Find the man.

[Duquesne]

So here is this breath of cold coming... reaching in 'round one's edges, as grim boot-tread bears the ashfiend nearer. From the heat of burning, now to the chill of some dread, the officer hesitates. Morning sun glints against his steel, both clean and bloody, a sword and a dagger drawn and poised for the conflict which a swordswoman would satisfy.

And yet winter arrives. The man can only look on with horror as the freshly dead body of a subordinate is raised up, its horrible and gaping wound like an eye in its torso, pulsing blood and trimmed with eviscerated guts. Looking on this, the officer's weapons lose some element of steady resolve and eyes flick toward the grave helm of Ashfiend, who has spoken the words... who has demonstrated the future, who would have him surrender.

This is his response, that slowly he bear up, straighten gloved fingers outward from his sword's grip and tighten them again. Level his sword, regrip his dagger... and spit upon the ground between he and this darkclad evil, saying, "Gwna pa ewyllysi." The words are rough as gravel, low-made with mortal bravery. Grant him respect, you fighters--he wears your colors, though he is enemy. "Arswyda mo." If living death was his fate, then while he yet bore his own will, he would cross that threshold fighting... very much with weapons in hand.

However, there is this new turn of fate which is having the man hesitate once more, though only for a heart-beat. These foreigners were a strange lot and his eyes dart toward the swordswoman, then back to the constable whose fierce attack challenges the ashfiend. Cautious steps are drawn backward, some small distance put between himself and this new hazard, his weapons still balanced and ready, his eyes still on the woman, still on the undead, still on the conflict at hand.

And the wounded soldier? he yet bleeds and is of the same mind as his superior, thinking it wise to put a little space between himself and the struggle. Thus, he drags himself by his arms and one good leg, leaving a bloody streak on the cobbles, here where glass and debris are scattered.

But take note now, that the wind lightly shifts and that a pall of smoke drifts this way. Note now, too, that it labors the lungs, stings the eyes. It irritates; it is chemical. The air is growing thin.

[Carnath-Emory]

'Advise me,' she ought properly to have said. 'Gentlemen, lend your wits to a brute, to a soldier that does not do well with these things.' Except that in some very real sense, they'd done precisely that, so that the swordswoman is provided with a swift, chilling education in magicking's more sickly uses.

A step closer, strides tall Ashfiend: a sidelong flicker of a glance carries a warning, for the creature she reckons wholly likely to murder this commander, this very necessary man. A step closer, ushering upon them the chill that she's begun to associate with his presence, the creeping fingers of cold that search for gaps and cracks in her armour plating, and which prove not nearly so discomforting as what soon follows. Like a fool, Ariane imagines Ashfiend means merely to intimidate the soldier, which is precisely the use she'd first intended for him. Like a fool, she does not contradict Calomel's words at all (although deserts and sands and far away is most of what she knows of 'r Chyr'laud), but adopts more flexible a grip upon her weapons: they will club, rather than kill. Like a damned fool, she glimpses motion from the corner of her eye, and assumes that the soldier'd had some life left in him yet.

Which is why, when everything collapses into violence, she becomes such a bewildered and graceless thing: the first of two darting lunges becomes halting when she reads more horror on the soldier's face than her approach could possibly have inspired. Becomes a spinning stagger, the armoured body thrown sharply off-balance when she realises what they see here. She must catch herself with the edge of one heel, must wheel back about, and in one very unlikely moment, place herself between Ashfiend and commander.

"Chto eto za piz'dyulina!" she cries, in a voice hoarse with grief and outrage. "Poslushay ty, mne padlo -- ne pizdi, ne pizdi! You do not do this, not even to him!" With an arm flung out towards Teron, as if this might halt his advance and stifle his intent. With pale eyes furious within the helm's shadows, and a challenging glance flung back towards the commander: do you see this, ser streltsy? Do you see what yet comes for you? And the lift of his weapons answers this in the worst way possible, and obliges something similar from Ariane.

Again, they begin with this: the tiny preparations of limb and nerve, the first moments of that darting lunge. But this time, there is no stopping it; even the sudden clash of metal from behind her cannot stagger this advance, for it is beyond her comprehending. Even the acrid scent upon the air, which stings at the throat and the eyes so that at first she mistakes it for grief. Even the brutal tide of horror that crashes upon her without warning: the woman doesn't recognise it, but the armour does, so that what comes upon that captain now is a juggernaut clad in livid, writhing iron; is a creature whose outline is barely human, because the armour does not wish it to be.

