Ashes ch. 01

	Word of the fire reached our outpost in the black hours of morning. A rider covered in burns rode his horse ragged to get to us in time, his breath as hot as the flames he spoke of in the chilly autumn air. His eyes were wild with fever and fear and his tears had left lines down his dust-covered face, but he spoke as calm as he could as we saddled our horses and prepared our packs. His body was covered in singed fur from the torso down and he had only three fingers on each hand, including the thumbs. He wore a hood to partially cover the four short horns jutting out of the damp mop of hair on the top of his head. He was from the denborn village of Engal, and he was denborn himself.
	When we found the village, there was no more fire. There were no more houses, farms, shacks or people, living or dead. The only things left standing were a few walls comprised of blackened bricks balancing atop each other as the mortar in between had been burnt away. Everything else was ashes.
	The sky above was a murky grey, as if the smoke from the town had risen and clouded over the mountains. The aroma of charcoal and cinders lingered throughout the lifeless expanse and the residual heat baked the scorched land. The only mercy was that the smell had dissipated somewhat. Burnt bodies has never sat well with me or my stomach.
	“Lords above.” Commander Blare shook his head. “Looking at this you wouldn’t believe a town was here the day before.” Despite the warmth the old commander still wore various animal pelts about his shoulders. He walked deeper into the wreckage, wiping away the beading sweat on his brow as he went along. Every few steps he scratched the ground with his boot, showing the untouched earth beneath a thick covering of soot. “Must have been an awful fire.”
	“Aye,” I managed to speak through a dry mouth. There wasn’t much to say, but saying anything was a challenge. “How did it start, and how could no one escape before the flames reached them?”
	“Most of the bodies are still in the homes. Some are in beds, even. It caught them while they slept.” Blare swilled a mouthful of water from his skin and spat it out onto the ground. “Denborn or not, this is no way to die.”
	I glanced at the bodies lying in their destroyed homes. Most seemed indistinguishable from humans aside from those with horns protruding from their heads and the largely misshapen legs and arms. Their skin was wrinkled and crisp and darker than night and the teeth stuck out like stars in contrast, and the mouths they sat in were stuck in an eternal scream. They were all sculptures of death in different poses but speaking the same meaning: death by fire is a painful way to die.
	Most of the bodies looked human, though it was impossible for so many to be here. Engal had always been a denborn settlement and humans rarely passed through except those visiting the lake up north. “How many are there? Has this town always been this populated?” I spoke with a cracked voice.
	“Over two hundred, last our records show. It’ll be hard to determine until we count the dead.” Fenrey Dover walked up to us after hitching his horse away from the destruction. Fenrey was younger than me by a few years but he didn’t show it much, his voice was calm and his stature relaxed, but it was clear the scene has gotten to him as well. His eyes scanned the area, but they didn’t appear to be looking for life as mine were; he was still trying to grasp the extent of the damage. This was his first time seeing a fire. He may act collected, but if I remembered how I felt when I first saw charred corpses I could safely assume his mind is running unbridled. “All are denborn, save a few human peddlers that take up residence during the winter. I fear they may have been killed as well.”
	“Commander, what do you think? How might this have happened?” I asked without turning to him.
	Commander Blare took a second before answering. “Blast me, Argyn. As sad a sight as this is, it may very well have been planned.”
	Now I turned, but without anything to say. My throat seized up and I could only stare at him with an open mouth. I swallowed dryly before finding the words. “Someone did this? Someone burned an entire village of farmers? For what purpose?” I stared incredulously at him, but he didn’t answer at all this time.
	“To kill the denborn, obviously. Probably religious zealots or disgruntled soldiers from the south. Fed themselves on drink before they rode out.” Fenrey spoke as if he knew exactly what happened. He had found his inner calmness now, but he was become dismissive as a result. “They must not have realized there were humans living here too. Bet they’d feel guilty if they knew that; killing men whose only error was living amongst monsters.”
	“If that’s the way you speak, then it seems I’ve made the same error.” Blare shot Fenrey a glare that chilled the warm air rising from the ashes. Fenrey’s ego was hurt and he meekly stepped back a few feet. “The only things that should be fed to flame are logs for burning. Take a look through the dead and see if you can find the humans among the denborn. Go on and see for yourself. We all look the same with blackened skin.”
	I was surprised to hear Blare speaking the way he was. He was a gruff man as his scraggly grey-specked beard would suggest and he had never been known to be very accepting of denborn as he refuted any sympathy for them with fervour, just as any older man would do. But looking at him now I found it hard not to notice how old he is; the hard and jagged lines that had dominated his face a few years past had grown soft and whatever hair that remained on his head was steadily receding (yet his eyebrows seemed to have grown bushier, like snow caterpillars). His thick leather armour weighed him down into a subtle but still noticeable slouch (he had removed any steel pieces the year prior to keep his speed from slipping, not that anyone had ever come close to striking him with a blade anyway) and his arms that had once flowed with muscle like tightly corded rope seem to swing slower and less directly. He was still more of a match for me though, perhaps even for the knights of the Silver Wall, but his age had begun to show through. The only things he hadn’t lost were the ferocity in his grass-green eyes and the sharpness of his tongue and wit.
