The pair of travellers had left the village less than ten minutes ago when a sharp crack tore through the air.
Mireille stopped abruptly and warned Silas with a shout, who ducked down just in time.
An arrow lodged itself in the tree a few metres away from him.
"Ambush!" hissed the maid through clenched teeth as she quickly dismounted her horse.
Silas followed her and clumsily drew his short sword. Seven figures emerged from the thicket, quickly joined by a dozen others.
They all wore crude burlap masks, their hands dirty, their arms outstretched like hungry wolves too soon out of their lair.
"The horses, Silas." Mireille whispered.
The young nobleman nodded, but already the bandits were relentlessly tightening their circle.
The first of them charged, screaming like a madman.
Mireille intercepted him with a lightning-fast movement, ducking down to strike the back of his knee with her elbow, before disarming his arm with a sharp blow.
The man collapsed with a hoarse cry. In the same motion, she threw her dagger, which lodged itself in the shoulder of another.
Silas parried a third attacker — almost by accident — but fear made him clench his teeth so hard that he felt his molars vibrate.
His heart was pounding, and his hands were shaking, numb from the violent clash of the steel weapons. But he held his ground.
The young man took two steps back, raised his sword guard and struck as Mimi had taught him: not powerfully, but precisely. However, he did not use the edge of the sword, but the flat of the blade.
The man was stunned and staggered.
Taking advantage of his speed, the young nobleman delivered a violent kick to the groin of an attacker who was trying to approach from behind.
Mireille slipped gracefully, like a dancer, between four opponents, her blade spinning. Screams and blood flew everywhere.
She struck another man's wrist with the pommel of her sword until he dropped his hunting knife — and took the opportunity to retrieve her dagger, still stuck in the other unfortunate man's deltoid muscle.
Then the maid's elbow flew into the stomach of another brigand.
One man tried to take them out with an arrow, but it narrowly missed Silas, who leapt up and delivered a high diving kick to the thug.
Suddenly, a giant appeared out of nowhere and tried to take him from behind, but at that moment, the jade necklace lit up and as soon as the man's fingers touched the young boy, he felt a kind of shock run through his body.
Mireille finished off the last attacker with a roundhouse kick, the hard sole of her boot almost embedding itself in the poor man's cheek.
In less than three minutes, the men were on the ground, some groaning in pain, others clutching the cuts Mireille had inflicted on them, but all disarmed.
Silas was still shaking. His heart was pounding in his chest, and he was short of breath.
"These... These people aren't travellers." He murmured with some effort as he removed the mask from one of them.
Mireille wiped her blade on the tunic of one of the men on the ground. Their clothing was strange: too worn, too stained, as if they had been wearing it for weeks without washing.
And above all...
They all wore a bracelet woven from brown fibres on their wrists. All identical.
Even stranger, these bracelets were also identical to the cords that the women of the village wore tied around their waists.
Mireille took a deep breath and stood up abruptly.
"Stand up. All of you. Slowly."
The men obeyed, not out of bravery, but out of pure fear. A fear that seemed older and deeper than any Mireille could have inspired.
Silas frowned when he noticed the hesitant, almost resigned gestures of these men who had attacked them without hesitation just a few minutes earlier.
"Why did you attack us? You could have... I don't know... talked? Asked?" spoke the young nobleman.
One of the bandits — the tallest, with a heavily lined face — raised his head. His eyes were ringed and red from lack of sleep.
"We can't. Not to you. Not to those who enter the village." he whispered.
Mireille crossed her arms.
"Why?"
A heavy silence fell. Then another man spoke, his voice almost broken:
"Because we have no choice. We... the hamlet... we are the men of the village."
Silas almost choked on his saliva.
"I beg your pardon?" he said, his eyes widening.
The man nodded, miserable.
The others nodded in agreement, the same shame and fatigue evident in their gestures.
"But why... attack us? I don't understand. If you were having difficulties, you could have asked for help!" Silas replied.
