Draka heard the clop of Vigora stepping through the front door. He had decided to lay down after watching Balor finally leave to go back to his wife. The fact that the man thought they would be enemies for this had made him chuckle. It took much more than that to make someone his enemy and one day Balor will realize that. Draka was thankful that he finally decided to go with his family. To stand by his wife like he should.

  The way his wife had left, on the other hand, did worry him. She saw him exactly as Balor said was his view. An enemy. There was no mistaking that. Much of what she said was true. He’s not a noble. He’s not sure exactly how he could help them through the winter. They needed their village to accept them. But she was wrong about many other things. He wasn’t destitute or a barbarian, whatever that is. And he absolutely wouldn’t allow them to lose their farm if it came to it. She, too, would one day see that everything would be fine.

  Vigora didn’t seem to think so, by the sound of her huffing and stomping at the door. He didn’t open his eyes. This wasn’t a camp. She was just hungry. He waved his hand at her and rolled onto his side. He’ll feed her in the morning.

  The sword fell over his feet and Draka shot upright to see Vigora trying to grab the handle with her teeth. That meant exactly what she was taught to do those stomps for. Without a second thought, he leapt toward the door, grabbing the sword by its hilt on the way. Two bounds and his bare feet splashed through the mud to the middle of the road between his house and the shack. His eyes narrowed at the unmistakable glow passing Balor’s house down the hill past the tilled field. The village was coming for him. This was what Balor meant.

  Balor’s shadowed figure was standing by as they passed. Were they safe? Was his family safe? Draka searched the glow, focusing his eyes intensely to see the bulges and disfiguring shadows of his family at the house. He was certain that they were near Balor. They had to be.

  “They’re not safe. Ready yourself.” The command was thunderous.

  He lifted his sword cross guard to his lips. Holy God, Your Will be my armor.

  He tucked the sword under his arm and scooped up a handful of mud. He pressed and rubbed the mud across his hands. Then he took his sword in them and shifted his feet to be broad. His knees bent. His back straightened. His wrists stiffened. His grip rested but tight. The sword was upright. He was ready.

  Balor felt a wet drop fall on his shoulder. Torchlight danced from one side of Balian to the other as the villagers passed, his glare only blazing more with their reflections, darker and more sinister than he had ever seen. His heart felt ready to explode out of his chest from how hard it was beating. His fists were beginning to shake at his sides. His knees were beginning to weaken.

  Another wet drop fell on Balor’s neck.

  What can I do? Balor couldn’t think of an answer. If he tried to warn Offla, they would turn on them. If he sent Alden or Maud to warn him, they would turn on them. If he did nothing, they would kill Offla. He needed to do something. Anything. But he was frozen in that hateful gaze his brother had fixed on him. It wasn’t his brother behind that glare reflecting the passing fires at him. It wasn’t the babe he had seen brought to his father’s arms when he was born. Not the boy who had cried when he first stepped into the river. Not the man who smiled and cheered with a pint of beer in his hand to congratulate him on his wedding night.

  A torch hissed. A moment later, other torches hissed and crackled. Balian’s glare shifted toward the dark night sky when a drop struck his brow and trickled down his nose. Balor eyed him as his brother lifted his head. As if the night itself had waited for Balian to see, rain spilled from it in masses of heavy drops that didn’t patter; they beat down on them.

  Torches extinguished instantly. Darkness shrouded them but for the dim light of a bright waxing moon piercing through the clouds. It was enough that he could see the mob begin to shuffle where they stood just past the end of his house.

  Balor had trouble keeping his eyes open from how hard the rain was falling, from how hard it was pounding into his heavy shoulders and craning neck, pounding into the top of his head. He couldn’t turn from Balian. Deep within him, he knew. If he looked away the gods only knew what Balian would do.

  “He’s ready for us! Look!” Preston called.

  “He warned the offlander!” Gregor shouted back.

