by Jacinta Jade
The captive would either move in that direction of their own accord or be hurried on their way by more Faction guards standing ready to enforce any decision.
With each step closer to the front of the file, Siray started to see the pattern as those in front of her were judged.
A male with dark hair was waved forth, and Siray could see that his face was pale, making the blood spattered on it stand out.
The guard eyed him. ‘Left,’ came the decision.
Another pair of guards ushered the youth off to Siray’s right side to join the large group starting to form there.
The next male was waved forwards, and he moved slowly, limping as he did so.
When he stopped in front of the guard, the guard scrutinised him rapidly, his eyes resting for a moment on the male’s injured leg.
The guard waved his hand lazily. ‘Right.’
Two guards hurried forwards to move the dazed male away towards the smaller group standing to Siray’s left.
As they did, the female next in line began screaming. ‘No! No, no, no!’
‘Shut her up!’ commanded Captain Raque from where he was watching off to the side.
A female Faction soldier promptly stepped forwards and, with a smirk, viciously backhanded the other female across the face, making her head snap to the side and blood to fly from her mouth. Then the same guard pushed the unsteady Resistance female forwards to face judgement.
The decision maker was silent for a long moment before he announced, ‘Left.’
The guards pushed the still stunned female off towards the larger group.
As the line continued to move forwards, Siray felt horror growing within her as she realised what was happening, and what was going to happen to her and her friends. Trying to keep her face blank, she casually twisted her head and glanced over her shoulder to focus past Zale and on Jorgi.
He didn’t look good.
He looked weak.
Siray, Tamot, and the others had patched up Jorgi’s wounds as best as they could in the tunnels after putting some distance between themselves and the dark abyss, breaking off the ends of the arrows that had pierced his sides, with Genlie digging out the arrowheads using the tip of the blade she had borrowed from Wexner.
It had been hard to watch, and even harder to listen to Jorgi’s moans of pain as they had worked.
After he had been bandaged up, though, Jorgi had been able to move more easily, though the loss of blood and resulting pain had made him frail.
Now, casually, Siray turned around to the front again but tilted her chin towards her shoulder. ‘Zale,’ she said softly.
The heat of another body against her back told her Zale had stepped closer.
‘Yeah?’ he breathed.
‘Wake Jorgi up,’ she said quietly, trying not to move her lips. ‘Make him a bit livelier.’
‘Right,’ Zale said.
Siray was relieved that he didn’t ask her any questions. Maybe he had seen and understood just as she—
‘Ow!’ cried Jorgi.
‘What’s going on?’ demanded a guard from the side.
Siray didn’t dare turn around.
‘Oh, uh, I think something bit me,’ came Jorgi’s slow response.
‘Well, keep it to yourself unless you’d like something colder to bite you,’ was the guard’s unpleasant reply.
Siray breathed deeply again but then tensed up an instant later as Tamot, who was ahead of her in the queue, was waved forwards.
The guard assessed him quickly. ‘Left.’
Tamot hurried off, his shoulders relaxing.
Then it was her turn, and as the guard motioned her forwards, she obeyed promptly, stepping forward to look him square in the eye.
He, however, took his time as his gaze roved slowly up and down her body, lingering unnecessarily long in some places. ‘Left,’ he finally announced.
Relief flooded through Siray, and although she felt like sinking to the ground, she moved swiftly in the direction Tamot had gone to join the large group on the right. As soon as she reached the watching mass, she spun to observe the judgement of her friends.
Zale was already moving in her direction, so Siray focused past him on Jorgi, who had just been waved forwards.
The guard was silent a moment as he regarded Jorgi, who stood before him, his shoulders slumped.
Jorgi still looked exhausted, but at least his eyes were wide open and alert, and he was holding his head up.
Siray just hoped that the guard didn’t see the bloody spots on Jorgi’s sides beneath his arms where he was already bleeding through his roughly made bandages. As Zale reached her side, she leaned close to him and whispered, ‘What did you do?’
‘Flicked his nose,’ came the quiet response.
A tense body on Siray’s other side made her look around, and she saw Tamot standing there, his face strained and his hands curled into fists.
The guard grunted. ‘Left.’
Siray could have cheered, but she settled instead for grabbing tightly onto Zale’s arm, her knees weak with relief.
Tamot also let out a long sigh of relief.
An instant later, Jorgi was walking unsteadily up to them, his eyes watering slightly and his nose red.
Tamot stepped forwards, discreetly catching his friend as he stumbled a pace out from them.
Siray remained tense until her other five friends had safely passed judgement to join them, Kovi hovering close to Genlie all the while. Even then, she found it difficult to look over at the other, smaller group of people who had been deemed unfit for whatever it was the Faction intended to do with the larger group that Siray was now a part of.
A heavy silence was beginning to settle over herself and the others who had made it safely into the bigger collection of Resistance captives. Zale and Kinna looked particularly grim, knowing most of those in the other group.
The last person in the queue, a brown-eyed female, was considered for a long moment in the same way Siray had been.
