Forest Mage

The town and the fortress had immediately gone under “plague rules” from the time of the first outbreak. Public gatherings were forbidden. Alehouses and taverns closed their doors. Funerals were forbidden for the duration of the plague season. It was forbidden to touch the bodies set out for the corpse carts; only the men designated for that duty could handle the dead. Those men lived apart from the rest of the regiment for that time. Food was set out for them, but neither Ebrooks nor Kesey was permitted to go into the mess hall.

I suspected Epiny when I heard that the women had organized a system of taking hot meals to homes marked with plague flags. There was a grimmer duty for one crew of men. They knocked daily on the doors of plague houses, and then stepped back into the street to await a response. If there was none, the corpse handlers were dispatched, for it was assumed that the entire family had perished there.

But for every evidence of adaptation and cooperation, there were horrible instances of failure. A young widow fell ill and before it was discovered that she had died, her infant had starved in his crib. A former prisoner was caught sneaking into the homes of the ill to burgle them of valuables; he was flogged and then hanged in the town square. In times of plague, even relatively petty crimes were punished more drastically, lest others follow the example of the criminals.

The prisoners lived in conditions far more crowded and unsanitary than the military barracks. The plague burned through the place like wildfire. In the second day of the fever and fluxes, those of the prisoners who could offer resistance had rioted, believing that plague was only in their prison and that their guards were deliberately confining them in a death hole. They’d overcome their guards and almost a hundred had escaped. Several dozen had attacked the town, looting supplies from untended businesses, but most had simply gone to the stables, stolen horses, and ridden off. A lieutenant had rallied a small force of mixed soldiers to reestablish order. The prisoners who had been foolish enough to remain in the town were shot down in the streets, and summarily consigned to the lime pits behind the prison barracks. The ones who had fled were pursued, not for themselves but for the horses they had taken. The pursuit had been successful.

The upper echelons of our command had been devastated by the plague. Ebrooks told me one day that Major Morson was now in charge, but didn’t know it, as he had sunk into his fever before death bestowed command on him. “But having an unconscious commander isn’t much different from what we’re accustomed to anyway,” he added with sour humor, and I was forced to agree.

I lost track of time, not just hours but days. The plague season ran together into a time of endless work for me. By the third day, I had become so accustomed to the stench of death and decay that I scarcely needed the vinegar and rag mask, not that it had worked very well in the first place. There came a day when we ran out of both ready graves and materials to make coffins. We did what was expedient, which was to put one body in each coffin and another on top of the coffin in each grave in the final row of waiting holes. I logged their names as best I could, and told the coffin makers to join me in digging a ditch for mass burial. I was surprised when they grudgingly complied. That night, before I closed my eyes for sleep, I took a small moment of pride in how they, as well as Ebrooks and Kesey, had accepted my leadership. I had no stripe on my sleeve and less seniority than any of them. I recalled with regret how I had angered Colonel Haren. Had he truly considered me for promotion? Well, I thought grimly, the plague was forcing a change in command; I’d have a second chance to impress my superiors when all this was over and I once more knew who they were.

Nights brought me no rest. The row of unburied dead outside my small cottage was not even contained in coffins anymore, but only in coarse white sacking. The scavengers of the forest ventured forth to feast. I did what I could. I set pitch torches in a protective ring around the bodies. That seemed to keep most of the larger predators away, but nothing seemed to discourage the rats. Often it was only when we went to move the bodies to their grave that the rodents would scamper away, bellies bulging with human flesh. I hated them and killed them when I could.

The carrion birds had become a constant. Red-wattled croaker birds skirmished with crows over the open-pit graves. They followed the corpse carts and gathered in the trees, watching while we placed the bodies in the pit graves and covered them with a thin layer of quicklime and earth. As soon as we stepped away, the croakers would descend. Kesey brought out a shotgun and killed a dozen of them one day. He tied the bodies to tall stakes and set them around the pit grave. The bird bodies served as a deterrent to the rest of the flock, but they quickly rotted and stank in the hot sun, attracting both buzzing flies and wasps. Worse, they reminded me of the horrible little bird carousel at Rosse’s wedding. The croaker birds seemed especially incensed by Kesey’s murder of their fellows. They recognized him and would dive on him when he was driving the corpse cart, stabbing at his hat and croaking loudly. Every evening, other creatures ventured out of the forest to dig in the newly covered graves. Not even the quicklime we used in the pit graves deterred them completely. Every morning, I made a brief tour of our most recent graves to fill in little tunnels and holes dug during the night. I felt as if I were under siege. My growing hedge, lovely as it was, would never keep out such creatures, and I reluctantly concluded that Colonel Haren had been right; a stone wall was needed.