In Kuroinu

Leonora's messenger caught us at breakfast with a face that said he'd been riding hard and a report that said a border village called Hadern had been hit overnight by organized monster forces. The garrison was too far. We were closer.

We left within the hour. Filia armed and in the lead, Llusse ranging ahead with her bow strung and her ears pointed forward, Tianne with her staff and her healing kit strapped to her back. Mila came. I'd looked at her when we got the news and expected her to stay at the inn. She'd picked up a satchel of bandages and water skins and walked to the door and said "I'm coming" in a voice that didn't leave room for discussion. Her ears were pinned flat and her tail was low and she was coming anyway.

The road to Hadern was an hour at pace. We ran most of it.

We smelled the smoke before we saw the village. Thick and black and carrying the same under-smell from the farmstead weeks ago, wet and sweet and wrong. The village came into view from a hill and part of it was burning, two buildings on the eastern side with flames still going, and there was movement in the streets. Figures too large to be human. The orcs were still there.

Llusse dropped into a crouch beside me on the ridge and counted with her eyes. "Eight. Maybe ten. Spread through the village. Armed." She looked at me. "Bigger than the goblins."

"Organized?"

"They've got a perimeter. Two on the main road, the rest moving through buildings." Her jaw was set. "They're looking for people."

"Survivors?"

"I can hear-" She tilted her head and her ears swiveled. "Crying. In the buildings. There are people hiding."

"Filia."

Filia was already drawing her sword. "Llusse, elevation. North roof if you can reach it. Tianne, stay back, heal anyone we send out. Mila-"

"I'll get the villagers out," Mila said. She was pale but her voice was steady. "I can hear them. I know where they are."

Filia looked at her. Looked at me. I nodded.

"Go. Stay low. Don't engage."

We went down the hill.

The first orc was at the village entrance and it was bigger than I'd expected. Taller than me by a head, grey-green skin, crude iron armor strapped over a chest that was thick with muscle, and it was carrying a hatchet in each hand and it turned when it heard us coming and the sound it made was low and guttural and it raised both hatchets and charged.

Filia intercepted it. She was fast, the Blessing humming in her muscles, and she sidestepped the first hatchet swing and cut the orc across the forearm and it roared and swung again and she ducked and her blade came up in a reverse cut that opened its side. It staggered. She finished it with a thrust through the neck.

The second one came from the alley to the right and it was coming for me.

My hands tightened on the sword I'd borrowed from the barracks armory. It was heavier than the practice blade I'd used in the den and the balance was different and the orc was fast for its size and it closed the distance in three steps and swung a heavy blade at my chest.

I moved before I thought about it. The reflexes were there, Llusse's boost layered over everything else, and my body read the swing and stepped left and the blade went past my ribs close enough that I heard it. I brought my sword up in a two-handed cut and caught the orc across the shoulder and the edge bit into the armor and into flesh and the orc grunted and its arm went loose on that side and I pulled the blade free and hit it again, this time across the jaw, and the steel crunched through bone and the orc dropped.

Ugly. Two swings that landed because I was faster than I should have been and the orc had expected a civilian, which is what I'd been a month ago. My arms were shaking. There was blood on the sword and on my hands and the orc was twitching on the ground.

Filia was already moving to the next street. "With me."

I went.

The village was a dozen buildings around a central square with a well and the orcs had come in from the east and worked their way through, breaking doors, dragging furniture into the street, setting fires that pushed heat against my face as we passed. An arrow whistled past from above and I heard the impact and looked up to see Llusse on a rooftop, already nocking another shaft. An orc in the square stumbled, an arrow through its throat, and went down. She put a second arrow into it before it stopped moving.

Filia and I hit the square from the south. Two orcs turned to face us and Filia engaged the larger one, her sword meeting its club in a clang that rang off the buildings, and the smaller one came at me with a spear. I sidestepped the thrust and the spear tip scraped the wall behind me and I cut down on the shaft and broke it and the orc threw the broken wood at me and pulled a knife and I kicked it in the knee. It buckled. I swung. The blade took it in the neck and it went down heavy and loud.

Across the square Mila's voice carried, sharp and clear. She was at the back of the buildings, moving between the ones that were still standing, giving instructions to people who were panicking. "This way. Stay together. Follow the wall to the south gate. Keep low." A family emerged from behind a collapsed fence, a man carrying a child and a woman holding a bundle of cloth, and Mila directed them down the alley with one hand on the woman's shoulder, steady and calm. Her ears were up and rotating, scanning for approaching threats while she guided people to safety. She'd run an inn kitchen during a rush. This was the same job with higher stakes.

Another arrow from Llusse. An orc that had been circling toward the fleeing family went down in the alley mouth with a shaft through its chest.

Filia killed her opponent with a combination that ended in a thrust to the gut and she pulled her blade free and checked the square. Three bodies. The burning buildings were losing their roofs and the heat was pushing us toward the center.

"Tianne!" Filia called.

