The flames consumed everything. Smoke streamed thick and black into the twilit sky. The screams of the unfortunates caught within this hellish inferno shook the air like the wails of the damned. The clash of metal-upon-metal rang above the roar of the flames that licked at the roof of the sprawling manor house. Horses shrieked, their hooves clattering across the courtyard while dark riders wielding swords and axes cut through the pitiful group of defenders, striking down men and women alike without provocation. The dead and dying lay everywhere, and the choking odor of blood and terror hung thick and stinking in the air.

In all the confusion, nobody noticed the man hurrying away from the scene of carnage, stumbling into the shadows of the trees lining the riverbank nearby. How perversely ironic, to be so near an endless supply of water while the magnificent structure of the manor burnt to the ground only yards away. The servant clutched a small, carefully wrapped bundle as he made his way to the nearby dock where a small fishing raft had been tied. He nearly fell into it, managed somehow to untie it from its moorings and allowed the current to carry it from the shore. He had never been a particularly religious man, but now he called upon every deity he could think of as the raft eddied its way past the burning structure, praying that he might slip by without being spotted by the attackers, that the raft wouldn't catch on any submerged tree roots, that the flaming timber falling steadily into the water might not fall on him and crush both him and his precious burden.

Somebody must have heard him, for the raft drifted unscathed into the deep shadows of ancient trees overhanging the banks, and he breathed a little easier as he sprawled out on the damp wood, finally succumbing to the pain of his wounds as his consciousness slipped away.

Behind him, the manor burned on.