Bennet's Babe

Bennet and his small troop of men were returning home from a long tour, fighting skirmishes all along the borders of a contested area.  They had been out for over a year, and were returning home to their families.  Following this particular path were a small group of men, living in Port Everlast, near Bennet.

As they approached a small shire they'd passed through before, they noticed something different.  The smoke wasn't curling cheerily from the chimneys of the stout little lodges, but rising from the roofs and fields.  The town center wasn't filled with knee high children, playing tag and weary mothers chatting at the well.  The town center appeared to be filled with rubble, at a distance.  

Instantly the men were alarmed.  They continued to the nameless town, to make camp, but they drew their weapons and moved with extra caution.  As they closed in, what they saw as a heap of rubble, was in fact signs of a dramatically one sided battle.  Halfling bodies strewn everywhere, men, women and children, adolescents cut down in their prime.  Bennet, a grizzled veteran, one accustomed to the hardships of battle, was completely overcome.  He dropped to one knee, and made some sound borne of grief mingled with shock.  Bodies...stomped, beaten, some impaled on spikes.  Clearly, this was the site of some terrible raid.  After the initial shock, the men quickly broke into teams and searched every abode for survivors.  They did a cursory search, coming up with abandoned homes, burned places, and bodies, even killed in their beds.  Whoever did this attacked with savage efficiency, this was not the work of a mere raiding party, but of born killers.  

Throughout the day, the men piled bodies in the center, on a makeshift pyre, sending blessings, and burning the dead.  As the day shifted to evening, they entered the place they were dreading to enter the most, the Inn.  Kithri's Rose, this charming little building was once called.  They feared the worst, avoiding the place, all day, knowing that the inn is where people tend to flee to, for protection in a small place like this.  They could see the door was bashed in, and just make out shapes in the gloom inside.  Upon entering the building, they were shocked to find no bodies at all, signs of a struggle, for sure, but no actual bodies.  In the last room Bennet entered, where he thought he'd probably crash and sleep for the night, as he was sliding into the tiny bed, he noticed a heap on the floor.  In the now almost darkness, he lit a candle, and found one small body.  It was a very young halfling woman, or older girl.  She had a long knife through her lower back.  Bennet, resigned with grief and exhaustion, slid her body gently onto his cloak, making ready to bring her to the pyre, when a small bundle of blankets spilled out of her hands.  In the bundle, there was a sniffle and a movement.  As if outraged from being disturbed, the bundle began wailing in outrage.  There was a baby, and by some miracle, the baby was quite alive!  Pulling the corner of the blanket aside, Bennet stared into the most piercing and alert sapphire blue eyes he'd ever seen.  Those eyes peered from under a shock of spiky cherry red hair, and Bennet knew immediately that he would kill to protect this child.  He fell asleep with her curled tenderly in the cook of his arm, and in doing so, he fell in love for life.  Kithri would ever be known as Bennet's babe.