Reed flexed his fists at his sides. He was this close to a panic attack.

There was literally nothing he would've liked better than to be elsewhere... But the City Guard had requested assistance in dealing with this situation.

As for the situation...

They stood on the road that ran alongside the river. Behind them, the water was still rising. The able-bodied Hannish were hurrying to gather the last of their belongings out of the water and mud, but the rain had come in quickly overnight, not giving them time to get out of the way before things got bad.

Reed had seen plenty of flash flood situations, but what was really triggering him was the abject destitution on display. That the city cared at all about collecting the dead was a shock. Reed suspected it was only because it was unsanitary to leave the corpses, not out of any kind of respect for the Hannish.

"We have ten missing," Vice-Captain Patrick announced to the squires and two knights who stood at attention in front of him. "I'll be splitting you into teams. Some will be on the water to retrieve corpses. The rest will be combing the shores. Who can swim?"

Reed raised his hand, along with only three others.

Patrick frowned at him. "Please don't lie."

"I ain't lying."

“Phil, you stay with Reed. Keep out of the water.”

His tenuous hold on his temper snapped. “Out of the water?” Reed demanded, his Southern drawl coming out as a dangerous growl. “And why would I need to be babysat, Vice-Captain?”

Vice-Captain Patrick Davis stiffened his upper lip. “I don’t want to be dragging your corpse out.”

"You want me to demonstrate?" Reed hated that he was dying on this hill, but he felt helpless and needed something more to do than comb the riverbank. "You need more than three people out in the water."

"You're to stay on the shore," Patrick insisted.

“With all due respect, Vice-Captain. Go fuck yourself.” Reed aggressively snapped his hand up to give Patrick the bird. Reed wasn't prepared for the gasps that rang out behind him. He'd been in Mythiric for five years now. In that time, he'd determined that Durs didn't know what the Hawaiian Peace Sign meant. However, he'd not dealt much with the Hannish, so their reaction was a surprise. Perhaps it was even more rude to them than it had ever been back on Earth.

Reed took advantage of the distraction and turned on his heel, slogging into the muddy water to grab one of the boats. He hopped in and started rowing out into the water before anyone could stop him.

Vice-Captain Patrick sighed and sorted out the other three squires and two knights. Xander was sent to watch Marx and Timmons on the shore. Phil joined Greene in one of the boats, and Avery got one of his own.

Once he was past the base of the bridge, Reed had to focus on fighting the current. He had already spotted the corpse of what looked like a child tangled in the brush at the center support of the bridge. Getting to it, Reed got his small boat wedged against the support and carefully leaned out to grab the stiff corpse.

He'd been right; it was a child. Dragging the corpse into his boat, Reed looked around for anything else he could reach.

Nudging the branches and detritus with his oar, Reed dislodged some, revealing another child's corpse.

Sickened and furious, Reed pulled that one out to drop on top of the first. This was the worst.

He broke apart more of the brush, but didn't find any more corpses before the current caught his boat and sent him under the bridge. Angling toward the shore, Reed got out, dragged it onto the bank, and climbed out. Xander was close by and helped pull the corpses out. Reed glanced at Lily Marx, who stood nearby, noting her pained expression. He didn't like that she was crying. She did it with a stony face, but he could tell by the way she blinked rapidly.

He hadn't known these people for long, but Lily Marx had one of those faces that he rather enjoyed looking at.

Looking at her was far better than looking at the dead children stiffly curled on the cobblestone street.

Grabbing his boat, Reed dragged it through the shallow water back upstream, his gaze now drifting toward Patrick. He'd been rude to a superior officer, but Sir Patrick Davis was a pushover.

That didn't mean Reed felt good about what he'd done. Didn't make it right... He wanted to be here. The Vice-Captain was standing with the older woman, who looked like she might have been in charge of the Hannish that camped on the riverbank. Reed guessed she might have been sixty. Her hair was salt-and-peppered, but her face was weathered by being outdoors.

