“While he scouts, Kudmer will have ten thousand help! Speed and surprise were our trump cards, we had to not let them come to their senses! Now, no. Now everything has gone to shit!”

“Lis, go fuck yourself!”

“Fuck, I do it more often than go out in the fresh air!”

“This… this Kudmer has time to gather anyone, you panic again!”

“No, well, of course, Kudmer is a fat, self-confident fool, but not to such degree!”

“It is an additional concern for him, to wait for you and to feed the foreign army of many thousands. He will only send for help when he sees us!”

“Well, okay, suppose he is confident in the inviolability of his walls, and this is so. We will storm them, and the army that has come to his aid will grab us by the ass!”

“Don't run ahead of the horses, Lis!”

And Nikto, as if looking for support, looked at Kors. He was taken aback, he clearly didn’t expect that Nikto would turn to him for help in a conversation. Because, according to Kors, Nik himself did a good job of “ransoming”, all the more, doing it in the style of those with whom he argued. But it seemed that he wanted some clever arguments in his support. Kors froze, and Lis, as luck would have it, also looked at him:

“Well, speak! Don’t stand in my throat, fall further!”

“Alis, slow and steady wins the race,” Kors hardly uttered, “and haste makes waste.”

Kors was terribly ashamed of what nonsense he had just said. But, having felt the emotions of Nikto, he realized that he was quite pleased with him, and diligently memorized the expressions, while correctly putting them on the shelf to the phrase: “business before pleasure”.

“We will capture this Ore town just like that edge Fort across the river, remember?” Nikto told Lis.

“What?!”

“Only you and I will change places.”

“Are you nuts? We got fucked up in that Fort!”

“Under Ore town all the land is dug for many kilometers. I and my unclean ones will go to their very heart through holes through which no man can crawl. We will take over the city from the inside. And you will be outside!”

Lis fell silent, considering the words of Nikto:

“Nik, this is too risky.”

“When was it different with us?”

Lis, seeming to calm down a little, turned to Tol.

“Well, have you done anything?”

“You bet!” Tol was delighted, seeing that the tension had subsided. “Come on, I'll show you how I put things in order here. You know, Lis, I have an ideal here!”

Lis just shook his head in annoyance.

They went out into the yard. Kors and Nikto put on masks again, and Karina covered her face with a cape.

Kors with disgust, since the mask hid the expression on his face, looked at the naked, torn corpse of Tishka. On the body, the softest and, apparently, the tastiest parts were eaten off by the wolf. The face was eaten, there were no eyes, lips, cheeks. The genitals were eaten away, the soft tissues on the forearms and thighs had bite marks from powerful jaws. The abdomen and chest were opened, but the entrails were not touched, the predator ate only tender liver and the boy’s heart. The mutilated corpse of Tishka, exposed for all to see, looked reproachfully at the living with empty eye sockets. On a board nailed above his head, it was written: “Went AWOL to the lake” and was painted a lake with blue paint and a huge figure of a grinning wolf with black paint. It was drawn very well. It could be said, intelligibly.

“There's a wolf walking by the lake,” Tol explained. “Here, they found a boy from the militia on the same day as you left. I don’t let anyone go there anymore.”

“How well it is drawn,” Kors couldn’t resist.

And Tol was delighted:

“Some freak used to work with Lila in the theater, he sculpted all sorts of decorations, and when the theater closed, he stayed on the street. So he came to us.”

“Yes,” agreed Kors, “it is a very correct decision. There are many illiterate among your soldiers, and the pictures explain everything clearly. That you can't go to the lake with wolves,” he looked at Nikto, because of the mask it was completely incomprehensible whether he was angry with Verniy or he didn’t care. Moreover, Verniy was standing nearby in his dog’s helmet, looking at the drawing on the board and did not look tense at all, his posture was still calmly relaxed. “Nothing will happen to him,” Kors suddenly thought with some inner confidence. Nikto didn’t even turn his head to Verniy, didn’t even look at him. He stood, looked at the body of unfortunate Tishka, torn apart by his beloved pet, and said nothing. And did he look at all? Did he see what the dog has done? Due to the black inserts covering his eyes, it is impossible to say with confidence. Or was it really a wolf and not Verniy at all?

“What's this? Why is this red here?” Lis said.

And everyone was distracted from the corpse of Tishka and looked at the red one, hanging next to on a rope tied around his neck.

“This is red Almer, he said a lot of unnecessary things about you, intimidated newcomers and was also constantly stoned. This is not how things should be.”

“Clear. Well, why did you hang this one?” Lis looked at the next corpse.

“Is he not a sorcerer?” Tol asked in surprise. “You see, Al, he has the same thing on his face, uh-uh… glasses, like the blind man you killed and whom we found buried along the road. You killed him? I decided not to risk and also got rid of the four-eyed!”

Kors froze. Tarmer! That’s where he disappeared! He looked at Lis, damn, he killed Tarmer to spite Kors! For some reason Kors was sure of this, but he was looking for this red. And everyone was silent. He asked Karina, and she said that she knew nothing, although she probably knew everything perfectly well. She deceived Kors! Her father! Everyone around knew where Tarmer had gone, except him. And they were silent. He looked at his daughter, but her face was covered with a cape. They were all closed, all the people of the Demon had masks: Nikto, Verniy, Lis, Karina, and Kors himself because of his jewelry and painted face. All were fenced off from the world of people by a barrier that made them faceless, and it was not clear now what Karina and Lis felt, because Tol, unwillingly, unwittingly revealed his act to Kors.