The Terror of the Raiders

Chapter Five - Red Blood (Revamped)

The scary woman stopped her unhinged laugher mid breath. Choking on the wind in her lungs until her brain had caught up and she screeched in pain.

The louder the sounds became, the looser her grip got. Charles continued to wriggle and wrestle his way out until finally she dropped him, barely seeming to notice that she'd lost her catch. Rather, she kept wailing into the darkening sky as she clutched tightly at her wounds with her uninjured hand.

Charles decided to forget about the forest. He'd had more than enough magic today, and the one place that he knew had none was back in the village.

As soon as he hit the compact dirt – embarrassingly landing on his fluffy black butt rather than his paws as every cat should – Charles turned tail once more. He sprinted as quickly as his tired little legs could take him, and trying to ignore the sharp throbbing starting up in his muscles.

Luckily, the stones he had chosen to hide under were almost as close to the outskirts of the village as they were to the woods – with more cover along the route.

In spite of the old hag trying to bind him to her, Charles hadn't forgotten about the man on the ship, and the double-dose of terror had him running sporadically. He didn't know whether to dart from cover to cover for the most protection from the angry druid, or to just sprint in a straight line to get away from the crazy woman as quickly as possible. His indecision had the kitten running one way before changing his mind with an aborted jolt halfway and going the other.

Charles spent far too much time in this mad sprint-holt-dash before he reached the foul smelling tanner's hut that sat at the outskirts of the village circle.

Such a large structure would have surely offered wonderful protection and numerous hiding spots, but with his sensitive sense of smell, his poor little nose could not bear even a single minute inside of such a horrid place. As logical of a spot as it might have been, Charles just could not get over the endless golden tubs that the tanner soaked his leather in.

He might have been an animal, but Charles could not imagine ever touching his own pee, let alone storing it the way these strange humans did. The stench from this archaic leather treatment was so great that it blinded his other senses, and momentarily drove away all other thoughts.

He recovered in a startle as he ran between two of the houses that formed the village's ring. For just beyond them chaos rained.

The terrifying fishermen that had tried to kill him before now stood surrounding the shaking village people. Mothers cried and clung to their children with the elders as the betweeners tried to stand bravely beside their fathers.

The fishermen – though surely there had to be a better name for them – appeared to be forcing the men to kneel one by one beside the women. Charles could see from within the shadows the huts were casting how these strangers had corralled the villagers up as if the people were merely a herd of placid goats or idiotic sheep.

But, there were a couple of men missing.

It looked as if the druid had not yet returned from his shelter under the oaks, one of the farmers was missing as well, along with his betweener daughter. And one other... it took a moment for Charles to figure out who though, as this particular man did not spend much of his time inside the village circle anyway.

One of the hunters, the youngest and only other surviving son than that of old farmer, of the blind weaver woman who lived outside the village ring with her tom cat. He was good at catching anything from a hare to a deer, and even though he would never actually pet Charles, occasionally a less desirable cut of meat would end up tossed to the ground beside the kitten's nose.

Something about the way that the rest of the local humans were being gathered up was raising the fur along Charles' spine. He didn't like it. He didn't want to watch anymore, he didn't want to be there anymore.

The kitten, feeling defeated without understanding why, started to retreat from the scene in front of him.

But then he noticed that one of the angry fishermen was no waving around a long knife like the rest of them, and a new dose of dread settled into his stomach. He was wearing a long, fur-lined coat and had an enormous ginger cat curled around his shoulders. It was the angry druid, and Charles was frozen petrified.

The insane lady was back where he came, trying to do something that he just knew was worse than death. The village druid and his magic were in the woods, and the angry druid with his lightning was right in front of the poor kitten. There was nowhere left to run.

Nowhere. Charles let that word sink in, let himself accept it with more grace than the whimpering humans corralled like livestock in the village centre.

Let himself prepare for that too-soon end as the angry druid turned his head and began to walk towards his shadows.

As the human passed the cowering elders, he reached out and grabbed one by the hair, forcefully pulling the woman to her feet. It was the blind weaver, the old tom's companion.

She cried out in startlement and pain, but forced herself to relax rather than fight against him.

The elder had been one of the few that had treated Charles with more than contempt, and he felt his heartrate begin to pick up again at seeing her plight. He wanted to help her, but he didn't know how.

The angry druid began to speak, the sounds he made slow and carefully formed so that the villagers could understand. "My people will let you live. But you will give us your valuables, and your magical creatures."

The women had begun to sigh and sob with relief as he spoke, but paled and stilled once more as he finished his address. One foolishly brave soul, the butcher's wife who had always been very outspoken, dared to raise her voice. "We don't have any magical creatures, sir."

He jerked his gaze to her and pulled tighter on the old weaver's hair. "Lies! You have a black cat, a powerful animal of-."

The words ended in an abrupt hack as the sharpen flint of a hunting arrow spouted from his throat. He let go of the weaver and stumbled back from the rest of the villagers and he clutched at the shaft.

Behind him, in a shadow just as dark and on the opposite side of the village from Charles', stood her young son with his bow reloaded.

The angry druid dropped to his knees, as the blood filling his mouth prevented him from pronouncing any words of magic. He coughed and screamed and spluttered, but there was nothing he could do, and nothing his cat could do as the arrow had pierced his belly to reach his master's throat.

Together they keeled over and collapsed into the dirt, churning it into mud with the assistance of their own blood.

And the barely contained chaos surrounding the village exploded into absolute pandemonium.