The three of them run. Each covered in sweat, mud, and blood, some of it theirs and some of it their friends. It’s been easily an hour since they’ve seen anyone but they keep running, fear and panic on all of their faces.
Daggers shoot through their lungs and each keeps rubbing the sweat away from their mouths in an attempt to keep their loved ones blood from running in their mouths.
It’s an island, so eventually they will run out of places to go. This fact does not stop any of them from trying to put some distance between them and the brutality behind them.
Ahead they can hear water washing up on the beach and know they must soon hide or try to swim away. Once they exit the trees they see a lone hut that must have belonged to an island of the resident long ago. It’s been abandoned for some time now though, judging by the amount of grass they can see growing through holes in it’s exterior walls.
Each enters, knowing it is all they have at the moment. Armon finds sits down against one of the walls and starts whipping blood off arms and neck.
“We made the right choice you know?” He says, trying to convince himself more than the two girls. “If we had stayed we would have ended up like all the others.”
“Maybe it would have been better to stay,” Steffi says passively. “I’m not sure that living without my father is worth it.” She seems the most calm out of the group, like she has finished her chores for the day and weariness is pulling her body down to sleep for the night.
Grega stands watch, looking through a slit in the wall to make sure they weren’t followed. The fingers on her right hand stretch out and then flex back in, then out and back in again. They seemed to missing the handle to her sword. In her panic to escape she had not remembered to retrieve it.
“It was not better to stay,” she says in a low voice. We have a chance now to warn King Erde. He needs to know that his own people are killing each other.”
“How do you propose we do that?” Armon interjects. “It’d be half a day before we even reached (Island Name). I love the kingdom but I’m not going to drown out in the water trying to get somewhere I know my body cannot reach.” He runs his hand through his auburn hair and lets a sigh out. He knows that his only other option is to stay on the island, be found and die like all the others.
“We shouldn’t wait. Any minute we will be found and be butchered,” says Grega stepping out of the hut. She pauses right outside the opening to see if the other two are going to follow her. Steffi is still sitting in the corner with her knees pulled up under chin, staring at the ground in front of her. “Steffi, did you hear me? We need to move. Get it together and lets go.”
Grega looks at Armon. He shrugs his shoulders at her but he doesn’t get up either. The events of the day and the shock of what happens seems to have immobilized the two of them.
Grega gives them both a look of complete disbelief and starts for the water. As she’s walking she hears a crash in the forest behind her. When she turns she sees twenty or more men coming through the tree line. Through their black cloaks she can still tell that they are heavily muscled. They each have their hoods down. They’re mouths are sown shut and every sign of hair has been removed from their heads. They have been covered with dark ink, the only white on their faces are their eyes. They aren’t running, yet.
“Armon, Steffi, get out of there! They’ve found us! Run! Run!” She screams in complete panic.
Armon emerges from the hut, and upon seeing the men, turns white as the sand he’s standing on. He races for Grega, who is already nearing the water. He turns back to look at the hut. Steffi is still in there and the men are ten feet away from her.
“Steffi!” He shouts. “Steffi, you have to leave! Get up and run!”
The men converge on the hut, each entering from different openings. They find Steffi still sitting in the same place. One of the men raises his sword. Steffi lifts her head and looks the man in the eye. He doesn’t hesitate, his sword falls.
By now Grega has reached the water and she is looking back as well. Armon is still a good sixty feet behind her and he’s not moving. She sees the hut and knows it is what Armon is fixated on. Coming out of the hut are the men. All but two are headed for them now. Those two carry Steffi’s body out of the hut.
Armon becomes a mixture of grief and rage. He yells at the men and then at Grega for abandoning Steffi. Regardless of this hysteria he begins to run towards the water. He only makes it a few feet when he feels searing pain in his right calf. He falls to the ground face first. He lays there for a few minutes and then rolls over to see a knife embedded in his leg. He gets back on his feet and hobbles toward the water but he’s not fast enough. The black cloaked men are now in a dead sprint and they catch him. Effortlessly the first man there runs his sword through Armon chests. He falls to his knees, the sword still in him. Then the other men arrive. They furiously and viciously stab repeatedly and then the last man removes Armon’s head. It hits the sand in a silent thud.
Grega has wasted too much time already. More men are headed her way. She crashes into the waves and pushes against the water with her legs struggling to get deeper. When she’s waist deep she dives into the water and begins swimming out into the open sea. After a few minutes she stops and looks back to shore. Many of the cloaked men are still on the beach looking out at her but they are not following. Three of the men are chopping down large trees and others are digging holes in the sand, a hundred feet apart, closer to the tree line than the water.
As she treads water she takes in this unusual spectacle. Two the trees have been felled by now and the men remove the branches and then shorten the log to about fifteen high. Then several other men help them carry the logs toward the beach. Grega sees the men lift Steffi’s body and place it on the long side of the piece of timber. They use rope and nails to hold her body on the tree and then place it upright in the hole on the beach, putting Steffi’s body up for display. The same is done is with Armon’s body on the second tree.
The third tree is not down, trimmed and carried to the beach. Grega becomes uneasy when all their eyes look toward her. She searches the water around her but sees nothing. Surely she must be safe this far out with no one in pursuit. Her eyes scan the water and the beach as she continues to swim backwards.
I’m safe. I’m safe. She keeps saying. No one could reach me out here. Then she feels a hand on her leg and looks down to see a black face coming up through the water towards her.
No one will be reaching King Erde today.
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