A/N: these two are set to music from the movie Defiance (which, btw, I own no part of), The Bielski Otriad for the first part and Bella and Zus for the second, by James Newton Howard (who rocks, fyi). I havent seen Defiance, but I like the soundtrack and it was very helpful for the T'reth story, along with the Inception soundtrack. (Hans Zimmer also rocks.) Music cues included with re-upload (because I could).
(Bielski Otriad 1:55) When the brilliant colors of the sunset had begun to fade they set out toward the Royalist camp. Their front line was spread out through the dense woods, minimizing the damage they caused to their cover, but not so far out that T'reth couldn't give orders. Usually circumstances would have demanded they travel slowly to keep quiet, but their winged immortal ally had assured them she could contain their sounds and neutralize the enemy's scouts. T'reth had trusted her at her word and so far they hadn't had a problem. They halted a short ways away from the enemy camp, much closer than they would have without Star there to keep them hidden, and T'reth sent out their scout to identify where most of the enemy was stationed at the moment.
They waited, in the dark of the moonless night, for the scout to return. T'reth peered into the deep shadows of the trees, searching for the man he had sent and for the immortal they had chosen to put so much trust in with this attack. It was their first offensive strike ever. He had high hopes of it going well, but as time passed and the trees stirred in a quiet, otherworldly wind, the rebel leader could feel the cold fist of dread clenching around his heart. Something wasn't right.
Ackala was suddenly next to him, almost making him jump, and he was frowning. "It's been too long." He muttered to his friend and commander. "Keita should have reported back by now."
"He may have just been delayed." T'reth murmured back.
"Or been captured or killed. The Royalists could be surrounding us as we speak." Ackala argued, keeping his voice a hushed whisper.
(2:46) "Or worse."
That was all Star said as she stood up, appearing from the foliage like a shadow coming to life, and spread her wings to take to the skies. T'reth and Ackala exchanged a glance, not needing to see the details of the other's face to know that they were thinking the same thing. Ackala jumped up to run after the winged immortal, struggling to keep up and keep her in view, while T'reth turned to yell back to his third in command as loudly as he dared.
"Gree! Get the men back to camp as quickly as you can!"
And then he was running after Ackala.
They were almost at the crest of the small hill between them and the Royalist's camp when Star landed, crouching next to a tree for a moment before straightening and marching to the very top of the hill to look down into the wide clearing below. Ackala quickly replaced her by the tree and almost tripped over Keita's body. The unfortunate young man had a dagger in his back, and his body was cold enough to have been dead for most of the time they had been waiting for him to return.
Barking a few choice words under his breath, Ackala hurried to follow Star to the top of the hill, and after a regretful glance at Keita's body T'reth joined them to stare down into the empty valley. The torches were still there, set up around what had been the campsite up until at least this morning, but that was all that was left.
"You have a rat among your ranks." Star murmured distantly.
"By Lykotus, this is bad!" Ackala almost yelled, giving up with being quiet when there wasn't anyone to hide from anymore. "No wonder we haven't been getting anywhere!"
Ackala went off on a rant about bloody traitors while T'reth looked to Star apprehensively. "If they're not here, where are they?"
The immortal turned her head sharply away from her absent inspection of the clear sky to look East. (3:41) "Your camp."
T'reth sucked in a horrified breath as his worst fear was confirmed, but that was all he could do before Star reached out to grab his and Ackala's arm. The forest around them seemed to smear and warp before snapping back into focus, leaving both men slightly breathless and dizzy for a moment. Star was already gone by the time they realized where they were.
Their camp was just up ahead, even though they had been over a mile away a mere ten seconds ago, and it was lit far too brightly and there was far too much noise coming from it to be good. They stumbled forward, quickly finding their balance to run, and burst into the part of camp that was on a small hill to find it almost entirely on fire and completely overrun by enemy soldiers. Star was standing and staring at the scene only a few yards in front of them, apparently unconcerned.
"DO SOMETHING!" Ackala yelled at her. Her wings flicked back at them.
"I have and I am." She retorted quietly without turning, and somehow the roaring fire and yelling soldiers couldn't drown out her voice. "This camp was evacuated five minutes before they arrived. Your people are safe."
"What about the supplies?! The food, the water, the tents and clothes? They're destroying everything!" Ackala gestured wildly to what used to be their camp and strode toward the immortal. "Do something!" he demanded again. T'reth would have stopped him, but he was too shocked to move at the moment.
How could everything have gone so bad so fast?
Star turned to the advancing human, her silver eyes stopping him short. "Such things can and will be replaced. Be patient, mortal."
"That's a little hard to do while our camp is ON FIRE!" Ackala snapped back, not sufficiently warned off to stop yelling.
Star looked back at the sloped clearing, as if noticing for the first time that the whole area was, indeed, on fire. "You're people are traveling that way." She pointed off to the side, in the direction their evacuation plan should have taken them in an event such as this. "I suggest you join them."
