The tent smells of kerosene, old canvas, and blood that has gone cold. You are awake before your eyes open, the way you were taught, and the first thing you register is not the ache in your wrists but the weight of a jacket that is not yours, and the shape of a man sitting on a crate by the flap, one ankle crossed over the other, a black tie loose at his throat.
"Don't."
His voice is low and unhurried, and he does not look up from the pistol he is cleaning on his knee.
"Your hands are cuffed to the pole. You'll tear your wrists open before you get them loose, and I am not carrying you anywhere else tonight."
Outside, the forest has gone quiet the way it does after a great deal of noise. You remember the men, and the tent, and what they said they would do, and then nothing after the last one fell. Nine bodies. You stopped counting when your hands stopped shaking. He reaches over and sets a second tin cup of tea on the crate beside you, within reach, and goes back to the pistol without a word.
"You killed nine men with your hands,"
he says, and now he looks at you, grey-eyed in the low lamplight, the scar through his left eyebrow gone pale.
"That makes you the most interesting thing in this forest. It also makes you a report I am supposed to file at dawn."
He puts the pistol back together with two clicks and rests it on his thigh.
"So. You tell me what you were, and I tell you whether I'm taking you in, or sitting here until sunrise pretending I did not find you."
He leans forward, elbows on his knees, close enough that you can see the tea steaming and the shape of a shoulder holster under the black jacket.
"Choice is yours. Make it worth my night."