	"Search around for any clue as to what may have done this," Blare said as he started on ahead of us.
	"And for survivors." I added.
	"Yes," Commander Blare gave me a grim look as he turned to me, "if there are any."
	Any hope I had of someone surviving grew smaller and smaller the more I searched the town. Whoever had done this had been thorough; every building and its residents had burned, the livestock slaughtered and burned along with their owners and anything that couldn't be properly put to flame was pitched over the cliff at the far side of the village. It didn't take us long to find out why so many had died inside their homes either. It was at night so many were caught sleeping, but the remains of a few doors and windows showed that they had been nailed shut with boards to prevent escape. Anyone that woke before the fire caught them wasn't in any better of a position unless they had an axe or blade with them inside the house. To nail shut so many doors and windows though . . . if there was a group that did all of this they certainly weren’t lacking for numbers, but for so many to have such a hatred for denborn . . . I knew many that despise the monstermen, but none that would go so far as to kill an entire town of them.
	Any valuables in the homes that weren't affected by the heat still lay untouched. Some decent steel, tools that were easily repairable and in some rare cases, a few cut jewels. I watched Fenrey carefully, wondering if he'd nick a couple, but he kept his distance. He had only been part of our garrison for a few months now so I had yet to give him complete trust, but he seemed alright for the most part.
	Yet in spite of the wealth (or the promise of it) the place hadn't been looted. The group that started the fire had goals for murder and destruction and ignored pettier crimes. The trip to and from Engal was nearly half a day in length so by the time the ragged denborn man had reached us this morning the fire may had already been down to embers, ripe for looting, but it laid untouched until we arrived.
	"Engal had stood for over half a century," Commander Blare spoke up after what felt like hours of silence. "It was originally an outpost for weary travellers making their way from Root to the Valley of Climbers. It was less than half the size it is now and it didn't have any permanent residents save for the inn's owner and his family. I had stayed there once and found it to be a cosy place, especially during the summer when the roads were full of travellers. After the War a bunch of denborn found this was as good a spot as any to settle down as it's far from the humans of the city but close enough to the city itself. Problem was that no one liked the denborn, which was understandable as we had just finished a bloody war with them, so anyone travelling between towns would pass right through Engal without so much as a greeting or a farewell. Eventually everyone stopped taking the route altogether, instead travelling the Snaking Path which cuts around the mountains and adds an extra two days to your trip."
	Blare stopped reminiscing aloud and furrowed his brow in deep thought. He didn't speak again until several minutes passed. "Nobody ever disturbed Engal nor did Engal disturb anyone else. I've only been called out here four times not including today, each of those times for nothing more than a quarrel between some denborn farmer and a drifter thinking he owes nothing to the monster that gave him food and shelter except the privilege of being allowed to continue living."
	I had been with the Commander one of those four times and it had been the only time I had ever been to Engal. The village was quiet with us around, everyone had been on their best behaviour in front of us, perhaps to gain favour. Still, they had seemed like nice enough folk. I was never unkind to denborn but I also never had the chance to show them acceptance, either. The War is twenty years gone now and I doubt any of them would like to try for rebellion again, especially not the lot in Engal. They accepted a peaceful life with the caveat of being discriminated against indefinitely in human lands, which at first I found to be a spineless ploy of fealty but now I realized the significance of it all. I had heard stories of the denborn homelands beyond the Thicket Mountains just as everyone else had as a child. To live here and be promised peace at the expense of a few rights or to remain in their lands and chance death daily; it wasn’t much of a choice, but “life is life,” as Commander Blare was oft to say.
	As residents of the land, however, our garrison still served for their safety just as we would a human. Or at least that’s what it said in writing, but there were stories, not just rumours, that other garrisons tended to lean more on the human’s side when it came to disagreements, unless their price was met by the opposing party, and denborn tended not to have much in the way of coin. For that reason I was glad we had Blare as our garrison’s commander. He might not have cared much for denborn, but when it came to his duties he didn’t discriminate. Life is life.
	“How many are you all up to?” Blare called out from the ruins of the inn in the centre of town. He had chosen the inn out of sympathy for me and Fenrey; he knew the bodies there would be the most numerous.
	“Thirty-four,” Fenrey replied. His mouth was a line, drawn thin and straight. But as distraught as he was, he continued counting. I realized he might have never seen Engal before the fire destroyed it. I wasn’t sure if that was a comforting thought or the opposite.
