Tam couldn’t think of a single time in his life when he had felt as terrified as he was right then. This village had always been a peaceful one, so the only spooks and scares really only came from shadows in the night and the occasional bear or wolves prowling through. This was huge by comparison. Incomprehensible. There was no telling how long he would have stood there if Jester hadn’t seized him by the arm and tugged him into motion.
The main road was still chillingly quiet, but there were flickers of movement along the side-road. The shouts were becoming more regular as word spread from one end of town to the other. Gunshots were still sporadic, but each one sent a wave of harsh static rushing up his arms and down his spine.
Jester started pulling them down the main road at a fast clip, but as soon as he got his sense about him Tam redirected to a side-road. Less open. Less likely to be seen by the wolf-- by the wolves-- by the soldiers. But why were they shooting? he wondered, clawing at any chance to peg this as a nightmare he could wake up from. No one in that village would have raised a hand against them if the soldiers had simply walked in and taken control.
Tam started out past the side of a building, but felt a hand on his collar yanking him back. He yelped --and found a hand pressed over his mouth. Adrenaline filled his veins and he started to thrash against Jester’s grip until the masked man pointed to a cluster of men and women in fancy blue uniforms jogging down the street. One of them started to look their way, but Jester tugged him back behind the building again.
Their bootsteps crunched and ground the gravel as they passed, talking to each other in urgent voices to check this or that building, group them together as willing, put an end to them if they showed any resistance. Tam’s heart clenched hearing this. Would Soryya fight? Maybe not for herself, but for Rodel’s sake… If the soldiers were jogging down the road from that direction, surely that meant that things had gone smoothly on the outskirts. No major hiccups from resistance, right?
A push on the shoulder jostled him back into focus, and he shivered with the sheer thudding force of adrenaline ripping through him. He wheezed in a few shaky breaths. “Okay. Let’s go.”
He launched himself off of the wall and hunkered low with glances to make sure that Jester was following. The masked man mirrored his posture almost exactly, head panning to and fro in a way that seemed uncannily calm yet alert. They stopped against the next building and shrank down between stacks of crates as shouting broke out somewhere on the street. A woman begged, “Please, please!” and then cried out shortly after. Another gunshot split the air and stopped time for a moment.
The fear was static prickling at his fingertips, heart heaving in his chest, a sort of dizzy awareness clouding his vision. He found himself thinking, Who does this? “Who does this?” he gasped without realizing, and Jester stabbed him the side with a finger to quiet him.
When they rose again, it was slowly and quietly, because they instinctively knew that stealth was of the essence now. They edged along the crates, then dipped back to a cluster of ferns, which became a stand of tall wide trees. A lifetime in this village had honed Tam’s internal compass to the point that he could trust his gut to get them home even if they neglected paths altogether, and that’s just what they did. Jester made for an excellent lookout while Tam navigated them closer and closer to the edge of the village.
But as they drew closer, one thing became distinctly clear: they had been in the house. They were walking up and down the street out front, most standing at ease, chatting and idly looking around. They did not feel threatened here.
Tam did. A chill swept through him as he realized they must have gone in the house already. “Soryya… Rodel… no…” Tendrils of fear swam before his eyes fast and thick. He stumbled toward the front of the house, but Jester grabbed him and pointed to a back window instead.
They crept over and peeked in to find the kitchen empty. Tam desperately wished they could see Soryya and Rodel hiding behind one of the cabinets, but the only thing they could see was--
“N-no--” A chill froze his skin into spiderweb cracks of ice. His breath choked up in his throat. “No. No no no. Soryya.” He pawed at the window, but Jester fought to grab his arms, hugged him around the torso instead and pulled him, kicking and writhing, back. “p-please-- Soryya-- no no no-- I h-have to go in there--” The instant Jester’s grip slackened the slightest bit, Tam drove an elbow into his gut and wrenched free to charge at the back door.
Tunnel vision drew him forward.
Tunnel vision didn’t care that his feet felt dead and numb.
Tunnel vision made everything else go to static but for the one, the one, the one--
He dropped to his knees at her side and scrabbled with shaking fingers to turn her over from the pooling blood. His breath hitched around the word, “please, please, please, please--” as he cupped a hand to her cheek and pressed a hand over the blotch of red on her chest. She hung limp in his arms, not breathing. “Soryya-- Soryya-- R-Rodel--” He jerked his gaze up and around the room, vision crawling with spots no matter how much he tried to blink the heat from his eyes. He couldn’t find their daughter anywhere in the room. The cushions and blankets had been kicked away from the hearth in a mess, but no daughter, no daughter, just blood, so much blood.
Back to Soryya. He felt his throat tightening on itself. “Please. Please, please, please.” He drew her to his chest and rocked her, eyes fairly glazing over. “Please Soryya. Please.”
~*~I really didn’t appreciate the additional bruise to my gut. It made my arms spasm loose from the struggling Tam and doubled me over with the distinct, instinctive need to keep my guts from spilling out of a mere bruise. The fool dove into the house while I staggered in his wake. The odds were good that soldiers would still be in that house, and bursting in like that could only lead to more trouble --a lot more trouble. And if they hadn’t noticed him already, they were sure to soon enough, which is why I was flummoxed by the draw to follow him.
Safety lay in the other direction. Curious as I was about these soldiers and what they could possibly seek to gain by raiding this friendly village, such were observations better made from far away. You see, I don’t do well with being stuck somewhere. Freedom to come and go is key to the whole of my person. If they tried to hold me at gunpoint, I would almost certainly wind up with a bullet lodged in my back.
