she

rags they were wearing.
For the rest—
One of the three younger women fell to her knees and began praying. Within seconds, the others had all joined her.
Gretchen remained standing. What was the point of prayer? She did not fear for her soul. The abuse of her body would end, eventually. She needed only to shield her mind. Prayer provided no help for that purpose.
Blank, blank. She began emptying herself of all thoughts. Nothing. A last glimpse of Hans, marching fearfully into battle, a last flash of grief. Empty.
All that remained was sensation. Eyes open, staring at the small figures of men charging forward from the distance. Her ears heard their whooping and hollering, but her brain made nothing of the words.
Mostly, she focused on the tactile sense. Feeling with her fingers the small knife which Hans had stolen for her many months ago. The knife was hidden away in her bodice, in a sheath under her armpit which she had sewn herself. The soldiers would not look there. They would not even bother to remove the dress.
The feel of the knife brought final emptiness. As she waited, Gretchen never thought once of suicide. She would survive, if at all possible. But the knife was there, should it be needed. If the soldiers—they were nearer now, much nearer—threatened her very life. Gret­chen had long ago decided she would not leave this earth without taking a devil with her into the afterlife.
* * *
It was the comfort of that knife, perhaps, which kept her mind blank for so many seconds after wonder appeared. Or, perhaps, it was simply the peculiarity of the wonder itself.
Gretchen had heard, once, a tale of knights in shining armor. Her grandfather had read her a story from a borrowed book. She had been ten years old. The war had just begun, and was only a rumor out of mad Bohemia. Yet even