	“Fifty-three over here.” I was almost at the eastern boundary of the village, the farthest point away from where we arrived. Looking across the destruction made me realize how deceptively large the village had appeared when I first visited it. The buildings were relatively close together in clusters, some even sharing walls despite the generous amount of level land (was that how denborn built their cities? As close as possible to each other?) so it almost felt like a city by how cramped it was, but it truly was just a bunch of buildings built right next to each other. Thinking about it, that probably made the flames travel easier. “Wait, make that fifty-six bodies. I just found . . .”
	My sentence tapered off into silence as I stared into a small alcove in one of the homes. Built of brick and barely holding upright it remained as one of the few pieces of the town that was still recognizable, but it wasn’t why I was staring so intently. A small girl was laying in its shallow relief, dressed in charred clothes of dull brown linen. Her skin wasn’t charcoal black like the other bodies, quite the opposite really; it was ghostly pale like the reflection of the noon sun in a calm lake. Her skin only reached so far down her body as the rest was covered in iridescent green scales that overlapped and multiplied all the way down to her talon-like feet and along a tail that she had curled around herself. Her hands were even larger than her feet in comparison with an average human, and they were covered in the exact same scales that dominated the majority of her body. Her head seemed to have been spared any deformity aside from a few scales that worked their way up to her cheeks as well as two twisted and abstract horns that protruded out of the dark hair either side of her head right above her oddly stretched ears. She had been visibly unharmed by the flames as far as I could tell, and I’d have pronounced her dead of smoke inhalation if not for one thing.
	The girl is still breathing.
	“Commander! -Commander-! I found someone! A survivor!” In mixed parts elation and fear I ran to the denborn girl, hoping she wasn’t only mere seconds from death. The monstrous parts of her body seemed invisible as I looked at the fragile life lying before me, but I still only looked in disbelief. Blare and Fenrey eventually reached me simultaneously.
	“Move aside, Argyn. Let’s have a look.” Commander Blare didn’t wait for me to move, instead he pushed me out of his way as he squatted down. I was too focused on the girl to care much. He looked at her a moment, then underneath her clothes, scanning for injury. He returned to his squatting stance and gave some more thought to whatever he was thinking of. “Bring her to the horses. I may have something for her.”
	Old Blare stood, his age showing in his creaking bones and exasperated tone, but he swiftly made for the horses. Fenrey watched a moment longer before following. It took me longer to realize what he left me to do. I picked the girl up as gently as possible and followed them both.
	The girl was bigger than I thought, but she was surprisingly light as well. She was still fairly young, her teenage years had only just started as far as I could tell, but by the look of her those years may yet end prematurely. Her face was covered in soot and sweat and I tried to wipe away both before reaching the horses along with the others. Commander Blare was rifling through his pack.
	“That girl needs treatment. Take her back to the outpost quickly, Argyn, and while you’re there ask that rider what happened last night and how he escaped. I want to know everything about this fire and whoever started it.” He poured some water onto a length of cloth from his pack. “Get Sam to make a salve for her arm when you get there.”
	I hadn’t realized it in my panic but her left arm was discoloured and its lustre gone. I wouldn’t have known it but she had been burned and with closer inspection it didn’t look good at all. I didn’t know the fire would affect her scales the way they did, but if her kind couldn’t be affected by fire I doubted there would be as many corpses in the town as there were.
	Blare poured the rest of his water over her arm slowly then wrapped the damp cloth around it. He looked up at me and said “Get going,” and I did so without complaint. “This whole mess may be beyond us, you two. If this truly was planned out, I doubt our garrison has the numbers to deal with whoever started it. I sent a rider to Titanspring before we left so you might pass by their city guard on the way back, we’ll wait here for them.”
	“Do you think they’ll be able to find whoever did this?”
	“They may be able, but as for willing . . .” Commander Blare shook his head and said no more.
	I glanced one last time at the ruined town, etching the sight in memory before climbing my horse and riding as fast as I could with the denborn girl seemingly fading in my arms.

---

	Blare was correct about the guard as I passed them not long after I left Engal. None of them paid heed to me even with my peculiar companion, so I rode on in silence, trying to hold onto the reins and the girl at the same time. Her breathing seemed to had picked up its pace a bit and every so often she coughed, but her eyes never opened. Worry had sunk its teeth in me then, and by the time we reached the outpost I was as out of breath as my horse.
	“Is it another one? Gods, what happened out there?” Samwell Courter exclaimed as he briskly walked out to me. Thin as string but remarkably quick with a sword, Sam also served to address our wounds when need be which, thankfully, wasn’t very often. Two patients in a day was more than he’s used to, especially considering the fact that we hadn’t needed him to attend to any of us in half a year’s time.
	“There was a fire. Quickly, do you have any burn salve for her arm?” I asked as I carried the girl in and up the stairs to one of the bedrooms.
	“Well, we’re not lacking for salves, that’s for sure. I have plenty left over from the man this morning despite practically bathing him in it.” He examined the girl’s arm as we both walked. “Lucky to be denborn with scales like these. It would be a lot more serious without them.”
