Page 8 of Heart of Defiance

With a distant hiss, a streak of yellow-orange light flares against the night sky at the east end of town. Flames are shooting up from the buildings on the fringes.

A chill washes through my body. Our enemies are already here.

An uneasy murmuring passes between the townspeople who gathered around me and Bertha. I can sense their resolve dwindling.

Clammy sweat trickles down my back, but I jab my spit toward the flames. "We have to face them now! They won't be expecting it. We'll strike them all down."

For a moment, I think my battle cry will be enough. My neighbors shift toward the east end of the square, grim determination crossing their faces.

The lead soldier wheels his horse, his mouth tight. "Youdon't want to do this. Please, get out of the town while you can."

His companion leans over in his saddle. "Jostein, if the soldiers see us?—"

"I know," the other man snaps.

Bertha and I wave our band of resistors forward anyway. We hustle across the square.

And then the first victims of the razing come pelting through the streets.

A woman clutching a baby stumbles at the edge of the square. Her hair is singed, a burn mark on her cheek.

"They're coming!" she wails. "They killed Nivard."

Her husband.

More fleeing figures dash toward us from behind her. One man has blood spreading down the shoulder of his shirt from a deep gouge. Another hobbles next to her partner, her ankle awkwardly bent. A kid who can't be more than ten sprints past them, burns bubbling on his forearms and jaw.

When he sees the bunch of us, his voice splits the air in a shriek. "The empire is here! They're going to kill all of us! Mom... Dad..."

More fire wavers all along the east end of town. The warble of it seems to come from all around us. Smoke laces the air.

A man staggers into the square and then crumples, the back of his tunic drenched in blood. His eyes stare at us blankly.

The lead Veldunian soldier rides around us, his voice even more urgent than before. "That'll be the fate all of you meet if you don't get out of herenow."

The small spirit of rebellion we summoned disintegrates.

"Run!" Gunther cries. His voice is echoed by others in the crowd.

Even Bertha turns on her heel, grasping the burnt boy'sarm to steady him and bolting in the opposite direction from the flames. The lead soldier and his companion wave everyone onward to the streets heading out of town.

My throat prickles with the thickening smoke and the anguish that threatens to choke me. "No! We can't give up. We can't let them ruin it all."

But everyone who stood with me has rushed off. I'm alone amid a torrent of the wounded and panicked escaping the carnage.

I grit my teeth and hold my roasting spit steady, bracing my feet against the cobblestones. My pulse hammers through my limbs and in the back of my skull.

If I lose this place, the only home I've ever had, the only place that holds the memories of the family I already lost... I have nothing. What's the point in going on?

If the Darium soldiers want to fight me, let them. I'll take as many of them down with me as I can.

More townspeople careen past me. Harsher shouts of warning and retribution reach my ears.

The Darium force is getting closer.

I clutch my spit with all my strength—and a huff of breath sounds right behind me.

The lead soldier tips over on his horse and smacks his arm right around my chest. Before I can do more than gasp, he's heaved me up onto his lap, knocking aside the spit.

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