It was dark. She could see the outlines of some tall buildings, but the waning moon was too thin and covered by clouds to see much more than those vague, dark shapes. She didn’t know where they were—she rarely did—but she knew they were in Colchis and she knew they were hunting, and that’s all she really needed to know.

She followed behind her father as he led them along the hard stone ground, Agogos clutched to her shoulder with a thin rope wound about his leg so she could catch him if he decided to fly off before they were ready. Uncle Dasmo was back at camp because it was his turn to watch their belongings, but the rest of them crept through the streets together like a pack of ghosts. Aea’s usual dirty tunic was covered by one of her father’s bulky black chlamys, her epiblema traded for a large black rag wrapped around her head and face. She was barefoot to better hide the sounds of her footsteps. The rest of her family was similarly dressed to blend into the dark. From her chin to the top of her cheeks, she was covered in ash, as were her bare legs. The only color upon her was the bright blue of her eyes, and she was sure her father would have blotted those out if he could have.

Hektos was in the lead, his tall and masculine frame taking up all of her vision when she looked up at him to gauge if they were close to their destination. Above him, grey clouds like swaths of smoke drifted prettily across the night sky.

Suddenly, her father drew up short and held out his large hand. The five of them were between two buildings, squeezed together in such a way that two grown men could not walk abreast. A warm glow bled from the darkness of the main avenue beyond the alley, small at first, then steadily larger, allowing Aea to see the detailed architecture hugging the street for just a moment. Hektos flinched away from the light like a ghoul and flattened Aea to the wall. The torch bearers passed them completely, three in all, in a triangular formation, and three other shadowed figures followed behind them.

Once they were well and truly gone, Hektos turned his head and flicked his eyes between the five of them.
“Agolois.” Even when he whispered, it sounded like a growl. “You, Gatheron, and Kaia let fly from the front on my signal. I want those torches taken out before anything else. Cassero, Aea, with me.”

She bit back on a small frown, not that her father could see her anyway. It didn’t make sense that they were in this place and not waiting on a traveler like usual. There was an ease and safety in killing those foolish enough to wander into their territory, and they’d taken somebody just a week before. Aea and Kaia were in charge of minding supply, and so she knew that they weren’t low on anything. This seemed unnecessary. Certainly more risky. There was a better way to go about gathering excess, but to Hektos, everything was about liquid wealth. And Aea would be asking for a swift backhand if she simply refused to participate in his schemes. Oh well. They would succeed, or they would die, and tonight did not feel like her end.

She looked at the dark building across the street and suppressed a yawn. It was unusually late for her. While the others might enjoy staying up well past the rise of the moon, she enjoyed maintaining a regular sleep schedule. It’s not like there was much else to do besides stumble through the midnight forest, and she was no mad hermit to go keep company with trees.

“Go.” Hektos thrusted his chin at the three marksmen and Gatheron quietly led Agolois and Kaia deeper into the shadowed alley to go around and emerge far in front of their prey. When they rounded the corner, Hektos clicked his tongue and nudged Aea forward.

Cassero led the way and she followed him at a quick pace, her father trailing behind her. Truthfully, she thought nothing of what they were about to do. Hunting was as mundane of a chore as cooking or feeding Kelosi. She didn’t have to be told that it wasn’t normal to feel so detached from the sight of blood, she certainly didn’t think it was healthy to feel so apathetic when looking into the eyes of a dying man. But this was life, as it had always been, and there had never been a choice between slaughter and mercy. She either participated, or she was beaten, and it wasn’t so difficult to choose herself over others when the options were a life of ease and a life of misery.

Cassero made a swift turn behind two more buildings, Aea and Hektos darting behind him, the sounds of their swift bare feet absent from the air. They settled into the alley and once more, the illumination of the torches slowly got brighter and brighter as the procession got closer to the mouth of the alley. The torch-bearers passed the opening, then just as the other three almost disappeared completely from Aea’s sight, Hektos bent over her shoulder.

“Do not kill the girl.”

She wanted to ask him why, but she didn’t. Instead, she nodded.

“Give the signal.”

