Prince of Fire

Prologue

The night was silent when they attacked.

No sound indicated their approach; not a single leaf crunched on the mud covered ground, not a single pebble moved out of line. They appeared from the night, riders on horseback cloaked in black. The edge of their swords gleamed in the moonlight, arrowheads glinted behind their shoulders, daggers winked beneath their cloak.

The screams woke her.

First it was only an echo in the night, a far, far away sound perhaps from her nightmares. But the scremas came closer, became louder, her nightmares turned to reality. The scream of the baker woman from down the road pierced the air. The pleas of the man from across the muddy path, his back hunched by age, were to no avail. The frantic prayer of the woman next door went unanswered as her little girl shrieked.

The screams came closer still.

She heard the scrape the dresser made as it was dragged across the room to block the entrance. She heard her father's urgent words as he handed a knife to her mother. She scrambled from the bed, squeezing in the nook beside it and the dresser, but dared not leave her room.

The next scream came from outside her room.

"No, please. No!" Her mother pleaded, her soft and lilting voice distorted by agony.

She was crying. Those were tears running down her face drip, drip, dripping onto her clenched hands. She did not need to see it to know that her father lay on the ground bleeding out. She lifted a shaking hand to stifle her cries-

Shadows slithered around her fingers.

"No!" was the last word her mother said before the house went silent once more.

Two pairs of blood stained boots walked in front of her door. They roamed through everything in the house: the cabinets creaked as they opened, the draws hissed on their way out, the pantry door cracked on its hinges.

When the door to her room opened, it sounded like hell brought to earth: the wood paneles rattled against each other, the hinges creaked, a nail clattered then rolled on the ground.

Heart pounding, tears streaming down her face, she ran.

She ran for the now opened door, ducked between the legs of the two men, and zigzagged her way through the labyrinth of their reaching arms. The drumming in her ears drowned out their curses and shouts.

There, before her door, lay the lifeless body of her mother, her mouth opened in her last scream, hand reaching towards... Her father, his once handsome face now distorted and pale.

She crawled, hands and knees scrapping; she ran, bare feet pounding on the cold hard ground; she rolled, nightgown tearing on the fallen nail. Through tears and pain, she made it to the door.

Outside was no better: bodies littered the ground, swords clanged, the tinge of blood was a perfume in the air. Men and women alike shouted, the voices of young and old combining.

A slaughterhouse.

She watched a soldier, his armour gleaming in the moonlight, swipe his sword across a woman's chest. Blood sprayed. She screamed and fell. She watched a second soldier behead a defenseless man; the bronze flame on his shoulder glinted in the firelight.

No one seemed to notice her escape in the frenzie. She took that moment of peace to take a deep breath in the midst of this butcher field. Spine straight and head held high, she took in the death around her.

Death was a living thing around the town, his presence so strong even she felt it. THe line between living and dead was thin as a thread.

Everyone she knew was dead: her mother, her father, her neighbours. Everyone in this town was doomed to die. And soon she will be dead too. Unless she ran.

So she did: She ran.