A sad, strangled laugh rang out.
"Help? To whom?"
The giant looked up at them with a mixture of fear and resignation.
"And besides... we're not allowed to anymore. Not since... she came here."
Mireille frowned.
"She?"
A silence fell. A silence so long that even the wind seemed to hesitate to blow.
Finally, another man whispered:
"The mist never comes alone when she wakes up. You must have felt it when you arrived in the village, but the atmosphere there is not normal."
Silas swallowed.
"Yes. We... felt it."
"Then you should understand when we say that, unfortunately, everything has changed since she arrived. The women... they are no longer themselves. Ever since the 'Thing' arrived."
Mireille felt a shiver run down her spine.
"The Thing?" she repeated, puzzled.
The taller man clenched his fists.
"A demon. Or something like that. One night, she came with the fog, took the women hostage and banished us. When we tried to resist, she took the children too."
He clenched his teeth and turned his head away.
"Since then, no woman or child has been truly... alive. As you have surely noticed."
Silas instinctively recoiled. He felt a long-suppressed nausea rising in his throat.
The man continued in a lower voice:
"She holds their minds captive. Keeps them locked away. Makes them move... like puppets. She drove us men out of the village. But she leaves us a role to play. That of robbing travellers drawn by the mist. To prevent others from going too deep into it... and seeing what she does. To prevent us from rebelling again."
Another nodded.
"If we don't obey... she punishes them. The women. The children. This demon rules the hamlet with an iron fist, as if this village... had always been hers."
The Wrightons' maid frowned.
"Do you know her?" she asked softly.
The giant flinched — the reflex of someone who had just been caught out. The other men exchanged glances.
...Glances heavy with secrets.
"W-We shouldn't even be talking about her." Whispered one of them.
"Yes... She doesn't like it." Added another.
Silas tensed. The men all looked away.
Mireille felt her stomach clench. She swallowed the bile that had risen in her throat, then asked a question.
"Why them?"
Another long silence ensued. After exchanging glances for a while, one of the men replied.
"...Because they're the easiest to... mould. The most... sensitive... And also our weakness, since they're the ones we love."
A shiver ran through Silas from head to toe.
Mireille turned pale.
The mechanical laughter. The impossible gestures. The vacant stares.
It all made sense.
Horribly sense.
"I repeat, you could have asked for help." Said Silas.
The tall man shook his head.
"We can't leave the territory. Not for long, anyway, and not while the women and children are under her control. Every evening, we have to return to the village so that she can count the men."
Another of the men took up the story from there.
"The last time one of us tried to leave to seek help..."
He swallowed hard.
"She killed four women without batting an eyelid and made the children scream... And to prove to us that she wouldn't hesitate to do it again, she made some of us wear the skins of those women."
Mireille ran a hand over her face. Silas felt like vomiting when he heard this.
"Since then, we've understood. We don't leave. We obey."
Silas was pale.
Mireille breathed slowly, as if to keep her composure.
"And the little girl... Enalid?" asked the servant, her voice slightly trembling.
At that name, the men froze.
The tall one closed his eyes.
"That little girl is different. She appeared a year or two before the demon arrived. And she's the only one still... whole. The demon hasn't managed to take her completely, for some reason. Not yet. She... she's resisting, perhaps. But she probably won't last much longer."
He opened his eyes and stared straight into the maid's.
"And you too, for that matter, if you don't leave."
Silas felt his heart rise in his throat.
"So... how do we get rid of... that?"
The colossus closed his eyes for a moment, then whispered, almost on the verge of tears:
"We don't know."
The young nobleman lowered his head and remained like that for a moment. Suddenly, he raised it again and fixed his eyes on the maid.
"Mimi..."
The girl shook her head and sighed.
Mireille sheathed her blade and took a deep breath.
"I know what you're thinking, Master Silas... But this situation has just become much more complicated than we could have imagined." She murmured.