Recognising such horror very well.
Knowing precisely what has provoked it.
Refusing absolutely to be sundered by it a second time, even though it's clearly no threat at all.

Cruel-edged carapaces of angry steel; long planes of twisted iron, bristling with tiny hooks and scythes; this is what clashes with that soldier now, with a dagger meaning to sweep aside his sword, if he raises it still. With the schiavona readied to deftly enter his guard and club him prone. With eyes blinded by the helm's encroachment, and not a single sound, for her jaw is clenched far too tightly to permit any.

Within that iron shell, she trembles.

[Cinnabar]

It is only after grasping fingers close upon blackened plate that the Constable finally makes a sound, an inarticulate snarl of rage and pain; no longer ameliorated by the heat of the forge, the bitter chill that the ghoul wears like a cloak bites deep into flesh and sinew and bone, robbing hands of their strength and fingers of their dexterity. Daggerblow spent uselessly against armour, it is some combination of the Ashfiend's movements and Calomel's own that see him thrown free of that attempted grapple, falling and rolling on debris-strewn cobbles to come to his feet in a low crouch as Ariane bowls into the officer, her own armour a horror of thorns and barbs and blades. Mirrorbright eyes glare at the ghoul from beneath lowered brows, lips twisted in a feral snarl.

"You have no concern here; your interference is neither needed nor desired, dolt." Venomous words spat at the armoured figure while he flexes frost-numbed fingers. "You already bungled things with the serpent, now you wish to repeat the performance here? No wonder you can't find Vraal, if you go blundering into everything like some clumsy great ox. He must be able to hear you coming from leagues away." Incredulity in his tone, and biting scorn every bit as vitriolic as the acrid smoke borne towards them all. It forces him to blink away tears as his eyes suddenly water, to cough sharply as lungs and throat abruptly itch from the caustic fumes.

Stinging eyes flicks between Ashfiend and the animated corpse, and he shifts his dagger back to his left hand, the better to draw his sword once more with his right. Boots crunch on glass and gravel as he takes a better fighting stance, and it is clear that come blistering smoke or biting cold, he's no longer willing to tolerate the meddling ghoul's presence.

[Duquesne]

Eyes will blink against their lacrimination, induced by the smoke which looms, hinders the sun in some grave evidence of capacity--it chokes even the light. But though this officer's eyes may tear, though his throat tightens to limit breaths, he faces this challenge squarely and does not waver at the onset of attack.

It is a ready man who meets her here, the two of them cracking glass underfoot even as steel clashes, the ruddy glow of flame glistening in their armor in different ways. Watch as his adept movement spurns her clubbing blow, feel his sword accept the power of it and deflect, channeling the impact away as he distracts with a bloodied and gleaming dagger coming 'round in a fast stab. She will find him a particular opponent, as a man fights all the more fiercely when hopeless death is forecast.

Somewhere beyond, a portion of wall comes down. Somewhere inside this wreckage of a once-beautiful mansion, timber and plaster descend in a chaos of dust and fire, sparks hurling high and firebrands whirling out on the convection of this smoke. Somewhere, something drops and shatters. Rubble shifts dangerously, with a low groan of strain--the debris is unstable. And still the smoke shifts here, whirling among them with its irritating qualities, burning the eyes so they water, the skin so it stings, the lungs so they would take no breaths if they could. And yet these moving creatures fight on, their respective battles not yet over.

[Carnath-Emory]

It is a ready man who meets these blows; it is a cold swordswoman who swings them.

'You believe yourself to be very much a thing of steel, don't you,' Syl Duquesne had once said to her, and standing not so very far from here. 'Blood and death and conflict,' he had said, and far more besides, so that she'd stepped away in shock: that he had grasped the essence of her with such precision. He'd stolen the breath from her lungs with this assertation, had summoned furious colour into her cheeks. And for a time there'd been silence between them, for her flesh wanted for air, and her mind for the words with which to explain herself, and at the end of it all:

'I'd sooner be steel than flesh,' she'd answered him, and flatly so. 'I'd sooner be iron that does not fail.'

So that in this sense, Ariane is now very much in her element. Is a construction of steel and sinew, is every inch the living extension of her own weapons; is, in almost every sense, very simply such a weapon herself. There is terror washing sickly down the contours of her spine, and it serves to cool the resolve of a weapon which has vengeance for its business. There is some caustic sting at the eyes, which blink it away like the quicksilver which half-blinds them; the armour is overwrought, is become quite mad. There is a bitter taste at the back of her throat, and shortened breath with it, and the woman might have been willing to die here --

But the weapon cares only to win.

