Thin shards of light trickled down into the forest as dawn crept closer. Above their heads, the stars winked out slowly, one by one. The chorus of frogs was beginning to fade out as the creatures sought out cool spots to while away the day, and in the trees overhead, birds began preening and fidgeting, getting ready for their first songs.
Lined up beside Aidan were three dozen courageous men and women, all willing to give their lives today to free their friends and comrades from this pit of hell. Their faces were painted black with charcoal – coals they’d had to bring with them, as they hadn’t dared light a fire since they’d arrived. They wore makeshift armour crafted from thin sheets of scrap metal, much the same as that worn by some of the slavers. Four of the men had rifles, each of them possessing just two bullets – the grand total that remained after their altercation with the Eden tribe. They would use them to kill eight of the slavers, then simply discard the weapons, joining the rest of them fighting with swords and machetes.
A light-footed scout made his way over to Aidan, all but invisible against the backdrop of inky trees. “The women are at the stockyards,” he murmured, voice low. “Ten grassy knolls on the western paddock. They’re ready to go on your signal.”
Aidan nodded to the man, then turned to glance up the other end of the row. He gave Faith a deliberate nod.
Throughout the camp, a few slavers were up and about – a handful of guards, a few men retiring from the night shift, and a few more who just seemed to be early risers.
He heard the slow creak of twenty bows being drawn and gripped the handle of his machete. He’d been in this same situation dozens of times, senses straining against the darkness, reflexes on a hair trigger as he waited for the fight to begin, knowing each and every time that it could be his last.
Faith gave the signal, and twenty arrows were loosed into the camp. The nearest men went down with barely a whimper. But those further away were harder to hit, kill shots against moving targets in the dark a near impossibility, and Aidan braced himself…
“RAIDERS!”
A second volley of arrows followed the first, more targets taken down, and then the camp came to life, men slithering out of their tents, clumsy and awkward.
“Go!” Aidan commanded his men, not wanting to lose the opportunity. They swarmed out of the trees, slightly to the west of the women, giving them the chance to loose a third wave of arrows, and if luck was with them, a fourth, without the risk of shooting their own side. Aidan’s warriors went for the tents, not even waiting for the slavers inside to emerge, but instead stabbing straight through the fabric, slicing holes to see the prizes inside, ending lives before they’d even climbed out of their sleeping rolls.
“Raiders! Raiders!” The frantic cry was taken up across the camp, and as they’d expected, a handful of guards, large and well-armed, came rushing out of the chief’s tent in the centre of the camp. There would be another half a dozen still inside, protecting the chief, but that tent wasn’t the one Aidan was interested in. The women’s marquees were on the near side of the chief’s tent, and he took off in that direction, Whisper at his side, both of them fighting in a coordinated pattern that guarded each other’s backs as they slew their enemies with almost mathematical precision.
A small cluster of tents on the far western edge of the camp was still and silent. These men had chosen the spot as a quiet one, many of them of a more introverted nature that disliked the noise and busyness of the main camp. Faint shouts drifted over to them, but, locked in dreams and used to blocking out the noise of the other men, they ignored it…
“Raiders! Raiders! We’re under attack!” A young man in a blind panic came rushing over and promptly tripped over one of the tent ropes, all but invisible in the darkness. His weight crashing into the tent was more effective in getting the men’s attention than his cries had been, and a moment later, the sound of zippers being opened split the morning peace. Men staggered out of the tents, armed and alert, if rather confused. “What the hell?”
“We’re under attack!” the messenger bawled, and it was only then that the men looked over at the main camp.
“Who let the fucking horses out?” one of them asked dumbly, as a dozen of the terrified animals charged straight through the camp, demolishing tents and trampling slavers as they went.
“Right! Weapons out, on your guard, stay together as a unit,” one of the men ordered, a more lively sort who assigned himself the role of leader, in the absence of more specific instructions. “Williams! Lapierre! On your feet!”
A faint rustling sound caught his attention, and he turned to look out over the paddock to the west. In the dim light, the distant stakes and vines of the vegetable garden were emerging from the general gloom of night, but the rest of the paddock was empty.
Without warning, a clump of grass at his feet lurched upwards, embedding a long knife in his neck before he’d registered what was happening.
“What the fuck? Get off him! Get off him!” Williams rushed forward, tackling the lump of grass, only to be set upon by two more similar lumps, which rose out of the ground like ghosts. Or demons, perhaps.
Some of the other men rushed to help, while a few more ran away screaming, as it seemed for a moment that the whole paddock had come to life, shaggy masses of vegetation attacking with surprisingly vicious teeth, until a dozen slavers lay dead, their blood black in the grim dawn light. The masses of vegetation, meanwhile, sank back into the grass and disappeared, as if they had never been.
“Raiders! On your feet, you drunken bastards! We’re under attack!” A guard rushed over, sword in hand, eyes wide as he looked about in a panic. “I said on your feet!” He bent down, grabbing one of the men by the collar and tossing him over onto his back. The man’s head lolled grotesquely to the side, halfway severed from his neck. The guard stepped back, only now seeing the blood that had been overlooked in his haste. A massacre had occurred here, though there was no sign of any attackers.
