The afternoon nap was crushed when there was a lot of rustling and rushing around her. Leila got up from her tent, feeling droopy and a little bit frustrated for interrupting her good nap.
After being saved by the King's Guards, Leila had been staying with them at the hidden camp on Mount Crownback. When she heard Ethan had taken over Crown City, she requested to go down the mountain along with Arthur but she was denied. She was stuck with a hundred purple knights on the mountain instead of reuniting with her man. Since she had no other things to do, she helped them out with their daily stuff such as mending clothes, plucking feathers from hunted birds and crafting arrows. She found a talent she never thought she had.
Outside the tent, she saw the king's guards acting different from their usual calm selves. Fear and worries were apparent.
What could make these soldiers, the most disciplined, to be scared?
The young knight, who had been trying to get a fling with her since the day she came to the camp, approached her and broke the news.
"They are here. The army from Rode. We sighted banners of Temple too. They are at the base of the mountain now."
Leila ran toward the edge and looked at it herself. She immediately understood why everyone was nervous.
Thousands of grey-white tents bearing the golden wheel sigil took over the entire plain at the base of the mountain. It was as if a new town was built entirely within a day. It was completely busy with soldiers in formation patrolling among the tents and soldiers training at makeshift drill grounds. Wagons and carts busily moved along the roads between the tents, carrying components and parts to build their siege engines. They lined up from the forest where woodcutters cut trees to the front line near the wall of Crown City.
The young knight approached Leila again and pointed in another direction. Leila followed his finger and found another army, although smaller but formidable, stationed at the east.
"Our exit point is blocked," Explained the young knight. "That army wasn't supposed to be here. They should be at Easton. Not here. We are supposed to build a natural fortress by this mountain and harass the enemy supply lines until the enemy main force is weakened."
"So? We can still fight, right?"
"Fight? With this number? There are only a hundred of us. We can't defend the mountain if they decide to kill us first before the city. A reinforcement from the city was supposed to be here yesterday but they didn't come. We are doomed." The young knight told Leila in frustration against the leaders he vowed to follow.
His frustration was exactly in the right place. The reason the reinforcement army from Midlake was not sent was because of the power struggle between Louise and Cleo. Both of them needed their loyal units at their sides in case either side chose violence so they failed to send any to Crownback in time.
"Well. We can't be sure yet. Maybe they will come soon."
"No. Unless they are idiots, they won't send troops over the wall at this point. It is better to sit duck behind the wall than sending out to fight in the open."
The young knight spoke with such certainty that Leila started to panic. Flights of thought passed through her mind about whether she should escape alone in the dark. Without proper knowledge about the mountain and its path, it might be a more perilous path than staying since thousands of traps were laid out all over the mountain so she decided to help the knights as best as she could rather than escaping alone.
"I will fight alongside you so let's do our best. Alright? We shouldn't be thinking about losing. Let's only focus on how to win."
Leila brought the fighting spirit back to the young knight. She jokingly threw a jab to his shoulder to lighten him up.
The squad leader saw the young knight chatting with the only woman in camp so he called him up.
"What are you doing, Ernest!? We are setting out. Let's go."
Leila quickly followed them and told her plan.
Night had taken over when the sun set behind the horizon at the plain below Mount Crownback.
Inside the war camp near the forest, the soldiers suddenly heard an alluring voice. The singing came from the forest.
At first, the soldiers thought they were hallucinating because of tiredness and smoking happy grass. Soon, they found out it was real.
"It is a female voice!" One soldier exclaimed.
Another concurred with him, "And it is a beautiful one. If her voice is this angelic, she must be pretty too."
Their claims riled up the whole squad, each went wild in their imagination. They looked at each other, raising eyebrows in a silly way. They sneaked out into the forest after bed check and they were never seen again after that day.
A week had passed after the first disappearance at the camp of the Retribution army.
The company commander had started to notice a whole squad went missing from each platoon each day without a trace. He rounded up platoon leaders to investigate the case to the bottom. He warned the leaders of harsh punishment if there were more desertion from their platoons. But the disappearances did not stop. It had even spread to nearby companies.
All kinds of rumours had started within the ranks after ten days when more than a hundred soldiers had vanished; that it was the forest spirit taking the lives of humans in response to the trees they had cut down; or that the men had fallen victim to the hunter traps laid down in the forest; or that there was a vicious evil female spirit who was raped and secretly buried alive by soldiers.
"She never got her justice for what they have done to her so she must be angry. Now her wrath has fallen upon us, at soldiers of retribution army. She will keep coming to take her revenge until we find her corpse and send her off peacefully." A soldier gave his opinion.
His story made more sense than the prior two, the company commander concurred. If it were about the trees, the numbers didn't add up. There could not be that many hunter traps to kill a hundred soldiers. He ordered to search the burial ground and give exorcism.
"But sir, you are forgetting an important piece. What about the song we heard at night?" A soldier added up another piece of information.
"Must be the evil spirit! She must be luring them like that."
They searched for any place that seemed to be dug recently. Accidentally, they found one and gave a proper burial after exorcism.
However, it didn't stop.
The soldiers near the forest kept hearing the alluring music at night. The song was sweet and warming yet they felt it to be frightening. It sent chilled down their spines. They failed to get sleep at night. Soldiers at the companies near the forest and mountain had become ill and exhausted after sleepless nights.
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The alarming incidents had finally reached the ears of upper echelons after two weeks, on the day of the first assault. The furious primus made all the officers stand up in the sun for eight hours until evening.