Wordlessly, she untied the rope from her raven’s leg and nudged him side-ways. He bristled and flapped his wings, taking off like an arrow high above her head. He cawed as he soared across the avenue and not a second later, the collective snap of three gutstrings rent the air. The steady illumination went askew and flickered, three men gasped and shouted and groaned. Cassero sprinted from the alley and Aea unsheathed two of the knives tied to her waist as she flew behind him.

She did not pay attention to what her uncle and father were doing, for theirs was a dynamic as known and trusted as any warrior between his platoon. Aea blew past the two guards who’d already unsheathed their swords. She could hear the wet, meaty sounds of a blade running through flesh.

Her father, once a lieutenant in the Colchian military, then an enforcer for a criminal collection, then a mercenary, and now a half-mad highwayman, was a monster. He liked hurting things, people most of all, and when he did not run his blade through someone and slake his thirst for an extended amount of time, he turned his fury on Aea.

Sometimes she only needed to be breathing and it would send him into a fit, but she’d learned to read his moods well enough that she could predict an outburst hours before it was upon her. Tonight, though, he would gorge himself on the lives he took, reveling in the pain he caused others, in the discord he caused within society, and he would be in a good mood for a time.

Hektos’s hallow chuckle was low, short, sounding almost like a grunt if one was not paying close attention. That is how she knew he was the one cutting through skin and muscle like cream, and not the other way around.

Aea slid easily past the men, their lives ended so abruptly that they had no time to look away from the unseen archers ahead and meet the monsters that haunted their steps from behind. One knife was swift to press underneath the girl’s chin, the tip of the other indenting beneath her ribcage.

“Don’t scream” Aea said, though she suspected the girl knew well enough not to. Aea’s voice carried no malice nor joy, only objective fact, as if she were speaking of the weather. It wasn’t personal, it was just survival. It was either the girl’s life, or it was Aea’s, and Aea was far from selfless.

The girl seemed to be the same size as she, but she was in fact an inch shorter and a great deal more slender. Aea could not pretend to know how old she was, but she did not seem that much older than herself. She wondered again why her father wanted the girl alive.

Suddenly, one of the supposedly slain men began to make a great racket. Cassero cursed and stepped over the fallen guard, hurrying to produce the rope and rag at his hip. While Aea held the girl at knife-point, he began to stuff her mouth with a rag and restrain her wrists. Meanwhile, Hektos thundered after the survivor, his red blade swiping through the air to cleave the man’s head from his shoulders.

The girl had cooperated well enough. Aside from a threat that they would regret stealing her away and biting Aea’s hand, she didn’t scream needlessly or flail around. It was all quite dignified, oddly enough. The girl was dressed well, and although Aea didn’t know a wealthy woman from a noble one, she knew that she could trust her father not to pick out anybody of true consequence—to do otherwise would surely be foolish, and her father was the wisest man in all of Greece.

Aea stepped away from the girl as Cassero tied her wrists together, and their three archers had already joined the group, the apprehension and need to hurry rolling through the group and spurring Cassero on quicker. They needed to go, but it would be foolish of her uncle to hurry to such a degree that he wouldn’t knot her up well.

After he was done, he wordlessly dropped to the girl’s feet to begin tying those together as well. Aea’s father had already disposed of the lone survivor of the girl’s entourage and was now directly behind her, a sword to her throat to keep her from moving while Cassero fished up with binding her ankles. Once the girl was secured, Hektos sheathed his sword, grabbed her about the legs, and slung her over his shoulder like a young lamb for sacrifice.

He didn’t have to say a word, he needed only cock his head toward the opposing alley they emerged from. Aea took her father’s cue and dashed into the darkness ahead of him, her cousin sprinting through the alley next to her own. The two of them came out around the same time, looking left and then right for any late-night strollers. There were none.

Aea whistled the clearing signal and when her kin emerged from the alley behind she and Kaia, they were off again. The girls stayed ahead of the group, smaller and quieter on their feet as they were. There were a couple of instances where it seemed as if somebody would stroll around a corner or pass them on a catty corner street, but Hermes was smiling on their late night adventure, for they made it out of the city without a hiccup. It was the long run home that Aea worried about.

