Lowell was dragging him mercilessly forward until tears streamed down Payton's cheeks from the horrid ache of his broken ankle he was forced to use due to their increased pace.
"Lowell", he said pleadingly, trying to draw his pawns attention who descided to stubbornly ignore his words. Instead, Lowell yanked at Payton's arm, forcing him to almost run. Gritting his teeth, the boy complied, the searing pain from his ankle blinding him for a moment. Suddenly, he felt himself stumbling upon a piece of metal, losing his balance and collapsing on the ground, landing unfortunately on said cracked ankle. As the sensation of hot, scorching ache forced Payton to curl in agony, he muffled his cries with the back of his hand to quiet sobs.
Lowells face was grim as he knelt down beside the boy and threw him over his shoulder like a sack of grain. The world turned upside down, dark grey thunderclouds replaced with puddles of rain and blood on the ground. There was also the polished iron of Lowell's tasset, a piece of his ancient armor, obscuring Payton's view. However, there was no need to look for their pursuer as he could hear the splashing of puddles and squelching of the wet earth behind them.
The boy found himself trying to estimate how long it would take them to catch up. A few minutes? Maybe even less as Lowell's breath rattled with every gasp of air and his steps slowed, shuffling over the ground more than running.
The cold rain pattered on Payton's skin like small pinpricks, but he welcomed the sensation as it kept him feeling grounded, calming his racing heartbeat as he made his descision.
Pushing up with full force against Lowell, he made the exhausted man stop in his tracks and let the boy slide down his shoulder. The impact was rough, sending Payton tumbling to the ground.

„Com'on. Just a little bit further", Lowell urged, doubling over for another coughing fit. His hair and beard glistened from rain and sweat, the skin on his cheeks and forehead crimson red from exertion.

The pawn's amber eyes were glued at the horizon, moving franctically from one approaching knight in the distance to the next, reminding Payton of a cornered animal's eyes.

„No", he said quietly and Lowell's head snapped in his direction.
"No?"
"No. They saw us, we can't hide anymore."

„They dun' have horses. We can outrun them. Flee." There was urgency in Lowells voice, along with barely concealed desperation.
"Oh, don't be delusional, Lowell. We are not going to make it. At least not both", Payton said, struggling to keep his voice even and look untouched by his words. He was scared, so much so that his hands were shaking in his riding gloves and he hid them behind his back to spare his pawn the sight of his utter panic.

„What 'yah talking about?" The boy let out a hysterical laugh at the grown man build up above him, with his jaw clenched and arms crossed defiantly like a child about to throw a tantrum.
"This morning, you gave me a promise to-",

„No! No, fuck. Absolutely no." Payton looked at the big man with fondness and pity, wondering if this was the way Lowell usually got what he wanted, head through the wall, and if he knew how loss felt like, how it felt like to leave someone behind on the battlefield.

„This is not a question Lowell. This is a command", he said softly, taking in drawn-together eyebrows in fury and brown eyes glistening with sorrow for deep down, the pawn had grasped the hopelessness and was simply to stubborn to admit it.

"No, absolutely fucking not! I'm not fleeing and leaving a godsdamn rook behind. I'm not leaving you behind!", Lowell shouted, because whispering was needless now, with splashing steps advancing them.
"You will have to. As your general, I command you to run." How the youth wished to cry right now, to mourn that he would not see this thug that grew into a friend another day. Tears burned in his eyes, tears that pitied himself and the fate that would befall him, but he did not dare shed them. "Lowell, please", he whispered pleadingly.

„Fucking hell, no. You are comin' with me", the man said, but his face was contorted as if in pain and he made no attempt to lift the boy off the ground.

For a moment Payton just listened to the rain pattering incessantly, turning dry, cracked earth into a landscape of mud and red-stain puddles. His undergarments were soaked and clung to his skin, making him shiver not only from pain and exertion but the bone-chilling cold. But the cold was familiar, he knew how to cope with it, growing up in the North, growing up behind the cold stone walls of the Tower, and so he engulfed the feeling, letting it numb his fear and sorrow.

„Run", he said, putting all his strength into the command, and his voice carried it, unwavering and demanding. „Run, Lowell, save yourself. And never come back." And Lowell ran, he ran fast as the wind blowing on the field and did not look back even once.

Payton watched his friend disappear behind dry bushes and shrubs, swallowed by dry and burnt woods.

A small smile crept on his face as he heard running steps in immediate vicinity and suddenly, he was hit hard and shoved face first into the mud. A weight was pressed onto his back so suddenly that Payton was knocked out of his lungs and as he desperately gasped for air, mud and rainwater filled his mouth.
Coughing and gasping, he struggled, but the grip on his neck that pinned him to the ground was ironclad and the man who had thrown himself on top of him, forcing him into the wet dirt with all his body weight, was as heavy as three boys of Paton's ilk.

The man yelled out something and the words had a foreign and harsh ring to the boy's ears, unlike anything he knew from his own melodious language.
The sounds had not been directed at him, he understood, as a second pair of heavy boots came to a stop in front of him and Payton's arms were jerked painfully behind his back. Hastily they were tied down with rough rope until the boy couldn't even move his shoulders and the knots cut into his flesh, cutting off the blood supply until his fingers went cold and numb.

The man who had been restraining him eased off, panting heavily and kneeled beside him in the dirt, a horrible, acrid stench emanating from him.
Payton's perception was blurred, the blood pounding in his ears, the stabbing pain in his ribs leaving him half blind. What he could make out was a big, kneeling figure in a breastplate of leather, its chest rising and falling rapidly from the chase after the boy and his companion. Strangely enough, neither of the two men seemed to know what to do with him, for they did not move and only their heavy, pressed breathing could be heard.
Suddenly, one of them broke into a loud, raucous laugh, and the other joined in after a while, hesitantly.

When one of the men now began to speak, Payton forced himself to search his fogged mind for the meaning of the harsh-sounding words.

„We got him! We fucking got one!" Relief and joy filled the exclamation, yet there was unfathomable rage in that voice, the rage of a man who just now had watched a hundred of his own die. Payton trembled as he imagined what would befall him if this rage was aimed at him, and it certainly would be. But then, how could he blame this man when he himself longed to punish someone for the sacrifices that had been made so pointlessly today?
"Saw the other one leaving him behind. The lad can't walk. Do you think he's-?", the other said, the laughter subsiding in his voice, an anticipating seriousness humming in it.

It was hard enough to understand the words in a language he had not heard for years, yet even harder to guess the emotional intonation in those harsh sounds.
Though when the first answered, it was frighteningly easy to guess his intent, for the man rose with a sword in his hand, his fist clenched.

„One way finding it out, right?"

Payton writhed and squirmed in utter panic, crying in pain when he tried to put weight on his ankle in a desperate attempt to escape.
The moment the sword hung in the air over the knight's head, his eyes seemed to sparkle darkly and soulless with malice, like Payton had seen in paintings of frightening demons stealing angels' wings. Did the man have claws and teeth as sharp as daggers?
He knew he was halluzinating as the sword was swung at him, a streak of silvery white in the air, and the face of its wielder was distorted in a scream of anger and grief, making him look as human as it gets.

Payton closed his eyes in anticipation of the stroke reflexivly and didn't dare to open them when he felt the whip of wind as the sword sliced through the air. With his eyes shut the boy was overly aware of his other senses, the dull bump and clattering of metal that followed, had him wincing.