Chapter 4: The Other Prisoners
The caravan kept moving along the forest trail.
Clack.
Clack.
Clack.
The sound was endless. Every jolt of the wheels sent ice dust sifting through the gaps in the wood.
Danny sat quietly in the corner of the wooden cage, his knees pulled up tight to his chest, his back pressed to the freezing wall. His breath made small clouds that vanished fast.
He had not said a word since he woke up.
He had no idea what to say.
He had no idea who he could trust.
Every few minutes, he would crawl to the gaps in the wooden wall, watching the trees fade behind them. The same white, the same grey.
The forest appeared to have no end.
Tall trees lined both sides of the narrow path, black trunks under white weight, their branches bending under heavy snow. White flakes kept falling from the grey sky, slow and endless, blanketing the ground and turning the road into a pale, frozen trail that left no footprints.
Danny shivered. The cold had started to creep through the wooden walls and into his bones. It wasn’t just outside anymore. It was inside the cage.
He rubbed his hands together, blowing into them. The skin on his knuckles was cracked.
It made no difference. His fingers stayed numb.
Then he heard something behind him.
A cough. Small and dry.
Danny turned around slowly. His neck was stiff.
Someone else was in the caravan. He hadn’t noticed before because the light was so dim.
A boy.
He sat a few feet away from Danny, huddled against the opposite wall, even smaller than him. His knees were shaking.
Danny looked at him longer.
The boy seemed about his age, maybe a little older. Ten at most. His clothes were ripped and filthy, stained with dirt and old snow, and his face was pale from the cold, his cheeks red raw. His hair was stuck to his forehead.
Next to him sat several grown-ups. Three of them.
An elderly woman with her head down, grey hair messy.
A man in middle age, with a rough beard and tired eyes.
And another young man, maybe eighteen, with bruises all over his wrists and a split lip.
They were all captives. All chained at the ankles.
Danny’s eyes went wide. His breath hitched.
He was not by himself. He hadn’t been alone in the box.
The middle-aged man saw him staring. For a short moment, their eyes met through the dim light.
The man’s face shifted. Not into anger. Not into kindness either.
Something more like pity. And exhaustion. The look of someone who had already given up.
Then he turned away and stared at the floor.
Danny bowed his head. He didn’t know if he should speak. His throat was still dry.
Several minutes went by. Only the wheels.
Then the caravan lurched hard when one of its wheels hit a big stone hidden under the snow.
Everyone inside was tossed hard to one side. Wood groaned. The elderly woman cried out.
The young boy let out a groan and fell against the wall.
"Cold..."
His voice could hardly be heard. It was hoarse, broken.
Danny turned his gaze toward him. The boy was shaking so hard his whole body vibrated.
Danny glanced around the cage. Inside there was just one worn-out blanket. Thin, grey, full of holes.
The adults were already using it. The old woman had wrapped most of it around herself, clutching it like a lifeline, while the middle-aged man kept another part over his shoulders. The older youth had none.
Danny paused, his hands cold. He crept slowly toward the blanket, his knees scraping the floor.
His fingers stretched for its edge, just a small corner that lay free near the boy.
The middle-aged man at once tugged it closer to himself, hard.
"Don’t."
One word. Low and sharp.
Danny went completely still, his hand frozen in the air.
The man’s eyes looked tired, but there was warning in them.
"We need it as well. You want us to freeze?"
Danny looked at him. He said nothing in reply. He didn’t know how to argue. He had nothing to say that would matter.
He just stepped back and sat down again, his own arms wrapped tighter around himself.
The small boy turned his eyes to Danny. His eyes were watery, red from cold. For a moment, Danny believed the boy was about to speak, to ask for help.
But the boy just bowed his head again and coughed, smaller this time.
Danny hugged his own body harder. The cold became stronger as the sun went down outside. His teeth started to shake, clacking together without permission.
He tried to pay it no mind. He tried to think of something else.
He pictured the fire in his village. The big hearth in winter. The heat on his face. The scent of cooked soup and bread. The noise of people chatting, laughing. His mother’s hand on his hair.
For a moment, he was back there. Warm.
Then the picture cracked and vanished. The fire turned into the blaze that ate his village.
Only snow was left. And quiet. And the noise made by the wheels.
Clack.
Clack.
Clack.
Many hours went by. The sky grew darker outside the cracks, turning from grey to deep blue. The snow fell harder.
The prisoners hardly talked. No one had the energy.
Now and then, one of the grown-ups would glance toward Danny, then quickly turn away, as if looking at a child made it worse.
No one asked what his name was. No one asked where he was from.
Maybe they already knew what happened to him. Maybe they just didn’t care anymore. When everyone is cargo, names don’t matter.
In time, Danny noticed something odd through the gaps.
The people on the outside had weapons. A lot of them.
Swords on their hips. Knives. Crossbows strapped to their backs. Some even carried odd weapons he had never seen before, long poles with curved blades that caught the snow-light.
And one of them — the man with grey hair — was not the same as the others. The others walked. He rode. The others complained. He was silent.
Danny couldn’t say how, but every time the man came close to the caravan, the other prisoners went totally quiet. Even their breathing got smaller.
Even the grown-ups appeared to be scared of him. The middle-aged man would pull his blanket tighter and look down.
Danny recalled seeing him the night before. He was the one who gave the orders. The one who told the others what to do. The one who hit Danny when he tried to fight back, without even looking angry.
Danny glanced down at his wrists. The red marks had not faded. They burned in the cold.
His fingers tightened into small fists. Anger flickered, then died. He felt like running, like kicking the door down.
But where could he go?
He did not know the forest. One way looked the same as the other, all white. He had no idea where the caravan was going. And even if he got away, monsters were all around. The forest was full of them.
The world beyond his village was not safe. His own village had already shown him that.
A sudden rush of wind came in through the cracks in the wooden wall, sharp as needles. Danny shook hard, his whole frame shuddering.
The small boy next to him started coughing once more. This time, the sound was fainter, wetter.
Danny turned his gaze to him. The boy’s lips were starting to go pale, almost white. His eyes were half-closed.
Danny couldn’t figure out why the grown-ups were just standing there, watching. Why no one helped.
Perhaps they were unable to. Perhaps they had already come to terms with what was about to happen to all of them. When you are being sold, you learn not to care.
Danny glanced once more at the torn blanket, at the selfish hands holding it. Then his eyes moved back to the boy.
He wished he could offer him something. Anything at all.
But he had nothing to give. No food. No water. No warmth. Not even freedom.
He bowed his head, his forehead almost touching his knees.
For the first time since he left his ruined village, Danny grasped something colder than the snow.
Humans had more to fear than just the monsters outside.
The caravan moved on through the frozen forest, deeper and deeper into the white.
And within its wooden cage, Danny slowly started to see that whatever awaited them at the road’s end...
It might be worse than death.