Fifty men of Balor's Fist, the God King's army, swept through their defenceless village like a storm.

Those who tried to fight back were cut down, easily outclassed by the soldiers who trained every day and killed for a living. 

A trio of them found Esra upon the grassy outlook. With nowhere to run, he fell to his knees and surrendered himself, shaking as he softly pleaded for mercy from the flint-eyed men who cornered him.

His terror seemed to amuse them, he realised with a slow-dawning horror. While they seemed to enjoy threatening it, they didn’t kill him.

The boats used to transport non-believers and other traitors of Fomoria were dragged ashore and torn apart for kindling massive bonfires. The smoke that billowed up from the flames sent a whooping cry of victory amongst the soldiers.

There had been three fae folk with them when Balor's Fist descended, hoping to join one of the small communities of their kind on the Continent. They were dead now, their slender bodies impaled on the stakes surrounding the village, along with others who had tried to escape Balor's justice, those deemed criminals and treasonous. Any villagers who fought to defend them lay dead on the ground, their blood mixing with the dirt.

Esra was escorted, an armored hand clenched around his upper arm, back to the center of a village that was quickly becoming foreign to him. He kept stumbling, his legs were like water beneath him, and the men holding him growled threats in his ear to keep him moving.

Balor’s soldiers paced lazily around the land Esra had grown up on, hungry for trouble. Their blood was still up despite their easy victory, Esra realised, shivering. They were looking for an outlet. He carefully avoided eye-contact, not wanting any more attention on him than he’d already experienced, but still he could feel their gaze on him.

But the ground wasn’t a safe place to look either. Esra had hesitated, but he was pushed to step over the littered corpses, and he desperately squinted his eyes near shut, too afraid of seeing a face he recognised. He’d vomit. He’d pass out. Then they’d kill him too, for being a terrified, useless nuisance.

He was breathing too heavily, he knew. He looked like prey.

The soldier led him to a small group of people who knelt fearfully on the ground, others like him who had been deemed harmless. Mostly women and children.

Another confirmation that Esra wasn’t like other men. Even strangers saw it.

“Stay,” growled the soldier, and shoved him down to join them. Esra fell to his knees on the hard dirt. He kept his eyes downcast, and tried not to cry.

All sounds seemed muted to him, his vision greyed. As a child, he’d dared climb a tall pine, egged on by Kian. A deceptive branch had snapped under his weight, and he’d dropped to hit his head, hard, on the dirt below. The disorientation, the paralysing animal fear… all of it was the same. A fear of dying that numbed him to most else.

Time passed, he did not know how much. He felt a gentle pressure on his shoulder from a fellow harmless prisoner.

“Esra…” whispered Hester, the barkeep’s wife. She was crouched next to him, her creased face white with fear, concern. Her usually neat greying hair was tumbling out of her coif. “Did they hurt you?”

Esra shook his head in response, then thought carefully. He wet his lips, and very quietly asked, “My father..?”

Hester’s too-long pause before answering told Esra everything. “They... took him. Once they’d cut down all those who fought back. They took him to the blacksmith’s hut. Him and a few others… I don’t know how they chose who to - who to...”

Esra looked over at the smithy. The chimney was smoking.

“Their leader is using it for interrogations.” Hester wrapped her thin arms around herself. “Balor’s Fist are being led by a knight of the Order--” she was abruptly cut off, her head whipped wildly to the side as she was backhanded by a soldier.

“No talking!” the man barked, spit flying.

Cowed, the group fell into complete silence. Hester’s cheek blossomed red. The soldier’s eyes dragged over them, his hand pointedly resting on the hilt of his sword. They all dipped their heads, and waited. After a few breathless seconds, the man was satisfied with their submission and resumed his patrol.

Esra exhaled shakily, and wiped his eyes.

A knight, he thought, mind racing. One of twenty who made up the Order of Balor, direct agents of the God King himself. The seabeast’s many roaming eyes. Esra had heard so many stories that it was hard to separate fact from fiction.

Everyone who passed through the village had a different story of the Order of Balor, and all, of course, swore to the veracity of their tale.

Esra had heard tales of black knights clad in magic armor that drank blood to subsist, who were immortal, unkillable (to which Esra had thought, then why wear the armor?). He’d heard that they could see in the dark, hear every sound from a mile around, and read your mind, your intentions. They looked for the guilty. They enforced Balor's justice. They were his eyes and ears, his most loyal servants.