Until the guard’s eyes dropped to her injured foot. ‘Right,’ he said, before promptly moving away as his final judgement was enforced.
The female fought violently against the guards’ grips as she was dragged away, her dark curls flying as she struggled. ‘I’m fine!’ she screamed. ‘I can walk! Let me join the others!’
Siray gaped in astonishment, focusing more fully on the female. It was Melora.
Melora’s continuing screams of her fitness only earned her a blow from the nearest guard, but she merely turned and glared at the male afterwards, not even a hint of submissiveness in her eyes.
Captain Raque moved to the edge of the larger group and waved his hand at one of his soldiers.
Demonstrating an eager awareness of the captain’s nonverbalised commands, the soldier faced Siray and the other captives and commanded, ‘Form up!’
They all stood there for a moment in shaky confusion until other Faction guards began pushing them into three lines.
When they were finally in a suitable grid formation, Siray twisted her head slightly to look down the line. Her quick guess was that there might be more than one hundred captives here. She swallowed.
And about thirty in the other group. Including Melora.
Across from them, the smaller group of captives was being forced to walk farther away, some of them being shoved, kicked, or dragged along if their injuries slowed them down too much.
After Melora’s group had been forced to walk about one hundred paces farther down the valley incline, the guards halted them, and a large trunk was brought down the hill to join the anxiously milling captives.
Leaving Siray and her group looking down with a clear view of the hillside and the thirty people standing there. Her body went cold all over.
‘Anyone who doesn’t watch will share the same fate,’ stated the guard who had ordered them into formation. ‘There is no place for the weak amongst us.’
Siray’s breathing grew rapid as she watched a
group of soldiers approach the injured captives below. She didn’t like Melora, but neither she nor any of the others down there deserved to die.
But instead of harming them, two of the soldiers merely flipped open the lid of the trunk they had placed before the thirty individuals before they stepped away to take up positions with the other Faction guards in a large circle around them.
Siray didn’t understand this at all until Baindan, who was on her right, breathed quietly, ‘Great Mother … they’re going to make them kill each other.’
Siray’s head snapped towards him in disbelief, but the terrible look of certainty on his face made her stomach sick. She began praying to the Mother that he was wrong.
Close by to her, Siray could see that a watching Loce’s nerves were getting the better of him as his right hand began twitching.
A guard stepped forwards, and although his voice was faint, Siray could just make out his words.
‘You have all been deemed weak, and thus unfit to join us. However, we are willing to offer one of you, just one, a second chance. To do so, simply prove your strength and survive.’ The guard walked away to join his watching peers.
It took the captives a couple of moments of looking fearfully around at each other, but as soon as one leapt forwards, it was the catalyst for them all to begin moving. A couple of them sprang forwards for a weapon while some of them backed away, hesitant to turn on their Resistance friends. This instantly split the group into two, and soon the two halves were fighting for their lives.
It was the most horrifying thing Siray had ever seen, and she watched as both males and females begged for their lives before the raised hands and blades of their fellow captives and former allies. She watched as the weaker group was torn apart, some by weapons and others by the claws or teeth of whatever form their adversary had Changed into.
Soon, blood coated the ground as the weaker group was eliminated, and the stronger captives turned on each other, their battles even more brutal as they fought viciously for the right to survive. To live.
Meanwhile, as the screams of agony and terror rang out below, Faction guards patrolled along the edges of Siray’s group, carefully observing all of them to be sure they were watching.
Eventuality, the number of fighting captives dwindled until there were just two left.
By this time, Siray simply wanted the fight to be over so that she wouldn’t have to watch blood being shed anymore. Then she immediately hated herself for the thought, knowing that one of the two desperately fighting figures below would have to die for her wish to come true.
An instant later though, a final pained cry echoed up to them as the last standing captive thrust their sword viciously into their opponent’s stomach, before yanking it out and kicking their dying adversary away and to the ground. As the lone survivor pivoted to glare at the soldiers and threw her sword to the ground, Siray realised that the figure dripping in blood was, in fact, a female.
The soldiers who had supervised the massacre approached the female, forcefully turned her about, and marched her up the hill towards Siray and the mass of watching captives.
As the female and her escort drew up just short of the large formation, Siray’s jaw dropped.
Bloodied and battered, her face streaked dark with red, Melora stood awkwardly on her injured foot, her shoulders and chest still heaving while her eyes showed exhaustion and a new hardness that Siray thought had not been there before.
The soldiers directed her to stand to one side of the column as Siray and the others were ordered to turn to the right.
The captain strolled up the line, and he paused near the centre of the column. ‘This female has been given a second chance at joining our ranks. Why?’ The captain surveyed them all. ‘Because she obeyed orders. Because she was strong!’ He raised a clenched fist before him to emphasize his words. Then he looked the column over once more, smirking. ‘We’ll see how the rest of you do when your turn comes.’
He turned away, and the minion who had previously been barking orders resumed his duties, pointing out a place for Melora to Siray’s far left in the column where a gap had existed until now.
