Page 5

A high-pitched, banshee shriek flung out of her as she was tackled to the ground by the man who had checked on the horse packs.

“Let me go!” She kicked, she screamed, and when he placed his forearm anywhere near her face, she bit him so hard she tasted copper.

Then, her long, dark hair was grabbed so he could yank her to her feet. She came face to face with the man, and his cold eyes promised pain.

“Ya fuckin’ bitch!” Just as he raised his hand to hit her, the slap of Gregory’s palm against his forearm echoed through the night.

“Don’t, Sal,” he warned, towering over the smaller man.

“She bit me!” Sal barked.

Although he said nothing, the grind of leather under his meaty hand and the darkening look on Gregory’s face said everything it needed to: he didn’t care. Lindi shouldn’t have been so relieved that he was acting as her saviour, considering he was also her captor.

“Please! Just leave me alone,” she begged when she was thrown over Sal’s shoulder, then he hoisted her onto the backend of a horse.

Her ankles were tied, as if they wanted to make sure she wouldn’t slip off and have the freedom to run away should she attempt it again.

All three ignored her and carried on in heavy silence.

It made her father’s roar all the louder when he came running between their crops of barley with a sickle in his hand. He was coming from the direction of the storage shed, as if he’d slipped out the window in order to sneak off and grab some kind of weapon.

“Papa!” she cried out.

The horse spooked and shied to the side, and she wiggled to get down from it to go to him. One of the other horses knocked into hers, causing it to spin in a circle, its hooves clattering erratically, and she barely caught the men drawing their swords to ward Nico back.

Her blood ran cold.

“Stop! Go inside!” she yelled as the horse turned and turned, but she was forced to close her eyes right before the saddlebag of the third horse whacked her in the face.

By the time she opened them again, she was facing away from the farm, and everything had gone quiet.

Too quiet.

Not even a cricket dared to chirp in the heavy night.

“What’s happening?” she asked, gasping for air against her worry, her anxiety of this night.

She didn’t like the silence that greeted her. Where was the sound of a kerfuffle? A fight? An argument? There were no more roars from her father or grunts from these brutes. Not even the clang of his sickle against a metal sword.

No sounds of... life.

As much as she appreciated her father trying to rescue her, he was one man facing off against three armed and possibly deadly men.

She wanted to be saved. She wanted it more than anything, but Nico needed to think about her mother.

Without Lindi, Allira would need him more than ever, especially with her heart so weak.

She couldn’t farm by herself; she was feeble and frail while she was getting better.

So long as these men didn’t kill Lindi – with Gregory’s desire to keep her unharmed, she dearly hoped that was the case – perhaps they could be reunited. She could hope and pray for that day to keep her moving forward without them.

She craned her head to the side when the horse she was on finally came back around, and her heart nearly came up her throat.

Throwing her body around until she managed to buck herself off the creature, she screamed, “NO! No no no!”

It spooked to the side once more. She was almost trampled, but Lindi didn’t care.

Not when her tears spilled to the dirt as she watched her father sink to his knees with a sword through his gut.

Crimson seeped into his white sleep shirt and spread fast when it was pulled from him.

As he cupped his wound, the assailant booted his chest so he would collapse to the ground on his side with a heart-wrenching thump.

“What the fuck, Sal?!” Gregory roared, grabbing the man by the scruff of his armour.

Sal, with his sword still bloodied, shoved back at him. “Piss off! He swung first.”

“There’s three of us! We could have subdued him. There was no need to kill the man!”

Sal raised a shoulder. “Who cares?” Then he shoved his sword into its scabbard and turned for Lindi. “We have the girl. That’s what we came ’ere for, ain’t it?”

He lifted Lindi on the back of the horse with the help of the third man, who had never spoken. Shocked, and unable to do anything else but cry as she tried to absorb that her father lay dying not even a few metres from her, Lindi was pliable.

She did nothing but weep as she was placed there, wishing more than ever that Nico had just stayed inside. That he hadn’t come out to save her. What about her mother? What was she supposed to do now? Lindi was being taken, and Allira’s husband wasn’t going to be there to help her through it.

You silly, courageous man, she thought with anguish, licking at the tears that wet her lips and forced her to drink her own sadness. What about Ma? How could you abandon her like that?

She couldn’t believe her father hadn’t stopped to consider the worst possible outcome: his death. What a foolish man! He’d thought with his heart and not his head... when he should have known there was nothing he could have done.

What is going to happen to me? she thought with a sob. What about Lindi and her future?

She wanted to know that. She wanted to know why they had targeted her, when she barely left her home – even to go wandering through the village. How did they even know about her?

The men argued about Nico’s death, Gregory apparently against the unscrupulous killing, whereas Sal appeared to be vibrating with glee over it. The two men’s views didn’t seem to align, and the third man, Mathews, remained ever silent on the topic.

She was cold, she was frightened, and her heart was breaking in her chest. The last thing she saw of her home that night was her mother running out to her father’s corpse to collapse next to it, shake it for life, then abandon it to chase after Lindi.

Lindi knew Allira’s wails would forever haunt her for the rest of her – perhaps fleeting – life. And the sight of her chasing after them as they kicked up speed would live in her nightmares and the depths of her sorrow forever.

Why me?