Just as LeBlanc was a small village, Elba was a small country and small countries have a way of getting preyed upon by bigger countries. In the end, if you're going to survive, you have to pick a bigger country that will prey on you on slightly better terms and hope that country is stronger than any of other countries that want to carve a slice out of you.

Elba chose to side with the Aurean Empire and be taken in as a protectorate rather than being named another tributary of Zadok in the north. A protectorate and a tributary is a distinction without a difference in the eyes of some, but none could deny that the yoke of the Aureans beat the yoke of Zadok any day of the week.

The Elban Army was disbanded when the Aureans claimed Elba as a protectorate and while the Militia wasn't functionally much different, there were still those who complained that Elban dignity suffered for it.

These weren't matters of much concern to young Tomasino Marisco—or Toma as he was more widely known—, who was sparring with padded spears with his friend Dino Almirante. Few took the drills seriously, but Toma and Dino were rather competitive types and any opportunity to pit one against the other spurred an earnest effort for one to emerge triumphant.

Narrowly dodging a thrust at his face, Toma said, "Hey, watch it. Padded or not, you could've knocked out some teeth if you hit me with that."

Toma took his spear and aimed low, swinging upward to catch Dino between the legs. He managed to block it before it connected, but just barely. There probably wasn't a single other trainee fast enough to do that.

Had it been anyone else, the hit would've landed, but Toma probably wouldn't have done it to anyone less capable of defending themselves. Not unless they happened to make him really angry, that is. Speaking of being angry, because he and Dino's rivalry was the friendly sort, Dino wasn't actually mad about the cheap shot. If anything, he seemed happy that 'Saint Toma' was so quick to fight dirty.

Normally, a regimental commandant would have little reason to visit a town as small as LeBlanc, but Captain Palazzo was born and raised there and was war buddies with the town prefect Sergeant Gambino, or 'Sergeant Benny' as most people in town called him. The Captain would make a point to drop in at least two or three times a year. This time just happened to coincide with the monthly drills. It was a privilege to have one of the top men in the Militia observing their training.

Because he was seen more as an uncle and a mentor than the regimental commandant, people were far more relaxed around him than the average low-ranking soldier would be when dealing with a superior officer.

The answer didn't come as quickly for Toma. He hadn't found a trade yet. He'd been doing odd jobs all over town for as long as he could remember to help support his mother. He really didn't know what to do with his life. The Militia seemed like a good opportunity, but he just didn't know.

He then said as much, telling the Captain, "I don't know."

Toma grinned wryly and asked, "Not the other way around?"

Dino laughed. "Not in a million years, buddy."

Captain Palazzo patted Toma on the shoulder, saying, "Well, you've still got a few years to make up your mind. If you ever want to talk about what a career in the Militia would mean or, more importantly, if you need some help convincing your mother, my door's always open."

The Captain laughed.

Captain Palazzo then clapped his hands and said, "Well, what do you say we do some marching and call it a day?"

Before he could call everyone to form up, the church bell started ringing. It wasn't the usual tolling for the hours, nor was it an alarm but rather more of a notification. It almost never happened, though.

Then there was the sound of a trumpet call as four riders came down the main road. They came to a stop in the town square. Aurean soldiers. Captain Palazzo promptly went to attention and saluted the leader of the riders. Toma didn't recognize Aurean insignia, but it didn't matter. Even the First Captain of the Militia was expected to salute any baby-faced son of a nobleman with his newly purchased commission.

The Aurean officer curtly returned the salute, then declared in a loud voice, "Citizens of LeBlanc, you are ordered to clear the main road. All traffic in town must be rerouted through side roads until sunset, at which point all citizens will be placed under curfew until dawn. Anyone found outside of their homes after dark will be placed under arrest!"

Mr. Oscarius, one of the assemblymen who was taking part in the Militia drills, looked to the Aurean officer and shouted back, "You there! What's the meaning of all this!?"

Mr. Oscarius was one of those big fish in a little pond types who didn't really appreciate where he stood in the grand scheme of things.

Another one of the riders, not an officer by the look of his uniform, took a more diplomatic tone, saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, please, we do not want to cause a disturbance. We ask your kindly cooperation for this brief inconvenience."

Captain Palazzo clapped his hands and told the trainees, "That does it for today. You all are dismissed. Go back to your homes. Make sure you let everyone know about the curfew. Sergeant Gambino, get your people together and spread the word. Give our guests from the Empire every assistance they require."

With quite a few of them muttering amongst themselves, the trainees dispersed, each to his own home, and the other townspeople hanging around cleared out of the square. Toma and Dino continued to stick together because they were going the same way.