	“Had she been human, Engal might not have been attacked at all. They wanted denborn blood.”
	“Who did? Wait, do you mean all of Engal is gone?”
	“It burned last night. This girl and the denborn rider are the only survivors.”
	“Gods . . .” Sam stopped in the hallway out of pure disbelief. He found motivation shortly after. “I’ll fetch some of the medicine. Get her in a bed then find some cool water and cloths.”
	I obeyed without hesitance. Before noticing it, I had walked into my own room out of routine. I placed the girl on the bed gently and rolled her sleeve up to expose the burn. The green has become an ugly inflamed red but the burn seemed to be secluded to her scale-covered forearm, leaving her pale human-like skin unmarred. When Sam found us again he spread a lumpy organic mixture all over her forearm while I brought up a pail of water. He wrapped the arm in damp cloths and instructed me to wipe her face clean of the dirt and sweat that has accumulated.
	“What happened with the denborn this morning? Is he resting?” I asked when nothing else needed doing. Sam shook his head in sorrow.
	“He didn’t live. I managed to sooth his passing, but it was all I could do. Even for a denborn he was a sorry sight,” Sam said as he stood and straightened his clothes. The blazing orange of the setting sun glinted off the metal buckles fastened in various places on his chestpiece and he looked down at the girl with a sense of pity—part of which I felt was for me as well. “She’ll be fine though, so no need to worry. But her family—if she had one—didn’t make it, hm? How bad was the damage?”
	I tell him about Engal’s destruction and the murder of hundreds. It might not have been a terribly big village compared to the rest of Veradan, especially considering the rate at which some denborn breed, but two hundred was a frightful number to imagine dying all at once. And as far as we knew, they were all innocent, which only made all of it even worse.
	Sam scratched his head and sighed. “This is all fantastic. Titanspring’s guard will be looking for these murderers in the bottoms of wine goblets and whores and we will be stuck with the clean-up of Engal and the wellbeing of this thing here.” He jabbed a thumb in the girl’s direction. “Think a brothel will take her?”
	“Do you honestly think the group responsible for all this won’t be caught?”
	“I’m sure the majority of Titanspring would rather commend the arsonists than punish them, that includes the guard itself. Engal hasn’t been a human settlement since the War. The denborn were on the brink of extinction when they surrendered but after our arms were laid down they flooded our land with their ilk and took over our towns. Me and half the population of Veradan wonder why the kings want to keep them all within our borders.”
	“Then, what do you think of the massacre?” I was a little confused as he sounded sympathetic for both sides here. My inquisitive gaze met his blank stare and he gave me a dry smile.
	“It’s been twenty years since the War, Argyn. You were a babe at the time and I was only slightly older, so you might not remember the Slaughter of Drias, but I do. Seven hundred men, women and children, most of those non-combatants, were killed by a denborn raid.” His look turned sharp and I spotted a shimmer of something deep within his dark eyes, possibly anger. “My family was killed in that battle, just like so many other innocent people. So if you ask me how I feel for the denborn of Engal,” he said as he dried his hands with a spare cloth, “I’d be lying if I said I cared.”

---

	Commander Blare and Fenrey didn’t return until the sun had long since sunk below the mountain line, and by then they were too tired to talk much of anything. Titanspring’s guard did nothing but assert their superiority over them and took what little information we had gathered for themselves. Only when they had decided to leave did they let the commander and Fenrey to do the same, and the guard had also pledged to find those responsible for the fire however warning that it would be “extremely difficult” to root out the arsonists among the populace. Anti-denborn sentiment is at an all-time high here in Veradan so their statement wasn’t without truth, but I doubted they would bother looking very hard anyways. Like Sam, they either couldn’t care less about the fates of two hundred denborn or they were secretly glad for the outcome.
	The rescued denborn girl developed a fever a few hours after applying the salve. Sam says it was natural and not dangerous at all, as a matter of fact it was a sign she would be healthy. “Fire can mend as well as destroy,” he mentioned with a smirk I didn’t care much for, but his words seemed to be honest. She may have been burning up but she certainly looked better than she did in the alcove. She slept right through the day and night, never once opening her eyes, at least when I was in the room.
	The other men of the garrison came in ones or twos or threes to see the orphaned girl. Before the last bell of the day rung everyone in the outpost had seen her and made their comments, good and bad. She remained on my bed for the night as I slept on the floor.

---

	I had to wake early for watch duty, but I found my mind wandering a bit. I stood at the top of the outpost tower, splitting my attention between the south and east; towards Titanspring and Engal respectively. Though it would prove fruitless, I wanted to see if any would make their way down the path that connected the two settlements. No one did travel down it in the end—as always, since everyone takes the Snaking Path to go around Engal, though with news of the fire that will no doubt be quickly spread around I have a feeling I’ll be seeing a lot more travellers—so my duty ended uneventfully.
