Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

They spurred their horses into canters as they rode in silence down out of the hills and into the fringes of the city. The place looked to have been built up around a meandering bend in a river and the crossings of several roads that were probably trade routes. The larger of two timber bridges had been burned. As they crossed a narrow second bridge in single file, Kahlan glanced down at the water. Bloated bodies floating facedown had collected in the reeds. Even before she had seen them, the stench of death had been so heavy in the air that she had lost her interest in going for a swim. She just wanted to be away from the place.

As they rode in among the buildings, Kahlan held a scarf over her nose and mouth. It didn't help much. She thought she might vomit from the fetid smell of rotting flesh. It seemed peculiar that it was so strong.

She soon discovered why.

They rode past side streets where corpses were piled in the hundreds. A few dogs and mules lay dead among them, the legs of the mules standing out straight and stiff. From the way the bodies were jammed into the narrow side streets, Kahlan thought that the people must have been herded into confined spaces from which escape was impossible and then slaughtered. Most of the dead, animal and human, were ripped open with ghastly wounds. Some of the dead had broken lances jutting from them, while others had been killed by arrows. Most, though, appeared to have been hacked to death. Kahlan noticed one other thing about them: they were all older people.

Many of the buildings in one section of the city were burned down. Only in a few places did wisps of smoke still curl up from some of the thicker piles of rubble. The charred wooden beams looked like the scorched skeletons of monsters. It appeared to be a day or two since the fires had burned themselves out.

Stepping their horses along the narrow cobbled street between two-story buildings looming up to either side of the road, they peered about in silent appraisal of the destruction. The buildings still standing had all been looted. Doors were broken in, or lay in the street nearby. Kahlan didn't see a single window that hadn't been broken. Curtains lay draped over a few of the tiny balconies overlooking the street. A few of those balconies held a body. Besides the fragments of wood from doorframes and the broken glass, the streets were littered with trivial items: random articles of clothing; a bloody boot; pieces of broken furniture; broken weapons; broken pieces of wagons. Kahlan saw a doll with yellow yarn for hair lying facedown, its back flattened by a hoofprint. All of the items had the look of having been picked over by a number of hands and, after being judged to be worthless, discarded.

Daring to look into the dark buildings they passed, Kahlan saw the real horrors. They were not merely the bodies of murdered townspeople. There were the bodies of people who looked to have been murdered for sport, or out of a sheer brutality. Unlike the bodies heaped in the side streets, these people were not older. They looked like they might have been people trying to protect their shops or homes. Through one broken shopwindow she saw that a man, wearing the kind of apron used by cobblers, had been nailed to a wall by his wrists. From the center of his chest protruded dozens of arrows, making him look like a grotesque pincushion. His mouth and each eye had been penetrated by an arrow. The man had not only been used for target practice, but as an object of monstrous humor.

In other dark buildings, Kahlan saw women who had all too obviously been raped. A shirtsleeve still on one arm was all that covered one woman on a floor. Her breasts had been mutilated. In another place, a girl, looking not to yet have grown into womanhood, lay sprawled on a table, her dress pushed up past her waist. Her throat had been cut through to her spine. Her legs lay splayed out, a broomstick left shoved in her as a final act of disdain. Kahlan felt numb as she saw one horrifying sight after another, each of such lurid cruelty that she could not imagine the kind of men who could have committed such acts.

By the manner of dress of many of the dead, the men appeared to be simple working people. They were not soldiers. For the crime of trying to protect their homes and businesses they had been butchered.

As Kahlan passed one small building she saw, in a back corner against a brick wall, a pile of small children — mostly babies. It was reminiscent of the way autumn leaves collected in a corner, except these all had once been living people with a life ahead of them. The gore on the brick wall betrayed where their heads had been bashed in. It was apparent that the killers had wanted to dispatch them as efficiently as possible. On the silent ride through the city, Kahlan saw several more places where the very young had been cast into piles after being murdered in a fashion that could only be described as entertainment for the most monstrous of men.