While the appropriate response seemed to be "You think it out," Toma found himself trying to work out the situation.

After a few steps in silence, Dino popped up in front of Toma and asked, "Wanna see for yourself?"

They went their separate ways and Toma continued on to his house, which was near the edge of town. It was a simple little cottage, a bit run-down as they couldn't afford repairs and Toma couldn't do anything more than crude patch jobs. Maybe instead of the Militia he ought to take up carpentry.

That was two months ago and it had been three weeks since the last time it rained, but he did as she told him. She would be the one mending his socks if he wore holes in them.

He saw his mother in the living room just around the corner from the entryway. She was sitting in her chair busily sewing as usual. She had a sewing machine, but like so much else, it broke down and they didn't have the money to fix it. Of course, she couldn't get as much work done sewing by hand, so that meant even less money. Maybe he needed to become a tinker.

His mother repeated her question from before. "How were the drills?"

This caught his mother's interest.

Both Captain Palazzo and Sergeant Benny served with Toma's father and uncle during the war and they were all friends before that, having grown up together. Toma's mother refused to tell him any stories from when they were younger, insisting that he had to continue to respect the two of them as commander of the provincial Militia and town prefect. Toma often wondered about the sort of things they would've had to do to have a negative impact on his respect for them. He had occasionally heard some of the old ladies compare him and Dino to the Wild Dogs of LeBlanc. Maybe it had something to do with that.

His mother set down her sewing and stared off into the distance, looking graver than he had ever seen her before.

She blinked as if she had been snapped out of a trance, looked to Toma and smiled like she was a completely different person and said, "Would you mind stirring the stew, dear? I'd like to keep working while there's still daylight and I don't want it to scald."

Toma went to the kitchen, which was only a few paces from the living room, over to the stove, where the stew for supper was simmering in a well-worn tin pot. It was some sort of cream soup with what looked like bits of chicken scraps, mushrooms, and a few odd vegetables. He took the wooden spoon and stirred it a bit. It must've been a while since his mother last checked it because some of it was stuck to the bottom of the pot. So it goes.

There was still about a couple hours until sunset and nothing else to do, so Toma took an old pirate novel from the bookshelf and started to read it while sitting by the stove and periodically stirring the stew so no more of it would stick to the bottom of the pot.

The novel had been one of Toma's favorites ever since he was a kid. They didn't have many books, so he'd reread it dozens of times over the years. He liked to imagine himself as the main character, an honest seaman shanghaied into a pirate crew, going on adventures all over the world, rescuing a princess, becoming the captain of his own ship and in the end, the pirate king. Not that he'd ever do anything like that in real life.

Just as it was getting too dark to keep reading, the room brightened back up with a dull yellow light. His mother had just lit a candle on the dinner table.

Toma put his book back on the bookshelf, then went back to the sink in the kitchen to wash his hands. It took several pumps of the handle to get any water to come out. The well must have been going dry again. They could use another good rain, but he needed to fix the roof first.

The table was already set by the time he was done washing his hands. It wasn't much, just a bowl of the stew and a couple slices of bread, but he couldn't expect anything more. At least they weren't going to starve. Toma took one of the slices of bread and was about to dip it in the stew when his mother stopped him.

Toma set down the slice of bread, folded his hands and closed his eyes. His mother then prayed, "Dear Lord, we thank Thee for Thy blessings day by day and for the abundance of Thy bounty. May this food nourish and strengthen our bodies that we might persevere in our labors. This we pray in Thy holy Name. Amen."

It wasn't that Toma stopped believing but more that he felt that God was rather miserly in the bounty his mother spoke of. The bread they were eating was four days old and going stale. If they didn't dip it in the stew, it'd be nearly inedible. Some people got to enjoy fresh-baked bread every day. Maybe he needed to be a baker.

Here he was, thinking of this job and that when what he really needed was money. So long as he had the money for it, he could have a carpenter fix the roof, a tinker fix his mother's sewing machine, and a baker make him fresh bread every day. He had a shot at just that, but how would his mother take it? There was no way to know unless he brought it up.

His mother stopped eating.

There were times when his mother showed a disturbing knowledge of warfare, but that had to come from living through the last war, being the wife of a soldier, the sister and daughter of soldiers.

His mother set down her spoon and folded her hands while she quietly thought things over. Toma watched in awkward silence until she spoke.

Toma knew better than to ask what really happened to his father. Toma had no memory of him and in all the countless times he asked his mother over the years, she never gave him a straight answer. As near as he could tell, his father died during the war. What other explanation was there?

