Somehow Emil had managed to hide a kitchen knife in his boot.

"I have a plan he whispered." And we leaned in to listen to what he had to say. It was a risky plan, full of things that could possibly go wrong, but it was our only plan.

"What happened to your sling Berwald?"

"Took it." I wondered how they managed to overlook a knife, but succeeded in finding the sling. But then again, Berwald gave of the feeling of being armed and dangerous, while Emil, especially with the cute little bird on his shoulder seemed rather innocent. Why that puffin was still here, was beyond me, I would have long since fled if I were him.

"So who's going to do it?"

That one was a tricky one. If one of those who had to share their bedroll had to do it, he might injure his partner, but if I was once again hugged by Ludwig, I couldn't do it either.

But I couldn't bring myself to use Ludwig as reason for me not to do it and tell Mathias that I had slept in the arms of someone else, an enemy above all, even though it was not of my own volition. And I hoped that Ludwig would avoid being close to me after the incident. Besides, I wanted to make good on the fact that I had been pretty much useless up until now, so I volunteered. We just had to hope that they wouldn't put me in a partner roll this time.

We didn't have infinite tries; there was no telling when we would meet up with the rest of the division.

Mathias of course tried to talk me out of it, arguing that he was stronger and more likely to be successful. But Emil had already given me the knife and I hastily stuck it in my belt. Of course our plan would very well be thwarted if they would tie us up like yesterday again.

I tried not to think of everything that could go wrong during the rest of the day. After our break we had once again be taken up by our respective watchdog and started walking again.

My feet still hurt from all the blisters, I hadn't had the chance to check on them, but I was sure that the flesh was all open and raw and probably oozing pus, but they were not the only body parts that hurt. My legs hurt in general from all the walking I wasn't used to. And my wrists were sore, the knots weren't that tight but the rubbing of the ropes was still enough to cause light abrasions.

Tino tried to make Smalltalk with the soldiers, but all he got were some incoherent grunts, if he got any answers at all and so he gave up. The rest of the day we walked in silence and with every inch that the sun neared the horizon, I could feel the knot in my stomach grow.

My resolve wavered with every stop I took; I had gotten in way over my head. And what would happen if I failed, would they kill us? They probably wouldn't kill Berwald and me, but maybe they would kill the others to punish us.

I took a deep breath, trying to calm down; it would be of no help if I were to panic. And I owed it to the others to at least try and get us out of here.

The sun sank lower and lower, and finally vanished behind the mountains in the West. We made camp at the edge of the forest this time, on a field of grass and leaves. We had not headed straight West, but kept south so we were now at the Southern edge of the forest, if we continued like this, the town would be north from us. Or that was what I pieced together from what little navigation talent I had.

This was when the fate of our escape plan would be decided. If they tied us up with our hands behind our backs, everything would have been in vain. I watched warily as Ludwig barked his orders and his subordinates quickly tied their respective pet to a tree and began setting up camp. They went at it more professional than we did, flattening out the ground, preparing a fireplace and laying out the bedrolls. My rope was still attached to Ludwig's belt, and I felt kind of exposed, standing in the midst of everything while doing nothing.

But then Ludwig tied me to a tree that was slightly away from the one the others sat beneath.

Seriously, what was it with all that special treatment?

Then one of the soldiers went off into the woods, carrying the crossbow with him, only to return later with a dead hare.

After the rabbit was cooked and eaten, we were once again stuffed in our bedroll, same combination as the last time. Only this time we were tied to trees, which meant, I didn't get a place near the fire. But this was all for the best.

Unfortunately Ludwig decided to once more lie next to me. This could be a problem.

Silence fell once more over the camp. Everyone was snuggled up in their individual sleeping arrangement, some less individual than others, only one unlucky bastard was awake and on watch duty. When Emil's observation from the night before was right, then the guards kept on looking out into the night, rather than into the camp. That was crucial for our plan.

So far Ludwig had made no move to cuddle with me, but it was still too early to assume that everyone was asleep. So I just lied there, counting the minutes until I was sure that it would be safe to begin.

I very carefully reached under my shirt, pulling out the knife and moving it awkwardly around until I was positive to cut rope and not skin. Then I started sawing. The rope was thick and I could only move so much, having to twist my wrist and hands to actually reach the hemp strands. Hearing Ludwig's faint breathing so close to me, didn't help at all to focus my concentration. And I slipped more than once, driving the blade through my own skin, I had to bite back the sounds of pain that threatened to emit. And of course the blood made my grip on the handle only more slippery, but mercifully after a torturous long time the rope eventually fell loose and I was free.

I took a moment to listen for anything unusual, but it seemed that no one had picked up on what I had been doing. I got ready to slip out of the bedroll when I suddenly heard a grunt. A warm body pressed against my back. And then with blood freezing horror I realized that hands tried to find their way into my bedroll, pushing the fabric down to my waist until they found skin.