	The sun hadn’t yet risen to its peak in the sky as I made my way down the tower’s wooden steps, stifling a yawn as Aron Plinth ascended to take over the watch. “Long night with the girl?” he joked as he saw my tiredness. I jabbed him on the shoulder as I passed him and he laughed it off, his jowls bouncing in rhythm with his oversized gut. “Get some food in you so you can go for a second joust.” I repaid his suggestion with another welt on the arm but accepted the first half of his sentence as good counsel. As for jousting, I never found much of a care for it, in any of its incarnations. As some particular women from Titanspring might say, I had never been good at placing my thrust. It was a weak spot of mine to admit, and it was also one of the reasons why the brothels saw so little of me, but I was sure my brothers here in the outpost more than made up for my absence. Speaking of absence, when I finally returned to my room I realized there is an important aspect that seemed to have gone missing during my duties.
	The denborn girl was gone.
	Blast me! I was gone for a mere few hours and she decided to wake up then! I barreled through the hallway in worry-laden self-hatred. Even if she had woken up, how was she able to get out of bed? The strength of her fever would have weakened even Blare, the old boar of a man, and she was still only a child. I had heard that denborn had incredible resilience when it came to disease and fatigue, but it was hard to believe she’d be walking around the way she was. And her burns . . . I hadn’t changed her wrappings yet today. Sam told me to change them twice every day and she was still wearing the ones from yesterday. I had dealt with injuries and stubborn patients many times before—Commander Blare had a nasty tendency to ignore Sam’s urgings of proper wound care—but I had never been this panicky before. Where all this sympathy was coming from was beyond me as I was never fond of non-humans myself, but I couldn’t have a girl like her walking around the way she was. Especially not from what she had been through.
	There was snickering and bouts of laughter coming from one of the rooms down the hallway. My first thought was to see who it is and ask if they’ve seen the girl, but the laughter gave me a chill, one that told me exactly where the girl was after all. As I walked towards the door their laughter ceased and there was loud hushing going on before the room went silent as they waited for me to enter. When I did, Jarrhen Castel, Fleese Dronenhall and Pattric Lakehearth all spit out their held breath in relief and laughter.
	“You just as well made us jump out the window there, Argyn! We thought you were Deven for a second!” Jarrhen spoke his relief out loud as the other two continued their laughing.
	“And if I -was- Deven?”
	“Well, you’d have caught us red-handed, you would have. We all figured Deven has been too long without a woman, you agree? He visits the fine women of Titanspring even less than you do, and that’s saying a lot since the last time you went was three years ago and Deven’s only been here at the outpost for two.”
	“He wants to be chosen for the Silver Wall, Jarrhen. Bricks have to be chaste their whole lives, you know that,” Pattric piped up in his mouse-like voice, his whiskers growing in like the patchy coat of a ditch rat.
	“Poor fellow must have lonely nights with his hand, hence why we got him a girl for tonight.” Jarrhen moved aside and confirmed my suspicions. The orphan Blare and I rescued the morning before was lying on the bed stripped of everything but the bandage on her arm. It seemed the three had the sense to leave it on, even though I intended to change it as soon as I could.
	With this, however, I could see that the girl’s deformities were mainly confined to her arms and legs. The colour-changing scales started in a small patch on her shoulders and worked their way down her arms, multiplying in number until they wrapped entirely around each limb. Beyond that the forearms bulged out in muscular reptilian fashion yet her wrists led to claws not unlike those of a crab—though on closer inspection there were digits found at the end of these appendages, including a thumb that jutted awkwardly out to the side. It was similar for her legs as well, though they ended in talons, one at the front and rear of her legs instead of feet or claws. Her long tail drooped off the bed seemingly lifelessly but its softly coloured underside looked to have warm blood still flowing through it. The girl was still in slumber as her eyes hadn’t yet opened and her scraggly dark hair hung down her face like roots of a tree and the scales on her cheeks shone a little in the bleak morning sun. Her jagged asymmetrical horns still tried to threaten, but the state of their owner has ruined any sense of intimidation they might have had on me. But the thing that captured my attention more than anything and caused my throat to dry up was the fact that she was robbed of her clothing.
	“Where are her clothes?” I asked.
	“Wouldn’t she be a fine whore if she had clothes on? No, we pitched’m. Deven wouldn’t have the power in him to strip a lady anyhow.” Jarrhen spoke for the others who nod along with him. “You have to abstain from women if you want to be a brick, but I don’t think it counts if you lay with denborn.”
	“Shouldn’t that be the other way around?” Fleese chimed in with a quiet voice laced with mischievousness that may very well have been planted there by the other two. “The Silver Wall is pretty devout when it comes to religion, and lying with denborn can’t be very religious, can it?”
