Rome In The Sky: Daybreak

CH 10: Hunter Killer

PAXXA

"Go on ahead of me," Pax told the two teenagers who rode on horseback alongside her. "I'll catch up."

The horses' hooves clicked over cobbled streets. She peered out ahead towards the sun, the pale sunset light warm to her eyes. The stones reflected the evening light in Robinhill, the neighboring town to Lykanhill. Brick buildings lined the roads, a few wayfarers out past curfew, a few street-side merchants still doing business. Jury outposts were too spread apart to stop them all. Tracks cut through the roads. Trolly cars rolled down them, stopping every now and again to spew out a passenger or two.

Years ago, Asha, the girl, had seen Pax in her hometown, Oris, while the Wulfenguard had stopped there for resupply, and had become her shadow. Asha refused to read the room and pestered her with questions the entire time her platoon was there. Pax hadn't had the heart to turn the poor girl away, and decided they would give some of their own munitions to the nearly starving town and move somewhere else for ressupply. Since then the two had been thick as thieves.

Dann, the boy, was a bookkeeper from Robinhill. Pax had often gone to his shop to find paper or ink or paint for her crafts. The outpost guard had tried to seize his shop once, and he, gentle giant though he was, had thrown them out of it. He and his sweet old grandmother had broken no rules, so Pax stepped in and helped him stave them off. The pair had grown fiercely close in the wake of the near civil war and the death of her brother, and he had been there to comfort her throughout the grueling training to take the helm of the Wulfenguard.

"Why are you always taking detours, Paxie?" Dann said as he took the lead.

"Don't call me that here, Dannie, you're embarrassing me in front of my friends." Pax flashed him a smirk, eyes narrowed.

"Aw, are you shy?" Asha asked, poking fun. "Everyone knows about the young first sergeant and the lowly bookkeeper being two little lovebirds."

Pax knew if she blushed they would keep prodding her, so she held it in.

"Ash I will literally eat you for breakfast," she said, fixing a false glare on Asha that was still enough to scare her a little. "And you all ask too many questions. Go on now. I said I'll catch up."

"Ok fine. Always with the attitude," Asha said.

"Oh," Dann said as he pulled up beside the girl and the pair went onward. "you haven't seen an attitude yet."

"I can still hear you." Pax said. She hopped from Flint's back and threw a small rock at Dann. Pax giggled as it glanced off the back of his head. Asha squeaked and shrank away, laughing.

The two trotted off.

She mounted, pulling up the hood of her riding cloak, and turned south. A few paces down the cobbled streets lead to a large bronze statue of St. Wolf, for whom the limit was named, and beyond the statue, a cemetery.

'Such a pretty pale gold. A shame he's not here to see it.'

Pax had a wreath of flowers in her cloak. She would make, them every few weeks, and go to the gravestones. She made her way to the far end of the burial plot, near the gate, where a rather bare grassy slope dipped down towards a small stream, and an old tree stood. She knelt beneath it, and brushed away the leaves and soil that covered a small headstone.

WILLEM

is all it read.

She laid the wreath atop the stone, and closed her eyes.

She remembered little moments.

His gleeful smile as he played with his food at the table, not caring that Judd looked on in disapproval. How his eyes went wide when he saw Anarchy for the first time and how, once the pair had warmed up to one another, he'd try to ride the wolf like a pony and fail, tumbling onto his head, laughing all the while. How he'd run wild in the woods and come back with thorns in his ankles and she'd sit with him long after dark, under candlelight, diligently picking them from his skin.