Book 3: Chapter 67: An Act of Desecration
The stench was overwhelming by the time Lumi slowed down to cautiously approach the bubbling bog that gathered beneath the sickly black willow tree. Despite the water rushing into the stagnant section of the river from above, the bloated area around the willow had thickened beneath a bubbling foam enmeshed with the bodies of thousands of dead insects that gathered around hundreds of floating corpses of fish, several dozen birds of various species, and the even larger bloated bodies of deer, stray cattle, and even a stray black dog that lay dead along the riverbank.
“Gods, that smell is—vile,” Carina groaned as she pulled free the long linen scarf stuffed inside her chest armor and wrapped it securely over her mouth and nose, insulating it with ice magic for good measure. “Well, Lumi, how much you want to bet they stuffed whatever bit of rotting corpse they dumped here inside that willow?”
The scriva whined and then sneezed before shaking its head and circling away from the revolting mire of death.
“Waiting for Larissa probably wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
The elemental wolf moved them to a safe location upwind from where they could safely observe the toxic portion of the river while avoiding the awful stench carried on the breeze. There, the Duchess eyed the large bubbles of noxious gas that floated to the surface of the dense film, where they grew in size until eventually bursting with a sinister hiss. Every time the breeze altered its course, her ice-blue eyes would tear up beneath the toxic fumes that gathered around the plague swamp.
‘It’s no wonder the poison spread downriver as far as it did. Thankfully, the knights carry their own water while out scouting for plague villages.’
With Larissa and her water witches serving as guides, the knights of Bastiallano avoided getting too close to any contaminated water sources. They were also cautious and alert when dealing with the victims of the plague, avoiding direct skin-to-skin contact, masking themselves before entering close quarters with the afflicted, and washing and bathing frequently whenever they made camp or returned to Bastiallano’s defense towers and fortress.
While these scouting and recovery missions were voluntary, Carina couldn’t shake the lingering guilt and fear that these men might succumb to the plague and die or be otherwise persecuted and punished like the doctors and nurses at the slum hospital.