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Description
A raven’s victory - #2

The sturdy wooden door was thrust open, and with a loud bang it hit the dark, damp wall of the prison. Some mean-looking guards appeared and threw another man in, who landed flat on his face in the rotting straw that covered the entire floor.
As he got up with some effort, the other prisoners looked at him suspiciously. One of them, a thin, bald man, approached the newcomer.
“Well, what have we here. I have never seen you before, mate. You look like a tough guy, though, and you must support the rebellion, or else they wouldn’t have locked you up here in the first place. What is your name?”
The man eyed him for a moment, then looked around, like a predator in a new environment. He wore black gloves, a ragged cloak, also black, and underneath it dark clothes. At night he would go completely unnoticed. He was tall and had the face of someone who has spent his entire life in the wilderness. His face bore the marks of the royal guard’s anger.
“I don’t have a name. Call me whatever you want, I’m dead anyway.”
The bald man laughed, a short, snorting sound, unpleasant to the ear.
“We’ll just call you Tough Guy then. Why do you consider yourself dead? You’re definitely still alive, unless my senses deceive me.” He laughed again, apparently finding himself quite witty. Some of the other prisoners also laughed, but not very heartily.
“Did it occur to you that this is a death-cell? We’ll all be dead by tomorrow morning.”
The bald man stopped laughing, and suddenly looked a lot more dangerous.
“Who are you, Tough Guy, to say such things to me? Who are you that you don’t know we’ll all soon be free? You must’ve done something quite terrible to end up here.”
The stranger just looked at him coldly.
“Wait a minute…” The bald man noticed the tiny iron flask around the neck of the newcomer.
“The guards told me someone killed general Somendus during that big fire. With a poisoned arrow. You are clothed like an assassin, and that thing ‘round your neck does not hold perfume, methinks. So the Prince sent an assassin without me knowing it…” He looked very bemused. “Anyway, we’ll be out of here in the blink of an eye, everything is set. That poser king will get a very nasty surprise soon.” He laughed for a moment, and then extended his hand. “My name is Kuron, and I am one of the Bastard Prince’s lieutenants. Soon the land will be ours, and you have chosen the right side, whoever you really are. You are an enemy of my enemy, and that makes you a friend.”
After hesitating for a moment, the man in black took off his right glove, and the two shook hands.
“I’ll introduce you to the others. We are all officers in the army of the Prince, which is exactly why we landed up here.” He pointed successively at every man in the room: “Pertor, Welvan, Ioran, Haralon, Lutob and Cind.”
They all nodded at him.
“How did you people get captured, Kuron?”
“Nah, we lost an important battle, and we didn’t get away in time. The royal pigs overtook us, and here we are, waiting for the Prince to arrive.”
“What battle was that?”
“Heh, you aren’t really up to date in the war, are you? There has only been one major battle in the last few months. It was on a large plain in Kettingale Forest, near a little town called Lujar. The villagers were all killed, unfortunately, just like most of our lads. Why do you look at me that way? Look, Tough Guy, we tried to use the houses as some kind of cover. You would have done the same. Really, we told the villagers to lock themselves up in their town hall, to stay safe, and so they did. The only problem was that the royal bastards had brought catapults, we didn’t know that. The first projectile crashed directly into the town hall. Man, the explosion was gigantic. They had used some kind of oil, that burned like hell. No-one made it out of there of course, poor fellows.” He misunderstood the look of utter disgust on the stranger’s face. “Creepy, uh?”
The assassin turned around.
“I’m going to get some sleep. Haven’t had much lately.”
“Wait a minute mate, you didn’t tell us why you have joined the rebellion, and how you were captured… what, you haven’t told us anything! Do you even know you work for the rebellion?”
“If it is true that we will be freed, you will get to know more about me than you ever imagined. It is late, and I will sleep now.”
The stranger tried to make himself comfortable on the straw in one of the dungeon’s corners, failing miserably. After a while he apparently decided it was useless, and he lay still, eyes open, listening to the soft talking of the others. After many hours of staring at the depressingly grey ceiling sleep finally came, but it was hardly a relief from the hard floor.

