Chapter 19: Mercy
Danny stared at the man lying in the snow. He couldn’t move.
The Awakened man was still alive.
Barely.
His whole body trembled beneath his frozen clothes, not strong shaking, but tiny, weak tremors that wouldn’t stop. His skin had become pale, almost the same white as the snow around him, and his breathing was weak and uneven, with long pauses that made Danny think he had died already.
Danny crouched closer, his knees sinking deep, snow getting into his shoes.
"Are you okay?" he whispered. It was a stupid question the moment he said it. Of course he wasn’t okay.
The man slowly, with great effort, opened his eyes. They were cloudy, rimmed with frost on his lashes.
He looked at Danny. He really looked at him, focusing for the first time.
His lips moved, cracked and blue. But no words came out. Just a faint puff of air.
Danny leaned closer, close enough to see the ice in the man’s beard. "What are you trying to say? I can’t hear."
The man’s mouth trembled harder. It was frozen from the cold, the muscles not obeying. Danny could barely understand what he was trying to do - was he trying to speak, or just trying to breathe?
He looked at the man’s chest. It was barely moving. Rising a finger’s width, falling. The cold had already taken control of his body, shutting everything down slowly. This was how people froze - Danny had seen an old man in his village die like this. Quiet. Slow.
Danny remembered what the grey-haired man had said back at the camp.
We need to survive. We eat this or we starve.
He looked back toward the camp, toward the faint glow where the others were. The grey-haired man and the thin prisoner were still busy, small dark shapes moving around the caravan wreck. Neither of them had noticed the Awakened man, or Danny crouching far away. The falling snow hid them.
Danny looked down again at the man in front of him.
He felt something inside him tighten, like a knot in his stomach.
This man had once been strong. So strong Danny thought he was a god. He had fought the giant worm alone while everyone else ran. He had cut it with light. He had survived the eyeless wolf when it should have killed him instantly.
But now he couldn’t even move his hand. Now he was just a cold body that couldn’t get up.
Danny slowly stood. His eyes moved across the snow, not knowing why he was looking away, just needing to look at something else.
Then he saw it.
A broken sword. Half a blade, snapped off at the middle, lying a few steps away from the Awakened man. Probably his own sword, lost when the wolf threw him.
Danny stared at it. The snow had not covered it yet. The metal was dull.
His hand began to tremble. Not from cold.
He didn’t want to do this. He really didn’t.
But the thought came anyway, quiet and terrible and logical, in the grey-haired man’s voice almost.
He’s going to die anyway. In an hour, he will be dead from cold. And if he lives until the wolves come, they will smell him. And if he lives until the storm covers him, we lose everything on him - his coat, his boots, his knife. We need those to survive.
Danny picked up the broken sword with both chained hands. It was heavier than he expected, heavier because it was someone else’s.
He walked back toward the Awakened man, each step feeling longer.
The man looked at him. He saw the sword. For a moment, their eyes met clearly, no more cloud.
Danny couldn’t tell what the man was thinking. There was no anger.
Fear? Maybe.
Understanding? Maybe he knew he was already dead.
Acceptance? His eyes seemed to soften, just a little, as if saying do it fast.
He didn’t know. He would never know.
Danny tightened his grip until his fingers hurt from the cold metal.
"I’m sorry," he whispered. The words came out quietly and were taken by the wind immediately. "I’m sorry."
He raised the broken sword high. His whole body was shaking now, not just his hands.
Then he swung.
He didn’t look at the face. He looked at the snow.
The blade struck the man’s neck with a dull, wet sound, not clean because the sword was broken and Danny was weak and his hands were chained. It took a second, horrible scrape.
Blood, dark and steaming hot in the cold air, stained the snow instantly, melting it in a spreading red circle. So red against so much white.
The Awakened man’s body went still. The trembling stopped. The faint breathing stopped.
Danny froze, still holding the pose.
The sword slipped from his hand and fell into the red snow with a soft thud.
He stared at the body. At what he had done. His ears were ringing from silence.
He had done it. He had really done it.
His breathing became faster, short puffs that hurt his throat. His hands began shaking violently, uncontrollably. He put them over his mouth.
Danny looked at the blood spreading across the snow, growing, steaming, then slowly cooling.
He couldn’t look away. It was too bright.
This was different from the monsters. The worm didn’t count. The wolf didn’t count. They were things.
This was a person. A man who had been alive a second ago, looking at him.
He had just killed a person. For a coat.
For several long seconds, Danny remained completely still, kneeling in the snow next to the cooling body, snow falling on his shoulders.
Then he heard a voice from behind him, muffled by snow and wind.
"Kid!"
Danny’s heart jumped so hard it hurt. He nearly fell over.
He quickly turned, panic flooding him, wiping his hands on his rags.
The thin prisoner was standing near the camp, waving an arm, barely visible through the falling snow.
"Are you done yet? We need that water! The old man is starting a fire!"
Danny stared at him, eyes wide, blood on his chains.
He quickly looked back at the dead man, at the steaming blood that would soon be covered.
Then at the water sack in his hand that he had dropped, now lying half in the red snow.
"Sorry," he said loudly, voice cracking.
He hurriedly picked up the sack, trying to hide the red side, his hands shaking so badly he almost dropped it again. He grabbed the man’s heavy coat too, and the boots, pulling them off quickly, not looking at the face.
The thin prisoner frowned, squinting through snow.
"What are you doing over there? What’s taking so long?"
Danny didn’t answer. He couldn’t. His throat was closed.
He walked back toward the camp, his steps fast, almost running, carrying the water sack and a coat that was too big, and boots.
Behind him, the Awakened man’s body, now still and coatless, slowly disappeared beneath the falling snow, the red turning pink, then white again, as if nothing had happened.