“You asked for this when the time came.”
Bramen’s voice, a low rumble, barely reached Velsia’s ears over the rising wind. He shifted the curved implement once, the crescent blade tracing a dark arc across the timber rafters, settling into a low, balanced crouch. Miksa, still sprawled by the door, whimpered and pressed both hands to her ribs. Blackened stains spread through the homespun weave of her skirt.
Then came the siren. Not the flat horn that signaled the end of a shift, but a brass howl rattling the windowpane in its lead frame. When the state blew that trumpet, it meant men with ledgers had stopped counting bushels and started checking off names.
Hobnailed boot heels crunched over frozen mud, closing fast. A rough shout cut through the whistle: “All squads into the northern spur! Root them out!”
Velsia stepped back against the hearth. Bramen’s back remained squarely between her and the entrance, his grip firm on the ash-wood snath. He was solid as an ox, but three dozen men with carbines did not care about broad shoulders.
“Bramen,” she began, her voice unusually small. “What exactly did I ask for?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, the front door gave way under an iron boot heel, cedar planks cracking down the center seam. A soldier in a slate-grey wool tunic jammed through the opening, bayonet collar rattling against his canvas webbing. Behind him, more shadows moved, weapons glinting.
“There!” the first thug roared, spotting Miksa on the floor. “The target! And the gravedigger!” He swung a weighted cudgel forward without looking past the threshold.
Bramen pivoted on his left heel. Steel whistled on a rising curve. The soldier’s truncheon clattered against the dry pine planks, followed an instant later by the dull drop of severed flesh. Miksa shrieked, scrambling backward as dark spray hit her apron.
Velsia stared, a strange detached feeling washing over her. The quiet man who boiled her turnips and darned her wool stockings had severed a neck like a dead sunflower stalk. Copper and bile flooded the small room, thick enough to coat her tongue.
Two more grey tunics crowded the entryway, bayonets leveled. “Take the big bastard down!” one yelled, scrambling over his comrade's boots.
The room dissolved into splintering timber and iron strikes. Bramen drove the blade point-first into a collarbone, leveraged the shaft against his hip, and threw the second man out into the yard like a bundle of threshing straw.
Velsia, still by the wall, found her legs moving before her brain caught up. A third guard dodged past the doorframe, brandishing a belt axe with an iron poll. “Grab the woman!”
He lunged with the blade cocked high. Velsia did not deliberate; her right palm slapped his forearm aside while her left fingers hooked around his thumb, wrenching the shaft free before his weight settled. She drove the blunt iron poll hard under his jaw, then brought the wedge down across his collar. The guard choked once and folded into the floorboards like an empty coat.
Velsia looked down at the haft in her grip. Her wrists did not ache. The grip felt balanced, almost familiar, as if her palms had worn down handles just like it through hundreds of repetitions. She wiped a smudge of soot from her sleeve, unsettled by how natural the murder had felt.
“Velsia! Get up, you useless lump!”
The shout came from outside, sharp and desperate. Velsia snapped her head around. Miksa was dragging her bleeding side through the clay outside, inching past the threshold. A rifleman raised his carbine toward her ribs, but Savelia Dorn came crashing around the corner of the woodshed, swinging a notched mattock two-handed into the side of his helmet.
The blow tore the leather strap away, sending the soldier sprawling into the dirt. Savelia seized Miksa by the collar, hauling her toward the ditch. “Get up, you idiot! Unless you want to manure the spring barley!”
Miksa scrambled on hands and knees, clawing through wet gravel while Savelia shoved her forward toward the tree line.
Outside, an overseer’s voice cut over the wind: “Torch the slopes! Burn the whole plot to ash!”
Flaring pitch sticks flew over the roofline, tumbling into the dry autumn straw piled against the outer shed. Fire caught the thatch with a hiss, racing up the eaves. Thick grey smoke poured through the shattered doorway, choking the air.
Velsia coughed, backing toward the rear window as heat pushed against her cheeks. Beneath her boots, however, the floor vibrated with a different frequency altogether. A low hum rose through the bedrock, shaking the loose floorboards. Between the raw pine slats, a sharp cerulean glare flared up from the pit where Bramen had hidden the cache. The strange ore was taking in the blaze, answering the surface flames with blinding, violent illumination.
The floorboards snapped upward in a thunderous rupture. A column of blinding blue force tore through the foundation, kicking the cabin rafters apart and lifting Velsia clean off her feet into the smoky night.