"Please, don't do this," her mother pleaded. "We should have followed Titus. We can still get away."

"Wait in the tent, Mother," Xenia said. "These men aren't used to having a fight on their hands. They're cowards at heart, you'll see. They will run."

Besides at this point, it was too late to run even if they left everything behind. The men on horseback appeared only a few minutes later, their silver helmets gleaming in the sun.

Though most of the arrows they shot flew straight and true, they did little because of the armor the men wore. Few penetrated and of those that did it wasn't in a vulnerable enough place to kill them.

The men crashed through the line of archers. Xenia didn't pay attention to who fell or which of the people she'd known all her life were being slashed down by the Slavs' iron blades. She focused only on doing all the damage that she could.

Though she wounded a lot of them with her wild slashing, she'd never forget the look of surprise that came from her first killing of a human being. She was sure the surprise was reflected back at him, but she didn't have time to feel, she pulled the blade out using her foot to hold the body down.

She was right. These men didn't want a fight. They wanted an easy mark though they ran away with a few spoils such as they were. Perhaps seeing that they had so little to take was just as much a reason for their running as the fact that that she and the others had refused to become victims.

She didn't have time to celebrate at the fleeing of their enemies because when she turned around she saw Lucius was one of the ones who had been taken down. She knew next to nothing about healing, but anyone could see that he was dying.

She rushed to his side. Her mother already held his head in her lap and sobbed with grief. He had only just turned sixteen.

"Lucius, we did it," Xenia said softly. "We won't see them again."

He looked back and forth between his mother and sister. He seemed to want to comfort them, but he was incapable of speaking as a trail of blood formed at the corner of his lips. He looked at her last and longest and managed a small smile before he died.

She didn't even realize at first that the horrible, blood-curdling scream was her own.

When she stopped, it was only a cold gaze that met hers. "Do you see the price of war now? You caused this. Lucius would have done anything you said. I begged you to run. Titus tried to get you to run, but you wouldn't listen. Are you happy how? Was it worth it?"

How could her mother know this wouldn't have happened anyway? This could have been all their fates. "I see that this can't be allowed to happen again. We need to mount a defense for the whole region. Protect the women and children."

She looked at her as if she were the monster. As if she had slain Lucius down herself. "Go. If you want to walk a path of blood, so be it, but you are not welcome here."

She looked around at her former supporters, but they had all turned on her from the cold looks they gave now that they had lost sons, brothers, fathers.

"Fine. Then I will go."

She didn't take anything with her but the clothes on her back as she walked away.

Her mother and the others might not want her help, but it wasn't going to stop her from helping, ensuring that this didn't happen again. She would make the countryside safe again and stop these invaders from taking whatever they pleased and whomever they pleased.

Night began to fall and so did a light sprinkle, but she came upon a building, a church. She went inside for shelter and to say a prayer for Lucius' soul.

"Father?" No one answered. The priest was either asleep in the back or out on business. It was probably just as well as her clothing and even her skin was still stained from the blood of battle. She would have been a shocking sight indeed.

Rumor was that this had once been a temple before it was converted to a church. It had belonged to Athena or maybe it was Ares. Considering she was preparing for a war maybe she should have been praying to one of them, she thought dryly.

She felt another presence almost immediately. Thinking it must have been the priest returning, she turned around. It was the furthest sight from a priest she could have imagined.

It was true he was dressed in black, but it was black leather, and there was no shirt underneath his vest. He was very attractive, and he knew it too, judging by the smoldering look he was sending her way.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"The answer to your prayer."