Chapter 5: The Boy
The caravan came to a halt.
It was not a slow stop. It was abrupt, the wooden wheels locking in the snow with a sharp screech.
Inside the cage-wagon, Danny’s head rose faintly. His forehead had been resting against the cold bars.
Silence hung there for a moment. Heavy, dead silence.
Then the sound of the horses followed.
They were breathing hard. Each breath burst out of their nostrils and turned instantly into white mist in the icy air. Their legs trembled under them, their muscles quivering from exhaustion. Snow was already gathering on their backs, on their manes, unmelted.
One of the escorts cursed under his breath.
"We can’t go on like this," one of the men said. His voice was hoarse.
The grey-haired man got down from his horse. His boots sank deep into the snow with a soft crunch. He gazed at the road ahead, his hand shielding his eyes.
There was no road.
Snow had covered it almost entirely. What was left was a faint, uneven dip in the white, leading into a forest that looked endless.
He clicked his tongue. "Get them out."
The caravan doors swung open with a rusted groan.
A cold wind poured in at once. It was like a knife.
Danny trembled violently. It cut through his thin prison rags, through his skin, straight to his bones. His teeth clattered before he could stop them.
The captives were hauled outside one after another. The guards didn’t wait.
Chains bound their wrists together, a single long chain linking them all, making them walk in a single miserable line.
The moment his bare feet met the ground, Danny stumbled. He nearly fell on his face.
The snow was bitterly cold. It wasn’t soft. It was wet, sharp, and deep.
It gave way under his bare feet, swallowing them up to his ankles, sending a spike of pain up through his legs. His toes had gone numb days ago, but this was a new kind of pain.
"Move."
Someone tugged hard on the chain. The iron bit into his frozen wrists.
Danny trailed behind. He had to jog to keep up, his feet slapping and sinking, slapping and sinking.
The group set off walking once more. No one spoke. Only the crunching of many feet in snow.
The road had vanished entirely.
Nothing but a white forest that stretched on without end. Trees lined both sides, tall and black, their branches hidden under heavy blankets of snow that looked ready to fall. The sky hung gray and low, without life, without sun. It felt like being inside a bowl of ash.
Danny could hardly feel his fingers anymore. He hugged his arms tightly to his body as he walked, trying to keep whatever little heat he had left. His breath came out in short, broken puffs.
Then a sound reached him.
Not the wind. Not the chains.
A faint noise. Weak.
A cough.
Danny turned his head around, his neck stiff.
The small boy was walking behind him.
He appeared roughly the same age as Danny. Maybe younger. Maybe eight. His face was dirty, covered in snow and grime.
His lips had turned blue. A deep, ugly blue.
His clothing was thin and torn, even thinner than Danny’s, giving him almost no shelter from the cold. His shoulders were shaking constantly.
The boy tripped over a hidden root under the snow. He caught himself.
No one halted. The line kept moving.
He tripped once more. This time his knees hit the snow.
Then his legs buckled beneath him completely, as if the strings holding him up were cut.
He collapsed face-down into the snow. He didn’t put his hands out. He just fell.
Danny came to a halt. The sudden stop made the chain linking them go taut with a sharp metallic clang.
The man behind him swore loudly.
"Keep moving! Don’t stop!"
Danny looked down at the boy.
He wasn’t moving at all. His thin chest was barely rising. Snow was already starting to cover his hair.
Something clenched hard inside Danny’s chest.
For an instant, it wasn’t snow he saw.
He saw his village.
The houses ablaze, the roofs caving in.
The screaming. The smell of smoke and blood.
The corpses sprawled in the streets. People he knew.
He recalled running. Running while everyone else burned. His feet moving on their own.
He recalled abandoning everyone.
He had lived through it. He had survived because he ran.
Yet now another person was about to die right before him. Again.
Danny turned. Fully.
He moved toward the boy, dragging the chain with him.
"What are you doing?" The guard’s voice sharpened.
Danny paid no attention to the voice. He couldn’t hear it properly over the blood pounding in his ears.
He fell to his knees in the snow. The cold shot up his legs. He seized the boy by the shoulders, his own hands shaking.
"Hey..."
Nothing at all. The boy’s head lolled.
Danny gave him a harder shake, his fingers digging into the thin fabric.
"Wake up."
The boy’s body felt cold. Far too cold. Not like a living person.
Danny placed a trembling hand on his chest, searching.
There was hardly any movement. A faint, slow thump. Too slow.
"Come on..." Danny whispered. His voice broke. "Come on, get up..."
He had no idea why he was doing this. This boy was not his friend. He didn’t even know what he was called. He had never spoken to him.
Yet he couldn’t just leave him there. Not again.
Danny attempted to pull him upright. He hooked his arms under the boy’s armpits and heaved. The boy was light, but Danny had no strength left.
The chain clinked and pulled.
Then—
CRACK!
Agony burst through Danny’s back. White-hot and blinding.
He collapsed forward into the snow, his mouth open in a silent gasp. Snow filled his nose.
The grey-haired man stood behind him, a short leather whip in his hand. The end of it was dark with snow.
"Leave him."
Danny lifted his head slowly. His back was on fire. Tears stung his eyes from the pain and the cold.
The man looked down at him, his expression empty, bored.
"Did you not hear what I said?"
Danny turned his gaze back to the little boy. His fingers were still clutched tightly around the boy’s torn sleeve. He couldn’t let go.
"Leave him," the man said again. Colder this time.
Danny’s hands clenched. The thin fabric crumpled in his fist.
For the first time since his village had been destroyed, something other than fear filled his chest.
It was hot. It rose up his throat.
Anger.
He looked up at the grey-haired man. His whole body shook, but not from cold this time.
He wanted to attack him. He wanted to scream at him. He wanted to ask why they could be so cruel.
But his body refused to move. His arms felt like lead.
He was hungry. He was freezing. He was not strong. He was nothing.
And the man who stood before him was more powerful. Far more powerful. He had a horse. He had a whip. He had food.
Danny bowed his head. The anger collapsed into something heavier.
Gradually, finger by finger, he let go of the boy’s sleeve.
"Good."
The man with grey hair turned around, as if nothing had happened. He walked back to his horse.
"Move."
The chain was tugged once more, violently. The iron burned his raw skin.
Danny rose to his feet. His legs wobbled. He took a single step.
Then one more. Away from the boy.
Behind him, the small boy stayed still under the falling snow. The white was covering him now, making him part of the ground.
Danny did not glance back. He couldn’t. If he looked back, he knew he would stop.
Yet he sensed that something within him was shifting. Something cracking open.
His home was already gone.
His family was already lost.
And now he had been made to abandon yet another person. To watch someone die again because he was weak.
Danny tightened his fists until his nails cut into his palms.
One day...
He had no idea what he would do.
He was unsure of where he would go.
He wasn’t even certain he would make it through the night.
Yet deep within the scared boy, in the coldest part of him, one thought started to take shape, clear and hard as ice.
I refuse to remain powerless any longer.