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{How did I get into this?} Makoto, son of Genkaku, thought as he ran hell-for-leather up the mountain path. {Why is this happening?}

{Why?}

The young boy, barely sixteen, came to a stop as he reached the ledge at the top of the path. {I don't understand why anyone would attack us here, especially not to butcher all of us! We're just trainees, not soldiers!}

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{Why!?!}

He bent over beside a large flat rock and tried to get his breath back. As he did, his thoughts drifted back to earlier that night...

Makoto turned over in his cot as he tried fruitlessly to sleep. His best friend, Jowy Atreides, wasn't there, having gotten his commission revoked two days early, and his absence was like the lack of a constant and familiar noise - jarring by the fact that it's *not* there.

{I give up,} he thought. {I'll never get to sleep. Not with our return home coming tomorrow,} he reasoned as he got out of bed. {I may as well look around the camp.}

As he left the tent, he spotted an aquaintance by the gateside fire - Daniel, a boy from Kyaro like Makoto and Jowy, who'd asked about learning some of Genkaku's fighting arts when they went back. {Grampa'd be so happy,} Makoto mused, just as he had when Daniel had asked the question earlier. Then Makoto remembered something that sent him scurrying furtively over to Daniel's side.

"Hsst! Daniel!" Makoto whispered as he got closer. "You may be cold, but that's better than the ten lashes Rowd'll give you for skipping out on sentry duty! You better get back there!"

Daniel looked up in shock at the first whisper, but then he smiled up at his friend. "No problem, Makoto," he stated - out loud, causing Makoto to make frantic hush-hush gestures with his hands. "Easy, it's really okay! I was out in the freezing wind on sentry duty, but Commander Rowd came out to me and said I could skip it tonight! It's the peace treaty, I guess," the boy finished.

Makoto blinked in surprise. "Commander Rowd, showing mercy about Sacred Discipline?" he asked quietly. "I guess the world really *did* turn upside-down when the treaty was signed," he sighed. Turning away, he strode around the perimiter of the camp, stopping by the gate that led back into Highland territory. {I don't like it,} he thought. {With Daniel in camp, there's only one outside sentry on duty. Any bandit could sneak right up on the camp.} Rowd had drilled that into their heads often enough - with the lash, if he had to. He looked at the gate again. {I can't sleep anyway - why not?} he wondered, and in his civilian outfit, red shirt, tonfas and all, he strode out the main gate to take up one last shift of night sentry duty.

It wasn't until he came up to the sentry post, near the forest end of the trail, that he realized something was wrong. The boy on sentry duty was bent over by a tree - {Asleep?} Makoto wondered. As he came closer, he recognized the boy; Kevin, from L'Renouille. He didn't want to learn Genkaku's fighting style - he was only interested in swords - but he'd been polite, which was more than Makoto could say for other L'Renouille boys in the Unicorn Brigade. As he had with Daniel earlier, Makoto crept up behind him... and slapped him on the shoulder. "Sur-"

His greeting died in his throat as Kevin's body slumped sideways, kept upright only by the arrow that impaled him against the tree.

An arrow with City-State Army fletching.

{Shit!!} Makoto thought, skittering sideways into the brush and working his way back toward camp. His caution was rewarded when he saw the bodies of several boys in full Unicorn half-armour scattered on the path between the forest and the camp, all with arrows in them. {They must be waiting near the path,} Makoto thought, and crept closer to the brush beside the path, far quieter in his civilian's gear than any Youth Brigade armour could ever be. Seeing the silhouette of an archer in the bush, Makoto lunged, cracking the man across the neck with his tonfa. The man toppled sideways, falling out of the bush where Makoto could see his uniform.

{No,} he thought. {It can't be.}

But it was: the man was in the uniform of the White Wolves, the elite bodyguard unit of Prince Ruka Blight. The man Rowd had sometimes joked about as 'the most dangerous crazy man Highland allows to run loose.'

{If this *is* the White Wolves...} Makoto thought, his line of reasoning faltering as he found himself unable to work out the motives behind it all. {I have to tell Commander Rowd about this,} he decided. {He's ths only one with enough experience to get us out of here!}

With that, Makoto abandoned silence, tearing through the brush as fast as he could without exposing himself to the arrowed death that awaited him on the path. Breaking out into the rocky trail, he ran as fast as his legs could carry him, stopping only once he'd ducked inside the gate and put the palisade wall between him and any arrows the ambushers would be sending his way.

Creeping around a burning tent, Makoto desperately looked around for Commander Rowd. {Please, don't let him be dead,} Makoto prayed, and breathed a silent thanks to the 27 True Runes when he peered around the tent and saw Rowd standing in the middle of the camp, unharmed and as arrogant as ever.

Just then Daniel came running out from the other side of the camp, heading right for their Commander. "Commander Rowd, sir! The path down is blocked, there are archers-"

An arrow came arcing from behind the tent, where Makoto couldn't see, and cut down Daniel in midstep. Rowd stood there and watched him fall without a word, without lifting a hand to help the boy.

Makoto's eyes went very, very wide, and he ducked back behind the tent.

And then he heard the words.

"So, you are here, Loud."

"Yes, Lord Ruka." Rowd sounded peeved at the nickname - not at the slaughter of the children he was *supposed* to have been protecting.

{And it *is* Prince Ruka, after all,} Makoto thought.

"You did everything exactly as I told you. Good. Now you shall be rewarded as such."

{There's the prince again.}

"Yes?" Rowd.

{God, he sounds *eager...* as if he'd do it all over again...}

"First of all, as I promised, you shall lead your own unit of soldiers. Real soldiers. Not children."

{But why KILL us, Runes damn you?!?!}

"And?"

{It sounds like he wants more. I actually hope he does, that he didn't sell us out for a promotion he could've earned anyway..}

"Well, just between you and me, I have a sister..."

{Marriage into the royal line. Yeah, that sounds like motive for slaughter,} Makoto thought with a shiver running down his spine.

Not waiting to hear any more, he crawled out of the camp to the north, taking care not to be seen. {I'm not wearing any armour,} he thought. {If I reach the ledge without being seen, I can climb down the cliff and escape.}

A sudden outcry arose behind him. Wasting no more time, he sprang up and took off running, his unarmoured frame quickly outdistancing the plate-covered killers behind him...

Up on the ledge, Makoto dragged himself out of his memories and up to his feet. {I understand now,} he thought bitterly.

{Prince Ruka wants more war, but the peace treaty meant he couldn't get it. So he needed a reason to break the treaty - and so all of the Unicorn Brigade died by Jowston arrows. It just wasn't Jowston archers who fired them.}

The clanking of armour was approaching fast. {Damn!! I've got no time to climb down anymore,} Makoto thought as he desperately searched for a way out.

Unfortunately, he only found one - and he didn't like it much. {The current in the river's bad this time of year,} he thought ruefully. {But I can't outfight six or more White Wolves alone, and I don't have a handy Wind Rune to loft me across the canyon.}

"Oh well," he said, and just as the soldiers burst out onto the ledge, he jumped.

It was funny, really: As he fell, he got a look up at the face of a soldier, peering over the ledge and gawking at the crazy boy...