Rinnet of King's Helm (COMPLETED)

Chapter Twenty-four

"That, too, was the last Kozua saw that night. As the last living Coretians fled, he fell from exhaustion, and the spirits dissipated. He woke the next afternoon in the healer's longhouse, having just been carried back. Barely alive, he was starved, dehydrated, and ill even beyond physical terms. He still clutched the Coretians' plan of invasion in one hand.

"Grandmother Ashi demanded to see him right away. She allowed no one but herself and the village healer to go anywhere near him. I begged her to let me see him. Kozua was as close as a brother to me. And even though Grandmother denied my pleas, I knew soon enough what had happened as the village started to talk.

"As the story pieced together, the dread I had been sensing sank into my stomach. I couldn't keep food or water down. Kozua had attacked the camp. The Hatawans who had seen the aftermath found bodies. He had killed. And I was the one who gave him the idea.

"Meanwhile, Grandmother Ashi was furious, and horrified. He tried to argue with her that he had saved more lives, the lives of the village, by removing the Coretian threat. He showed her the invasion plans to soothe her anger—'This is what would have happened,' he told her.

"He watched the color drain from her face. 'You have brought them down upon us,' she said, and left the longhouse.

"She was right. The Coretians came. They brought hundreds this time, enough to easily overpower our small village. There was no negotiating. There was no explaining what happened. There was shouting, and fire, and Hatawans dragged out of their longhouses until they had collected all of us out in the open.

"They forced us to reveal our leader, threatening to kill every last one of us if we didn't. I saw Kozua, too weak to stand, slumped against the side of the healer's longhouse. Heavy rain obscured his face. I couldn't tell if he was even conscious, and if he was, if he would say something.

"Silence, but for the pounding of the rain in the dirt. I started to speak when Grandmother stepped forward. 'I am,' she said quietly. 'These are my people.'

"They beheaded her. The nearest Guardsman drew his sword that instant. In front of her family, her grandchildren, everyone she loved. She fell to the ground. Someone screamed, a toddler.

"Then everything was chaos. The Guardsmen struck Hatawans down without provocation, slaughtering those who froze in shock and pursuing those who fled. In the midst of it all, I lost my parents. The terrified faces streaming past blurred into a shapeless smear, and I couldn't recognize anyone. Panicked, I could only think of one person I still knew. I ran to Kozua, keeping low to the ground, choked with fear. He still slouched unnoticed by the longhouse in the deepening mud.

"I screamed at him. I shook him. He was lost in a trance, his eyes unfocused and his arms limp at his side. He was still weak from his attack on the camp just days before, but now something in him broke.

"I turned once to see if anyone was coming for us. Something sick in me tried to find Grandmother Ashi's head. But it was lost in the increasing number of bodies on the ground."

Riuza's voice thinned until she stopped, running out of air entirely. Now at least interested, Rinnet scrunched her toes inside her boots and gnawed the inside of her cheek, waiting for the Hatawan to keep going. Of course, she knew how it ended.

"Finally, Kozua grabbed one of my arms and pulled me down next to him. He said nothing, but I was paralyzed with fear and didn't know where else to go. We huddled there by the building, half-hidden by ferns and junipers and rain, as Hatawans tried to run and Coretians hunted them down. The violence moved away with them, the noise thinning into the occasional shriek or sob in the distance. Every now and then a Guardsman would prowl close to us, but then there'd be a crash in the trees across the village and they'd take off after it. Throughout the day, I realized it was Kozua, telling some spirit to rustle the branches in the brush.