The Terror of the Raiders

Chapter Six - Run and Hide (Revamped)

The fishermen had been frozen shocked as they had watched their druid splutter in his own blood. Charles was given the impression that they had believed him to be beyond such injuries. Or death.

It was not until he had finally coughed his last that they moved.

A righteous rage ran through the men as their minds comprehended that the angry druid was not moving, and would not move of his own will ever again. A roar made its way around the fishermen, screamed at the cowering women and hunched men of the village.

The first to fall was the blind weaver who had been so kind to the kitten in his short life. One of the brutes had stepped forward, around the sprawled body of his fallen comrade, and had reached in with a single meaty fist to wrench her hair where it was still being held in the angry druid's hands.

He pulled her to her feet so suddenly that she stumbled, and then back into his chest when she couldn't catch her balance. He held her there for a long moment whilst it felt as if the rest of the world had fallen still around them. Then, with a single guttural shout, he swept the sharp edge of his long knife across her throat, and a line formed in a gruesome parody of a smile.

She did not cry out, and the only sound that resonated through the air was her fragile body thudding to the ground.

As if by a silent command, the other fishermen who stood surrounding the unarmed villagers all raised their long knives in the same heaving breath, and brought them down upon the next.

Growling out the foreign sounds of their native tongue, they began to hack into the defenceless humans that Charles had grown up around.

Screams joined in to harmonize with the symphony of death ringing through the air. Mothers sobbed and men grunted as they used their own flesh to protect their children from the invaders. Begged pleas, unanswered prayers and hissed curses left the victims' lips, all aimed for the ferocious men that slaughtered them.

Thieves. Murderers. Soulless. And, raiders.

Charles stood frozen in the shadows. He couldn't bare to keep watching, but was still unable to tear his gaze away from the horror he witnessed.

Human after human fell to join their neighbours in the dirt. Brown turned to red all around.

Not even the babies were spared in the fishermens' anger. They were slashed still held to the breasts of their dying mothers. It was the pure evil of those murders that was enough to start the kitten out of his shock, and allow his mind dominance over his body once more.

Enough control to finally let him look away.

Finally, he was able to slowly turn his head away, catching in his peripheral a blur as the widow's son did the same and followed suit with the rest of his body. Turning heel and running from a battle that they both knew he had no chance of winning.

At least there would be one survivor from Charles' village.

After his head came Charles' paws. Twisting his body until it would have hurt his neck to turn back far enough to see the massacre. His tail had stood straight in terror without his permission whilst everything else was happening, and refused to move as he took a single cautious step away from the bloodbath.

As soon as his paw hit the trodden grass, the next was raised. Then he was off.

Sprinting once more through long grass and packed dirt paths, his only destination ahead and away. Yet there was still something subconscious that kept him from two remaining humans of magic.

Grains of wheat blinded him as his charge knocked them from their stalks, careless now of everything other than going forward. He had to get away.

There was some form of intuition inside of him that kept Charles away from humans, their dwellings, and the unattended larger animals that often tried to step on him. Something inside of him that he couldn't understand knew where he needed to go.

It didn't take long for the wheat to turn to turn to stones, and the occasional sharp edges of those rocks that the ocean had not smoothed yet cut into the kitten's thick paw pads. Now he truly was tracking blood the way it had felt when he'd fled the gruesome scene in the village centre.

Something unknown and primal was guiding him here, back to the grey beach where it had all started a short forever ago.

Back to the fishermens' – no, the raiders – unusual boat. They were busy killing everything they could at the other end of the fields right now, and the only one that had wanted to kill Charles out of them was dead.

Half the village – though now probably all dead themselves – had wanted Charles dead.

One of the raiders had even liked Charles. Had been nice to him. By some twisted logic that not even he could fully comprehend despite coming from his own mind, it made sense. The raiders were busy, and likely would be for quite a while. The raider that had hated him was gone, along with his contemptuous ginger cat. The village was being destroyed in its entirety.

There was nothing left for him here.

Charles took another look at the raiders' big boat. Now illuminated in long streaks of soft pinks and violets from the predawn light. It looked like a good place to hide.

He had been running all night, and he was tired. I won't stay here long, Charles promised himself.

But right now, he could do with a rest.

With his mind made up, the kitten began the task of climbing up the wooden hull before he could question his resolve. It felt okay to be here. With such a big boat, there would surely be lots of places to curl up and disappear from the horrors of his world.

To just forget about them for a few hours.

But the deck was disappointingly plain. There were wooden benches fixed firmly to the floorboards, and a closed chest at the inside end of each one. Why did he think that there should have been more?

And why was he so upset over it? It didn't matter. Charles chose a chest and coiled his body around itself, carefully tucking himself as deeply into the dawning shadows it created as he physically could.

He was asleep before his eyes had even finished closing.