A strange sound caught his attention. Something not quite human; somewhere between a screech and a wail; the sound lonely, beseeching, yet predatory all at once.
He turned upwards and saw the edge of a wing; feathers silken black in the morning light.
The crow banked slowly, its wings curved precisely to catch the breeze as it glided higher and higher. It circled back, its black gaze seeming to lock onto his for a moment. Those avian eyes were depthless, fathomless; an eternal abyss. They too had witnessed suffering; humanity's carnage a never ending feast for the winged scavenger and its feathered friends. And here they came now, joining their leader as his beak pointed toward the horizon, their sleek bodies instinctively wedging into a flying V formation, pointed unerringly at the impending disaster ahead.
The man followed, his steady footsteps eating up the miles as the day wore on. Long before he reached it, a column of smoke could be seen rising high into the sky. The incessant cawing of the crows reached his ears before the village finally came into sight. And joining their cries were barely human sounds combined together into a symphony from hell; the wailing, screeching, teeth gnashing sounds of grief raising a frightful din as what was left of the survivors gathered in the village common. And what they paid witness to was even more frightful than the din they raised.
It was a scene worse than the lowest circle of Hades itself. A funeral pyre; its fleshly tinder raising the mile high column of smoke he had seen earlier. Hands, feet, legs, ragged dirty clothes all jumbled together in a burning pile as the fire raged ever on. More bodies tossed into the flaming heap as their kin watched; the women mad with grief, tearing at their hair, the men staring helplessly; shoulders stooped in defeat.
Men in chain mail held back the crowd, swords at the ready and eyes sharp for any possible signs of organized defiance. A woman, eyes wild with pain, tried to run pass the king's soldiers and was met with a metalled gauntlet for her trouble. She fell to the ground sobbing and tried to turn her eyes away. Away from the skin slowly sliding off the face of her son like molten plastic as his body burned along with many others in the increasing pile of human bodies gathered and tossed into the flames by the king's men. But she could not, her eyes like those of others around her, hypnotically drawn to the last moments of their loved ones on earth as their bodies sizzled in the flames, the sickly sweet scent of their burning flesh sickening as skin melted into bones.
By order of the king, all those killed by the black death would be consumed by fire, their diseased flesh consecrated to ashes forever so as to prevent the further spread of the devil's sickness upon those still living. And so the villagers grieved, bearing witness to the last moments of their loved ones; black tongues bloated with disease and eyeballs running into soup in their sockets as their flesh burned away forever.
The king's soldiers watched and waited as their comrades went hovel to hovel, forcibly dragging out black bloated bodies for them to burn. They had become inured to such carnage as the plague swept throughout the kingdom, mowing down people everywhere like so many stalks of wheat indistinguishable from the chaff as the grim reaper's scythe cut down the living by the thousands. And so it went, village by village, hovel by hovel, bodies too many to count piled higher and higher onto the flames as the unending nightmare of the plague dragged on and on.
The man stood at the edge of the crowd and watched in silence. Face young but eyes ancient, he stared calmly, having seen much worse throughout his wanderings. He did not pity the villagers, for life was life and death was necessary to define it. At least with death came an end to suffering and with it the sweet bitterness of not knowing what came the morrow. When would his suffering end?
Finally, mercifully, the burning ended, the last body having been dragged from the village hovels. Now the carts came forth, as the villagers dispersed and the king's men pulled charred remains from the smoldering pyre and unceremoniously tossed them like sacks of leftovers into the carts, their blackened flesh plopping with a sick squishing sound as flesh met wood. One by one they left, their wooden wheels leaving a long rut in the dirt as the line of carts wheeled slowly out of the village. The king's soldiers followed and men and carts soon disappeared over the horizon.