And loves to win, and relishes this conflict, and exults in the brutal simplicity of it. A rumble of falling stone only lends a cool urgency to the matter, to this conflict which has powdered marble grinding like glass beneath her boot-heels, which has eddies of thin smoke coiling about their legs as they tangle here. The schiavona is knocked aside, is rebounding already as an armoured forearm takes that dagger with a squeal of steel upon iron; the sword-arm is twisting to deliver an ironclad elbow for the side of that helm, knowing its strength. Knowing what the armour's weight will do to that impact. And even should it fail, these blows continue, because their time is short and her blood is cold, and this is the last impediment which stands between her and a dying building.

He might yet live, every brutal blow insists. He might yet live.

[Teron_Ashfiend]

He regards the Constable with an unwavering gaze, watching him fight the natural impulse to recoil as his swift and skilled attempt is buffeted away. This Calomel, he briefly considers from the shadowed depths beneath his hood, becomes ever more the fool. The man's tenacity, he was increasingly convinced, was as that of a boy playing with fire - someone so excited by their ability to strike sparks that they had groan boastful in the presence of a bonfire.

For his own part, the blackened knight merely regarded the Constable as one would a petulant child who wanted his precious toy back. A slow, almost sad, and derisive shake of the head is his first response.

"Bungled...?" He finds his voice in a cold, dismissive rumble. "I have already told you that no smithy can destroy the serpent. You thought it a mere piece of magical jewelry, a sinister toy to be destroyed on a whim. It would have withstood more than what both your arms combined could visit upon it, and it would have been secretly laughing at you the entire time." He ventures forward a pair of steps, his weapons remaining sheathed in a display of his rising contempt for the would-be hero.

"This one," he regards the enemy captain a moment, "had already decided before the three of us came that, should need arise, he would not be taken alive. Learn well, constable. Here is a man who does not hide his fear behind bravado. Here is one who accepts things for what they are."

He laughs. It is the sound of icicles breaking free and tumbling amongst themselves before shattering against the frozen ground. The seething flames of his gaze flicker with the sound. "As for Vraal, or my continued presence here, suffice to say that we have common enemy in the serpent. Beyond that, I need not explain myself to some worm of a constable who cannot even enforce his treasured laws."

"Now, if you are done interfering," he mutters, regarding Calomel briefly before his gaze shifts back towards Ariane and her opponent. "There is yet work to be done."

It is a silent command that halts his latest servant, who obeys after coming to stand just behind Ashfiend. It is as if, within his mind at least, the departure of his gaze removes Cinnabar's existence entirely - the matter having been settled. Should the constable decide to press the matter further, he remained ready.

However, he agreed that taking the man alive was simply intelligent reasoning and, in order to do so, required delicate work.

It is with a delicate mind he prepares himself. In another magical command, a subtle manipulation of his very nature, the chill that hovers about him reaches forward - abandoning him for their mutual enemy who rails against whatever fate the three have in store for him. It is an icy touch that seeks the man, whispering of a graveyard presence and bringing with it an attempt to breathe into his joints to cause him to tire, fatigue and surrrender.

[Duquesne]

That is a well-timed blow, with the weight of this woman's armor and the strength of her arm. His defense is a fraction slower, so that in the eye-blink after impact, their respective arms are touching and this small collision of metals offers another noise to the struggle.

And inside the officer's helm, there is the roar of threatened consciousness, a moment of stunned hesitation as the weight of that armored elbow vibrates through his metal, his skull, the matter of his brain. Eyes reflect it, while the body is reacting out of well-honed instinct, swiftly returning to some level of defense against her further blows.

But what is this cold tension creeping in, whispering at the edges of his movement. A burn comes into these muscles, strangely and newly weary from exertion; a stiffness comes into this joints, so that his former dexterity is abating. And yet he labors to compensate, to stave off the swordswoman's blows and dealing none of his own as this wintry clime seems to embrace him--a long fight is becoming a short one and quickly.

By the swordswoman's next clubbing blow, this officer will fall.

[Cinnabar]

A curious expression crosses Calomel's features, some unholy hybrid of absolute incredulity, white-hot rage and boundless frustration. "Wh-" He starts speaking, then stops. Mouth opens and closes several times, each time about to speak but cutting off the words before they are uttered. Itching eyes are squeezed closed for a moment, and an attempt at a deep, even breath ends in coughing at the acrid fumes that waft across the scene; still, he straightens his pose somewhat, regarding the armoured ghoul speculatively, one sleeve across his mouth in an attempt to filter the air he breathes.

