Manticore Rampant

Ch 10 - Eejits vs Assassins

Another time, another place. Another cry from the shadows...

Mopping up. That was all recruits as raw as cadet foot-soldier Cutter 'Slash' Greenstone were deemed worthy of. Trailing far behind the real soldiers, picking their wide-eyed way through the shattered outskirts of the reclaimed city, doing their best to avert their neophyte gazes from the broken figures of the fallen and trying very hard not to breathe too deeply of the battlefield's charnel house reek. Searching for rebel stragglers or holdouts and hoping against hope not to find any.

With the smoke and the falling dusk, the toppled buildings and the choked roadways, it perhaps wasn't surprising they should become separated. That Slash should find himself alone and afraid, making his tentative way down the barely discernible remnants of what had once been a suburban street, longing to call to his squad-mates but keeping silent from fear as to what such a call might bring.

There were flowers in the front yard. Trampled and crushed, yet still striking in their vivid yellows and blues, strangely jarring in this torn apart world of greys and browns and blood. And although its door hung from one hinge and its windows were long gone, the house still stood. Still offered potential shelter for a rebel.

Still needed to be cleared.

The sounds of the advancing army had long since faded into the distance and all was silent. No insects clicked or whirred, no birds graced this barren hellscape with their song. The windows were dark. No movement stirred within. Sweaty hands grasping the hilt of his sword in a convulsive grip, Slash stood in tortured indecision.

He should find backup. He should track down Zed, the last friendly face he'd seen, or Ramson, his particular friend and the best sword in the squad, or his sergeant or any one of the other scattered boy-soldiers picking their way through the suburban wreckage. They couldn't be far. And yet, the longer he stood here wavering, the further they could be.

On the other hand—as much as he tried, he couldn't prevent the thought from forming in his treacherous mind—he could pretend he'd never even seen the wretched house. Who would know? Who would know if he turned and walked away? If he scurried back to the relative security of his squad, wherever they might be, tossing his sergeant a token 'all clear' as he rejoined their ranks? It wasn't as though any of the dozen or so other houses they'd checked so far had contained any threats. Why should this one—this hollowed-out shell of a home, this battle-scarred ghost of some family's long-dead dream—be any different?

He hadn't yet decided—that's how he chose to remember it, at any rate—when he heard the cry. Faint but unmistakable in the silence, forlorn and despairing, the kind of cry born of desperation rather than hope, base impulse over reason, a plea that didn't really sound as though it expected to be answered.

Instinct and reflexes carried him two steps towards the door before the new doubts assailed him, ending his valiant 'charge' as abruptly as it had begun. Was it a trick? Bait set to entice an unwary novice such as himself into an ambush? He'd heard of such things, stories spun by old soldiers, the hoary veterans at memorial dinners and regimental gatherings, tales of the treachery and deceit employed by the assorted enemies of the past, no underhanded tactic too low if it meant the end of a dragon and one less sword for them to face in genuine battle.

There was another cry. He managed another step.

"Only an eejit goes chargin' into tight spot he knows nothin' about. Leastways, without someone to cover his arse." Slash could hear his squad sergeant's gravelly voice, picture his greying whiskers and gap-toothed smile. "Mind you"—he'd given the recruits gathered around him on the parade ground a broad wink—"there are worse things than bein' an eejit."