I was carried in silence for about ten minutes through the woods. At the start I had tried to remember the way we were going so that I could retrace the route, but I gave up when I realised the clearing with the wolf would be no more useful a place as where they were taking me; I would still have no idea where to go to get out of the woods. And that was if I could escape the two soldiers first.
They both looked formidable, and I knew if I was to come up against them again, I'd have to do more than curl up and cry, to ensure my freedom.
When they finally stopped walking, it was at the remnants of a small camp fire with three tents set up around it. Another soldier sat attempting to light the fire again; he looked up as we approached, eyes fixing on the blood clotting around my stomach.
He let out a low whistle, and Silas bared his teeth at him. Grinning, the third soldier lit the fire, then turned to the closest tent and reached for something.
Silas took the time to lower me to sit on the ground by the campfire, then as he stood back up he froze.
The third soldier had come back out of the tent, and was staring at me in horror, having gone from seemingly mirthful to furious in seconds, he took a step towards me; his face an angry mask.
"What the hell have you-."
"She's marked, moron, sit down," Silas cut him off quickly with his words and by stepping determinedly in front of me.
Ty, the second soldier, remained worryingly quiet, adding to the tension as the others seemed to face off. After a few frozen moments he slowly moved then reached across to retrieve the cloth the third one had retrieved from the tent. I hadn't noticed it during the standoff, he had obviously been intending to clean my wounds, before he saw something he didn't like, probably the same thing about me the other two had seen at the start. The thing I had yet to identify.
"Marked? What with the..." the angry one let his words trail off, eyebrows drawn low over his eyes.
Silas nodded, and soldier number three stepped back and straightened, slowly nodding to himself; Silas didn't relax completely, but he too backed down a bit. The forest around us almost seemed to day in relief at the rest from conflict.
A touch on my arm drew my attention to Ty, who was crouched with the cloth covered in snow. He motioned it at my wound and I reluctantly stretched out to give him access to clean the wound. I turned to watch the two sulking soldiers as they shuffled around the camp ignoring each other.
"That's Johnathon, you won't find an ally in him, he'll be even worse than us," Ty spoke to quietly for the man in question to hear, and stayed focused on my bloody stomach. I held in a squeak and winced when I felt the first touch of the cloth.
He spoke again, head down to try and avoid his comrade's notice, "He hates your kind more than anything, even though-."
"Shut your mouth, lieutenant," it seemed Ty hadn't been quiet enough, and Johnathon's reprimand madeboth of us jump, though I was the only one who shivered in fear. Ty just gritted his teeth and scowled at my wound.
Silas sighed, "John..."
He spun on Silas, "Just because I have to, doesn't mean I like it. We'll take it back and resume the mission as soon as possible."
And with that he turned and stalked into the woods, quickly fading into the blackness.
I bristled at being called an 'it', but Ty shook his head at me with a wry grin, and pressed the cloth against me again, making me hiss in pain.
It was quiet for a moment, until Silas suddenly swore, then stormed to sit opposite me in front of the campfire, I looked at him strangely as he sat with his head between his hands, but Ty continuing to clean my wound distracted me soon enough.A silence settled, broken only by Ty standing to fetch some more bandages.
I gazed off into the dimness outside the soldiers' little camp; again pondering just how likely I was to escape in reality. All three soldiers were much stronger than me, and one of them seemed to be completely against my existence, so he certainly wouldn't be holding back; so unless I pulled something crazy out of the bag like I seemed to have done with the wolf, I was stuck.
I jolted back into the present by Silas clearing his throat.
"John's family was one of the first taken down by the Frost when they went haywire, since the revolution, he's dedicated every breath to eliminating Runners, so I'd avoid being alone with him if I were you."
I stared at him, and then looked at Ty when he came towards me with bandages, to see if he understood the utter nonsense that just spewed out of his comrades mouth.
"Frost? Runners? Which am I?" I asked, confused but having detected the capitals on those words.
Silas gave me an odd look, then slowly shook his head.
