Nìa and Jessie were occupied with the quiet labor of breaking down their camp as the boys vanished into the treeline for the hunt. The meadow, once loud with celebration, was now a place of soft packing and shared plans for the evening’s bread. Nìa invited the girl to the farmhouse for the evening meal. She had few peers in the village of her own years, and the ones who did dwell in Echo often looked upon her with a cold, distant envy; Jessie and Joel, however, were as close as kin. Nìa had held them when they were yet babes, watching them grow into the red-haired shadows they were now. Jessie, eager to learn the complexities of Nìa’s kitchen, had become a frequent apprentice; her own mother was a steady cook, but she lacked the variety and spice that Nìa had bartered from the traveling merchant wagons.
They reached the bend in the path where the roar of the falls began to vibrate through the soles of their boots. The branches of the Serpent’s Tongue disappeared over the precipice in sheets of silver mist. As they prepared for the descent, Jessie gasped; she realized she had left her heavy wool blanket tucked within the hollow of the Great Sycamore. Nìa offered to return with her, but the girl declined, setting her burdens on the damp stones.
“Go on ahead,” Jessie said, her voice bright against the thunder of the water. “I’ll catch you before you reach the first shelf.”
Nìa gathered the extra items and began the treacherous trek down the slick face of the cliff. It was a heavy, awkward labor; she realized only then that the boys had carried the weight on the ascent, leaving her to walk unburdened. She was halfway down the slope when Jessie reappeared at the summit, shouting a greeting to signal her return. The sudden cry startled Nìa; her foot found a moss-covered stone and slipped. She tumbled a short distance, the jagged rocks biting into her calf. The cut was not deep, but it burned with a cold, sharp agony that made her breath hitch.
Jessie scrambled down to her, her hands flying to the wound. She used a tin cup to fetch freezing water from the spray of the falls, rinsing the grit from the tear in Nìa’s skin. There was no clean linen to be found among the picnic scraps, so she used the very blanket she had gone back to retrieve, binding the leg as best she could.
They sat for a time, waiting for the throbbing in Nìa’s leg to dull to a manageable ache. They were moving slowly, Jessie shouldering the bulk of the packs while supporting Nìa’s weight, when they reached the basin at the foot of the cliffs. They stopped to rest, but the peace of the canyon was shattered by a sound that did not belong to the water. It was a scream: thin, high, and curdling. Then came another, and another, until the air was thick with the collective terror of the village bounding back towards it off the cliff.
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Jessie told Nìa to stay hidden against the stone and ran toward Echo. No nightmare born of the Great Sickness could have prepared her for the sight that greeted her at the village outskirts.
The streets were choked with men clad in armor the color of dried blood. Some stood on the rises, loosing arrows into the legs of those who tried to flee; others moved with maces and blades, kicking in doors and setting torches to the thatched roofs. She ducked behind a thick oak, her eyes searching the carnage for her parents. She saw women covered in gore being dragged from the cooling bodies of their husbands.
She watched a woman kneeling in the dirt, cradling the body of her man. When the woman looked up to curse the soldiers, Jessie saw the horror; the woman was holding her husband’s severed head in her hands. A soldier seized her by the hair, dragging her toward the line of prisoners. The head rolled into the gutter like a discarded rind. The woman let out a soul-shattering shriek, lunging for the soldier’s belt-knife and burying it in his back. A second soldier did not hesitate; he drove his sword into her stomach. Even as she spilled her life into the dust, she crawled toward her husband, reaching for a hand she would never hold again before a third blade pinned her to the road.
Jessie’s heart was a frantic drum in her ears. She searched the line of captives until she spotted her mother; the woman was bound and bloody, but she was alive and screaming curses at the invaders. Of her father, there was only a fleeting glimpse as he was dragged behind a stable by two armored men. Terrified of being spotted, Jessie turned and fled back toward the cliffs, her feet winged by panic.
By the time she reached Nìa, Jessie was a ghost of herself, her face stained with tears and her lungs burning for air. She tried to speak, but the words were mere fragments of gasps. She clutched Nìa’s arm, pulling her back toward the slippery heights.
“The village,” she finally managed, her voice a ragged whisper. “Attacked. We must find the boys before they walk into the slaughter.”
They began the climb again, Nìa forcing her injured leg to find purchase on the rocks. They were nearing the summit when a shout rose from the basin below. Three soldiers in crimson leather stood at the base, their bows drawn. One loosed a shaft that hissed past Nìa’s hand, burying itself deep in a crevice of the cliff.
“Stop!” they bellowed. “Stop, or you die on the stone!”
The girls did not stop. They hauled themselves over the final lip of the cliff just as a second arrow whistled into the empty air where they had been a heartbeat before. Below them, the soldiers began to curse, their heavy boots beginning the slow, clattering ascent in pursuit.