They didn't really talk much after that. When they were done eating, Toma put the dishes in the sink and headed to his room, saying, "I'm gonna turn in. I want to get an early start in the morning so I can take care of the roof before I have to go run errands for Granny Clemenza."

He was about to go on to his room when his mother cleared her throat at him. He turned to see her standing there with her head tilted to the side. He went back and gave her a kiss on the cheek like she was wanting.

With that, he went to his room, changed into his nightshirt and crawled into bed. The morning would be there before he knew it and another day of work to go with it.

For a young man in the bloom of adolescence, it's not always the head on your shoulders that does the thinking for you. As paltry as the enticement was compared to the risks, Toma was hooked. Dino was all too aware that he had won.

Dino held up a worn pair of boots and said, "I brought my dad's. Now hurry up before we miss her."

Toma quickly got dressed and then climbed out the window. He closed the shutter behind him but left it unlatched, not that he could latch it from the outside anyway. He then put on the boots Dino had for him. Dino's father had smaller feet than Toma, so the boots pinched his toes, but he wasn't going to be wearing the boots for long.

Even though Dino said there were no troops patrolling the streets, they stuck to the side paths and cut across people's yards to make their way to the square. They riled up a few dogs along the way, but some of those dogs would bark at a stray leaf falling from a tree, so they weren't too worried about drawing attention to themselves.

When they made it to the square, they saw four riders circling about and groups of two mounted and six dismounted troops at each of the four points where the main roads connected with the square. There were some riflemen on the rooftops and about twenty or thirty around city hall where the two fancy carriages Dino mentioned were parked.

Whatever motivation brought Toma this far, it wasn't enough to convince him to stay.

The more he looked at all the troops, the greater Toma's sense of dread.

Dino wasn't listening, though.

It actually wasn't the challenge to his courage but rather a concern for Dino that kept Toma from minding his better judgment. This would quickly prove to be a mistake.

Toma and Dino froze.

Slowly, awkwardly, the two boys raised their quaking hands as they turned to see one of the Aurean soldiers with his rifle pointed right at them.

Toma's legs were like jelly, but he somehow managed to stand up.

Toma glanced over at Dino and saw the growing wet spot in his pants. It was a wonder he hadn't done the same.

Unfazed by the sight, the soldier shouted, "Identify yourselves!"

The soldier turned his hawklike gaze to Toma, who then said, "Toma Marisco," in a choked voice barely above a whisper.

Toma didn't even want to think about what was going to happen next wen a new voice said, "Stand down, Corporal."

Another soldier approached, an officer by the looks of him. He didn't look nearly as severe as the Corporal. He didn't even have his weapon drawn.

The officer laughed at this.

The Corporal gave the officer an annoyed look but said nothing.

The officer laughed again.

The officer waved his hand dismissively.

It was hard to say which was worse, Dino's stammering or Toma practically squeaking his response.

No sooner had they turned to go back home, though, than an ear-piercing screech cut through the night air like an icy blade.

The first screech was joined by the sound of others, then a brilliant orange light shone in the east.

Other troops were shouting this and that, moving about like a hornet's nest that had been whipped up by a kid with a stick. The church bell started pealing the alert. Holding a pistol in one hand and a saber in the other, the officer gave one last moment's notice to Dino and Toma.

More orange lights appeared in all directions. More of that terrible screeching. Dragon Riders, the officer said. If it was Dragons, that meant fire. Toma thought about where the orange light first appeared. His home was that way.

He forgot all fear and uncertainty. He took hold of Dino's wrist and said, "Let's go!"

Beggaring all belief, Dino was looking down at himself and said, "I can't go like this!"

Toma didn't have time for this. Seeing a rain barrel in a nearby yard, he hopped the fence, scooped up some water in a watering can, then darted back to Dino and splashed him.

As they were running back toward Toma's house several of the Dragons swept past overhead, screeching as they went. Toma had never seen a Dragon before, but now wasn't the time to be impressed by it. The sound of gunfire from the square soon followed.

When he got to his house, his worst fears were realized. His house and several others nearby were engulfed in flames. Some of the neighbors were trying to get people together to put out the fires. Women and children were huddled in the roads crying as their homes burned.

Looking around frantically for any sight of his mother, Toma shouted for her. "Mom! Mom!"

Mr. Salvatore the stonemason seemed to have made himself the man in charge of the scene and he was shouting orders to anyone who would listen.

Toma ran up to him and asked, "Mr. Salvatore! Have you seen my mom?"

Only Toma didn't care about the whole town. He only cared about his mother. Foolishly, blindly, he rushed into his burning house.

Dino wasn't quick enough to grab him before he got inside.

