Valentí’s lord’s lands lay just outside Ostenso. A stone’s throw. There was no warning at all when the attack happened; it was said later that the whole army marched out of the very air. Valentí had been in his fields, doing the first planting, wearing a wooden Asmodean holy symbol around his neck. He always wore it. Valentí was a bit of a carver, and had a bracelet with charms for Erastil, Gozreh, Pharasma, Abadar, and Shelyn, which he also always wore. He had hoped that the pentagram might keep him safe, from anyone who looked at it too closely.

He wondered, as he lay dying in a pool of his own blood, whether the Galtans had tortured him for the pentagram, and if he might have been spared without it. But he could hear his daughter's screams from the house, and his daughter wore no pentagram.

It had taken him a very long time to die. All night, he had lain in his own blood. All night, he prayed. Not for himself - he was done for - but for his family, and the families around him. Let his daughter live. Let his wife be safe. Let them spare the other children, on this plot, and the next, and the next, and the next. Erastil, Gozreh, Pharasma, Abadar, Shelyn. Please.

And then, as the sun rose on a ravaged landscape, Valentí’s wounds had closed. He had known it at once for a miracle. He hadn't known whose it was, at first. He did not ask, not then. He sprang up, and gathered the bodies together, speaking softly and reminding everyone that they knew him, that he was no soldier. And he prayed again, to all five of his gods in turn, and the miracle had come again. They did not all live. But some did, who would have died. 

It was days later that he learned which god had saved him, by taking the bracelet apart and trying each charm in turn. Erastil, who once made plants grow. Erastil, who once blessed marriages, which the lords once recognized. Erastil, who chose a wife and remained with her for all eternity, though no one else could make him. Erastil, who teaches men that virtue is within their grasp. Erastil, who had answered no prayers and picked no clerics in a century. Erastil. Erastil.

Valentí understood at once. In spite of everything, Erastil had not forgotten his children. He had heard their screams, but been unable to fend off their attackers. The moment he could - the very instant - he had returned to them, and healed what he could.

They called it the four-day war, after. But death lasts more than four days, and new children last more than four days.  Homelessness from houses burned lasts more than four days. Hunger from a season of planting lost lasts more than four days. They had left those lands. No one had issued them permission to be anywhere else; the lords were dead, and no one could. The days after were very hard. It was weeks before his oldest daughter spoke again.

But it would be a mistake to hold that the Galtan conquest was so evil that Asmodeus was better. The Galtans left bastards in their wake, but so did the city itself, infernal pit that it was. The Galtans left them mutilated corpses to bury, but so did the lord, when he lived. Had Norgorber come to kill the old masters, it could not have made Valentí weep for them.

But the new queen is Galtan, they say, and having killed the old masters does not mean that the Galtans are any less evil than Norgorber. He heard awful things about their own revolution. That Galt had tried to make all children property of the state. That Galt had rounded up and killed the Iomedans. That Galt had sacked their own cities, blood running through the streets for weeks. How much worse will they do to people they do not know?

Valentí's group has not starved, or turned to banditry, like so many others - but only because Valentí can heal, and make water, these are even rarer gifts than they used to be. They are still very poor, because fifty souls travel with Valentí, and he shares everything he has with them. He had hoped, at first, that he could make the plants grow, and had been devastated that he could not. In Remasiana, he had gone to the newly reclaimed temple and learned the answer. Only a very great and wise cleric of Erastil can make the plants grow. But all clerics of Erastil are called to be so great and wise. It would take time. But it would come, if he defended his people. When the call for delegates reached them, Valentí knew at once that this was a way of doing that - not, perhaps, of defending his own family, but of defending all the families that still suffered under evil masters.

His wife had told him that the Galtan Queen would kill him. Perhaps. But Erastil had protected him once, and Valentí could not bear to stand by, while he could stand at all.