Led by the Wall
Meagan Peo
he town sat in the middle of a clearing, a forest on one side, the Great Wall leering down on the other.
It was simple, surrounded by fields only a single road leading off into the distance. Villagers lined the
fields like so many ants, though only one young woman worked alone. She was tall and proud with
dark eyes and a thin sharp face, and unlike the rest, she did not bend against the heat. She might have
been pretty once, but her face was marred by a long gash through one eye, leaving behind the raw
puckered skin of a wound that would never heal.
ples, Group 4: Fiction, West Island School
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She was the first to make it to the shade of the wall, and she stopped for a moment, resting in the cool
darkness as she watched friends and family come down the line. Her opposite was soon recognizable by the
sheer number of people milling around her. Her long hair shone, rippling in the sunlight, an ebony wave that
complimented her dark and wise eyes. Her smile gleamed, and even from where the girl was sitting she could
still make out the rouge of her cheeks and lips. They had the same nose, and the same face, but looking from
one to the other you would not believe that they were related.
Looking at her sister under the sun, Niu traced her scar absentmindedly, before a group of chattering
woman interrupted her solitude. They squawked and giggled, throwing glances at Niu who scowled. It was not
her fault that fate had made her sister so beautiful.
A sudden gust of wind blew over the landscape, and the trees rattled. She could hear the dull thump of
hooves in the distance. A few people ran, picking up children or valuables and fleeing off into the woods,
though most simply just sat down, waiting for the inevitable. As the marauders got closer and closer and the
villagers lining the road curled deeper and deeper into themselves, as the wind continued to blow cold and hard
buffeting the wall that continued to stand impassively above.
There were twenty men. The first man, sat tallest in the saddle, the sun shone directly onto his
shoulders, outlining him in golden rays and highlighting his strong profile. He surveyed the villagers in one look.
Niu sat alone, shoulders bent and eyes lowered, body acting automatically as the well-armed men came into
view. She shuffled slowly back into the shadows, relaxing as her shoulders touched the wall behind her.
The man suddenly spoke. His voice was rough, and it cracked as he raised it trying to be heard, his
head swinging from side to side try to watch all the people at once, not unlike an animal.
“
If you stay quiet we will not hurt you, if you don’t resist we will not hurt you. Just do as we say and
everything will be alright” He smiled as he looked down from the saddle.
The rest of the men gathered Niu and the others at the center of the village, which was truly just a
collection of empty houses. The Wall hugged its back end, though the men who once walked it were long gone.
Half of the raiders rounded up the rest of the people who had been hiding in their houses or in places not nearly
clever enough to escape detection. And soon everyone who had not already taken their chances with the woods
were sat around Niu on the ground, not looking at the men who held their fate.
The movement was subtle and sudden. One moment the air was still with silence the next a man
decided to test his luck and made a run for the woods. Then there was chaos. Multiple shots were fired and the
man dropped, weeping and wounded his leg a tattered mess of muscles and tissue. The silence came back,
intensified by the pitiful moans of the man clutching his leg. After that the raiders could have continued their job
and ransacked the village while the people watched and waited, but a woman decided to scream, a terrified
unreasonable scream that tore the scared silence to shreds.
Panic soon spread, and it wasn’t long before people lay dead on the ground as the raiders exulted in the
glory of gore. Instinctively Niu started to search for her sister among mob, the occasional flash of dark hair the
only clue as to her direction.
Chaos reigned and Niu was thrown around like a rag doll. Person after person shoved her around, wide
eyed with terror hair strewn behind them. But her sister stood apart. She radiated calm, her hair in a tangle
above her head, eyes wide open and mouth slightly parted. She stood her ground, still despite the people
moving around her. Niu rushed forward reaching an arm out to grab her, when she was shoved against a wall,
knocking her head back against the stone, her vision going blurry. She lay to the side of the crowd. She could
not move, could not stand, only watch as the leader of the raiders came up to her sister.
She could not hear the words, but the look of exaltation on his face spoke enough of his intentions. Her
vision was fading. But she knew she had to get up. She crawled towards the two. The last of the men and