Inside a familiar wooden building. A fire in the middle. A young woman’s face, looking worried. Suddenly, a loud crashing sound. Terrible flames everywhere. Children crying, people screaming in agony, an unearthly sound. Inferno…
No, this is to be forgotten…
A lone man, dressed in black, a bow across his shoulders, climbing wooden stairs. Beneath him, a fire is spreading rapidly. Faint whispers can be heard from below. He arrives on the roof. The manor-house is just across the street. The man takes the one arrow he has taken with him, opens a small flask, drops a little bit of its content on the cold iron, and spreads the drop neatly over the metal with his gloves. He waits. Then, as a surprised face appears on one of the manor’s large balcony’s, watching the growing fire, the archer moves with an experienced hunter’s astonishing speed, aiming and then firing at the man. The arrow hits him in the shoulder, painful but normally not mortal. With a startled cry the man stumbles inside. The lone hooded man shoulders his bow, takes a long run and jumps lightly to the nearest roof, as flames continue to consume the building beneath him…

He awoke because of a painful nudge. He jumped up and almost attacked the man standing next to him, before he recognized him as Kuron, the bald man.
“What.”
“It’s almost time. We should ready ourselves.”
“For what?”
“For getting the hell out of here, of course, you idiot. You might look like a tough guy, but you’re not very bright, are you?”
He ignored Kuron and put on his gloves again.
“I’m ready. Now what?”
“Now we wait.”
He watched the seven others. Each of them showed different signs of hopeful expectation: most of them sat or leaned against the moist wall, only the one called Haralon, a broad, strong, long-haired man paced up and down the small room.
“I hope he succeeds, or else we’ll all hang in some hours,” Welvan said, looking thoroughly nervous, “’cause the sun has already risen.”
Indeed, the first rays of the morning sun were shining through the barred little window. Kuron kicked away a dead rat with an angry sound. “Of course he’ll come, he’s promised. He’s the Prince, he keeps his promises. Any minute now.”
They waited, every one of them with his own thoughts. The assassin didn’t know how long it lasted, but suddenly Welvan broke the silence again:
“Look, buddies, we’d better accept it: he’s not coming. We aren’t that important, he wouldn’t waste valuable men rescuing us.”
“Don’t you understand?” Kuron said, “it’s not just about us, today is a great day for the rebellion. Targets everywhere in the city are to be assaulted and burned. Every one of them military of course, we don’t want to harm the population itself.”
The assassin winced. Kuron didn’t notice.
“I mean, most of those guys are as tired of the king as we are, and they’ll join us soon. No, the Prince will come.”
All were silent again for a while, until Ioran said:
“Listen… It has started, my friends. The fighting has started.”
Indeed there were sounds of battle to be heard, first outside, and then in the corridor. There was a cry of pain in the hall, and then the sound of a key in the door. Everyone was standing now. It swung open.
A single man entered the dungeon.
For a moment, no-one moved. And then, suddenly, the man started to laugh and hugged Haralon, who was standing closest to him.
“Good to see you, old bear, and all of you filth, of course.”
His eyes slid over the relieved prisoners.
“Wait a minute… where are Lortin and Dyvan?”
Silence.
“They haven’t been killed on the battlefield, have they?”
Still, everyone remained silent.
“Alright, let’s just get out of here, then, before the whole thing blows up. And while we’re running, just tell me who that guy is.” He pointed at the assassin. Kuron answered, while they all left the dungeon.
“We call him Tough Guy, cause he says he has no name. He killed Somendus, but for the rest I don’t know a bloody thing about him. The Prince may have hired him in secret. Have you heard anything like that, Graid?”
“Nope. The Prince might know more about him, though, and if not, the Oracle will.”
“How’s the rebellion stuff going since the battle of Lujar?”
“You’ll see once we get to the Prince. That might be some trouble, because of the king’s men everywhere, but we’ll manage to hold them off for a while, I hope.”

