Ralph and the Pixie

‘Come here, girl.’

Something in the soldier’s voice made her go cold inside, and she was suddenly terrified of him, or what he might do. She turned to her father for help, wide-eyed. Arlon’s look was hard, his sword raised.

‘There are women and children with us. Leave them be. You can take us menfolk, but leave our women and children alone.’

The soldiers hesitated. A few of their mounts champing impatiently, as though they knew or expected what was to come.

The one next to the soldier who had spoken, said impatiently, ‘What are we waiting for? You know the orders!’

‘I know the orders,’ said the soldier, and he began moving forward, slowly, as if willing himself to perform an act from which there was no turning back, an act which he knew, in every fibre of his being, would change him forever in his own eyes, and in the eyes of the watching world; that is, if the world was watching at all.

At once, as though pivoting, turning against his former life, he said, ‘There has been no order given for the sequence of events as we must enact them. I will have my way with this wench before I kill her. The rest of them . . . do what you will!’