Grayson sat apart from his army, his horse slowly picking his way through the now demolished village, which had been ravaged, and it’s villagers either killed or rounded up until he gave the orders that determined their fate. His eyes glanced at the bodies which lay upon the ground in a jumbled pile, an occasional woman or child mixed in with the men and boys that had died.

Smoke rose skywards from the burning wreckage of houses that had once stood proudly around a small square. On one end of town a sheep and goat pen stood but instead of holding animals, it held the remaining women and children and it was to the pen that he directed his horse.

Soldiers scurried about their duties pausing to give a quick salute as he passed; some still were seen fighting those who continued to resist between the alleys and streets. One could hear the fighting better than one could see it but it nevertheless was evident that this battle was still not quite over with.

His hose carried him around the parameter of the pen; he eyed the wailing and sobbing women with a jaundiced eye. Ignoring the pleas for mercy from the prisoners, his attention was drawn to a young woman who sat impassively in a corner of the pen, nursing a child from her full, ripe breast, rocking the child as she did so. She intrigued him; for all the commotion that was going on around her, she seemed to have a quiet sort of dignity and calm.

One of the guards came up to him, saluted, and then asked what the next order was in regards to the prisoners. Instantly, one side of his mouth curled upwards in a cruel half grin then replied as his eyes shifted from one prisoner’s face to another, “ Kill them all when I leave the area but leave one alive so that Rome shall know who did this.” He stretched out his arm and pointed at the woman in the corner. “Bring her to me. Now!”

She was brought to him immediately and he bent down from his horse to cup her chin in his hand turning her face this way and that to get a better look at her. The child in her arms began to stir then cry, drawing Grayson’s attention to it. His eyes flew from the child to the woman, then back to the child. He softly smiled at the baby as he touched its’ cheek gently.

His face turned towards the soldier who held the woman in place. “Bring her to my tent,” he ordered in the guttural Goth tongue, then glanced at the woman and spoke in his native Latin that he had spoken when he had been younger and mortal. “No need to fear me, lady. You shall live as your child shall.” He gave her a half smile, and in a flash of movement, scooped the child out of her arms and into his own and galloped away.

Once he was out of range of hearing the mother’s pleas for her child as well as the screams of the women and children as the soldiers slaughtered them, he stopped the horse and tended to the child who wailed loudly and fiercely for its mother. He clucked his tongue at the boy, hushing it in a quiet tone in Latin while rocking it into a quiet calm. Soon he had boy gazing solemnly at his face, while one hand clutched at Grayson’s long, thick braids that swung with each movement of the horse as he made his way towards a lone spot that looked south.

When he arrived, he picked the child up so that he was eye to eye with him then turned the child around to face southward. “Look upon this world, little one,” Grayson half whispered to the child. “All that you know, all that was before now will soon be gone.” He turned the child back towards him. “Look at me.” His voice rose in volume as he continued, “I am the destroyer of it all!”

The child began to wail loudly at the pronouncement.

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