Prince of Time

Chapter Forty-Three - The Burning

In the end, it was very simple. So simple that the entirety of the last few crowded hours seemed worthless. So simple that the spent lives seemed very useless.

 The army drew back all in a rush, leaving their dead lying across the ground like discarded toys thrown from a giant child’s pram. They pulled far back to the other end of the valley, a wounded cluster still huge enough to conquer lands.

“What are they doing?” Mithien demanded. “It’s not yet near dusk!”

“Off the wall!” Tobiah ordered. “Now! Get everyone off the walls! Evacuate Etheron!”

“I’ve sent the order to get the children out,” Mithien objected. “I don’t see…”

“Then look and see!” Tobiah roared. “Etheron is lost! Get everybody off the walls! Spread the word!”

The soldiers around him hesitated.

“Now!”

Mithien nodded tightly. The word began to spread and a fresh flurry of action saw the soldiers leaping from the walls, racing down stairs, finding rooftops to drop to, any means of escape. Tobiah hurried them along as best he could.

  They left death behind. Tobiah saw a thirteen-year-old girl, hair streaked with her own blood, the top of her head cleaved open. He saw an eleven-year-old boy with his belly slashed wide, entrails spilling across the stone. He saw a man wrinkled as a walnut, still breathing but with no life left.

  He looked towards the army, towards Finem. And he ran. He ran with all the energy left in his muscles, jumping and climbing, escaping the wall with every bit of strength he had.

  He was sprinting down the a wide street, hemmed in and headed for the keep, when the wall blew apart and he knew there was an army at his back and suddenly it was obvious that he was never meant to survive.

Pepper dragged the two boys along. Her bloodied sword was shoved back in at her waist and she had one of their hands each, pulling them behind her, forcing them to run with her towards the keep and their last hope.

 The two boys were brothers. The elder was perhaps twelve, the younger ten. They were incoherent, bubbling over with tears, wailing and screaming. They were too young to be killers. They were too young to be killed.

 Pepper wasn’t sure how or why she had ended up in charge of them but she couldn’t let them go now, even though she was scarcely moving above a jog. They clutched at her hands, bloody skin slipping, fingernails digging into her palm.

 “Come on!” she screamed, hauling them after her. “Hurry up! Just run!”

But they weren’t running fast enough and, when the wall collapsed and crumbled and disappeared, Pepper was far from safety. The rush of displaced air nearly bowled her off her feet and the falling masonry made her two charges scream louder and hang back, afraid to run.

 Desperately, hopelessly, Pepper pulled them forward. She couldn’t leave them now. She couldn’t. There had been too many bad things in her fifteen short years for her to add to them now. They couldn’t die. They mustn’t die. She wouldn’t let it happen.

  The younger fell flat on his face and Pepper scooped him up, slinging him over her shoulder. The elder was still crying but Pepper gritted her teeth and pulled him along too. Stumbling under the weight, Pepper ran for her life and theirs.

 All the while, the army advanced on the bleeding city.

Haliwen made it to the keep just as the wall gave way. Mithien caught her at that moment, his eyes panicked, his unspoken screams shockingly loud.