I lost count of how many days I spent as serving woman to the convict chain gang and their captors. Weeks, to be sure. Fear and misery making it seem longer. It was my first real taste of the distant war, and I hoped that this was the closest it would ever come to my village and my friends and family.

How could people treat each other with such cruelty?

I had wondered that about the bandit gangs many times, but they were outside the law – these people were the establishment, if they won, then they would be the ones in charge.

Besides, the bandits – terrible though they were – did what they did largely to feed themselves. As far as I could see, the only reason for the long war, the only reason for so much death and so much cruelty inflicted upon their fellow men, was greed.

Each individual day of my captivity seemed interminable and yet, the hours passed quickly because of the constant activity. The work never ended.

Despite my heartache and despondency, I usually slept soundly through simple exhaustion, but on this particular night, I tossed and turned in my straw bed awhile, with the horses staring at me. Finally, I decided to go for a turn around the camp to clear my head. Unlike the convicts, I was not locked in or chained up, there was no wall or fence around the camp because it was in constant motion. There were guards who patrolled the perimeter, but not that many of them, since there was little of worth here to protect. Theoretically, there was nothing stopping me from walking out. Except fear – the knowledge of what they would do to me if I were caught. That was the leash that kept me tied to the camp, and it was a strong one. I’d been on the road alone before, and had nearly wound up in a worse situation than my current one, which wasn’t exactly peaches.

A few oil lamps swung in the night breeze by the camp edges as I walked out of the stable, casting a dull orange light that was just enough to allow the guards to see about them. I went the other way, not wanting to give even a suggestion to the guards that I might be trying to run away.

I looked again towards the lamp. The guards paced up and down a bit to give at least some semblance of cover to the perimeter, but they usually stayed within range of the lamps. Here, in this moment, I could see no one.

Doesn’t matter, Keira. Keep it moving. Even if you get away, you’ll never make it home alive and unharmed alone.

But just as that thought was passing through my mind, in the alley between the guards’ tents and the convict quarters ahead of me, I saw a pair of shadowy figures, moving quickly but silently in the darkness. Not guards – just the intentional stealth of their movements told me that - and now I saw them reaching up and helping another pair of figures down over the wall of the stockade that surrounded the convict quarters.

Dear sweet goddess, I was witnessing a prison break.

My heart sped and I opened my mouth instinctively to call to them, but before I could make a sound, a large hand reached around from behind me and clasped over my lips, even as a second, muscular tree trunk of an arm wrapped around me, holding me fast, stilling my struggles.

The figures in the alley hurried closer.

I now recognized two of them; one was Hob, the older convict who had looked like he wouldn’t last long in this hard life. The other was Taka, and it was to him that the other men – who I was sure were not on the chain gang – seemed to turn.

“What now?” The low voice, more like a breath than a whisper, came from just above my head.

“Stick to the plan,” replied Taka, his voice calm but quick.

“And her?”

Taka’s eyes looked me up and down.

“Can’t risk leaving her. Bring her.”

“What if she screams?” Hob’s voice was hard. “Kill her now.”

My heart leapt into my mouth, but Taka faced his fellow convict with equanimity. “You’re not in command now, General. I give the orders.”

“I hate to say it, but she can’t come,” one of the other men put in. “She’ll only be trouble and--”

“Enough, Luca. Your concern is noted,” said Taka, his tone brooking no further argument. “Rex, bring her with us. This is not open for discussion and even were it, this is hardly the time or place. Kai, horses. Luca, go check the rear.”

The one called Luca’s mouth went tight but he nodded and then went back up the alley to listen for danger. The man called Kai hurried ahead of us into my sometime bedroom, while we crouched in the dark, waiting. But as Kai emerged leading five horses, Luca came running up from behind.

“Guards are coming. Lost too much time on those damn chains.”

Taka nodded sharply. “Kai, go with the general. Take the girl. Luca, loose the rest of the horses. Rex, with me.”

The man, Rex, who held me, twisted me about in his arms. “Now, I’m going to leave hold of your mouth and pass you over to my friend Kai. He won’t harm you as long as Taka says not, but make one sound and you’ll wish you’d never been born. Briefly.”

I was too scared to scream as Rex, a giant of a man with a beard and hands the size of anvils, let go of my mouth and passed me over to Kai. He wasn’t as large as Rex or the others, his muscles more leanly honed, his face all planes and angles, but he was every bit as intimidating.

