I opened my mouth to reply when a spine-chilling scream rent the temporary peace in two.
I jumped, and Harthon yanked me behind him. Dread slithered into my stomach as the primal noise echoed through the quiet landscape.
We knew that sound.
It was the same one we’d heard earlier in the day—the sound of a brutal, horrific death.
But this one was no distant cry. It was around us, above us, in the very air we breathed.
They appeared then, much like a swarm of flies drawn to the smell of a mortally wounded animal. One or two at first, sporadic enough to make the animal think it might have a chance to escape, and find a place to heal without being infected with flystrike. But then those flies would multiply, bursting into a throng of wings and single-minded intent, and no matter how fast the animal ran, no matter what ditch it cowered in or how fiercely it swiped its claws, those flies would swallow it in a cloud, feast on its flesh, and lay their eggs.
Except here, they weren’t small insects, but people. At least forty of them. And they wereeverywhere,appearing from every direction I spun to in panic.
The source of that terrible scream appeared—a looter with their stomach spilled open. The bloody hands holding him threw him carelessly to the ground.
“Meet the Horrads,” Aric breathed.
Like the looters, the Horrads were armed with makeshift weapons and covered in shapeless, earth-toned rags. But unlike the looters, their heads were covered with what looked like burlap sacks, and the skin of their hands was hidden by gloves. There were no holes cut for their eyes or mouths, but they moved deftly, easily, suggesting the fabric was woven loosely enough for them to see and breathe.
And unlike the looters, there was no chance we could successfully fight our way out of them. Our level of skill or ferocity didn’t matter. We were simply outnumbered.
“We have two options,” Aric rushed out, his voice tight and gritty. “Fight now and die now, hopefully quickly. Or we don’t fight back, we’re taken captive, and we die slow, painful deaths. The latter gives us a chance to escape, but the likelihood of suffering is much higher.”
I wondered if they could hear us as they closed in, but the burlap sacks allowed no insights, no sense of whether their faces salivated as they tasted our fear. Promises of death would be better than the blank visages bearing down on us.
Fear was a wild thing, sprouting into every limb, screaming at me to run. But there was nowhere to go.
Harthon turned to me. “I will get you out of this. I promise you,” he vowed, the words so sure and determined, theyhadto be true. But his expression was tight with what looked suspiciously like fear, and that might have been the scariest thing of all.
“Domus help us all,” Aric muttered, dropping his sword. “Swallow your pride and don’t struggle.”
Harthon dropped his weapon, then Joris and Stefano. The leather grip of my dagger slipped through my fingers.
Conrad was the only one who didn’t. Sneering in determination, he cocked his arm back to throw a dagger.
“Brother, don’t,” Aric hissed.
Conrad hesitated, reconsidering his choice.
What he decided, we’d never know, because all at once, five blades impaled his stomach and legs. His face slackened in shock, and he collapsed.
There was no time to process his death.
The stench of rot and sweat came with their bodies. They reached Harthon first, and I stood, frozen in horror, as a Horrad swung the butt of their wooden sword and cracked him in the skull.
He dropped before I could try to catch him.
His body crumpled on the ground, blood blooming from a wound at his temple, was the last thing I saw before something rammed into my own head.
* * *
Time washed away in a blur of tangled branches and shapeless hues of brown. Pain beat across my skull every time consciousness surfaced, only to disappear when one of those burlap bags loomed over my face and sent a wash of bitter-tasting syrup into a mouth I never remembered opening.
I didn’t want to open it for them.
I didn’t want to be here at all.
No, that wasn’t right, because the kernel of heat in my chest was humming. Content.