  Balor’s eyes went wide just before Balian’s hard right struck his cheek. Before he could blink, he was in the mud. One after another, Balian’s feet plowed into his stomach and chest. He struggled to breathe. His chest felt smaller and smaller with each kick. Debilitating pain penetrated all his senses.

  “No!” Aurie cried out with a leap from the porch. Balian caught her with a wide arch of the back of his hand hard across her face. She hit the ground just out of Balor’s reach. Another blink and more feet clouded his sight of her. More feet kicking. His face. His stomach. His chest. His back.

  No, please, Balor’s mind was a pit filled with earthquakes of pain, stop, help us, someone.

  When Balor hit the ground, Draka whistled. Vigora leapt from the porch, already in full gallop past his side. She didn’t slow as he swung with a leap onto her bare back. A squeeze of his legs and she charged at a sprint through the heavy drops. The rain was like millions of unending buckets pouring at once.

  He leaned into her mane. His sword arm stretched back. His eyes were fixed on the mob ahead. The rain seemed to hover in the air as they plowed through in unending splashes.

  “Back to the bridge!” Someone in the mob shouted. They scattered, still far ahead of him. But not so far that he wouldn’t reach them in a few breaths.

  Balian stopped kicking Balor as the others charged around him back to the village. “We have spears! Why are you running? This is our chance!”

  Balor rolled, striving for air to fill his collapsed lungs. He tried to see Aurie as the feet and legs between them scattered. She clawed the ground through them. Her face was stretched and bloody. Her dress was filled with feet-shaped mud splatters. She stretched for his hand. Someone ran across her arm and she screamed.

  “The water is on the bridge!” One of the wives called from it.

  The mob was sprinting now. The pillars bounced and splashed in the mud. Balor reached for her hand as Aurie clawed and climbed to cover him.

  “I’m sorry,” she cried to him as the rain dripped blood from her face onto his. “I love you, I’m sorry.”

  “Aurie,” Balor wheezed.

  Aurie ducked as Vigora’s hooves were a blur of splashes passing them. Maud slid to her knees beside them as Alden rushed to the other side. Balor felt his son’s hands dig into the mud beneath him.

  The stream was already flowing over the bridge just above the soles of their shoes as Balian followed them across. He stopped and looked down. How had it gotten so high so quickly? He turned and lifted his spear. The man was charging at them through the pounding rain. The offlander was mad! Charging them with a horse and sword. They had spears. All they need to do was…

  “Make a line!” Balian commanded with a roar. “We’ll unhorse him here, it can’t escape!”

  In an instant, Gregor and the others were at his side. They pressed the shafts of their spears into their feet and leaned the points toward the charging offlander. Once he was on the bridge, once he was halfway across, they would kill his horse and he would be stunned just long enough for them to gut him.

  The icy water filled his shoes as it rose over his feet. He felt the force of the rushing current beginning to make his feet lose grip. But he wasn’t deterred. He had come to kill that bastard, that invader, that thief, and he wouldn’t be satisfied until it had been done. The others looked to feel the same as they shifted themselves to keep on their feet.

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  As the offlander’s horse reached the bridge, Balian strengthened his grip in anticipation of the impact. The horse jerked to the side. No saddle. It was barebacked! And, as they watched the offlander almost fly from its back, he realized that the man was barefoot.

  Draka landed with bent knees on the bridge. The splash from his bare feet was a tidal wave that made them whip their faces to the side. The sword in his hand gleamed through the rain as if the dim moonlight were somehow brighter on it.

  “Stop here.” The command in him made him shift back into his stance.

  He looked to the one who had command of the spearmen. They were only a few bounds in front of him, just beyond the middle of the bridge that was barely visible through the rushing water. It was no surprise who it was. He recognized the brawler instantly. And he knew the look in the man’s eyes as they held each other’s fierce stares. He had seen it a thousand times before. Not hate. It was more than that. Deeper than that. Something had a grip on him. There was evil in those piercing eyes. His presence was known.

  “Look out!” A woman screeched.