An incoherent mumble near my ear and Ludwig's hot breath caressed my neck. Something hard pressed against my backside; I couldn't place what it was until I felt the hands under my shirt stroking over my belly and chest. Ludwig was hard, he was doubtless dreaming of that Gilbert again.

I lied still, not daring to move in fear he would wake up, but when his hands trailed down my body I had to move or else he would have touched the knife in my hands. I stretched my arm, so that the knife was as far ways as possible from Ludwig's reach and laid the knife down, being painfully aware of how exposed it was.

Ludwig rubbed against me and moaned in my ear, once again calling me Gilbert. I couldn't let this go any further, especially when I could feel Ludwig's hands sneaking into my pants. "Stop it." I hissed, "Gilbert doesn't want to have sex now!" Apparently this was all I could come up with, pathetic.

But to my surprise it seemed to work, for Ludwig retracted his hands, grumbling in disappointment and then returned back into deep sleep once more. Whoever Gilbert was, Ludwig seemed to listen to him, and for that I was more than thankful.

I climbed out of the bedroll, hastily folding the sheets and retrieving the knife. The camp was silent, and I searched for the form of the soldier on watch duty only to find his form slumped against a tree, fast asleep. If Ludwig knew of this…

I made my way over to the others and found Mathias sleeping soundly; the rest was more or less awake, blinking at me with tired eyes. There was not much time and so I peeled Berwald and Tino out of their bed and cut their rope. It was easier this time, because I could move my arms freely. The actual plan had been for me to threaten the soldier on night's watch and tie him up with the rope that had previously bound me, but since he was asleep there was not much need to do so. It was still a risk, he could wake up any second, but so could everyone else in this camp.

The moment they were free, both of them gathered as much things as possible, without making too much sound, Emil in the meantime had woken Mathias and I freed them too.

So far so good.

It would have been best if we could use the ropes to tie up the soldiers while they were asleep, but we'd figured that they would wake up in the process. So the best option was to run for it and either try to be as fast as possible and put as much distance as possible between us and them, or try to be as stealthy as possible and not leave any traces behind. Or we could just kill them in their sleep.

Obviously we weren't going to do that, so we opted at a combination of the first two options. First run until we were far away and then try to leave as few traces as possible. We moved as quiet as possible, grabbing our things and careful not to stumble over anything when we made our way to the tree line, as far away from the sleeping guard as possible.

Emil and Tino were the first to disappear into the shadows of the woods, Berwald quickly following behind. I noticed that Mathias had fallen back a little and turned around to see what delayed him, but my eyes were caught by the soldier on watch duty who had started to slightly stir. My heart skipped a beat when I realized that he was about to wake up. He would notice immediately that we were missing, the moment he would look into the camp. And then everything would have been in vain.

Mathias followed my panicked gaze and spotted the soldier, who just seemed to wake up at that instant. He reacted as quickly as lightning, dashing forward, bending down on the short distance to grab up a stone and smashing it over the guard's head with a sickening crunch that could be heard to where I was standing. My blood froze in shock, eyes darting over the sleeping forms of the other soldiers to the lifeless form of the man whose fall had been caught by Mathias who know carefully laid him down on the ground. Blood was gleaming in the moonlight, and I felt a sick feeling forming in my stomach.

That man was probably dead.

Mathias wide blue eyes met mine, the impact of what he had just done seemed to hit him only now. A low whistle from one of our friends ripped us out of our stupor and we scrambled to follow after them into the forests and as far away from there as possible. The first moments we tried to run as quietly as possible, but as soon as we were out of earshot we carelessly broke through the woods.

My mind was reeling while I was running; I couldn't get the image of the man's body suddenly getting limp out of my head. And that awful sound, when the stone had crushed his skull. But Mathias had to do it, hadn't he? If he wouldn't have done it, we would have been caught, and maybe even killed. Ludwig said as much, we would be punished if we acted up.

But there was no time to dwell on it, I had to focus on getting forward without stumbling, and that was hard enough with the darkness and the thick underbrush, even without my mind being absorbed in other things.

Mathias was close behind me, I could hear his breath and it filled my heart with pain that he had been forced to buy our freedom with the smashing of a human's head.

After we ran for what seemed to be an eternity, we finally slowed down when we reached a shallow stream that marked the southern edge of the forest. We would use the water to hide our tracks, while wading upstream. If they should follow us until here, they might figure out that we would head in that direction, because that was where we were going before they caught us, but we figured as long as we made sure not to betray the spot where we left the water, we would be safe.

