He went down in a heap, knees drawn up to his chest, his face a picture of contorted anger and pain.
“Why, you bitch!” the older man shouted as he grasped Catrina by her clothing, wrenching her to her feet in one fluid motion. “You’re going to pay for that; you’re going to pay big time.”
“Get your hands off of her!” Peter shouted as he broke into a sprint, closing the distance between them in an instant. “Get your hands off her before I make you wish you’d never been born.”
Two of the other men turned around to intercept him, but as rumpled and dirty as it was, his uniform was still recognisable as that of a Watch officer, and a sergeant at that. The two men were barely able to stop themselves mid-strike.
“I said let her go, now,” Peter continued, his voice calm and measured, his right hand hovering dangerously close to the pistol tucked into the waistband of his trousers.
The two men stood there, hesitant, turning to the older man for leadership, unsure of what to do. The shouting had drawn the attention of the surrounding camps and as they all knew, the surrounding soldiers and militia would soon be along to investigate.
Knowing that time wasn’t on his side, the older man released his grip on Catrina and pushed her towards Peter, who guided her to stand behind him. It had been three to one against, and had Peter been wearing anything else, he would have ended up in a brutal fight. Fortunately, the men had realised that assaulting an officer of law, regardless of the state of his uniform, would not have looked good when the rest of the soldiers arrived.
“This isn’t over,” the older man said, though they all knew that it probably was. He begrudgingly turned away, his two friends helping the young man to his feet and half carrying him back towards their campfire where they sat him down, his hands still gripped tightly in his groin.
Slowly, the people at the surrounding campfires turned back to their own business, leaving Peter and Catrina alone.
“Catrina, Catrina, are you all right?” he asked as he escorted her towards the campfire where he had been sitting. “Catrina?”
Peter was realising that she was far from all right, and had been for some time. He escorted her to the nearest friendly fire and sat her down, holding her tightly to both warm and reassure her, but for the most part it was in vain. She just sat there, staring up at the stars again, oblivious to his words, lost in a world which only she inhabited, a world of peace and happiness where she was no longer held in Peter’s arms, but in the loving embrace of her family.
III
“Ben, Ben, wake up,” Carl said, shaking him by the shoulders, his voice as loud as a whisper would allow.
“What is it now,” Ben murmured, one hand drearily reaching for his blanket while the other attempted to wipe the sleep from his eyes.
“It’s time to wake up,” Carl insisted. “Now come on before I drag you to your feet.”
“Carl, come on, what’s going on, what time is it?” Ben asked.
“Time for you to take over the watch,” Carl informed him. “Now come on before we wake the boss and get into a whole heap of trouble. I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t stick doing this every night for the rest of the week.”
Ben dragged himself out from under his makeshift bedding and dusted himself off before taking Carl’s place near the outskirts of the camp.
“What's the deal, Carl? It's freezing,” Ben said, retrieving his blanket and wrapping it around him.
“I know,” Carl agreed. “There's not enough dry wood to make a fire.”
Carl wished him a good night and lay down in his spot in the camp. The tall trees of the forest gave little protection from the rain and everything was still damp to the touch.
Ben shuffled from one foot to the other, beating his arms against his sides in an attempt to keep warm, blowing warm air into the hollow of his palms before rubbing his hands briskly together. He’d never known a night as cold as this, at least not one that he could remember, and just as he was thinking that at least the rain had stopped briefly, he felt the first drop of many trickle down his face. He sat whilst there was still a dry patch of ground to be found.
“Carl, Carl you awake?” Ben whispered as he struggled to get comfortable. He didn’t want to get so comfortable as to fall asleep, but he needed to be comfortable enough to make it through the rest of the night.
“Carl, are you awake?” he repeated, slightly louder this time and more agitated.
“No,” came the mumbled and distinctly angered reply.
Ben took the response as a “yes.” “Carl, it’s freezing,” Ben continued. “How did you cope?”
“By shutting up and letting my friends get some sleep,” Carl replied, barely able to keep his voice to a whisper. Carl then proceeded to roll over, but Ben failed to get the message.
“I bet there’s no food either,” Ben said. “I’m starving. You got anything left to eat, Carl?”
“No,” Carl said, rolling back to face him, “but if you don’t shut up and let me sleep, you won’t be eating any solid foods ever again.”
“Come on, there’s no need to be like that. I was just passing the time of day with you,” Ben replied with a grin.
Ben pulled his blanket tightly around his shoulders while Carl tried to bury his head beneath his so as to drown out all of the irritating noises around him. It was almost a full minute before Ben spoke again.
“Well, night,” Ben mumbled under his breath, but loud enough so that Carl would hear it. Foolishly, Carl took the bait.
“Just what are you talking about now?” he demanded. “Why won’t you let me sleep!”
“I said ‘passing the time of day with you,’ when I should have said ‘night’,” Ben informed him. “Passing the time of night with you, you see?”
“Oh, I see, all right,” Carl said as he threw the blanket away from him and sat up. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so clearly in my entire life.”
By now, there were stirrings from other members of the group. People weren’t awake yet, but unless both of them were careful, they soon would be.
