Homecoming

Chapter Nine

"You gotta untie me, man," I holler to Johann as I approach the porch, limping.

His close-set, sunken, green eyes look into me with confusion. His soft-angled brows tug together, and his lids droop, as he traces the trickle of blood continuing to flow from my nose. He opens his mouth, but not a word comes out of it. He seals it, before swallowing twice, his Adam's apple moving up and down with every go.

His glance moseys around, absorbing the view of the catastrophe encompassing us. He turns his head to the people clustered behind him for answers, but all eyes are glued to the rangers loping to chase the weapon thieves as they disappear into the smoke.

"C'mon!" I spin around my heels, my back opposite him, extending my fastened wrists and twisting my neck to look him in the face. "You need to help me out, so I can help you. And you know I can."

He taps a tight fist against his pale, quivering lower lip, before taking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly.

Without a word, he takes out his drop-point knife from his burlap sling bag and tries to snip the tether around my wrists with it.

"What are you doing, J?" Cora asks him, her abrasive tone cloaking her otherwise bubbly disposition, as she clutches his hand to stop him from cutting me loose. "We're not even sure if he's one of the enemies."

"I have to do this, Cor." He yanks his hand away and the blade slices through the spool of rope in one fell swoop.

Stretching out my hand, I take one last look at the mayhem and devastation those four bastards left in their wake, my humanity engulfed with feral wrath.

Humans or Antes, those bastards deserve the most horrible deaths violence could provide. They aren't worthy of a quick arrow to the heart or some one-shot decapitation. Even being burned or flayed or disemboweled alive wouldn't feel enough to serve justice to what they did here. Perhaps nothing from the list of television's most gruesome deaths ever could.

What they descended upon us was the textbook embodiment of savagery, and it's just right for their deaths to be nothing short of savage. If I could slay them all and make a giant pie out of their sickening flesh to serve their Mind Flayer of a king, I would.

Sure, they may not have killed one of us (at least, not explicitly), but what they did was unarguably worse: cutting off our food supply and taking our weapons away, ensuring our path to a slow death—either by starvation, welcome slaughter or both.

This entire sequence is no different from the loot train attack from the seventh season of Game of Thrones—but with the Faceless Men-like assassins and garden-variety explosives, instead of a horde of Dothraki criers and dragon fire, of course.

Don't get me wrong; I'm team Dany all the way (except maybe during the final season), but her forces ambushing the combined Lannister and Tarly armies—and demolishing the stolen supplies from Highgarden—along the Goldroad, while the enemies are on their way to King's Landing, was a tough course to cheer for. It's like cheering for the idea of innocent people dying in famine being nothing but a collateral damage in a move that would bring her one step closer in her quest for the crown.

Yes, they were at war—so are we—but civilians should never be treated as collateral damage, no matter the end goal.

While thinking about it, it's also hard to deny the similarities between Daenerys and the Antes themselves: both claim to be the rightful rulers of the world, both use violence to enforce that claim, and as of the final season, both are mad and have to be stopped.

Using the words of the Mother of Dragons herself, the wheel has to be destroyed.

Borrowing Johann's weapon, I begin striding to follow the rangers.