Wildchild

In a time of endless life and eternal beauty, there existed a sparkling world, a sight for all to see and envy.

It was even envied by the stars! For you see, the future of mankind flourished without a twilight. The vast numbers of what we called humanity had become countless, settled on infinite planets -- hospitable or not -- throughout the galaxy. Within and without, the boundaries of our race were pushed beyond a mortal and moral limit long enough ago that it was forgotten where the line had originally been drawn.

We were immortals. Expansion was essential for our kind.

That didn’t stop others from crossing arms and barring each other from going further. Everyone had their own agenda and sought to set it up high on their pedestal.

Why was that human nature? Instinct?

The best of the best were always what we sought in all of us. That was why we mated endlessly with those who appeared Godlike from the beginning of time and to the never ending. To have the greatest chance of survival, we discovered in ourselves the necessary genetics that would push our race to the next generation.

Why would now be any different from then?

That was how I thought when I looked out at a twinkling-blue colossus: Earth.

I stared at the primal planet in a fascinated wonder. Not my homeworld, but the origin of our species. It was a pretty color... and the glittering lights of civilization were remarkable. I wished I could’ve done more for that beautiful world. At least, to have more time...

But it certainly was a great sight to behold before my demise --

-- then the cabin of my ship was engulfed in a silent inferno. That would be the very last instant captured in my mind before I saw no more. But my mind still mulled over what if I had time...

Was I lucky to have frozen before burning? Not when it was the vacuum of space that had been the cause. That void had shattered me in the process, just like the blue marble had when the destructive solar wave struck. Unlike the explosion of Earth, I had interestingly imploded rather than having burst into specks of tiny ice. And instantly melted in the consumption of an unstoppable aimless flame.

My time, all those on that world, and countless others had vanished. All because an angry red sun enviously went supernova.

* * *

* * *

Dark.

Thirsty.

Starved.

Tired.

Cold.

Hot.

Pain.

I stopped counting the negatives and searched for something positive. That was a tad bit difficult for an outstanding reason.

I was distracted.

A burning in my chest and an acute headache were a couple disorienting factors. There was a weight on my body; I felt crushed and wet where I was clothed. It had me confused about where I was. Because nearby a scorcher of incredible heat was practically cooking me! I would look, but a searing line of agony crossed my vision and left me in befuddlement.

Those were odd sensations, but I did find a positive in all of that! If I had vision, that meant I could see. I only had to look and find the bright side!

I attempted to shake my head, but I couldn’t move. I wanted to rid myself of the troublesome nerves distracting me first so I could figure out my situation, but apparently I had to deal with my condition before that.

...I got it! I didn’t need to be alerted to the pain anymore. I knew something had been damaged, but it was difficult to get a hold of myself.

Like I wasn’t -- myself?

Honestly, I shouldn’t even be...

I mean, I had no existence. I’d been vaporized! The last memory I had was being blown into stardust with the supernova. Well… I didn’t remember it exactly to that extent, but I was glad to have not consciously experienced that mindblowing event to the fullest.

…ouch.

It was really getting on my nerves that I couldn’t grasp what was wrong with my body. I should have been capable of self-regenerating the damaged tissue by now --

-- unless my mind was damaged?

Wait… I’m confused? I shouldn’t have a body at all, but I was obviously thinking.

How and why was I feeling anything? How was I experiencing confusion without a rational concept of thought? There was currently an issue of it being available. For one, for my consciousness to exist, it had to be contained in a squishy pinkening grey noodle, but my noggin had poofed into nothing with the rest of me. Right?

Okay. Focus on that first. Pretend I have a brain and knit whatever had happened to it back to its original state.

Then upgrade what most certainly was required to get the damn pain to stop!

...FUCK!! did that ever hurt.

I jerked my head away from whatever was burning nearby. That was enough to tell me I had fixed whatever was broken upstairs. Next was to deal with deadening my nerves to a tolerable degree. All I needed was to know I was hurt, not blaring klaxons through my whole Goddamn system.

...much better.

What was I dealing with? Head trauma? If so, must be severe. If I could whistle right now, I would in the deepest gratitude I could recall how to regen.

Now that I had a grasp of where my head was, I could twitch and search out through those controlled nerves what was the matter…

Yowch and ew. Something had partially cleaved through my head.