He nearly choked from the heat and smoke right away. The roof was burning, but the flames hadn't spread to the floorboards yet. Toma covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve, taking it away only to shout for his mother again. He could barely see anything, hardly breathe. No sign of her in the living room or the kitchen. Not in the washroom. Not in her bedroom. The only place left was Toma's room. Not in there either. If she wasn't there, where was she?

The rafters groaned and gave way. Thinking quickly, Toma bolted out the window before the roof came down on his head. He hit the ground hard, but was too busy coughing and hacking from the smoke to notice. He dragged himself back to his feet and staggered away from the house.

As he made his way onto the street, Dino saw him and ran up to him.

Toma was too busy trying to breathe to answer him, or to point out the redundancy of his questions.

Lowering his voice, Dino then asked, "Did you find her?"

Toma shook his head. Where did she go? Was he just going to have to wait until everything settled down to find her? No, he couldn't wait that long and there was no telling how much worse things could get. He had to find her. Nothing else mattered.

Then something caught Toma's eye, the glint of light off some metal. He didn't know why he did it, but he went down the road to investigate. All the noise around him seemed to fade away as he got closer. It was near the east exit out of town. The charred bodies of several Aurean soldiers and their horses were scattered about, but it wasn't their armor or weapons that he noticed earlier. Closer to him was another body, bunt beyond recognition but clearly not a soldier. It was too small, like a woman. The arms were frozen in what appeared to be the woman's dying effort to shield herself from the flames. A silver wedding band was fused to one of her gnarled fingers. That was what he saw. Nearly all the adult women in town were married, so that didn't tell him anything, but then he noticed another gruesome detail. The feet were curiously left unburnt and the shoes... they were his mother's shoes. Before he could deny it, tell himself it was just some other woman with the same kind of shoes, he also saw the scar on her instep that she got as a girl. It was his mother.

He couldn't even begin to wonder why she was out here, caught up in the fight between the Aureans and the Dragon Riders. He wasn't thinking anything at all. He just felt empty.

He didn't even hear Dino ran up to him.

Toma didn't say anything. It didn't take Dino long to piece the situation together.

Toma probably would've stayed there dead to the world if he hadn't heard the screeching of the Dragons again. He turned toward the square and saw it, an Aurean rifle with fixed bayonet lying in the road. It must have flown out of the hands of its owner and escaped the Dragon's fire.

There was only one thought on his mind and it had nothing to do with the consequences. He went over to the rifle and picked it up, checking it for damage. It seemed intact and judging from the weight, it was loaded. It would do. He looked ahead to the fires rising from the square and with rifle in hand, charged headlong into the heart of the carnage.

Toma didn't care about anything else. Just one. If he could just get one of them...

When he reached the square, the buildings were in flames all around and the bodies of the Aurean soldiers were littered about all over the place. One of the fancy carriages was trying to make a break for it, but a Dragon swept in and knocked it onto its side. The panicked horses wildly thrashed about trying to break loose, doing more to injure themselves and each other than anything else. The soldier riding shotgun unsteadily got up to fire off a shot, but another Dragon swooped down and its rider shot him dead. A soldier who emerged from inside the carriage fared no better, getting shot before he could even squeeze the trigger.

Three of the Dragons touched down around the carriage and their riders dismounted. One of them went over and shot the driver of the carriage while another pointed his gun inside and shouted something. Three people came out of the carriage: an older man—not an Aurean by the looks of him—, a boy around Toma's age, and the girl Dino was talking about. She was as pretty as he said, but that was far from Toma's mind at the moment. One of the riders seemed to be the leader, judging from the silver gorget around his neck. The older man started to say something and was promptly shot between the eyes.

By this point, Toma was already running full-tilt at them. He was actually aiming for the leader, but trying to shoot while running was no guarantee of accuracy. His shot ended up getting one of the other riders instead. Riders perched on the rooftops opened fire on him, but if any of those shots hit him, he didn't notice.

As he charged screaming at the leader of the riders, the leader calmly turned and took aim with his pistol, only when he pulled the trigger, it clicked empty. He looked at his pistol and almost failed to react to Toma's bayonet thrust. He managed to deflect the bayonet by swinging his pistol, but rather than losing his balance, Toma followed the momentum and struck the rider in the face with the buttstock of his rifle. Only the grunt from the leader revealed that he was in fact a she.

Of course, that didn't matter in the slightest. Man, woman or Papa Noel, she and the other Dragon Riders were responsible for his mother's death and they all needed to die. However, seeing its master hit angered the leader's Dragon. It made a rumbling sound deep in its chest and an orange light began to glow from its throat.