“What’s it going to take, eh?” Carl asked. “What’s it going to take for you to let me get some sleep?”
“Nothing,” Ben said sullenly. “Sorry, Carl, I didn’t mean anything by it. Please, carry on and get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning. Please.”
Carl was about to say something else, but then thought better of it and retrieved his blanket. This time it was almost a full five minutes and Carl was almost actually asleep when Ben spoke again.
“You’re not asleep yet, Carl, are you?” Ben asked.
“Son of a skeet, Ben,” Carl hissed. “If you don’t shut up right now, I’m going to beat the talk out of you. What do you want?”
“It’s just, well, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Ben replied. “Just something that’s been playing on my mind, you know?”
“And if I tell you, you’ll let me sleep?” Carl asked.
“Sure, yes, cross my heart and hope to die,” Ben said, doing the arm movements in time with the phrase.
“Well, that’s a promise you’ll keep,” Carl replied.
There was a momentary pause as neither man spoke, staring at each other through the dark.
“Well, then?” Carl said, the agitation in his voice brewing into a rage.
“Well, what?” Ben asked.
“What is it you wanted to ask me?” Carl said angrily.
“Oh, right,” Ben said. “I was just going to ask how you, you know, how you got that scar on your face, that’s all.”
“Is that all,” Carl muttered. “There was me thinking you hadn’t noticed it.”
“Well, it’s kind of hard to miss,” Ben pointed out.
“Tell me about,” Carl said, his hand instinctively tracing the line of his scar as he replayed the events that caused it through his mind. With his face and scalp covered only in stubble, the scar seemed to have become more prominent, more alive, not wanting him to
forget what happened, unforgiving.
“So?” Ben said, dragging out the pronunciation of the word to a question.
“A fight, Ben,” Carl told him. “It was a fight.”
“Who with?” Ben fumbled, ignoring the small voice in his head that was telling him to shut his mouth, shut it and never open it again.
“It was just a fight, Ben, a stupid, pointless fight,” Carl said bitterly. “That’s all you need to know. Now just shut up and let me sleep.”
Carl rolled over for the final time that night, and though neither of them slept, not another word was spoken until morning.
IV
They met up as planned two days later, hiding in the shadows cast by the red-labelled crates in the light of the setting sun. The rain had started again with a vengeance, pooling in the ruts and potholes scattered along the Great Road. The wagon gave them little shelter from the elements, but the bad weather seemed apt to their mood.
Peter was the first to arrive, Catrina reluctantly at his side. He was unsure as to whether the others would make it: Donald, Conrad, Simon. So much could have happened in the two days since they last spoke. It would have only taken another encounter like their first with the soldier to blow their cover and have them executed on the spot. He’d wait as long as he could, until he attracted the wrong kind of attention, and then he’d have to assume that they were gone, lost.
Fortunately, Conrad and Simon arrived shortly after he did, and Donald five minutes later. They spoke hurriedly in hushed tones, unsure of how much time they had before they were discovered and had move to on. Donald insisted on going first.
“Let me speak, Peter, you’ve really got to hear this. You all do,” Donald insisted.
Donald had made his way as close to the front of the army as he could, but there had been more soldiers in that direction, a lot more. The night before, he had gone against all sense and good judgement and sneaked wide around the soldiers to get a good look. Tom had prepared them for some of what they had seen, but to see with their own eyes the full scope of what was before them, it was hard to imagine what these five could do to change the course of the coming war.
“You had to see it, Pete,” Donald began. “There were twenty, thirty cannons at the front of the army, the same again at least in catapults, and wagons piled high with crates. I couldn’t make out what they were; it was dark and they were covered in sheets, but they had to be weapons or explosives or something, had to be. Piled high they were, absolutely piled high.”
“It’s no worse than we expected,” Peter pointed out. “Not really. We knew they’d been planning this for a while; they had to be well armed and well prepared.”
“But that’s not the worst of it,” Conrad jumped in.
“Why not?” Simon asked.
“We’re all dead,” Conrad continued. “Me, you Catrina, Matthew, all of us. Shot or hung outside the Regent’s palace for all the world to see. I met one man who insisted he was at the front when it happened, telling me how he heard Matthew’s neck snap like a twig when they pulled the trip switch on the gallows.”
“I heard that too,” Simon added. “He even did the sound effects for us, snap.”
Peter felt a cold shiver run down his spine as Simon repeated the snapping noise for all of them to hear.
“From what we were told, not one of us got out alive,” Conrad said.
“But that’s, that’s impossible,” Peter insisted, stamping the fist on his right hand into his left palm. “I was sure, positive that everyone got out, everyone left alive. There couldn’t have been any of you left alive back there. You didn’t see…the bodies.”
There was a tear in his eye as he relived that horrific moment beneath the palace, the crates piled high with the bodies of the men, women, and children that these people before him had called friends, some of them family.
“Don’t, Pete,” Conrad said, trying to comfort him. “We know you did your best, we all do, and Catrina, Matthew, we know they’re not dead. It’s all another trick, a stunt this new Regent is pulling to turn people to his way of thinking. He just wanted to stir up trouble between north and south, just like in the old days, start us all off killing each other again, just to satisfy his own ends.”
