Page 41 of Chained

"Who are you to say the other men deserve death more? Just because they aren't on our side?"

I could hear the truth in his words, but it still felt wrong to let people die in front of me when I could have done something to stop it.

"Let's just keep moving," Taylor said finally.

Chapter Thirteen

We took the path the fighters had come down, reasoning that it should be empty now. We walked in silence, taking turns to check around corners and keep an eye out behind us. I had the feeling that we were being watched but no matter how much I looked there was no one in sight.

After about fifteen minutes of wandering in silence, we turned into a narrow trench. The sun had started to move across the sky and clouds had closed in to further obscure the light.

It was dark inside the trench, the ground was shrouded in gloom but we could make out shapes in the mud hidden beneath the shadows. I moved forward tentatively and nudged the nearest shape with the toe of my boot.

Something gave way under my foot and an arm flopped forward and hit my leg. I squealed in shock and jumped backwards, colliding with Taylor who slapped his hand over my mouth.

"Are you insane?" he breathed in my ear before releasing me.

"Sorry." Funnily enough I wasn't used to touching parts of a corpse. I bent to examine the body, a woman in the colours of our unit. I stepped over her carefully and checked the next prone form. It was another member of our unit and as we moved down the trench I counted more and more of our dead.

"Ambush?" I asked the others.

"Must have been," Taylor replied.

"Do you think we're losing the battle?" Evan asked after we passed the twelfth body.

There was a long silence while we all thought about what that might mean. If we couldn't get back out of here we could be slaughtered as the rival army chased down the last of the opposition. We were wearing the wrong colours, which marked us as the enemy, messengers or not.

"We need to take a look at what's going on," Evan finally spoke, breaking the silence that had trapped us.

"How?" Taylor asked.

"We'll have to risk getting up high, but if we can work out where we are, we might be able to find our way to Laurie," Evan replied, looking up at the edges of the trench high above our heads.

"Let's move along until we can find an easier way up," I suggested and we pressed on.

The ground started to squelch under our feet and the mud was sticking to our boots. It didn't help with being stealthy but at least the sound would let us know if anyone else was sneaking about. A shudder ran down my spine, I still couldn't shake the feeling that we were being watched.

Eventually the trench opened up and we entered an area with a low stone building in the centre. We stopped and surveyed it warily.

"What do you think?" Taylor asked.

"That if someone was lying in wait in there we would be dead already," Evan replied.

"Do you think we can use the roof of the building to get up onto the bank behind it?" I asked, looking at the way the sloping roof reached up until it was level with the high ground above us.

Evan nodded.

"Let's get on with it then." Taylor moved towards the building and we fell in behind him.

There was an open doorway in the brick front and no obvious way to climb up from the outside. The roof was made with thick red tiles that had broken away on one side, leaving a pile of smashed rubble on the ground.

We spread out to check the other sides of the building but there weren't even windows for us to use to climb up and the roof was out of reach.

"Maybe there's a way up inside?" Evan suggested. He moved forward cautiously, Taylor and I followed close behind him.

The interior of the building was dark. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and I suppressed a shiver as I stepped over the threshold. Every nerve in my body was screaming at me not to go inside but I ignored it and continued forwards.

The squelching of our feet was cut off as soon as we set foot on the stone floor. It was eerily quiet in the little building. The space was split into several small rooms and we were standing in a tiny entrance hall.