"Now, take your men and go search the forest, mountain, everywhere. Follow her if she appears at night and beg her if you have to. Do not return till you find that burial ground and end this ridiculous nonsense. Understood!?"
Four hundred men entered the forest that evening, spreading out to locate the evil spirit. By midnight, only ten came back alive and among them, only six had returned with their sane mind attached to retell the tale.
"It is a Siren, sir. A Siren, her look as beautiful as an Angel, her voice as alluring as a devil. Any who followed her was killed ruthlessly by her minions. They would rip the hearts out of their chest to serve her raw. Slit the throats to take blood like wine for her. The mountain is her domain. This is above of our heads, primus sir. We need assistance from Templers to take out this monster." A soldier explained.
When the soldier who had lost his mind heard that they would be sent out again, he refused to go. "No, no. No one should enter. We should have never camped here near the mountain. We need to move away."
The primus angrily slapped the insane man and ordered him to throw him into the pit. "I will invite the Templers tomorrow. We need to end this quickly before this monster drains the sanity out of the entire army."
"Finally, another day is over," Leila said with a sigh of relief as she watched the enemy army retreating from the wall."
The young knight patted her shoulder which was stiff as a log to comfort her. "Don't worry. The wall of Midlake had been standing for over a century. It can hold up any attack threatening its existence for months. It won't go down easily. Anyway, it is about time for the enemy supply to arrive. Half of us are going out to the north and planning to block the bridge at 'Centric'. I advise you to go with them."
Leila turned to Ernest. He seemed to be worrying about her safety after four hundred enemies entered the mountain so she asked about him back.
"What about you? Will you not come? Are you staying with the group in the mountain?"
"What are you saying? Of course, I will be with the group which you choose to stay."
Ernest's bold move made her chuckle. Leila shook her head in disbelief.
"You are unbelievable. You are persistent even after I have told you a dozen times that my heart already belongs to another man. If you have focused on something that makes more sense for you, you would have become a general by now."
"Nah, I don't like becoming a rich general with many wives. I am content with loving one woman alone with all my heart."
"Arg* you are too cheesy. I like dishes with spices more."
The two chit-chatted relaxingly forgetting war and deaths around them.
"But, seriously, you should go down the mountain. Get a boat at 'Centic'. You row down along the Irra river and enter the lake through twin rivers. The castle guards would sink any ships entering the lake but I doubt they would sink a boat with only one woman on board. With luck, you will be able to meet your man there."
"I see. But I am staying here. I have a performance tonight for the Easton Army."
As much as she wanted to be reunited with Ethan soon, Leila figured she owned these knights with her life. "I will stay and fight with you guys until we all decide to leave this place together."
"No. It is getting dangerous. I can't let you do that anymore."
"Come on. I can handle it. I have been doing it for weeks. It has been dangerous since the first time, nothing changed with yesterday."
Ernest tried to make her understand how dangerous it had become but she stubbornly ignored it.
It was not her sense of duty which was pushing Leila to do it. When she saw the golden cloaks, who had been mistreating her like an object, were slaughtered like pigs by the King's Guards, she felt a feeling of satisfaction after a long time. The scene of the Duke's men killed after she lured into the traps made her feel a sense of power. She was slowly getting addicted to such a sense of satisfaction.
The captain overheard their conversation. He noticed how much Leila had changed within these few days. He could see a bit of madness starting to take over her eyes and darkness over her heart. He stopped it before Leila had reached the land of no return.
"What bloody nonsense are you blabbering about? You two are in the team going down the mountain. That's an order. Not a suggestion! Now, go pack your stuff. The others are about to leave."
By the order of the captain, Leila left the mountain along with half of the knights. She was reluctant to leave as Crownback was the one place where she wasn't prey. There, she was the hunter. A notorious predator that had taken hundreds of enemies' lives.
Again and again, she looked back at each step as she went down the mountain.
"We need to go, Miss Leila." Ernest hurried her. "We don't have time to waste. We need to reach Centic before the enemy supply passes it."
"I am sorry for dragging you down with me. I am ready. Anyway, I am thinking... can you let me stay with you after we take Centic?"
Ernest was surprised by Leila as it came unexpectedly that she wanted to stay with him longer. He thought she was dying to go to Midlake and reunited with her lover.
"Have you finally fallen in my charms?" Ernest happily replied with a joke thinking she was finally interested in him, to which Leila replied with a big no.
"What!? NO! After what we have been through, I thought we had become brothers in arms. Not a man and a woman."
"Of course we have. Don't you see I am just joking?"
Leila seemed to be annoyed so Ernest let it slide under the carpet as a joke. He didn't want to lose what he had with her. It was precious already.
"So, why do you want to stay longer? This is your chance. We are finally letting you go. Who knows? We might change our mind again if you stay longer."
Leila chuckled. She suddenly remembered the day she begged Arthur till her throat dry to be able to leave. Life is unpredictable, she concluded.
"I want to have many tales. Tales I can share proudly with Ethan. I don't want to be a woman with only tragic tales."
Leila told her reasons with a smile.
Ernest could tell how much pain she had been concealing deep under that smile. And he swore to himself that he would help her make many beautiful tales.
And so the small group, around fifty men who were fully prepared to decimate any forces they were to meet, marched through the thick forest day and night without rest. Their energy did not come from food or rest. It came from sheer determination that they would never let Midlake fall again.