Puppet Master

Part 6 Long walk

Chapter six
                                                     Long walk

   I growled waking up to sunlight in my face. Rolling over I saw a rabbit hopping in the middle of us. It hopped over to one of the bags and started to dig in it. I yelled waking everyone up as I scared the rabbit away.
  "What the hell?" Bailiff hissed, keeping his eyes shut.
  "A rabbit was trying to steal our food." I kneeled after running on my hands and knees. I dusted my gloves off and pulled a little food out. Everyone else ate a little.
  "Mark will you now tell us what to go?" Bailiff finished eating. 
  "Yes." Mark pulled the largest roll out of his bag that had been sticking up like an antenna. He unrolled it and handed me one corner and Jack the other we stood holding the map open. It was the first map I'd ever seen, it was very pretty. Our country Urasieia was oddly shaped and the rest of the land also looked weird. 

   Two countries over from Urasieia was boot shaped and called Itasy. 
  "We need to cross here." Mark pointed to the farthest West our country went. 
  "Where do we go from there?" I asked looking at the map. 
  "One thing at a time!" Mark looked up at the morning sky mumbling to himself. "We need to go that way." He pointed in the opposite direction of the sun. "Bailiff did you have a plan on what country you go to, to get to Amilis?" Mark turned to Bailiff. 
  "I'm fairly sure this place trades with Amilis." He walked up and tapped the boot shaped country. 
  "Very well we head there." Mark took my corner of the map and rolled it up to Jack and put it away. We made our way West and spoke little more focused on getting to the mountains.

   Days later we were running low on food and very tired. We came to the edge of a small town, we covered our faces with the masks and walked into the town slowly. The people stared at us scared. We came to a line for food and waited with the people not letting them just let us through.
  "Maybe we should take our masks down?" I whispered at Mark.
  "No we're pushing it already." He whispered back. We got our sandwiches and ate walking doing our best to keep the masks on. Two soldiers came around a building we covered our faces and hid the food. They stopped in front of us. 
  "What's a commander doing out in this backwater?" The one on the right asked.
  "Reviewing the outlying districts you are not supposed to stop you're lucky I'm not having you shot now. Move!" Mark howled at them and they ran away. 

   We hurried our way out of the town after that. 
  "You seem to know a lot about Long coats Mark." Jacob growled, Mark didn't answer him.
  "I used to be a soldier." Mark said low as we walked.
  "What!" Jacob howled, stopping. 
  "I used to be I'm not anymore I was put in the camp because I saw what was really going on I wasn’t a high up." Mark growled turning back to Jacob. 
  "That makes no difference to me!" Jacob spat.
  "Everyone put in the camps are lucky, you have no idea why our king does I was a desk jockey. I found files in one of the generals' desks saying what the government really does." Mark whined. 
  "What do they do?" Bailiff asked scared.
  "Ever wonder why women aren't sent to camps very often?" Mark mumbled.
  "Yeah." I gulped not sure I wanted the answer with how much it was upsetting Mark of all people. 
  "Younger women are sent to the capital and the king sorts them keeping some for himself. Others for his friends and the rest he sells as well as young children." Mark pulled his mask down. Tears falling into his beard. "I saw pictures and papers in it. We were so lucky to be sent to a camp. Men are treated so much worse than women the king takes." Mark gulped. 

    We stood in silence for a while.
  "What does the king do to the men?" Jack asked very scared.
  "Cuts them up and often cutting their tongues out." Mark shook his head. "Rose, if he got his hands on you, you would have begged for a bullet in your skull. He would have cut your tongue out, destroyed one eye, and scar you face with fire." Mark turned to me. I covered my mouth not thinking.
  "We need to get out of here." Bailiff hurried forward.
  "Would have done anything to my mother?" I pulled my mask down to look at Mark.
  "How old was she and what did she do?" He walked next to me. 
  "I think she was in her thirties but she and my father were gun makers." I gulped.
  "Too old, they both would have been sent to camps." He shook his head. 
  "Good my grandfather didn't lie to me." I watched my black boots. 
  "If he had it would have been better. You were four weren't you?" Mark looked down at me.
  "Yes but I still would have wanted to know." I kicked a rock out of my way and hit Jacob in the back.
  "Will you two shut up! Life's hard enough as it is!" Jacob spun and yelled at me and Mark.
  "Sorry for telling you the horror that's happening to thousands of men women and children!" Mark snarled.
  "There's nothing we can do for them we are five not a million or a hundred, five! We can't possibly help them!" Jacob spat at Mark.
  "You are a hard man." Mark said completely calm and it scared me, I stepped away and they stared at each other stopping. 
  "If you want to turn around and go save maybe one or two of them go ahead I'm getting out of the hell hole." Jacob started to turn. Mark grabbed his shoulder pulling him back and punched him with his other hand. Jacob fell holding his jaw laying on the grass. Mark growled trying to say something but just growled again waving his arm up walked ahead of us. We started walking again and left Jacob to get up himself.