He considers the situation.

The creature is either totally lacking in wits, or in reason, or in both. He had interrupted the attempt to destroy the serpent and, in so doing, had facilitated its escape. It had attacked both Cinnabar and Ariane with murderous intent, it had proven thoroughly unrepentant, nay, it had accused the two of them of being inept; and worst of all, it had had the tale of Kinny Fletcherson's reanimation recounted to it, described as horror and abomination, and now the ghoul had the sheer gall to seem affronted when the pair of them took exception to an act of blatant necromancy?

It beggars belief.

So. Ariane remains embroiled in a duel that is rapidly becoming a brawl while the Ashfiend works whatever dark sorcery it is that he possesses, and the Constable stands to one side, half an eye on his own maimed soldier, the rest of his attention on the ghoul and his walking corpse.

"No. I don't believe that I am done."

And thus it is very calmly that he sheathes his blades with a smooth, deliberate motion, and stoops for a moment. When he straightens it is to regard the ghoul thoughtfully for a moment before his right hand draws back, then lashes out with a sharp flick of the wrist. A lump of shattered rubble the size of a child's fist is sent winging its way towards the Ashfiend's head. Meanwhile another piece is transferred from left hand to right, which then pulls back in preparation to let fly once more; he has a handful such fragments, and plenty more are lying around at his feet.

Perhaps he cannot kill the creature. Perhaps he cannot even hurt it. But he can certainly make a determined effort to annoy it, puerile as such an endeavour might be. Have a chunk of masonry to aid your concentration, sir.

[Carnath-Emory]

She is silent before such developments, this swordswoman: her focus is sharp and refined, so that the world yet exists upon the periphery of her senses, but only there. At ten years of age, a girl first dared her brother's sword, and loved the feel of it immediately; by fifteen, she'd begun to sell her skill with it to whoever was buying; six years later, she crushes glass and splinters beneath her boots, lunges across the lawn of a stately ruin to hammer at a streletsi helm.

It is a very unlikely situation. It is also a very serious one. A glance at the lean lines of her will confirm this, a glance at the face within that twisted helm. Here stands a man who holds a thing which she reckons to be hers -- as if information can be owned, as if it can be reckoned a possession. Here stands a man who means to keep from her something that she requires, and so he has earned this end: the heavy blow of ironclad elbow and bristling gauntlet, the sharp strike of a sharskin hilt for his chin, his shoulders, his throat, for she is relentless in this pursuit, is fueled by repugnance and has no reason whatsoever to ever stop --

Except that a backhanding gauntlet has caught him well across the armoured cheek, and it has dropped him. There is some good fortune, here: were it not for that helm, the cruel edges of her fist would have stripped skin from his bones. Better fortune, by a swordswoman's very cold reasoning: that she still lives, and that he does, too. And his second, yonder: two men, one to wield against the other, and as for that dialect ... ah. They tackle that when they've the liberty for it. So that it's with some very grim pride that she is turning to face the others then, with no small measure of arrogance in the lift of her helmed chin, as she sets her iron gaze upon ... so very strange a sight.

"There," she has begun, with a booted toe nudging the fallen man's helm. "It is done, j'otpizdit' ty'chernozhopyi streltsy --" And the obscenity must die quietly upon her lips, for they present such a scene, Calomel and Ashfiend: it is somehow itself outrageous. Quiet and frowning, the gaze which moves between one man and the other, between two men and a shambling corpse -- oh, she cannot quite comprehend it, will not process the fact at all. It is no time for that.

There is no time for anything.

"You must fetch them back to my horse," she is instructing ... ah, whoever will listen; her gaze has already moved past them, has already fixed upon the distant shell of that manor. "I cannot carry them both," she is explaining herself, and dimly, distantly.

Literally so, now, for she is making for that smoking wreckage of a sudden, and in a jog that very quickly begins to sprint.

[Cinnabar]

He might have persisted in throwing stones, he might have persevered in this tiny and ineffectual gesture of defiance, but matters seem to be almost resolved. So at the swordswoman's words he is nodding, the rest of his stones dropped to fall at his feet.

