Gwen’s father Martin saw the bandits coming first. “Ella,” he called, and pointed north, where three figures crested the hill.

“Kendra’s tits!” Ella swore. “Steffan, take Gwen and the sheep. Get them home and don’t look back. Go!”

Steffan did what his mother said. Or rather, he tried to. When he went to grab Gwen, she ducked him and took cover behind a nearby tree instead. She wasn’t sure what was happening, but she knew it was important, so she had to see it.

“Come on!” Steffan said, tugging at Gwen’s arm. “Mother said to go!”

“I need to know what’s going on!”

Her brother sighed. “All right, me too. I’ll make you a deal. We watch until I tell you to run, but then you really have to run.”

Gwen thought about that for a minute. Steffan was weird sometimes, but he was also older and knew more about a lot of things. “Deal,” she said, deciding she would trust him. “But don’t say run too early.”

“Shh. You also have to stay quiet.”

Gwen clasped a hand on her mouth and nodded.

The three figures drew close enough for Gwen to make out details. It looked like two men and a woman, each about her parents’ age, each holding a short sword like the ones guards wore. These weren’t guards, though. They wore two-day stubble, patched clothes, thin bodies, and hungry eyes.

They were bandits. Wolves come for the flock.

They were also tall. One of the men had to be over six feet, while the other man and the woman were about six feet even. Their height combined with their weapons and obvious desperation made them look threatening indeed.

Ella drew her sword and Martin raised his club.

“Who are you?” Ella shouted. “What do you want?”

“Dangerous,” the larger man called back. “We’re dangerous. And we want your sheep.” They kept walking, narrowing the distance between the two groups to a few yards.

“Yeah,” hissed the woman. “And that’s a mighty nice sword you got there.”

The smaller man gave her a sharp smack on the head. “Don’t be greedy. You can keep the sword and your lives if you hand over the sheep.” He and the woman shared enough features that they could be siblings.

“If we lose our sheep,” Martin said, “we won’t have our lives for very long. Please, we’ll starve.”

“And we won’t?” the bandit woman snapped. “We’ve had a harder life than you, you know. Why do you deserve to eat and we don’t?”

“Everyone deserves to eat,” Ella said in the same slow, measured voice she used when trying to settle fights between Gwen and Steffan. Even still, her gaze didn’t leave the bandits’ weapons. “But we aren’t the ones keeping you from eating. Besides, we have children. They need to eat too.”

The bandits glanced around as if looking for the Shepards’ children. Gwen and Steffan pulled their heads behind the trunk until the talking started up again.

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“You’re the ones standing between us and the sheep,” the smaller man said. “I’d say that’s keeping us from eating.”

“We had a child once,” the taller man said. He rested his free hand tenderly on the woman’s shoulder. Were they husband and wife? “Like Kinber said, we’ve suffered.” He turned his menacing gaze back at Gwen’s parents. “We have to be this way to survive.”

“I find it telling,” Martin said, “that you endured so much suffering and still decided to add more to the world. I’m sorry, but you can’t have our sheep. You can’t have anything of ours.”

“We’ll see about that,” Kinber spat. Raising her sword, she ran forward. The men followed behind.

Thus the battle was joined. Martin’s club was reinforced with bronze his wife had salvaged from the battlefield, so it could block a few sword swings. Block he did, smacking away the brother’s first attack and backhanding the man across the face. Then he turned and swung at Kinber so she couldn’t help her husband overwhelm Ella.

This freed up Ella, who had blocked Kinber’s first swing, to then turn and block her husband’s. The tall bandit knew how to use his reach, attacking from just far enough away that Ella couldn’t easily step in. But Ella had been a soldier for a long time, so she knew how to deal with bigger enemies. The next time he swung, chopping down at her, she reached up and smacked his blade aside with her own. She hit high and hard enough to make him stumble, which finally gave her a chance to step forward into striking range. He leaned away, but not far enough. Ella’s sword found its mark, stabbing deep into his belly.

Gwen started to cheer, but Steffan clamped a hand over her mouth.

Martin attacked aggressively, pushing back both Kinber and her brother, doing his best to keep them off of his wife. It didn’t work. Kinber ducked one of Martin’s swings and slashed a deep gash in his side. With a cry of pain, Martin stumbled back and blocked Kinber’s follow-up, but that left him open to her husband, whose blade bit into his shoulder.

“No!” Gwen shouted as her father dropped to one knee. Steffan didn’t cover her mouth this time. He was screaming, too. Tears filled Gwen’s eyes, but she wiped them away as fast as they came. She needed to see what happened, even if it was bad.

“Found the kiddies!” Kinber crowed.

Gwen’s mother let out the most ferocious sound Gwen had ever heard, a predatory roar that made the girl’s skin turn to gooseflesh. Ella charged Kinber, doing nothing but heavy chopping attacks until one of them broke through the bandit woman’s guard. Kinber twisted out of the way of Ella’s follow-up, but not quite fast enough. She ended up with a long, shallow slash wound from her shoulder to her navel.

As Kinber fell back, her brother stepped in to take advantage of Ella’s single-minded focus. Ella reacted just quickly enough to block his first swing, but that left her sword out of position to stop his second, which cut deep into her side.

Too deep to survive.

Martin, down but not done, slammed his club into Kinber’s brother’s shin, making him cry out and drop to his knees. Martin’s next blow hit the man’s left elbow, which folded inward at a strange angle. Unfortunately, the bandit was right-handed, so he was still able to smash the pommel of his sword into Martin’s face and knock him over.

“Fall back!” Kinber shouted, voice fraying with pain. She snatched her husband’s sword from his corpse as her brother struggled to his feet. Then they ran, with Gwen and Steffan’s parents too injured to give chase.

Once the bandits were gone, Gwen tore across the field toward her parents, weaving between scared sheep as she went. She reached them just as they reached each other. Steffan wasn’t far behind.

The four of them lay together, tangled in each other’s arms, becoming stained with the adults’ blood and children’s tears. Gwen was full of fear and sadness and pain.

“Promise...” Ella said weakly, then coughed up blood. “Promise me you’ll...protect each other.”

“I’d like to think we raised you well,” Martin said. “We believe in you.”

“No!” Gwen said. She wasn’t done being raised yet. She wasn’t ready to be a protector. “I still need you,” she told her parents between sobs. “You can’t go yet. I’m not done being your kid.”

There was no response.

Nearby, a sheep let out a soft baaa.

Gwen and Steffan lay in their parents’ arms until the bodies went cold and the other villagers came searching.

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