still on fire. Piles of ash were scattered all around the snow of what had been torched first, and the rest would soon follow. It was as if the house itself was no match for the fire, and now it looked like just broken burned sticks ready to fall apart.

I walked out the broken door to see the entire village was burned out completely. Houses were reduced to nothing but burned boards of wood and broken stone. Many of the roofs were gone, and those that were not, had only half remaining that were on the verge of collapsing. Some parts were still on fire, but most of them had died down adding the red blaze to the sky.

Shit, how much firepower did the Huns have to burn everyone's homes this much? I thought as I ran down the path in fear searching for survivors. My heart was racing, and I remember that I was one of the very few to witness the attack before it began. The villagers had no time to evacuate, or seek the right shelter, and now I was standing in the aftermath. From what I could see, it was a devastating ambush, there was no way that a lot of people would survive this. The Huns had practically reduced the village to an ash pile.

The snow had fallen heavily overnight, but it was not enough to put out the remaining fires, and the red sky made me know this was going to leave a burn scar for a long while. As I walked deeper into the remains of the village, there was a creaking noise, and several burnt wood panels collapsed to my left from the remains of one of the houses. The archway at the entrance was slowly falling apart and many stone walls were half wrecked.

This can't be good, I thought as I walked past a set of houses with smashed stone chimneys and remaining wood panels still ablaze. Just as I turned a corner, I felt my boot come down on something that was not snow. I looked down, and at my feet was someone's arm, I bent down quickly to see the flesh had turned grey from burns. I uncovered the snow from the rest of the body and recognized the face. It was Lan, the anti-social lady at Meiying's dinner last night. I hung my head down, even though she was not the friendliest, she was still another living human at that time. As I uncovered her torso from the snow, a massive flesh wound came into view. A sword's blade had impaled her through her abdomen leaving an opening of now dried blood blooming that dripped into the snow, turning it pink.