John Ringo - There Will Be Dragons

Herzer stumbled through the woods, looking for a stick, a tree branch, any sort of weapon. He finally collapsed to the ground, panting and crying. Even through the rain-muffled woods he could hear sounds behind him but he closed his ears to them, looking for something, anything that could help.

The forest was old grown with a thick undergrowth of bracken and privet. The branches that were on the ground were all old and rotted but finally he found a sapling that had grown to man height then died off from lack of sunlight. He tried to find his path back through the woods but the privet had covered it over. Finally he found a stream, he hoped it was the right one, and he followed it back, part of the time splashing through it. Dionys was the main threat, with his sword and size. But even Benito’s rotten bow and lopsided arrows, despite the rain, would be a danger. The others just had knives.

If he could just make it back in time.

Guy heaved himself off the doctor and looked down at her.

“Should we cut her throat now?” he asked. “That’s what we always do with the homunculi.”

“No,” Dionys said, wiping at a scratch on his cheek. “But take her rain coat and pants as penalty for not paying the toll willingly,” he laughed. “Let her live.” He kicked Daneh in the side.

“Live. Go and tell your paramour what we did. Tell him we’re coming for him. Not today, not tomorrow, but soon enough. And then, we’ll finish the job.” He gestured at the group and walked down the path to the south across the bridge. “There’ll be more where she came from.”

Daneh rolled over on her side in the mud and covered her face with her hands as the group walked off. She wouldn’t cry. She refused to let them get that satisfaction. She had stayed stone faced through the entire ordeal and she knew that that had taken some of the pleasure of it from them. It was the most she could do and she wasn’t going to lose it now.

She waited until she was sure they were gone and got to her feet, fumbling her clothes on as best she could. She wished that she could tear them off and throw them away, burn them even. But she had to have something against the cold and the wet. She stumbled to the stream and rinsed her mouth spitting out the foul taste and worked at a loose tooth; Dionys had tried to get some response out of her, but other than that one scratch when she worked her hand free she wouldn’t give it to him. There were other cuts and bruises on her body and she winced at the pull of her ribs; there might be a crack there.

Finally she sat down on the bridge and just let the rain fall until she heard steps squelching up the road. Afraid that one of them had come back for seconds, she stood up and turned to run. But it was just Herzer, holding a sapling taller than he was with dirt still attached to the rootball.

Herzer took one look at her and dropped to his knees, head down, cradling himself around the useless stick.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“Herzer…”

“I’m so sorry, there was nothing I could do, they would have killed me and…”

“Herzer!” she snapped. “I don’t have time for your angst, damn it. I lied about Rachel. She’s up the road. We have to find her and get her out of here before they do.”

“Rachel?” he said, coming to his feet.

“Keep. Your. Voice. Down,” she said tightly.

“I…” He pulled the cloak off his back and handed it to her. “You need this far more than I do,” he said. “And, yes, we need to get out of here.”

“We’ll talk about this,” Daneh said, taking the cloak at arm’s length. “You can walk in front of me.”

“In front…”

“Right now, I don’t like any males near me,” she said with a venomous tone. “So it’s nothing personal.”

“All right,” Herzer replied, edging past her.

“And Herzer.”

“Yes?”

“When we get to Rachel, we’re just going to not mention that you were with the group that did this, understand?”

“I… okay. But, no, I don’t understand.”

“I put a lot of effort into saving your life,” she said bitterly. “I don’t want Edmund killing you. Or Rachel.”

Rachel had not been happy.

“I’m going to kill them!” she snarled.

“If you tried, you’d end up just like me,” Daneh said, shivering. Herzer’s cloak was a better fit for her than for the boy, but it was still a poor substitute for her rain gear. And she knew she was still shocky from the trauma of the rape. “I didn’t lie through my teeth just so that you could get raped too. Leave it.”

Azure, already wet and annoyed, wandered around her sniffing and yowling. He sniffed at Herzer as well, and seemed ready to bite, but finally he left off and wandered into the woods, sniffing at the ground.

“There’s nothing you can do, Rachel,” Herzer said tonelessly.

“You can just butt out Herzer Herrick,” Rachel snapped. “Where in the hell were you ? Huh?”

“Too late to do anything,” Daneh said. “Leave off, Rachel. We need to get on our way.”

“What about the snares?” she said. “We can’t keep moving without food. Azure needs to eat at the very least.”

“He won’t start getting sick for another day or two,” Daneh said tiredly. “If we move fast we can make it to the Via in a day at most. There are towns up there; we’ll find something to eat.”

“How far up the road did you go?” Herzer asked.

“Only a ki or so,” Rachel said. “The trail is knee deep in mud up the way. Mom, I don’t know if you can make it.”

“I’ll make it,” Daneh said, standing up. “I’ll make it all the way. But I’m not going to wait here for McCanoc and his band of merry men to find me again. Let’s go.”

“God, I hope Dad is still in Raven’s Mill,” Rachel said, gathering up their few belongings.

“He will be,” Daneh replied. “I just hope that he’s willing to overlook the last few years.”

“Home is where when you have to go there, they have to take you in,” Herzer said, quietly. He automatically took the front position, picking up Daneh’s pack and slinging it on his back. “He’ll be there. And he’ll be waiting for you.”

“He’d better be,” Daneh said, bitterly.

“Naye, naye, you have to heat it more or you’ll be hammering all day to no effect,” Edmund growled, picking up the piece of metal with tongs and setting it back in the charcoal fire.

“I’m sorry, sir, I thought…” The apprentice stepped back and looked around at the group gathered in the forge. A few weeks before, all he’d had to worry about was what to wear to the next party. Now he was trapped in this cluttered workshop, learning a trade so ancient that until the previous week he had never heard of it. And doing badly at it. It didn’t seem fair.

“It takes years to learn the blacksmith trade,” the smith replied, more softly, noting the glance. He jerked a chin at the bellows and waited as the apprentice pumped the fire hot. “Watch the color of the metal and the colors of the fire around it. When it gets white hot, pull it out and then strike. You don’t have much time, that’s why they say you have to ‘strike while the iron is hot.’ ” He leant emphasis to the words, pulling the piece out and hammering it flat, then turning it to shape. “Just a hoe but hoes are what will feed us all soon enough. Hoes and plows and parts for wagons will be your mainstay once you learn.” He thrust the half-formed metal back into the fire and jerked his chin at one of the other hovering apprentices. “Now, you tend the fire while he tries again.”