72. The Darkest Night.
When the flat top of Salamandastron loomed on the horizon, Flicker found himself in the pit of despair. All that he had left in life were his principles, but how these principles, which have failed him, his family and every creature he ever loved, could be worth lives of the hundreds about to die? Hatred of Akkla and her brother, and all of the Axehound clan gnawed at him like never before. If Akkla and Willag were to die, killed in the night by a stranger from nowhere, could that stop the war? Flicker wanted to think so. The Axehound army, with all the tribes that joined it, was held together by personal authority of the clan's leaders. Without them it was going to fall apart. Of course, he would have to die too, he would have to get caught, lest the otters decide that an assassin from Salamandastron did the job. Chances of killing anybeast but himself were slim, he still realized that, but he no longer cared.
In a forest, reaching the Warchief's tent would have been relatively easy, but in this dune country sneaking past the alert sentries around the camp would have been impossible even for Flicker, if not for clouds blanketing the sky. Even if none of the bird scouts, who watched all around the moving army during the day, could fly in the darkness, otters remained ever alert on their posts. Flicker crawled like a snake past their line, then choose a moment when nobeast seemed to look in his direction, stood up, put on his cloak, and walked as if he had every right to be in the camp. The sheer size of the army meant that no warrior knew everybeast else, so why would any creature who may be awake pay attention to another squirrel, wrapping himself up in a cloak to ward away night's cold, or at least enough attention to look under his cowl?
Most of the army slept under pieces of cloth stretched on poles or dug holes in the sand, but Axehounds had a big tent for themselves, as he observed many times before. Flicker made sure the small knife strapped to his forearm leaves the sheath easily, as he approached it. The greatest difficulty would be making sure that the first beast he's going to kill dies silently enough, without waking up the rest. The young otter who must have been Willag's daughter or niece would have to be the first, then Akkla, and then Willag, in order of their size and strength.
The tent was unguarded – whom the great Axehounds had to fear in the midst of their own camp? Flicker slipped inside, quiet like the faintest of winds, and paused for a moment, trying adjusting to virtually absolute darkness. Something was wrong. He could hear sounds of only two breaths. Who was absent and where he or she went? Flicker moved around silently, dropped on one knee before the closest otter, bent forward and sniffed the air, trying to discern who was before him by scent.
The otter woke up instantly. "Who's there?"
There was no time to think. Flicker stabbed down. His knife hit something twice before the otter caught him, and threw him with the force of a bent tree branch suddenly let lose. Panic gripped him, when he realized that the knife was no longer in his paw. He tried to scramble away and run, but the foe, Akkla, judging by the harsh voice he still remembered all too well, jumped on him, not accurately enough to catch him, but accurately enough to bowl him over and send both of them rolling on the floor. Before he could rise again, somebeast else threw a blanket over him. The struggle after that was fierce but pointless, swiftly ended with a tail slap, delivered blindly upon Flicker's head. By the time most of his senses returned to him, he was dragged out of the tent, stripped of his humble clothes, tightly bound, and surrounded with more armed otters than he cared to count.
"Speak, outlaw!" Willag, who apparently was checking sentries and came running upon hearing the noise, shook Flicker with one paw, as easily as if he was a ragdoll. "Who you are and who sent you?!"
"Wait, Warchief." Akkla's shoulder was hastily bandaged, and she was holding a piece of white cloth next to her ear to stem the blood, but she remained relatively calm. "You may kill him like this. Let me do the questioning."
Willag did not answer, but allowed Flicker's paws to touch the sand.
"I'm fine, fine enough to handle this runt. Go, have some sleep."
Willag huffed, and threw Flicker to the ground. "You just got unlucky, outlaw. Soon you will see that I was the good one here."
Flicker had no doubt about that. However cruel and ruthless Willag could be, Akkla's heart certainly was blacker.