Melora took her place silently, those around her leaning away from her bloodied form slightly.
‘March!’ came the order.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
SIRAY AND the other captives were marched for three days straight, with rests only provided every six spans or so as they reached the next guard post. During these stops, they were allowed to take privacy breaks in small supervised groups and were also provided a barrel of food and a barrel of water to share, the food stale and dry, and the water warm and odd tasting.
The prisoners were forced to have a privacy break, food, and water, in that order, and they all quickly learned to grab their share and get back into the column formation as fast as they could to secure a place near the front of the line for the next rest stop.
Those who moved slower soon found that if you were towards the end of the line for food and water, you were unlikely to get any of either. And with the next break six spans away, a bit of water could mean the difference between surviving the next march or not.
Disgusted by the treatment, Siray nonetheless realised that it was an incredibly effective tactic for weeding out the captives not suited for the Faction’s purpose. Thankfully, mere chance had positioned Siray and her friends at the front of the column on that first leg, thereby ensuring them an early spot at the barrels at the first rest area.
By the second stop, twelve spans into the march, some of the captives at the back cleverly opted to miss the privacy break, which meant that they got to the food barrel a lot faster than they otherwise would have and moved up the line in the formation.
The effect of this was that most of the captives ended up opting to miss out on at least one privacy break, and that some of them began to smell strongly of urine and other things. There were a few, however, who didn’t catch on fast enough, and after marching for so long without food and water, they weakened rapidly, no matter how well trained their bodies were.
For the thirteenth span of the march, everything was the same, then in the fourteenth, captives began dropping.
When the first one went down, Siray knew something had happened because she heard a commotion from behind followed by the order to halt—and they never halted between guard posts, owing to their escorts’ eagerness to hand off the column of captives to the next group of guards.
So when they were ordered to halt that first time, everyone stumbled to a stop, and a stillness came over the three long lines of the column.
Breathing rapidly, Siray strained her ears. Soldiers were moving. The sound of a sword being drawn. Her spine tensed as she guessed what about to happen behind her, but even if she could have made her fatigued muscles cooperate, she knew there was nothing she could do.
Nothing any of them could do in their current state, and with this many Faction guards. So she told herself.
A sharp cry split the air a moment later, followed by the sounds of captives shuffling in unease.
The soldier currently in charge moved to the head of the column. ‘If you stop marching, you’ll die where you fall. And now we also need to make up lost time. March!’ And he increased the pace.
Siray could only feel numbness, the sound that had been someone’s death cry repeating over and over in her mind until it turned a deeper pitch altogether and became the cry she had heard Deson utter, right before his final fall the ground. She didn’t take in much of anything for most of that march between guard stations.
At one point, however, Siray remembered that she still wore the device on her arm that had once told her when to attend training, and which she would have used in the field on missions—had that actually occurred. As it was, the device remained dark and still, a clear sign of the full impact of the attack on the Resistance facility. She pulled it off her arm and let it drop to the ground, the many feet behind her pressing it farther and far
ther into the dirt.
By the time they had reached the fourth guard station—after twenty-four spans of marching—two more captives had dropped along the way and were promptly executed by the guards. The captives positioned behind those who were killed were forced to step around or over the bodies when the order to continue the march was given.
By this stage, Siray’s body was hurting all over, her feet worst of all. The soles of her feet throbbed and felt as if they were on fire, and she longed to remove her boots and socks so that her feet could be touched by the air and feel the cool ground.
And she was ravenous. Although she never missed out on the food, they never got enough either.
The other alarming factor was the exhaustion that was creeping up on her. For a time, adrenaline had sustained her, but that had worn off long ago, and now only fear—and the drive to survive—was carrying her.
During the breaks, she and her friends talked to each other, trying to encourage one another to keep going. The more experienced in their group, Baindan, Wexner, and Genlie, just told the others to hang in there. That it had to end soon.
When they were thirty-six spans into the march—at the sixth guard post—Siray and her friends were barely talking to each other, with only enough energy to sit close by each other in the re-forming column during their short break. Baindan and Zale stuck close to Siray, while Kovi always trailed no more than an arm’s length from Genlie. Tamot had taken on the role of Jorgi’s carer, leaving Wexner, Kinna, and Loce to keep each other company.
Siray wished that they could Change into an alternate form. After all, her yeibon form was made for roaming great distances. But the guards had warned them early on that anyone who Changed would be considered an immediate threat and killed, no questions asked.
After two days of marching, captives were dropping frequently throughout the column, the majority of them towards the rear.
But strangely, each time the column was halted, Siray found she cared less. Part of her vaguely wondered at this. Did she really not care anymore? Or was she just growing immune after witnessing so many deaths? Or at least one in particular? She stopped pondering this quickly as she found it made a pressing emptiness rise swiftly within her, threatening to overwhelm her if she let it. But that didn’t stop the silent tears that had already begun to run down her face, and she wiped them away angrily, knowing she could not afford the luxury of crying, given how dehydrated she already was.