Hearing the sound outside the window, Shade instinctively felt, I should be woken up now. He grabbed Dawn's First Light and rolled out of bed. Only when he pushed open the door did he discover that the entire village, including the house he was in, had already erupted in roaring flames.
The night was illuminated by fire, yet while he had been indoors, he had neither sensed the house burning nor seen the village outside ablaze through the window. It was as though the fact that "the village was burning" had appeared the instant he opened the door.
But Shade had already encountered enough problems in the ten minutes since entering this village, so he did not dwell on it. Sword in hand, he walked out of the courtyard.
Ordinary flames could not harm him, but corpses lay everywhere in the village. The villagers appeared to have died only recently, and their bodies bore wounds from bladed weapons. Naturally, there was no sign of the retired soldier or his family.
Clear footprints and hoofprints marked the village's muddy roads, and Shade followed them all the way to the eastern end of the village.
Mounted bandits with red headscarves were burning even more corpses at the village entrance. Mules, cattle, chickens, sheep, and other livestock had been herded together, while the various valuables looted from the village were piled nearby, awaiting division.
The retired soldier was speaking with someone who appeared to be the bandit leader beside the burning pile of corpses. They noticed Shade emerging from the village with his sword and turned to look at him.
The bandit leader, bare-chested, wearing a red headscarf, powerfully built, and scarred across the face, said to Shade:
"Knight, we are willing to offer you a quarter of our spoils. Please overlook what