That’s an easy fix.

I was rather cold from the blood loss, but I worked on getting my lungs back in motion... On second thought, I’d leave that to my autopilot -- once I get that smooth baby programmed. That way all I had to worry about were the cognitive functions.

The burning I had felt in my chest had escalated when I began to breathe again. Other organs in my body had sparked brilliantly back to life.

My hearing came next. I hadn’t realized I’d been deafened by the blow to the head until my autopilot recovered the rest of my senses. Everything was still dark, but I could sense whatever was going on --

-- I wasn’t alone.

There were hysterical shouts and desperate screams all around me. Crackling too. Like that of a fire.

A big one.

And so much unfiltered chaos of frantic running and so many smashing noises. What confused me most was the raised and faded noises going by. Was I moving?

I doubted it when I considered my recent condition had been death, but I tried to wiggle around and find out if I was a reanimated corpse or something… a zombie?

Nope. Thank God!

Whatever was the cause of motion had halted and a harsh light blinded me. It was so bright! The light made me jerk away in agony and cry out. “Ah!”

My voice sounded weird, but I wasn’t surprised. My head had only been put back together a moment ago!

What did surprise me was the sound I heard above my cry. I heard sobbing above me.

A vise crushed my midsection into a pillowy softness. It took some effort, but I looked up to see what was squishing me. Cool tears were blurring my vision -- not surprising considering my painfully obvious condition. So I reached up and wiped my eyes clear.

What I saw was a scrunched up and crying face. A pretty woman’s face. She was literally bawling her eyes out as she looked down at me. Despite her sniveling over me and dripping tears onto my face, she expressed a joy that was beyond relief. Then I was blinded again as she crushed me even further into her large chest.

Wait a second. Was she carrying me?

I gave a soft kick to figure out how far off the ground I was. My bare toes hit her at once, so I changed tactics and felt around with my toesies and soles. I felt smooth fabric, something that was broad and tied tightly around -- that was her waist. So that would be a sash I felt.

Then I drew my leg up and my heel hit her elbow. Was she cradling me?

How small was I? Why was I small? What in the world was going on here?

It took a lot of effort to free my face from her buxom bosom. When I had accomplished that, I got a good view of the sky above our heads. It was light blue... with a ring of fluffy white clouds that reminded me of the Helix nebula, but that was only because it was mostly surrounded by an obscuring smokescreen.

In the corner of my vision, I could see the cause of smoke: fire everywhere. The flutters of motion that blurred by my stinging vision were those people I heard running. Not one appeared to stop and all were going in the same direction.

Except us. And I began to understand what had happened when she jerked a step forward and gave me a stunned look. How she looked at me left me startled and confused.

A shuddering breath escaped her lips. For far too long, she breathed only out like an air leak. Any time she tried to inhale, she choked. She could only exhale until the corners of her lips turned blue.

Then the sky had a different perspective, like it had spun for a moment, but really it was the woman toppling over on top of me.

I was trapped under her heavy and shaking figure. She spasmed a few times, but I felt her seize up firmly with determination as she pulled me more beneath her.

Breathlessly, I barely heard her final demand: “S-stay... stay.” Then she was still. Dead.

I knew now why everyone was running. They were on the run from death. But I didn’t have a clue what was the cause of it. If I could, I would have looked out from under the woman to see what was behind everyone. Problem was, I didn’t have the strength!

I was puny!

Maybe from starvation? When I wiggled my little fingers in front of my face, I second guessed that theory. Being beneath the woman was impairing my ability to see myself and everything else around here.

Not a moment longer and I didn’t have to look for me to know something was approaching. A lot of somethings. They shook the ground under us.

Pressing my ear to the dirt was easy, but discerning what I heard was difficult. It sounded like thunder, but unlike any I’d heard before. Normally vehicles or some heavy transport would cause that, but these weren’t any kind of wheels or treads I’d ever heard of before. From the sound of their approach, they rumbled across the earth at great speed too.

They sounded like stomping. Or rather… clopping?

A weird noise went by me. Definitely a creature. An animal. Then a herd or swarm of them. All of them were the cause of the loud quaking.

There was also hooting and shouting coming from those animals. Wait, I was wrong. On top of the animals. People were with them. On them?

