As night turned to day and Ashtesa emerged from beyond the horizon carrying the sun in his arms, Zacharias turned to see how far from the fortress they had actually gotten.

  It both seemed a long way and not nearly far enough. The column of smoke that curled upwards into the sky was miles away, but at least one side had a dragon. He could only hope that no-one would care enough to follow them.

  They moved in a slow column, having finally come down from the mountain. The escape from the fortress had been difficult; even after the skeleton had broken them free, just getting to the gate had been a challenge. More than a dozen people had died, and they had had to leave their bodies behind. Zacharias hadn’t even been able to hold his sister, as she was killed by a rogue crossbow bolt that killed her instantly.

  He and a few of the others had volunteered to break into a store room on their way out. There had been a few guards there, but Zacharias had managed to wrestle one of them to the ground and stab him with his own dagger, which he decided to take with him. They had managed to take some meat and bread, but after that they had to flee to avoid being left behind.

  The ham that he had liberated was still clutched in one of his hands. They hadn’t stopped moving all night, and there just hadn’t been time to share it out. The thought of keeping it to himself snuck into his mind, but as soon as he thought of it an apparition of his mother seemed to appear and smack him on the ear.

  “Shame on you, Zacharias Millson!” she snapped. “I won’t have my boy known as one who only thinks for himself! You serve yourself with that meat last, and that’s final!”

  It was true that he needed the meat less than others. He was a teenager still, and in quite good health all things considered. There were infirm here, and old people. That pregnant woman almost certainly needed something substantial. Already he could see her ahead of him in the column, being supported by two other people.

  He looked behind him. The column was getting more stretched out as people tired. The skeleton that they had all chosen to follow wasn’t slowing at all, and it moved at a pace that many people wouldn’t be able to manage for long. The forest ahead of them was still miles away, and the open grassland that stretched around them in all directions gave little in the way of cover, but Zacharias knew that they had to stop. People needed to rest, and to eat.

  Zacharias picked up his pace and walked up the side of the column, until he breathlessly reached the point where the skeleton was walking doggedly forwards.

  “We need to stop,” he said.

  The skeleton looked at him. Zacharias found the experience of meeting the eyes of something that didn’t have eyes very disconcerting. “Why?” the skeleton asked.

  “Because people can’t keep up with you,” Zacharias said.

  The skeleton cocked its head. “My concern is for myself. If you are concerned about where we are going, I am travelling to the woods. Those who wish to wait can do as they please and then follow when they feel able.”

  “No!” Zacharias insisted. “We have to stay together!”

  “You are all allowed to do that,” said the skeleton. “I am not a part of your group!”

  Zacharias growled in frustration and cut in front of the skeleton before stopping. The skeleton didn’t even slow down, and bowled him out of the way. Zacharias tumbled to the ground, before struggling to his feet.

  “Just for a few minutes!” he said. “Just for people to catch up!”

  He felt hands on his shoulders and turned to see that Gerry had caught up to him. “It’s okay, Zacharias,” she said. “We know where he’s going. And you’re right, maybe we should take a break.”

  The column came to a halt, and everyone collected in a small circle. Zacharias did a headcount, while Gerry took the ham from him and started cutting it into slices with a small knife.

  The process of counting was slow. Zacharias had learned his numbers years ago – his mother had made him and his sister learn them, so that one day when they started running the mill for themselves they would be able to handle coinage. Zacharias had never been so good at it, but he managed to count up to thirty four before he ran out of heads to count.

  He redid the count, making extra certain that he had counted his own head, and came up with the same number. Only thirty four people. He knew that there had been more than that many slaves in the fortress, more than five hundred they said, which he knew was a lot of a bigger number than the one he came up with. A lot of that didn’t seem fair, but at least it meant there were more mouths to feed.

  Gerry handed him a thick slice of ham, along with a small chunk of bread. “There you go, lad,” she said. “Eat up.”

  Zacharias looked around. “Has everyone else had some?” he asked.

  “Aye, and we’re all looking forward to seconds, so get that in you before someone snags it,” Gerry insisted. Zacharias nodded and took a small bite of the ham. The flavour was so strong that he almost spit it out on pure reflex. All that food in the fortress had been hard bread or gruel, or tough meat, nothing like this. He wolfed it down before he could even think about enjoying the taste.

  The mention of seconds had intrigued him, but Zacharias knew from looking around that it was only a jest. All that food that they had risked their lives before was already gone from just this small rest stop. He had killed a person for a single meal.

  The skeleton was growing vanishingly smaller, the sunlight on the tip of his spear acting like a beacon. Zacharias wanted to chase him, but the thought that his mother would have boxed his ears for leaving everyone behind kept him rooted.

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  “What’ll we do for next meal?” he asked.

  Gerry smiled. “Don’t worry too much, lad. These people have gotten used to being hungry, and the forest will have all sorts to eat. We’ll get by, but you’ve done good for us.” She ruffled his hair.

  Zacharias pulled away from the gesture. Gerry was acting like his mother, and he had had one of those things before. He wasn’t looking for another one.

  Soon it was time to be going again. As everyone got to their feet, Zacharias counted them again. It went quicker this time, and he still had thirty four. He decided that as long as he could count to thirty four, and had a reason to be counting that high, he had a reason to be feeling okay.

  He walked at the back of the column, so as to watch the backs of anyone who might be struggling. There was another who walked at the back, Orid with the orcish blood, who looked to be struggling in the sun.

  In general, Zacharias wasn’t too fond of those with orcish blood. His village had been raided by them too many times for him to be able to separate all of them from the brutes with the braided hair and the extra large tusks, but he had never known Orid as anything other than polite and quiet, even when they hadn’t talked too much.

