between two fires by christopher buehlman

The soldiers made a fire in the barn just near a small creek and a still house. Those with means had fled, but many times it dogged them even into the hills and swamps and manors and killed them there. Some fouled in houses because they were the last and there was no one to put them out. They lay pitifully in the shadow of the town church where they had crawled hoping that last gesture would lessen their time in purgatory, stuck like glued birds to the limestone where they had tried to cool their fevered heads. They lay in weed-choked fields of rye and oats where they had fled in delirium. It had fallen so heavily upon this part of Normandy that the dead could not be buried they were piled outside in their dirty long shirts and they stank in the August sun and the flies swarmed around them. Now none looked at their neighbors, nor spoke to them. The sickness, which they called The Great Death, passed mysteriously but surely from one to the other as easily as men might clasp hands, or a child might call a friend’s name, or two women might share a glance. There were not enough hands to swing scythes, nor enough women willing to gather for the threshing, nor any miller to grind, nor bakers to stoke the ovens. The disease was ruthless here it had killed so many farmers that there was no bread even in this fertile valley. They had all eaten so much grass that they had green piss. The four men had been on the road in their rags and rusty armor without a good meal for many weeks, living on spoiled food from houses, watercress and cattail tops from ditches, worms, bugs, acorns, and even a rotten cat. It would be smarter to walk it to the barn first, where they could shelter against the coming rain.

The fat one, and nobody knew how he stayed fat, took his war hammer up, meaning to brain it, but Thomas stopped him. It looked at them hopefully from beneath a willow tree, swishing its tail against the flies.

It was lame and its ribs were easy to count it was too weak to run from them or even to bray at them, but it didn’t seem to have the disease.

Between two fires by christopher buehlman