The Warrior had no time to waste; smoke from the burning village further blackened the stormy sky above the valley. Distant crashes and cries of battle carried clearly to her on chilling winds. She spurred her mount, digging into its belly, into wounds made from a night of goading and hard riding. The creature was spent and foamed at the mouth, but still it galloped on. She felt it gnawing at the bit. It thrummed between her thighs, broad and powerful, mesmerizing in its way. Only a few more rises and then the drop down into the valley. She did not allow herself to think that she might already be too late. Her legs were numb, her fingers cramping. She held her position just off the saddle, using her knees, digging her heels, her head down and close to the hot neck of the beast, breathing its scent in and out.

She was clearly too late to save the village, but it could not all be cinders yet. She would still find the child as she promised, though dead or alive. But if there was still fighting, there was hope. She was exhausted and her vision blurred, filling with tears from smoke. She trusted the mount to find its own way and simply ground her spurs steadily, mindlessly, whispering along the creature's dank lathered hide to hurry and to fly.

The rhythmic blast of its flecked breath churned out steam into the air. The air was damp and cool here in the highlands; the village could not have burned through completely. Her spurs were catching in the flesh.

"You should not have returned," said the Vicar's Champion, rumbling low and honeyed all around her. Her head pounded with fever, her vision swirled into drizzle and ashes and mud. She clung to the mount with a feeble brittle strength and closed her eyes.

"I made a vow, surely you would understand that," she whispered, rocked gently on thick working muscles. Though they were almost to the crest of the last rise, the melee just beyond it sounded far, far away. Only her heartbeat now, and the thudding gallop, and the stinging burnt air in her lungs.

"You made a vow, but you are pledged to the dead. Even now the fighting is among the victors. Those you would save have been slain. The child you would adore has been consumed. Your purpose here has ended," he said this and she faught back dispair.

"You are not death. My purpose is my own. Can you say the same?"

"I serve my master's will."