The Testament of Lukar

Chapter Six

That night, sleep eluded Lukar as he lay on his rough cot, staring at the uneven wooden beams above. A subtle shuffling sound caught his attention, and he noticed Petro preparing to leave. Confused, Lukar questioned Petro's destination, but Petro silenced him with a finger to his lips, signaling him to join. Lukar, slipping on his coat and shoes, followed Petro into the night.

"It was me," Petro confessed once they were at a safe distance.

"You, what?" Lukar asked, bewildered.

"I told Jarin about the wire. I never instructed him to escape; I merely mentioned that the faulty wire needed replacing while we scouted for a place to clear. I never intended for him to run," Petro admitted.

Lukar remained silent, absorbing Petro's revelation. "That's not your fault. But where are we going?"

Petro led Lukar in silence, navigating past the sleeping overseers until they discovered Jarin and another man confined in a small cage. Petro gently rattled the cage, motioning for silence, and began tending to their wounds. Lukar followed suit, assisting Jarin and offering him water.

"Why did you do this, Jarin? You could have been killed!" Petro scolded in a hushed tone.

Jarin, his eyes reflecting the dim light as Petro tended to his wounds, whispered, "I don't belong here. I was never meant to be a slave. Why won't they kill me?" Lukar, carefully listening as he assisted in feeding the men and cleaning their wounds, couldn't help but absorb the weight of Jarin's words. The night held the hushed confessions of those who longed for freedom, their voices echoing in the darkness of captivity.

Jarin gazed at Lukar, a mixture of pity and confusion in his eyes. "What crime could a boy possibly have committed to end up a slave?" Lukar furrowed his brow, genuinely perplexed. He explained that he hadn't committed any crime. Recounting the horrifying tale of his home being raided by monstrous men in armor he didn't recognize, who burned everything to dust and took him captive, Lukar saw the shock in their eyes.

They exchanged glances that spoke of an unspoken realization, leaving Lukar with a nagging feeling that something about his story had unsettled them. When he attempted to inquire further, they brushed him off, offering generic sympathies for the ordeal he had endured. The unspoken mystery lingered in the air, an unexplored chapter in the stories they carried.

As Petro and Lukar finished tending to Jarin and the sacrificial man, Jarin's hand shot through the bars of the cage, grabbing Lukar's wrist with a firm grip. Lukar could see a spark of recognition in Jarin's eyes, a shared understanding of the darkness that haunted both their pasts.

"About your home," Jarin began, his voice low and filled with a mixture of sympathy and suspicion, "that sounds like the work of mercenaries, not common raiders. If they targeted your home specifically, there's a chance it was orchestrated by someone with a personal vendetta or something."

Lukar nodded, the weight of the revelation sinking in. The mention of mercenaries stirred a flurry of thoughts about the mysterious figures who had torn his world apart. Petro, sensing the gravity of the conversation, exchanged a knowing look with Lukar and quietly gestured for them to leave.

Silently, Petro and Lukar slipped away from the hidden spot, their movements cautious as they navigated through the darkness to avoid waking the overseers. The night enveloped them in a shroud of secrecy, their shared secret forging an unspoken bond between them.

A few weeks passed, and Lukar and Petro continued their clandestine visits to Jarin, slipping through the shadows of the night to offer a semblance of compassion in the confines of their humble quarters. In the dim glow of the moon, they tended to Jarin and the sacrificial man, their nightly rendezvous a thread of humanity woven into the harsh fabric of their enslaved existence.