Some of the marines rowed the small craft towards the strand. Others pointed their cocked crossbows in the direction of the beach. 

Elias Zamara sat with his hand on his sword’s hilt. Frater Jonas clutched his Elder Sign as if it too was a weapon. He clearly expected some emissary of the Shadow to be waiting within the village to challenge his faith.

The marines kept their eyes fixed on the shore. They had the look of the typical Siderean professional soldier—stocky, dark-haired, medium height, olive-skinned. They were the same hardy breed that freed their country from the Seleneans and who were now spreading Siderean power across the Dragon Sea and the archipelagos of the World Ocean. Some said they were the best infantrymen the world had seen since the days of the Solari Legions and so far Kormak had found no reason to doubt that assessment.

The wind carried the smell of burned flesh, mingling it with the salt tang of the sea. The waves turned to white foam as they hit the sand and withdrew.

Kormak was the first to vault into the surf. Salt water wet him up to his thighs. Sand crunched beneath his boots. He made his way ashore as quickly as he could, uncomfortable with the way the water slowed his movements even for those few moments.

Silence brooded over the village. Gulls pecked at the corpses on the beach. Larger carrion birds fluttered skywards as they noticed the soldiers.

Kormak walked over to the nearest body. The dead woman’s skirt had been raised above her waist. Blood pooled between her legs. Someone had raped her then stabbed her through the heart. 

A man lay nearby, his throat cut. Maybe he had been forced to watch the woman die before they killed him. Kormak fought to keep his mind from constructing narratives. It was all too easy to picture what had happened here. He had seen the like many times, the first when he had been eight years old and it had been his own people dying.

Two children lay nearby. They stared up at the sky with blank empty eyes. Their throats had been cut too. They bore a family resemblance to the man and the woman.

“It was a mercy,” said one of the soldiers. “The tykes would have starved to death without their folks to feed them.” He did not sound as if he believed it. He sounded like he was trying to comfort himself.

The state of the corpses and the fact that the fires still burned made it obvious the attack was recent, most likely last night, possibly even some time before the dawn.

The slow burn of an anger that he knew, given time, would become incandescent fury started in Kormak’s gut. He felt, as he always did, the need to make someone pay for this.

He unclenched his fists, took a deep breath and forced the rage down into the place where he had buried it long ago. A man in his line of work could not afford to give in to every spark of righteous anger. It was not his job to avenge these people. His duty was to find the sorcerer men called the Kraken and end his unrighteous career. Anything else was just a distraction.

“Silence,” said Zamara with the chill authority of the Siderean nobleman.