Seven days after Henville's seventh birthday, the fragile truce shattered. The War of the Six Kings flared anew.
His father, Obian, whose valor had shone in the previous campaign, was once more summoned by the baron to the front.
Watching his father depart with buoyant confidence, Henville's heart remained troubled for a long while.
He understood clearly: this phase of the Six Kings' War was unlike the last.
The probing skirmishes were over; now it was a fight to the bitter end.
Half a year later, grim tidings arrived—not of Obian's death, but of a catastrophic defeat for the Kingdom of Ika in a pivotal battle.
A narrow strip of the kingdom's eastern territory now lay naked before the enemy's advance.
Diversion Bay happened to lie within that strip.
Thanks to their insulated lives, most townsfolk failed to grasp the impending horror.
Even those who suspected occupation imagined it meant nothing worse than heavier taxes.
Henville knew better.
Six months of unrelenting slaughter had cost the enemy dearly, too.
Prolonged war and the savagery of cold steel had stripped soldiers of their humanity.
Both rank-and-file and officers teetered on the brink of madness.
As the old saying went: bandits pass like a comb, soldiers pass like a fine-toothed lice comb.
Henville could picture the carnage—burning, killing, looting, bodies strewn across fields.
No exaggeration.
The vision spurred him to action.
He rushed to his mother, urging her to take his younger siblings and flee at once.
Their wagon was ready; a few valuables and coins would see them clear.
He had calculated: the enemy vanguard would need at least ten more days to reach the town.
That window was wide enough to reach the nearest fortified city, a cluster of strongholds the foe would find hard to crack.
But his mother—daughter of a modest merchant house—lacked the foresight to credit a seven-year-old's prophecy.
Abandoning home and livelihood on a child's word was a decision no woman could lightly make.
Persuasion failed; Henville turned to stealth.
Night after night he slipped into the warehouse, shouldering sacks of grain and produce into the family's long-forgotten cellar—an old smuggler's hold from his grandfather's caravan days.
Though only seven, Henville stood four-foot-three and had secretly practiced Sir Cookler's body-tempering drills.
He could heft fifty pounds without strain, moving like an ant relocating its nest.
In fifteen nights he stockpiled enough food and water for four mouths to last over a month.
On the twentieth day, refugees staggered into Diversion Bay bearing terrible news: the enemy host was upon them, torching and slaughtering, intent on turning the region to ash.
Only then did the townsfolk awaken.
Panic seized them; they scrambled to pack and flee.
Too late.
If refugees had reached the town, enemy light cavalry already ringed it. Families burdened with children stood no chance on open roads.
At dusk, a grisly proof arrived: severed heads hurled over the palisade—those of townsfolk who had fled that afternoon.
Like everyone else, Henville's mother dissolved into terror, clutching her infants and sobbing prayers that the foe might yet show mercy.
Henville shouted her name until, with a violent shake, he snapped her from paralysis.
"Mother, stop! Listen carefully—every word matters. I've filled the cellar beneath the old shed with supplies. We can stay hidden a full month. The enemy does not want to occupy; they want to raze and terrify. That's why no survivors were meant to escape. Their true aim is to sow panic in our armies and spark refugee tides that force the kingdom to split its forces. None of that matters now. What matters is they will not linger. Days, perhaps weeks—two months at the outside. Then they march on. I've also cached extra stores beneath the house. Even in the worst case, we endure. Tonight we move. You take the little ones. We leave by the back gate, follow the goat path to the cellar. Their horses cannot ride narrow trails; patrols will stick to roads. Stay low, stay quiet—we vanish."
His mother's voice trembled.
"And you? You're coming too?"
Henville shook his head.
"I must scout and watch the approaches. I'll signal when it's safe."
He slung his father's short bow across his shoulder and buckled on a dagger.
His mother pressed a fist to her mouth to stifle a wail.
"You're only a child!"
Henville flashed a fearless grin.
"Exactly—no soldier wastes arrows on a child. Besides, Sir Cookler trained me. I'm already a man. One day I'll be a knight."
He thrust a confident thumb skyward.
True or not, his mother had no choice.
Clutching the toddlers and a single satchel, she slipped out the rear door behind her son.
In the darkness Henville paused every dozen paces, owl-hooted the all-clear, then beckoned them onward.
An hour to cover half a mile; the cellar lay just ahead.
Suddenly the town erupted in orange firelight.
"Inside—now!"
Henville hissed.
His mother hesitated on the threshold.
"Come with us!"
"I have to sweep our trail. If they track footprints, we're finished."
He pressed a final instruction:"No signal, no opening the hatch. If I don't return, hunker down. I'll hide, then find you."
With that he vanished, dragging a pine bough to erase their prints.
Watching his small silhouette melt into the night, his mother felt the chill certainty that she might never see her eldest again.
Tears streamed unchecked down her cheeks.!