She braced for the third kick, knowing it had to come. She rolled as best she could with the last one to buy time. She pulled a breath and planted her hands on the ground. She was braced for the kick and would put as much room as she could between them. The timing was off, and the screaming had quieted. In fact, it had become quiet enough that she heard murmurs from the far side. She heard a voice from behind, raspy and stilted and old.
“You woke me, elf. I am displeased.”
She turned slowly to look at the source of the voice. It was an old satyr, grey tufts of hair growing from his chin and half of one of his ears missing.
“I… we didn’t mean to…”
The elves stopped there and ran for the far wall. The satyr knelt down over her.
“Do you not care for your life, tiny elf?”
“What would my life here have been without so much as clothes?”
The satyr let out a choppy, honking laugh and stood. “Can you walk?”
Óraithe tried to push herself up, but her arm gave. The knobby hand of the satyr grabbed her before she hit the dirt and pulled her up. She looked up at him, nervous. He was an immense creature but thin. There was a calm in his expression that was inviting. He wore the same roughspun clothes as the rest of the prisoners in the yard, and somehow it seemed odd. She had not thought of satyrs as the sort that wore clothes. She’d never seen one but now she could see why the war had been so long.
“Follow. I have questions. And if the guards see you near the rocks you will be made to work.”
She looked behind at the trail of blood that had followed her attacker away and felt a sense of pride rise above the pain for only a second. The satyr stayed at her side, though she moved slowly.
“In all my time here, I have not seen a girlchild sent to the pits. There must be no love for you in your land.”
She pulled in a breath to answer him and held it a moment, giving the pain time to wane. “It does not seem likely.”
“What was your crime?”
She laughed. “I thought to unseat our Treorai.”
The honking laugh filled the air again. “Tyrants, is it? I know of them myself. They are difficult to deal with.”
“I was naive. I know now.”
“So you no longer wish to unseat her?”
Walking was becoming easier as her muscles came to understand that they would be used whether they complained or not.
“I do. Or, it is something simpler. I wish to see her dead.” She coughed.
The satyr considered that. “I think… nothing is so simple as you see it in your mind.”
They were nearing the wall and the satyr moved ahead of her. He grabbed a blanket from a small pile and handed it to her.
“Warm yourself. There are things that you should know.”
Óraithe happily wrapped herself in the blanket. It was nicer than most blankets she’d had even back in the Bastion City.
“Where did you get blankets?”
“This prison was not always such a cruel place. I expect it was long before you were born into this world.”
He slid his hand into a canvas bag and pulled free a crust of bread. “This is yesterday’s. You are welcome to it. They feed us better here than in the cells, I am sure.”
She took the bread and tore a chunk free with her teeth. Her full mouth did not stop her talking. “Have you been to the cells?”
“No. They don’t dare try.” He laughed. “More than a few have been sent to the pits. None survive.”
“You helped them?”
“No.”
He answered so casually that Óraithe hardly believed she’d heard him correctly.
“Then why help me?”
“You fought as I have never seen. Such a small thing and you tore at an enemy many times your size so that you would not die. Or at least not as easily as they may have liked. A thing that thirsts to live ought to live, I think. They have not broken you as they broke the others.”
Óraithe placed a hand low on her stomach. “They nearly did.”
“So it goes with all who are put through great cruelty. You are bent across the hard edge of your will to live. If it is too narrow a thing, you will snap and be lost in your own mind. Whether you would break is not a thing that is found out. It was set long before by the shape of your life.”
She listened as intently as she could as she ate. When the bread was gone, the satyr gently grabbed her hand and examined her arm.
“There is one meal. At night. Food is left by the doors they sent you from. I will secure what I can for you now, until you are fit to fend for yourself.”
The satyr grabbed a blanket from his pile. Óraithe looked at the lump of cloth and wondered what was there besides blankets. She dreamed of a pillow. Anything to rest her head upon. While her eyes fixed on the pile, a knot formed in her stomach. She had eaten something solid for the first time in too long, and eaten it too quickly at that. Óraithe winced and the satyr glanced at her.
“Ate too quickly did you?” He gave a quiet laugh. “It will be a few days before your stomach will allow the food they leave for us. For now, the best thing is sleep.”
“Sleep? In the day?”
“Yes. The guards watch in the day. They do not allow for fights and only care that the
