The second rule of the forest always seems to be, whenever someone’s being chased, he’ll always run towards the worst possible obstacle.
The porcupine man, for someone who had never been in the forest before, was following the rules perfectly.
“Naturally—the wrong way,” the jacketed man grumbled as he sprinted to catch up to him. “What more can go wrong tonight?”
The cloaked porcupine man realized, in his maddened dash, that the trees and shrubs he was dodging abruptly ended. Fortunately he still had enough wits about to recognize he likely should as well.
He skidded to a stop right before the deep crevice in front of him, but his momentum still swayed his body towards the gap.
The man in the jacket reached him just in time to yank him back, throwing him into the relative safety of a prickly bush.
“That was close! So what do you think you’re do—”
The cloaked porcupine didn’t even thank his rescuer, but was off again in a scrambling dash. The cloth of his covering snagged on the thorny bushes and tripped him up, but he kept running without a plan or a clue.
The jacketed man was right behind him. “You have no idea where you’re going, do you?” he tried to yell in a hush. “Think about it—this is NOT a great place to run blindly in, now is it?!” and he leaped on top of him, knocking him to the ground in front of several boulders. “Now if you’ll just—”
“No! Get off me!”
“I can’t do that,” the jacketed man told him, pushing a knee into his back and twisting one of his arms behind him. “You’re going to get yourself killed!”
“Only saving you the bother of doing it!” his caught porcupine gasped, trying to free his arm. “That’s all you do out here, isn’t it?”
“Not me, my friend. That’s not what I do.” The man in the jacket—larger and stronger—twisted the cloak around the porcupine to avoid getting smacked again. Then with a grunt he flipped him over onto his back.
The porcupine man, rendered helpless on the dirt, noticed the man’s open jacket and the silver buttons concealed on the inside. He glanced down at his captor’s trousers, then up at his face dimly lit by the moons.
“Wait a minute,” his voice thick with anger, “You . . . YOU! How could you?!” While his arms were bound, his legs weren’t. He sharply raised his knee to knock his captor off of him.
“Be quiet!” the man in the black jacket hissed as he tumbled off, but it was too late.
His hostage had already wriggled free and was on his knees, his hands out ready to strangle him.
“I told you to stop him, not kill him, Zenos!”
Shem was prepared. He quickly got to his feet, and in a flash Dormin, far less practiced, found his arm twisted and held behind his back again. Then he felt the cold steel of a long knife held against his throat, the flat of the blade pressed on his flesh.
“Dormin, I’m so sorry. It was me that killed Sonoforen, but there was no other choice. He was standing in front of the Shins’ door, his long knife out, and his hand on the door handle. I had only seconds to act. I didn’t want to do it, I promise you. I’ve never taken a life before, and that night I took two.”
Dormin panted anxiously as Shem Zenos held him immobile. “Are you taking a third tonight, then?”
“I’m praying not to, but then again, the night’s only begun.”
“Why are you out here?”
“I was about to ask you that,” Shem said. “You’re supposed to be long gone! This forest is no place for you, last son of King Oren.”
“There’ve been complications.” Dormin gasped and swallowed against the cold blade on his throat. “Let me go, will you?”
“Only after you promise you’re not going to avenge your brother’s death.”
Dormin sighed, almost in embarrassment. “I’m not even armed, Zenos.”
“That’s right, he’s not!” a woman’s voice snapped. She bounded out of a clump of trees, shaking her head in dismay. Her long blonde and gray streaked hair, pulled into a serviceable ponytail, whipped angrily but she moved as silently as the moons. “Dormin, how in the world did you get here?”
“Sorry, Mrs. Yung,” he whispered. “I got disoriented.”
“Yes, obviously!” she whispered back. “You’re almost as aimless as my husband. We’ll have to find him next. Zenos, let go of him already!”
Shem shrugged apologetically, sheathed his knife and released Dormin’s arm. Dormin scampered away from him and glowered.
