Chapter 5 A Fiery Intervention #2
Outside, the camp was in chaos. His soldiers had indeed found him, and they came torpedoing through the night on black mounts.
They looked like dark, hell-raising wraiths, terrifying in stature and build.
But when they opened their mouths in a battle cry, it took all of Morfran’s restraint not to maim the nearest soldier.
He’d been the one to teach them how to arrive in style. He’d shown them what to wear and how to hold themselves like they were wicked devils, and how to scream like unearthly demonic creatures who’d freshly clawed themselves from their graves.
They clearly were out of practice, consequently sounding like Benjamin hacking up an undigested boot heel on a bad day.
They were making him look bad. Never mind that he’d abandoned them and his life as their villainous commander.
Fighting against the urge to maim someone, he squinted in the night for the animal pens where Benjamin and her kids would likely be.
Although the canopy of trees blocked night’s natural light, the moon was full and leaked a blue-white light onto the forest floor, and he could easily make out huts, trees, people, and even the rope ladders that led up to the treetop houses.
In addition, there were illuminated hot spots from lanterns left on in windows.
Ragged shadows darted about the forest of brawling men, horses tearing through the night and women and children fleeing towards the rope ladders.
He needed Benjamin. The animal pens had been—he looked past a soldier on foot chasing two men with shovels and saw the fence posts—that way.
He strode past them, only stopping to trip the soldier with a deft jerk of his foot when the idiot had the audacity to be shoved in his way, and only vaguely registered the men smacking the soldier into the ground with their shovels.
To his left three soldiers were trying to scramble up the rope ladder to get to the upper huts, but the weight of their armor and the palm-sized stones the forest dwellers were dropping on their heads were making them fail quite spectacularly.
That made him scowl even more. Had whatever git leading them just sent them in willy-nilly?
Had they not taken the trees into account, or how difficult it was to ride horses through dense forest, or that these forest dwellers outnumbered them at least seven to one?
If Morfran had been the one leading them to nab himself, he’d have taken the stealth route, and his men would have captured him hours ago and been halfway out of the forest by now.
Honestly. Ravana was an expert at terrorizing even the most stoic of men, but when she was left to command armies on her own, her plans fell apart.
And now look: these idiots here were damaging the reputation of his forces, which he’d worked for years to build up.
It put him in an even worse mood as he made his way towards the animal pens.
Twice he had to kick a soldier out of the way.
On one occasion he pulled a man off a horse that was barreling towards him, then proceeded to headbutt the jerk, spit in his face at his pathetic attempt to skewer him, and steal his sword.
Another bout of dizziness swarmed Morfran’s head. He had to lean against a tree to let it pass.
“Get down here, you coward!” a soldier shouted at someone sitting in a tree.
It was Hugh. Although he had Morfran’s scabbard attached to his belt and the sword was perfectly usable, he instead had chosen to half hug the trunk and was raising his dangling legs up whenever the soldier tried to swipe at him with his sword.
“I said get down and fight me like a man!”
Hugh peered down at the soldier wearing a full suit of armor, said, “No way,” and tossed a pine cone at his head. It bounced off his helmet like a pebble against a mountain. The soldier huffed and began towards the tree trunk to climb it.
Hugh just climbed higher, taking Morfran’s sword with him.
That settled it. Morfran hurled the stishovite dagger at the soldier’s back. It pierced straight through his armor and sent him sprawling against the trunk, dead.
Hugh let out a “Huzzah!” and leapt from the tree. “Say, you’re not such a bad fellow after all—”
Morfran bashed him on the head and stole back his sword, kissing the pommel before launching into the night towards the pens.
The animals were obviously upset about the commotion, with the pigs snorting in displeasure, the chickens squawking in distress, and the horses fidgeting in disdain. But it was the geese that came out in full-fledged battle, honking bloody murder and leaping up to bite his elbows.
He kicked at them in vain, searching for his goat friends. In addition to the wide pens, there was a lean-to shelter to keep the animals safe from the weather, and it was there, curled up by a bale of straw, that he found Benjamin and her kids.
“Beni,” he started. And that was when he saw it from the corner of his eye.
Untamed, naked fire. It burned on a torch held by a soldier who wore the glossy, rich armor of a general and a stout helmet with a magpie’s plume jutting out of it.
He was headed to a tree with a rope ladder, unhindered by the assault of rocks from above.
Other soldiers were dousing the tree’s trunk and surrounding ground with oily liquid, shouting threats to those in the canopy.
Above them, villagers—mostly women and children, Morfran noticed—were screaming, desperately flinging down items in an attempt to stop the torch-wielding soldier: pots, stones, sacks of grain, hand-carved toys.
Now is the ideal time to leave, a voice in his head urged. Steal a horse, put Beni on your shoulders and the kids in your bag, and get out of here.
Across the forest floor came Brim and his men, surging towards the torch-wielding soldier.