The grandmother was staring at Reed in return. It was more eye contact than Reed was used to getting from Hannish. There hadn't been many in Molton. Certainly, there weren't many in Lockton either, but they were all concentrated in one place. The majority seemed to be away from the camp at the moment, though, leaving only a couple of ladies, the grandmother, and a dozen children under ten.

To Reed's further surprise, the old woman called out to him in Hannish. "What gives you the right to be rude to your Heksha?"

Reed didn't recognize the word, but assumed that it was Lieutenant or something.

"No business of yours," Reed said boldly to the woman in Durrish.

The old woman's face screwed. When she reached down for her chankla, Reed knew he'd fucked up. Grabbing his boat, he high-kneed through the water to get away.

Her flip-flop hit him in the back of the head with a solid Thwop!

"You disrespectful little brat!" the grandmother shouted after him.

"Sorry, Abuela!" he blurted in house Spanish. It was close to Hannish, but not close enough. The last time he'd tried speaking Spanish to a Han, he'd gotten stabbed. He'd answered that way out of habit, though. He'd not been hit with a chankla in over twenty-five years, but some habits just didn't die, and this was one of them. He got out of range of her other chankla and was back in his boat, rowing to check for corpses on the opposite bank.

This reincarnation kind of sucked in a lot of ways. He'd not been given mastery of any of the local languages. He'd had to learn Durrish from a bunch of kids when he first arrived. He understood Hannish but couldn't speak it. He'd been given a new body, but he was the minority race in a foreign land, second class by default, and still poor as dirt.

Reed had made the best of things by living in the woods for a while until he got caught by the Hunter's Guild. He'd joined them for a few years, then been entered into a squire competition. Upon winning, he was adopted by a local lord, given some schooling, and sent to the capital to join the knights.

Unfortunately, becoming a knight wasn't going to be as fun as he'd first thought. He was only doing it because he wanted the title. He knew that if it didn't pan out, he could quit and go back to being a Guildsman. Hunting monsters and keeping people safe out in the wilderness was something he was not only well prepared for, but also enjoyed.

Reed didn't get more than halfway across the river when he heard a call for help. He'd gone under the bridge again, carried there by the stiff current. Looking back, he spotted Avery frantically trying to keep his head above water.

Fighting the current, Reed angled back to intercept.

Avery hit the side of his boat, caught the edge, but went under again. His death grip flipped the boat and Reed into the water with it.

Moving fast, Reed caught Avery's sleeve and pulled him up to the surface.

Avery gasped and coughed as he got above the water and clutched Reed desperately as Reed kept a grip on the overturned boat.

He couldn't see past the boat whether anyone was coming to their rescue, but Reed assumed not.

Kicking to tread water, Avery managed to stop panicking and grabbed the side of the boat, too.

"Ready to flip it?" Reed asked him.

"Flip?"

"Yep. Push on three." Reed counted out, and they shoved the boat over. Reed slid up into it, then balanced to drag Avery in with him.

That was when Phil arrived, which was good, since Reed's oars were gone.

Avery sat with his head hanging in shame as Reed gripped the back of Phil's boat while the man paddled them all to shore.

Sir Davis was there to greet them, looking pale. "Avery, sit down and recover," he ordered. "Reed, you alright?"

"Just wet, Sir," Reed wrung his hair out. The only time it ever resembled tamed was when it was soaked, but that also made him look like a drowned rat. The grandmother was standing just on the other side of the low wall that separated the road from the flooded riverbank, clutching her chest and throat. As if she actually cared what happened to Reed.

Weird.

Hans always treated him weird. Reed didn't like it. He looked downstream. His oars were long gone. One boat was out of order now.

Lily, Xander, and Timmons were coming back with a couple bodies between them. More children, judging by the size. Reed looked down at the filthy water sloshing in the bottom of his boat instead, infuriated once more.

Why was it that no matter where he went, there was always shit like this? People pushed to the edge and forgotten until they died, and then they were inconvenient and had to be cleaned up. These kids hadn't gotten to start their lives, and they were already dead.

Admittedly, given their conditions, they would've likely starved to death soon anyway.

Phill bumped Reed's arm. "Pull the boat ashore and join mine," he said.

Reed nodded and did as told.