小嫂子的味道

If not for me…If I had done as he said and ran as far as I could then probably he wouldn\'t have had to stop to slap and…

I was aware of all that, perhaps that\'s why I was sitting in front of my burning house and carrying on as the rest of the village was raided by the soldiers of the Askington kingdom and the other houses were burned.

I guess if Eugen hadn\'t come to me when he was passing by the area then I would have either been killed by a soldier or burned along with my house.

He stood by my side and looked at the burning house, then back at me. He probably didn\'t have to think twice to guess what had happened.

"Come on, you\'re a strong girl. This is no time to sittin\' around and cyrin\'. You\'ve to survive," he said as he gently pulled me back to my feet.

I noticed a bit late that he had a deep gush running all over his left arm. He was carrying Rick\'s sword, and it had blood on it. I guessed he was injured in battle.

"We\'ve to find a safe place, less go," he instructed and hurried me outside in the village.

There were soldiers ravaging everywhere, knights clad in armor were mounted on war horses. They carried sword and spear and lance and shield; ready to kill at any moment. And they were killing, in fact.

Three of the villages—a family of two parents and a girl—were killed right in front of my eyes. They were trying to escape, the three of them. At that moment I wondered if the same could\'ve happened with us even after we somehow escaped the house.

It was a terrifying thought, so I stopped thinking about it.

Eugen was holding my hand tightly as we sneaked past the knights and behind a piece of broken stone wall. He stopped there to examine the surroundings and look for a chance to escape as right now the knights were all over the place.

In front of us was a tree and beside it was a house that was now ruined by the flying boulders, over all this place made for a good hiding spot.

We sat with our backs against the wall, and waited, and waited, and waited. The sounds of horses, the clanking of metal, the screaming of people as they were stabbed or slashed…we tried to ignore it all but failed quite badly.

Eugen closed his eyes in frustration then opened them again. I was not sure but he was probably restraining himself from going out there and fighting.

It must\'ve been hard for him. After all, the reason he chose to learn the sword was so he could protect the people around him. He wanted to be a hero, a protector. It was only reasonable, as he himself had arrived at this village as a runaway war orphan.

However, things are not always as you expect them to be. There was no way that he could go in and fight all those knights; they were covered from head to toe in iron, they were mounted on horses, most of them knew magic.

He knew that he couldn\'t beat them precisely because he had faced the ugliness of war before. That\'s why he was keeping hold of his hands and trying not to hear the dying scream of the villages he knew.

But then something snapped.

He, and I too, heard a similar voice. It was a scream, I scream that sounded familiar.

Eugen carefully cocked his head and peeked from the edge of the wall, I was having a bad feeling about this so I did the same.

There about a hundred meters away from us stood Rick. He was wearing chained armor that was probably the guard uniform he never used, but that was not what caught my eye.

Near his feet was a knight who had fallen from his horse, the reasons were clear. Rick had inserted his long spear in the gaping the knight\'s armor had on the neck, through the gap the spear had pierced the knight\'s body, giving him a painful death.

But his scream was suppressed by the other sounds he made when he fell off his horse. The one Eugen and I heard was of Rick.

I had not seen the whole thing happening, but right now Rick had a lance stabbing him in the back. It was big and bulky, and it tore apart Rick\'s stomach and came out from the other side. For a kid like me it was quite a grotesque sight.

Rick was probably stabbed just after he killed the knight, but none of it mattered to Eugen. He lost his patience and the will to restrain himself.

He stood up furiously and was about to run off in the battle when he had to stop since he was still holding my hand tightly…no, I was the one clenching on his hand.

His eyes focused on me and he seemed confused, as if not knowing what to do with me. For just a moment I noticed a distant darkness in his eyes, and then it faded.

"Stay here till I return, okay? Make sure no one sees you," he said and bent down and shook my shoulders to make sure I understood. In reply, a nood was all I could do.

He patted me on the back and smiled a reassuring smile, then he stood up and turned toward where Rick was. He raised his sword up and let out a battle cry as he rushed forward. After taking two steps he fell to the ground. An arrow had come flying and drilled itself inside Eugen\'s head.

I was stunned to even scream, or probably because I knew that I\'d meet the same end if I screamed. So I sat there, with my back against the wall, and waited as Eugen had said.

I waited till the noises grew dull and the knights were beginning to count the bodies and laying there camp. I waited till the blood on my body was dry and the tears under my eyes had grown rough. I waited till the sun had gone down and the moon was out, shining in the sky.

When I thought that this was the time I\'ll get caught if I stay any longer, I decided to move. I marched forward with the quiet of a winter\'s night, crawling beside the tree and along the walls of the burned house.

I walked as far as I could from the center of the village, as I knew that would be the place where they\'ll be camping. And I was on my way to cross another opening between two houses, I thought I would make it. Just a leap in the shadows and I\'ll be there, no one will see one.

Hugging a wall tightly and walking next to it I came near a turn, after that was the opening and then the cover of another house. I took the remaining steps and stepped into the opening.

I had predicted that there should be no knights here as there were no torchers, and no knight went out without a torch even if they were alone. It turned out it was nothing but something out of a childish fantasy my mother had told me.

There was a knight, pissing in the corner. He was a step or two away from me as after the turn I\'d basically stepped in front of him.

He finished his business as soon as he saw me, I thought of running and my feet moved on their own. All the panic I was trying to escape from came rushing back, and I made a mistake. Instead of turning around I moved backward, and my feet stumbled, and I fell.

The knight didn\'t let go of the opportunity, he came closer and before I could see anything in the dark of the knight he jabbed me hard against the back of my neck.

I lay there numb on the ground, looking up at the sky I saw the gleaming moon as I felt my consciousness slowly fading away. Tears rolled down my eyes, since at that time my whole body was screaming that this was the last time I was going to see the breath, the last time I was going to feel, the last time I was going to see.