Kaschar's Quarter Read Online Free PDF Page B

none of them at first glance, if only because his revulsion prevented him from taking a second. Many looked as if they had suffered horribly for a time; still others were recognizable by their wounds as victims of the Mentite invasion. While he did not stop to inspect more closely, Matthieu thought he recalled seeing priestly robes amongst the dead, though its body had been removed of head and limbs.
    He stumbled as if in a daze, knowing neither how many hours he had lain in the cellar, nor if more enemies lurked in the ruined buildings all around him. The only sound he heard, save the squelching of his feet in the mud roads, was the morning wind howling out of the east as it cut through burned timbers and blackened stone like a wailing specter.
    Matthieu spoke not a word: what could be said? His mind could only combat the horrific slaughter before him by imagining himself in another place altogether, separated from the material world as if by some transient fog. Eyes did not focus on the dead, eschewing even the most vibrant hues the garments of now-murdered aristocrats could muster, for fear of being called back to reality by a familiar face. And yet, in spite of his best efforts to avoid dealing with this reality, he barely noticed his feet beginning to tread a very well-known path; one that would lead him to either his only joy in this horror or the greatest blow that could yet be dealt to his wounded mind.
    Why he had hopes that Beate Kerns would have been spared this awful destruction, he would never be sure. This desire drove him on most unceasingly. Much later, Matthieu would come to see this feeling in a similar way to the compulsion long ago in his university years which had driven him to attend a dissection theater. In a special demonstration given by one of the chief anatomists of the day, the secrets of the human body would finally be revealed to all willing to leave behind fear and dogma in order to comprehend man at his most basic level.
    Fascination had overwhelmed him despite his mind’s protests that what he saw could not simply be ; he knew there were bones beneath his flesh and lungs within his chest, but to see God’s most noble creation deconstructed and placed on exhibit like a specimen—or like swine at market—defied everything he had ever known about man and his exalted state in creation. So close to the angels, indeed; yet in death, even a king would appear no more regal than a butchered lamb.
    Still his feet carried him on. More and more he saw the scattered tabards of Cyrnnish and Heiliconian soldiers: the blue-and-pink of Lemaste and blue-and-purple of Garrand were prominent, but many more wore the gold-and-blue of Alfonse Mennish, Lord of Heilicon. Hundreds of corpses choked the market square and the steps to the City Hall. Ragged banners writhed in the wind all around him. He gave it no mind; his goal was clear.
    At last, he arrived to the steps of her home and there he saw her. She looked like a beautiful carnival puppet whose strings had been cut, sprawled across the stone in one of her finest gowns; the blood at her chest and mouth told of attack by a swordsman. Matthieu’s already overwhelmed mind was now numb, for too much death had passed before his eyes for him to realize what it meant that Beate Kerns, his beloved, was now dead.
    What took the place of sadness was a fatalistic musing: this form that lay at his feet had been but a few hours ago a vibrant human being, and now it would never rise again. How silly the living creature must be, he thought, to imagine that he meant something to the universe. Of all the multitudinous ways to die, they all led to the same end: a jumble of meat, blood, and bone left like a glove without a hand to wear it. And Beate was such a lovely glove. Before, he would have thought it a shame to imagine that he would never know her as his wife, but now that was far from his imagination. He merely saw and accepted: Beate Kerns was dead.
    It took all his