Chapter 221.

PART 1.

Suresh waited in an alert state the entire night, expecting an attack. but no attack came. Mithun, his employer, had enough of this, so he ordered everyone to go back to their camps and have some sleep. much to Suresh’s annoyance, he did not leave any guards to keep an eye on things.

“At least leave some guards, they will sound the alarm in the case of attack.” he raises this point.

“Honestly boy, shut up,” said Mithun. “The fact that we still keep you employed is an example of our generosity, despite your repeated failures and paranoia.”

Suresh wanted to fire back with “What failures?” because so far, all the land they have managed to secure in this region from the tribes is because of him.

Once again, he regrets his life and looks like he will die, and even then, he will be cursed and remain unappreciated by these noble pricks.

PART 2.

Raven is taking note of the activity going on in the enemy camp. “General, when are we going to attack?”

In the night, Raven did not attack. he wanted them to be relaxed. But now that he has achieved his purpose, he feels it is the right time. “Right now. prepare the forces.”

“Yes sir!” said the officer.

As they prepare to raid the camp, Raven realizes that for all his great tactical mind, Suresh is surrounded by idiots. And he plans to take full advantage of this. Sending a force from the front, he reserves the larger force to attack from behind.

Once the attack started, the plan continued to go well for them. the enemy is running around like a headless chicken. In the chaos, there are some challenges and call-outs to fight in a duel, but Raven gives his soldiers strict instructions to ignore such challenges.

He found the father and son team running behind their camp, preparing to escape. The victory was just in hand until Suresh appeared. “What are you doing, people? Do you think you can conquer any land with such a weak will? Stand up and fight!”

His hasty rousing speech is enough. The tide turns against Raven. Not wanting to get involved in a dangerous battle with the camp wards being active, he sounds retreat. Raven arrives in his camp with empty hands, though he still has a smile on his lips.

PART 3.

After Raven’s assault in the day, they are all spooked. They are listening to Suresh as if he is their lord and savior. But Suresh knows that this will not last long. Durgesh, the son of his employer Mithun will soon enough forget this and will start to order him around as if he is his personal goon, hired to beat up anyone he orders him to beat.

“Now, you all need to understand. Our opponent has one goal in mind: the death or capture of our two noble sirs.” Said Suresh, hating every word. “Therefore, it is imperative that their camp is guarded, and it is ready to be moved at a moment’s notice. For now, we will keep the camp at the center. If an attack happens, take them outside of the battle zone. Is that clear?”

“Yes sir!” said the soldiers of the Mithun’s forces.

Then Suresh hunkers down to wait for the next move of Raven. ‘I wonder what will you do now? I’ll annihilate you if you attack again.’ Suresh thinks to himself.

PART 4.

The situation has become a stalemate. Raven hates it whenever that happens. However, unlike in chess, real life does offer a way to break this stalemate eventually. This requires patience, but the people around him are agitated. After their raid a few days ago, they are impatient to do this again.

“General,” asked one of the tribal chiefs. “Don’t you have any plan of attack?”

“I do.” Said Raven. “But I believe we need to capture an important piece before we can attack.”

For a moment, the chief looks confused. But then, the light suddenly dawns upon his mind. “I get it now. I’ll make the preparations.”

“Good,” said Raven. “You do that now. meanwhile, do you have any men who can perform some sneaky operations?”

“Of course. I’ll send you the list immediately.” Said the chief, and then left.

PART 5.

The next morning, Suresh wakes up. he did not have an easy sleep in the night. and now, he is woken up by the alarms and shouts.

Apparently, someone has left some graffiti on the borders of their camp, with no one being any wiser. Suresh goes out to see what exactly is so alarming about it, only to see his own name in the message. The message said this:

“Remember the days when you needed the help of the general to retain your championship? How can you forget this gesture of friendship?”

Suresh looks at the soldiers and takes a step back. Their eyes contain suspicion, which was not there yesterday. One of them comes forward and decides to ask directly. “Commander, is that true? That you and the new general were friends?”

“Yes.” this started a murmur. Suresh could not lie, because this will come out eventually. “But a mere school friendship is not enough to stop me, and the same goes for all of you as well.”

This assures them, and they all do their duty without any complaints for the rest of the day.

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Until the next message appears the next morning, and once again, they fail to catch the writer of this graffiti. In the opinion of this humble narrator, I hope they do pay them well for this job, given the danger of being captured, plus torture and death.

