“No! No, let go of me!” Sierra screamed as she was dragged by the wrist at run­ning pace throught the muddy streets.

“Let me go, Pietre! Let me go back!”

What­ever Pietre said in reply was lost some­where in the tor­rent of rain and artillery shells. Sierra dug her feet into the ground as best she could and shouted once more.

“Stop! Let me go!”

Pietre stopped and span around, lean­ing for­ward to put the tips of their noses only an inch or so apart. For the first time since they had started run­ning, she had a good look at her fiancé’s face. In three places includ­ing across his right eye, the skin was cut and drib­bling blood; his hair and eye­brows were singed and his left cheek burned. Sierra’s once fierce deter­mi­na­tion melted as she saw the mix of devo­tion and agony in his remain­ing eye that gazed deeply into hers, until she looked away from him.

Now that she thought about it, all the time they’d been run­ning and she’d been stub­born and scream­ing… All that time, every explo­sion, every piece of fly­ing shrap­nel — he’d always stood between it and her; shel­ter­ing her, pro­tect­ing her, being injured time and time again with­out even mak­ing a sound.

Sierra sighed, and looked him in the face again.

“Come on, you fool, run!”

“Right,” Pietre replied, and the two of them started run­ning again — side by side, this time, rather than one drag­ging the other.

Only once they had reached the top of the hill did they finally have the courage to turn and see what had become of the city they’d left behind. The whole dis­trict where their inn had been was ablaze. The cas­tle was a pile of smok­ing rub­ble, and this pat­tern of smoke and fire spread across every build­ing in sight; yet still the bom­bard­ment did not stop.

Pietre sat down deject­edly against a tree while Sierra lay with her head in his lap. Within a few min­utes they were fast asleep, too exhausted to resist.

The morn­ing dawned bright and clear, all signs of the night’s rain dis­ap­pear­ing quickly in the sun­shine. With­out look­ing back, Sierra and Pietre hefted their bags onto their shoul­ders and headed towards a new life far from that city, with deter­mined looks once more upon their faces.