So I couldn’t comprehend, as I heard him gasping and whimpering inside the house, why I wanted to go toward the danger and not away. The moment he hurt me, he should have become Not My Problem. And yet there I was, catching a shoulder against the doorway and looking across the kitchen to where Tam huddled around his fallen wife. A ragdoll. A body. Unmoving. I had never seen a person so limp before. And covered in blood. I watched as her arm hung with cruel unresponsiveness even as he clung to her, rocked to and fro and begged in a raspy voice for… what? For her to come back to that broken body? So that she could suffer this attack on the village with him?
I had come to respect Soryya. She was far more than just a housekeep --she was keen and intelligent, anticipating my needs before I had any thought to communicate them. She was, probably, as close to a good person I as I had ever seen, but still I couldn’t comprehend what her husband was feeling. Obviously sorrow, but what kind of sorrow could blind a person to the dangers of soldiers standing right outside the house? What kind of sorrow made a man fold in on himself, shaking as if he himself was in the throes of death? What--
There was a stir from in front of the house. I couldn’t tell what, but the tone of those voices shifted suddenly, the grind of bootfalls picking up. Something in my chest clenched. We had to get out of there. We had to.
Focusing on being as light on my feet as I could, I ran into the room, sprang over Tam and the body of his wife, crouched my way past the front window, and slid the deadlock to the front door in place. I raced back to Tam and grabbed him by the arm --found myself stumbling when, to my surprise, he refused to budge.
“N-no,” he gasped. “No. I can’t. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. Please. please.”
Well, okay. I dropped his arm and backed up. I don’t force people. I don’t. I am an observer. A witness. To force would be to interfere and change the playing field. So I let go of him and backed up.
The doorknob rattled. A voice outside called, “It was unlocked just a minute ago...”
And I snapped. I bounded forward and somehow managed to peel Tam away from the corpse of his wife. He was drenched with blood, my gloves were drenched with blood, but the only resistance he put up was a faint keening sound from the depths of his throat and vaguely reaching a hand after the dead body as I kicked it away. I wasn’t strong, but it’s funny how urgency somehow magnifies one’s abilities in a pinch. I hauled the man to his feet, took him by the wrist, and dragged him into the kitchen just as the door began rattling and thumping against the lock.
Leaves crunched underfoot as I sprinted forth as fast I as could with a whole human man tethered to me. He was trying to keep up. On a good day, he couldn’t possibly keep up with me, let alone now when he had anchored himself to that spot of that room of that house which we were putting behind us. I couldn’t tell if the shouting was at us, but I knew better than to look back to find out. I could feel it, the spot, right between the shoulderblades: that’s where the bullet would go. So I ran. We ran.
I ran a straight line. In retrospect, I know better, but my priority at that point was only to get away from the nearest threat, which was the shouting from behind us and the anticipatory sensation burrowing into my spine. Far behind, there was a pop, and something puffed into the ground several feet to my right. The shouts were definitely for us, but the blood rushing in my ears was too loud to make out what they were saying. I could guess. But I didn’t. Just-- straight.
And straight.
And straight.
Until we couldn’t hear the shouting any more.
And straight some more, until a sharp tug at my arm brought me reeling to a halt. Tam had collapsed, and for a moment I thought that he, too, had been shot. I let go of his hand and started to back away, but he reached after me without lifting his head. “No-- please-- please stay--” On hands and knees, he was raking in huge gulps of air, coughing it out with great sobbing sounds.
I stopped, and watched.
“R--Rodel,” he wheezed. “We have-- have to look for Rodel.”
He wasn’t looking at me, so I didn’t reply. After all, there was no way, none at all. I wasn’t exactly one for practicing caution, but even I knew it was a fool’s errand to go back there. The soldiers had gone into the house. They had tried to take Rodel, and Soryya fought them. Once the mother was out of the way, the soldiers would have taken Rodel… somewhere. We would have to turn ourselves over to the soldiers to see her, let alone any chance at saving her.
My heart was still pounding in my chest. Books have a cliche phrase: “it felt like his heart was trying to leap out of his chest.” I suddenly understood that line with utmost clarity as I scanned the forest around us. I had no idea where we were, but it seemed that, through a stroke of luck, we had managed to avoid a collision course with any other soldiers.
I startled-- Tam had crawled forward to try to prop himself up on my leg, looking at me with the most destroyed, broken eyes I had ever seen. “Jester-- Jester please-- please-- Rodel, she--”
This wasn’t the sort of panic I could have a tea party with. I doubt there is any logic in the world that could have placated the anguish in his eyes in that moment. For some reason, against his better interest, he had decided that I was the adult here. I was the one who needed to grant permission to go back. Authority. He was so distraught that he had deemed to give me, of all people, authority over him. The responsibility froze me for a moment. Responsibility of this level comes with shackles in many ways, and my first reflex was to run. But I didn’t.
Instead I shook my head at him and knelt and wrapped my arms around him. In that embrace, he shattered. He broke down into terrible, messy sobs that sounded nothing like a child who had broken a toy or thought he had seen a ghost. These were sobs that made knots out of heartstrings and sucked all the air from the clearing. He clung to my coat and gasped over and over, “please. Please. please.”
His pain… hurt, and I didn’t like it. I held him for a couple minutes, but when he failed to calm himself, I took his wrists and drew him back up to his feet. We had to keep going. When I started walking away, he turned back to reach for the village, but my grip stopped him soundly. I dragged him with me, deeper into the trees and away from the unsafety of home.
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