The leader shouted to the Dragon, apparently trying to get it to stop. Meanwhile, the third rider took aim at Toma, but before he could shoot, a rock struck him square in the face. It was Dino.

Toma's head had cooled down a little by then and as much as he wanted to put more of the Dragon Riders into the ground, he had already fired off his one shot and they were terribly outnumbered. It was one thing to throw himself into harm's way, but he couldn't very well bring Dino along for the ride. Speaking of Dino, he'd somehow overcome his fear to showboat for the girl.

Taking her hand and kissing it like some gentleman out of the storybooks, he told her, "Let's get you outta here, m'lady."

There was the crack of a gunshot. Dino staggered back, tripping on his own feet and falling over. The girl screamed.

It was the rider Dino hit with a rock. Toma rushed at him. The rider fired off another shot, but it must have missed. Toma didn't. He thrust the bayonet into the rider's neck, then starting stabbing away in blind rage.

There was another shot, too loud to just be a pistol. The pavestones near Toma erupted in a spray of fragments. Toma turned to see the girl struggling with the leader of the riders, who had pulled out a blunderbuss to finish Toma off. The leader pushed the girl away, knocking her to the ground. She tossed the blunderbuss aside and drew a javelin from her saddle.

The question of whether Toma could get her with the bayonet before she got him with the javelin went unanswered as more shots rang out. They weren't from the Dragon Riders but from surviving Aurean troops pushing their way back into the square. The leader's Dragon moved to shield her and Toma realized now was the time to go.

It wouldn't have been in his nature to leave the girl anyway, but because she saved his life, he had all the more reason. He went over to her and offered his hand, asking her, "Can you stand? We have to go."

The girl accepted his hand and he helped her to her feet. He then went over to Dino. He was shot in the chest, but he wasn't dead yet. There was still hope.

As Toma slung Dino's arm around his neck, Dino was trying to say something, but no words were coming out of his mouth.

The boy from the carriage was frozen where he stood, but the girl took hold of his sleeve, telling him, "Come on!"

She managed to get him to move just as Toma was standing back up. He had to hope the firefight would keep the other riders too busy to take any shots at them until they were clear of the square. The north exit was closer, so that was where they headed, only he didn't get far before one of the mounts of the riders he killed stood to bar the way.

Even if Toma wasn't supporting Dino, his bayonet may as well have been a butter knife for all the good it would do against a Dragon. It really looked like he was about to suffer the same fate as his mother, but then a shot glanced off the Dragon's cheek and its attention was redirected to whoever shot at it. Toma didn't waste the opportunity he was given and the girl was right behind him, dragging her companion along with her.

By now the fires had spread through most of town. Not much chance of Doc Vittorio's office still being in one piece and even if it was, that nearsighted old man with shaky hands probably wouldn't be much help. Only the nearest town was over ten kilometers away. What was he going to do? First things first. Get out of town, away from all the fires and Dragons and shooting. The only problem was that getting out of town wasn't going to save them.

Waiting for them were foreign troops rounding up the townspeople fleeing the fires, shooting or bayonetting any who resisted. One of them saw Toma and shouted to a couple others, apparently to go after them. The two soldiers were shouting something, probably for them to halt, but he couldn't very well let himself get caught now.

He kept going. The soldiers shot and missed but kept coming. As one was charging with his bayonet, Toma turned to face him, tripped and fell, sending him and Dino to the ground. He still managed to get his rifle pointed at the soldier and because of the Aurean bayonet's greater reach, he caught the soldier in the stomach. The soldier gave Toma a bug-eyed stare, then slowly looked down at his stomach. His rifle slipped from his hands, but the eerie moment of silence between them was broken by the other soldier howling and making his own stab at Toma.

Out of sheer dumb luck, the other soldier's bayonet glanced off the muzzle of Toma's rifle. Toma then threw all his weight into tearing his rifle loose from the first soldier and slashed across the gut of the second. The second soldier shrieked in horror, desperately clutching at his belly to keep his entrails from spilling out.

Toma looked for any reinforcements, but the rest of the foreign troops seemed occupied at the moment. They needed to keep moving before more came after them. He turned to Dino to see how he was holding up after the fall, but he was already dead. Still numb from the loss of his mother, he didn't really feel anything. The only courtesy he could show his best friend was to close his eyes and fold his hands over his chest. He deserved better, but there was no time.

The boy and the girl had seen so many horrors that they just had this empty, haunted look in their eyes as they looked on. Maybe Toma looked the same way. Under other circumstances, he might have put the two dying soldiers out of their misery, but he left them in their death throes. He took the girl's wrist and led her away from the town and the foreign troops to God only knew where.