Oh, Gods. They knew! The elders knew that there was nothing for her to do but run. Any young man sent would have been seen as a challenge by the ones who set the trap and the men wouldn’t have had the sense to keep running. A man would have gone home to report. They would have rallied the rest of the men and doomed an entire village to a senseless fate of trying to fight an unknown force.

The night was cold; colder than the day had been. But not so cold as it would be in her village or the caravan meadow where the corpses were now freezing with their charred bones. The stars were beautiful though.

This high up in the mountains, the air had a kind of clarity that was painful to the uninitiated. For once Lyla let the natural beauty of her world that she took for granted wash through her and purify her bruised mind. It was horrible, but there was nothing she could do to unsee what she had seen, let alone undo what others had done.

And Lyla knew that if she let it seep out from the deep dark place she had hidden the knowledge, it would overwhelm her. As it was it tried to creep and crawl and weave its way out of its loathsome hole with every insidious trick it knew. Knowledge, in all its forms, had a life much of its own. Terrible knowledge had a much more dreadful power than any other form of knowledge and its life grew in leaps and bounds that could not long be contained.

Mangled corpses danced before Lyla’s eyes and each one wore a familiar face she had known since childhood. Some of the caravan had been relatives, they came each year. Traders that married, had children, and spent their lives traveling. Some came from the village, and some only had wives from there.

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Retching again brought up nothing more than water and sour bile. Lyla tried to lose her stomach as silently as possible. There was no telling if there had been any pursuit, nor how far it might be if there were.

Turning resolutely uphill Lyla trudged back against the easy slope she had inadvertently worked her way down when she left the road in the darkness. Gravity was at least a consistently bitchy mistress. The generalities never changed, just the specifics.

Finger-like branches grasped at her and pulled her hair, scratched her eyes, and left slimy half-frozen trails through her being. Like remnants of ghosts that snatched at her soul, Lyla felt her spirit had been left behind in the caravan meadow. How could she go back there if she ever made it to help?

The road returned with the suddenness of a dropped coin. Lyla fell into the deep muddy ruts left by the dozens of wagons that had passed that way untold days before. There was no moon and every rustle in the night could have been the end of her. Darkness gave way to darkness, then the grey-green predawn twilight which was the time when all bad things which happened were to happen.

Quickening her pace Lyla was certain that she would make it to Balast without hindrance. Hope withered swiftly when the first brute stepped out of the shadows. He didn’t even try to speak to her. The murderer was hasty though and left himself unbalanced with his first swing. His partner was not so clumsy though and Lyla found the searing slice through her side was hot and sudden.

There was no time to do anything more than hope that the injury had not completely severed the transverse abdominal on her left. Dodging between the two Lyla grabbed the nearest forearm and threw her weight into the effort.