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If the colonel discovers them here... I shudder. “How did you find me?” I hiss. Keva barks again, as if announcing her presence. I shush her. The farm is crawling with other humans, and I can’t have her drawing their attention now.
“The dog,” Drazak says quietly. “We need to get you out of here.” He reaches for my ropes and tries to untangle them.
The voices outside draw closer. The colonel is touring the farm looking for any last scraps of food the overseer might have hidden away.
“She’s coming,” I whisper at them. While I’m distracted, Han’zir slices the ropes through in one motion.
“Who?” Drazak asks, urging me to stand up.
“Bad person.” I shake my head and point at the door. “You have to go.”
Drazak scowls. “We’re not leaving without you.”
I glance at them and the ropes we left behind. Outside, the colonel is talking louder and louder about insubordination, and how the King treats disobedience.
“I can’t go with you.” I won’t exchange one servitude for another, as much as my heart aches and burns for them. They can hurt me in a deeper, different way than the colonel can. “Leave.”
Drazak’s heavy lower lip turns down even further. “No.”
“Leave!” I whisper it louder this time. “You have to go, now. Before they find you.” But how will two trollkin possibly escape the farm alive while it’s crawling with soldiers?
Han’zir glances up at the lantern hanging overhead, and grins. “I have an idea.” He snatches it off the hook, and with a glance at us, says, “We’d better run.”
Nodding in understanding, Drazak picks me up around the middle and tosses me over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes. I resist shouting at him, but I bang on his back with my fists. He’s so bulky and muscular it makes no difference.
Han’zir breaks the glass and hurls the lantern into the straw. It catches fire instantly, and within moments, the flames are spreading to the walls.
Carrying me like a limp fish, Drazak races out the barn doors, Han’zir close behind. The flames shoot up the dry wood beams, crackling as they travel to the roof.
“Keva!” I call out. The dog appears, ears flattened to her head at the smell of smoke. The air fills with shouts and screams as the fire arcs up into the sky above the barn. Drazak sticks to the building’s shadow as we creep around it, the dog in tow, and I can feel the heat of the flames on my skin. People are fetching water as the fire spreads. All the animals that lived here have already been slaughtered, but the barn is close to the house, and the sparks could easily jump.
When we reach the edge of the barn, Drazak pauses. “We’re going to have to run,” he says to me. He drops me to the ground, grabs my hand, and looks into my eyes. “Please, Esme. Will you run?”
My soul knows I have to go with him. So we run.
But we’ve only gotten a few yards from the barn when I hear thundering hoofbeats. A huge, familiar brown horse gallops in front of us, blocking our way—and riding it is the Colonel, her gun aimed at my face.
“Don’t move,” she snarls. All three of us freeze. “I knew there was something strange about you. Your story didn’t add up.” She gestures at Drazak and Han’zir with the barrel of the gun. “Move, and I’ll shoot them. That’ll be two pairs of tusks for my mantelpiece.”
I glance between my orc and my troll. They can’t die, not here, not now.
So I don’t budge. The Colonel snarls in fury. “Overseer!” she shouts. “We have a runaway!”
Like the rest of the humans, though, the big oaf is busy dumping water on the fire, while the others build a barricade to the house.
“So what?” he shouts back. “We have bigger problems!”
The Colonel turns the barrel of her gun on him. Without any warning she presses the trigger, and the overseer screams as the bullet punctures his shoulder. She turns back to us, drawing her sword.
“I will cut you down, traitor,” she says, dismounting her horse, sword still pointed at us. “But first I will torture you, little girl, and find out everything you know.”
Damn it. I wish Han’zir and Drazak hadn’t come for me. Next to me, Keva growls.
“Let us go, and deal with what’s important,” I snap at the colonel. “You can’t pillage this farm for food if there’s nothing left of it.”
But she simply laughs at me. “You think I care about one little farm?” Then she lunges towards Drazak, her sword outstretched. Before she can reach him...
A massive wooden spear flies through the air, gliding right through her throat.
