War (The Four Horsemen #2) - Laura Thalassa Page 0,9
The crude man’s attention is drawn away, towards the front of the line where the screams are coming from.
The man flashes me a mean smile, backing away. “I’ll have you soon enough,” he promises.
I stare at him a long time, memorizing his features. Long face, the beginnings of a beard, and dark, receding hair.
My gaze moves over the other men guarding us. They all have a mean look to them, like they’d rob you and rape you if the opportunity arose.
“Move! Move!” one of the soldiers shouts.
The line of us shuffles forward.
A ways in front of me, another prisoner leans over and vomits. A couple of the soldiers laugh at him. And the screams, those piercing, terrible screams, they continue intermittently, followed by the camp’s boisterous heckling.
I can’t see ahead to whatever’s going on; there’s too many people and tents in the way, but it turns my stomach nonetheless. There’s a peculiar agony to waiting when you know something bad is coming for you at the end of it.
It’s not until I move around a bend in the line that I get a view of what that bad thing is.
Ahead of me, there’s a large clearing free of tents and shrubbery. Standing in the middle of it is a man holding a bloody sword. A captive kneels in front of him. They’re talking, but I can’t quite make out what they’re saying. All around them, men and women ring the space, watching with hungry, avid eyes.
Sitting on a dais a short distance away and overseeing it all is War.
My heart lurches at the sight of him. This is the first time I’ve seen him since he captured me.
The man with the sword grabs the captive’s hair, dragging my attention back to the two of them. Now I can hear the captive’s cries.
They seem to fall on deaf ears. The man with the sword pulls his blade back, and with one clean swing of the weapon, he beheads the captive.
I turn my face into my shoulder, breathing against the cloth of my shirt to keep my rising sickness at bay.
Now I understand the screams and the nausea.
The prisoners are being culled.
It takes an agonizing thirty minutes for me to move near the front of the line. In that thirty minutes I’ve seen several more captives die, though many have walked free.
The huge man I saw earlier, the one who trembled uncontrollably, is now at the front of the line.
Someone grabs him roughly, leading him to the center of the clearing before pushing him to his knees. He’s no longer shaking, but you can practically smell his fear tinging the air.
For the first time, I make out the executioner’s words over the noise and distance.
“Death or allegiance?” he asks the kneeling man.
Suddenly I understand. We’re being given the option to join this army … or to die.
My eyes swing over all the people standing around. They must’ve all chosen allegiance. Even though they might’ve watched the horseman kill their loved ones and burn down their towns.
It’s unfathomable.
I won’t become the very thing I fought against today.
In front of me, I don’t hear the kneeling man’s answer, but then the executioner grabs him by the hair.
That’s answer enough.
The captive takes one look at the sword. “No-no-no—”
With the sweep of the blade, the executioner cuts his cries short.
Saliva rushes into my mouth, and I force down my nausea.
That’s what will happen to me if I don’t agree to this camp’s terms. It’s nearly enough to make me change my mind.
I close my eyes.
Be brave. Be brave. I probably shouldn’t be using Rule Five of Miriam Elmahdy’s Guide to Staying the Fuck Alive to convince myself that death is the better option. The whole point of my rules was to stay the fuck alive.
The handful of prisoners that follow all choose allegiance. They’re pulled from the arena and swallowed up into the crowd.
Someone pushes me forward, and now it’s my turn to face judgment.
A soldier roughly drags me to the center of the clearing, where the executioner waits. Puddles of blood soil the area, and the liquid splatters beneath my boots as I walk up to the man with the blade. Here, the air smells like meat and excrement.
Death is messy. You forget that until you cut a man open.
The camp’s eyes are now all on me. They look sickly fascinated by this, like it’s some sort of macabre show.
But all of their faces fade when I gaze up at War.