	“It’s not the religious part they care about, it’s the fact that they don’t want you to have ties to anything but the Silver Wall. Bricks can’t have loved ones or else they’d put them first when it comes to danger, instead of protecting the kingdom.” Jarrhen laughed. “But who’d want a child with a denborn? Who’d come to their bastard’s rescue? The thing is a denborn woman’s just like your hand, only a little warmer and a whole lot dirtier."
	The three chuckled to themselves some more. I never cared much for this group, save Fleese who was soft spoken but easily pressured into doing things he didn’t care much for. He was definitely the weak link in their chain, and as such he was my target.
	“Where are her clothes?” I asked again, directing the question at Fleese and he cut his laughter short.
	“What does it matter? She don’t need them.” Pattric said.
	“Where are her clothes, Fleese?”
	Fleese smiled nervously and refused to look at anyone as we all looked at him. His friends watched him for any sign of betrayal. “Not here, obviously,” he finally muttered.
	“He’s right. And what’s it matter to you, Argyn? She’s not for you to keep to yourself, you know.” Jarrhen tried to step in between Fleese and I. “You’re not becoming one of those apologists are you?”
	“Aye, he’s gotten a warm feeling in his heart for the girl, it seems.” Pattric joked.
	“That so, Argyn? Your loins are begging for some denborn half-breed, then?” He laughed away with the others, but there was an underlying threat he made well known: “Don’t overstep your bounds,” it said, but I continued on regardless.
	“Fleese! Where are the girl’s clothes?” I bellowed as if Jarrhen was a brick wall between us, and all three of them jumped in surprise. Nobody spoke up immediately, including Fleese, but he couldn’t stay quiet for long.
	“Out the window,” Fleese finally sputtered out, his short brown locks sticking to his forehead from the nervous sweat breaking out over his body. “Jarrhen pitched the clothes outside after we all stripped her. But that’s all we did, promise! We just wanted to see Deven’s reaction is all.”
	I didn’t really doubt that, but I still felt it was in bad taste. “Go outside and get them, Fleese. Wash them too, if they’re dirty.” I commanded, feeling a little like Commander Blare when he used to tower over me when I first came to the outpost, his eyes glaring murder down at me if I ever so much as blinked.
	Fleese began to comply until Jarrhen stopped him with an outstretched arm. He stood up straight to me and peered into my eyes, beyond them even, and laid his threat bare for me to see. “Is there a problem with the way we’re doing things here, Argyn?” he asked with a hardened face of stone. There was a flame in his eyes that was none too pleasant and it promised there were worse things they could do than strip a girl of clothing.
	“The girl has been through hell and she’s not yet recovered from it. Save your jokes for when she’s healthy.” I tried my best to match his defiance.
	“So we can do what we want when she’s all healed up, then? Is that a promise?” Jarrhen inquired with a crooked smile. I didn’t reply to him.
	“He’s a bloody apologist. A fucking garrison man is sympathizing with the denborn; look how low we’ve fallen.” That mousey voice of Pattric’s chimed in again now that his leader had regained his footing. “Once she wakes up we should toss her out the door and let her walk back to Engal, if she can. I doubt there are other places she’d be more welcome.”
	“Listen Argyn, I’m not sure when you began caring about these beasts but you’ve got to keep your head and your heart in separate places.” Jarrhen said in mock pity. “Unlike you, my family and many others’ here in the garrison were killed in the War by denborn just like this one. And they may have lost the War, but they’re reaping the spoils by taking our land and jobs. We’re just trying to push them back, for humanity’s sake.” He fingered the larger talon on the girl’s right foot.
	The words caught in my throat, but I managed to spit them out anyways. “Two hundred denborn died yesterday and I say that’s more than enough. Whatever war you’re fighting she takes no part in. I’ll take care of her, so leave her alone.” My voice kept steady and strong, not betraying the fear I truly felt before Jarrhen and the others. Jarrhen wasn’t a terribly frightening man to look at, he stood a quarter of a head shorter than me and his features made him look more like a cat than the wolf whose blood he says ran in his veins, but he had a way of peeling your skin back and irritating the tissue underneath. Left unattended, his actions could infect you much like they did with Fleese and Pattric before him. “If you can’t stand the stink of denborn, you’d do best to keep away from my room from now on.”
	“You damn-!” Jarrhen’s eyes blazed with rage. The curly red-blonde beard he had been growing glowed like embers under his bared, uneven teeth and he pulled a short blade out of his tunic. Although not unexpected, he turned out to be quicker than I had hoped and before I could react the cold steel was brought up to just under my chin. “Where’s your allegiance, Argyn?” He spat at me.
	“. . . With Veradan. And with all those who live in its borders.” I say, swallowing deeply and remembering the Code.
	“Twenty years ago that meant humans and humans only.”
	“Twenty years ago is twenty years ago. Times have changed.”