Whatever was going on, it was weird.

Squirming my way to see better, I managed to poke my head out from under the arm of the woman. The sight I saw was intriguing.

Brown and black sleek fur. Four long and tapered legs that ended in a single shoe like an overgrown stubby toenail. Great darker mane of hair whipped in the wind, much like their swishing and brushing long haired tail. Strong and long-snouted necks with an equally long face that bit and gnashed at a brittle between their teeth. They had straps, reins, harnesses, and more attached to their horizontal broad bodies with riders in the saddle.

Saddle… Oh! These were horses! I’d heard of those.

The riders, all men -- horsemen -- wore dresses? Armored dresses that covered more of their legs than they had ascending up their bodies. They would have a difficult time walking in that. I suppose the protective design was to be more efficient while riding rather than on foot?

Protective… I believed these were warriors of some sort. They did appear to be wielding weapons of some kind. Staffs with an elongated slender tip. I couldn’t call that a spear. Definitely a missile.

Javelin?

Why was my head being filled with that knowledge? The longer I looked on, the more knowledge of what I saw came to me. I could confirm these were warriors with my new-found knowledge. Soldiers, to be more precise.

A vanguard of a host that came to cause trouble.

But why?

It took a moment, but then I figured it out. A diversion. They were drawing out someone to distract them from a bigger target. Another host that was charged to defend the whole region. I was in only a tiny location of that region.

As these soldiers passed and left me behind, I struggled out from under the dead weight of the woman.

...my mother?

I shook my head a few times to clear my thoughts. I was so confused. I still didn’t know what was going on.

What shocked me more was my figure in the light of day. I was a child! Blackened, bloody, but formerly blue robes had been wrapped around me securely. My skin tone wasn’t the same as my original fair-colored body. A sort of golden-hued complexion. The sight of my skinny body had me concerned enough to explore myself and discover more of who I was...

But all that should’ve mattered right now was to find safety. Right here was not safe. Especially as the fires lifted higher, hotter, and came far too close to me.

To us.

As I managed to stand up at last, I saw what had struck down… struck down my mother. Between her shoulder blades was one of those javelins. That explained the jerk I’d felt in her arms, that shocked expression, and her last odd breaths.

My hands shook. I took one hand in a tight grip while I bit down on my lower lip. For some reason, tears welled up to blind me again. I had thought I’d taken care of numbing the pain, but the agony I felt right now was through the roof! It felt like my chest was going to cave in.

I’d never experienced a pain like that. But I’d had a taste of fire once and those fires were almost to us.

I didn’t know what to do as I was, small and weak. But I simply could not stay here.

In a farewell to this woman -- those thoughts of her as my mother were troubling me -- I knelt down, patted her head, and combed back her elegantly beautiful, long, and shining black hair until it was straight and neat.

The wooden stock of the javelin in her back was in the way. Memories of how her hair once was flooded my mind. I couldn’t help it, I had to fix her tousled hair or I wouldn’t find peace after leaving her.

With trembling hands, I gripped the javelin tightly and used all of my strength to tear. In a shuddered huff, I fell back, frozen stiff. With the overlong stake removed from her, all I could do was stare at the woman and expect the impossible. I literally thought she would be fine now that the javelin was out.

I knew better.

After I recovered, I crawled onto my hands and knees and reached out. A moment was all I gave to her to adjust an intimately familiar hair over that ugly hole. The blue native dress she wore was stained a dark red, but I left her like that.

I took the javelin without thinking.

Inside of my strange new heart, I felt a fiery rage grow hotter than the flames around me. Those soldiers would pay for what they’d done.

But why? I didn’t know who they were or why any of what happened was… well, happening!

But I hated them. Wasn’t that all that really mattered?

There was no rhyme or reason for why I should. I was a stranger here.

Yet I intimately knew the who and how what was before their arrival.

My home burned.

My family murdered.

In an instant, I violently shook my head to find clarity! I was dead! Dead, until an anomaly in that particular supernova did something really weird. It must have caused me to be launched into a child. A child with the same disposition as mine: deceased.

Except I would have been lucky if I had been atomized into dust in the coldness of space. Likely nothing remained of me after the solar catastrophe.

The child was a different story. And yet there was a problem being a kid.