Midas was not a large landmass, and there were only so many places to hide. Currently, they were camped near the high crags. It was unsuitable for casual traversing and even less suitable for living, which meant it was the perfect place to avoid detection.

It may have taken them an hour or so to get back to camp, maybe less, and that was with short breaks between their midnight flight. Aea’s father had worked up a sweat from carrying his cargo, and when they finally got to the thick pocket of rocks and trees they called home for the past two weeks, Hektos all but threw the girl upon the ground and wandered over to their large travel sack for a mouthful of wine.

Gatheron struck up the sleeping fire and Kelosi, who’d been laying by her cart, lifted her head long enough to glance at the new arrival before she dropped her head back into a relaxed position and closed her eyes.

Dasmo groaned and cracked his back, glancing at the girl whose face was now alight with the illumination of their campfire. When his eyes caught on her, he froze, then turned swiftly on Hektos.

“You idiot,” he growled, “are you trying to get us killed? That’s a fucking Drakos.”

Hektos’ eyes widened at his twin and he pivoted on his heel to stand toe-to-toe with Dasmo. “Good, then the ransom will be heftier, won’t it?”

Dasmo, only an inch or two shorter, wasn’t nearly as wide of shoulder. Gatheron popped a piece of straw into his mouth to chew on and coaxed Aea to him. Warily, she eyed the unfolding argument between her father and uncle, stepping wide around them. At least if they got into a fight, they’d make up later. She didn’t know what a Drakos was or how her uncle knew the girl was one, but the stress underneath Dasmo’s anger put her on edge.

Uncle Gatheron put a hand on Aea’s shoulder and flicked his eyes to the girl. “You sit here and watch her. The other three will be look outs. I’m taking the two of them to work this out.”

She nodded and when her uncle wandered away to go tell Kaia, Cassero, and Agolois where to go, she crossed the small clearing to stand next to the girl, her hands wrapped around two daggers strung to her hips.

Kaia, Cassero, and Agolois submerged themselves into the dark forest, Gatheron nudged Hektos and Dasmo in the opposite direction, and Aea was left with the girl. She didn’t think the girl would try anything funny, she was pretty indisposed at the moment.

Silence reigned over the camp for a moment, and although Aea wasn’t usually uncomfortable with the quiet, she’d never been left alone with a stranger before. They’d never tied somebody up and put them at camp before, either, and she didn’t get why they weren’t just killing her and taking her jewelry and clothes. But Hektos said not to, and there was a mention of a ransom, so she was clearly somebody important.

Aea didn’t know what to do with herself, and the silence she usually enjoyed was starting to become awkward, at least for her.
“Are you uh…” she looked at the girl, then at the fire, then back to the girl, “are you hungry?”

She didn’t know if people were supposed to feed hostages or not, but she had to say something and it was an innocuous enough query. Maybe it was the dregs of anxiety that Dasmo conjured. She trusted her father implicitly, but something had surely gone awry for her uncle to accuse his older twin of being an idiot and trying to get them killed.

The woman nodded her head and Aea moved wordlessly to find something to eat. Dinner had been devoured, so there weren’t really any leftovers, but they had dry rations and that would do.

Aea moved around their campfire and to Kelosi’s wagon, a small wooden construct with two wheels and two shafts, just big enough for a goat or a pony to pull. She flipped the worn brown blanket over, uncovering the goods within the wagon, and rummaged through the ration sack near the back.

She grabbed an apple and a few strips of dried rabbit. She hesitated before she covered the wagon again and quickly decided to grab a strip of cloth as well.

Once more, Aea rounded the campfire and arrived in front of the woman. She kneeled so that she was eye-level with the captive and laid the cloth in her own lap before depositing the snack onto the cloth. There were only two ways the woman could eat. One was that Aea could feed her, the other was that Aea could untie her hands. It was a fairly simple choice—Aea was not stupid enough to free a captive's hands.

Aea reached up and tugged the cloth from the woman’s mouth before she brought the apple to her lips first.