"I can." And he will, for he'll not trust such prisoners to the Ashfiend's less than tender mercies. First a step across to Ariane's now-unconscious soldier, the officer with his own man's blood on his blade. The man is lifted with as little effort as might be put into picking up a sack of laundry, and slung over the Constable's shoulder with little gentleness or dignity.

The other soldier, the one with the maimed knee, is clearly expected to give a little more trouble. That one Cinnabar simply reaches to grab by the scruff of the neck and drag like a recalcitrant kitten. There is swiftness and a terrible strength to his movements, coupled with an air of relentless determination in his features; should the man struggle or make himself inconvenient, the silver-haired youth will have no compunction about applying a boot to that injured knee to subdue him; there is no time for nonsense, no time for stupidity as the mansion threatens to tumble down upon them, and that bitter smoke threatens to smother all those who linger here overlong.

"We are done here."

[Teron_Ashfiend]

The rain of stones scatters across his armor in a soft, dry rain. A larger piece of masonry connects against the side of his skull, rocking his head somewhat aside, though if he is angered he does nothing further to show it. However, Teron also begins to suspect that whatever has happened here is probably not the work of Vraal. Still, it might bear some further investigation.

He raises a gloved hand to pass Ariane's command, and that it may have been aimed at him sparks the same twisted, crimson life within a baleful gaze. Before he orders his latest servant to do as the woman might desire, the constable has thrown himself into the task with a fervor that seems born from either disgust or resignation.

As Ariane moves closer toward the wreckage, his hollow voice echoes after her while he follows. "What is this place? Who lived here? And who would seek to do this to the occupant?"

A gloved hand falls to rest upon the diminutive skull that tops his sword's hilt as his looming, armored figures to close the distance between them in relative silence. His latest servant remains behind, mute and deaf to the grey world around it, awaiting its master's call.

[Carnath-Emory]

In the matter of fallen masonry, Ariane has so far proven more fortunate than morbid Ashfiend -- or less so, in a sense, for real danger from the stuff might have driven her away from the ruin, and Away is surely the safest place to be. But here they are, and pressing inexorably onwards: her sprint has slowed in deference to the uncertain footing, for they grind powdered stone beneath their boots now, and more substantial things as well. But onwards nonetheless, towards the right wing of the manor, the last remaining piece of the building where one can recognise that there had in fact been walls and ceiling and things with purpose.

"This place is Aithne," and speech is something of a challenge now, for they move through tendrils of bitter smoke, and it is not kind to the lungs, the narrowed eyes. Is difficult, that voice; is coldly flat. Violence is done with, and in its absence, the mind admits some sense of loss to fill its place.

A moment's lost control will turn her back around, will see those captives murdered.

"My employer lives here." They do not yet find a corpse. A sidelong snap of a glance reminds Ashfiend of this. "M'Ser Sylvius Duquesne, and with him -- " his doctor, a futile shadow "-- a homeful of servants, of friends." Old Archibalde ... who had put a very misplaced woman at ease with nothing more than a smile; a very unique, very human sort of magic.

But they're come upon the heart of the wreckage now, so that for a time there is no talk at all: a crumpled section of the wall must be climbed, if they wish to be admitted to what remains, and she clearly does. It is the work of several careful minutes, for the footing here is uncertain, stone has a way of slipping loose beneath the feet. When she drops down to the floor at the other side, it is with a squeal of scattered glass beneath her boots, and Ashfiend will realise its source: will make out what surely should have been tall windows, except that heat and detonation have conspired to shatter the windowpanes. Heat, of which he'll see some source almost immediately: beyond a half-ruined staircase, there is a corridor that's become a mess of flame.

"I don't know," she means to answer him, and it's lost to coughing almost immediately; she spits the bitterness from her mouth afterwards, searches for a route that fire's not yet claimed. "But those men do.

"And they'll tell me. Gladly."

[Teron_Ashfiend]

The smoke nests and billows about them, born aloft on angry, sulfurous breezes. Through crimson eyes alive with a relentless, hateful fire of their own he watches the additional greyness seep into his vision. He is spared the smarting sting of the eyes but the morass of smoke slips a sliver of fear through battered, blackened armor. If the smoke were much stronger he would be totally blinded by it and the unliving haze that robs the brightness of color and sharpness of scent from his senses.

"Your employer?" He responds at length as some burned wreckage of something once-fine squeals and collapses beneath a heavy footfall. "I thought you called no one master."