  The spearmen stumbled and leapt backwards, clawing at air as their spears splashed into the water. Draka was unmoving, still as a statue. The rain came down even harder as he and Balian remained fixed. At least until Balian whipped his head to the side and jumped just in time.

  Trees rolled like spiked wheels, pushed by a wall of water that struck the bridge in a tidal wave of crumbling cement and debris. The stone bridge cracked apart. The pieces joined the debris with iron rods that rose and fell from the flow like jumping fish. Shimmering water reached into the pounding rain.

  Draka was unmoving, still as a statue.

  The water was already above his elbows when Balian pushed off the ground beneath its surface. The current pulled hard at him as he struggled to climb back on his feet. He stumbled and grasped for air, his feet unable to find grip when Gregor’s firm hold wrapped his wrist. Egan caught him under his arm and pulled. He found his footing but the water was nearly to his knees.

  Together, they dragged themselves against the hard current and, as they raised their heads to the village in front of them, their mouths fell open. The water was already filling the streets. The vendor stands had all been washed away. Carts were smashed against the sides of their houses and shops. Water threw debris through shattered windows with loud crashes.

  “My house!” Egan tried to sprint toward the forge.

  “Help!” Soran cried out as a tree rolled in the rushing waters and toppled the stones of his home.

  Balian was frozen as he watched the water and debris thrash its way through the village. He knew he should be moving. He knew he should run against the current to reach his land, his freshly tilled fields, his home, his wife, his daughters and son, but he couldn’t. He was numb. Stricken.

  That is, until he turned, wide eyed and horrified, to look over his shoulder. Just as he was, just as he had been when the wave crashed through the bridge, the offlander still stood at the other side of the bridge, unharmed. Unmoving. A statue still standing in that warrior stance, his sword up and ready for an attack. A halo of light surrounded the offlander. He was a shadowed silhouette shrouded in brightness. He was unable to look away as the light behind the offlander fell away, as if sucked back into him, until it was gone.

  For the first time he could remember, Balian felt terror, pure and bone chilling terror, as the offlander finally straightened and lowered his glistening blade. The horse came calmly to beside him and he climbed on to ride back toward Balor’s house. Back towards the house he had grown up in, the land that made his mouth water with yearning, what should be his and not his brother’s.

  The rains stopped just as quickly as they had started. The current softened and disappeared. The water lowered from over his knees, then his ankles, but no further. He blinked at the murky water over his feet. How? How could this happen? It wasn’t possible. The stream has never risen that high or that fast!

  He looked again to the bridge. It was gone. He could see it even in the dark of the night. The stream was flowing freely through it, carrying felled trees and broken branches and thatched roofs, bits of the houses he knew belonged to Morin and Preston, with it.

  Part of him still thirsted for the offlander’s blood. It was hungry for his land. Aching for the taste of the kill. But there was something else there as well. Fear. Fear of what will happen if he ever tried this again.

  “Balian!” Gregor’s shout drew his attention. He was at the edge of the village, waving his arms in the air at him, “We need you!”

  Finally able to move, Balian charged through the water with high, splashing strides.

  Maud held Aurie’s battered face in her hands. One side was already beginning to swell and the other looked like it had been raked across a rock. Her lips were split and her jaw looked crooked. And though Maud reached for it, Aurie refused to let her look at the arm she cradled to her chest.

  “Your father, look after your father, I’m alright,” Aurie said in huffs.

  Alden had Balor draped by one arm over his shoulder and was slowly leading him back to the house. He looked worse than she did. There were blotches of blood staining through his shirt and pants.

  Maud shook her head, wanting to laugh through the tears, “You two are ridiculous. What do you think he told me to do? Alden’s got him. Now come on, we need to get inside so I can tend you.” Without contest, for once, her mother nodded and draped her arm over her shoulder.

