Deciding whether to burn Maleshov in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is one of the key choices in the game. During the Dancing with the Devil quest, the aforementioned Dry Devil will try to burn the village as part of your assault on Maleshov and Von Bergow, explaining that you need to draw the soldiers out of the castle if you don't want your own comrades to die in the assault.
It's a tricky choice—on one hand, you'll be murdering an entire village of innocents, on the other, not doing so will understandably make you anxious about your own beloved comrades dying instead. Here I'll run through the outcome for both decisions as well as the ultimate consequences of choosing either. This guide will of course contain spoilers for the Dancing with the Devil quest.
Should you let Dry Devil destroy Maleshov?
When you arrive at Maleshov, Dry Devil will brutally murder a peasant who was simply enjoying a nighttime piss, before passing you all torches and telling you to torch Maleshov and kill everyone in the village. He claims this is necessary to draw the soldiers out of the castle so you won't all die in the assault. However, Henry has the choice to either follow the plan or refuse.
If you agree to burn Maleshov
By selecting "Yes, the trap must be sprung", Henry can go along with the Dry Devil's plan. What follows is a sequence where Maleshov is sacked and Henry runs around trying to make peasants flee so they don't get murdered. Afterwards, soldiers from the castle come out to investigate and you ambush and slaughter them.
Following that, you infiltrate the castle. The immediate outcome of this choice is that the castle is much emptier when you try to infiltrate it, making the stealth sequence to open the gate from the inside a little easier. However, this is one of the worst moral choices you can make in the game. Istvan Toth will appear to you in a nightmare afterwards where you find yourself in a sacked Maleshov, and he'll tell you you're the same as him.
This choice also has a partial impact on the tone of the ending as you reflect on your actions throughout the game.
If you refuse to burn Maleshov
By selecting "No, I won't murder the innocent!" The first immediate consequence is that you'll have to defeat Dry Devil in single combat to take command if you don't back down. If you don't defeat him, Maleshov will burn the same as before. If you do beat him, though, you'll immediately jump to the next section where you have to sneak into the fortress and open the gate. Since you didn't draw out the defenders, there will be a lot more guards, making this trickier to complete. However, there are no consequences to raising the alarm other than having to kill lots of soldiers to get to the gate.
Despite Dry Devil and Zizka hinting that the assault would have casualties if you didn't burn the village, no named characters will die apart from some of the mercenaries that Brabant hired. No matter which choice you made, the following sequence plays out exactly the same, either with you convincing Von Bergow to leave the tower, or assaulting it yourself if you refuse to put Rosa in danger.
As with the Semine choice earlier in the game, the best decision is to save Maleshov instead of burning it. Doing so doesn't cause any of the main characters to die, even though Istvan Toth will appear to you in a dream claiming that you sacrificed your own men. It also has a positive impact on the game's ending.