They finally arrived outside, after having travelled through such an amount of corridors that one could only guess about the true extent of the dungeons. There were lots of people gathered on the square, many of them carrying weapons, and a large group of apparently released prisoners were being given weapons, which the rebels seemed to have got from a nearby armoury.
Some of the men were carrying straw towards the building, others were leaving to help their comrades in different parts of the city.
“We’re going to blow up the storage above the cells. There are lots of grain supplies up there, together with several oil barrels. The whole thing will burn like hell”, said Graid, “you’d better run for the headquarters, cause the royal troops shall be here soon.” Indeed, some people were coming out of the building, yelling at everyone to get away from there.
When the assassin looked around, he could see there already were pillars of smoke rising into the air at many other places in the city.
“Let’s go”, Kuron said, “the whole city is one big chaos now, but soon it will be over. We don’t want a full-scale civil war in the streets, yet.” He took a large sword offered to him by another rebel, and started to run away quickly from the already burning prison storage. All started to flee, except for one.
The assassin gazed into the spreading fire, an inscrutable expression on his face. To his ears it seemed like the fire was speaking softly: “mine… mine forever… surrender…you’re mine…raven…”
“Hey, Tough Guy, we won’t wait for ye, ye know!”
The assassin sighed and turned around. He took a few steps, then began to run, putting as much distance as possible between him and the rapidly growing inferno. As he rounded the corner, he was almost lifted from his feet by a gigantic explosion behind him. The flames had reached the oil barrels. It almost sounded like a scream of joy.
He scrambled up his feet again and followed the others, his only allies in a huge hostile city, allies he had sworn to himself to kill. He briefly touched the flask around his neck. Patience, he told himself, my revenge will come soon.

