Chapter Eighteen:
Escape
A/N: Sorry about the long wait; we've had some bug on our computer… no updates till it was fixed.
The sun's rays were just topping Ice Mountain in the east, shining pink through the heavy rain clouds. It was very early, but despite that, most members of the noob's army had woken up and were preparing breakfast. Leafdarking sat alone, on a snapped flagpole that was lying on the ground beside Burthorpe castle walls. She was watching her troops carefully.
The previous night, Rorthan had commanded her to send fifteen of her best warriors to reinforce the outpost at Morytania. She had chosen four instantly: Freakoldman, Calladus, Blazingwarri and Luthandros. The others, were harder.
And now, watching three she had picked out already, maybe it wasn't a good idea to send them off into Morytania. Freak was cooking what looked like enough chicken for her whole command, and Blazingwarri was hard at work, creating armor and weapons for the troops. Calladus was almost as good a warrior as she was; what a waste to send him off to Morytania...
"Hey! Get this friggin curse off me you noob!" Luthandros yelled, staggering drunkenly towards a noob mage, who was sprinting away as fast as his long robes would allow him. The story of how Luthandros had been owned by a level 12 mage was now well-known within the noobs camp.
Well, she knew she wouldn't miss Luthandros. Even if he stayed with her command, he probably wouldn't live longer than a few days anyway.
"Leafdarking!" Someone called.
Leafdarking snapped her head round to face the newcomer.
"Hey Radune." She greeted her fellow officer.
"Do you have anyone who can make my prisoner talk?" Wasting no time on formalities, Radune presented his problem. "The prisoner I got from Camelot, he isn't saying anything and the old man's teleported off somewhere... I've tried every sort of torture I can think off... Do you have any idea?"
Leafdarking nodded. "Some of my warriors are pretty good at that sort of stuff." She replied. "Freak! Calladus! Blazingwarri!" She reeled off names. The three friends got up and walked over.
"See if they can get him to talk." She told Radune, who nodded.
"Right you three, come here. There's this prisoner I got, you make him tell everything about the enemy's plans, the sword Excalibur, or the barbarians north of Camelot." Radune said. Without waiting for an answer, he turned and marched back to the large, solitary pine tree just south of the town. Set up beneath this tree was a rough wooden fence. Inside this fence was a person, bound hand and foot to the tree.
"Look mate, listen to us, and we'll get you out of here." Freak whispered to the prisoner as soon as Radune was out of earshot. The prisoner eyed him carefully.
"I don't care. I'm not telling you anything understand?" He said.
Freak turned to his comrades.
"Guys, we need a plan." He said.
In the next ten minutes, they had a good, almost foolproof plan to free the prisoner. The prisoner had stood, bound to his tree, not speaking nor moving throughout the entire discussion.
Walking purposefully to the rough wooden gate, Calladus opened it and called Radune.
"Well? What has he told you?" Asked the noob commander impatiently.
"As of yet nothing is what he has told us, him being of a both very stubborn and arrogant nature which together creates a difficult..." Calladus spoke quickly. All the noobs guarding the enclosure had been listening attentively to Calladus's report, but the complexity of his words was enough to focus all their attention and brainpower on him, on trying to figure out what he was saying.
So it was that no one noticed Blazingwarri slip out of the enclosure and sprint off to a safe distance away.
"...So, that is to say, assuming that rocks don't normally cry as hard as the tears of Guthix, we have been able to extract nothing as of yet from this prisoner." Calladus finished his long and confusing report when he saw that Blazingwarri had disappeared.
Radune was staring at Calladus, incredulity written all over his tanned face. Turning to Freak, he ordered, "Repeat what he just said." Freak obliged.
"My friend just wanted to tell you that we haven't learnt anything off the prisoner yet, and we haven't had breakfast yet, so could we please go and eat after another few minutes here?"
Radune nodded. "Ok, another ten minutes here, then you come straight back after you're done eating." He said.
Freak and Calladus went back inside the enclosure, surprised, yet suspicious.
"Leafdarking would never give us time off to eat. He knows something Freak." Said Calladus.
Freak was more optimistic. "He's just a friendly guy or something. Don't worry." He told Calladus.
Freak turned to the prisoner. "Hey, we're gonna help you out of here... just, cooperate, ok?" He said, and began to untie the prisoner's bonds, explaining the plan while he did so. "See this steel helm? You're gonna wear it out of here, so you look like our friend Blazingwarri. We should be going to Morytania sometime soon; we'll all be safe there."
The prisoner gave a dry laugh. "Since when's Morytania been safe?" He said.
"Since everywhere else got more dangerous." Replied Calladus. "I'm Calladus by the way, and this here is Freak. We're all in a small anti-noob clan, and we're going to Morytania real soon, to reinforce the noob's army there. If we work it right, you're coming too."
The prisoner hesitated a moment, then answered. "My name's Raneundead, but everyone calls me Rane. Called me Rane, I guess, cause I don't think there's anyone living anymore who ever called me that."
Freak felt a pang of sympathy for the warrior. He took longer over untying the rest of the ropes, hoping that Blazingwarri had had enough time...
Once he was a safe distance away from the makeshift prison, Blazingwarri had gone straight to Leafdarking. She wasn't hard to find. Indeed, she was in the same place she had been about fifteen minutes earlier. On the flagpole, watching her troops.
"Captain Leafdarking." Blazingwarri greeted carefully.
"Yeah, what." She responded.
"Ah... who were you going to send to Morytania?" Blazingwarri blurted out his question. He had neither Kryarn's or Calladus's gift for smooth talk. He was a miner, an explorer, not a politician.
"You for one." Leafdarking snapped back. "You and your two weirdo friends. And that idiot Luthandros." Leafdarking shut her mouth and glared at Blazingwarri. "Why you wanna know, anyway?"
"Oh um, just wondering if you were sending me or, and any of my friends." Blazingwarri said, his words tripping over each other in his nervousness. "Well I have this friend who wants to go to Morytania and..." He continued.
"Who." Said Leafdarking, more of an order than a question.
"Ah, his name's um..." Blazingwarri quickly searched for a name. Seeing the rubble that was once the walls of Burthorpe castle, he went on. "...Brick...34. His name's Brick34."
Leafdarking thought a little. Blazingwarri was a good smith, but he was fairly reclusive and didn't have many friends that she knew about. Only friends she knew he had were people she didn't like, such as Freak and Calladus. Also, she didn't know she had someone in her troop called Brick34. Well, every band of noobs got stragglers in all the time, or noobs furtively changing commands. And if he made friends with people like Blazingwarri, she was pretty certain she didn't want him.
"Sure. You, Freak, Calladus, Luthandros, Brick34 and some others." She said.
"Thanks, well... see ya." Blazingwarri said, and walked quickly away. He was extremely surprised that Leafdarking had actually fallen for it. The commander almost called him back. She knew he was up to something, but it didn't matter now... he would be in Morytania by midday anyway.
Blazingwarri returned to the campfire, where he was shortly joined by Freak, Calladus and Rane. Blazingwarri told them what he had organized with Leafdarking.
"Couldn't you have thought of a better name than Brick?" Said Rane, annoyed. Rane like his name, and wasn't very happy that he would be known as 'Brick34' for a fair while.
"So, we got Raneundead out alright, and any hour now we should go to Morytania, taking Rane with us. While we're within earshot of the noobs, Rane will be known as Brick. That right?" Asked Freak. The others nodded.