  Draka’s horse galloped to a sliding stop through the mud. He leapt down, letting the sword fall into the mud as he rushed to Aurie. Neither Maud nor, surprisingly, Aurie protested as he scooped her into his arms, cradling her with ease against his chest. He didn’t hesitate a single step as he bounded to the porch and jumped onto it around Alden and Balor.

  “The bed! In the side room!” Maud called as he carried Aurie sideways through the door. She lifted her dress and started running to follow. Draka rushed out the door, leapt to the other side of Balor and lifted him just as easily.

  Alden took a step back at the suddenness of watching his father get carried like a child into the house and Maud staggered in awe. Not even Egan or Dalfur could carry a grown man that easily. And what about his ankle? Which made her blink even more when he emerged again to look Alden up and down. No boots? She turned to the horse, whose head was lifted with her ears tucked forward over her high forehead. No saddle. He charged them with no saddle, no boots. Just his horse and his sword.

  Like a knight in her fantasies, rushing to slay the dragon and save her from imprisonment. Only, he didn’t save her but saved her mother and father. Her eyes glistened at him as he ran firm grips over Alden’s shoulders and arms.

  “I’m fine. They didn’t come for us,” Alden softened. Draka pat his shoulder and rushed to Maud, hands ready to do the same, but he stopped short a step away and looked her over.

  “I’m fine, too.”

  Draka nodded. He glanced over his shoulder.

  “They’ll be okay, I can take care of them now,” Maud’s trembling wasn’t from her shaking but the tears spilling across her wide smile. She hesitantly touched his arm, his head whipping around to look down at her. She felt so small in his gaze, but not in the way that she ever could have anticipated. He was a giant in her presence. A true hero. “Thank you, Offla.”

  “Look,” Alden stepped off the porch in a haze. He drew her attention with a pointing finger.

  The village was a scatter of torchlights and small fires. They could see their reflections in the flooded stream. The houses nearest the bridge, Soran and Balthazar’s, were islands of piled debris in still water. They could see that the Greshon houses, connected by the walkway over the road, were half toppled by thick trees that they were struggling to move. Maud tried to see Dalfur’s home, the blacksmith’s, but there was too much in the way. To her chagrin, she found herself hoping it, too, had been destroyed. But beyond the Greshon houses, the houses and shops of the village were still standing, albeit with debris piled against them and likely through their doors and windows.

  “Serves them right,” Maud growled.

  Draka tapped her shoulder and shook his head at her before returning his gaze to the village. Her brows pursed at him. She did feel ashamed for being so glad for their suffering, but they were going to kill them. Kill him. How could he not feel the same? But in his face, she saw sympathy. Sorrow. As if it were his home that had been washed away but their side of the bridge was somehow untouched. The waters never rose but a few feet over the ledge.

  “You’re right,” Maud followed his heavy gaze. “I shouldn’t feel that way, but they nearly killed ma and pa. They were coming to kill you, you know.”

  He didn’t look at her, only nodded. That made no difference to him. She regarded him for a moment. This giant warrior, this godlike knight in shining—no, stained smelly shirt, unwashed pants, and bare feet—truly felt sorry for those who would have murdered him. It stunned her at the memory of him racing down the road, valiant as anything she could imagine, riding bareback on his horse through the rain and mud with his sword glistening. Bare feet and all.

  “How’s your foot? Your ankle?” Maud asked as she started for the front door.

  He waved dismissively at her. Like the fact that it was practically an army he charged to stop them from beating on her parents, she knew that he didn’t care at that moment.

  “Come inside so I can check it once I’m done with them,” Maud nodded her head to the door with an inviting grin. But he shook his head and slapped Alden’s shoulder with a point for him to follow her. She crooked her brow at him. “You can come in. It’s the least we can do for chasing them off.”

  He only grinned warmly at her. Then, after grabbing his sword from the mud, with a wide-legged leap, he was on his horse and riding up the hill to his house.

  “Plow the village,” Alden said as he watched the offlander go. Maud whirled her head at him with wide eyes of shock. Alden met her eyes with a thumb over his shoulder, “I’m with him.”