“Besides,” Simon added, “we were told that the prisoners’ heads were covered. Those people, they could’ve been anyone, even Alexander’s own men. Believe me, I doubt anything would be beyond him, if it meant that he got his own way in the end.”
Peter held back the tear from his eye and looked over at Catrina, but she failed to express any of the emotions that he was feeling, even at the mention of her own dead sons. She continued to stare at them all, looking passively from one to the next as though waiting for the conversation to continue. Peter’s worry for the woman was increasing by the minute, but there was nothing he could do to help her. He would spend every free minute talking to her, comforting her, but only time and patience would heal a wound as great as hers, if it was possible to heal the wound at all.
“I know you’re right,” Peter continued, “both of you. Carl and I, we checked all the cells that we came across, but when we were chased through the tunnels, I still had that worry that we’d left some of you behind. If only we’d had more time.”
“We’d all have been dead meat,” Donald said matter-of-factly. It worked, bringing Peter’s mind back to the present, allowing him to focus again on the matter at hand.
Their voices had risen slowly over the last couple of minutes, but luckily there was no one around to hear them.
Conrad brought the tone down to a hushed whisper. “What’s the plan now then, Sarge?” he asked. “Are we going to start messing up their plans a bit?”
“Not now, but soon,” Peter told him. “From what you’ve said about the forefront of the army, there’s no use attacking there. They’d be all over us in seconds. We’d never get close. We need to scout out some softer targets, weapons, livestock, even food if we have to. I won’t harm my own men, not unless we have to, but we need to slow this army down, even if it’s only by a day or two, to give Matthew and his team the chance to warn the others. Scout around, find something that we can hit, and get out before they capture us. We’ll meet back here in another two days, at sunset, and by then we’ll have a plan.”
V
Samuel stepped quietly into the front trailer of the foremost Road Train, brushing the hundreds of tiny drops of rainwater from the shoulders of his overcoat, though he was unable to brush away the burden of his newfound promotion.
“Ah, Larson, I hear that you wanted to speak with me?” Alexander said, his face concealed in shadow as he sat on the sofa, a large glass of whiskey and a pile of half unfolded maps on the table in front of him. “Please, won’t you come join me.”
Larson knew that it was an order, not and invitation, and did as he was told, hanging his sopping overcoat up before sitting down.
“A drink?” Alexander offered.
“Yes, please. Thank you, Regent,” Samuel replied.
Alexander poured him a drink personally, as the two men were apparently alone in the trailer. He was purposely taking his time with the young officer, checking him over, trying to work out what had troubled him so that he would need to talk to the Regent personally. By all accounts, the man had all but insisted on it, irritating his seniors in the process. It was fortunate that the young Larson had already proved himself an invaluable aide, and so had earned himself a little leeway with Alexander.
“So tell me,” Alexander said, sipping at his whiskey, though never taking his eyes from his guest for a second. “What is it that you can tell only me and no one else?”
“Permission to speak freely, sir?” Samuel asked.
“Of course,” Alexander replied with a smile.
“I wasn’t sure who I could trust, sir,” Samuel continued. “Who knew of your, greater plan. I felt that you needed to know about this, sir, and I wasn’t sure which of them I could trust to tell you.”
“I trust my personal guard and those closest to me to do what may be asked of them,” Alexander told him. “Please, continue.”
“We’ve been marching for almost a week now,” Samuel told him, “and we’re still weeks from the Draxian border. I’ve heard rumours in the ranks, and it’s not just the civilians either, that the men are already growing weary. This weather doesn’t help. We’ve had barely an hour without rain all trip, and it’s sapping morale, sir. I hear tell that we’re already losing people at the wayside, and more follow them every hour. I’ve had the men severely punish any deserters that we find, as a lesson to the others, but they continue to leave. It’s these peasants, sir. They’re not accustomed to this way of life. They want to go back to their comfortable homes and their own way of life, sitting with their families in front of an open fire. They’re not soldiers, sir.”
“No, and don’t I know it,” Alexander said as he rose from the sofa and began to pace. “But we need them, all of them, if we’re to have any hope of success.”
“I understand, sir,” Larson said, carefully placing his drink down on the table, hoping against hope that the Regent didn’t think that he was speaking out of turn and have him executed on the spot. “And I have an idea, of sorts. There’s only one man who can turn the people around, and that’s you, sir, as you did before and at the executions. We need to fire up their spirit again, remind them of our, their goal, remind them why we’re here.”
Alexander returned to his seat and drained the remainder of his whiskey in one gulp. “You’re right,” he agreed. “Of course, I shouldn’t have allowed myself to become so complacent, so caught up in maps and strategies when victory will come not just with plans, but in sheer force and weight of numbers. These people are my strength, my greatest weapon, and I must nurture them, encourage them as a father would his child.”
Alexander’s eyes glazed over momentarily as he mulled the matter over in his mind, before snapping his gaze back towards the young officer. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Larson,” he said. “It shall not be forgotten. There is something, an . . . acquisition, but no matter. I shall deal with it in the morning.”
Knightfall - Book 1 of The Chronicle of Benjamin Knight Page 22