A Lady's Submission

Chapter 8 - Second Chances

We'd beached the canoes, six hours ago and ever since we had been headed inland towards the trading posts. We were as silent as a party of several thousand warriors could be, which wasn't all that quiet.

The noise of our passage through the jungle was annoying me in a way that was beyond the normal. What surprise could we hope to bring to the enemy with this amount of racket?

It seemed as if every warrior of the natives had suddenly lost all the forest craft that they had been born and raised into. What's more, they all seemed to be aware of it.

They glanced among themselves as if they thought themselves apart from their natural selves. To say the mood about us as a fighting body of men was less than to be desired was to put it mildly.

Angrily I continued to move forward stubborn to complete the task at hand. My foot fell and snapped a twig loudly. That was it!

I stopped and angrily motioned everybody else to do the same. Something was not right!

It was as if some invisible force was working against me. Suddenly it came to memory the way my wife had been silent on the whole premise of my plan, which wasn't like her to be when I outlined a plan of something.

She hadn't approved of my plan. I'd known that, even though she hadn't said anything.

I reached a hand up to wipe at my forehead and the sudden cold sweat that I found there. My wife was a very prudent woman, while I could sometimes be prone to acts of rashness.

Was this such a moment?

In the silence brought about by my gesture to halt I ruminated on the facts as they were. With a little more insightful logic applied it became apparent that of all things the Portuguese would expect of me to do it was to do something forceful, as I was doing right now, instead of remaining in my position of strength at Arn.

Arn was anything but strong right now, as it was defended by only a quarter of the number of warriors needed to do it adequately.

"What have I done!" I exclaimed inwardly to myself completely aghast at my own blindness.

Abruptly I turned around and strode back the way we had come my actions causing warriors to have to jump out of the way quickly in order to not be bowled over.

"Mahlon?" Sean cried out uncertainly.

In a voice that everyone could hear I said, "We're going back! Now!!!"

As one the warriors turned and with eagerness made back the way we had just come. The level of silence that greeted my ears at our passage through the jungle only echoed to the fact of how we had been miraculously diverted from disaster of the worst kind. The warriors once more moved with the silence of their natural born instincts.

Somebody had been praying and I was pretty sure I knew who it was. "Thank you God for my wife! Without her I.... thank you so much!"

~~~~~~~

Anna

Anna knew the exact moment the attack was imminent. She'd been listening to the sound of a loon calling out. The loon's voice had stopped mid-note and in that instant, somehow instinctively knowing the cause of it she had turned to scream at Tyree standing near the gate, "Close the gate!!!"

He jumped looking startled at her shout, but in the next instant barbed arrows and poison tipped javelins were raining down everywhere within the compound. Men, women, and even children alike screamed out in both terror and pain.