Page 13 of Morfran, Dark Lord Reformed

“Easy.” He seethed as she bucked once more before giving in. Her fingernails dug into his forearm, her entire body tense. He pressed his lips against her ear, her soft hair tickling his cheek as he whispered, “Now, listen to me. We are going to take a walk—”

A loud, metallic jangling erupted from somewhere outside in the trees. It was discordant—the only thing he could compare it to was someone rifling through an enormous bucket of utensils. Whatever it was made Bronwen buck again, fiercely. It was only when she bit his inner hand that he withdrew it.

“Ouch! You savage little—”

“Soldiers!” Her anger was quickly draining into panic. “That’s the alarm for soldiers invading!”

They’d found him? But…how? He hadn’t seen them since that day he’d fled his homestead. He shoved up to his feet—a major dizzy spell turning his vision granular—and found Bronwen already at the door, armed with one of the rakes that’d previously leaned against a barrel. She raised it towards him.

She was pale. “You led them here somehow.”

“You don’t know what’s going on,” he replied. The exit—and freedom—was right behind her. But she wasn’t budging, and he was dizzy from torture and weak from lack of food and water. “Now get. You’re in my way.”

“I’ll kill you before you set foot outside.”

He palmed the stishovite dagger in his hand. “What are you going to do? Rake me to death?”

Her eyes flashed with anger. “I told you! I am not just some commoner—”

Whatever she said after that, he didn’t hear it. The hut flap flew open, and in the light of the lantern he saw the tall shape of a man. His black armor was refined and polished, with the slightest purple sheen to it, like a magpie’s feathers. One of Ravana’s men. He was staring right at him.

“You.” His voice was sharp. “Look at me.” The command was unnecessary, as Morfran was already looking, and perhaps it was Morfran’s appearance being that of a recently beaten prisoner that tipped the soldier off that he was at odds with the dwellers, for he didn’t seem to recognize Morfran’s bloodily rearranged face, only the possibility that it could be him.

Swiftly, the soldier raised his sword above Bronwen’s back to hack her down before she could even turn. And in that split second before it fell, Morfran weighed his options: be prisoner to an armored soldier who would forever have bragging rights about finding and imprisoning his ex–Dark Lord for his queen…or to a forest woman with anger issues and a rake.

He chose the latter. The stishovite dagger blurred as he chucked it, a black arrow bolting through the air. It sank right into the man’s forehead, knocking him back a step. For a moment none of the three of them moved. It took both Bronwen and the soldier a few seconds of staring at each other to register that the soldier was a dead man standing, and, because dead men do not stand and blink in stunned confusion with daggers in their heads, he did the natural thing and collapsed to the floor like a puppet whose strings were snipped.

Morfran exhaled in relief. Bronwen stared at him wide-eyed.

“As I said before.” He moved past her, leaning over without slowing to remove the stishovite dagger from the soldier’s noggin. “You’re in my way.”

Outside, the camp was in chaos. His soldiers had indeed found him, and they came torpedoing through the night on black mounts. They looked like dark, hell-raising wraiths, terrifying in stature and build. But when they opened their mouths in a battle cry, it took all of Morfran’s restraint not to maim the nearest soldier.

He’d been the one to teach them how to arrive in style. He’d shown them what to wear and how to hold themselves like they were wicked devils, and how to scream like unearthly demonic creatures who’d freshly clawed themselves from their graves.

They clearly were out of practice, consequently sounding like Benjamin hacking up an undigested boot heel on a bad day.

They were making him look bad. Never mind that he’d abandoned them and his life as their villainous commander.

Fighting against the urge to maim someone, he squinted in the night for the animal pens where Benjamin and her kids would likely be. Although the canopy of trees blocked night’s natural light, the moon was full and leaked a blue-white light onto the forest floor, and he could easily make out huts, trees, people, and even the rope ladders that led up to the treetop houses. In addition, there were illuminated hot spots from lanterns left on in windows. Ragged shadows darted about the forest of brawling men, horses tearing through the night and women and children fleeing towards the rope ladders.

He needed Benjamin. The animal pens had been—he looked past a soldier on foot chasing two men with shovels and saw the fence posts—that way. He strode past them, only stopping to trip the soldier with a deft jerk of his foot when the idiot had the audacity to be shoved in his way, and only vaguely registered the men smacking the soldier into the ground with their shovels.

To his left three soldiers were trying to scramble up the rope ladder to get to the upper huts, but the weight of their armor and the palm-sized stones the forest dwellers were dropping on their heads were making them fail quite spectacularly. That made him scowl even more. Had whatever git leading them just sent them in willy-nilly? Had they not taken the trees into account, or how difficult it was to ride horses through dense forest, or that these forest dwellers outnumbered them at least seven to one?

If Morfran had been the one leading them to nab himself, he’d have taken the stealth route, and his men would have captured him hours ago and been halfway out of the forest by now. Honestly. Ravana was an expert at terrorizing even the most stoic of men, but when she was left to command armies on her own, her plans fell apart. And now look: these idiots here were damaging the reputation of his forces, which he’d worked for years to build up.

It put him in an even worse mood as he made his way towards the animal pens. Twice he had to kick a soldier out of the way. On one occasion he pulled a man off a horse that was barreling towards him, then proceeded to headbutt the jerk, spit in his face at his pathetic attempt to skewer him, and steal his sword.

Another bout of dizziness swarmed Morfran’s head. He had to lean against a tree to let it pass.

“Get down here, you coward!” a soldier shouted at someone sitting in a tree. It was Hugh. Although he had Morfran’s scabbard attached to his belt and the sword was perfectly usable, he instead had chosen to half hug the trunk and was raising his dangling legs up whenever the soldier tried to swipe at him with his sword.

“I said get down and fight me like a man!”

Hugh peered down at the soldier wearing a full suit of armor, said, “No way,” and tossed a pine cone at his head. It bounced off his helmet like a pebble against a mountain. The soldier huffed and began towards the tree trunk to climb it.

Hugh just climbed higher, taking Morfran’s sword with him.