I wasn’t capable of doing anything about what had happened here. Those had been soldiers. Riders with weapons that could be thrown at a range before I could come close. Even if I had been in their faces, what could I do?

There was a strange new voice in me. A burning hatred that germinated and grew stronger the longer I remained doing nothing, and told me to do morbidly malicious things to those soldiers. To kill them before they reached and slaughtered all those who were running.

Just like they had done to my mother.

Could I catch up to them?

Gritting my teeth tightly together, I recovered some of my composure. My thoughts swayed back to --

Hold on a fucking moment! What was I going to do if I did? I was a kid!

A suicidal kid. Jesus! No wonder the brat was dead...

Take a lesson from me: look before you leap. How many soldiers were there? Twenty, right?

At least, that was how many I’d seen ride past me. Who knew how many more there were in that vanguard. Not to mention how far away the host was from my destroyed village.

Their village! THEIRS! Why was I still on a tangent about the kid’s identity?

I took a deep breath. Then another, another, and another. I calmed down and worked out what were my thoughts and separated them from the child’s.

I’d acquiesced to whoever’s personality was in my mind, but I would be the dominant consciousness. The kid could support memories and hand off whatever knowledge I required.

Thinking back, my mother didn’t regenerate like I could. Was that because of the shock or didn’t she know how? Did that apply to those soldiers?

Something to test.

Did that mean I was committed to the child’s cause? I could simply run off and gather more information about what all was happening. What had happened.

But that again meant the deaths of all those who were running from the soldiers that killed my mother!

...I crossed the Rubicon.

First challenge was for me to catch up! That meant in more way than one.

I let all the air in my lungs escape and learned the best method to breathe with a small body. Then I started to walk. I got a feel of moving around for the first time with these thin legs. And I went at a sprinting pace before I exerted myself at full throttle.

To chase after those horsemen, I had to ignore the limits of my new body.

With psychotic strength, I immediately pulled and tore apart the muscles in my overextended legs from an unrestrained speed. I had no choice but to stop. I couldn’t move!

I knitted the flesh of my legs back together again.

Tried to run again. And knit again.

And both done again until the act became muscle memory. Something my auto-pilot handled without a thought involved anymore.

After that painstakingly long session, it became easier to run at that constant mad dash. It certainly helped made up for lost time. The distance was still great, but I might be able to reach them in time to stop any more killing of my people.

My people? Who exactly were considered my people?

I would have to work that out later. Maybe when I found peace?

I had a massacre to prevent first if I wanted peace. Otherwise I’d have felt like I hadn’t tried when I might’ve been able to accomplish something.

Up ahead, I heard and then saw horsemen. Right now would be the time to come up with a rational plan. We were out of the inferno and on a field. To the left was a large slope that was blanketed with trees. On the right was just more fields.

Farmland? That made some sense.

What was beyond the vanguard? Villagers… I know that! Where are they heading?

Water? A stream, lake, river..? A river that snaked around the other side of the slope to pass the farmland and flow toward a major settlement.

A city? The villagers were going to make an attempt crossing and racing down along the other side of that river to that city.

They won’t make it. We were already at the slope and the horsemen won’t be long until they reach the mass crossing. My people will die…

The kid flared up with a score of emotional turmoil and snapped so hard that I was thrown for a loop!

Inside me, something burned through and had broken free: a feral animosity. My breathing had ceased. My jaw made a cricking and cracking noise as it tensed from the wide open cry I had been about to let loose.

Then I screamed like a banshee.

And I panted and gasped for air as I charged straight and true at those soldiers. Blood rushed through me with a potent surge of adrenaline.

At least four of the riders had yanked back on their reins to spot my inhumanly fast approach.

At least one of them was going to be the subject of my experiment.

The javelin in my hand was thrown -- again without any thought of it being in my possession. I watched it sail until I saw the slim wooden flier disappear before my eyes. I knew it had hit one of the soldiers because he jerked back from the momentum.

The man hadn’t appeared to be fazed --

-- but only for a moment. The horse he rode had strangely collapsed. He didn’t slide off, but he did curl up onto his side and clutch his stomach.

While that beast of burden was down, and the other three horsemen had a moment to recuperate from shock of what I had done, I was dealing with an acute pain in my shoulder.