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Akkla, with another otter, Miggro, a scarred veteran who was her oftentimes companion in campaigns and assistant in doing grisly deeds that needed to be done, hauled Flicker out of the camp and towards shoreline, closed enough to be easily seen by multiple sentries, but far enough to not disturb the sleep of warriors too much. Now Miggro was tending a small fire, and a long strip of metal made from a broken sword, heating in it, while Akkla sat, slowly twirling a small nasty-looking curved knife in her paw, and looked at her prisoner, who stared back at her defiantly. The grey-furred squirrel looked as scrawny and scruffy as could be expected from an outlaw, though apparently healthy. No part of him was missing except for the ears, cut away entirely, the outlaw mark. The face was unfamiliar to Akkla. The again, in her life she met so many squirrels, that it was impossible to remember faces of them all, even before changes that could have been wrought by time and travails in wilderness.
That thought made something click in Akkla's head. She remembered the conversation with Heddin right after that damn fight where he met Aldwin was injured. He spoke of a certain outlaw grey squirrel… Akkla's eyes widened. "By all the seasons and ancestors, you are… no, you name yourself!"
The squirrel produced a coughing laugh. "Can't believe you remember me. Yes, right, I'm Flicker."
Akkla looked at Miggro. "You go, get some sleep. I know who he is and why he tried to kill me, and I don't think he has any answers we will have to carve out of him."
"Sure don't need help burying the carcass?"
"Sea is a grave good enough for this scoundrel, if it comes to that."
Miggro shrugged and went away. Akkla looked back at Flicker. "Not a very good use you made of life I left you."
"I lived my best after you took everything but my life from me, believe me or not." Flicker stared back. Akkla's fresh founds pricked. The fire crackled in silence. Was there anything left to say? She closed her eyes for a moment. She thought that memories of that night long ago, when she and Flicker first met, have long since frayed and faded, yet since the previous season she began seeing them in nightmares once gain. And now the mere sight of Flicker made her recall most things very vividly.
Not many vermin could have spotted a slim and nimble young otter, trained by some of the best scouts and trackers in the Northlands, in the forest on this fairly dark night. Certainly none of them were in this band. Meanwhile she could count arrows in their quivers. By all appearances, they were a bunch of young weasels and stoats, who set out – or were kicked out – from their tribal land to find glory or death, most likely death. But despite being none too forest-savvy, they headed more or less straight towards the camp of the Fortunate Freepaws. The band was meagerly armed, but simple spears, cudgels and short bows were quite enough to deal with beasts who had no weapons and no will to fight.
Akkla thought very quickly, as she slipped behind an old tree and stood up. Willag and the rest could not be far behind her. Not a great fighting force, merely envoys numerous and armed enough to not fear routine dangers of the Northlands, but quite enough for a vermin band like this. Now they hurried back because they found signs of vermin presence in the valley soon after parting ways with Fortunate Freepaws after fruitless negotiations. Akkla and a couple of others who could quietly and swiftly in the dark fanned forward to scout, but she was sure that the rest would hear a loud yell. So would, of course, the vermin, and that would draw them away from the defenseless camp…
The defenseless camp of these brainless, useless, willfully blind Fortunate Freepaws, the vermin-loving fools! Willag offered them to stay in the Axehound clan lands permanently, and be safely protected, in exchange for their healing skills, they threw his kind offer back into his face, even if politely. Willag took that in good humor, he did not even mind the fact that they had a few ferrets in their camp, but Akkla was still seething with fury. How about letting the fools get a taste of their own foolishness?
She was not sure how long she stood there, thinking these dark and terrible thoughts. Perhaps only a few seconds, perhaps half a minute. She heard some slight movement near and snapped out of it, reflexively readying her sword, but that weren't vermin sneaking up on her across the ground, but a beast who just landed on a branch right against her on the nearby tree, some small squirrel. Great shame and fear shot through Akkla. She cupped her paws to mouth and shouted: "To me, Axehounds! The vermin are here!"
Yells and screams of terror from the direction of the camp echoed her shout. And the squirrel was gone before she looked at his direction again.
Akkla felt no usual exhilaration of battle. This night the smell of blood made her feel nauseous, the screams of dying made her wish to plug her ears and run away. No wonder she nearly got killed. Hacking like a madbeast at a weasel who was already fallen, she did not notice in time more vermin to her left. Before she could dodge or defend herself with her shield, a burly stoat drove a two-pronged spear into her side. Fine chainmail and poor make of vermin iron saved Akkla from dying on the spot, but the fearsome thrusting blow knocked all wind out of her. Gasping for air, bent double in agony, she could barely see as the stoat raises his ugly weapon, to drive it into her unprotected face, and more vermin hurry to help with finishing her off.
