A Fine Harvest Day

It was all Din could do to suppress her laughter at the irony of the pain and fear she felt. Pain was natural, stemming from the familiar throbbing of the bullet lodged in her right shoulder blade. Her fear, though, was that primal terror all of humanity had felt; the knowledge that everything had gone to hell, and she was powerless to stop it.

Crows were already flocking to the scene, squabbling with one another despite the overabundance of bodies that littered the streets of the Hold. Din ignored the scorching heat of the mid-harvest sun as she scanned each face with a mixture of hope and dread. She recognized more faces among the dead than she had hoped, but the one that mattered was still absent.

A rough shove from behind made her stumble as her loosely bound feet and hands barely kept her balance, but Din managed to keep her pace in the line of prisoners, grinding her teeth as the throbbing of her shoulder magnified. She tested her wrists against the rough cords, hoping her captor had left some room in the bonds, but they held fast. Given a day or two, she could have worked the rope loose enough to break free, but she had less than thirty minutes before she joined the bodies at her feet.

“Breathe, Din,” she said to herself as she sucked in a ragged breath. Anxiety wouldn’t do right now; she needed to stay calm.

At most, fifty other prisoners were lining up at the gathering field in the middle of the Hold by the wooden platform, where a band of travelling bards had played not more than five days ago. She had danced with Ash for the first half of the night, then danced a different sort of waltz with him for the second half. Din shed a tear when saw his handsome, stubbled face among the fallen. Despite her fear, Din hoped the bards hadn’t been taken by the raiders; they had played well.

Everyone was assembled, now, and her heart fluttered at the sight of her daughter, standing amongst the other children. She looked a little frightened and slightly battered, but Minx was alive, and that was something for now. When Din held Minx’s light brown eyes and saw her head nod ever so gently, she nearly wept.

“Hold tight, baby girl,” she mouthed in assurance. If only she could get out of these ropes, everything would be fine!

A burly, sunburned man stepped forward from amongst the heavily armed fighters, hefting an M-4 against his shoulder. The bastard was smoking a cigar as he addressed the prisoners with the bored disdain of someone who regretted that no one else was left for a fight.

“Right; I’m Clip, the Honored Deputy of this lot, and your ‘Hold’ is finished. Before we go further, we confirmed the body count against the three hundred and sixty-two residents we know lived here. Anyone you don’t see is dead, so don’t imagine your comrades will rescue you.”

Din could feel their hope shatter at Clip’s words. He knew it, too and grinned wickedly as several began to sob uncontrollably.

A cold sweat broke on Din’s brow as a thin man with a nasty gash along his arm glared at her through Clip’s speech. The bastard had shot her in the back with a revolver as she fought, though she’d repaid him with that wound and managed to escape before he could shoot again. His hand was twitching toward the gun at his hip now, and Din knew his next shot would hit its mark.

Somehow, Clip was still grandstanding. “That’s it! We took what’s yours and I know you have every right to be mad that we did. Now, I’d just as soon end all three hundred and sixty-two of you to keep from waking up with a knife in my back, but that’s not how the Captain sees it. See, every time we fight, we lose men and women, which leaves slots for new recruits.”

Din could see in his eyes that his mind had been made up. He wouldn’t wait for Clip to end his speech or wait for the chaos of the Reckoning to put Din down. He was going to make his move. She could hardly believe the sob that tore from her throat. She was going to die, and nothing would change that fact.

Just as the man’s hand closed around the hilt of his gun, he made a surprised, gurgling sound, interrupting whatever nonsense Clip was spouting off. Every head turned as Wiry slumped, clutching vainly at the dagger that had severed his left external jugular. Just like that, Din’s fear evaporated with the smoke billowing from the wreckage of the Hold.

No one spoke in the stillness only punctuated by Wiry’s struggles as she strode with purpose across the gap between captive and captor. Stooping astride the corpse, Din pretended to ignore her bullet wound as she cut her bonds on the exposed part of the blade. Rubbing her wrists, she pointed to the woman who had tied her bonds, and that was the end of the insurrection. She’d known Fang wanted her dead, but hoped to deal with it in a cleaner way than this.

Din smiled with pride down at her twelve-year-old who was busily cleaning her knife she’d pulled from Wiry’s neck. That girl was becoming a force to reckon with when it came to that blade. A glint of gold in Minx’s hand made her pause.

“What’s that you have?” she demanded, opening her daughter’s hand firmly to find a golden heart-shaped locket.

Minx started in before Din could upbraid her. “Ash had it in his hand, and when I saw the picture…I couldn’t leave it to the communal spoils.”

Din opened the locket and turned her face, tears burning her face. He’d set her likeness in the locket, and Din’s eyes stared back at her, accusing her of losing something that might have been good.

She closed the locket. Good didn’t keep you alive in this world.

Now, onto business.

Din looked up at the stricken remnants of the Hold with as much motherly affection as she could muster and cleared her throat.

“You knew me for the time I was here as Danah. For those of you who survive, I’m Din, but from now on you will call me Captain.”

She pointed to three women, two men and the four remaining children, all of whom stepped forward. “I know you all to be competent individuals with skillsets we find deficient in our…enterprise. Clip, how many did we lose today?”

“Six died in the fighting. Eight, if you count the two assholes who tried to end you, Cap’n.”

“Thank you, Deputy. We had room for seven before our raid, so beyond those I've selected we have room for six, yet forty-five individuals stand before me...”

The remaining men and women looked at each other despairingly for the briefest of moments as Din’s words gained their full weight. In the next breath, the killing began.

The newly recruited doctor set to work on Din’s shoulder as the carnage raged, but Din never let her eyes stray from the Reckoning, nor did that of her fighters. This was a sacred initiation, and their sacrifice must be witnessed. While they fought Minx hummed Dance With the Reavers as Din stroked her hair in one hand and rubbed the locket with the other hand. All in all, today had been a fine harvest day.