The Rebel Cause

Night

The air was thick with moisture, the evening rains having washed the forest clean of his scent and path. The humidity caught in his throat and pulled ragged breaths from the silence of the forest. Crouched behind a tree, Darren clutched the bark before him for support as his eyes scanned the underbrush near him. The dogs had stopped chasing almost a mile ago. The men had stopped chasing miles before then. The persistent sounds of hounds barking, the feeling of breath on your neck enough to make your hair stand up. That is what Darren had been through in the last couple of hours. Ever since he'd left the village of Eldrich, he'd been running for his life. But before he could get more than a few breaths out, he turned and fled again. He could feel something watching him from the shadows. Enough to know that he was not out of danger yet. Those dogs could be lurking, watching, waiting just around the corner for his guard to slip.

Darren knew where he was headed. He knew there was a rebel camp around in this forest. The people in Eldrich had been able to tell him that much. He'd been searching for the camp for months, hoping to find it in every village he'd entered but instead, he kept running into dead ends. No one trusted the outsider enough to give him any information. If there was something that citizens bound together for, it was for the secrecy of the rebellion. Even when he pleaded, showed proof that he wasn't with the royal guard, they didn't seem to care. Simply sent him packing. He knew the camp had to be near. The forest was large but the camp could span the horizons. Legends talked of its enormity; how it scaled up a mountain and back down the other side, how it tripled the size of a village and quadrupled the population of one. On his journey, he'd began to doubt the legitimacy of the rebellion. If he hadn't been able to find it yet then where the hell was it? As he was thinking this, Darren caught sight of a man to his left.

Immediately he dropped to the ground, burying himself in the underbrush to peak through the dense foliage at him. He couldn't pick out any defining marks, but he could see the scabbard on his hip. Darren's eyes burned holes in the man's head, staring with an intensity that rivaled some statues. The man didn't seem to have seen him. Darren moved slowly, inching away from the guard before him. Surely it was a royal guard who had found him; He'd circled around the opposite edge of the forest and found Darren before the others could. Swallowing the lump in his throat, he backed up, step by step as he opened the gap between himself and the male. It wasn't until his final step that he broke a twig and the guard's eyes snapped to him. As soon as they locked gazes, Darren caught a glimpse of emblem on his chest. Rebellion.

Darren could have sighed from relief but he wouldn't be given the chance. The guard produced a sword and sounded an alarm in the swift movement of someone who had practiced for years. Darren barely had a second to breathe before the weapon was produced. In his equally matched skill, he took off. Light, quick feet carried him through the trees. Why was he running from the man who could help him? Could help him move into safety? Because he was wielding a sword and that spelled trouble at any time of day. The sounds of alarms peeling through the forest had Darren's heart thundering in his chest and pounding in his ears. Despite his years of training, it clouded out his hearing and he neglected to hear the guard to his right, the one who took him to the ground.

Crashing into the foliage was enough to knock the wind out of his chest. Darren grunted with the force, grappling with the guard in an attempt to break out of his hold. But the feeling of cool metal against his hip reminded him just how unarmed he was. Darren forced himself to relax in the man's grip and was hauled to his feet. The tip of the sword was pressed into the skin just beneath Darren's jawline; that set his skin ablaze with fear. The man holding him growled out the question of what he was doing there. Darren's hurried answer flowed out quickly, explaining himself.

"I'm looking for the rebellion. I want to join."