Kaeev was completely unaware that some distance behind him, on the other side of the river, stood Sergeant Raveneye. He had a bow with an arrow drawn, following the tauren as he waited for the right moment to fire. If the arrow didn’t slay, he thought, at least it would wound the shaman badly enough for a second arrow to easily finish him off. This chase had dragged on long enough, and he wanted to end it now.
He muttered a curse under his breath as the sound of Malagan and the remaining sentinels quietly approaching on their nightsabers reached his ears. He took final aim, but before he could let the arrow fly, Malagan was by his side. “What do you think you’re doing!?” hissed the human in an angry whisper as he pushed the bow aside. “I want him alive!”
Already irritated by the interruption alone, the human’s words only fueled the sergeant’s frustration further. “Oh, now you want him alive?” he hissed back as he relaxed the tension on his bowstring. “You’ve been trying to kill him up until now, and all we have to show for it is a dead nightsaber and wasted arrows. I could have changed all that just now.”
“Your ambition has no place here, Sergeant. Keep thinking for yourself like that, and I’ll have you relieved and reprimanded,” threatened Malagan.
The sergeant was about to retort with a threat of his own, when an eerie, unnerving sound caused everyone to look around. The sound was howling, almost wailing. It began as distant, but only seemed to grow louder and closer. Even more unnerving was that the sound seemed to come from nearly all directions. Then, the trees about them began to waver with a sudden breeze. It was as if the forest itself had suddenly found its voice.
Malagan, not nearly as familiar with the area, exclaimed, “Sounds like the wails of the dead!”
The sergeant shook his head. “Ghostpaw,” he whispered, drawing his bow taut as he looked beyond the bridge. The sound had also caused Kaeev to stop and turn. The moment their eyes met, the shaman turned again and took off in a sprint.
The sergeant cursed under his breath again; they had lost the element of surprise. Malagan saw this, too. Quickly, the human charged toward the bridge, shouting, “After him, all of you!!”
“No, wait!!” exclaimed the sergeant, trying to shout over Malagan’s cries for the sentinels to stand their ground, but to no avail. They charged with the knight, but as they approached the bridge, a large pack of Ghostpaw wolves suddenly appeared out of the trees, closing in on them from both sides of the path.
The sentinels’ charge had quickly degenerated into mass confusion. The river, wide and deep with the previous rain, combined with the narrow bridge to create a chokepoint for the sentinels. In addition, the feral instincts of their nightsabers had taken over. Rather than obey the commands of Malagan and their riders and pursue the shaman, they were busy trying to fend off the Ghostpaw. Those that did obey their riders left themselves open to attack.
Raveneye had yet to get back on his own nightsaber as a pair of the wolves came at him. He felled the first with an arrow, and dealt a sharp kick to the other as he leapt onto his mount. He did not have to get far to catch up with the others, as only so many could fit onto the small bridge at the same time. Malagan had managed to get across unscathed while the sergeant broke through the rear, slaying a few Ghostpaw with more arrows as he went. As a few more wolves fell to the sentinels’ arrow fire, Malagan and the sergeant both shouted for the party to press on across the bridge.
With less of them now remaining than nightsabers, the Ghostpaw ceased their pursuit as the remaining sentinels hurried across the bridge. Three of the sentinels were without their nightsabers, as they had fallen prey to the Ghostpaw. Raveneye looked back in time to see this and, to his dismay, that one night elf was among the casualties. The Ghostpaw howled--whether in mourning for their own loss or in victory for their kills, the sergeant did not know--as they then feasted on the bodies of the lone elf and the nightsabers left behind. Their blood-stained muzzles made for a grisly sight.
And even as the three who were lucky stumbled to the rear of the group with various injuries, Malagan commanded all to continue at all speed without so much as a glance to check for wounded or dead. And once again, Sergeant Raveneye found himself being left behind with the wounded amid his own futile attempts to belay the knight’s order. “Madness!” he then exclaimed, almost throwing his bow to the ground in anger. He turned to the three wounded and whispered urgently, “Silverwing Grove is a short travel to the south; I do not think the wolves will pursue if you hurry. Go, now. Haah!” And with that, he took off on his nightsaber as fast as he could to catch up with the others.
. . .
“Malagan!”
The knight heard Raveneye shout his name behind him, but he continued his lead of the sentinels undeterred. Surprisingly, in a few moments the sergeant had caught up and was by his side.
“We have wounded and dead back there, Knight! We can’t leave them!” shouted the night elf at him.
“Tragic,” responded the human coldly, with little or no emotion in his countenance. “We will press on, and recover the map.”
“Damn the map!” cursed Raveneye in reply. “We’ll be in range of Splintertree’s defenses by the time we catch up to that shaman!”
“Not if we shoot first!” said Malagan, breaking from his stolidity. “Our bows are better than theirs, and we are better with them than the orcs. We can shoot farther, and suppress their ability to attack while we make ours to take back the map.”
Raveneye gaped, aghast at the knight’s fallacious zeal. “..This isn’t even about the map, is it?” he almost whispered, but the volume of his voice soon returned, his tact thrown to the winds. “Nature herself has sided with that shaman, and she is stronger than any number of orcs or arrows! This isn’t courage, it’s hubris! You tempt slaughter!”
Malagan suddenly raised a fist at this, as if to strike the sergeant, but he withheld. “Then,” he said with anger on his face and in his voice, “you can pride yourself in escorting the injured to Silverwing Grove. Sergeant, you are relieved!”
The knight continued ahead, relaying his orders to the sentinels following him as Raveneye flagged in his pursuit. The sergeant was dumbfounded, stunned at being stripped of his command, and this because, he felt, he was the only voice of reason in this chase. He had tried to reason with Malagan when he saw heaven and earth tremble at Kaeev’s torturing. He had tried to reason with him when they had lost track of the shaman after Maestra’s Post. And finally, he had tried to reason with him when they had suffered actual losses to the Ghostpaw. All that, in vain! How could his commanding officer not see things as he did, that this chase would only end in their ruin?
In the following moments where Raveneye had tried without success to fathom the method to Malagan’s madness, he noticed that he had come to a complete stop. His nightsaber gave a low growl and looked to him expectantly for his command. He thought for a moment, before his face hardened with anger. “We aren’t going back to Silverwing Grove,” he said to the large feline, as if it would understand. “Not yet. I would rather save the rest of them or die trying, than live with their blood forever on my hands.”
His nightsaber gave another low growl as it returned its gaze ahead, and its body tensed, readying itself as it seemed to know what Raveneye had in mind. The sergeant steeled himself for what was to follow.
“I’m through with trying to reason. Fly!!”
And with that shout, he took off after Malagan and the sentinels, hoping he might avert disaster, not meet it.
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