The few who remained at the black coast, they dug in, the wooden ruins left unfinished by the enemy, now turned into their very own makeshift barracks surrounded by wooden pikes and trenches.
One of the imperial mercenaries found a paper that bared the resemblance of the Blasphemer King; the picture was snatched out of his hands and the image was tossed into the fire.
The rumors went a blazing: ¿Was it the enemy? ¿Spies? ¿Possible saboteurs from the Buccaneers inside the Island?
Some of the conservative mercenaries had a firm suspicion, a possibility to be among colleagues who are devotees of such Blasphemer King, thanks to the heretic gossips of the Imperial Magi, who drank and gambled with the crew, an unlikely behavior from a high born warrior of the mythical arts, such a close presence to the Imperial Sovereign.
Already prepared for that kind of guerrilla warfare; the darkness behind those jungle bushes were hungering for the destruction of their imperial ship, anchored safely, away but near to the coast.
On the lonely stone tower, nested in a field of trenches and wooden walls of pikes, from its battlements, the sailors saw their ship.
All of them, awaited for two arrivals.
The return of their brothers, the main war party lead by the Captain and the Farquir de Lid.
And the arrival of reinforcements, the Oceanic Kings of the far south seas and the Rangers of the Strait, the ancestors of Riverguard.
They felt that the bellowing from their ship went mute by the sudden violent waves, tearing up and scattering what's left of the line of foul old ships from ages recent and ancient.
The anchored ship of the imperial mercenaries, wanted act to move, because it knew.
Its crew knew it.
The drumming of round fire came from the horizon, distant but sure in its might.
The false skies in defiance against the arrival of their allies; the false skies, days ago, were already defying it, but the drumming of round fire and lightning still cracking on its hellish warpath.
Then their scout arrived, reporting everything.
...
The main war-party marched on a known path, a carved up path left by the Buccaneers.
Those creatures are not known to this world. The war party was stunned by the image of those creatures galloping abnormally upon the bushes and stones of the dark jungle.
Even the fell wings of the Discreet Eye was envious for attention. Its buzzing went through every man, triggering them, reminding them of the carnage they left in the tower.
The dead sunken eyes and mouths agape of their own human brethren, left bloodshot and misshapen by them, the Imperials.
They marched on, still damning the whispers of their own guilt.
And due to suppression of their own guilt, they drank, bargained and fell to their own gambling, a debt they must pay, and the Imperial Magi was boastful about it, gleefully.
And their guesses about the surroundings came true.
By the path, carriages and other belongings were left abandoned, footprints, long erased by the winds of the dark peril that laid in the eye of hurricane still hovering over the heart of the island.
The howling of the near ocean breeze, their only eerie but natural companion for these war band of criminals and former slaves.
They marched again, the first among them holding the roguish multi-color standard of their imperial employer, saw a glimpse of their scout.
YOU ARE READING
CORAZÓN AGUIJÓN (Crónicas de los Infra-Reinos) by DeLeon Cortes A.
Fantasy"The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction" -William Blake-