"And what are you going to do?" Ackala demanded.
"Introduce myself to our enemy." The goddess explained shortly, spreading her wings. A hot wind swirled around her and whisked her into the dark sky, out of view almost instantly. Neither of them moved; shock rooting one and helpless anger rooting the other to the spot, and so, elevated at the top of the hill as they were, they had an excellent view of what happened next.
The forest beyond their camp suddenly began to bend in a howling wind, moving like a wave of air toward them, and a shadow swelled out of the protesting trees to block out the stars. The wind ripped through camp, sending the flames roaring higher and sparks flying before the shadow swept over the clearing and extinguished every source of light it touched. (5:08) Oppressive, heavy silence fell with it, stilling the air and all movement in the camp. The Royalist's mages lifted their staffs to light the darkness, but they were nothing more than small candles in the thick blackness that had settled in the clearing.
A sound like thunder rumbled through the air, and a crackling feeling that came after made the hair on their arms and the backs of their necks stand up. When the immortal spoke, the very earth beneath their feet seemed to vibrate with her tone.
"Listen now and listen well, soldiers of the Royalist people." She instructed. A fissure of light appeared above the trees on the far end of the clearing, where everybody could see, and it became Star, her stance very similar to how she had first appeared to T'reth, if a bit more aggressive. "I am Star. I am an ally to those whom you call rebels, and I am thus your enemy." She declared.
Four mages working in tandem pointed their staffs and uttered a curse. Their power lanced up at the immortal, only to strike an invisible wall and dissipate into the air around her harmlessly.
"I wasn't finished." She said flatly, disapproval in her voice. She made a slightly irritated gesture and a horrified shout went up from the enemy soldiers as those four mages collapsed, dead and cold before they'd even hit the ground. "As such I give you one warning; cease hostilities and find an agreement between your leader and theirs, or face me in battle and die."
There was a short, uneasy silence in the clearing before Star pulsed brighter, pointing commandingly toward the North, where the Royalist capitol city was. "Return to your leader with my message. Leave now under your own power, or I will remove you with mine."
The Royalist soldiers shifted, unsure, waiting for someone to give an order. Then an arrow from a crossbow arced up at the immortal and someone yelled, "ATTACK!"
The arrow vaporized, along with every arrow that followed, and the other three mages that followed the order had just as little luck harming Star as the four before them, and their fate was the same.
"So be it." Was all she said.
The hot, fierce wind returned as she lifted her arms, bending the trees as far as they would without snapping, picking up dust and whisking arrows away. The air pressure changed dramatically, as did the temperature, and within moments a tornado had formed around the immortal. It grew quickly to engulf almost the whole clearing, forcing T'reth and Ackala to retreat into the trees to find what little shelter they could, and then it moved off to the north with a mind of its own.
In its wake, the Rebel camp was as it had been before the tornado, but not a single Royalist soldier remained.
Ackala and T'reth emerged to study the remains of their camp silently, until Ackala glanced over at his friend.
"You know, I think I'm glad she's on our side."
T'reth nodded numbly. "We should find the families and start salvaging what we can. The Royalists no doubt moved their camp, and since they won't be needing it anymore we can restock from what they left behind. Gree should be back with the men soon."
Ackala nodded and set off in the direction Star had said the families of their soldiers had gone while T'reth wandered through the camp to find a torch and see more clearly what had been lost.
~0~
They found the Royalist's camp early the next day when T'reth looked at the small map Star had given him and realized it had changed again to mark the new positions of the enemy. The Royalist contingent had been larger than their own, and thus they found plenty of supplies, though not as many weapons as they would have liked. Once everyone had been set to the task of counting and writing down what they had, T'reth called his officers together to address the issue of the rat among the ranks. Only the officers had been told enough details of the attack to have been able to give the Royalists enough information to counter, unless they had routinely failed to notice an eavesdropper outside the tent. That was unlikely, though, since their guards would have noticed, and if it had been one of the guards themselves he wouldn't have been able to gather nearly enough information since they switched out guards every meeting.
It had to be an officer.
T'reth stared carefully around the table at the men he had chosen to help him lead. Next to him, Ackala also studied his fellow officers, but with a heated glare and obvious suspicion. Gree frowned around as well, knowing what they were looking for, but not knowing how to look for it.
Once their last officer joined them, T'reth started the meeting. "You all know why we're here. That attack last night was turned on our heads because someone in this tent told them it was coming. I want to know who and why."
The officers glanced uncertainly at each other, waiting for someone to speak up or for T'reth to start asking questions.
"Sir," one of the older men said quietly, and T'reth turned to him. "How can we be sure it wasn't that creature?"
T'reth frowned. "You think it was Star?"
