Now it was an impenetrable blackness that they faced. They knew something was there, of course. Something... But that something didn't feel like the villagers. It felt considerably darker than that. It was easy to let the imagination play tricks on them.
Even their young commander found himself unnerved. He felt a gnawing in the pit of his stomach. A feeling that he'd felt several times before. The emotion stirred an old memory that he hadn't thought about in a while. An old Yarmdon coming-of-age ritual, that he'd been forced to undergo in his fourteenth year.
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Alone, in the wilderness, with nothing but a weapon of his choosing – for the task, he chose a spear – he had to bring back the pelt of a Grey Bear. Bigger than the brown bears that inhabited the Black Mountains, they were terrifying foes, even for those of Yarmdon descent.
It was in the moment where he'd finally succeeded in tracking down one of those bears that Jok had felt this primal instinct. As he'd gazed into the blackness of the cave, he'd felt that deadly presence. He'd heard the rising and falling of the beast's chest, he could almost feel the heat of its breath.
And then he took that emotion, and he gripped his spear tighter, slaughtering the bear all the same. Few returned from that test and none – not at that age – came back with the pelt of a Grey Bear. They'd had to settle for weaker animals, cementing their position in society.
Jok would never have allowed that for himself. From the moment he left the womb, he knew he had been destined for greatness. Now, as the fear came, even greater than what he felt outside of that bear's cave, once again, he reminded the world of his worth.
"Burn it," he gave the order with a stern voice, a voice filled with strength. It unfroze the nerves of his men at the front. They held a torch to the low-thatched roof only too gladly. It quickly caught fire, as Jok lit up the darkness that Beam had created.
Such a thing was an emboldening prospect. It was the domain of the criminal. Greeves' men delighted in it. They felt comfortable in it. It afforded them far more opportunities than the light did.
They held their breaths, not daring to speak. Beam still had yet to give a single other order. There were various plans that they could take. They could have some of the men hide inside of the houses as the Yarmdon approached, and attack them from their positions of stealth.
Such a thing was being immediately countered by Jok, though, as he burned down every house in his path.
The darkness was a temporary measure. With every step that they took, the small advantage that the darkness afforded them was being snatched away. But no matter how hard a man looked, they could find no better ways to go about it. There were no other real tactics they could employ.
Had they had bows, they could have shot arrows. Had they had oil, they could have tossed pots amongst the enemy, and forced them to fight amongst their own flames.
Along that line of thought, Beam found himself raising his head again. It was never about total victory, not for them. They were the weak. It was merely about evening the playing field enough that miracles could happen.
In that sense, the flames too were to their benefit. All kinds of chaos were to their benefit. If the villagers had the morale to keep from running, through sheer numbers and through sheer chaos of the environment, they could seize their victory.
But that seemed unlikely. Beam couldn't snatch any more ideas from his tired mind. He could only merely acknowledge the situation and give one last order.