“What you boys get up to in the forests here, I just don’t know,” Mrs. Yung fumed. “This entire night is going completely wrong!”
“Sorry, Mrs. Yung,” Shem said, withering under her glare which didn’t even need full light to be fully effective. “We just, uh . . . needed to talk things through.”
Dormin folded his arms.
“Well, I hope it’s resolved because we have far greater problems right now! Zenos, the upper northeastern route along the ridge has been compromised. We had to stop at the ravine because of an emergency, but we’re ready to move again. But we don’t know where the last four are. We split up to confuse them, and confused Dormin instead, I see.” All she had to do was put her hands on her hips and face him.
Now it was Dormin’s turn to shrug contritely, and Shem’s shoulders sagged in additional remorse, even though he hadn’t been the cause of any of those problems.
Mrs. Yung was used to that. Rector’s wives were supposed to be their husbands’ equals in acting as the Creator’s hands to provide heartfelt concern and loving guidance.
But Mrs. Yung had an additional trait which manifested itself in opportune moments. With a determinedly pointed finger, a quick tongue, and a sharp kick to one’s conscious, no one could reduce a full-grown man to shamed penitence quicker than Mrs. Yung. When her ire was up, even innocent people who had never met her before felt the need to apologize repeatedly. Her ability to reduce any ego into scrambled egg with simply a well-honed glare was why she was chosen to keep order in the forests. Her husband tagged along at this point, after his work was done, just for the entertainment.
Satisfied that the boys were no longer squabbling, she nodded once in acknowledgement of their apologies. “Now, there’s yet another wrinkle tonight, and Shem, you have to fix that one as well.”
Shem briefly rolled his eyes. “Oh, what is it now!?”
“A friend of yours has found herself on the wrong side of the trees. Now, I suggest you find her lost dog, then—”
“Wait a minute,” Shem grabbed Mrs. Yung’s arm. “Mahrree?!”
“What’s a marr-ee?” Dormin asked.
“A most determined, naïve, and dangerous woman, that’s what!” Mrs. Yung declared. “She wanted to know the truth, or so she claims, and I accidentally grabbed her thinking she was you, Dormin!”
“Where’s she now?” Shem asked, alarmed.
“Likely at the edge of the forest, sobbing because I intimidated her for her own good. She and her family need to stay out of here. It’s not their time yet. Hifadhi’s said that a few times.”
Still Zenos looked down in the direction Mrs. Yung had come running from.
She grabbed his jaw and turned his face abruptly to look at her.
“Shem, focus here! First priority is to find and misdirect the last four. Then you can see about your friend. And Shem,” her glare turned so severe that only a man as strong as Shem could have withstood it, and even then his knees began to buckle, “since when do you call an older married woman by her first name?”
Zenos swallowed. “Didn’t want to reveal her identity in front of Dormin. The less he knows, the better.”
“Yes, of course,” Mrs. Yung said slowly, not at all convinced by his explanation as she released his face. But fortunately for the young corporal there were more important matters at hand and no time for a lecture. “I’ve secured Dormin, so you get out there and do your duty tonight, whatever that means. Understand?”
“Yes, Mrs. Yung
,” Zenos said obediently. No one would dare disobey that tone of voice. “You just get him out of here!”
“That’s always been the plan, Shem, but this past week—it’s been unlike anything we’ve ever experienced. How I’m going to explain any of this to my brother Hew, I—” She stopped short and pointed to a clearing beyond them.
Four figures in black were jogging quietly towards their general direction, weaving through the underbrush and dodging pine trees.
Without another word, Mrs. Yung jabbed Shem. He nodded, the long knife still in his hands, and headed straight towards them, noiseless hurtling shrubs in his way. Mrs. Yung grabbed Dormin’s arm and pulled him back towards the boulders.
“What’s he doing?” Dormin whispered.
“Saving your life, Dormin. When I say three, head towards the stand of pines. One . . . three!”
Dormin followed her up to the trees several paces away. He slipped into the middle of them, learning earlier that night that complaining about their poking needles wouldn’t earn him any sympathy since Mrs. Yung was already quite scratched up herself.
