Chapter 35 - Where is a Man?

Pan stepped forward and close to Thorin.

 "You know what it is?" Asked Pan, getting off the horse to better investigate the horrendous scene. 

 Some of the novices were unable to hold back and ended up vomiting in the snow. One girl even started crying in despair.

 "I have no idea, and you?" Asked Thorin seriously, his crazy self now nowhere to be seen.

 "Just guesswork," Pan replied as he bent down and touched the skin of one of the victims.

 Pan took one more look at the corpses, then turned to the forest that surrounded them as if searching for something.

 'Your blood has been drained.' Thought Pan.

 "What assumptions would those be?" Asked Bjorn, getting off his horse and joining Pan.

 "Speculating won't change anything, the townspeople must know what it is. We're a few hours from Lurea anyway," Pan replied and then returned to her steed, which looked more expectant than afraid of the whole scene as the other horses.

 'Edward did a good job.' Thought Pan as he stroked the steed to calm his excitement.

 "Pan is right, speculating won't make a difference," said Thorin, still on top of his horse and pulling his reins to control. "Let's go around and accelerate the gallop. We should reach Lurea today!" Ordered Thorin.

 Under Thorin's orders, the battalion sped towards the city without a holy wall. It could be said that they mercifully failed the dead by not giving them a proper funeral. But in Lazark mercy must be preserved for the living, for the dead are already at rest and they have nothing to do with the mortal world. Wakes were held when the situation allowed and the situation in Lurea was far from it.

  "How long will the Order take? Eighty people disappeared last night," asked a guard on the walls of Lurea.

 The cities without walls were not exactly wallless, but they had normal walls, made of stone and gravel and not of hardened and enchanted salt.

 "I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you, they didn't even bother to wall us up, or name our lord, let alone send crusaders, maybe some wannabes might come," replied an older guard. Age has taught him that grace never falls from the sky for free.

 "There!!! Look! It's them!" Pointed out another guard and the rest squinted at the road.

 In the distance a spot could be seen moving, they were the sixty-one envoys of the Order. The stain then got closer and closer and the guards were finally able to notice his clothes and types.

 "Apprentices? Do they treat our disgrace like a class? These damn-", a younger guard tried to say, but was stopped by his senior, who slapped him in the face.

 "Don't spit curses you can't sustain, apprentices or not, they tame the essence. What will you do if one of them hears you from there? You know the price paid for blasphemy don't you?" Spoke the old man in a whisper strong but with wisdom. As for the young man, he just put both hands over his mouth and nodded in agreement. "Good… Get ready to open the gates."

 The gates were then opened for the battalion to pass through. Upon entering the city, the citizens began to say small prayers to the three miracles, some asked with exaggerated supplication if the whites could heal one relative or another. But the apprentices had to refuse, some even wanted help but Thorin stopped them. The city had fifty thousand inhabitants. 

 "If we start helping a few, soon hundreds and then thousands will come, preventing us from fulfilling our purpose here," explained Thorin.

 Thorin as a white understood the Apprentices' appeal, but it would take days to help everyone. And from the scene seen on the road, they clearly didn't have days.

 The battalion then went towards the house of the regent of this city. He was called only regent as he did not officially receive the title of baron from the Pope.

 "A man, where is a man," stammered an old man with a lamp in his hand, as he approached people here and there and said. "There is no man here, there is no man here either, where is there a man?"

 Pan felt intrigued by the man's actions. But he wasn't willing to stop to ask the meaning of his words.

 'What a strange fellow.' Pan thought, watching the man regress from the street for them to pass and then enter a large barrel inhabited by dogs and snuggle inside with the lamp still burning.

 The scene made him extremely uncomfortable for some reason Pan was unaware of. Seeing the man cower in the big barrel surrounded by dogs and with a lamp illuminating the now-falling night, as he babbled about finding a man filled him with… Helplessness.