"And how do we know it wasn't you?" another asked. Tiktuk had always been suspicious of T'reth's motivation, and he wasn't surprised by the narrow look the man was giving him. T'reth merely sighed a bit, but next to him Ackala bristled, growling dangerously. T'reth put a restraining hand on his shoulder before his friend could say something offensive and was about to reply to both concerns when Star herself did so for him.
"It was neither, I assure you."
Tension in the room skyrocketed as the immortal moved away from the entrance, letting the tent flap close behind her. The worried face of one of their guards, a young man, peered through before being blocked from the proceedings again. T'reth hoped they hadn't tried too hard to keep Star out. From what the leader could gather from her frosty expression, she wasn't in the best mood.
The stillness in the room was that of men ready for any sort of action—whether it was to fight or flee. Heads swiveled and eyes remained trained on the tall, thin form as Star deliberately took her time walking around the table, though if she met their gazes the officers were always the first to look away. She stopped at T'reth's right shoulder. "T'reth remains loyal to the cause, as do most of you. But not all of you."
T'reth felt the impulse to tense with the rest of the room at his vulnerable position, with the very dangerous being directly behind him, but he forced himself to relax. She had just reiterated that his position had not changed, and she had promised to uphold his command so long as that was the case. Ackala, on the other hand, was as taut as a pulled bowstring next to him, and half turned to keep the immortal in his field of view.
Star swept her unnatural eyes around the table again, daring each gaze she met to challenge her. None did. "I already know who the guilty party is. Now is your chance to speak."
There was silence in the tent for an unbearable minute, the officers shifting slightly and glancing at one another, waiting. Star didn't so much as twitch in all that time, and then abruptly turned to continue her way around the table, wings settling closer to her back. Her steps were light and measured, her hands were clasped behind her back, and if it had been almost anybody else it would have been normal, something like pacing to help her think. But it wasn't. It was with a predator's grace that she moved around the spacious meeting tent, sending the tense atmosphere to new heights of discomfort and making every man with their back to her cringe with instinctual fear.
"You were all chosen as officers for your ability to offer valuable insight in fighting and winning this war. The traitor is no different. Some of you even vouched for his skills. He has made himself a friend, a position that has served his purposes well. He has appeared willing to follow T'reth's command, and encouraged the rest of you to do the same. His suggestions have seemed useful, but were more so to him in allowing this trap and others to bear fruit. He has always been clever to hide his affiliation and contact with the Royalists, but he showed his hand without truly understanding the consequences of my support. Had he been smarter, he would already be gone rather than at this meeting, but he believed his position to still be secure."
Marcel, the officer to have expressed concern about Star's loyalties, was frowning as he pieced together the clues the winged woman was setting out for him. He was one of the oldest men there, but his mind and eyes were still sharper than most, as his skill with the longbow proved. T'reth could practically see the wheels turning in the other man's head even as his own mind worked hard to narrow down his options. Already he had eliminated several of his officers, but he still had about three he wasn't sure of. Star hadn't spared a glance at anybody since she had started circling, but she only paused her speech for a few moments before going on, voice dropping to a dangerously low murmur. "He went ahead of your army to warn the Royalists and waited for your scout in order to kill him. His scent was still on the body when I found it. His hand was imprinted on the blade he used."
There were several disconcerted frowns at that, but one of the three men T'reth was debating between suddenly paled, lifting his gaze to look at the immortal across the table from him as she came to a stop and faced him. T'reth felt disappointed, and more than a little angry. Erol had been a decent officer. He was usually quiet, but when he did speak T'reth was glad to listen to his ideas, and he had always carried out orders well. At least, T'reth thought that he had.
Heads turned as Star fell silent again, following her gaze to lock on to Erol as the man began to shake, eyes growing ever wider as the Goddess stared him down.
"Erol…" one of the officers next to him started, face falling. "Is this true?"
"I—" the traitor started, and then took a stuttering breath. "It was inevitable. You can't win; it's impossible. I was only serving my king."
"Anything else to say, traitor?" Star asked, steel in her voice.
Erol abruptly stood with a forced sneer, tipping his chair over backwards. "Not to you, Demon!"
It was surprising, how fast the man was almost to the exit before he suddenly stumbled, before anybody else could move. The rest of them were on their feet as the traitor made a choking noise, grabbing at his throat, and the whole group froze again, watching. Except for Star. Star slowly stalked closer to the man, posture the same as when she had paced around the table, terrifyingly predatory gait still in effect, dispassionate eyes locked onto the shaking mortal as if he were nothing more than an insect that needed to be squashed.
Erol collapsed, face turning blue, eyes bugging out in horror at the Goddess standing above him with not a hint of emotion anywhere on her person, and the next second his eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he was gone.
The officers remained rooted to their spots in shock as Star stepped over the body without another glance at it, pausing right in front of the tent flaps.
"I do not tolerate traitors." She glanced over her shoulder at them, completely unaffected by what she had just done. "Don't forget it."
And with that the immortal swept out of the tent and was gone.