Chapter 377
Ra’thala swallowed as he listened to headman Tiu’ja talking to the other village elders. There was an uneasy feeling lingering in his gut that told him something bad would happen today.
He didn’t know what, but it was something in the soldiers’ eyes. It was something in the way they weren’t looking at the village storehouses but instead looking at the gathered villagers.
His mother pressed his shoulder as she chanted a mantra but he was trying to lean as forward as possible to hear the talk.
His father, leaning on his walking stick, pulled his little brother back from almost getting crushed in the moving crowd but like his mother, he seemed frustrated and angry.
Leaning into his father’s side he whispered. “Father wha—”
“Silence.”
Slinking back, he tried to listen.
His mother tugged his fathers sleeve. “He’ll be fine. He's only twelve. They only take fourteen year olds.”
Her words made that sinking feeling settle into place even more strongly but as his parents went back and forth, something happened by the village leaders.