I kicked at the ground and beat at his arm, anything to force him to loosen his grip, but nothing worked. Lukas had seen this man take me, I was sure he had, but he wouldn’t be able to help me, nor should he. If he tried, he’d only share in whatever punishment I was about to receive.
Before I knew it, the soldier had dragged me across a field and toward a river where I heard other voices somewhere nearby. I couldn’t see them, but I knew the other people here were in as much trouble as I was.
The soldier pulled me into the river and threw me under the water, which was icy cold and deeper than it looked. His grip on my arm was like a vise, so I couldn’t get away, nor could I stand. I turned my head against the current, hoping to get a few sips of air, but every draw brought more water into my lungs.
Then I understood. That was the soldier’s intention. The people they had captured, the ones we had failed to save, they were being drowned here.
And I would be among them.
When it became clear what was about to happen, I began fighting the soldier more fiercely than ever. More fiercely than I believed I was capable of fighting. Oddly, I didn’t feel like myself in that moment, but rather, I felt like Rue, the character from the stories that Lukas had told me all these months. I’d once been timid and fearful, but now I was much more like Rue: strong and confident and forceful. And if she would not give in to this fight, nor would I.
I yanked my father’s bag off my shoulder and swung it at the soldier’s face. Water had filled the leather satchel now, so the smack against his jaw caused him to stumble, enough that he loosened his grip on my arm. I wrenched free but, in doing so, lost the bag, which floated downstream out of my reach. I dove for it and failed to notice the soldier had lunged for me, grabbing my arm again. This time, his pistol was out.
My gut twisted. I had no defense against that. And with the river more than waist deep, I couldn’t fight him off again.
“Back away!” The soldier raised his pistol, even while keeping a hold on me. But his head was up, speaking to someone else, someone ahead of him in the water. Who was it?
Not Lukas. The last I’d seen him, he was on the bank of the river, some ways behind me.
“I said back away!” the soldier repeated.
The voice that answered became muffled against all the water splashing around me, but I did get a few bits of phrases.
“… would’ve been your commander.”
“… this is wrong …”
“… I will stop you by force if—”
That was the last I heard before the pistol fired and the soldier released me. Exhausted, half-frozen, and choking on water, I drifted downstream, only vaguely aware of Lukas shouting. Was it my name? It didn’t sound like my name.
Seconds later, someone pulled me from the water and dragged me back onto the riverbank, turning me to the side and pounding on my back to force the water from my lungs.
“You’re so concerned with saving others you never think to save yourself first.” That was Ben’s voice. “I’m not letting you die here, so you get some air into your body, Audra, or else. You start breathing, hear me?”
I coughed out water and drew in air with it, beautiful, breathable air. I lay there on my side until Ben’s face came into focus, his expression grim.
“There are others downstream who still need help.” Ben pointed up the riverbank to some brush that somehow was still holding on to most of its leaves. “Can you get up there to hide until this is over?”
“Where is Lukas?”
“I don’t know. He jumped into the river to attack the man who was holding you. That’s all I saw before I grabbed you.”
Then I had to do more than crawl to a hiding place. I had to find Lukas and make sure he was all right. While Ben went in one direction, I continued coughing out water, then staggered to my feet, bracing myself with anything I could find along the way to keep stumbling forward.
The trouble at the church wasn’t over—I heard cries and shouts everywhere around me—but I couldn’t think about that. I had to find Lukas.
I rounded the bend in the river and was relieved to see him kneeling on the bank, but not alone. A man lay in front of him and seemed to be bleeding. Lukas had his hands pressed on the wound, I realized.
Wasn’t this the officer that had just tried to drown me? Why would he—
No, it wasn’t. This was Officer Rusakov, Lukas’s father.
The man who had tried to save me. He’d been the one shot by the pistol.
I knelt beside Lukas. His father was alive and conscious, but bleeding from a wound in his leg.
“Let’s get him into the forest,” I said. “Where we sent the others. I saw people go into a barn there.”