This time, the message said, “You only retained your championship with the help of the general.”

This bothered Suresh, and in a moment of fury, he erased that message. “What are you all looking at? Go to your work!” he snarled.

All the soldiers scurry out of his presence, while Suresh looks at the tent cloth where the message was smeared. The words hurt him deeply this time, as it is something that he often thought about, and now it has become a thorn in his heart. He feels like someone has mercilessly pushed on that thorn deeper, knowing its effects.

The situation reaches the ears of Mithun, but for now, through the black art of persuasion and business talks, Suresh has managed to buy himself some time. unfortunately, he was wrong.

Since the message hurt him deeply enough that he wanted to take some action, he sketched out a plan with the officers of the forces of Mithun. But that entire plan is sketched out in the graffiti the next day, including the possible branches and different steps they could have taken to execute the attack.

Once again, this reaches the ears of Mithun. But this time, he did not speak with Suresh. His son, Durgesh says to him: “Father, leave this mercenary alone. he cannot match the general, and his loyalty is also suspect. Let’s just move the camp overnight, and leave him to face the attack of the general which is surely coming.”

“You are right, my son. We should do exactly as you say.” He agreed with Durgesh.

Thus, the camp is moved overnight, and Suresh does not know that he has been abandoned by his employer.

When Suresh wakes up the next morning, he sees the deserted camp. They did leave some grunts behind, but the larger force has left. When asked, the grunts replied that the lord in his infinite wisdom decided to move the camp in the night, and a sleeping spell was put on Suresh to make sure he would not wake up during the movement.

‘It’ll be a terrible thing if we got attacked right now.’ he thought.

And then, the earth heaved and the flames sprang up. the camp started to burn, and the grunts were slaughtered. Feeling like he is moving while observing someone else, Suresh somehow avoids getting captured.

As the only survivor of that skirmish, Suresh reached another camp. only to find the flag of the throne fluttering in the entrance. He sneaked away. He repeated this on a few other camps, but the final one caught him in the act. He barely avoided getting captured, again.

Now bleeding and tired, Suresh finds the camp of Mithun. Only to see the sneering face of Durgesh at the entrance. “Get lost, dog!” he snarled at him.

“Go call your father.” Persisted Suresh.

“I said get lost!” repeated Durgesh.

The spells start to fly at him, and Suresh has to run from his employer. Truly, there is no such thing as a reward for loyalty. Once the new king was placed on the throne, and the army of the throne started to retake the lost territories under their control, many mercenaries switched sides. They even got better pay on the other side.

But Suresh did not do this, because he already received the payment for his services from Mithun. But this, this is too much. “I hope you die in a ditch somewhere, you noble prick!” he roared to the sky.

The blood gushed out from his mouth, and he lost consciousness.

Several hours later, he wakes up in an unfamiliar place. It feels too good where he is lying, so he does not move. But when he opens his eyes, he sees Raven. Now grown up, and gone through the hardships of life, he does not resemble that kid he used to know all those years ago, who was so unsure of his place in society. That version of Raven would have never thought of becoming the general even in his wildest dreams.

“Well, well, well. look who is awake?” said Raven. “Have enough of running around?”

Suresh does not answer. “If my platoon didn’t find you at the right time, you would have died in the storm last night.”

“Last night?” croaked Suresh, and Raven gave him some water to drink.

“Yeah. it was pretty bad. Our camp got flooded, but we got the new pumps to keep the water out.” said Raven.

Meaning, that he has been here for a full day at least, and not once his previous employer thought of him after all the service he gave him. “Let me ask you a very important question.”

Suresh feels the pressure in the tent increasing. “Do you surrender now?”

“Yes,” he said, putting the glass of water on the floor. “I surrender.”

The pressure disappears as quickly as it came. “Excellent! Get well soon, we require your talents.” Said Raven, before walking out.

Suresh wanted to call out to him and ask him what he meant by that, but he was still tired. So, he goes back to sleep.

PART 6.

Avinash is reading the report of Raven. He is wincing at the brutal tactic used by Raven against Suresh. ‘And he was worried about Hatori going wild. Talk about hypocrisy.’ He thinks to himself.

He makes a note to check up on Suresh later, as Raven is planning to review his performance and make sure he is completely loyal to their side before letting him work in their military.

Avinash does not mind, since they can use some new blood, given that death and destruction have claimed the lives of many experienced people in the last three years or so.