It happened without warning.
One moment the square was still — soldiers by the water trough, the commander standing near the cage with his arms behind his back, the man inside sitting the way he had been sitting since the convoy arrived. The next moment the air split open.
A blast hit the ground between the cage and the well. The cobblestones cracked outward in a ring and the sound hit Aldric's chest like a fist. Dust and stone erupted into the air. One of the white-clad soldiers was thrown sideways. His horse screamed and bolted.
Garrett's voice cut through the ringing. "Get behind the wagon! All of you — now!"
Kira was already moving. She grabbed Petra's arm and pulled her toward the wagon. Soren pressed himself against the wheel, low, still.
Figures came from the side streets. Five — maybe six — moving fast, faces covered, something red on their arms. They hit the convoy from two directions at once. One of them raised a hand and fire tore across the square in a line that scattered the soldiers and set a market stall alight. Another moved toward the cage with something in his hand — a tool, a weapon, Aldric couldn't tell.
The commander in dark blue drew his sword. He shouted something — an order, a warning — and two of the white soldiers formed up on either side of him. The third was on the ground. The fourth was trying to control his horse.
Darin was ten paces out.
He had been near the edge of the square when the convoy stopped. Watching the soldiers. Curious. That was all. He was curious and he was ten paces from the wagon and he had turned to run back.
He was running. Aldric could see him. Brown hair, wide eyes, mouth open. Running.
The attackers were faster than the soldiers. One of them — the one with fire — sent another blast at the guards near the cage. The commander took it on his side. He staggered, went to one knee, but didn't go down. Blood on his sleeve. He swung at the nearest attacker and missed.
The cage broke. The man inside flinched — the first movement Aldric had seen from him. He looked up as the bars came apart around him. Someone cut his chains. One of the attackers leaned close and said something — quick, urgent, too low to carry across the square. The prisoner stared at him. A moment passed. Then he stood and went with them.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it — between the cage breaking and the attackers pulling back — a second blast hit the ground near the well. A crack of sound and force that sent a piece of the iron frame spinning across the square. Debris — a shard of iron torn loose by the explosion, tumbling through the air the way a stone skips across water.
It hit Darin in the side.
He fell. Not the way people fall in stories — slowly, with time to speak, with someone reaching out to catch them. He fell the way a person falls when something breaks inside them. Fast. Heavy. One step he was running and the next he was on the ground and he was not getting up.
The fighting was still going on. The commander was back on his feet, blood on his side, swinging his sword at two of the attackers. One of the white soldiers had rallied beside him. Another blast of fire lit up the far end of the square. Steel rang against steel. Someone was shouting orders. The cage was open and the prisoner was moving with the attackers toward the side streets but the soldiers were pressing after them and the square was full of smoke and noise and things breaking.
Garrett reached Darin. He crossed the distance in seconds — fast for a man his age, fast for anyone. He knelt beside him and put a hand on him and looked at what the iron had done. He stayed there for one breath. Two. Then he stood and came back to the wagon and his face told Aldric everything before his mouth did.
"Get in," Garrett said. His voice was level. Steady. Behind him the square was still burning. "Get in the wagon. Now."
Aldric had not moved. He stood with his back against the canvas and his hands flat against the wood and he had not moved since the first blast.
"Aldric." Garrett's hand closed on his shoulder. Not gentle. "Now."
He moved. He climbed into the wagon. Kira was inside. Petra was inside. Soren was inside. They were all inside and Darin was not and Garrett was pulling the canvas shut and calling to his escorts and the wagon lurched forward.
Through the gap in the canvas Aldric saw the square falling away behind them. The smoke. The fire. Soldiers and attackers still tangled in the street. The commander with his sword up, fighting. And on the cobblestones, near the edge of the square where a boy had been standing because he was curious, a shape that was not moving.
The wagon turned a corner and Harrenfield was gone.
* * *
The wagon did not stop.
Garrett drove hard for the first hour. The road out of Harrenfield was rough and the wheels hit every rut and stone and nobody inside said a word about it. The woman with the bow rode ahead. The swordsman rode behind. They moved the way people move when they are leaving something bad and do not want it to follow.
Inside the wagon there were four of them.
Aldric sat where he always sat — back against the canvas, bag between his knees. Across from him: Soren, Petra, Kira. The bench where Darin had been sitting yesterday — the spot where he had leaned forward and grinned and said I talk enough for two, probably three — was empty.
Nobody sat in it.
The silence was not like the silence from two days ago when they were strangers. That silence had been thin and nervous, waiting for someone to break it. This one was heavy. It pressed down on the wagon like weather. Nobody was going to break it because there was nothing on the other side of it that any of them wanted to reach.
Soren had not moved since they left. His arms were folded across his chest and his eyes were closed but he was not sleeping. Petra sat with her knees pulled up and her face turned toward the canvas wall. Her jaw was tight.
Kira's hands were clasped in her lap. Her knuckles were white. She stared at the floor of the wagon and did not look up.
Aldric looked at his hands. The same hands. He thought about the goat dream — Darin yawning at the breakfast table, hair sticking up, telling them about the goat that got into the academy. He thought about the honey in his bag that he had been saving. He thought about I've slept on worse and the way Darin had taken the bedroll without being asked.
He thought about the sound the iron made when it hit.
He closed his eyes.
The wagon rocked beneath them. The road went on. Outside, the sky was grey and the air smelled like rain and Harrenfield was already far behind them. Ahead, the road to Valmont stretched through country that none of them cared about anymore.
Four teens in a wagon. One seat empty.
The wheels creaked. Nobody spoke.