Epilogue
T he young soldier comes to with a start, eyes squinting against the midday sun. He’s being jostled about, multiple hands holding him steady while others grapple with the rope he used to tie himself to the horse. Muffled voices speak all at once, but he can’t make out what they’re saying over the constant ringing in his ears. Suddenly, he’s pulled from the horse’s back and white-hot pain tears through his abdomen from where the bullet is still lodged inside of him.
Screaming.
He’s screaming, and crying, and begging for them to set him down and just let him die in peace, but they either don’t understand or don’t care. More pain, like a hot poker, runs through his belly as he’s lowered onto a stretcher. Black creeps in at the edges of his vision, and he prays for the oblivion of unconsciousness.
But the gods aren’t listening .
Trees tops piercing a blue sky whiz by as he’s rushed across a field and into a white tent. There, he’s set down on a table or counter of some kind, the cool top shocking against his heated skin. A male dressed all in white leans over him. His lips move, but the soldier shakes his head. Can’t they see he doesn’t understand? The pain in his side has diminished somewhat, but now there’s a cold, tingling sensation building in his fingers and toes.
The soldier isn’t delusional. He knows he’s dying, grateful even. Death means no more pain, no more guilt, no more nightmares filled with the scent of smoke and burning flesh, the sound of fists pounding on chained doors, of children’s screams as they died.
He knew burning Duje was wrong, and yet he did it anyway. He helped set fire to the dom and watched as innocent people burned to death inside. All because he was too much of a coward to stand against it. He deserves to die for that. They all did.
Except, he didn’t die, not yet at least. He escaped so he could warn the others, but his mind is too fuzzy, the memories a jumbled mess of images: the scouts running into camp shouting that escaped magi had returned to Duje, his troop outside the decimated building demanding that the magi come out with their “hands up.” There was a lady in white. She was angry. She told them to burn and...
The soldier grabs the medic’s lapel and jerks him close. “She… burned,” he says, his dry throat cracking on the words.
The medic’s eyes widen, and his mouth forms a silent ‘O’ that could only mean, “Who?”
“W—” the soldier begins, but before he can finish the word, a fit of coughs tear through his chest, each one like somebody stabbing him in his wounded gut over and over again. The soldier releases the medic to collapse back onto the table. He swallows and licks his crusty lips with an even crustier tongue in a vain attempt to moisten them. Another medic, this one female and pretty with curly chestnut hair, rushes over with a canteen. She tips the soldier’s head up and holds the canteen to his lips. The soldier sputters and chokes as she tries to pour the water down his dry throat, but it is wet and blessedly cool. It clears his head enough so he’s able to string together a few more words.
“Dead,” he begins. “All dead.”
More medics and a few uniformed soldiers are closing in around him now. They pummel him with questions. But there are too many of them and their lips move too fast for him to make any sense of. The chill that started in his fingers and toes is now spreading into his hands and feet. The soldier’s arms and legs will be next, then his chest, then his head. He doesn’t have much time left.
“Duje,” he says. “Troop is dead. She made us…” He takes a ragged breath. “Made us shoot—couldn’t control it. Killed each other.” His eyes flutter shut. Gods, he’s so tired. The cold is spreading up his arms now. Someone is shaking him, and his eyes fly open again to find the pretty medic leaning in close. Copper fills his mouth, making him cough red spittle in the medic’s face. She doesn’t wipe it away, just keeps mouthing the same word over and over again.
“Who?”
The cold is in his chest now, his vision rapidly dimming, but the soldier, ever obedient, answers her, the words like dark passengers riding his dying breath.
“A white witch.”
Thank you for reading Dawn of the White Witch!