Union deserters drifted into the Rebel Camp over the next several hours, men who could not continence the moral depredations of Lieutenant Pace, men who sought refuge in the storm. They explained the situation to each newcomer; the ultimate decision simply, where did they want to die, alone or among friends?
None of them was blind to what had been happening over the past nine months, and none of the men thought they could escape the taint of evil that permeated the island. To a man, the refugees remained with the Rebel’s sense of freedom despite the danger.
Amid the snowstorm, the refugees used the summer stockpile of logs to construct new barracks, palisade, and defensive wall. Bloody logs from the original barracks burned.
Searching the area, Robert found the raft near the lake shore, shredded to pieces, unable to sustain the weight of a field mouse. Robert set the remains afire, a resolution to a bad idea. The deaths of those men were more than a mistake. It was another millstone around Robert’s neck, just another reason to feel guilty. If there was indeed a hell, he was in it. None of his ideas worked. Maybe that was the truth of hell, no more death.
Stragglers stopped drifting into the camp near dusk, and Lieutenant Pace did not probe the woods. Robert suspected Pace was experiencing trouble gathering and arming his forces. While sitting by the fire after sunset, when Robert thought there were no more surprises left in the day, Corporal Anders delivered a shock.
“Look who we found on the wrong side of the palisade,” Anders waved to a man dressed in Union blue.
“What the hell?” Robert stood. “Private Holm?”
“Sir,” the blond-haired soldier tiredly replied.
“Come on, sit by the fire.” Robert gestured to a log seat and sat as the private joined him. Robert motioned Anders to take a seat. “What happened?”
“It attacked a few hours after you left, sir. It was everywhere, moving so fast it was unrecognizable. We knew it was the Robber King. We tried to kill it but it was like swinging at the wind. Nothing worked. It attacked me but did not kill me. It threw me from the camp.” Holm did not describe the attack or the screams of men ripped limb from limb. His words drifted off as he stared into the fire.
“You are the only survivor? The only man the Robber King allowed to live?”
“Yes,” Corporal Anders examining Holm closely.
“I saw it’s eyes,” Holm spoke to the flames, screams of the dead echoing in his ears.
It was obvious Private Holm had changed; a piece of his soul ripped away in the fight, leaving a husk of a man only capable of focusing on a hidden horizon. This was what war produced, it was what Robert and Anders understood.
“Get something to eat and some rest,” Robert clapped a hand on his shoulder, startling the men. “Corporal, come with me.”
Robert walked away from the fire, his mind churning furiously. He passed through a gap in the wall, worked his way through the pines and up the ridge. Corporal Anders followed obediently, equally intrigued by Holm’s story.
At the palisade, a few men stood guard. “Get back to the stockade. No one stays out here after dark.”
“Sir,” the man acknowledged, gathered their equipment, and headed downhill.
Once they were alone, Robert looked at Anders, the snow making it easier to see the Corporal.
“Why didn’t it kill him?” Anders pondered their mutual question.
“Maybe because it recognized Holm.” Robert leaned over the palisade and peered out at the storm, scrub vague shapes that were close enough that they should have been recognizable. “It knows Holm’s memories of his grandfather. It knows Holm is the man who can give us an understanding of the Robber King.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“It thinks?” Anders shook his head. “This thing shreds, men. It’s like an overgrown wolverine. How can it think?”
“All the evidence tells me this thing is highly intelligent. Worse, it can tactically expect us. It killed our men while you and I were at the main camp, so the impact of the dead would destroy our morale. No simple creature does what the Robber King has done.”
“It’s hunting us?”
“Seems like it,” Robert confirmed. “I don’t understand this thing or what it wants beyond our deaths, but I think perhaps it wants us to be afraid.”
“I’m already there, Major,” Anders said through gritted teeth.
“Holm said something a while back, that the Sioux Indians used the cave to reach this island. Why would the Indians willingly come to this island when the Robber King lives here?” Robert shrugged. “Why come here?”
“I do not know. This whole mess makes my head hurt.”
“It is important. If we understand the Robber King, we might defeat it.”
