Page 99 of Their Master

But it was the last three men he remembered most clearly.

They had caught one of his sisters, his mother, and his father’s youngest sister, his quiet, shy Aunt Alexa, and were doing… things to them.

His nine-year-old brain didn’t know about rape. At least not until that day.

Later, he would recall the men as they’d been in that moment: laughing and pillaging and raping while smoke swirled around them. It was like some of the religious paintings of Hell that Smith would later see—a cautionary tale: behave, or you will end uphere.

A small pile of bodies—he couldn’t see their faces, but he recognized his sisters’ dresses—lay off to one side of the courtyard, close to the fire.

As he watched, a man dressed in a soldier’s uniform climbed off his thirteen-year-old sister Phile and bent to pull up his trousers.

Phile crawled away, her dress torn off her slight body, smears of blood all over her. She managed to get to her feet just as the man buttoned up his trousers. He caught her easily, grabbing her long, wavy hair—Phile’s pride and joy. He then raised his arm and Smith saw the blood splash, even though Phile was hidden by the man’s body.

Something broke inside his nine-year-old brain and he charged screaming, flinging himself onto the man who was writhing and thrusting on top of his aunt. He was screaming and pounding his fists, blinded by tears and rage.

A hand gripped his hair—still long because it was spring, before the summer shearing he and his brothers had so disliked—and yanked him to his feet.

He was surrounded by laughter and the babble of voices in a language he did not know. He kicked and fought and bit, until another hand struck his face and knocked him to the ground.

His head rang and he was aware of his mother and aunt, weeping and screaming.

“Run, Maximus! Run!”

But he couldn’t run. He couldn’t even move, because the man towering over him—an impossibly tall, dark-haired man with a cruel sneer—planted his booted foot on Smith’s chest. He said something in his language to the others, both of whom had finished their raping, and the men laughed.

One of them said something back to him, and the wordsMonsieur la Comtestuck in his mind.

A voice came from the small olive grove—where the youngest children played most of the day.

Smith’s captor and his henchmen laughed harder and nodded, pointing to Smith.

Smith heard his two young sisters before he saw them. Five-year-old Xenia and seven-year-old Mya, his favorite among all his siblings.

As he watched in speechless horror, one of the other men approached the group. He said something, his hands going to his trousers. A gesture that would have been meaningless only minutes earlier made Smith scream like an enraged animal.

He somehow managed to break free of his captor, only to be seized by what felt like a hundred hands. Another man ripped off Mya’s cotton shift and then pinned back her arms—

“Smith!”

Smith punched and kicked, vaguely aware of shattering glass and a pained grunt.

“Bloody hell!Smith!”

A body fell on top of him and arms twisted around his neck, choking off his air. Another hand grabbed his arm and squeezed.

“Smith! Stop! It is Malcolm, Edward, and Gideon.Stop.”

Smith blinked and the haze of smoke cleared, the screams disappearing.

Malcolm and Edward loomed over him; their expressions horrified.

“It is just us—your friends,” Malcolm said, breathing heavily.

“And you’re bloody crushing me,” Gideon grunted, his voice vibrating through Smith’s back and making him realize that he was lying on top of the other man. “Can I let you go now?” Gideon asked, his arms still tight around Smith’s neck. “Or will you try to kill us with a damned glass of whisky?”

Smith’s hand, he saw, was damp and bleeding, his fingers clutching a bloody shard of glass.

“He’s fine, now.” Malcolm held out a huge hand.

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