Dark Heart by Margaret Weis;David Baldwin

wolf.
    Gwendolyne watched him, her deep brown eyes glistening with concern.
    “They simply do not understand,” he said. “They see only their own concerns, their own little lives, going up in the smoke from the pyre. They don’t know how terrible this can be, what is at stake here. Do they think I like ordering something like this? I would have sacrificed myself on their behalf if I could have stopped it. But the plague is here. Perhaps it is the devil’s will, perhaps God’s own. It was certainly not my will that brought it into our midst, but mine is the task of stopping it, if such a thing is humanly possible. It may already be too late.” He ran his hands over his face, as if by doing so he could wash the stain of this morning’s actions from his memory.
    Gwendolyne got up, put her arms around him.
    “Tell me what happened, my lord. Why is there blood on your hands?”
    Justin looked down, saw the scarlet stains mixed with the soot from the fires, saw the drying blood where he had smeared it upon her gown. He tried to speak, but the words were thick in his throat. He coughed, then began to speak.
    “I killed a man. We came to burn his house and he went mad. He was in there weeping over the dead body of his wife. The plague had taken her. Neck swollen, the black spots. She was with child, near to term. We tried to take him out before we put the torch to the place, and he went mad. He struck Goodman Miller and picked up a scythe.”
    Justin looked away. He couldn’t look his wife in the face. She wrapped her arms around the small of his back, held him tight.
    “The miller managed to grab the scythe and I struck the man. He would not stop fighting, and I was forced to continue striking him until he went down.” Justin let out a slow, anguished breath. “We dragged him to the village square. He kept saying that he’d built this house for her…they were going to live there…he’d built it for her. He crouched there in the dirt crying like a babe. Blood ran down into his face from where I’d struck him. When the house caught fire, he broke free from our hold and ran inside. I couldn’t stop him. He never came out.”
    Gwendolyne led her husband to the bed and sat him down. She dampened a cloth in the wash basin next to the bed and began to wash the blood and soot from his hands. If only the stain in his mind could be cleaned so…
    “Milord, you did what you could. When this passes, those who survive, they will see that.”
    Justin sighed. “I stood there watching that man cry today, and all I could think of was you. What if you were the one in that house? What if it was me crying in the dirt over your body? I would have grabbed that scythe and threatened anyone who tried to keep us apart. I, too, would have chosen the fire.” Justin looked into his wife’s eyes. “But he was not me. I bear the responsibility for all of the people on this estate. I am not free to act merely on my own behalf. I am lord here. It is my duty to stop such madness. But how could I have saved him?”
    “My lord, you did your best,” she said.
    “It wasn’t enough. I told them today in the village that I would rebuild all their homes if I had to sell my own to do it, but nothing could bring back that man’s wife, and he knew it. I told them that their homes and their dead had to go up in flames, or the Black Plague would take them as well. But they did not care.”
    Gwendolyne placed the cool cloth upon his face, washing away the soot and tears. “Shhh, love, there was naught else that you could do.”
    “I…I don’t even know if fire will save us. But I had to do something. I can’t just let my people die, and I have seen that the plague moves from one stricken victim to the next. Perhaps by sacrificing the one village, I can save the rest. Perhaps…I had to do something! I am their lord!”
    Gwendolyne pulled her husband down beside her on the bed.
    Justin looked down into her face. She smiled up at him. Her