Description
A raven’s victory - #2

The sturdy wooden door was thrust open, and with a loud bang it hit the dark, damp wall of the prison. Some mean-looking guards appeared and threw another man in, who landed flat on his face in the rotting straw that covered the entire floor.
As he got up with some effort, the other prisoners looked at him suspiciously. One of them, a thin, bald man, approached the newcomer.
“Well, what have we here. I have never seen you before, mate. You look like a tough guy, though, and you must support the rebellion, or else they wouldn’t have locked you up here in the first place. What is your name?”
The man eyed him for a moment, then looked around, like a predator in a new environment. He wore black gloves, a ragged cloak, also black, and underneath it dark clothes. At night he would go completely unnoticed. He was tall and had the face of someone who has spent his entire life in the wilderness. His face bore the marks of the royal guard’s anger.
“I don’t have a name. Call me whatever you want, I’m dead anyway.”
The bald man laughed, a short, snorting sound, unpleasant to the ear.
“We’ll just call you Tough Guy then. Why do you consider yourself dead? You’re definitely still alive, unless my senses deceive me.” He laughed again, apparently finding himself quite witty. Some of the other prisoners also laughed, but not very heartily.
“Did it occur to you that this is a death-cell? We’ll all be dead by tomorrow morning.”
The bald man stopped laughing, and suddenly looked a lot more dangerous.
“Who are you, Tough Guy, to say such things to me? Who are you that you don’t know we’ll all soon be free? You must’ve done something quite terrible to end up here.”
The stranger just looked at him coldly.
“Wait a minute…” The bald man noticed the tiny iron flask around the neck of the newcomer.
“The guards told me someone killed general Somendus during that big fire. With a poisoned arrow. You are clothed like an assassin, and that thing ‘round your neck does not hold perfume, methinks. So the Prince sent an assassin without me knowing it…” He looked very bemused. “Anyway, we’ll be out of here in the blink of an eye, everything is set. That poser king will get a very nasty surprise soon.” He laughed for a moment, and then extended his hand. “My name is Kuron, and I am one of the Bastard Prince’s lieutenants. Soon the land will be ours, and you have chosen the right side, whoever you really are. You are an enemy of my enemy, and that makes you a friend.”
After hesitating for a moment, the man in black took off his right glove, and the two shook hands.
“I’ll introduce you to the others. We are all officers in the army of the Prince, which is exactly why we landed up here.” He pointed successively at every man in the room: “Pertor, Welvan, Ioran, Haralon, Lutob and Cind.”
They all nodded at him.
“How did you people get captured, Kuron?”
“Nah, we lost an important battle, and we didn’t get away in time. The royal pigs overtook us, and here we are, waiting for the Prince to arrive.”
“What battle was that?”
“Heh, you aren’t really up to date in the war, are you? There has only been one major battle in the last few months. It was on a large plain in Kettingale Forest, near a little town called Lujar. The villagers were all killed, unfortunately, just like most of our lads. Why do you look at me that way? Look, Tough Guy, we tried to use the houses as some kind of cover. You would have done the same. Really, we told the villagers to lock themselves up in their town hall, to stay safe, and so they did. The only problem was that the royal bastards had brought catapults, we didn’t know that. The first projectile crashed directly into the town hall. Man, the explosion was gigantic. They had used some kind of oil, that burned like hell. No-one made it out of there of course, poor fellows.” He misunderstood the look of utter disgust on the stranger’s face. “Creepy, uh?”
The assassin turned around.
“I’m going to get some sleep. Haven’t had much lately.”
“Wait a minute mate, you didn’t tell us why you have joined the rebellion, and how you were captured… what, you haven’t told us anything! Do you even know you work for the rebellion?”
“If it is true that we will be freed, you will get to know more about me than you ever imagined. It is late, and I will sleep now.”
The stranger tried to make himself comfortable on the straw in one of the dungeon’s corners, failing miserably. After a while he apparently decided it was useless, and he lay still, eyes open, listening to the soft talking of the others. After many hours of staring at the depressingly grey ceiling sleep finally came, but it was hardly a relief from the hard floor.

Inside a familiar wooden building. A fire in the middle. A young woman’s face, looking worried. Suddenly, a loud crashing sound. Terrible flames everywhere. Children crying, people screaming in agony, an unearthly sound. Inferno…
No, this is to be forgotten…
A lone man, dressed in black, a bow across his shoulders, climbing wooden stairs. Beneath him, a fire is spreading rapidly. Faint whispers can be heard from below. He arrives on the roof. The manor-house is just across the street. The man takes the one arrow he has taken with him, opens a small flask, drops a little bit of its content on the cold iron, and spreads the drop neatly over the metal with his gloves. He waits. Then, as a surprised face appears on one of the manor’s large balcony’s, watching the growing fire, the archer moves with an experienced hunter’s astonishing speed, aiming and then firing at the man. The arrow hits him in the shoulder, painful but normally not mortal. With a startled cry the man stumbles inside. The lone hooded man shoulders his bow, takes a long run and jumps lightly to the nearest roof, as flames continue to consume the building beneath him…

