The Wildlands (working title)

Chapter 7 - Sigey

There was chaos. The cavalry were charging through the street. One of the horses fell and slid through the dirt between Sigey and the Imperial boy. The janti woman was too far ahead and the soldiers were way too close. She turned her horse around to flee - as she should. Sigey wasn't planning to get cut in half by an Imperial glaive, and there was no time to think through all of the possibilities in the ever-changing battle - if it could even be called one. It took only a few seconds for the riders to catch up to him and he could hear the hoofbeats right behind him. With a sudden movement he jumped to the side and rolled over on top of a banister which landed him in a roofed porch. He ran along the narrow caged structure to get farther from the street and make the pursuers' job harder.

He needed to get out. At this point the people who were fast enough to flee did so, and the cavalry seemed more organized. They weren't as spread out as in the first half of the attack, they had more time to focus on Sigey and the others who had been around him. Most of the villagers were either out of harm's way, dead or hiding somewhere. It was likely that he couldn't do much to help them right now. He could surrender. Stay in the village and try to take care of the ones left behind. But would they even listen to him in the heat of the battle or right after it? He had his doubts. He had seen many times how carried away Imperial soldiers can get in these situations. How they raze villages without care for the people who call it home. How they take whatever they want from them. How they slaughter the wildfolk without a second thought. He wanted to believe that not all of them were this way, but most of them didn't see wildfolk as fully human. He couldn't risk it. Not right now.

These thoughts were not new to Sigey by any means, so his racing mind made the decision in a matter of seconds as he tried to disappear in the growing shadows and billowing smoke. Most of the cavalry seems to have moved past him, but it was easy for them to race back just as quickly. He ran out of the cover of two houses and crossed a street as fast as possible.

"Baha!" he could hear one of the soldiers call out in Yashandi. He should have been more careful. But he also needed to keep moving so the riders had a harder time keeping track of his location. His height didn't necessarily help in such situations. He ran across a garden, past a house and reached the palisade wall, which formed a corridor with some of the mud houses. As he glanced around he spotted the silhouette of the janti woman. He gave a sharp whistle and yelled to her to come his way. She was quick to react and followed his suggestion, racing through the narrow corridor in the wall's shadow. Not far behind her were the glints of several helmets as some of the cavalry gave chase. Sigey positioned himself next to a house which was about to be consumed by flames. The heat was hard to bear, but he steeled himself and ignored it as best as he could, while still trying to keep an eye on the inferno and give the fire the respect it deserves.

As the janti woman reached the flaming house, Sigey gathered all the strength and precision he could muster and kicked the beam of the porch. The structure buckled and his own momentum pushed him back a little. But the roof did not collapse. He had no time to look up or even guess how far the riders were and how fast they were approaching. And no time to check if a glaive was coming right toward his neck. He kicked the beam again, fueled by all his willpower, knowing that failing this move might be the last thing he ever did in his life. This time the beam slipped out from its place. The flaming roof of the porch and half of the structure itself cascaded down right in the middle of the corridor.

Sigey jumped back to avoid the falling debris, but still he was hit by some of it as the first of the Imperials rode past him just as it all started to collapse. The rider avoided the worst of it, they were probably more confused than anything else. For just a moment Sigey could see that the rest of the pursuers were about to stop, so he turned his attention to the one who got through. He took out one of his axes and before the rider could reorient himself, Sigey slid the blade of the axe between one of the saddle straps and the horse's skin and with a precise move he cut the strap. Before the rider could even turn toward him, a sudden momentum pulled him off his horse and he fell to the ground. One of his legs got caught in the saddle. He dropped his weapon to try to detach himself from the horse that clearly did not like the situation.