I didn't know how far we walked. I didn't care. We stopped at a river to wash up, the water turning pink from the blood, and then I laid under the sun on the banks to dry.
"How's your shoulder?" I asked Gunnar, the first words spoken in a long time.
"Not great," he grunted, standing in the water half-naked trying to get his skin clean of his sins.
I stared at the bared wound in his shoulder. The stitches had torn, but there was no chance of us finding another doctor to fix it any time soon. Thankfully, it didn't appear to be bleeding too much, not uncontrollably like before.
Our few spare items of clothing, on the other hand, had gotten horribly messed, but we'd washed them as best we could and laid them out on a flat rock to dry in the late midday sun. Not that we had much time to be doing laundry. We would have to get moving again soon, if we wanted to make it somewhere safe for the night.
I'd have to act like I trusted him now. After what had happened, there was a sort of comradeship that had developed between us, and I'd have to do my best to keep it that way.
His words from earlier resonated at the back of my mind. "I am nothing to you," he'd said to me at the inn. A conversation that seemed to have happened a lifetime ago. But I kept the words close, because they served to remind me of how fragile our current partnership was.
"My mother sent you?" I asked, since we'd never properly finished that conversation.
He glanced at me briefly over his shoulder, something sparking in his eyes. "Yes."
"Why?" I asked,
He didn't give me the response I was expecting. "Because the new king wished it."
"The king?" I repeated, not understanding. "Why the king?"
"Because your mother married him," he said.
My mind stalled for a second, before picking up fast. My mother; the woman who'd sworn on my life she would never marry.
I wanted to ask more questions, but a howling scream pierced the quiet of the forest, and Gunnar and I both startled, still on high alert. Gunnar's head snapped up as he scanned the wall of trees, and he hurriedly sloshed out of the river towards his clothes. The gun and the satchel with the ammunition were laid beside them, and I moved closer to collect them.
At the sound of my footsteps, he whipped towards me and his eyes hardened. "Don't you dare run again."
I froze under the weight of his gaze. I couldn't tell if he was angry or scared or something else entirely.
"I won't," I lied quickly. "I need you out here."
He studied me for truth, then laughed humorlessly. "You're a shit liar. What does a person like you need help with?"
The way he said a person like you didn't sound like a compliment, but I didn't comment on that.
"Savages," I answered his question instead. "They work by a whole different set of rules. Specifically, they have none, and they won't be easily managed."
I knew these things because I was one such creature myself. Unpredictable. Dangerous.
But Gunnar didn't appear convinced. In the end, though, it wouldn't matter. Someone suddenly crashed into the river, and we both spun towards the noise. I recognized the military uniform first, then his face. He was the same soldier who'd stopped me when I'd tried to run.
He froze when he saw us, and he yelled unintelligibly, almost comically.
Gunnar and I looked on with bewilderment as the soldier bolted backwards in a panic. A wall of savages materialized amidst the trees, and the distraught soldier halted and fell to his knees, caught between us. Two unstoppable forces.
One of the savages stepped out of the shadows, his familiar bearded face creased in laughter. "It's the married couple."
"They're the devil," spat the soldier in a quivering voice, still kneeling in the mud. He appeared to be favoring the savages to us, which was saying a lot, since they seemed ready to tear him to pieces. He stuttered out the rest, "The entire town—I saw it, her fault! She killed them all—the entire town—"
He was hysterical and practically incoherent, but the words seemed to settle heavily with the savage, who glanced up from the soldier to us, his intelligent eyes narrowed.
"An entire town?" he echoed, as though fascinated.
I didn't bother correcting the distraught soldier. I instantly eyed the satchel and the gun. The clothes laid out on the rock. Our small collection of belongings and provisions.
I leaned towards Gunnar and lowered my voice to a whisper. "We should go. Now."
As though I'd given him an actual order, Gunnar wordlessly bent at the waist and grabbed our stuff. By the time he'd shouldered his shirts on, the savages were in the river, advancing slowly. They were going to try to circle us, but we'd be faster.
"Nice seeing you again," I nodded at the bearded one, forcing my voice to sound amicable just to keep up appearances.
He nodded back, and although I dreaded turning my back on them, Gunnar and I started to walk away. We didn't even take two steps before another savage stepped out from the woodwork in front of us, effectively blocking our path. Then another, and another, until they had formed a second line-up. A second wall.
Gunnar and I froze. We'd been surrounded all along, we just hadn't known it.
"Not so fast, please," said the leader from behind us.
We said nothing. We just looked on in resigned silence, waiting to find out what it is they wanted, while the hysterical soldier hurled more nonsensical screams at our backs.
"Devils," he enunciated clearly, and I saw Gunnar flinch, as though the word meant something to him personally—something bad.
But then a second later, a gunshot cracked loudly, and the hysterical soldier was silenced forever.
"Shit," I hissed, feeling Gunnar go rigid beside me.
I wasn't afraid of these savages. I had no reason to think they would harm me, as long as they believed I was what I claimed I was. But Gunnar was in deep trouble here.
...
They made us travel all through the night. Apparently, stopping to rest wasn't an option. They knew their forest well, and despite their crude appearances, they came well equipped to navigate the dark.
I lacked their experience. I stumbled more often than I'd care to admit, my footwork unused to this type of terrain as we moved deeper into the dense woods, but at least I wasn't being crowded like Gunnar. They'd stripped us of weapons and kept Gunnar surrounded so closely it was a wonder how they kept moving forward.
I only had the leader to worry about. He'd shouldered Gunnar's big gun, wearing it like a threat, and was lingering close to my side so I'd know not to try anything.
Occasionally, he'd catch me by the elbow when I stumbled, and then he'd laugh loudly when I shook him off. The sound bounced off the trees, startling sleeping animals in the dead of night.
I wanted to kick something. I cursed us for getting caught this way. If it hadn't been for that idiot soldier, they never would have taken an interest in us.
Her fault, he'd hollered. An entire town.
I could still perfectly recall the way the bearded savage had looked when he'd heard those words. The way his eyes had narrowed on my pale face. In the dead of night, when my body ached for rest and the hours blended into each other for what felt like eternity, that expression on his sun-beaten face kept replaying in my head.
I could almost feel him plotting and planning as he walked steadily at my side, apparently immune to the fatigue I felt in every bone in my body. I could almost see the gears working double time in his brain, but I couldn't tell what they were working towards.
I couldn't figure out what he could possibly want with a woman accused of murdering an entire town.
It's not like I'd killed everyone by my own hand, but a part of me wondered if that dead soldier been right. At least partly. Was it my arrival that had tipped the scales and sparked the warfare? Was it my foolish interference that had caused the slaughter at the train station?
I couldn't be sure, and my head only pounded harder, unable to make sense of anything, as I pushed my body to keep moving.
A bruise had already formed on my scalp in the spot where I'd hit the concrete, and whenever it throbbed, I recalled the woman who'd charged the soldiers.
Why had she done that for me?
And whatever her reason, was it the same reason that had doomed the entire town in the end?
In the dead of night, with my body pushed far beyond its limits, it was easy to believe the accusations the dead soldier had screamed at me. I could almost still hear his screams echoing on the wind, his ghost come to find me.
But later, by the time daylight broke and we arrived at the savage's camp, I would disregard all those thoughts I'd had as mere exhaustion.