Step Into The Light (Poetry and Prose Journal)

The Conquerer

It was midnight-and the world was on fire.

They were trying to burn him out of the forest, and it would've worked had he been any other man. Fortunately for Dreyfus so, he was no common man.

Even now he could hear their officers shouting orders to the levy swordsmen over the crackling of the flames. They have done well to light the patch of forest that he was in from four different directions. They figured that in that way they could cut off all routes of escape and trap him in the middle. What they had not counted on-was the with several fires converging on the same spot simultaneously they would exhaust each other's source of fuel. This meant that while the entire section of force will be razed to the ground, the very center where the 4 fires converged would not be burned quite as badly.

This would be where Dreyfus would survive. His cloak, the one he was currently dousing from top to bottom with the last of his water, was the key to his survival. Given to him by Sufi Shaikh of the Mevlevi Order as a reward for completing a particularly interesting job, it was supposedly unable to be burned. While Dreyfus had found the cloak to be an excellent defense against the rain, he had never had the opportunity to test it against fire.

Now he dropped to the ground and started to dig furiously in the moist leaves in soft soil. This was the tricky part, if he chose incorrectly the fire would burn right over top and cook him alive. He still my asphyxiate from the lack of oxygen, but he was depending on the flash fires burning out before the heat became unbearable.

He was already sweating by the time he hunkered down the small pit he had dug and pulled the green cloak over his body, leaving a small pocket of space around his head so he could breathe. Even through the thick cloak, he could see the light from the flames as they drew closer and closer. He could still hear the shouts of orders, so he knew the soldiers were following along behind the advancing wall of flame, searching for what they hoped would be his burned remains.

Dreyfus took this time to ask himself why this kingdom was putting such a great effort into trying to kill him. Perhaps the seduction of the Kings daughter had not been in his best interests after all, but even so, she had been the one making the eyes at him at the Royal banquet, not the other way around. 

It wasn't Dreyfus's fault if the King kept his daughter so unbearably sequestered that she threw herself at any man with a functioning penis. Dreyfus got the impression that not many men took her up on her offers for late-night trysts (the fact that she had been a virgin confirm this belief); At first he hadn't understood why. She was a remarkably beautiful maiden taking the average appearance of other women in her realm into account. Dreyfus had seen other, more attractive women in the Egyptian sultan's harems- but the Sultan had the benefit of being able to choose virtually anyone to become his royal concubine while the King here was stuck with one official wife that could bear him legitimate heirs to his throne. 

The fact that Dreyfus had violated the King's only daughter just three days before her  betrothal to  a rather well landed but pompous Prince from adjoining kingdom was not something he was overly concerned about.  

Unfortunately the new groom  disagreed.  The bride's family had been disgraced and felt their own honor sufficiently violated to justify waging a small-scale war  on a single individual.  The thing that they had not realize though, was who exactly this man was.  Their underestimation of Dreyfus's skills,  was one of his primary advantages. 

 Rather large tree  wailed as the soaring heat and flames brought it down very close to  where  Dreyfus was  hiding.  it added its untouched uppermost branches to the Inferno and the dry leaves gave the fire a new intensity.  By now the heat around him was bright enough to be broad daylight.  The heat was starting to make him sweat again,  but the small pocket of air he preserved for himself was  more than sufficient.  And then the  converging fires met  and created a vacuum all around him.  Dreyfus pulled the cloak tighter around himself,  trying to make the space around his head as tight as possible so the  air would not escape and with it the last of  is hope.

 The blaze reached a fever pitch for several long, agonizing seconds  and then  gradually dropped  in intensity as the open flames became  embers.  now the world was quiet save for the sound of the occasional crack and pop as residual pockets of moisture trapped in the trees burst in their haste to become vapor.  A new sound, though distant, was growing louder in Dreyfus's ears.

 It was the rhythmic  thumping of armor shod shoes trampling through the new ash  and debris.  from the sound that there were  two of  them extremely close, of  to the left and to the right. Ashes and debris had fallen over top of the dark green cloak,  providing a natural camouflage  that would make him invisible to their searching eyes,  but only as long as  remained perfectly still.  Dreyfus gently filled his lungs with the last of the stagnant air it was under his cloak, and closed his eyes to better concentrate on the sound of the voices as they drew closer.