Zechs strode quickly through the trees, his new shadow close behind.

And so he seemed, very much like a shadow, following quietly, usually unresponsive.  Zechs had never met someone quite this silent and withdrawn.  Except, he added to himself, maybe me.

But he wasn’t naturally so.  He’d longed to join into the warm camaraderie the rest of the soldiers had felt as they trained.  He’d wanted to turn the acquaintances into friendships.  At eighteen, he didn’t hesitate to think of himself as a man, but somewhere there was a child inside him that didn’t want to be alone.

No one in his right mind could possibly want to be alone.

All of this led him to believe that this Noin boy had a secret.  Just as he did.

“It will be good to fight, at last,” he said, idly polishing the stone at the pommel of his sword.

The shadow stopped in his tracks.

“How can you say that?” Noin demanded in his quiet voice.

Zechs stopped as well, glancing back over his shoulder at him.  “I take it you don’t want to fight?”

The boy’s eyes narrowed.

“Why are you here, then?” Zechs asked impatiently.

“Because I believe in Lord Treize’s ideals.  Because I feel peace is something worth fighting for,” he explained, voice firm.

Zechs nodded in approval.  “Then why…”

“I’ll fight, because I have to,” he interrupted.  “But that doesn’t mean I’ll ever like it.  Or that it will ever be a good thing,” he concluded grimly.

Zechs felt his face go red.  Good Lord, when had he gotten so bloodthirsty?  His mind started turning, of it’s own accord, to his father, but Zechs couldn’t let himself think of that.  He couldn’t bare the shame…

“I’m sorry,” the dark-haired boy was saying, “I didn’t mean to be judgmental.  I’m not trying to force my convictions on you.”

“No,” Zechs said, interrupting the apology.  “You’re right.”

 

“I can hear them,” Noin said softly.

“So can I,” Zechs answered.  “You’d think,” he added, “that if you were planning to be a bandit, you’d learn to make less noise than a stampede of overfed dairy cows.”

Noin laughed, and Zechs, unreasonably pleased, grinned.  The kid was a kindred spirit, perhaps.

“You’d think that.  We can never really know.  That’s why they’re the bandits, and we’re just the unsuspecting travelers,” he pointed out without a trace of sarcasm, casually adjusting his grip on his strung bow to a more businesslike position.

Zechs cracked his knuckles and shook his sword loose in its scabbard.  “When do you suppose they’ll decide to show themselves?” he asked casually.

“Oh, I imagine we’ll hear them crashing through the underbrush soon…” Noin quipped, smiling.

This seemed as appropriate a cue as any for the bandits to reveal themselves.

A solidly built man with dark hair stood in their path, a curved blade, like a scimitar in his hand.  “State your business,” he demanded harshly.

“Friendly, huh?” Noin muttered, as he quickly drew an arrow and fitted it onto the string in one fluid movement.  Almost unconsciously they stood back to back, giving themselves a 360-degree range of vision.

“My friend and I are on our way to join up with the Imperial army,” Zechs told the man on the road.

“You scum,” he spat.  Seconds later, he was joined by the rest of his group.

It took Zechs a moment to realize that the weapon he carried was not a scimitar.

It was a sickle.

Another man carried a pitchfork, and yet another was armed with a hoe.

“They’re villagers,” Noin was muttering numbly.  “Simple villagers.”

“Who would like nothing better that to spill our blood with those farming implements,” Zechs pointed out.

“Zechs,” the boy said, using his name for the first time, “you can’t expect us to fight these people.  They’ve never hurt anyone.”

“That’s gonna change if we hang around here,” he countered.

“Damn.  If only we could tell them, without…”

“Without ruining their only chance for deliverance from their oppression?” he finished for him.  “Besides, you think they’d believe us?”  Telling random villagers that the Empire’s most distinguished officer was training troops for an overthrow would not be a good idea.

“Quit whispering!” the man with the hoe bellowed.  The villagers seemed at a loss with what to do with them.  They seemed hesitant to make the first move, as though they were waiting for something…

 

The boy in the tree tried to steady his trembling hand.  He could hit squirrels, so this would not be a problem.  Aiming along his arrow, he tried to decide which one to hit.  The tall one made a better target.  He was holding a sword, and looked pretty dangerous.  Besides, he couldn’t help feeling a certain sense of kinship to the dark-haired one with the bow.  So, the big blonde one it was…

His aim was good, but the dark-haired archer looked up at the familiar twang of a bowstring.  He gave his companion a shove, and stepped forward.

The boy in the tree heard the sound of the steel-tipped arrow piercing leaf-mail, a low cry, and saw the archer fall.  The swordsman turned, staring at horror at his comrade, and the puddle of blood forming around him.

The boy in the tree could only stare too.  It wasn’t like shooting squirrels.  He shakily half-climbed, half-fell from his branch, left his bow on the ground beside him, and ran.

 

Protect him as you would your own brother.  Even at the cost of your life.

Zechs stared numbly at where the slight boy lay, immobile, on the muddy road.  The arrow protruding from his shoulder had been meant for Zechs.  And he knew that.

He’d failed, he thought grimly, knocking the sickle from the hand of the villager with one deft turn of his blade.  He’d failed Lord Treize.  The other two came at him clumsily, and he aimed blows to shatter the wooden shafts of their makeshift weapons.  Now unarmed, the three fled back into the trees.

And he’d failed this poor kid who’d put his life on the line for him.

Zechs thrust his sword back into its sheath, and knelt beside the dark-haired boy on the road.

“Hey, Noin, hang on…  Can you stand?”  It wasn’t a mortal wound, but it was a nasty one.

“I don’t…I don’t know.  I can try,” he said in a voice thick with pain.

Zechs helped the boy to his feet, and he promptly passed out.

Well, the middle of the road was no place to tend his wounds, at any rate.  Zechs lifted his companion – the boy wasn’t any heavier than he looked – and headed into the woods, looking for a clearing to build a fire and set up a temporary camp.

“Put me down,” Noin’s voice said faintly.  He didn’t have the strength to struggle.  “I can walk.”

“No, you can’t,” Zechs told him.  “Unless you want to pass out again.”

In the shade of a huge pine tree lay a small clearing, and even the forest floor was free of underbrush and carpeted with dead needles.  Zechs lowered his companion to the ground.  First things first.

Villagers wouldn’t have barbed arrows, so it would be safe to remove the shaft.  Luckily, the boy was unconscious again.  Zechs gently eased the arrow from the wound, and hurried to unfasten the boy’s leaf-mail armor and stop the bleeding.  He unlaced Noin’s linen shirt, and, for a split second, forgot his haste.

She most certainly did have a secret.