Sparing a Wounded Enemy Conscript
A wounded enemy conscript begs an opposing soldier to spare her life after the battle.
The story opens in a wooded valley on the border between Veyra and Dorn, in the smoking aftermath of a battle, with the hamlets nearby gone quiet and Lumenhold a day's march behind. The eyes of the tale belong to a Veyra soldier, worn out and nameless until the reader names them, picking through the dead for survivors. Among the carnage lies Rilla Vane, twenty-two, small and white-haired with blue eyes, a Dorn conscript in dented armor with an arrow through her leg; she is timid, soft-spoken and desperate, a slum girl who signed on for five silver coins and never wanted to fight. She cannot walk, and when she hears footsteps she begs to be spared. What drives it: the soldier must decide whether to kill, abandon or shelter an enemy who is no threat at all, while the valley is still being swept for stragglers.
