Chapter 167: Touch Me and the Girl
The Aindra camp had been set up in a relatively flat stretch of valley between the hills, close enough to the beastman nation's front lines to feel it.
Evening came in from all sides, staining the canvas of the tents a dull, flat grey.
The makeshift prisoner enclosure sat on the western edge of the camp: a few rows of temporary fencing knocked together from rough-cut wooden stakes and rope.
Several hundred beastman prisoners were crowded inside. Every so often a low groan came from somewhere in the mass of them, or the dull clank of chains.
The guards were stretched thin.
The adjutant had pulled everyone he could spare to the western side. Even the old cook had been slotted into the rotation.
Touch Me was the exception.
Lord Lucian had given him a different assignment. It had looked simple enough on the surface, but it had given him more trouble over the past few weeks than anything in the previous ten-odd years of his life.
Touch Me was sitting outside a small tent.
The tent flap was half-drawn. A thin strip of warm lamplight leaked through the gap.
He wasn't looking inside. But his ears hadn't stopped working.
There it was.
A faint rustling sound from inside the tent: something soft brushing against the felt of the groundsheet.
Then quieter footsteps. Bare feet pressing into the earth, barely making a sound.
Touch Me let out a quiet, resigned sigh.
Again.
The tent flap lifted by a hair, barely wide enough to fit a finger through.
A small hand slipped out through the gap and hung in the air for a moment, as though checking whether anyone was outside.
Touch Me pretended not to notice.
The hand withdrew.
A moment later, the flap lifted again, wider this time.
A small head poked through. Tangled golden hair fell across the forehead and covered most of the face.
A pair of large eyes darted quickly left and right through the curtain of hair. Then the whole small body slid through the gap like a fish through a net.
She wasn't wearing shoes.
Bare feet on broken stones and mud. Her toes curled, probably from the discomfort of something sharp underfoot, but she didn't make a sound.
The little girl moved in a low crouch toward the edge of the camp.
Her steps were small and careful, but her pace was surprisingly quick.
Touch Me stood and followed.
He kept it unhurried — almost leisurely. His boots made a faint sound on the ground with each step, but the girl didn't seem to notice at all. Every bit of her attention was fixed on the thickening dark ahead of her.
She was nearly at the perimeter.
Touch Me picked up his pace by two steps.
He bent down and reached out with one arm, catching her from behind with an easy scoop — the way you might pick up a small cat that had wandered off.
The girl's body went rigid for an instant, then she made a token effort at struggling before going still.
"It's cold out. Come on, back inside." Touch Me's voice came from above her head, carrying a note of mild resignation but no reproach.
The girl didn't resist. She let herself be carried, both small arms hanging at her sides, like a rag doll that had given up the fight.
Touch Me carried her back to the tent and set her down gently on the bedroll.
She curled up on the blanket, bare feet pressed together.
Touch Me sat down beside her and picked up a pair of small cloth shoes from nearby. He put them on her feet.
He had sewn them himself that afternoon, cutting them from scraps of old cloth. The stitching was crooked and the sizing was approximate at best, but they would at least protect her feet from the stones.
He looked at her, and his thoughts drifted back without meaning to.
To the first day she had been placed in his care.
The memory started from that evening, clear as something that had happened an hour ago.
Lord Lucian had called him over, and pressed into his arms a small, trembling shape wrapped in cloth, and told him to keep the child safe.
Then Lord Lucian had told him to take her to the rear and meet up with Sebas-sama, explaining that the environment in the village wasn't suitable for her.
As Touch Me turned to go with the girl, he felt the tiny body in his arms begin to shake harder.
He didn't know if it was the cold, or fear.
The whole way, Touch Me tried to get her to talk.
"What's your name?"
Nothing.
"Are you hungry? We'll have something to eat soon."
Silence.
She curled in his arms like a stone. Touch Me started to wonder if she couldn't speak yet.
That put him at a loss. He had looked after young children from the Aindra domain before, but those children could at least cry. They could at least make noise.
He kept walking.
The road wound between two hills, and the evening closed in around them.
Touch Me was keeping an eye on the surrounding terrain.
The moment he turned his head to check a patch of brush on the right side of the road —
His arms went suddenly empty.
The girl had wrenched herself free.
She was fast.
That small, thin body sprinted back the way they had come, moving like a startled rabbit. Her bare feet hit the broken stones and cracked mud with short, frantic steps. She nearly fell twice, but each time she caught herself at the last instant and kept going.
Touch Me stood there for one heartbeat, then went after her.
With his conditioning, running was no effort at all.
The girl couldn't sustain it. Her foot caught the edge of a small hollow in the road, and her whole body pitched forward.
Touch Me pushed his pace.
He reached her just before she hit the ground and steadied her.
The girl swayed on her feet, then lifted her head and looked at him.
Touch Me has never forgotten the look in those eyes.
Something lodged in his throat. He didn't mind being misread. What hurt was the thought of what this girl must have lived through to look at another person with that kind of fear behind her eyes.
He crouched down, bringing himself level with her.
The evening settled around them. Wind came through the gap between the hills, carrying the smell of earth and dry grass.
A long moment passed.
Touch Me reached out and gently took her hand.
It was a very small hand. The fingers were thin as twigs. Across the back of it were a few old cuts that had healed over into scabs, picked up somewhere, somehow.
"Stop running."
His voice came out slightly rough.
"I'm not going to hurt you."
The girl let Touch Me lead her back by the hand without pulling away.
By the time they reached the rear camp, it was fully dark.
Touch Me brought her food.
A bowl with stewed meat and bread.
He had cut the meat into small pieces and torn the bread apart and stirred it into the thick broth. Steam rose from the bowl.
He had done it on purpose, thinking she might have trouble with anything larger.
Touch Me held the wooden bowl out to her.
The girl stared at what was in the bowl without eating.
She was trying to work out whether what she was looking at was actually food.
In her understanding, food was slop. A grey-white paste, sour-smelling, thin as dirty water.
Sometimes a few wilted vegetable scraps would have sunk to the bottom of the bucket. Those had been the finest thing in the world.
She had never seen anything like what was in front of her. She wasn't sure it was really food at all.
But the smell kept reaching her — kept insisting, in a way she had no answer for, that this was something to eat, something she had never encountered before.