They didn't stop coming.

  I thought maybe after the knights, they would leave us alone.

  I thought maybe they'd see what Frans could do and realize that we were too much trouble to catch.

  But it was like the forest itself was spitting out more and more of them.

  We ran until the world became nothing but the sound of my own sobbing breath and the thud-thud-thud of my heart trying to escape my chest.

  My legs felt like they were made of dry, cracking wood, ready to snap if I took one more step, but Frans didn't stop, so I couldn't stop.

  The next attack came so fast I didn't even have time to be "calm" like before.

  One second the trees were just trees, and the next, ten soldiers were there.

  Ten!

  They didn't have the shiny, heavy armor of the Starheim knights.

  They didn't have the scary emblems.

  They just looked like regular men in dirty leather, but they were shouting so loudly, screaming at us to stop.

  They were trying to sound brave, but when I looked at them through the leaves, I could see their hands shaking on their spear shafts.

  Compared to the knights from before, they were... they were weak.

  Frans didn't even hesitate.

  He became a blur of silver and blue, and two of them were on the ground before they could even finish their first war cry.

  And then the most terrifying thing happened.

  They broke.

  "Run!" one of them shrieked.

  "Fall back! They're monsters!"

  They turned their backs.

  They started to run away, scrambling over roots and through bushes.

  In all the stories Father told me, the heroes let the cowards run away.

  But Frans didn't look like a hero from a storybook right now.

  His face was cold, like the ice on the river in winter.

  "Don't let them escape!" Frans barked.

  My tummy did a horrible, sick flip.

  Chasing them? But they were running away!

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  But I was so scared of Frans's voice that my hands moved on their own.

  I didn't want them to get away and tell the others.

  I didn't want the two hundred knights to find us.

  We chased them.

  My crossbow fired again and again.

  Thuut.

  One.

  Thuut.

  Two.

  Thuut.

  Three.

  They fell one by one, like the targets I used to miss during practice when I was being "lazy". Only these targets made wet, heavy sounds when they hit the dirt.

  Some of them tried to beg.

  One man tripped and looked back at me with eyes so full of fear they looked like mine, and for a second, I almost dropped the bow.

  But he was one of the people who burned my house.

  Some tried to hide behind the thin trunks of birch trees, but it didn't matter.

  In the end, all ten were dead.

  I killed three.

  Frans killed seven.

  We didn't talk about it.

  I couldn't.

  I felt like if I opened my mouth, I'd just scream and never stop.

  I looked at my hands, and they were stained with more than just dirt now.

  We just kept running, the silence of the forest feeling heavier than the shouting had been.

  But we didn't run for long.

  The forest wouldn't let us rest.

  The next group came even faster than the last one, as if they had been waiting for us to get tired.

  Five knights.

  There were fewer of them than the soldiers, but the moment I saw them, I felt a cold chill run down my back.

  These weren't like the ones before.

  They moved together, their shields overlapping, their swords held low and steady.

  They didn't shout.

  They just moved in, silent and deadly.

  The fight was brutal.

  It wasn't like Frans was just dancing around them this time.

  Every strike he made was met with a heavy CLANG of a shield.

  They were coordinated, like a single beast with five heads.

  Every time Frans tried to slip into a gap, another blade was there to push him back.

  Their armor was thicker, and their eyes behind their visors were steady.

  Every mistake could have been death.

  I tried to fire my crossbow, but the bolts just bounced off their shields with a useless tink.

  I was panicking, fumbling with the reload, my fingers slipping on the wood.

  "Frans! Watch out!" I screamed as a spear nearly took his leg.

  We fought.

  We bled.

  I got a long scratch across my arm from a stray bolt, and Frans had red soaking through his sleeve.

  But in the end they fell.

  It took forever.

  It felt like hours of metal screaming against metal until the last knight finally collapsed under Frans's blade.

  All five were gone.

  When it was over, I leaned against a tree, gasping for air that tasted like iron and smoke.

  I looked at Frans, waiting for him to tell me to keep moving, but he was just standing there. His face was… strange.

  He wasn't tired.

  He wasn't relieved that we had won.

  He looked… doubtful.

  Like he was looking at a puzzle piece that didn't fit.

  "…What is it?" I asked, my voice trembling.

  "Is there more? Are they coming?"

  "…Nothing," he said, but he didn't look away from the bodies.

  But I knew.

  Something was wrong.

  Frans always knew what to do, but right now, he looked like he was second-guessing the very air we breathed.

  Why were there only five? Where were the other two hundred?

  We ran again.

  This time, I kept waiting for the bushes to explode.

  I kept waiting for the shing of a sword or the shout of a scout.

  Five minutes passed.

  Then ten.

  The forest was eerily quiet.

  No birds sang.

  No leaves rustled.

  It was just the sound of our feet and the wind.

  "…Did we lose them?" I asked, my voice a tiny whisper. "Did they give up?"

  "I don't know," Frans replied. His eyes were still the four-layered rings, darting left and right, searching for a trap that wasn't there.

  The silence was almost scarier than the fighting.

  It made my imagination run wild.

  I kept seeing Father's face in the shadows, or Mother's disappointed eyes.

  I felt like a coward, like a monster, like a little boy who just wanted to go home to a home that didn't exist anymore.

  Then, I saw it.

  Between the trees, past a cluster of jagged grey rocks that looked like dragon teeth, there was a massive shadow carved into the mountainside.

  It was a giant archway, hidden by hanging vines and the spray of a distant waterfall.

  "…Frans."

  He looked. His eyes widened slightly, and the glow in them seemed to flicker.

  The Cave of Honor.