Apparently my shoulder had dislocated when I hurled that javelin.

I rolled and shoved at my shoulder and arm until the regeneration kicked into the joint. With a sigh of relief, and more knowledge on how to fix that kind of injury, I saw something of interest ahead of me. It was how my javelin had embedded itself in the soldier.

He was trying to wrench free from the back of his horse's long head!? The tip of the javelin stuck out of the horse’s mouth like a pointed tongue.

Yuck! I didn’t intend that to happen!

Now that I had an inkling of what I could do, I worked on my awareness to not let my rage go out of control. Obviously that wrath didn’t prioritize precision or care for anything other than killing those soldiers. Everything else was in the way.

If I went berserk like that again, such as near the villagers, my own assault would endanger innocents. I had to keep control or the collateral damage would be horrendous in my vengeance.

Vengeance? Again I had to reassert how I was a stranger here, despite how I felt otherwise. Memories and knowledge were acceptable from the child, but these tremendous emotions overwhelmed me and were unwelcome.

That caused me to move onto another experiment: emotional control.

Unlike me, the three other riders snapped out of it and didn’t appear to have the same issue with getting angry like me. And they appeared to seek revenge.

They charged at me and tossed their own javelins before they reached over their shoulder for more.

I quickly counted. In reserve, there were a total of three javelins in their quivers.

As for the javelins zeroed in on me, I managed to dodge one, but I gagged when the other two struck true. One stuck out of my empty tummy. The other had grazed my hand -- when I instinctively tried to wrench out the bellyache. After it had scored my hand, the missile had jabbed its tip into my hip, but bounced out and clattered to the ground.

I guessed that one had hit bone? The thought of that caused me to shudder.

Breathing in once, I concentrated and forced my regeneration to be faster. Quickly now, so I could use the javelin I’d just now ripped out of my stomach, and the one I’d picked up off the ground, effectively before I was run down.

A few seconds was all took me to heal that time. I was improving at regenerating. With a grin, I gripped both javelins by the middle and shoved them up under my arms.

The three horsemen split, but still charged me as I ran at them --

-- and leapt from the ground onto the broad breast of one horse that galloped straight at me.

I smacked off of the charger, but not before I had let go of those two javelins. I blindly gored the rider. I knew that because I’d hit him in the shocking impact with his horse and felt the vibration go through my thin arms when I struck his armor and ran him through. If they hadn’t pierced him, those javelins would have dropped and clattered to the ground. And most likely that soldier wouldn’t have fallen off his horse just now.

But now I felt woozy. When I fell, I heard and sensed a crunch when I bounced off the ground. I had accidently tried to break my rebounded fall by reaching out to the ground.

I recovered from my break within seconds. I Impulsively laughed at my arm’s quick fix! How long until I could instantly heal?

But I had an issue that sobered me right up. I was out of stabbing things and I had two more riders to deal with!

Scrambling on the ground, I moved fast on all fours. I clumsily kicked back up onto my feet and glanced at one of the riders. He had pulled on his reins to circle sharply back around -- sacrificing his momentum for that quick turnabout.

Glancing the other way, I raced towards the second horseman’s rear. Both horsemen were yet to turn around fully. That second rider happened to be angry at me for jumping up and climbing on his back to meet him. He drew out a wickedly long blade. Not as sharp as I would have expected.

While he tried to throw me off, my mind was fed more knowledge and I sort of understood the concept of that sword. Thicker and duller to be more sturdy for a charged swipe. If it had been thinner and sharper, it could snap.

He swung the blade behind himself and at me, snapping me out of my observation.

Despite the blade not being too sharp, it was still dangerous!

He had armor; I didn’t! What I had was some kind of blue robe. And I wasn’t sure I could reknit severed limbs onto a kid’s body, so I hopped off the instant he flashed that menacing sword at me again.

After I rolled on the ground and hopped back up, I ran as fast as I could to the soldier who was curled up around his horse’s skewered head. Kneeling down by him, I saw that he wasn’t alive any longer -- that was a good thing for him and me.

The kid gave me morbid thoughts, not sadistic ones for these soldiers.

The sound of the fast-approaching horses alarmed me. I fumbled with the dead soldier’s sword in a panic. The two horsemen sounded like they had come up right behind me.

