Killing Softly ✞ (gxg)

26 | meet your maker

Silence cloaked their march, even with the entire army wearing vests of armor and carrying their shields, swords, and spears.

There were only two sounds that the Queen could hear as she stood in the very front of her army, leading them towards the southeast to be met with the rebel army. The two sounds were the sound of heavy combat boots crunching the thinning snow beneath them and the blaring alarm of her own brain—the alert thoughts that kept her senses vigilant and ready to apprise her of any form of danger that was near, and the contemplation of her mate and the despondency at the thought of anything happening to her or even to herself.

She didn't let the despondency bring her fatigue; no, she let it drive her forward like a beating drum, masochistically imagining gruesome failures as motivation for her success. That's why even though her jaw clenched from the pain of thinking about Lily hurt, her chin was raised and her eyes tight with watchfulness. She breathed steadily and was the first one to smell the treacherous stench of the rebels, diverting her army's path a few degrees to the left so they would meet them more accurately.

As they marched past the mountains, the snow on the ground began to thin even more as they marched over a hill and onto a wide expanse of green land where the ground leveled out in an unnaturally flat way, as if God herself had stamped the ground down with the flattest of hammers. The snow disappeared right after the hill, leaving only various splotches of white over the land whose grass was dark with moisture from the melting snow. She could see that the ground was also muddy even through the thick and healthy grass, so she gave a quick warning to her men to be careful of their step.

She also told them to keep eye on the dense forest that surrounded the wide pasture, for the only way the rebels could reach them was through the forest. They continued marching across the muddy field, aiming towards going into the patch of forest that was directly ahead of them.

But, as the Queen led them, she suddenly stopped in the very middle of the field, the armor of her men clanging as they came to a sudden halt as well. The soldiers looked at the iron-clad back their leader expectantly, some of them using that silent moment to admire the way their Queen chose to fight with them on the very front lines instead of sitting on her throne and making them go fight by themselves. She was a fair Queen and a humble one, always doing things herself instead of making others do things for her. But it also made some of them nervous to have her at the very front, and they each were ready to step in front of her whenever it was needed, no matter if it cost them their own life.

''Your Majesty?" a lieutenant directly behind her questioned, his scruffy voice lowered to a gentle hush as he did not want to sound impolite to Her Majesty.

The Queen said nothing. She only stared forward into the forest, her yellow-green eyes solidified and her pupils wide. She lowered her head, her ears picking up on something coming from the forest. Taking a deep breath, she turned her head to the side only slightly, never moving her eyes from the trees, and told the lieutenant, "We will not go into the forest. We will wait for them."

"Wait for them?" he questioned in respectful disbelief, glancing between the forest and the side of the Queen's face.

"Questioning me is the last thing you ought to do," she quietly spoke, her eyes still trained on the trunks of the trees packed so close together and so dark that it was hard to differentiate one tree from another. "They want us to go in the trees after them. They have traps in there."

The lieutenant looked at the Queen with his careful red eyes in near wonder at her ability to sense such things. He kept his mouth closed, not wanting to piss her off in the middle of a battle.

So they stood there, alert and quiet, casting their eyes across the woods surrounding them, some growing achingly frustrated from their readiness to fight. But they trusted the Queen, and so they would not complain or even merely think too wrongly of her. As they all shifted their eyes around, they included her back in their vision cycle, letting their eyes land upon the way she stood so tall with her armored shoulders back, the only part of her body moving being strands of her pinned-back hair in the gentle breeze.