Then the stoat's head all but exploded, blood spattering Akkla's face, as his skull got smashed like an egg by a throwing axe hurled with enormous force. As he fell, Akkla saw Willag, swooping on the small group of vermin like an eagle swoops down upon his prey. Willag was built not unlike Akkla herself, albeit bigger, slim and well-proportioned, like their mother. But although he did not inherit the bulk of their barrel-chested father, his strength still was worthy of a future Axehound chieftain. And his speed, his skill with the sword, which he preferred to the more traditional weapons of their clan, were marvels to behold. He smote one weasel so hard, that the vermin's neck was left hanging on a strip of fur, cut off right paw of another before the vermin could finish lifting his heavy club, deflected clumsy spear trust of a stoat with his shield, disemboweled the hapless foe with the first strike and sliced off a good part of the stoat's head with the second. Just as Akkla managed to straighten herself, Willag put the weasel who dumbly stared at the blood pumping from the stump of his paw out of his misery, and turned to her. "Akkla, are you wounded?!"
Speaking and breathing was painful, a couple of ribs may have been broken. But that was nothing. "Will live," Akkla answered before rushing where, judging by the sounds, the battle still was raging on.
What was left of the vermin band broke and run, scattering through the forest. Akkla found the ferret pair on the edge of the camp, as she tried to pursue and failed, because pulsing pain at her side made breathing difficult. The male was lying on his side, maybe already dead while the female was sill trying to stop bleeding from the terrible wound in his midriff. There were no ferrets among the attackers, and in any case these two wore plain but well-made tunics of Fortunate Freepaws, instead of kilts, cloaks, and grisly decorations of bones and feathers of the vermin raiders. However tempted Akkla was to pretend that she mistook them for some of those raiders, she could not. Then another thought occurred to her. The male was struck practically outside the glen, where the traveling brotherhood camped, probably the very first of the attack's victims. How this could be a coincidence?! If the raiders knew where they were going, somebeast had to betray Fortunate Freepaws, and were there any better candidates that creatures who knew that their fellow vermin are coming, went to meet them, and got betrayed by the raiders, who stabbed the male but spared the female for obvious reasons. Normally Akkla would have at least paused to question the survivor, but at that moment she saw red. Now she could see who was actually responsible for the horror and slaughter of this night! The ferret female tried to tell Akkla something instead of trying to escape, and that was a mistake. Akkla only stopped chopping and slashing when the pain at her side made her stop. By that moment her face was wet with droplets of blood, and bodies of both ferrets were barely recognizable. Blood and mutilation hardly ever disturbed Akkla, but this time she felt nausea.
"You murderer!"
Akkla turned and saw the young grey squirrel screaming almost incoherently at her.
"You murderer! Traitor! Liar! I saw you, I saw you in the forest! You did it! You villain! You led these raiders here!"
Akkla shuddered. Then she noticed the squirrel was loud enough that survivors scattered across the battlefield, both Axehound warriors and Fortunate Freepaws, started noticing. It was easy to imagine what a huge blow the entire clan's honor would take if anybeast were to believe this squirrel. "You're mad with grief. Stop this…"
"Mad?! I saw it with my own eyes, I saw it, you monster! Villains and liars, all of you!"
"Shut up!" Akkla threw her sword so it landed right before the squirrel's footpaws. He recoiled from the bloostained weapon as if it was a viper. She was unable to hold back a yelp and hiss of pain, as she pulled her chainmail off over her head, both because of her hurt ribs, and because she did it in such furious haste that steel links tore out a couple of clumps of fur. "Do you think I will let these nasty lies stand?! Do you think you can just smear the Axehound name?"
She brandished a simple knife "I gave you a weapon, if you have any courage and honor take it, and let's fates of battle show everybeast who is lying here!"
Akkla looked right into Flicker's eyes again. "I did not lead any vermin to your camp, and I never wanted you to become an exile, but you're right to hate me. I might have saved your parents, or Heddin's parents, had I not hesitated to defend goodbeasts against vermin just because I thought those goodbeasts are fools. But this doesn't matter now, I suppose."
She stood up, the knife still in her paw.