The chill hovers about him, only mildly abated by the waves of heat that roll about them. Whereas the fire and ash might sear the outside first, the grave-cold that follows him seeks to burn inside first - tickling hair on necks and seeping into bones. It is the blanket curse of death that heralds his presence and threatens those who might otherwise brave it with either sword or kind word.

Glass crunches beneath his tread as he follows Ariane through the choking fog. As she fights to form words, struggling with her own breath, he shakes his head and offers a rumbling commentary. "Then let them tell you. There is nothing for you here but fire and death." There is a moment of silent consideration before he continues. "Question your prisoners. I will search for this master of yours."

Should she consider speaking against his idea, he raises a forearm clad in scorched, ancient plate armor. "The flame is toothless to me. At least since..." and he is silent. The offer remains, his evidence demonstrated in the simple fact of his nature and the reasons behind which abruptly cropped with no hint of a willingness to continue. Apart from which, Teron considers, if either the serpent or Vraal might remain if they are responsible then he would find them first.

[Carnath-Emory]

It had been some small hut that to which he'd led her, a year and more ago. Small and dark and warm as the womb, except that it'd been death instead of life that waited at its core, and the subtle spice of incense had flavoured its air. She had examined this waiting corpse very closely, at first; had later beaten it with her fist as if to punish it for the unpardonable offense of its demise.

If only, she had breathed very quietly, then -- like grieving, like begging.
If only, much later afterwards -- like a promise.

So that here she arrives at that moment once again, except that there is no corpse at all. But they will have one -- or they will have a living man in its stead -- if.

If her lungs will endure enough of this bitter vapour.
If her flesh recalls not to fear livid flame.
If the roof of this dying manse does not come crashing down onto their heads.

If she strives, and having lacked the opportunity for that once, be assured that this time the swordswoman means to take full advantage of the fact. For the broad staircase she's moving, towards that shattered wreck of stone and splintered wood, and with the footing become treacherous beneath them. Far ahead, there burns the dull blaze of hungry flames, and nearer, the groan and shudder of fine wood that fails beneath a burden it was never meant to support.

"Nor do I," she wheezes blindly for Ashfiend, and half-regrets spending the beath upon it. Stone trembles uncertainly beneath her heel. "Mne dorogojj Uchitel'. Kostjor moyo. These are be - are better - "

Stone ruptures, so that she must catch herself against the wall: riddled with spiderweb cracks it's no reliable support at all. But breath comes with some difficulty here, breath burns the throat which receives it, so that when her hand lifts, it's to smear away tears and spittle and quicksilver alike. And meantime, Ashfiend is a hulking creak of movement at some point behind her, is a voice that breathes the coldest of truths into this smoke-filled ruin.

"Oh, you would find him!" she chokes out, near the end of it all. "You would fi -- find -- you would -- " the body buckles as it climbs, the lungs most absolutely fail. "Mne padlo," she chokes, an arm flung back to point towards the wrecked lawn. "You make another of such chyort things -- "

And the prospect is outrageous. And the situation is hopeless. And her wish in this instant is so fervent, so desperately intent, that all the world moves discern its answer. So that Truth runs like wildfire down the length of her spine; so that certainty is an electrical song that floods her nerves, exquisite and filthy and necessary. She has stumbled backwards down those steps without quite realising it, has staggered real steps towards their escape, when:

"He's dead," she rasps, bowed at head and shoulder, and with no uncertainty at all.

"We go now."

[Cinnabar]

The fumes thin briefly as Cinnabar hauls his burdens towards the swordswoman's horse, though a shift in the wind could easily change that again. A glance after the pair of them, two armoured figures striding into the ruined mansion, has him shaking his head and half-considering dumping the two soldiers and moving to follow them; he has his task to perform, and it needs doing. So, the horse.

This provides an interesting quandary, as the acrid fumes and crackling flames have made the swordswoman's mount thoroughly uneasy; Calomel's approach is countered by the horse sidling away from him, which has the Constable muttering vile curses under his breath. After a few moments of this he reaches a decision, and unceremoniously dumps his charges on the debris-strewn ground.

"Stay there, or I'll pull your arms off." This to the crippled soldier, for all that he likely doesn't understand the words; the tone is more than clear, as is the finger which points at the ground before him. Then the pale-haired man turns his attention back to Ariane's horse, approaching slowly, almost nonchalantly, taking as much care as he can not to spook the beast. A warhorse it might be, but even such a doughty steed has its limits.

In truth he's very little familiarity at all with matters of animal husbandry, and quietly hopes that he can bring the horse under control without getting himself trampled.