It was one of the raiders. His hand was cold when he pushed her forehead back to examine her. His grimy fingers lifted her lip to check her teeth, then he pulled off the tunic she still wore, though it had been ripped in many places and barely clung to her frame. She shivered in the sudden cold. He was a tall man, and stocky. He looked her up and down, seemingly satisfied by her appearance. His dirty mouth turned up at the corners, and the girl’s stomach churned with a dreadful fear.

It wasn’t a man at all, but a demon from childhood nightmares.

Fangs hung over his lip, and his gums were stained red with blood. His skin was pale and bloodless, but the eyes were like two black pits, reflecting her own panic back to her as she trembled before him.

A high keening sound came from her throat. In the back of her mind, she saw her son’s eyes, wide in the moonlight, glassy with tears as he reached for her. Would someone find him? When she didn’t return, would First Wife send another to check? Perhaps, the baby would crawl toward the pens where he played, and someone from the village would take him.

Probably, he was dead. At least he had been spared whatever horrors this demon would inflict on her.

The monster barked out some words she didn’t recognize, and slapped the girl’s face until she quieted her cries. Then he grunted and reached for something in a pile behind her. It was another tunic, which he pulled over her head, snapping the bindings on her wrists with two fingers. He was inhumanly strong. The girl wondered how easily he could snap her bones. He pushed the hair back from her face and tugged on her arm until she stumbled after him.

As she walked through the camp, the girl wondered what she had done to deserve this fate. Perhaps, she had been too happy once. Perhaps she had tempted the gods, as her mother had warned her. The gentle man who once met her eyes had died. The girl child had died. The boy would die too, if he was not dead already. Surely, it would be better to die before Fate caught her in some other net.

She was not afraid of death.

They passed two raiders, standing around a fire. They eyed her with blatant glee, but she ignored them, staring at the red flames that tossed sparks into the night air.

Fire was too uncertain. People fell into cooking fires all the time, but they didn’t die unless the wound became angry and swollen. Then, a fever might take them. She needed something more than fire.

Perhaps they were near cliffs or a river. Either one would be a more certain way to die. And the girl knew she would rather die than exist for whatever purpose the demon chose for her. She did not know her child’s fate, but she knew her own. Life was short and brutal for those who lived on the plains, and she’d lived longer than many.

She burned with the need to find a quick death.

The raider pulled her past some tents. They were thick and heavy, low to the ground, with no flaps to let in light. She saw no cooking fires and no women or children. The camp reeked of blood and spoiled meat. Filthy rags hung over the backs of the tents; some of them seemed to be washed, but only a few.

As they approached the largest fire, the monster turned to her and slapped her cheek again. The girl didn’t make a sound. Her mind was occupied with how she might kill herself as quickly as possible. Perhaps if she angered the creature—

“Tshhh,” he hissed, putting his finger over her mouth. He wanted her to be silent. He lifted a brow, looking at her as if she was dumb livestock, then he said it again. “Tsh.”

She gave him no response, purposely making her eyes as dead as possible. He scowled at her, but the girl didn’t care. Then he turned and continued walking toward the large fire in the middle of the tents.

The camp was not large, she saw no more than a dozen tents. There were no houses like the mud and thatch roof huts her people had built by the river, but a few of the tents were larger and sat higher off the ground. She saw a grouping of ponies near the largest tent. The animals were decorated with bright cloth saddles and beads in their manes. The girl had only ever seen ponies from a distance and had always wondered how the nomads rode them. But the one who had grabbed her had come from the sky.

Perhaps these monsters also rode some monstrous birds, as well as the four-footed, stomping beasts.

Her captor had hooked an arm around her neck as they walked. A few men parted before him. She saw two more raiders nodding at him with respect. Whatever he was, the demon that held her was a being of some importance.

The girl ignored all of them, until she saw a metal blade at the waist of a man nearby. It was not unlike the scooped stone knives she’d used to clean animal hides with her mother. Her hands were no longer bound. She watched as the knife came closer. Her fingers trembled.

As she passed the man, her hand darted out, yanking the knife from his waist as she twisted her thin frame from under her captor’s arm. There were a few wretched laughs around her as some of them noticed.

Before the monster could grab her again, she fell to her knees, bringing the sharp edge of the blade up to her throat and pressing in. She felt it bite, and her mouth spread into a relieved smile, but before she could drag the knife deeper, her hand was yanked back and the snickers turned into roars of laughter around her.

Her captor knocked her to the ground with a cuff to her temple, but the girl didn’t go down quietly. She screamed and clawed to her hands and knees, scrambling toward the knife that had fallen into the dirt. Her captor kicked her stomach, but she kept going. Her only thought was the sweet relief of death that waited on the edge of the bronze blade.

He yanked her up by the hair, and the knife fell from her fingers. Her dark eyes followed it down to the dirt where it landed, blade dug into the earth, out of her reach as he lifted her up by the neck. Then he tossed her toward the fire with inhuman strength as the men around him laughed and hooted.