(WARNING: THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS SCENES CONSISTING OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND ASSAULT. IF YOU DO NOT BODE WELL WITH SUCH SCENES, IT IS RECOMMENDED YOU EXIT THE STORY. OTHERWISE, CARRY ON.)
We did not get far. Maybe five steps. Maybe ten.
The smoke was too thick. The fire was too bright. And the night too full of men who knew how to hunt fear by sound alone. A voice laughed somewhere to our right. Another answered from the left.
Then a shape moved through the orange glow ahead of us, broad enough that for one wild second I thought a wall had stepped into the lane.
He was taller than any of the others. He looked older. Built with the kind of thickness that made armor seem unnecessary even though he wore pieces of it anyway. Blackened plates were strapped over hide and fur, iron scales were sewn into leather, and trophies hung from cords at his belt. A broken saint's emblem. A child's carved charm. Rings torn from hands too dead to need them.
His beard was shot through with gray and dark with soot. One side of his face had been carved by an old scar that pulled the corner of his mouth upward into something like a permanent sneer.
Two more barbarians stepped in behind him. Then three. Then more shapes gathered at the edge of the lane, half-lost in smoke and firelight, watching. The giant in front of us looked first at Shiro. Then at me. Then at our hands.
Because at some point in the chaos, in the heat, in the terror, our hands had found each other again.
His smile widened.
"Well," he said, voice low and rough as grinding stone. "There it is."
My grip tightened around the spear shaft I had taken from the man outside the chapel. Shiro's fingers were cold in mine.
"Stay behind me," I whispered.
She did not move. But the man tilted his head.
"You think that means something?" he asked.
I said nothing. His gaze dropped briefly to the children behind us. The little girl let out a sound too small to be called a cry. The boy put himself in front of her without understanding how little that would matter.
The man's eyes returned to us.
"Take the brats," he said.
Two of his men moved at once.
Shiro lunged before I did. Frost flashed from her hand in a thin white arc that struck one barbarian across the chest and drove him back with a curse, ice racing over his furs. I stepped in beside her and thrust the spear at the second man's throat.
He knocked it aside like it was a branch.
Pain exploded through my wrists.
Then the man moved. I had seen large men before. I had seen men swing axes, haul feed, wrestle oxen by the reins. None of that prepared me for how fast he was. He crossed the distance between us in one step and caught the spear shaft in his left hand. His right fist drove into my stomach so hard the world vanished.
There was no graceful way to fall. My knees buckled at once. Air left me in a broken sound that did not feel like it belonged to me. Before I could even understand the pain, he tore the spear from my hands and struck me across the face with the butt of it.
The ground hit me hard. Somewhere above me Shiro shouted my name. I rolled onto one elbow, half-blind, and saw her trying to force another burst of Grace into the air. Frost bloomed around her fingers, beautiful and thin and nowhere near enough.
One of the men caught her wrist and another hit her across the side with the flat of a blade.
She crumpled to one knee.
"No!"
I tried to rise, but a boot slammed down between my shoulders and drove me flat into the dirt. The chief stood over me, breathing easily.
"So," he said, almost conversationally, "the white-haired beauty fights. Good. I hate it when they collapse before the lesson starts."
I thrashed once under the boot and got nothing for it except pain. My head was still split open from the forest. Blood ran hot down the side of my face and into the mud beneath me. I could hear the children crying now. They were thin, terrified sounds somewhere off to the side as the barbarians dragged them away.
Shiro had managed to get one hand free as she hurled a shard of ice at the man's face.
It broke against his cheekbone and scattered into glittering dust. He blinked once. Then he turned, walked to her, and struck her hard enough to throw her sideways across the lane. I heard the sound of her hitting the ground. Something inside me tore loose.
I surged upward with a shout I did not recognize as my own. Hands grabbed me from behind at once. One barbarian seized my arms. Another drove a knee into my back. A third caught me across the jaw. My teeth snapped together so hard I tasted blood.
The man laughed.
"Good," he said. "There he is."
They hauled me upright only to force me back down onto my knees. My arms were wrenched behind me. Someone twisted my injured shoulder until black sparks burst behind my eyes. Across from me, Shiro pushed herself up slowly, one shaking hand braced against the earth. Her hair had come half loose. Ash clung to it in pale streaks. Blood darkened one sleeve. But she was still trying to rise.
The man looked at her with something like approval. Then he looked at me again.
"This," he said, "is why villages die."
One of the barbarians behind me laughed. The man spread his arms slightly, as if presenting us to his men and the fire and the burning houses all at once.
"Look at them," he said. "A boy too weak to save himself, and a girl too foolish to run. And both of them are so certain that clinging to each other means anything at all."
He crouched in front of me. Up close, he smelled of smoke, sweat, and old blood.
"You know what love is?" he asked.
I spat blood at his feet. His smile widened. He backhanded me hard enough to send the lane sideways. When it steadied again, he was still there.