“Hold still and you’ll become the shadows,” Mrs. Yung breathed. “That’s the best way to see what’s happening.”
Dormin nodded, but felt a sharp jab from Mrs. Yung. “I said hold still. Talk in breaths.”
“Sorry,” he breathed. He kept his shoulders from shrugging another apology, but his eyes widened with dismay that the gentle, kind woman who had been acting as his mother for more than a year had become as pointed and threatening as the blade she wore concealed under her cloak. With considerable dread, he fretted that maybe that his great grandmother, the originator of the killing squads, was distantly related to Mrs. Yung.
His first night in the trees was definitely different than what he was used to.
Dormin squinted between the boughs to see where Zenos had jogged off to. A moment later he appeared in the moons’ light directly in front of the four men. They stopped in surprise and blinked, as if unsure that the man was really in front of them.
“Who are you?!” one of the men asked, not concerned about keeping his voice low.
Zenos answered them nothing, but stood motionless.
“Wait a minute,” one of the four said slowly. He took a few steps closer. “Look at his trousers. Hey, I know who you are! What are you do—”
That’s all he got out.
Shem lunged unexpectedly, thrusting his knife into the man’s heart. His three companions immediately reacted by pulling their jagged daggers, but the man in the black jacket took off running.
Dormin, in the safety of the shadow of the trees, gasped.
Mrs. Yung covered his mouth with her hand. “Hush, Dormin. We’re safe now,” she said in the familiar gentle tone Dormin had known over the past year. “That was the last four we were trying to flush out. The other three will likely survive. We save people, Dormin. All we do is to save lives.”
She took her hand off his mouth and exhaled deeply as if to rid herself of her previously sharp demeanor. When she spoke again, she was once again an ideal rector’s wife.
“That one died to save you, and Shem will wrestle with his conscience as mightily as he did the night he killed your brother. But you, and the others, are now safe. My husband, however, isn’t. The poor man gets lost when he can’t see the mountains. Come on.” She tugged on his arm.
Dormin nodded, but took one more glance back at the still body with the long knife protruding out of his heart. Maybe it happened that quickly for Sonoforen, so fast that he didn’t even know what hit him before the ground did. That’s the way he’d want to go, Dormin thought—suddenly, like their father. He remembered telling his brother he loved him, and how ridiculously that went over. But the Yungs told him someday he would be grateful he did. And he was.
Dormin nodded once to the body. “I’m sorry, Sonoforen. Good-bye.”
Then he dashed through a clearing behind Mrs. Yung and into a stand of scrubby oaks.
---
As Shem sprinted, he glanced behind him and saw the three men in close pursuit, but none of them could catch the dark figure that ran with greater speed and agility than a deer. Through trees, through meadows, through a river, and even through a shallow patch of steaming water they chased him, heading west.
If only the Strongest Soldier race could have been run in here at night, Shem thought wistfully.
Sometimes he slowed his gait, only enough for the men behind him to think they could finally catch him, but then he pulled out ahead, tantalizingly out of their reach. He headed down a ravine, stumbled, and struggled to recover his footing.
His pursuers took advantage of his trip and rushed towards him.
Just as the three men were to converge upon him, they were inexplicably stopped by nets and ropes, wrapping around their feet. Shem had stumbled there, too, but knew how to step out again. As the three men fought and flailed, they became more entangled, as if the ropes hidden by leaves and branches tightened with their every move. That’s because they did.
Shem, however, stood up, nonchalantly brushed off the black lining of his army jacket, and watched passively as several trees and bushes tightened the binds on the three men.
It was a trap, and one of their best.
As the three men fought against half a dozen camouflaged captors, two more men in green and brown mottled clothing emerged. Those whose skin wasn’t naturally hued brown or red had worked mud into their flesh, but it had long since dried and was flaking off. One man went to assist tying up the prisoners and gagging them into silence, while the second one, a hulking figure and already browned by the foresight of nature, made his way over to Shem.