“What the hell?” Wait, was that lump of grass moving? The guard went to take a closer look…
Inside his tent in the centre of the camp, The Wolf hurried to get dressed. “Armour!” he snapped at a nearby guard, who rushed over with a breastplate and arm guards, thick leather reinforced with metal plates, helping his chief put them on and doing up the buckles for him as quickly as possible. “What are you all gawking at?” he asked of the half a dozen guards standing around watching him. “Get outside and get this damn riot under control!” There were two hundred men in this camp, give or take. Whoever was attacking them – and he suspected it was that pesky tribe from the south – they would be greatly outnumbered and of no real threat to him. What they could do, however, was start a fire or damage their equipment, which would make an already tenuous existence even harder.
All the guards but two rushed outside, drawing their weapons. “Get me my sword!” The Wolf ordered the one not currently helping him with his armour. The man rushed to fetch the long sword hanging on a post and handed it to The Wolf, bowing as if he were presenting it to a king.
The Wolf snatched it from his hands and began strapping it about his waist. “Where are the horses?” he demanded next. Being on horseback would give him an advantage over any foe, and he had no intention of facing them if there was any real risk to his own life.
“I’ll go and find out,” the guard promised, rushing out of the tent.
A moment later, the heavy thud of hoof beats could be heard, coming rapidly closer. “Finally!” The Wolf marched towards the doorway, pleased that at least someone had had the foresight to arrange -
Six hundred kilograms of panicked equine power slammed into the side of the tent without warning. The horse stumbled and went down, ripping one wall down with it. The roof tore under the pressure and one of the poles supporting the structure toppled over, dragging the rest of the roof down on top of The Wolf.
Buried under the swathes of fabric that had just collapsed, Dream sat shaking until the horse finally hauled itself to its feet and charged away. Only then did she set about the painstaking business of dragging the tent fabric off herself. She’d been brought here with another woman by the name of Aria, to give The Wolf his weekly bath. Both of them were chained to a post, but she couldn’t currently see Aria amid the yards of cloth. “Aria? Are you okay?”
“Fine. I’m not hurt. You?”
“Just drowning in a tent…” She managed to find the edge and gave it a good yank, pulling the tent pegs out of the ground. Sucking in a great gulp of fresh air, she helped Aria pull herself free, then looked around.
The camp was in a state of chaos, horses stampeding, dead and dying men and women littering the ground, yells, threats and calls to arms echoing across the paddocks.
“Well, fuck me sideways and call me Steve,” Aria said. “Would you take a look at that!”
With so many wondrous sights all around them, it took Dream a moment to work out what Aria was referring to. A guard lay dead beside them, his legs sticking out from beneath the fabric, and from the signature red streaks on his pants, it was obvious he was one of The Wolf’s personal guards.
“Can you reach him?” Aria asked.
Dream tried, straining at the end of her chains, and managed to snag the edge of his pants at his ankle. It was an easy job to pull his leg closer, but a huge effort, even with Aria’s help, to drag his whole body the two feet necessary to get within reach of his waist – and the set of keys that was secured there.
Neither woman bothered disguising what they were doing. The men of their own camp were too busy killing their attackers, and the men and women of whatever tribe was attacking theirs were obviously trying to cut a path through to the women’s tents. There had been rumours that the new women who’d arrived had backup, men who were willing to fight for them, rather than over them. But they’d been quiet rumours, whispered in hushed tones in the dead of night, and neither Dream nor Aria had dared put too much faith in them.
Until now.
Twenty seconds later, they were both free, the guard’s keys each neatly labelled with a number, as were their own shackles. Dream stood for a moment, frozen in indecision. She could run away, secure her own freedom, and it was a fairly sure bet that none of the slavers would be aware enough of what she was doing to try and stop her, with the bloodshed and frequent screams all around her.
Or she could head for the women’s tents and free the rest of them.
“What are you waiting for?” Aria demanded. “We have to go free the others!”
“Just waiting for a break in the fighting,” Dream replied, measuring the distance between herself and the entrance to the nearest marquee. A horse thundered through the gap, then two slavers ran screaming along the narrow path, three furious women racing after them, swords held high.
“Now!” Dream commanded, and she and Aria dashed across the path and through the entrance of the first women’s tent, the cold metal of the keys biting into the fevered flesh of her hand.
Aidan was operating almost entirely on autopilot. His gaze didn’t linger on a single target for more than a split second, taking in each one of the dozen slavers currently trying to kill him, his body moving to dodge a blow or counter a strike on pure instinct. A horse thundered past, a woman on its back, and he dived out of the way as she loosed an arrow at a slaver bearing down on him with a machete. Off to the south, he could see the grass-men fighting with a handful of slavers. To the east, a handful of women had surrounded a group of slavers and were slowly and systematically cutting them down.
A guard rushed at him, and Aidan had learned by now that the leader of this hellhole had chosen his guards well. They were far superior fighters to most of the men, and a real threat to Aidan’s tribe, whereas many of the less well-trained slavers were merely a nuisance. He traded blows with the guard until he found an opening, then sliced through his arm, cutting straight through to the bone. The guard dropped his sword and screamed, grabbing the gushing wound, and Aidan took the opportunity to slice an equally deep gash in his neck.
But when he’d finished dealing with the man, he looked up and found that the women’s marquees were no closer than they had been five minutes ago, a thirty-metre gap between himself and the entrance that he couldn’t seem to close, no matter how many of these bastards he killed.
“Whisper! The women!” he reminded the man beside him. That was their real goal, rather than killing these dogs.
“I’m working on it!” Whisper shot back. He grabbed the wrist of the man he was fighting and cleanly and forcefully snapped his elbow.