"Love," he said, "is the prettiest word the weak ever invented for the chain they wrap around their own throats."
Behind him, one of his men chuckled. Another said, "Chief's in one of his moods."
The chief ignored him.
"A man who loves hesitates," he went on. "A woman who loves, begs. A father who loves, dies in front of his children. A son who loves, kneels when he should kill. Love makes prey of people who might otherwise have learned to become wolves."
He rose to his full height again and pointed at Shiro.
"You," he said. "Look at him."
And she did. Even she was hurt. Even when she was trembling. Even with fire painting one side of her face orange and the other gold, she looked at me first, not him.
The chief saw that too. His mouth curved.
"There," he said softly. "That look. That is the weakness I'm talking about."
He turned and seized Shiro by the front of her dress, dragging her upright. She winced but made no sound. Not at first. One of his men caught her arms from behind. Another laughed under his breath when she tried to pull free.
"Don't touch her!" I shouted.
The men holding me tightened their grip. The chief glanced back.
"And yet," he said, "you can do nothing."
He struck me again. Not out of rage. Not even to silence me. Simply because he could. My vision blurred. I tasted blood again.
Someone behind me said, "He'll pass out if you keep hitting him like that."
The chief's answer was immediate.
"Then keep him awake."
Their hands closed harder in my hair, forcing my head up.
Across from me, Shiro was breathing too fast now. Panic had reached her face at last. I knew that look. The chief's voice turned almost reflective.
"I have seen cities fall because a commander chose his wife over the gate. Seen brothers cut down because one turned back for the other. Seen mothers starve because they fed sons who would never survive winter anyway. Love is waste. Love is hesitation. Love is the lie people tell themselves so they can make weakness sound holy."
He leaned close to Shiro, one hand gripping her jaw hard enough to force her face toward me.
"So," he said, "watch what your holiness buys you."
I tried to break free. God, I tried...
Every muscle in my body pulled against the men pinning me. My shoulder felt like it was tearing apart. A fist drove into my ribs. Another into my back. One of them twisted my arm until I shouted through clenched teeth and nearly blacked out. But still I fought.
Still, I got nowhere.
Shiro's eyes stayed on mine.
"Haruto—" she breathed.
The chief tore the outer mantle from her shoulders and threw it aside into the mud. Then her sash. Then the ruined layers beneath, not with urgency, but with the slow cruelty of a man performing a lesson for an audience, revealing her nakedness.
The barbarians around us laughed.
One whistled as if to admire her body.
Another said something filthy I did not fully hear because all the blood in my body had turned to fire.
"No!" I screamed. "No, please—"
The men holding me barked with laughter.
"Listen to him beg."
"Louder, curse-boy."
"You want her, go save her!"
I could not breathe. I could not think. I could only watch.
Shiro struggled hard, desperate, and enough to earn a brutal blow across the face that snapped her head sideways. When she looked back at me, there were tears in her eyes now. Not weakness. Not surrender. Pain. Shame. Rage. Terror.
And still she looked for me.
"Haruto..." she said again, and her voice broke.
Then the chief violated her as he groped her body. Touching everywhere a man should not. And eventually raping her in front of my helpless self as I cried out in anguish. The Barbarians around us laughed and cheered.
The fire crackled. The bell tolled once, wild and crooked overhead. The barbarians continued laughing.
I screamed her name until there was nothing left in my throat but blood and air and broken sound. I screamed and thrashed and begged and cursed and prayed to anything that might exist above us, below us, inside the flames, inside the dark, inside the bones of the world itself. Yet, nothing answered.
Only Shiro's crying, and my own.
The men pinning me down mocked every sound that came out of me.
"Look at him."
"He's crying worse than she is."
"Maybe he wants a turn!"
And more laughter. When it was over, the chief rose in no hurry at all. Shiro collapsed into the dirt in tears. She turned her head toward me with the little strength she had left. Her face was wet with tears and ash, and her body trembled in the firelight.
"Haruto..." she whispered.
I could not reach her. I could not even crawl. The chief looked down at her for a moment. Then, to my horror, something like boredom crossed his face. He drew the knife at his belt. A long, ugly thing meant less for duels than for finishing.
One of the men behind me laughed softly.
"Pity from the chief," he said.
The chief crouched beside her and brushed blood and soot from his thumb with a motion so casual it made the whole world feel rotten.
"She would not survive the night anyway. And it's better that way," he said.
Then he looked at me.
"Take comfort, boy. I am kinder than love ever was to you."
He took Shiro by the hair, pulled her head back, and slit her throat as I cried out to stop him. Yet, it was too late. The light from her eyes vanished as her blood emptied onto the ground, around her and me.
They kept me there. Time had already broken by then. It no longer moved forward in clean pieces. It only lurched from sound to sound. Laughter. Fire. Boots in mud. The bell above the chapel giving one last twisted toll before falling silent. Somewhere nearby, a roof collapsed inward with a shower of sparks. Somewhere farther away, someone screamed until they no longer could.