"Well, a Runner, sort of. But you're a bit young for one. You're what? Seventeen?"
"Nineteen," my small stature had always made me seem younger than I really was, and I'd given up being annoyed at people for it long ago.
"So yeah. Too young. I'd say your mother was one," he nodded to himself, "Do you remember her name?"
I frowned at his use of the past tense for my mother, why would I not remember my own mothers name? Why did he instantly assume she had died a long time ago? Then an idea came to me, if they had treated me badly because they thought I was a Runner, they would likely do the same to my Mother. Maybe it was better that they thought she was dead.
I answered carfully, thinking over my words.
"Dominika," I told him, "I think her surname was, Polachev?"
I had never used my Mother's surname, always my Papa's, even after he died. The village would have seen me as even for foreign and unwelcome if I'd had such an odd surname, as well as strange looks and a witch for a mother.
Silas choked on the water he had been drinking and Ty froze on wrapping my stomach. The former continued coughing violently for a few seconds, then wiped his mouth and stared at me, his body taught.
"Your mother is Dominika Polachev?" His voice was low and dangerous, and his accent created a familiar twist on the name; he sounded like my mother. An icy feeling settled in my chest at the use of the present tense, and it wasn't the good kind.
"Uh..." It seemed I was unable to speak, the tension in the air weighed heavy on my shoulders.
"Well? Is she," he was stood up and shouting at me now, and even Ty, who had been seemingly gentle since they had stopped beating me up, stood up and stepped back from me, leaving the bandage trailing in the snow.
I saw no way of denying it now that the fact was already out there, "Um, yes?"
The answer that they had both been waiting for was met with silence, which seemed a bit anticlimactic, while both men stared at each other.
Ty was the first to break the standoff, he took another step back, "But her daughters marked..."
This didn't satisfy Silas, and he cut an assessing glance my way, and then looked back at Ty.
"But Polachev's not, and think what it would mean to bring her head back," he mused.
I shot to my feet, wound forgotten. Bring her head back! They couldn't kill my Mother! We may not get on very well, and I may still suspect her of killing my Papa, but she was still my mother.
"You can't kill my mother!" I gasped, still startled.
Silas ignored me, still seeming to communicate with Ty wordlessly, until the latter looked away.
"No, she's right," his comrade was still unconvinced though, so he added, "Not yet anyway, we may get orders later on since her rough whereabouts are known now."
Silas seemed appeased, but I was reluctant to back down. What was even more frustrating was that they continued to talk in what seemed like riddles to me, I had no idea what either of them where saying most of the time. And worse, they never seemed to finish their sentences, always trailed off and left the most important part out.
"So you're not going to kill my mother?" I was still unsure.
"No," his reply was short and definitely not sweet, and Ty rolled his eyes at his friend's disgruntlement. Silas muttered something else to himself, but it was too quiet for me to hear from my position across the camp fire, though it couldn't an't have been anything good, going on the warning look Ty gave him.
Ty came back to dress my wound, pushing me gently to sit back in the bit melted by the fire, while Silas disappeared into a tent, and for a while everywhere was quiet, and I fooled myself into thinking I was safe.
This was ruined, however, when Ty drew my attention back to my beaten up ribs and stomach.
"I've cleaned and dressed the wound, so that should be fine now, but you have a lot of bruises. You're going to have to be careful for a little while. Sleep on you back from now on."
The glare I cut him told him what I thought of his giving me bruises then trying to heal me of them, and he chuckled, increasing my annoyance.
"You go in that tent," he pointed to the one not occupied by Silas, also they one that Johnathon hadn't been into before he stormed off, "and try and get some rest. I'll keep watch until John comes back."
I held back a shiver of fear at the mention of Johnathon, and followed Ty's instructions. Settling under a blanket inside the small tent, on my back like I'd been told, I fell into a light sleep, so that I would be woken by any suspicious noises outside, like an angry soldier coming in to kill me.
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Edited, sort of, thank you for your support! <3