	“There are denborn who killed humans and they’re living here right now. They took their enemy’s land and made it their own and we just sit back and let it happen. Why? Why do we allow those who slaughtered our own to live in peace on the land watered with our blood? Blood that they caused to spill?” The blade pushed deeper into my skin, but Jarrhen’s face changed. He was still angry, but other emotions begin to rush to the surface. “My father was killed right in front of me by her kind! Pattric’s sister also fell, same for Sam’s family, and Timmins’, and Wes’, and Jak’s siblings. Even Commander Blare lost his three sons! You’re the only one who didn’t lose anything, Argyn. Your family is living peaceful days in Grayverne while mine are nothing but bones in the ground.” His face began to shake with a mixture of hatred, disgust, and depression.
	“Abusing the girl won’t bring them back, Jarrhen,” I said.
	“No,” Jarrhen replied, “but I can help you understand our pain a little better.” He flicked his dagger in the direction of the girl. “How would you feel if I gutted her like a fish?”
	Pattric began to shuffle uncomfortably. Fleese broke out into an even bigger sweat and his head was slowly shaking side to side. His eyes had become as large as saucers since Jarrhen pulled the blade on me. I remained silent to try and calm the situation down, but Jarrhen seemed to be waiting for an answer. And he was growing impatient by the looks of it.
	“What in black hell is going on in here?” a familiar voice rumbled from the door behind me and as quick as it came out the dagger was back in its sheath. Commander Blare stomped beside me and spotted the naked denborn girl, but didn’t say anything about it. “What are you three doing here? You’re supposed to be on patrol! Get moving!” he growled.
	Fleese was the first to rush forward, then Pattric, both looking utterly relieved that the situation was brought to a quick and anticlimactic finish, but Blare’s eyes followed only Jarrhen. Jarrhen, however, kept his gaze fixed on me. It was another mixture of emotion, but this time I couldn’t distinguish any of them apart. All I could see were his blue eyes tracing me, and I followed them until he disappeared down the hallway. When they were finally gone I turned to Blare.
	“Those three, they-“ I started, but find myself cut off before I can explain.
	“Find her some clothes—buy new ones, if need be—and return her to your room. I'll help keep an eye on the others but I won't be here all the time so you'd be better off not instigating any of the other men,” Blare stated as he handed me a pelt off his shoulders for the girl.
	“But commander, they were the ones who started it. They took her when I was on watch duty and wouldn't give her up.” I explained.
	"And you marched in here to demand her back, right?” he said tersely. My mouth moved wordlessly as I looked for an answer but he waved me off. “These men won't respond to you if you do that, and you may find yourself sitting alone at the dinner table if you continue acting that way. You're not a better man for treating the girl the way you do nor are you any less of one either, so it's best if you don't look down at them and even better if you never look up; Fleese does that and that's why he's the spineless wreck he is,” Blare said with some disgust, “the only reason they listen to me isn’t because I’m old, it’s because I can put the fear in them. Don’t go assuming you can do the same until you’ve been in a war yourself, green boy.”
	I couldn’t find any way to respond to him. He handed me another pelt which I took and placed on the girl’s small chest which rose and fell with every heavy breath and we both watched the girl in silence for a while. Her face was a warm red aside from the scales on her cheeks. I wasn’t sure if her scales could be affected by the fever, but somehow I felt like they were a little less shiny, and instead of a colour-changing green they were reduced to a dull, constant grey.
	Commander Blare still stood with me but said nothing. Though he naturally tried to disguise it with the stern placement of his eyebrows he looked over her with a father's eyes, both caring and worrying, his inner worry betrayed by his gaze. I wonder if my eyes looked similar to his.
	I was reminded of his past that Jarrhen had mentioned. He had lost three sons during the War to denborn; two of them had perished on the same battlefield he was also fighting on. If there was anyone I wouldn't blame for loathing the monsters it would be him, but he's remarkably one of the scant few that tolerates them to the extent of a human. He was anything if not respectable, and it surprised me to see him have a soft heart after everything he had been through. To have watched the lands be inhabited by denborn so shortly after winning the War and losing so many children, how did he feel when he saw it all happening? How did he truly feel about the fire that took Engal and its people?
	“Tell me something, Argyn. What will you do when this girl becomes healthy?” Blare asked without looking up from the girl. The way he talked showed there was deep meaning behind his words, so I thought carefully before answering.
	“I suppose I’d find her a family. A new place to live, away from Titanspring and anyone who’d try and do harm to her again. If she has family in other parts of Veradan, I’ll try to get her to them as best I can, but I know she can’t stay here.” I thought my answer was satisfactory, but Blare gave no hint towards his opinion.
	“Where can she stay, then? Can she be safe anywhere? Where in the kingdom is there sanctuary for denborn?” Now Blare looked at me, his face as grim as it was at Engal. “Can you promise her safety?”