And Shiro lay still.
My body fought that truth before my mind did. Every part of me strained toward her even after I knew. Even after the world had already ended in front of me. I kept pulling against the hands that held me, because the alternative was to accept it, and I could not. Not yet. Not ever.
One of the barbarians shoved me hard into the dirt.
"Still moving," he said with a laugh.
Another answered, "He's got spirit left. Chief ought to take that too."
Their voices came to me as if from far away. Muffled. Warped. Not because they were distant. Because something inside me had begun closing doors just to keep itself from shattering all at once.
The chief stood over Shiro's body for a moment longer, then turned back toward me. The firelight moved over his face in long orange bands. There was no rage in him. No triumph either. Only the flat calm of a man who believed the lesson was not yet complete.
He crouched in front of me again.
"Do you understand now?" he asked.
I stared at him in anguish. I no longer had the strength to look anywhere else. He tilted his head slightly.
"Love did this to you," he said. "Not me. Not my men. Love. You could have run. She could have run. But both of you chose to stay. And for what?"
I tried to answer. But only blood and breath and something broken in between came out. He smiled faintly at that.
"Yes," he said. "That is what truth sounds like when it finally reaches the weak."
He rose and glanced at the men holding me.
"Make sure he remembers tonight. After you're done, meet me just outside the village with our prizes."
The laughter came back at once. One of them shifted his grip on my arm. Another planted a boot harder into my back. A third seized my wrist and forced my hand flat against the ground.
At first, I did not understand.
My thoughts were too slow. I saw my own hand in the mud like it belonged to someone else. Dirt under the nails. Blood drying at the knuckles. A hand that had hauled water, repaired fences, fed animals, caught snow from Shiro's Grace and held hers in the fire.
Panic reached me a second too late as I jerked once, violently enough that the men laughed harder.
"Hold him!"
"Got him!"
One of them swung their axe onto my wrist and dismembered my right hand from my arm. I heard myself scream before I felt breath leave me. My body convulsed against the ground in excruciating pain as they continued to hack away my other limbs.
They were methodical about it. They wanted me to remember everything about this night. They knew where to hack away in order to keep me alive.
By the time they were done, the sky reeled above me in black and orange. Ash drifted down through the firelight like ruined snow. I tried to curl in on myself and found there were too many men and not enough body left to protect.
Somewhere above the roaring in my ears, one of them said, "These were the hands, weren't they?"
Another laughed.
"The ones reaching for her!"
"Well, not anymore!"
I think I tried to bite someone. Or maybe I only thought about it. A boot struck my ribs and rolled me hard enough that the mud filled my mouth. I coughed and choked and dragged in a breath full of smoke and blood.
When it was over, they threw me onto my back.
I could not move my hands nor my feet. They lay beside me like ruined things attached to the wrong body. My arms trembled from the effort of trying. Nothing answered. Or not enough. Only pain, deep and terrible, pulsing in time with my heartbeat.
The chief stepped into my line of sight again.
His men had gone quieter now. The amusement had thinned. Not from pity. Only from the dull satisfaction that follows finished cruelty. He looked down at me the way a man might look at an animal too damaged to stand.
"There," he said. "Now you'll remember what weakness costs."
He turned his gaze briefly toward Shiro's body in the dirt.
"Perhaps in another life," he went on, almost casually, "you might have learned in time."
Another barbarian asked, "Chief, leave him?"
The chief considered me for a moment.
I do not know what he saw.
A dying boy. A village curse. A thing emptied out.
At last, he said, "Let him breathe. Men like this are better left to the dawn. Sometimes the living suffers longer than the dead. There is more lesson in that."
A few of them laughed again and they receded. The voices moved away through smoke and flame. The chief's among them. Deeper. Slower. Unhurried. As if what he had taken tonight was so complete that nothing behind him could threaten it.
Soon it was only the fire. And the dead. And me.
I lay there in the mud with the village burning around me and tried to turn toward Shiro. It took everything I had left just to move my head. She was still there, lifeless.
"Shiro," I whispered.
Or thought I did. No answer came. I tried to crawl. My arms failed under me at once. Pain ripped up through both of them so violently that blackness crowded in from the edges of my sight. I collapsed back into the mud, breathless, shaking, unable even to reach for the ground properly.
For the first time since waking in the forest, I understood something worse than fear.
Helplessness after the fact.
Not danger.
Not the fight.
The certainty that the moment requiring everything from you has already passed, and you were not enough.
The flames roared higher somewhere behind the chapel. Heat washed over my face in waves. Sparks drifted over the lane. One landed on my sleeve and died there. I stared up into the smoke.
No prayer came. No hymn. No plea "God."
Nothing in me still believed that heaven had any right to hear my voice. But beneath the pain, beneath the grief, beneath the wreckage of everything that had made me small and quiet and willing to endure, something else began to move.
It was cold. Deeper. A thing without mercy. A thing that did not ask to be saved. It only asked one question:
Why am I still alive?