Mugs jumped from his seat and approached her slowly. Thomas sat motionless on the floor, his mouth agape, while the rest of the crew rose cautiously, unsure of the proper procedure given the terrified innocence crying in the dark. Kate, a man seemingly ready for any scenario that fell before him, melted into the shadows and began to circle the girl until he was behind her.

The girl stopped screaming and began to sob.

“Don’t touch her.” Mugs inched closer.

“He killed her,” she whispered.

Resting his knees on the floor, Mugs was close enough to grab her. He didn’t though: it was unnecessary. The girl broke the trance on her own. She looked up at Mugs for a brief second with bright amber eyes and then slumped over, her head falling into his lap.

Mugs’ face reddened. He wasn’t sure what to do at that point so he rested a steady, calloused hand on her shoulder. She didn’t react. Her breath was even and shallow: she was asleep.

Mugs nodded to Kate, who was watching with increased boredom, and the man scoffed and went back to the fire. He looked back down at the girl before picking her up gently, cradling her head. She didn’t make a peep.

Thomas was dismayed back at the fire, to say the least. He only piped up once Mugs had set the girl down at a cozy distance from the warmth of the flames.

“Aye, bossman, I coulda helped with that!”

“My boy, it’d be for the best if you stayed away from her for the remainder of our travels,” Mugs murmured over the girl. At the look of protest on the other man’s face, he added, “this is not punishment. This is precaution. The girl is obviously troubled. If we’re to do right by her, it would do us a disservice to stir up attention before she can be delivered… somewhere safe.”

“You kill people for coin, gaijin.” Kate stood nearby and kicked up some dust, the boots he had pried from a corpse already somehow specked with blood. “The girl is tainted, can you not see it in her eyes? She not like you and I. She will be sick her entire existence. You cannot save her.”

“And what would you propose for the lass?” Mugs said without looking at the man.
Kate spoke slowly, enjoying his words. “We end her suffering. The storm on her horizon will wither… And there will be peace.”

“Like hell!” Thomas exclaimed, eyes bulging.

“She will not die, Kate. Not by our hands at least. In any case, she’s useful to our benefactor.”

Kate grunted. “One day, gaijin, you learn. You will see truth in my words, and my blades.”

Mugs didn’t respond. He just stared at the fire.

“Like hell,” Thomas said quietly, shivering.

For a few moments, the camp returned to a strange peacefulness. The men were quiet, and Mugs found his eyelids becoming heavy. If it weren’t for Shin’s ghostlike arrival he might have just dozed off and forgotten his burdens, if only for just a fleeting time. God knows he needed it.

Shin spoke with a whisper in his ear, appearing at his side from the darkness. He even seemed to have startled Kate, for the man glared at him from across the fire.

“Ten men approach on foot,” Shin murmured. “They carry many weapons. I do not favor this.”

“This late?” Mugs grimaced. “They were ordered to rendezvous first light come morrow. Do they really intend to break the Code of our contract?”