“This should be the last of them,” he said appreciatively. “Excellent work! I thought there were four, though.”
“There were,” Shem whispered.
The man in green exhaled in understanding. “The long knife?”
Shem nodded once.
“Where’s it now?”
“Still in his heart,” the corporal said flatly. “If I removed it, it would’ve made a mess.”
“It had to be done. You know that,” his companion said consolingly.
“Never going to own another one again,” Shem whispered in despair. “I’m too deadly with them.”
“You killed a guilty man in order to save fourteen lives tonight,” the man in green and brown assured him. “And these three others will never reveal anything either. The way is safe again, because of you.”
“Why wasn’t it before?” Shem snapped bitterly, and began to tremble.
“Bad timing along with a few unexpected complications,” his companion explained. “It was the noise that attracted their attention. There were far more than we expected, and they wandered this far east because—Look,” he said, growing annoyed with having to justify the situation, “you know this is part of why you are here. Your training, your position, your access . . . you also know we wouldn’t call on you unless it was a real emergency. True, we need you to keep quiet, but every now and then you still need to—”
“I know, I know,” Shem sighed wretchedly. “Fourteen, you said?”
“Yes, now.”
Shem nodded once, knowing he had to be satisfied with that response. “So where is he?” he asked, looking around at the dark pines and leafless trees. “I need to get him back now that the last are secured.”
The man shrugged and looked behind him. “I’m not sure, but he’ll be completely exhausted. We had no idea we’d be distracting the entire army, too, or we would have told you to borrow those three brown cows that never moo. They crash through the underbrush just as effectively, and we could’ve split them up.”
“But once the cattle fence is up, we won’t be able to use those, either. We’ll need to find another strategy,” Shem decided. “He tried to go home early, and that’s what alerted the patrols this morning. Then rumor and fear, being as efficient as they are, blew everything out of proportion. The major’
s been on high alert since early morning, completely perplexed.”
“Confusion is good,” the man patted Zenos on the back. “You doubt what you see, so you make up explanations of what it may have been, and soon you can’t even remember what you saw to begin with. By the time this night is over, I’ll guess there’ll be about a dozen different stories, all compelling, all terrifying, and none of them accurate. No one’s imagination will ever let them believe that it was—oh, there he is. Ugh, he is a mess.”
Through the undergrowth came the noisiest creature to ever plod in the forest. He saw Zenos and went straight for him, collapsing in exhaustion at his feet.
“Oh, good dog Barker!” Shem squatted and scratched the massive black dog behind the ears. “Well done, well done. Look at you, covered in burs, twigs, and what’s this? Ew, never mind. Sorry about that. Not sure if we’ll have time to brush you out before we bring you home.” From his back uniform pocket Shem pulled out a piece of jerky, Barker’s favorite.
Barker looked up at Shem, his tired eyes drooping, his drool running, but his tail wagging whip-like and thrashing the long dry grasses behind him. He gulped down his reward.
His two handlers for the night appeared a moment later, winded.
“He always hears your voice, Shem, and heads straight for you. He could sniff you out from anywhere in the forest, couldn’t he?” One of the handlers, dressed in a dark brown mottled jacket and trouser, grinned.
The second handler in brown gestured to the three being bound. “Looks like good hunting tonight, eh?”
The three captives stared at them, stunned by the appearance of two more men as if the trees had just spat them out, along with an abnormally huge dog that could have been spawned by a gurgling black cavern.
One of the captives managed to cough out his gag. “Who are you?!” he demanded. “And whose side are you on, anyway, Quiet Man?!” he said to Zenos.
The man in the black jacket stared at him for a moment before saying, “Get them out of here.”
He turned, took the dog by the rope around his neck, and said, “Alongside, Barker. One more problem in the woods tonight. Alongside, alongside.” And he jogged down through the trees back towards the east in what he hoped was the direction of Mahrree.
Soldier at the Door (Forest at the Edge) Page 56