The man glassed the road, watching the long procession slump south across the valley, armed and ragged like a band of crusaders for some dark creed. The rain caught them earlier, somewhere further north, and now they were wet to the bone, all of them, their eyes all downcast save a pair who looked like the guards, janissaries still young and with enough energy to lift their heads to watch the tree-line and all the darkness that lay beyond it.The years had brought many swart beliefs to the land and the man had seen blood cults and bridge trolls, men driven mad with hunger and terror and loss. But this group was different. Each wore something that was once brightly colored but now ratted to the color of the ground and the slate sky. One man wore a scarf, once red, another wore a shiny green hat gone the color of oil on pavement.