	It was another hard question, but I felt this one carried consequences, as if my answer would determine some important outcome down the line. However Commander Blare could see this, he wouldn’t tell, and nothing on his face betrayed his intentions. I looked at him and found the lines his face had rediscovered their youth; they were sharp and strong, his skin taut instead of sagging and wrinkled, and the gaunt features of his cheeks looked more fleshed out than usual. His beard had colour returned to it, a stark, deep chestnut, and his poise no longer had the slight lurch I grew accustomed to noticing. The only thing that remained the same were his grey-green eyes that still held that spark of unflinching resolve. I was no longer looking at a man of sixty, I was looking at the man who stood in the War twenty years ago, still in his prime, that stood bravely against an invasion of monsters threatening his life, his family, and his freedom.
	“If there is no place I find safe,” I said without a stopper on my words, knowing that what I was saying was the truth and there was no need to hide it, “then I will keep her here with me. I know she will be no safer here than I am, but I will try my best to make sure a tragedy like Engal won’t happen again to her, or anyone again. It may not seem like much, but it’s on my honour that I pledge these vows. I will protect her as I would my brothers in the garrison and as any other resident of the kingdom.”
	“And why would you do that for a rotten, filthy denborn, Argyn?” He growled, the lines on his brow wrinkling in disgust as he said “denborn.” It took me aback for a second, but I quickly realized his insult was a feint.
	“Because,” I said, and with a fluency I could only suspect was my inner nature I continued, “life is life.”
	Blare stayed quiet for a few seconds which felt more like minutes. I had never been put on the spot like this since I first joined the garrison and Blare had stared me down so much that I swore I shrunk a few inches. The white light of noonday illuminated the room and the sun reflected in his eyes like a couple of polished coins. Eventually, after a long period, Blare nodd as if he has just finished a session of introspection.
	“Aye,” he said finally, “that it is.”

---

	I carried the girl back to my room and laid her on the bed. I changed her wrappings finally and applied more of the salve Sam had mixed but I kept the pelt on her until I could find some time to travel to Titanspring for new clothes. It would be difficult to find some than could fit over her large limbs, and I’d need to cut a hole for her tail and the same for her horns if there’s a hood attached  . . .
	I went over the conversation I had with Blare and rethought my answers. I wasn’t fond of denborn; tolerant, yes, but I acted like I’d guard her with my life. Despite the vows we all made here at the garrison there wasn’t many men here, if any, that I’d fight to the death for, but even they’d rank higher than an orphaned denborn girl that might not even be respectful when she wakes. I had sounded like I’d protect her like I would the king when I’d rather fix her up with some denborn family in the closest settlement I could find and perhaps never see her again if I was lucky. And I supposed that’s what I was gambling on at the moment: the hope that there might be someone to take her off my hands as soon as they could. It was an ugly thing to admit, but it was there all the same.
	Then why did I say the things I did to Blare? The man could smell lies just as well as he can fear, but I spoke without thinking about honesty or lies, I simply spoke what came to me. Is that what the truth is after all? If so, then why do I contradict myself now? And if I can’t find a place for the girl, then what? She would stay here in the garrison, but she couldn’t stay in my room her whole life. There are no fields for crops near here as the ground is too rocky and it lacks fertile soil so there’s not much of a purpose she can fulfil around here unless she can cook better than Wes (which shouldn’t be difficult as we all had grown tired of the stew he insists on feeding us nearly every night). I was sure the other men would ask a certain job to her, one that made it so they didn’t need to take a trip down to the underside of Titanspring for some relief, but I would veto that as soon as it gets proposed. I knew she wasn’t my property, but if she would be staying here then she will listen to my counsel just as much as the others’, if not more. I think I deserve as much respect.
	Yet here I was, already accepting the fact that she might be staying here indefinitely. I sighed and sat on my bed by the talon-feet of the orphan. Perhaps Blare trained me to be more accepting of denborn than I had originally been. Or perhaps I simply felt pity for the girl I would eventually talk to and explain the deaths of her parents and the town she grew up in. Perhaps whatever caused these feelings to spring forth would forever be unknown to me.
	Whatever the case, it was all a mystery for the time being, and knowing the answers to all my questions wouldn’t entirely fix the problems I faced. Jarrhen wouldn’t keep to himself now, that much I could guarantee, and Pattric would follow him wherever he goes. The others might also come by when I’m away. And if this arsonist group finds out we’re holding onto a resident of Engal, and they want to try and finish the job they started . . .
	I leaned back some more until I was almost touching the girl’s leg, but it quickly pulled back. After a brief moment of realization I flicked my head around. The denborn sat upright, her jagged horns pointing up and out and in and every direction at once and her claw-like hands held Blare’s pelt across her chest. She brought her knees up to her face and she curled her talons as if to keep all parts of her body as far away as possible from me. Her tail has also retreated.
	But the thing that captured my stare were her eyes which, for the first time since finding her, were open. Not only open but watching, seeing; she was keeping vigil on whatever it was I might end up doing. She didn’t speak, but I neither did I as I continued staring. For her eyes were the palest blue I’ve seen, almost grey, and I had never seen eyes that looked so much like diamonds.