Chapter 7: Salt
Danny stared at the salt.
It lay scattered across the wet snow beside the dying fire, already half-melted, mixing with dirt and pine needles.
Small white grains. Dirty. Pathetic.
That was all they had. That was dinner.
He swallowed. His throat clicked. It was so dry it hurt.
His stomach growled again. Loudly. It wasn’t a normal growl. It was a hollow, angry snarl from inside his guts.
The people around him heard it. The middle-aged man, the old woman, the bruised youth.
Nobody laughed. Nobody said anything cruel.
They simply looked away, as if looking made it worse.
Danny slowly reached toward the ground. His arm felt heavy. His fingers trembled violently as he pinched a small amount of salt between his cracked fingertips.
He placed it on his tongue.
The taste was sharp. Immediate. Bitter and burning. It hit his cracked lips like fire.
Almost painful. His tongue recoiled.
But he didn’t spit it out. He couldn’t afford to. He forced himself to swallow, his face twisting.
His stomach growled again, even louder, angry at being tricked.
He needed more. It wasn’t food, but it was something.
Danny reached down again, this time with his whole hand, desperate to scoop more before the snow swallowed it.
Before his fingers could touch the salt, a rough hand grabbed his wrist and stopped him mid-air.
"Wait."
Danny froze. His eyes shot up, scared.
It was the middle-aged man. The one who had made the fire. His grip wasn’t cruel, but it was firm.
The man looked at him, really looked. At his thin arms, his ribs showing through his rags, his feet blue and bleeding.
"You’re the only child here," he said quietly.
Danny didn’t understand. His hunger was too loud to think.
The man picked up the small sack that the mercenary had thrown beside them. It was made of rough burlap, almost empty.
He opened it and tipped it. There wasn’t much inside to begin with. A few crumbs of something hard and dark that might once have been bread, and more salt at the bottom.
The man looked at the other adults, at the old woman and the young man.
"Give him most of it," he said.
One of the adults — the young man with the split lip — frowned. Hunger made people ugly.
"Why? We’re hungry too."
"Because he’s a child," the middle-aged man answered, his voice low but hard. "Just look."
He glanced at Danny’s thin body, shaking in the cold.
"Look at him. He won’t last another night if we split it even."
Nobody answered for a few seconds. The fire popped. The wind blew.
Finally, the young man clicked his tongue and turned his face away. "Fine. Do what you want."
The man poured what little salt there was into his palm. His hand was shaking too. Then he did something that made Danny’s face burn.
He threw it onto the ground in front of Danny. Not handed it. Threw it. Like feeding an animal.
The grains scattered across the dirty snow, some disappearing instantly.
Danny stared at them. His face burned with shame so hot it was worse than the cold. His ears turned red.
But hunger was stronger than shame. Hunger was an animal that ate shame alive.
He dropped to his knees. His chained hands hit the snow.
He began licking the salt from the ground. His tongue out, like a dog.
One grain. The snow melted against his tongue, icy water and sharp salt together.
Then another. Another. He scraped his tongue across the frozen ground, getting dirt and snow and salt all at once.
The salt stung his cracked lips, making the small cuts bleed, but he didn’t care. The sting meant feeling. Feeling was better than numbness.
He kept eating, his knees soaking wet, his forehead almost touching the ground.
The adults watched silently. No one stopped him now. The old woman turned her face away completely, her hand over her mouth. The young man sighed, a long, heavy sound that was almost a sob.
Danny continued until there was almost nothing left, until his tongue was raw and his mouth was full of cold mud. Only then did he stop.
Then he looked up, breathing hard, snow on his chin.
His throat was impossibly dry. The salt had made it worse. It was like swallowing desert.
"Water..." The word barely escaped his mouth. A hoarse whisper. "Water... please."
The man who had given him the salt looked at him. His eyes were pained.
Danny swallowed, the salt scratching his throat.
"Water..."
The man hesitated. He looked over toward the main camp, where a large waterskin hung by the fire, fat with water. He looked back at Danny.
Before he could answer or stand up, another voice came from behind them, sharp and cold.
"Don’t."
Everyone looked over. Their small flame reflected in angry eyes.
One of the mercenaries stood several meters away, arms crossed. He had been watching them the whole time, leaning against a tree. His sword was at his hip.
The man who gave Danny the salt frowned, his own hunger making him brave.
"He needs water. He’s just a boy."
"So do we," the mercenary said flatly.
"He hasn’t eaten all day. He hasn’t drunk anything."
"And? What does that have to do with me?"
The mercenary pointed with his chin toward the main camp, toward the big fire and the waterskins.
"That water belongs to us. We carried it. We found it. It’s not for cargo."
The man looked at Danny again. The boy was still on his knees in the snow, his lips cracked white, his face pale as the snow itself. His hands were shaking badly. He looked like he might collapse at any moment and not get up.
"Give him some," he said quietly. "Just a mouthful. He’ll die."
"No." The answer was immediate. No thought at all. "He dies, he dies. Less mouth to feed tomorrow. Less weight to pull."
The mercenary turned around and walked back toward the main camp, his boots leaving deep prints, and sat back down by the big fire where the stew was.
Danny watched him leave. His eyes remained fixed on the water container beside the fire. He could see the leather skin glinting in the firelight. So close. He could almost taste it. Yet it was unreachable, like the moon.
He lowered his head slowly. His neck had no strength left.
The fire beside him began to die, shrinking down to red embers that gave no heat at all. The wind came through again.
The adults moved closer together, huddling, trying to share what little warmth remained, their backs to Danny without meaning to.
Danny sat alone at the edge, outside their small huddle. He hugged his knees hard against his chest, his chains clinking. His body shook violently.
Not only from the cold anymore.
He was hungry in a way that felt like his stomach was eating itself. He was thirsty in a way that made his tongue stick to his teeth. He was exhausted in a way that made his bones hurt. And he was afraid in a way that made it hard to breathe.
But he couldn’t sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, even for a second, he saw the village. The flames eating the houses. The monsters. And the little boy lying face-down in the snow, getting covered and covered until he disappeared.
Danny opened his eyes again, wide. He stared into the darkness beyond the dying embers, into the forest where anything could be watching.
He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know where these people were taking him. He didn’t even know if he would survive until morning.
But one thought remained, stubborn and clear, burning hotter than the salt on his tongue.
I have to escape.
No matter what it takes. No matter what he has to do.
He had to escape.