Auction

Before he can finish, a bloodcurdling scream cuts through our conversation. It is followed by another, and many more, drowned out by the sound of heavy projectile fire.

We rush toward it, all of us drawn by an instinctual call to chaos.

In the banquet hall, death is being dealt indiscriminately. There are multiple men in armored suits, bearing automatic weaponry. They are firing into the crowd, into the food, into the roof and the walls and through the windows. The room is awash in explosions of meat, both food and human flesh.

"Where is the girl? Bring us the girl!" Harsh mechanical voices boom above death screams. "Surrender the prime female!"

They're here for me. They're killing for me. There's a coldness and an almost mechanical approach to it that is sickening to behold. Every target is assessed as being not me, and killed. I see three men drop in the blink of an eye.

I panic. My mercenaries do not.

"We go," Silver says. "Now."

Alexios picks me up and slings me over his shoulder and we run. They do not look back, they do not hesitate.

Carried like a sack of potatoes, I see very little aside from the floor and the gleaming of the moon on the paths over which Alexios is running.

"Out this way, the secret passage," Silver hisses.

I am a passenger in this horrible nightmare. I only saw a few seconds of what was happening inside that hall, but those few seconds play over and over, the sounds and the sights and even the smells reinventing themselves in my mind.

Alexios and Silver are efficient and quick. They avoid the streets and stick to the bushes, just as I once did, but they do it so much better.

The wall that made it impossible for me to leave is no obstacle to them. Alexios puts me down for a moment to bend over and give Silver a base off which to leap. Silver grabs the top of the wall with his fingers and pulls himself up, then leans back over so Alexios can hoist me up and half-throw me into the air. Silver catches my wrists and pulls me the rest of the way, then he climbs back down and hangs by his hands, giving Alexios the chance to grab his leg and climb up himself. In less than a minute, they have me over an unclimbable obstacle. The process repeats itself on the other side. Silver tosses me down to Alexios, who catches me as if I weigh nothing.

They say almost nothing to each other, but they seem to know where they are going, and what they are doing. Silver grabs me up this time and we are off again.

We leave the city entirely, move into the scrubby outland I know so well. The smell of the dirt rushes into my nose and I feel a rush of heady freedom shooting through my veins. It's wrong to feel that now, with so much chaos and carnage behind me. There is a heavy weight in the pit of my stomach that tells me many are dead. Not my mercenaries though. They can't die. They are above death. Beyond it. They can keep me safe, no matter what.

Suddenly, we are going down. Alexios pulls an old piece of iron sheeting aside, and we enter a small cave built into the side of a rock. There they settle me on a stretcher. This is a camp of some kind, a hidden one.

"A secret base?"

"A supply stop and safe rendezvous point," Alexios says.

"The others should join us soon," Silver agrees. "Let's have a hot drink."

They put a little gas stove on and brew up some hot tea. It's busy work for all of us, both the making and the consuming. I'm more scared than I want them to know. Maybe they feel the same way. I can see the worry written on their faces.

Once or twice, Alexios tries to say something to Silver, but Silver always shakes his head and glances at me. Whatever they want to talk about, they can't say in front of me, it would seem.

"Who was that? I mean, who is attacking?"

"Hard to know at this point, given we cut and ran," Silver says.

"It was the right thing to do," Alexios adds. "None of us were prepared for that kind of onslaught."

"The guards must have been bought off, or killed," Silver murmurs. "We didn't have even the slightest indication..." He closes his mouth, his lips a thin line.

"We got cocky," Alexios agrees. "And now we have to hope we get lucky."