Prologue: Blueberries and Mutton
Plumes of smoke billowed and rose into the air,
drifting and spiraling violently toward the clouds like many writhing worms
emerging from nooks of dirt. The suffocating stench of death that came with the
smoke permeated throughout the very air along with the smell of burning oak and
wood as the forest itself was put to the torch. Above, between pillows of
rising smoke, trees one by one became enveloped in orange as flames licked away
at their coat of leaves, turning them into dead husks with burning twigs,
before the flames spread to the adjoining tree and the process repeated itself.
Edric the miller had not seen such a horrid
spectacle of flames in his fifty years of life.
The tall, burly miller stood back, watching flames
scorch away a large blueberry bush where he’d gathered blueberries for his
youngest daughter only the week prior. For just a brief moment, Edric pictured
his daughter screaming and burning amid those leaves and berries just as the
flames destroyed one of the meager things that had always brought her joy. The
orange flames mirrored themselves upon the older man’s glistening grey eyes as
he watched the bush die in fire, but the resilient miller willed himself not to
let tears be shown.
The man who’d set the blueberry bushes on fire
stepped back, pulling away his torch. The gaunt, grinning man with a stormcrow
emblem upon his tabard turned to Edric, waving his torch nonchalantly while his
other hand rested upon the hilt of the sword at his hip. The man’s grin showed
thin, chiseled lips and highlighted his sunken-in, skeleton-like cheeks.
The armed man licked cracked lips. “Smell that,
miller?”
