The Omens of a Crow [COMPLETE] (Watty 2018 Award-Winner)

Chapter 3

The sickly-sweet stench of death and rot filled Krow's nostrils.

The home of one of the first peasants to fall ill held the sick – a lonely cottage northwest of the village. Since that time, the plague had claimed victims enough to fill a large pit behind the homestead's northern wall, as well as more recent sufferers who still clung to life, crowded inside.

He found the first victim near the cabin threshold. Some few faces drew up in a grotesque display of lethargic wonder as the door swung open and struck the man's arm. Krow grimaced as he squeezed inside the narrow opening, nearly overwhelmed by the potent scents of decay.

They lay everywhere, piled up on each other amidst their own waste. At a glance, he could see that a great number were dead – their black, pus-filled boils having swelled and burst and drained. There were no longer any survivors in a coherent enough state to drag the bodies from the room; they only stared with glassy eyes. Most were silent, though a few muttered in fevered dreams, and the small remainder were lucid enough to moan at his entrance. A desperate warning.

Go, those weak, pitiful voices shrieked, recognizable in every tongue of sentient peoples. Go, before it is too late!

Krow ignored the groaning of the damned. He knelt to study the first victim, feeling his knees meet the thick, sticky mixture that covered the floor. He tried not to think about what pus fluids and other foul elements might have created such a substance.

The man's body was succumbing to black distension – knots of hard boils that had surely begun appearing in warm, moist areas like the armpits and groin. Now, the swelling had spread over his arms, legs, and chest, his body like one cankerous pouch of putrid meat. Any attempt to move him would bring unimaginable agony and rupture the black tissue. The only mercy was that the man might be too far gone to feel it. He stared up with unseeing eyes.

Krow's hands reached toward the large medical pouch on the left side of his belt, then he forced them to stop. "An unnatural plague," he muttered to himself, presenting his diagnosis in detached, clinical terms. "Swollen buboes indicate bubonic origins, but it's spread continues past the lymph nodes into a peculiar form of...gangrene? Pus on the lips, coughed up from the lungs. Pneumonic as well? Explains the spread via human contact at least. Rate unknown, but approximate spread of the sickness is nearly complete in current patient. Diagnosis...death. No realistic chance of recovery." He moved his hands instead to the short sword on his right hip, which he drew with a fluid, unhurried, dispassionate motion and thrust into the man's chest, careful to keep from rupturing any more of the black boils. The eyes never changed, but a small sigh indicated the soul's departure.

Krow pulled the blade free with a cautious motion and leant it against the corner, just inside the door. He pulled a pair of thin gloves from his leather jerkin and fitted them over his hands before grasping the corpse's bare ankles, avoiding the areas black with rot as best he could, and dragged the body out the door.

It was going to be a long day.