Eight Years Later
1227 Words
Arrows cut through the morning fog. John Duncan — eight years old, though his mind carried the memory of a grown man — dove behind a wooden cart as the first arrow splintered the ground where he'd been standing.
"Down!" Mei shouted, pulling a young girl behind the same cart. Villagers scattered in every direction, screaming, as a group of armed riders tore through the market square on horseback.
John peered around the cart's edge. Six riders. Swords drawn, not arrows — the arrows had come from a seventh rider positioned on the ridge above the village, covering the others.
"Bandits," Mei said, drawing a short blade from her belt. "They hit the eastern farms last month. Now they're here."
John's hands shook, but not from fear. His body was still eight years old, still weak, still slow. His instincts — the ones carried over from his first life — screamed at him to move, to fight, to protect. His muscles couldn't keep up with his mind.
One rider spotted them and turned his horse toward the cart.
Mei stepped in front of John without hesitation, blade raised. The rider swung down from his horse and struck first. Mei blocked it, but the impact sent her stumbling backward into the cart.
The rider raised his sword again.
John grabbed a kitchen knife lying in the dirt — dropped by a fleeing vendor — and drove it into the back of the rider's knee before the man could finish his swing.
The rider screamed and dropped, clutching his leg. John didn't stop. He drove the knife again, this time into the man's side, using every ounce of technique his old memories still carried, even trapped in a child's weak arms.
The rider went still.
Mei stared at John, breathing hard, blood on her hands from where the sword had grazed her forearm. She looked at the knife in John's grip, then at the dead man on the ground, then back at John's face — calm, focused, nothing like an eight-year-old should look after killing someone for the first time.
"Where did you learn that?" she asked.
John didn't answer. He didn't know how to explain it, and now wasn't the time.
More riders were closing in.
Mei grabbed John's arm and pulled him through a gap between two stalls, cutting toward the village's northern edge where the tree line offered cover. Behind them, villagers were fighting back with farm tools, buying time but losing ground fast.
They reached the treeline just as three riders broke off from the main group to chase them down.
"Split up," Mei said. "Circle back through the creek bed. I'll lead them away."
"No," John said. "You're hurt. I'm not leaving you."
Mei looked at him, surprised again — not by his skill this time, but by the certainty in his voice. Whatever this boy carried inside him, it wasn't just fighting instinct. It was loyalty that ran deeper than his years should allow.
"Fine," she said. "Stay close. Don't stop moving."
They ran through the trees, branches snapping under their feet, the sound of hooves closing in behind them. Mei's arm was slowing her down, blood soaking through her sleeve.
John spotted a narrow gap between two boulders ahead — too narrow for a horse to pass through.
"There," he said, pointing.
They squeezed through just as the lead rider reached the boulders, forced to dismount and follow on foot. John used the delay, grabbing a heavy branch off the ground and swinging it hard into the man's shin the moment he cleared the gap.
The rider dropped to one knee. Mei finished him with her blade.
Two riders left. Both dismounted now, moving cautiously through the trees, aware they were dealing with more than an easy kill.
"They're not ordinary bandits," Mei muttered, pressing her back against a boulder, breathing hard. "Ordinary bandits don't hit a village this small. Someone paid them to come here."
John's mind sharpened at that. "Paid them for what?"
Mei didn't answer immediately. Her eyes moved to his back, where the faint mark beneath his shirt sometimes glowed when his heart rate spiked — like it was doing right now.
"For you," she said quietly. "I think they're here for you."
The two remaining riders found them minutes later. Mei fought the first one directly, trading blows despite her injured arm, buying John time to circle around behind the second.
John crept low through the underbrush, staying out of sight, watching the second rider's stance. The man was scanning the trees, sword ready, clearly expecting an ambush from an adult — not a child.
That mistake cost him.
John came out of the brush low and fast, driving the kitchen knife into the back of the man's leg exactly like before. The rider dropped, and Mei finished the fight against her own opponent seconds later, disarming him and putting a blade to his throat.
"Who sent you?" Mei demanded.
The surviving rider laughed through gritted teeth. "You think I'm the only one who knows where you are now? There are three more teams combing this region. Someone wants that mark, and they're not stopping until they find the kid wearing it."
"Who?" Mei pressed, blade digging deeper.
The rider's laugh turned into a cough. "Ask your old friends. The ones you used to work for."
Mei's face went pale.
"You know exactly who I mean," the rider said, blood trickling from his mouth. "The Duncan Sword Clan doesn't forget a debt. And you owe them one."
Mei's grip on the blade tightened, but her hand was shaking now — not from exhaustion, but from something closer to fear.
"That's not possible," she said, more to herself than to him. "The Duncan Clan doesn't know he exists."
"Don't they?" the rider said, smiling despite the blood on his teeth. "Or maybe they've known from the beginning. Maybe you were never as hidden as you thought."
Mei's expression hardened, and she knocked the man unconscious before he could say anything else, cutting the conversation short.
John stood a few feet away, gripping the bloody knife in his small hand, processing everything he'd just heard. The Duncan Sword Clan. His own former clan — the same family who had murdered him in his past life.
They were the ones hunting him now, in this new life too.
"Mei," John said slowly, "who exactly did you used to work for?"
Mei didn't answer at first. She wiped her blade clean on the unconscious rider's sleeve, avoiding John's eyes.
"That's a conversation for later," she said. "Right now, we need to move. If there are three more teams out there, this village isn't safe anymore. Neither are we."
She helped John to his feet, and they started back toward the village, moving fast through the trees.
Behind them, unnoticed by either of them, the unconscious rider's eyes slowly opened. He reached into his coat with a shaking hand and pulled out a small signal flare, striking it against a rock.
Red smoke rose into the morning sky above the treeline — a signal visible for miles in every direction.
By the time John and Mei reached the village edge, three more groups of riders were already turning their horses toward the rising smoke, closing in from three separate directions at once.
- Writer
