A LEGACY OF LIGHT

TILLA

TILLA

The cart trundled down the road, jostling the recruits against one another. Tilla gasped for breath and clung to the girls around her. They had packed them like cattle, and even in the cold winter day, sweat drenched Tilla and she felt faint.

"Tilla!" whispered the girl beside her. "Tilla, can you see anything? You're tall!"

Tilla frowned down at the girl, the daughter of a baker, her blue eyes wide with fear, her cheeks pink, and her strawberry braid slung across her shoulder. Rune had been infatuated with the girl, Tilla remembered; her bakery stood only a few buildings away from the Old Wheel Tavern. Tilla herself had bought bread there, but could not remember the girl's name. She was a soft, doll-like thing, pretty but too fragile. Tilla could not imagine this one ever wielding a sword.

"What could I possibly see?" Tilla said and gestured around her.

The cart had no windows. It was wide enough to house a dragon... or about a hundred girls cramped so tightly together they couldn't even lift their arms. The shorter girls gasped for breath. At least Tilla was the tallest among them; her head rose above the mass, allowing her to breathe the hot, fetid air. The forest road was paved with rough cobblestones; the cart bumped and tilted with every turn of its wheels. The girls would have fallen were they not packed so close together.

"I don't know!" said the baker's daughter, and tears filled those large blue eyes. She clung to Tilla's hip. "Maybe you can see a crack, or a very small window, or..." The girl sniffed, then began to quietly weep. "I just miss Jem. I love him so much."

Tilla rolled her eyes. She remembered Jem Chandler, the girl's love. He was a useless dolt who spent more time drinking at the Old Wheel than crafting his candles.

They had not seen any of the boys all day, not since leaving Cadport. Outside the city walls, Beras and his soldiers had herded the female recruits into three cramped, rotted carts. The boys had been rustled into their own carts. Beras had driven his punisher into the backs of those too slow to climb in.

Dragons pulled these carts now, dragging them over bumps, ruts, and slopes that left the recruits bruised and whimpering. It had been a long day: a day of sweat, of gasps for breath, of recruits whispering and praying and--like the baker's daughter--weeping incessantly about loved ones.

"What's your name?" Tilla asked, not unkindly, and touched the girl's shoulder.

She sniffed and looked up at Tilla with damp, red-rimmed eyes.

"Mae," she said. "Don't you remember? You bought bread from me once. Mae Baker."

"Well, Mae, as I see it, you have a choice now," Tilla said. "You can cry and weep and mope for your boy. Or you can shut your wobbling lips, stop crying onto my shirt, and maybe act like a soldier. Okay?"

Mae's eyes widened, her jaw unhinged, and for a moment she just stared as if trying to understand if Tilla had truly said those words. Finally fresh tears filled her eyes.

"But I don't want to be a soldier!" Mae said. "All I want is my Jem, my sweet Jem who loves me."

Tilla glared at her. "Well, you are a soldier now. Or at least you will be when we reach whatever fort they're taking us to. I don't want to be a soldier either, but given that we don't have a choice in the matter, you can either cry yourself to death, or you can toughen up."

But the girl seemed not to hear her. She covered her eyes and began mumbling something about how her father was the richest baker in Cadport, and how he would save her from this place, and how handsome Jem Chandler was going to run away with her, and how Tilla would be so sorry she hadn't joined them.