I bit hard into my bottom lip and tasted the coppery tang of blood on my tongue. My hands steadied and gripped the sword’s handle. Once the sword was free from his scabbard, I held it up --

-- and found a problem: it was too heavy for me.

But that wasn’t the only issue here! When I raised the sword up, I finally took notice that we were being watched by the rest of the horsemen. I stared back at the assembly of soldiers and wondered for a few seconds how they must have perceived a kid like me. I had already taken down two of their heavily armored riders and still held my own against two more.

I suppose if I was in their position, I’d stop and watch the incredible scenario unfold too.

Focus! Those two hadn’t wandered back with their group of friends, which meant I had to keep vigilant or lose my head. When I looked at the two horsemen, I saw their murderous intent in those dark eyes… so I reflected the look right back at them!

I ducked just in time as the second horseman’s sword swished over my head. The other soldier barked some kind of curse at me before he removed another javelin from over his shoulder.

Thinking fast, I crawled over the horse and used its big round belly to wall myself off from the horsemen -- the two that remained and the twenty-some that still watched. As the two maneuvered around the dead horse’s carcass, I held the sword up to face against the second horseman while I’d have to possibly endure another javelin in the back. In a pincer, the horsemen picked up their pace in a sudden burst of speed.

And charged when I was in their line of attack.

That second horseman -- on my left -- swiped his sword at me again, but aimed and struck my borrowed blade hard enough to send my sword flying out of my delicate little hands --

-- while at the same instant on my right, the other horseman leaned down so low as to ram a lancing blow with his javelin someplace too close for comfort next to my spine.

I was launched in the air a few inches and smacked off of the horse’s belly. Sliding down to my knees, I hiccuped for air as I blindly felt around my back to reach for the object impaled in me.

I knew going against these guys was suicide!

Not having any luck from behind, I had a better idea on how to remove the javelin. The tip poked out from under my ribs, so I thought I could just pull it out the long way.

That was the most sickening sensation I had yet felt so far out of all the other wounds I’d sustained. And I only managed an inch or so coming out of me. I clenched my eyes shut and dug my slender fingers in deeper until I had a sure grip. A shuddering gasp later, I ripped it out of me fully.

After I registered that it was thoroughly out, I reknit the wound. I felt jittery and sick, but managed to stand up. Now that I had a weapon in hand --

-- I realized it was useless. I saw that the rest of those twenty-some horsemen had decided to finally join the party. I watched as I was entrapped in an encirclement.

What could I do? I took one pointless step back and was blocked by that big belly of the dead horse. The horsemen rode around me with those javelins held in a surer grip than mine high over their head and shoulders.

All aimed down at me before the first of them commenced the shower of splinters. I wished I could dodge all of that!

One after another, they sent their missiles flying at me. Most hit, and I instinctively shrieked as I was being pinned to horse, ground, and even to myself. My hand stuck onto my thigh when I tried -- by impulse -- to free my staked leg.

When I stopped moving, they rode off. I supposed they were done when they thought I was dead? Of course, they had a village population to massacre. Why would they bother wasting any more time with a kid?

I could only hope that they were too late and the villagers were already making headway along the river.

Meanwhile, me being left incapacitated and stuck like a pincushion, I thought I might as well be dead. Who would free me? No one from the village would be here and all of those soldiers had ridden off...

Then I noticed only one of them had stayed behind.

He was decorated, unlike the rest of those soldiers. He approached me and stared down with disbelieving dark eyes. It was like he was disgusted and in awe at the same time. Not exactly knowing how I appeared to him, I would give him the benefit of the doubt that I probably was a complete mess.

“What are you?” he hacked out in a baritone voice, in a language unlike any I’d ever heard before, but I somehow understood him. At least, I thought I had? Improbable, but it was possible I had misheard and thought I understood what was said... maybe? To be certain, I kept quiet and waited to hear him speak again. “Girl, I asked you a question.”

Girl? How the Hell could he tell I was a girl when I was me and I couldn’t even tell!? Maybe the blue robe I wore was meant for women?

“I asked you a question! What are you!?” He was shouting at me now! Like that was going to make me talk...

Could I speak? I gave it a shot: “Hi?”

...that was certainly a girl’s voice. Without expressing it, my scalp tensed as I mentally cringed.

