The Bruised Thistle (The Order of the Scottish Thistle) by Ashley York

before he approached the castle.
    The gates were open but unprotected. Two people sat outside, leaning against the city wall. Upon closer inspection, the land was otherwise devoid of people. No one in the towers. No one in the surrounding fields. It looked as if everyone had up and left. Following his signal, the men advanced slowly toward the two, who showed no sign of seeing them. When they were almost upon them, he realized why.
    Both men appeared to have been dead for several weeks. Much of the flesh on their arms and legs had been picked clean. Seumas knew the unease of the men behind him as they shifted in their saddles. His arm went up. The men held back as he dismounted and moved in closer to inspect the corpses.
    Adorned with exotic silk and carrying a Scottish harp, these were no beggars but wealthy men. Why would that be? Seumas grimaced at the stench and held his breath. He moved in closer until he was level with the corpse still clutching the clarsach . He gasped. A telltale bulbous sore was clear on the man’s neck. Seumas stumbled back from the infectious bodies. He pulled his cloak up over his nose and shouted, “The pox!”
    He reached his mount and turned it away from the castle and out to the open land, spurring him as if chased by the devil himself.
    The others had already made the trees when his conscience subdued his fear. He reined in at the top of the hill and looked back. Could he really leave this place without knowing if someone inside needed help? If he was smart, that was exactly what he would do, said that self-serving part of him that ran much stronger in his mercenary underlings, who were already out of sight. He sighed and covered his face as protection from any noxious fumes. No, he could not just leave without investigating. He slowly returned to walk his destrier through the castle gates.
    The smell was atrocious, a fetor he could not have miss ed earlier had they not been downwind. As his horse walked among the debris-strewn bailey, Seumas found it all too easy to imagine the scenes that had caused the sights before him. Bodies of adults and children alike were piled here and there, some partly covered with mud kicked up by the last storm. It looked as if an attempt had been made to keep the dead separate from the living, but when he approached the inner bailey, he saw it had all been for naught.
    Showing fewer signs of decay, body upon body had been left where it fell, overtaken by a sickness that caused one to be a little tired and congested at breakfast and dead by supper. He peered through the windows. Bodies lay in beds in their own feces, hands outstretched as if to ask for help from anyone who would stay. None had.
    The wind blew stronger through the open doors and windows but carried no sound of life with it. He approached the eerie silence of the barn, a shiver sliding down his spine. All the animals were gone—either someone had left with them or come and taken them. Wearier with every step of his horse, he felt overwhelmed by the loss of life engulfing him.
    Seumas paused in the outer bailey. These people had died in excruciating pain, with no one to care for them, stay with them until they died, or cry over their passing. It was every man for himself. This was a visible death, but, like a punch to his gut, the realization dawned that his own life was no different. His position as a mercenary was also a kind of death. No one cared for him or would cry over his passing. When a life was spent killing for someone else, fighting someone else’s battles, there were no attachments or loyalty or honor.
    He longed to be out among the heather, hearing the lowing of cows and bleating of sheep, growing barley for his own spirits instead of wasting every night with the castle cast offs. With ignorant, self-serving men who cared about nothing and had no scruples about whom they accosted or how they treated others.
    Seumas was tired. He wanted out. He steered his horse through the open