Tianne was at the south entrance of the village where the wounded had been gathering. A man with a gash on his leg, a woman with burns on her arms, children with cuts and scrapes and the blank-eyed look of people who'd been woken up by monsters. Tianne was moving between them with her hands glowing gold and the healing was fast, faster than it had been before the boost, the flesh closing under her fingers with a speed that made the villagers stare.

"Two more in the northeast," Llusse called from the roof. "Moving toward the well."

Filia and I went north. The last two orcs were in a building that had partially collapsed and they were rooting through the wreckage and when we came around the corner one of them had a village woman by the arm and was dragging her into the street.

Filia hit the one holding the woman without breaking stride. She cut its hand off at the wrist and the woman fell free and scrambled backward screaming and Filia was already engaging the orc's body with a series of cuts that drove it backward into the collapsed wall. The second orc came at me from inside the building, bursting through a broken doorframe, and I caught its first swing on my blade and the impact jarred up my arms and into my shoulders and my footing slipped on the rubble.

The orc pressed forward. Bigger than me, heavier, and in the tight space between the collapsed walls it had leverage. I gave ground. My back hit stone and the orc raised its weapon for an overhead strike.

I heard it inhale. The sound was loud and specific in my enhanced hearing, the air going in through its mouth before the downswing, and the fraction of a second between the breath and the strike was enough. I ducked left. The weapon hit the wall where my head had been and stone cracked. I stabbed forward, under the orc's raised arms, and the blade went in between the armor plates at its side and sank deep.

The orc made a wet sound. It grabbed the blade with one hand, bare fingers on steel, and I twisted and pulled and it staggered and the blood was hot on my hands and it fell.

I stood there breathing. My arms hurt and my back hurt where I'd hit the wall and the orc was dying at my feet and the sword was slippery in my grip. Filia had finished the other one and was helping the village woman to her feet and her voice was calm and professional and the woman was sobbing and clutching Filia's arm.

Llusse appeared at the end of the street. "Clear. All targets down. Mila's got the last group heading south."

"Injuries?" Filia asked.

"Tianne's handling it." Llusse looked at me. At the dead orc. At the blood on my hands. Her ears twitched. "You're getting better."

"Thanks."

"You still drop your left shoulder."

"I'll work on it."

Her mouth twitched. She turned and went back to check the rooftops.

The village was quiet after. The fires burned themselves down as Tianne moved through the survivors. Filia coordinated with the village elder, a man whose hands were shaking but whose voice held together while he listed what had been lost. Llusse scouted the perimeter in expanding circles, making sure no stragglers were coming back. I helped carry wounded to Tianne's triage area and moved debris and did the work that needed doing.

Mila was sitting on a low wall near the village well with a child in her lap.

The kid was small, maybe four or five, with dirty cheeks and wide eyes and she'd been in one of the buildings when the orcs came and Mila had gotten her out. The girl's parents were being treated by Tianne for burns. Mila was holding the kid against her chest and her dog ears were drooping, folded back flat against her head, and she was murmuring to the child in a low steady voice that was meant to sound like everything was going to be fine and she was doing a convincing job even though her hands were trembling on the kid's back.

I watched her. The afternoon light was warm on the square and the smoke was thinning and Mila's hair was messed up and there was soot on her shirt and her tail was low and still and she was rocking the child gently and her eyes were red.

She looked up. Our eyes met across the square. She didn't say anything. Her arms tightened around the kid and her ears shifted, turning toward me, and her expression was tired and open and she looked like she'd been doing this all day, which she had.

I walked over. I didn't think about it. I crossed the square and stopped in front of her and the kid looked up at me from Mila's lap and Mila looked up at me and I put my hand on her head.

Between her ears. My palm settled onto her hair, warm from the sun, and my fingers rested on either side of her dog ears, and she went still.

Everything about her went still. Her breathing, her hands on the kid's back, the constant ear-swiveling and tail-ticking. She was looking up at me with her brown eyes wide and her lips parted and my hand was on her head and neither of us moved.

Her tail wagged. Once. A single slow sweep behind her, and the motion went through her whole body where my palm touched her hair.

The kid in her lap looked behind Mila and laughed.

"Doggy lady's tail is moving!"

Mila turned red. Her ears went flat under my palm and the tail wagged again, faster, and she couldn't stop it. "I- that's- it does that sometimes-"

I took my hand back. She was looking at me and her face was flushed and her ears were pink and the kid was giggling and poking at Mila's tail and Mila was trying to hold the child and hide her tail at the same time and failing at both.

"Thank you," I said. "For today."

Her eyes went bright. She pressed her lips together and nodded fast and looked down at the kid in her lap and her tail was wagging steadily now and she was blinking hard.

"I didn't fight," she said. "I didn't do anything-"

"You saved people. You heard them when nobody else could and you got them out."

She was quiet. The kid had gotten hold of her tail and was petting it like a cat and Mila let her and the tears she'd been holding in leaked down one cheek and she wiped them quickly.

"Thank you, Haruto."

I squeezed her shoulder once and went to help Filia with the debris. The sun was getting low and the fires were out and the village was standing and behind me the kid was laughing and Mila's tail was thumping against the stone wall.

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