Dieter stared at the malnourished, dying girl below him and wondered what manner of nobility she had pissed off to deserve being thrown in this crudely made oubliette of all things.
Whatever she did, it had drawn the eyes of raven and crow alike.
Not wanting to dirty his boots further with shit and vomit, he selfishly commanded his men to fetch the girl from the hole instead.
Time was of the essence.
Luring Abalon away from Holten had worked splendidly, albeit at no small cost of his own men’s lives.
Unfortunately, it would be only a matter of time before the Grand Devourer would realize its mistake and come back to give chase.
But before they left, there would be one more task to complete, which would all but guarantee the monster’s ire.
As sad as it was, by his hands Holten had died a second time.
Fresh corpses littered the streets, their bodily fluids still oozing from their remains.
From the fifty men he had brought to this raid, only twenty or so still drew breath.
A good trade for the hundreds of lives taken, he found.
A handful of his men awaited his command while the others searched the rubble for remaining hostiles and other survivors.
The horses stood at the ready, and soon all survivors, friend or foe, would have been found and brought to him.
He looked around but could not find the man he was looking for.
‘Where is the boy?
Find him, and tell him that we have someone in need of his urgent care,’ he commanded one of his men.
Despite not being spoken to, a man of fuller proportions wearing a black beard and wargear both too big and small for one of his size answered.
He could have been a dwarf from the way he looked, straight out of a storybook.
Although the would-be dwarf had been in his service for a few months now, Dieter had not bothered to learn the man’s name yet.
‘The lad’s dead,’ he squealed, with a familiar sense of fear in his eyes.
‘An axe and spear got to him, I saw it myself.
Straight through the bladder.
It was a bad death, Lord.’
‘Shit,’ Dieter angrily cursed to himself.
‘This changes things.
Lukk, you are to take the girl on horseback to our encampment in haste.
You may take five others, I need the rest here.’ Always the good samaritan, The big, Nooric man nodded and took charge of the situation with his familiar brutish yelling and shouting.
‘We might not have time to do this as properly as I hoped,’ Dieter admitted to the men around him.
‘Other survivors be damned, we need to do this now.
You three.
Tell the search party we lack time and to gather everyone around this oubliette.
This disgusting hole will prove very useful to us.
And bring oil while you’re at it.’
Watching his men run off and shoutingly repeat his commands, he contemplated his chosen strategy again.
Dieter disliked the risk he was taking by splitting up his already massively diminished forces even further.
The chances were real enough that Lukk’s splinter force would be noticed and dealt with before they even got close to safety.
Feeling the frustration rapidly grow within him, Dieter decided to go talk to the man once more before they left.
Dieter approached, and watched as two of his men carefully lifted the sickly girl on the horse of his lieutenant.
Surprisingly, she was still conscious and responding to questions, however frail her voice.
The other three stood at the ready, where Lukk’s aged face was one big grimace full of disgust as he’d tried to clean his boots using the jacket of one of the cannibal’s perished men.
‘Sorry about that,’ Dieter joked.
His friend was big, truly so.
A true-blooded Noor, a veteran warrior, all of which were apparent from the very first glance.
His long, backwards swept brown-greying hair a reminder of his more barbaric heritage.
Unlike most of his people, Lukk chose not to wear a beard, his face having only become stubbled due to their extended incursion into the Third’s territory.
The bloodied Zweihander on his back served as a reminder of the man’s obscene strength.
Lukk grunted in response.
‘I hope the girl is worth ruining my precious boots over.
Speaking of, did they bother to tell you why she was important?
She is either too weak or too stubborn to tell us.
And I don’t like risking my life for something I don’t understand.’
Dieter shrugged.
‘Curiosity is the death of the perfect soldier.
Truth be told, I’m as annoyed as you by this.
Our siege at Rijen took months of careful preparation and an enormous amount of planned misdirection to set up, and suddenly we need to play simple errand’s boys?
I just hope that damned Diederik didn’t ruin our efforts in our absence.’
Lukk smiled, seemingly satisfied with the state of his boots for now.
‘Diederik will do just fine.
As he always does.
What I’m more concerned about is the looming threat of our current situation.
We walk a razor’s edge by violating the den of the Devourer and I don’t like it at all.
The thing’s already terrifying enough to face on the field, let alone when you hand it a clear reason to hate you personally.’ Dieter mockingly smiled and watched as his men hastily approached.
‘When Abalon comes to seek recompense, we just blame everything on Diederik.
Like we always do.
We were never here, Lukk.’
They both chuckled at the dumb idea.
‘And with that, I suppose it’s time I set off then,’ Lukk yawningly remarked while fully stretching his arms.
They shook hands.
‘Don’t die, my friend,’ Dieter sighed, not wanting to reveal the sincere dread behind his request.
Lukk smiled while his grip tightened.
‘I never do.’ Bellowing orders at his inferiors while taking the girl in his arms, Lukk rode out of Holten and towards a not too unlikely death.
That left Dieter alone, and with a big mess to clean up and not a lot of time to do it.
Ten-ish minutes later they had gathered around the stinking oubliette.
His men had found a total of seventeen survivors hostile to their cause, and twenty-four prisoners of war that had likely fought on the right side of previous conflicts.
Despite their superior numbers, their bindings and numerous wounds had put them at the mercy of Dieter and his dozen or so remaining men.
Unfortunately he could not find any females amongst them, which was a somewhat expected but still very much an undesirable outcome.
‘This really is not my day,’ he sighed frustratingly, wishing their enemies would not inspect the charred bodies of their slain too closely in the nearby future.
With a simple gesture of his hand he executed the pleading, despair-filled prisoners in one simultaneous, merciless stroke.
As they rode away from the smoldering city, they glanced back at the burning hole they’d left behind.
The massive smoke clouds would surely serve as the distraction they so desperately needed.
The nearest safe zone was an hour and a half from here on horse, at galloping speed.
He heard the horns of war, echoing in the distance.
No doubt they were hunting after Lukk and the girl now.
As Dieter solemnly stared at the stars and the quarter-moon that lit up the clear, but beautiful skies, he regretfully conceded, understanding what needed to be done.
Reluctantly, Dieter took the small knife that hung around his waist and slid it over his palm, careful to not hit any important blood vessels.
As his blood started spilling, but before the first drop had even hit the ground, they could hear it.
Deep from within the thick, dark forest it came.
A deafening, inhumanly monstrous roar awakened the sea of trees to its awful presence, shaking and uprooting the very earth around them.
He could feel the sheer terror of his men and hear their anguished, panicked screams, and yet he could not fault them for their unfiltered cowardice.
Alerted to his fearful presence, the primal, blood-starved, god-eating thing that had forever lacked an equal began its dreaded, frenzied hunt.