Chapter Text
Ayla
The sky was clear; a beautiful blue that barely had an interruption of a cloud. The crops were doing well, the surrounding fields golden with wheat. That’s what our village was known for. Not entirely, it wasn’t the only skill our people had, but according to the conscription records…we provided grain.
The war had changed a lot of things, not least of all the insistence by father that all of the horses be brought inside before nightfall.
Sampson stamped his hoof at my side, practically nudging his bridle into my hand as a reminder that the deadline was fast approaching with dusk.
“Alright.” I sighed.
I closed my eyes and took one last breath of fresh air before turning to lead him towards the stables.
Except, Sampson had to nudge my shoulder.
Because the air was tinged with a smell that made me pause.
Smoke.
Its origins were abundantly clear. Not firewood, nor the burning of refuse, or anything remotely domestic.
This was war.
War smelled like:
Glass window panes melting.
Straw thatched roofs blazing.
Bones crumbling into ash right where they were slain.
War wasn’t geographically close, but it made itself known.
In more ways than one.
Father was waiting at the stable entrance for me, a metal bucket of stewed apples hanging from his arm.
“What’s the occasion?” I asked, as we approached.
It took both of us to stop the horse from slopping up the lot, he was last in so he’d have to go to the far end.
His shoes clopped against the uneven ground, his pace quickening once he spotted the fresh bed of straw in his stall.
“Goodnight.” I pressed a kiss to his nose and locked him in.
Father still hadn’t answered my question. He was giving much more attention to the horses than he usually did, especially this close to dark. He dosed out the treats, put a generous portion in the mare with the foal.
“Did you smell it?”
He didn’t meet my gaze.
“Was it far?”
My pulse quickened the longer it took for him to summon a response.
It wasn’t until I was helping him drag the wooden beam across the doors that he spoke.
“We’ve got to go to the Church tonight.” He sighed, removing his cap to rub his balding head.
It was a Friday.
There weren’t any weddings, Christenings, no specific celebrations that I was aware of.
No funerals.
Was there a funeral?
Father caught my eye, reached to ruffle my hair at the scalp.
“No-one’s died, love.”
Okay, well that was a relief.
But it didn’t mean we were out of the woods.
Not yet.
Back home, Mother was trying to get something quick sorted for supper. No hot meal, nothing cooking on the stove, so we needed to be at the Church soon.
My brother, Lenny, was sat at the kitchen table chewing through a piece of bread and lard. He’d done what he did most nights; deconstruct his food and remove anything that resembled a vegetable. Mother had even diced them up extra small, but he’d decided that plain would be better.
“At least try the carrots.”
I snatched up a chunk and neighed like a horse, munching the end while I watched for his reaction. He called me a dork, which meant he didn’t know what tonight was about, either.
Maybe that was for the best.
—
The vicar resorted to something he rarely did.
Shouting.
“Can we lower our voices?” He pleaded, stood at his pulpit.
I’d been sat in a state of shock ever since the announcement.
There’d been a decree. Written, signed, sealed, hand-delivered by one of the King’s messengers.
Someone had said they’d wished he’d have fallen off his horse and drowned in a drainage ditch.
The smoke had come from a failing on our behalf. The kingdom’s. So…we had to pay our dues.
The response from the community was disdain and premature grief.
“Why should we send anyone? We already harvest our grain, volunteered our men.”
“I’m not sending my girls, they’re all I have left.”
“All of this for a ceasefire of a week? I have to surrender my child for a week so some Lord can bury his son?”
Lenny was curled up at my side, his head nudging onto my lap as he played with a little wooden duck he’d got for Christmas.
Our family had remained quiet during the debate.
We usually did.
But the chalkboard that had been borrowed from the school had something written on it that made me feel nauseous.
My name was on there, not for the first time.
This time, the age bracket had been expanded.
Indefinitely.
“They can take babies?” Someone had cried.
“Not taken.” The priest hurried to correct, hands fumbling with the decree. “Volunteered.”
I scoffed, corrected my posture so he wouldn’t necessarily know the reaction had come from me.
Someone far more clear-headed had suggested we pull together a fund and pay instead of ‘volunteer’ anyone.
Apparently, those pots had long run dry.
“I’ve slaughtered every cow I can.”
“I don’t have anything left to give. I can’t be expected to give up my mother’s jewellery.”
“Jewellery or my daughter? How can you be so selfish?”
One of the older parishioners intervened in the ensuing scrap.
I brushed the hair back from Lenny’s eyes and sighed. I was thankful for once that he was in his own little dreamworld, too stubborn to pay attention to what was expected of him.
He was far too young to be of any help in the war.
Not as a fighter, anyway.
I felt a maternal edge come over me, imagining him being shoved in a cart and forced to eat unfamiliar foods and sleep on floors, being beaten for disobedience.
Tears prickled my eyes.
I shuffled along the pew, raised my hand to ask the vicar to hand me the decree.
I thought for a moment, that I was lucky not to be from one of the settlements where girls weren’t allowed to learn to read or write, though at the rate things were going I didn’t think it would be long before even the school-house teacher Mrs Putnam was forced to take up a job elsewhere.
Once the scroll found its way into my hands I gave it a once over.
Five offspring.
Ages undefined.
Gender undefined.
Origin undefined.
Undefined?
I could guarantee that they weren’t banging the doors down in any Manor House’s or palaces to force such a donation.
There were some smaller inscriptions at the bottom. I unfurled it a little further, asked Lenny to hold it for me.
I saw something that gave me a small glimmer of hope.
Substitutions acceptable.
My hand raised itself.
The words that came out of my mouth sounded like my own, but it was like an unconscious action.
“Would anyone be willing to donate if only one child was sent?”
The hall fell silent.
Mother snatched the scroll from me, struggling without her glasses.
The vicar asked me to explain.
“They’ll kill the boys.” I said. “Kill them or train them and send them to die at our own hands.”
“Get to the point.”
I took a breath.
“I can go.” I stood as if that made my point clearer. There were barely thirty of us sat around. “If we can gather the equivalent coin then I’m the only one that has to go.”
When I heard myself say it, that pit in my stomach seemed to calm itself down.
There had been a girl in a nearby town that had gone on to work in a kitchen in the adjoining kingdom. Her master even allowed her to write home.
The ensuring argument was the rest of the community against my parents.
The poor vicar had to sit down, Lenny called me an idiot and rolled his eyes.
Mother flooded the place with tears and me?
I just sat back down and waited, because I was eighteen. I could make my own decisions, and I still counted as a ‘child’ in the text, because people would miss me once I was gone.
But at least they’d be alive.