Dear God.

I’d forgotten about the horseman’s savagery.

The man’s mouth moves, but all that comes out is a strangled moan.

The warlord’s attention turns to the two remaining men. As soon as his ferocious gaze fixes on them, they both visibly wither.

War grabs the hilt of his sword from the dying man’s abdomen, and jerks the blade out, the action making a wet, sloshing sound.

The horseman steps up to the most frightened of the remaining two, and without ceremony, stabs him in the stomach. Almost mechanically, he withdraws his sword and moves to the next, repeating the action until all three of my attackers lay dying in a pool of their own blood.

I gaze down at them in horror as they writhe and moan on the ground. The horseman mortally wounded them, but he didn’t instantly kill them, leaving them instead to suffer.

War casts his violent eyes on the crowd. “Anyone who lays a dishonest finger on another woman will suffer the same fate.”

He turns to me and gives me a nod.

Revenge and justice are one and the same, he said.

Perhaps this is the very reason the world is burning. After all, if this is War being just, then his God’s justice makes sense too.

I don’t immediately return to my tent. Instead, I make the familiar journey back to my original quarters. Call it morbid curiosity or call it closure, but I want to see the place where I was attacked. I want to see if the earth is stained red with the blood that was spilled, or if the ground has already returned to normal.

I don’t know why, but the urge presses on me.

About ten meters from my tent I notice something is off. The tents in this area flap forlornly in the breeze. No one is around, and it’s silent. So silent.

A chill runs over me, despite the heat of the day.

I continue toward the original location of my own tent, acutely aware that the usual noise and bustle of this area is now gone.

My old neighbors might just be lingering in the center of camp. There were still some people left …

When I get to where my tent should be, all that’s left is an empty patch of earth and some faint bloodstains. As soon as I see those stains, the night once again comes back to me in all its vivid terror. The men’s hands on me, pinning me down, beating me.

I take a deep breath, trying to unmake those memories. I don’t want to feel frail and afraid.

I take a step back, and that unnerving silence swarms in again. I look around at all the empty tents, their flaps snapping in the wind. There are a few overturned baskets scattered about, but there’s no life, not even a whisper of it.

When you cried, no one came. No one but me.

War’s justice touched more than three men, I realize with a shiver. The people that once lived around me are now gone.

I’m resting next to my broken down tent, whittling another arrow shaft when I hear commotion nearby.

I glance up just in time to see phobos riders closing in on someone.

“Let me through!”

I knit my brows at the vaguely familiar voice.

“No one passes by without War’s approval.”

“His wife would approve!”

I set my work aside and head over to the phobos riders, one who now has his hand on his weapon. Beyond the two men is Zara.

As soon as I recognize her, I call out, “Let her through!”

One of the men frowns at me and spits.

Apparently he’s super fond of me. The other one, however, the one who brought me the sword at the execution this morning, gestures for Zara to pass by. His comrade immediately starts arguing with him, but he ignores the other man.

My new friend slips by, two heaping plates of food in her hands.

“I’ve been trying to see you for days,” she complains when she meets up with me. “And for days those assholes kept sending me away.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know.”

I lead her back to the packed remains of my tent, aware of the many sets of eyes on us. Apparently the phobos riders don’t take kindly to just anyone entering their section of camp—even when their section of camp is getting packed up for traveling.

“It’s fine,” she says. “I knew I’d get through eventually.”

When we get to my things, she hands one of the plates to me. “I wanted to return your earlier kindness.”

That … that hits me harder than it should.

“Thank you,” I say, taking the plate from her, a lump in my throat.

“How have you been doing?” she asks, her eyes moving over me. Most of my visible injuries have healed up; I don’t know if she can see what’s left of them.

“I’m okay,” I say.

Today, I feel like our roles have utterly reversed. Zara seems to be in good spirits, and I’m the remote one.

“That night,” Zara says, “I heard so many screams. To think one of them was yours …” she shakes her head. “I thought they belonged to the other people, the ones who had killed …” she shakes her head.

She listened to those screams and she thought it was some sort of perverse justice.

Zara picks at her food. “I didn’t find out it was you until word got around that a woman had been harmed, one the horseman was fond of. I put two and two together … “Her eyes meet mine. “I’m sorry I didn’t come.”

“It was your first night. I wouldn’t have.” Not to mention that she didn’t live anywhere close to my tent.

We’re quiet for a few minutes, and I pick at the food Zara brought over.

“What’s that?” she asks out of the blue, nodding to the carving knife and the piece of wood I was working on.

I pick it up and inspect it. “The beginnings of an arrow.”

“You’re making one?” I’m not sure if it’s judgment or awe in her voice. She takes the piece of wood from me and looks at it. “I never learned how to shoot a bow,” she admits. “I’m okay with short blades, but that skill doesn’t much help me here since I don’t actually own a blade.”

“You don’t have a weapon?” I ask, shocked. But of course she doesn’t. Zara was stripped of her weapons when she arrived, and she won’t be offered another one until the next battle.

If the same men who attacked me had chosen Zara’s tent instead, she would have been utterly defenseless.

The thought sickens me.

“Wait right here.” I get up and go into War’s tent, which is still standing. The horseman isn’t inside at the moment, which is probably for the best.

Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

I grab one of the sheathed daggers War has scattered about, then leave his tent, returning to Zara. Several nearby phobos riders track my every movement.

“What’s that?” my friend asks when I extend the weapon to her.

“Put it on.”

“It’s not going to fit,” she says, unwinding the leather belt that’s wrapped around the sheath; it was clearly made to fit a much larger waist. She loops the belt around her, doing the best she can to make it fit.

Zara stares down at it. “Is War going to kill me for this?” she asks, glancing warily at the phobos riders who watch the two of us. They’re undoubtedly going to report that I’ve lifted a dagger from the horseman’s collection.