Corporal Anders had known nights before battles to drag on second by second. It was like time itself wanted nothing to do with the coming carnage. This night was worse than any he had experienced in three years of war.

He could not stop watching Major Kane as the officer stood upon the wall. Eventually, he reached the breaking point and climbed from the comfort of the fire and approached the wall. “Major, please come to a fire before you die of exposure?”

“Come up here John.” Robert glanced down at the Corporal. It was possible he was wrong and someone might survive the island; if that were the case, men needed to know what he had discovered over the past weeks. It was the least he could do for the men.

Anders climbed the ladder to the rampart and stood next to Robert. “Honest to God, Sir, I’ll drag you to a damn fire if I have to.”

“I owe you an apology, John.” Robert whispered.

“What?” Anders, taken aback, then recovered automatically. “Anders Sir, no one calls me by the other name.”

“I have a few things to tell you and I am sorry I did not tell you them sooner.” Robert turned his gaze back to the slope, where nothing moved. “First off, I’ve known since the drown man you found, that we were being watched. I thought the Robber King understood what we said or thought, so I stopped talking about what I saw and I stopped thinking about step-by-step plans for escape. It was seeing Pace twice that night and the fact that Colonel Beltram and General Cornell knew what we had done the next morning. I knew you and Sergeant Burns had not talked, so I decided Lieutenant Pace learned of our activity and told the senior officers. The only way he could have known was if...”

“... the Robber King told him.” Anders finished the sentence with a growl.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“So, either Pace was under the Robber King’s control or he was helping the King. I came to all of this after a few weeks of thinking, but I thought that if I spared you men, what I understood the King might spare you. I was wrong to have that hope, and I was wrong to keep the information from you.”

Anders was silent as he thought about the past events and how they seemed tied to the young lieutenant. “What was that thing you found on the wall?”

“I had seen them before. I finally remembered seeing pelletized gunpowder at Vicksburg when our sappers poured the charge into a hole dug under the Union wall. The Sappers told me it was a mixture of wax and gunpowder that was rolled into small balls. It looked like deer crap, that’s why I remembered it.”

“Pace mined the wall.” Anders surmised.

“Probably,” Robert nodded. “Back to the body; remember how cut up and burned it was?”

“Yes.”

“This explains his burns.” Robert turned to Anders and used his hands to show what he was describing. “What if he was sucked into the cave complex? He could have been shredded by the wood debris and stone walls. But what if he did not die? What would you have done if you found yourself in a dark cave?”

“I would have tried to make a fire.”

“There has to be a dry area of the caves still accessible for the Robber King or Pace. He was killed, then dumped into the lake. It was luck that our men found him.”

“How does this help us?” Anders considering the information.

“Sergeant Burns was tracking the Robber King and Pace. He told me they were spirit folk. You kill the spirit to kill the Beast.” Robert rubbed his eyes. “I think we were close to the King the day we found that altar, but that’s as far as my understanding takes me.”

“What do we do?”

“We kill Pace and force the King to change its attack.” Robert walked to the ladder and climbed to the ground. “That fire sounds nice.”

“You want to upset the King’s plans?” Anders clarified as he followed Robert.

“Why follow the enemy’s plan? We are rebels. We follow our own plan.”

The last piece of the puzzle was left unsaid, as Robert intended. He had never said he had stopped believing the Robber King could understand his thoughts. Somehow, the King always knew what was coming; not this time.

They say by the fire and waited for the morning, talking of life before the war, food they liked, places they had been, everything but the war.