“Your pick, General,” said Kai, indicating the horses to Hob. He then picked me up with ease and went to sling me over one of the horses.

“No, please,” I hissed, almost frantic as I remembered my painful journey here. “Please let me ride upright. I won’t try to escape. I swear.”

Kai looked at my face for a moment – he was a young man, not much older than me, with bright green eyes that shone even in this light, and boyishly handsome features.

“Fine.” Without letting go of my arm, he swung up onto the horse and then pulled me up after him. I sat in front of him sidesaddle, his arms around me. “With me, General.”

Kai kicked the flanks of his horse and we set off at a gallop, Hob just behind. As I looked back, I saw the huge Rex passing a spear to Taka and then unfastening a massive axe from across his back. The last thing I saw was what looked like an easy dozen of the camp’s guards descending on them.

“They’re outnumbered,” I gasped to Kai.

Kai nodded. “Wouldn’t be fair, otherwise.”

Hob looked over his shoulder. “They’re following.”

“They must have had horses elsewhere,” muttered Kai. “You know where you’re going, General?”

Hob frowned. “I’m not leaving you.”

“It’s our job to get you away, General,” said Kai. “We don’t get paid if you get killed.”

“You don’t get paid if you get killed, either,” the older man shot back.

Kai laughed. “You’d be surprised the lengths we go to for money. None of us would let a little thing like death get in the way of payday. Besides, I have no intention of dying.”

Hob nodded. “Good luck, young man. And thank you. I’ll see that Lord Krius rewards you handsomely.”

“We’ll take you back if he doesn’t,” grinned Kai.

The older man nodded, unsure if Kai was joking or not, then raced ahead of us as Kai wheeled his horse around.

“You comfortable there?”

“You’re going to fight them?” I quavered.

Kai shrugged. “Well, it’s either that or they kill me. Or, I let them catch Hob. Sooner or later, they’ll find out who he is and then he’s a dead man. We’ve only got one shot at this.”

“Or you don’t get paid,” I said with a frown.

“You say it like it doesn’t matter.”

“How are you going to be able to fight with me sitting in front of you?” I asked. Suddenly, the fear of finding my way back home alone seemed far less significant than the thought of being cleaved in two by an axe during a battle. “Aren’t I in the way?”

“Nice try,” Kai grinned amiably. “But you’re not going anywhere.”

He reached back over his shoulder and I felt the muscles of his chest move against me. The churning of fear in my stomach was joined by a fluttering of something else. Before I could think too long on it, Kai drew a bow from over his back, then reached down to a quiver that hung at his waist to retrieve a handful of arrows.

“Hold these.”

Seconds later, four horsemen, illuminated by the high moon, came charging up the rough path after us, drawn swords in their hands. Kai notched an arrow to his bowstring and in a single fluid motion, drew back and released. The arrow shot through the air with a sound like the tearing of moonlight, and I saw the lead rider cry out and drop his sword as the arrow strafed across the back of his hand. Surely that couldn’t have been what Kai was aiming for? No one was that good a shot. The riders pulled up, seeing Kai and me ahead of them.

“That was a warning shot,” Kai called out as he notched another arrow. “You only get one.”

But the second rider obviously liked his chances. Kicking his horse into action, he made straight for us. Kai’s arrow hit him in the middle of his chest with a solid ‘whunk’ sound, knocking him back out of his saddle, one foot still caught in a stirrup. His horse charged on, galloping off into the night, dragging the corpse of its former rider behind.

“Nobody else has to die,” announced Kai.

The other riders had moved together and were conducting a conversation in low whispers.

“At this point,” Kai called over, “someone is probably using the phrase ‘he can’t get all of us’. May I remind you how little comfort that will be to the ones I can – Oh, damn it.”

The riders had broken, going in different directions to confuse Kai and spread his fire, all wheeling about to converge on us. Kai drew and fired like lightning, his arm muscles as taut as his bowstring, his aim flawless. Two more riders fell, dead before they hit the dirt. But this gave the third time to reach us and I screamed as his sword swung at me.