  “You did a good thing,” Orid told him. “Sorry I didn’t come with your group. We might have been able to get more food.”

  “That’s okay,” Zacharias said, though he really wished that Orid had come. “Maybe you can help us next time we need to find food.”

  “My people are river people,” Orid said. “If we find water, I can fish.”

  Zacharias pursed his lips. “I’ve never had fish,” he said. “Too far from the water to get, and ma always said people who ate it too much would turn into a fish. Grow scales everywhere and start flopping around, never being able to work.”

  “I have never seen someone turn into a fish from eating too much of it,” said Orid. “But I will show you how delicious a well smoked fish can be. Your last name is Millson. Do you work in a mill.”

  “Millers and Millsons going back generations,” Zacharias said proudly. “Not that that matters much now.”

  “It might be,” said Orid. “I don’t know how to mill. If we found a mill, we would need a miller to use it.”

  “Where would we find a mill?” Zacharias asked.

  Orid shrugged. “I don’t know. But if we did, we could get flour. From flower, we could do many things.”

  “We’d need grains first,” said Zacharias. “And I don’t know where those would be either.”

  “Neither do I,” said Orid. “Do you think you’ll look for one.”

  Zacharias looked forwards at the column. It was beginning to stretch out again, and they were still miles from the forest. Already he had slowed his own self to make sure that he stayed at the back.

  “I’m looking to find somewhere safe,” he said. “If they have a mill than that’d just be perfect. But that’ll all come after this batch splits apart.”

  “What if they don’t?” asked Orid.

  Zacharias laughed. “Thirty four people, all different races and ages, all from different lands and homes. Why won’t they break up?”

  “Where else are they going to go?” asked Orid. “My home was burned, and I think it was the same for some others. If there’s nothing to go home to, then why not try and make a new home.”

  “Good luck,” said Zacharias. “But I don’t think that can happen. All that’s for now is to keep living until we split up and I have less counting to do.” From the back of the line, he repeated his count. Thirty four.

  Orid looked as though he was about to make another point, but he suddenly stopped walking and looked around as though there was something in the air. “Do you hear that?” he asked.

  Zacharias didn’t hear anything at all, but he focused on listening. For a second he heard nothing at all, but then there it was. Like a series of low breaths, rhythmic, almost a drum beat. It was the sound of a giant pair of wings.

  “Run!” Zacharias screamed.

  People turned at the sound of his voice, and they saw it. A giant dragon, flying away from the fortress and towards them. It was the same dragon that had attacked the fortress, and Zacharias had seen first hand the type of destruction that it could bring.

  The column dissolved as everyone began to run to the treeline. Orid grabbed an older man and threw him over his shoulder, and pointed Zacharias in the direction of a little girl. Zacharias nodded and scooped her up, and together they ran.

  They were still a long way from the trees, and running while carrying a child was hard. Worse, the dragon was getting closer, far faster than they could ever hope to move. Zacharias didn’t dare turn around for fear of tripping or slowing down, but the sound of its wings grew louder by the second.

  Orid’s foot hit a route and he fell. He managed to twist his body so that the old man he was carrying remained unharmed, but the way he landed himself made him shout in pain. Zacharias stopped and returned to him, quickly helping him get to his feet. In the time when he was turned around, he saw the dragon again.

  This was the clearest view he had ever gotten of a dragon. The night before, the dark and the chaos of the battle had stopped him from getting a real view, and it was only now that it was close enough for him to clearly make out.

  The dragon was a deep purple, like the hue of the flowers that would grow near his home in the spring. It had two pairs of giant, feathery wings, one coming from the shoulders and the other from just above the hips, as well as four giant scaly legs. Its head looked like a mix between a lizard a boar: a mouth filled with sharp teeth had four tusks around its outside. It had seen them, that much he was sure by how it was looking directly at him.

  “Come on!” he yelled, and continued to run. The dragon flew after him and Orid, after all of the escaped prisoners. Even those at the front were still out in the open, the cover provided by the forest a mere dream. They wouldn’t make it. The beating of those giant wings was so loud that it felt like thunder, but was also slowing. As it drew closer, it was letting itself slow down to better catch its prey.

  Zacharias screamed and threw himself to the ground, seeing many others do the same. The dragon swooped down.

  And flew straight over the top of them. Zacharias looked up in time to see the dragon’s rider look back at him, nod, and then turn forwards as the dragon started to ascend again. As Zacharias climbed to his feet, the dragon was already above the forest and flying further south.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  “Perhaps trying to scare us,” said Orid.

  They reached the trees soon afterwards. Everyone clumped together at the edge of the woods, where they found the skeleton waiting for them. “This will be a good place to rest,” it told them. “I have procured food.”

  The skeleton showed them the corpse of a freshly slain deer, which it had already begun to remove the skin from. Zacharias felt his stomach rumble watching it, and helped to make a fire. Someone explained how to strip off the bark to ensure there was no smoke, and just like that they were ready to cook a feast.

  While everyone began to help themselves to the meat of the fat deer, Zacharias went to the skeleton.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Why did you do this for us?”

  “My goal was to reach this forest, in order to find a place to hide,” said the skeleton. “Once I was here, I decided that I should get a new objective, and I decided to feed your group and give them a place to rest. I will protect you when you sleep tonight.”

  Zacharias found it hard to trust a skeleton, but this one was making it a lot easier. “Your name was Warren, wasn’t it?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Warren. “That is the name I chose for myself.”

  “My name is Zacharias,” he said. “I didn’t choose that name.”

  “It is good to meet your, Zacharias,” said Warren.

  The next time Zacharias did his headcount, he made it to thirty four even faster this time than the others. Everyone was still accounted for. But after a moment of hesitation, he counted again. This time, he got to thirty five.