He withdrew the sword at his hip and brought it across his chest in preparation to swipe at me. Likely my head. “Don’t test my patience any longer, girl. What. Are. You?”

I had to think fast. He wasn’t about to believe me if I explained to him the mystery of my existence. And if I told him I didn’t know -- my head would roll.

Maybe if I lied?

...why?

Instead of giving him an answer, I questioned him. “What am I?”

My response appeared to have caused him to hesitate. He lowered his sword down a hair and asked me another question. “Why are you here?”

There were two reasons my mind quickly came up with: vengeance and rescue. I didn’t appreciate the vengeance so much, but the idea I could save the villagers appealed to me.

“Save village.” That sounded good enough, if a bit curt. Did I have a limited vocabulary? I shouldn’t. My head was patched up and in working order.

“Will you cease your hostility against us if we turn back?” Was he negotiating?

I supposed I understood that. I was damn difficult to kill -- if not impossible. Who was there to tell him I wouldn’t rise back up to hunt them down one-by-one?

Anyways, after he offered, I eagerly nodded in acceptance.

And… he just stared at me. For a moment, I wondered if he understood what I meant when I nodded.

So I told him: “Yes.” And yet he continued to look at me for a long time. There were so many stakes through me that I feared the blood loss would cause me to faint before he would acknowledge me.

“Very well.” A shuddering sigh of relief escaped me as soon as he said that.

He grabbed a hold of something odd on his back. Unlike all the other men, he didn’t have those javelins. What he held was a flattened rod, curved, with a strip of sinew between both ends.

A bow? Yes. That was a bow. On his hip, those were arrows in his quiver.

He drew a strange kind of arrow and aimlessly fired up in the sky. A shrill whistle soon followed its trail before the noisy arrow disappeared into the distant smoke.

In a few minutes, I almost nodded off and blacked out before I felt and heard the approach of riders. Many more riders than before. Possibly fifty? A hundred?

I didn’t bother counting when more showed up.

The decorated man gestured down at me and a number of soldiers dropped from their horses to approach me. Then I saw rope.

“Hey!” The first loop went around my neck, but so did a gag over my mouth when I was about to protest again. The nearest soldier yanked me off of the dead horse with such force that I fell forward. By reflex, I struggled as I was yanked back up onto my feet by the rope around my neck.

As I stood, I felt a bit of relief when they began to remove the javelins. They turned me around and secured me in bonds around my wrists. Thankfully, they left my legs alone.

Then I had a sack pulled over my head... that effectively blinded me. I supposed they didn’t want me to see where they were riding off to? That made a whole lot of sense, because I wouldn’t be able to immediately follow after them or tell any of their enemies the general direction they rode off to.

...I was wrong.

Those soldiers picked me up and carried me. Then I was laid on my back -- down over what felt like one of their horses. I felt them fiddling with the rope around my neck. It went slack, but I wasn’t sure why. I couldn’t see, so I didn’t know how yet.

I realized the worst when I found how they’d retied the rope around my neck. Once they tightened it up against my throat, it felt like they had secured the other end to the neighing horse’s own neck or reins. Either way, our heads jerked together and I choked each time.

A muffled cry left my lips and I tried to squirm closer to the horse’s head. Then I felt hands on me. They turned me over to lay me on my stomach.

The horse began to move. My legs instantly bowed down and over the back of the horse to hold on for dear life. If I fell, I’d hang and be dragged over the ground until I got back on my feet. If I could get back up.

I was experiencing flashes in my darkened little world in the hood. Not long now until I would faint. I kept deathly still after I figured that out.

It had sounded like I was to be with the entire vanguard. The cacophony of clopping hooves told me that much. When I felt our return to the conflagration that had once been my village, I felt a sense of relief that they were holding their end of the bargain.

My people would live.

My emotions got the better of me as I thought about that. Tears ran down my cheek and soaked through the hood onto the horse’s mane. For now, I was filled with joy for that victory.

But my tears became bitter when darkness remained my only company.

If I cried, it was because I was in trouble. What if they eventually decided it was best to execute me? How would they go about doing that? The flames of my village offered me one possibility.

My terrible imagination ran wild. Was that because I was a kid?

...at least it wouldn’t matter in a few minutes. I reached my limit and passed out.