Pio's post
His brothers and Hama were huddled together, hidden well within the shadows of the surrounding trees and rocks. Fréa had hunkered down, his back against a rocky outcropping, chewing on a piece of jerky. The slow, deliberate rhythm of his chewing irked Archim. Fréa, for all intents and purposes, looked like a man prepared to wait until doom’s day before he saw an ‘opportune moment’.
Archim sat apart from them, his own meager, cold meal hastily downed. Thoughts of the five men in the other camp rolled about in his head . . . thoughts of Brytta . . . his smug little, self-assured self going about the business of making a safe place for him and his brother. Just like him, he thought, to be so efficient . . . so overweeningly confident . . . to think that they would be safe now . . .
His thoughts spiraled further down dark and twisted paths. Brytta, he imagined, was somehow snubbing his nose at them even now. Thinking once again how stupid and incompetent the Forgoil’s were for even daring to think they could pin the murder on his darling brother, Heldór. And yes, he was sure the Hyldeson’s knew exactly who had done the deed.
Fréa and Graitwa were talking low, heads together. Hama was nowhere to be seen. Probably sent off by Fréa to scout the Hyldeson camp once again. Archim picked up a sharp stick from the ground beside him and jabbed it viciously into the dirt.
‘There are five of them, and four of us,’ he thought to himself. ‘perhaps that is the reason Fréa is holding back.’ The hint of a crooked smile crept on his lips. He stood, and drew his dark cloak around him. Fréa called out to him, and Archim waved him off, saying softly he was just stepping away for a moment to answer a call of nature.
He patted the knives hid beneath his cloak and strode off, deeper into the cover of the trees. The sun was westering, twilight was darkening toward night. Circling round, out of sight of his brothers, he approached the Hyldeson camp.
Perhaps, he thought, continuing down his path of paranoia and illogic . . . if he could pick one of them off . . . even the odds, so to speak . . . then, Fréa would be prompted into action.
He drew up on the top of a small rocky outcropping that stood above their camp. ‘The sentry,’ he thought, ‘he should be alone. If I can take him down, we can go in.’ Flattening himself against the level top of one of the taller rocks, he waited.
It wasn't long before he spied a figure walking the perimeter of the camp. 'Better and better!' he grinned in the failing light. It was Brytta . . .
[ September 16, 2003: Message edited by: piosenniel ]
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