“Defeat the wind?” Anders joined Robert at the wall. “I seem to remember an old Irish hero who thought he could use a sword to beat back the tide. It didn’t work so well for him either.”
“We have to try.” Robert waved his hand.
“Christ in heaven,” Anders pointed into the storm. “Is that it?”
Two silver eyes, faded by the falling snow, glared at the men from the depth of the storm. They could almost hear harsh breathing as the Robber King watched them, intent on the two Southern men as if they were a meal waiting to be served.
“I see you spawn of hell,” Robert spoke to the eyes.
The creature blinked twice, then moved left, then right, pacing angrily.
“Move out, Corporal,” Robert suspecting they might push their luck with the Robber King. “Back to the stockade.”
They retreated slowly downhill, warily watching the ridge, neither man surprised when the eyes mounted the now vague palisade. The King was staying just out of sight, only its eyes visible to suggest intent.
Corporal Anders reached the stockade first, squeezing through a gap in the timbers, then firing his rifle skyward. The rifle report drew men from the shelter rapidly as the gun smoke drifted upward in the night sky.
“Torches,” Anders shouted. “Watch the walls. Arm yourselves.”
Robert stopped short of the wall and watched as the Robber King descended the slope, weaving through the scrub. True to behavior, the King paused part way down the hill, refusing to close with Robert.
“Frightened?” Robert addressed the creature loudly. “Are we not behaving as you wish?”
Men were lighting brands at the fire and hectically taking positions near the circular stockade wall. Many men planted the wooden torches in the snow, then drew and armed their rifles. Other men threw more wood on the campfire, creating a huge blaze that drove the dark from the stockade.
“Major, get your ass in here.” Anders warned worriedly.
The Robber King stopped moving and stared at Robert. This time the eyes were unblinking and curious, the sense of malevolence gone for the moment.
“How many have you killed?” Robert wondered aloud under the creature’s stare, as curious as the Robber King. Both were used to death, both were dangerous.
The creature slowly paced forward, narrowing the distance to Robert, yet remaining indistinct by slipping behind scrub pines.
A hand grasped Robert from behind, taking hold of his collar and yanking Robert through the gap in the timbers. He fell to the ground at Corporal Anders’ feet.
“Ready weapons,” Anders regained his battlefield voice. “If that bastard sticks his head in this stockade, shoot its face off.”
“Get off me.” Robert backhanded Anders’ leg.
“I will when you stop acting like a fool.”
“Corporal, it’s coming to the wall.” One of men warned.
Removing his foot from Robert’s arm, Anders aimed his rifle at the wall, looking for the Robber King through the gaps between logs.
Robert climbed to his feet but kept in his place by a warning glance from Corporal Anders.
Light from the campfire danced across the upright logs, sending shadows of the men along the wall. Snow fell thickly as the men waited, their breath shallow in the cold air.
Movement beyond the wall drew the aim of dozens of rifles.
A large silver eye looked through a gap in the wall, the gaze steady as it slowly searched the men. It paused on Private Holm, regarding its chosen man as he cowered near the large fire, then moved on, hesitating at Corporal Anders, and finally settled on Robert.
The Robber King paced the outer wall, slowly passing from one gap to the next with its attention fully on Robert. The pupil was white, glowing like a silver coin in the firelight, the iris pale blue shot with silver as well.
There was definite interest in the creature, gazing as if it was determining what men now stood before it, as if it saw something different in the rebels.
The Robber King stopped, then leaned against the stockade wall, the timbers warping in loose fittings, groaning in protest to the weight.
Robert drew his revolver and cocked the hammer before leveling his pistol at the eye.
The beast backed away from the wall; the eye receding into the storm until it vanished.
For several minutes, none of men moved.
Gently releasing the hammer, Robert holstered his revolver, signally the rest of the soldiers to stand down.
“What the hell was that about?”
“Finish the damn wall.” Robert shook his head in resignation. “We can sleep when it’s done.”
“I didn’t hear any breathing,” one man observed.
“Maybe it was holding his breath,” came a caustic reply.
The men set to work, stacking rifles within easy reach, determined to do as their major ordered.