Before it could connect, Kai had pushed me over backwards, so I fell to the ground while he launched himself off his horse’s back to grab the final rider, dragging him from his saddle. They rolled on the earth together. All I could see in the darkness was a blur of limbs as the two men struggled. The rider’s sword flashed in the darkness as he waved it about, trying to free his arm from the grip Kai had on it. Then, there was a sharp abbreviated cry and a figure extricated itself from the tangle of limbs.

Kai wiped the blood from his hands as he looked down at the man on the ground. The dead rider had an arrow stuck in his chest that Kai had thrust there, the shaft broken from the force with which he had rammed it into his attacker.

“Damn,” Kai muttered as he looked. “Those things cost money. What’s your name?”

“Keira.”

“Be a good girl, Keira, and go fetch the other two arrows. I daresay the first one is long gone now.”

I looked at the corpses and barely suppressed a shudder of horror. “But… they’re in the bodies.”

“They’re still good for another use. And be careful how you pull it out. Don’t break the shaft – as the High Priest said to the Vestal Virgin.” He laughed to himself as he went to secure the horses.

I probably could have run off there and then. In the dark, he might not have found me. But I would have been as lost as I had been when this whole wretched adventure started, and if Kai, Taka and their friends didn’t find me, then the guards from the chain gang still might. I wasn’t sure whose prisoner I was better off being, but one thing did occur to me; in all the time I had been with the chain gang, Taka was the only one to ask my name. Kai had, too. It was a small thing, but at least they saw me as a person.

I made quick work of the unpleasant task and came back with the arrows as instructed.

“You’ll get a horse now,” Kai said with a satisfied nod as he took them from me. “Which will at least save one of us carrying you. Up you get.”

Again, I wondered at the strength in Kai’s wiry frame as he picked me up with ease and placed me on the horse’s back.

“Now, I’m sorry about this, but I don’t feel like we can trust you.”

With the reins from another of the horses, he bound my hands together and then secured them to the saddle itself. He then fastened my horse to his own.

“Simple rules, Keira; do as you’re told and don’t try to escape, or you’ll be punished. Understand?”

Oh, I understood. I’d been told much the same my entire life. Obeying was another thing entirely…

“What are you going to do with me?” I asked, almost afraid of the answer.

“Whatever Taka tells me to,” said Kai, simply. “For now, we just need to get ourselves out of Lord Vulpus’s territory and--” He stopped short, his head flicking to the right as if he had heard something. I listened and caught the sound of hoofbeats. More guards?

Kai swung up onto his horse. His bow was in his hands in less than a heartbeat, an arrow notched the string, his keen eyes trained on the direction from which the sound came.

But then his lips broke into a smile.

“Ho!” he called into the night and an answer came quickly, followed by three horses carrying Kai’s three comrades; Taka, Luca and Rex. Rex smiled on seeing us, Luca sneered on seeing me, and Taka just looked like Taka – calm, collected, unreadable.

“The general?”

“On his way. Some guards followed us.”

Taka nodded. “There’ll be more once they’ve put the fire out. We need to get moving.”

“We’re bringing her?” There was a snap of derision in Luca’s voice.

Taka cast a look at the younger man. “Yes. We can hardly let her go when there are Vulpus guards about. She’s heard too much.”

“You’re going to let sentimentality slow us down when we should be heading for our payday. What if they catch us while we’re busy nurse-maiding her? You’re putting our lives at risk for the sake of some slip of a girl.”

Taka nodded. “I know. Come on, we’re not wasting time discussing what’s already decided.”

But Luca wasn’t done yet. “You and she were in the camp awhile together. Did you have a thing together? Good, was she? Worth risking our lives for?”

For the first time, I saw a flash of anger in Taka’s mild features. It was gone as quickly as it had arrived but Luca clearly saw it, too, as I saw his head drop a little.

“We don’t leave young women to die or who knows what else because it’s convenient,” Taka said, his voice controlled. “Time was when I wouldn’t have to tell you something like that. I look forward to seeing that Luca beside me again. Until then, I cannot for the life of me understand why we are still talking about this, when my decision has been made.”

He tugged his horse’s head about and set off into the night with Rex hard behind him. Kai gave a yank on the tether that tied our horses together and we both rode in pursuit, with a coldly furious Luca bringing up the rear.

We traveled in silence, but two terrifying questions blared loudly in my mind with every passing mile.

Exactly how badly did he want me out of the picture? And had I just gone from a miserable situation to a deadly one?