He awoke because of a painful nudge. He jumped up and almost attacked the man standing next to him, before he recognized him as Kuron, the bald man.
“What.”
“It’s almost time. We should ready ourselves.”
“For what?”
“For getting the hell out of here, of course, you idiot. You might look like a tough guy, but you’re not very bright, are you?”
He ignored Kuron and put on his gloves again.
“I’m ready. Now what?”
“Now we wait.”
He watched the seven others. Each of them showed different signs of hopeful expectation: most of them sat or leaned against the moist wall, only the one called Haralon, a broad, strong, long-haired man paced up and down the small room.
“I hope he succeeds, or else we’ll all hang in some hours,” Welvan said, looking thoroughly nervous, “’cause the sun has already risen.”
Indeed, the first rays of the morning sun were shining through the barred little window. Kuron kicked away a dead rat with an angry sound. “Of course he’ll come, he’s promised. He’s the Prince, he keeps his promises. Any minute now.”
They waited, every one of them with his own thoughts. The assassin didn’t know how long it lasted, but suddenly Welvan broke the silence again:
“Look, buddies, we’d better accept it: he’s not coming. We aren’t that important, he wouldn’t waste valuable men rescuing us.”
“Don’t you understand?” Kuron said, “it’s not just about us, today is a great day for the rebellion. Targets everywhere in the city are to be assaulted and burned. Every one of them military of course, we don’t want to harm the population itself.”
The assassin winced. Kuron didn’t notice.
“I mean, most of those guys are as tired of the king as we are, and they’ll join us soon. No, the Prince will come.”
All were silent again for a while, until Ioran said:
“Listen… It has started, my friends. The fighting has started.”
Indeed there were sounds of battle to be heard, first outside, and then in the corridor. There was a cry of pain in the hall, and then the sound of a key in the door. Everyone was standing now. It swung open.
A single man entered the dungeon.
For a moment, no-one moved. And then, suddenly, the man started to laugh and hugged Haralon, who was standing closest to him.
“Good to see you, old bear, and all of you filth, of course.”
His eyes slid over the relieved prisoners.
“Wait a minute… where are Lortin and Dyvan?”
Silence.
“They haven’t been killed on the battlefield, have they?”
Still, everyone remained silent.
“Alright, let’s just get out of here, then, before the whole thing blows up. And while we’re running, just tell me who that guy is.” He pointed at the assassin. Kuron answered, while they all left the dungeon.
“We call him Tough Guy, cause he says he has no name. He killed Somendus, but for the rest I don’t know a bloody thing about him. The Prince may have hired him in secret. Have you heard anything like that, Graid?”
“Nope. The Prince might know more about him, though, and if not, the Oracle will.”
“How’s the rebellion stuff going since the battle of Lujar?”
“You’ll see once we get to the Prince. That might be some trouble, because of the king’s men everywhere, but we’ll manage to hold them off for a while, I hope.”

They finally arrived outside, after having travelled through such an amount of corridors that one could only guess about the true extent of the dungeons. There were lots of people gathered on the square, many of them carrying weapons, and a large group of apparently released prisoners were being given weapons, which the rebels seemed to have got from a nearby armoury.
Some of the men were carrying straw towards the building, others were leaving to help their comrades in different parts of the city.
“We’re going to blow up the storage above the cells. There are lots of grain supplies up there, together with several oil barrels. The whole thing will burn like hell”, said Graid, “you’d better run for the headquarters, cause the royal troops shall be here soon.” Indeed, some people were coming out of the building, yelling at everyone to get away from there.
When the assassin looked around, he could see there already were pillars of smoke rising into the air at many other places in the city.
“Let’s go”, Kuron said, “the whole city is one big chaos now, but soon it will be over. We don’t want a full-scale civil war in the streets, yet.” He took a large sword offered to him by another rebel, and started to run away quickly from the already burning prison storage. All started to flee, except for one.
The assassin gazed into the spreading fire, an inscrutable expression on his face. To his ears it seemed like the fire was speaking softly: “mine… mine forever… surrender…you’re mine…raven…”
“Hey, Tough Guy, we won’t wait for ye, ye know!”
The assassin sighed and turned around. He took a few steps, then began to run, putting as much distance as possible between him and the rapidly growing inferno. As he rounded the corner, he was almost lifted from his feet by a gigantic explosion behind him. The flames had reached the oil barrels. It almost sounded like a scream of joy.
He scrambled up his feet again and followed the others, his only allies in a huge hostile city, allies he had sworn to himself to kill. He briefly touched the flask around his neck. Patience, he told himself, my revenge will come soon.