Chapter 19

In a leafy glade far to the east and south of Chakcha city, a weary and bedraggled sentan signalled his men to stop for their noontime break. The heavy forest seemed to press in on him as he stood, slouching, beneath an ancient oak tree. With a tired sigh, he called his decans together.

"Do any of you have anything new to report?"

They looked at each other hopefully, then with resignation. None wanted to be the first to break the silence.

"Decan, squad one. Report! What shape is your squad in?"

"Five men able to fight, Sir. Two more wounded but able to carry a pack. Two wounded badly enough that they should really be sent back to the city, and one dead."

The sentan scratched a rough tally in the dirt with the point of his spear as other decans reported much the same thing. When they had finished, he counted up the marks he had made.

"That makes sixtythree men fit to fight, down from seventyone this time yesterday. Two more dead, six more wounded. What are the men saying among themselves?"

"They don't like this kind of fighting at all, sir," replied the decan of squad five, still not wanting to meet the sentan's eyes. "They were trained to keep order in the city, not to slog through the woods after an enemy they can't even see. All they know is that every now and again one of those little darts flies out of the trees at them. Every time one of them tries to scout ahead he just disappears, and even if we do find him, he's just another dead body for us to bury. I don't think that they will go much farther from the city, no matter what orders we try to give them."

"They say they can't fight someone they can't see, sir," added the decan of squad seven.

"They don't want to go any farther into the forest." This from the decan of squad three, who seemed to agree with his men.

"That's enough!" snapped the sentan. "If we don't catch up with those women and bring them back, there won't be anyone but us to till the fields next spring."

"But at least we'll be alive," came a muttered comment from somewhere among the decans.

"And how do we fight them when they won't stand up to us?" This from the decan of squad three. "We aren't even sure that the main bunch of them came this way."

"I suppose that's why they nip at us like demons every step we take in this direction," replied the sentan in a sarcastic tone of voice.

"What better way is there to lure us on if they really went another way?" countered the decan.

"That's enough of such talk. We are pushing on until we catch them!"

The decans filed sullenly back to where their men were grouped and herded them back into fighting formation. One of the soldiers moved out ahead to scout out the trail, plainly reluctant to move out of sight of his fellows.

"Aargh!" The scream of anguish echoed through the trees, bringing a squad of the scout's fellows to his aid.

"No use, sir," the decan of squad one reported. "He's dead. Pinned to a tree by five or six of those damned darts."

"All right. Send out someone else in his place, and we'll keep moving. Well?" The decan hadn't responded. "Send someone else, I said!"

"No use, sir. They won't obey that kind of an order."

"They'll obey, or I'll have every one of them hung from the city walls. Now, move them out!"

The soldiers finally started moving, accompanied by furtive rustlings from both sides of the trail. The sun rose higher, but that only seemed to darken the shadows under the trees. Once again that afternoon, and again just before dusk a scout was found pinned to a tree by a cluster of those vicious darts.