Chapter Thirteen

                                    

                                          
~1~
(two days prior)
Aelia 

      When Aelia finally awoke, she was no longer by the lake, but back in the Sherone's tent surrounded a few familiar faces from the Carthin camp, but mostly men she didn't recognize. These new people didn't strike her as refugees, they had a much harder look to them.  
      "The girl's awake." One man said, "go tell the Sherone." A few moments later, the Sherone approached and knelt beside her. 
     "How are you feeling child?" 
Aelia tried to sit-up but was still too weak, "What happened?" Aelia asked.
"Don't you remember?"
     Aelia thought back to the cave collapsing in a flood or rock and water. The faces of Harn and his men struck with panic and disbelief as they were swept away into the blackness. She was somehow indifferent to these memories.
     "There there child," the Sherone said pressing her to lay back down, "just rest now." 
      She carried over a bowl of simmering broth, which Aelia quickly devoured so ravenously that she wanted to lick the bowl for every last drop.
      There was a commotion outside the tent, before another of the Sherone's men entered abruptly, "Sherone! Sir Heston has come. He brings soldiers!" the man warned.
        "Wait here child. I will return shortly." She said as she followed the man outside. Then there was a woman's scream sounding like it came from the far end of camp, and soon more screams followed. Aelia felt an instant sense of deja vu, reminiscent of the slaughter of her home village. 
       When the Sherone burst back into the tent, she was in a frenzied state of panic. "We have to flee now!" 
        "Why... what's happening?" Aelia pleaded for any bits of information to wrap her mind around.
      "They come for revenge.. for what you do to their men in mines." As usual she'd delivered the truth with a directness that was like being kicked in the gut, and her dark eyes never faltered as she spoke it.
           She signaled to her man, gesturing toward Aelia, to which he hoisted her up onto his back to carry her. Then when the Sherone thought that Aelia wasn't looking, she pulled an object from a concealed compartment and stuffed it into her bag, which Aelia noticed in her peripheral view.
       "Time to go now." Sherone said, and they moved through the flap of the tent to the outside world.
             They were instantly met with thick blinding smoke all around, causing Aelia's throat to choke and her eyes to tear-up. Everything was red and orange with the light of flames from burning tents. People scrambled in all directions, mothers carrying their crying infants in their arms. 
         They proceeded as a group to make their way through the chaos, away from the side of camp where squadrons of soldiers dressed in armor bearing the sigil of Corinth, hacked their way with sword and ax through the masses of the Carthin refugees. 
         Aelia wanted desperately to shut her eyes to the horrors of the massacre, but they seemed to refuse her command, forcing her to absorb every atrocity as though bearing witness was more important then preserving innocents; but innocents was already a word long since forgotten to her anyway. 
           They were just about at the edge of the camp at the start of the tree line, when their escape was blocked by two soldiers. 
"Where's the Stone?" One soldier demanded with his sword outstretched toward the Sherone.