And now, a knight of the Order was questioning his father. His proud, stern, father. A man who, in Balor’s view, was nothing more than a traitorous, treasonous, non-believer.

And Esra, weak and easily subdued, could do nothing but listen as screams started to come from what used to be the smithy.

* * *

The soldiers had clamped irons around their ankles and set them to work raiding their own supplies to feed their invaders. The chain between Esra’s feet was not so short as to prevent movement, but there was no running away.

“We’ll be taken to the nearest market city and sold,” said a young woman in a stilted voice.

Esra knew her as one of the runaway slaves who'd come to them, hopeful for a new life on the Continent. Her fear was not well hidden, a tremor of her limbs as she grabbed supplies.

“I’ve already a slave mark,” she stammered, eyes wild with fear, “so I’ll be getting a runaway brand. I’m going to be sold for a pittance to a monster. I know it already.”

Outside, the soldiers sat around the bonfires of the broken ships and drank all the barkeep’s ale, eyeing up their prisoners with increasingly lecherous scrutiny. Some of the bolder ones had already snuck off with their own helpless captive for muffled thudding cruelty behind trees and bushes.

One of the soldiers, who had been eyeing Esra for a while, downed the rest of his ale and threw his mug to the side. He approached with predatory swagger, and Esra quickly averted his eyes and tried to shrink into himself, tried to become small and invisible. Insignificant.

Esra had to stifle a gasp as he suddenly felt the grip of a strong hand on his slim arm, rough fingers skittering upon his skin. He could smell the soldier’s breath over him, hot and stinking of ale, as the brute leaned in with a cruel grin.

Esra wanted to scream, but he knew he could not. He must not.

Yet he was saved, somehow. Another soldier immediately came up and whispered something in that brutish man’s ear. As much as Esra strained to hear, he could only catch one phrase - “The knight…” and then, he was released again, as his would-be torturer pulled reluctantly away.

He was flooded with an immense relief, which was quickly followed by trepidation. He could not fathom why he had been spared, and what fate might await him instead.

Alongside the crackle of the bonfires and the lazy banter of the soldiers, an ebb and flow of wails and screams from what used to be the smithy made up the ambient background noise of the village. When the sounds of torture abruptly cut off, Esra’s gaze snapped up.

That's when he saw him.

Two soldiers came out down the steps first, splatters of blood on their plate armor, and stood to either side of the door. And then, moving with a sort of beast-like grace, descended a man that towered at least a head over anyone, his strength and authority obvious in the very line of his body.

The inhumanly tall knight was clad neck to toe in fearsome darkened steel, with a heavy cloak that draped from his broad shoulders to the ground. Instead of a sword, he carried a black scythe across his back, a weapon, and a mark of his office. A helm-like mask covered his eyes, followed the cut line of his cheekbones, and ended in a sharp point over his stern mouth, leaving very little of his expression to read. His face was clean-shaven, his strong jaw set fierce.

Without pausing, the black knight stalked to the cleared out town hall. Even the rowdiest soldiers fell silent at his imposing appearance, moving out of his way in a respectful wake.

He was followed closely by a finely armored soldier, who must’ve been the captain, and the other two soldiers who had also exited the smithy.

These two were looking around at the shambling survivors with a particular intent. One of them paused as his eyes alighted on Esra in recognition. He grabbed the trembling youth by the wrist.

“With me,” he ordered, and all but dragged Esra with them.

* * *

The soldier swung the door to the meeting hall open, and ushered Esra in.

“Something pretty, Sir Knight,” he drawled, holding Esra’s arm aloft like he was displaying him, “to serve us wine while we talk.”

A dark head turned to them. The tall knight, in his gleaming black armor, struck Esra as an incongruous figure in the humble village hall, eating up the dim space around him with his presence alone. Orange light from the crackling fire glinted off the darkened steel, and Esra thought he looked like some sort of mythical salamander, from the stories Kian used to tell him. A creature formed from flame.

“If you must.” Esra couldn’t tell if the knight was looking at him or not, behind that mask. He had a low, rumbling voice, with the crisp accent of city folk. “Remove the irons, so I don’t have to hear him rattle.”