I needed help with my boots, my hands were full of dried blood and gripping something hurt too much from the cuts I had acquired earlier. One cut was even more serious than I first had thought, it went across the palm of my left hand and seemed to be pretty deep. Berwald quickly wrapped some bandages he had with him in his bag around my hands, but there was nothing more he could do at the moment. I was not the only one whose feet were in a horrible state. My feet were covered in blisters and even my blisters had blisters. So together with my butchered hands, I was pretty useless at the moment.

But I grit my teeth and stepped into the ice cold water after the others, and the freezing temperature made my feet go numb in no time, so at least they didn't hurt anymore. But that also meant that I had no feeling in them and holding my balance on the slippery surface proved to be tricky. I just hoped that I wouldn't step on a sharp stone and slice open my feet.

So we stalked awkwardly through the night, teeth rattling and shivering from the cold. Mathias carried my things again, he seemed to have calmed down from his earlier shock, but sometimes I caught him throwing backward glances with eyes that looked almost dead. I wished I could talk to him, but I doubted that I could articulate past my rattling teeth.

The sun was still far from rising, when the first one stumbled and splashed into the water. It was Tino, one moment he was walking, the next his legs slipped away under him and he fell onto his knees, luckily he caught his fall with his hands so he didn't get wet completely. But it would only be a question of time until the next fell, so we decided to get out of the water.

The stream was bordered with forest floor on the western side and with grass on the eastern. We needed to go east, and hopefully our feet wouldn't leave any footprints in the grass as they would do in the earth. We still treaded carefully, trying to put as less weight into our steps as possible, but that was difficult with our feet being numb from the cold.

We walked bare feet until we reached a place where the grass was so short that we could sit down without leaving obvious spots of flattened grass. The floor was cold and so we hurried and put our boots back on, Mathias helping me again. But it was still a painful affair, our feet stung like hell when the feeling finally returned. But that at least meant that we didn't get serious frost bite.

But from this on things went bad. Tinos legs had been soaked up to his thighs so he had to change. Luckily he had thought of bringing spare clothes. But his skin was still clammy and his cold feet and the lack of sleep didn't help at all. And then it started raining.

Tino was coughing by the end of the night and when we finally dared to set up a small hidden camp around noon under an overhang of the steep side of a hill Emil found by lucky chance, he was feverish. I couldn't be of much help as the other three arranged everything, so I sat awkwardly beside Tino and patted his head with the back of my hand. His eyes were closed and his forehead burned red and shone with sweat.

Berwald had tugged him into their bedroll, but I could still feel him shiver through the fabric. I pointed it out to Berwald as soon as they were finished with preparing the rest of the camp and he just nodded quietly and pulled Tino onto his lap.

It was still broad daylight, but we needed our rest nonetheless. It would maybe even be better if we walked at night from now on. We then ate a silent meal, only interrupted by Tino who occasionally would moan and thrash in his sleep.

I would have taken the first watch then, but I was unanimously overruled and forced into a bedroll by Mathias. Aside from my damaged hands I had also started to slightly cough, nothing big, probably only a cold, but it still got Mathias worried. So Emil took over the first watch and wandered outside to search for a nice spot to sit with his puffin being enthroned on his shoulders as usual. Berwald crawled in with Tino to provide additional warmth and Mathias slid into mine.

I noticed only then how tired I really was, up until now the thrill of our escape had kept me awake. I could feel myself drift into sleep, when Mathias voice broke through my hazy mind. "He's dead, isn't he?" I didn't need to ask to know who he was referring to.

"Most likely." I said, unwanted images of the stones meeting heads drifting before my inner eye. "I had to do it, hadn't I?" Mathias sounded lost, his voice barely audible and I could feel his hands tugging aimlessly at my shirt. Maybe there had been another way, maybe Mathias didn't have to hit so hard. But his actions undoubtedly saved us from detection.

"We didn't have to flee, you know?" Mathias said before I could reassure him. "They weren't going to kill us; they just wanted to exchange us for money." Suddenly I felt cold inside.

"You don't know that." I whispered, desperate to quell the fears that arose in Mathias. "But I killed him." He continued as if he hadn't heard me. "I didn't have to, but I did."

"No!" I whispered, unexpectedly furious. "We had to flee, this was our only chance! And you had to stop that man, or else they would have stopped us, so you did the right thing." I had grabbed Mathias shirt during my outburst, ignoring the pain that that caused. I didn't care if Berwald would hear us, I only wanted Mathias to be his old self, cheerful and without a care in the world.

"You're right." He mumbled, I could hear the sleep that was taking him over, and felt incredibly relieved. "You're always right, that is why I love you." I could feel his lips in my hair, his arms were now slung around me, holding me firm and safe and finally the grasp of my hands relaxed and I allowed the pain in my hands to dull into a distant throbbing until I too fell asleep.

...