In the valley below slaves bent to their work. Their backs were marred by scars, old whitened ones competing with fresh marks and open sores still waiting to heal. On many, fresh rivulets of blood ran down, inflicted by the whips of their taskmasters. Some of the slashes festered. The fiends did not care if the slaves lived or died, these were not valuable slaves but mere labourers with no desirable skills. The sun shone down onto skin darkened and dried out by hours spent sweating in the heat, none had ever known protection from the heat, why waste it on valueless slaves?

In unison, the slaves bent and rose, depositing handfuls of reeds into the buckets behind them before they bent down again, grabbed another handful and pulled out the reeds as they straightened. The sun overhead was not hot today, the heat of summer had passed away, the coolness of autumn a relief to those who toiled. Gyv sat staring down, her bow bent, the arrow centred on a fiend that strolled through the field below, its fearsome visage observing the slaves and taskmasters alike. This fiend stood tall, thick bony ridges running down its back and along its arms. Those bony ridges were as sharp as any sword, and stronger than many swords, it would not be unusual for a less than perfectly forged sword to shatter against them. The fiend's face sported the same bony ridges, hard and angular, outlining features of cruelty. None who saw that visage would ever imagine asking it for mercy or compassion.

Gyv pulled back the string of her bow, the yard-long arrow sporting a viscously barbed tip. The arrow lay tight against her arm, a piece of loose blonde hair weaving across her face in the gentle breeze. She sighted along the arrow for a long moment, making sure of her aim before releasing the shaft and watched it streak down to pierce the fiend's chest and send a brief fountain of blood into the air. If killing the fiend had been her desire, she was doomed to disappointment. A heartbeat later, a mere intake of breath, and the arrow fell out, lying on the ground steaming slightly from the heat of the body that rejected it.

"Get up there, you fools! Find the one with the temerity to shoot at me! A reward to the one that brings me the foolish one, an extra reward if they are alive!" The fiend’s voice was deep, rough and amazingly loud across the fields. He was speaking a guttural language, well suited to his voice, a language native to the lower planes of Hell, not to this world, or this place. All slaves understood the language of the fiends, though they were forbidden to speak it unless explicitly ordered.

His words created a frenetic bout of activity, men running in the direction from which the arrow came, whips in hand. Some of the better-armed guards waved their swords in the air as they ran, all wanting to show their master their keenness to obey his words, wanting the favour that came with recognition from the fiends. A few guards remained behind to watch over the slaves but were paying more attention to the frenetic pursuit than to the unarmed, downtrodden and spiritless slaves.

The lack of attention on the slaves satisfied Gyv. From above, she watched how, in the distance, slaves were slipping away, helped to get out of sight by a group of green clad men. With a few gestures and quiet words, she slipped away into the forest herself, the plants closing behind her, leaves patterning themselves to hide her tracks from those busy storming up the hill. Today, she could feel content, almost happy. Today some would breathe free, but the happiness of the moment was marred by the frustration that her arrow had been no more than a fleabite to the fiend, the wound already healed and forgotten. Her thoughts wound round her, like a poison on the success of the day. We need to know what will hurt them!

She circled around the fields, making her way to the group that had assembled beyond. Twenty of her men stood there, along with 20 slaves. A simple rule that always observed, no more slaves rescued than rescuers to shepherd them. Many times newly freed slaves needed very close watching and guidance and attention divided over too many could lead to mistakes. The group moved out, heading through the forest towards a cleft in the jungle floor, the chasm that led to safety. Behind them, commotion broke out, the chasers had returned empty handed. The slaves had been rounded up and counted and the missing number noted.

Gyv turned to her companions.

"Take them to safety. I am going back to make sure our tracks are properly hidden." She did not wait for an answer, but darted backwards, heading back along their trail, carefully erasing any signs that they had inadvertently made.

"I tell you they must have come this way. If they came from the other parts of the fields, we would have noticed." The voice came from beyond the trees, from the edge of the field just out of her sight. She lay against the trunk of the tree, its red tinged bark irritating her hands where they touched, making her skin itch. At times like these, she cursed her height, her wide shoulders and the difficulty it created for her when hiding. She stood taller than many of the soldiers who reported to her, and the extra height was often a hindrance when staying out of sight. A sound from above her caused her to look up, to see where a squirrel sat, its eyes red and enflamed, the madness of the fiends within. Chattering, it started down the trunk towards her, soon to be joined by two more. The trio approached her, their red eyes gleaming, their mouths foaming as they looked at her, prepared to jump.

By the Celestial hegemony blast the fiends and their accursed luck. This is not what I ordered, not what I needed. Why does the world choose to curse me with this now? Why am I inflicted with tainted squirrels come to attack me when I want to remain hidden? Carefully, she started backing off, her eyes not leaving the squirrels, her hand going slowly down to grasp the hilt of her sword. The squirrels' eyes followed her, their chattering rising, their movement-keeping pace with her own. As they approached, the smell of rotting meat came off them. She could see bits of dead skin and rotten pieces of meat stuck in their fur, all combining to create a nauseating miasma of smell around them.

Gyv, concentrating on the squirrels, nevertheless kept her eyes and ears open for movement from those outside the forest, listening to the occasional snippets of conversation that drifted towards her. The guards were not entering, to her relief, but twenty slaves were to be offered as sacrifices for the twenty that had escaped. There were always plenty of slaves, discipline was more important than a few extra field hands. Lessons about escape would be taught. Let your fellows leave, then you will die to pay for their indiscretion. It seemed that some of the guards were to join the slaves, and those outside the forest were relieved that they were not being held responsible for those that had escaped. They would still be punished with short rations and extra duties for their cohorts failure to retrieve the failed slaves, failure was never accepted. The death of their fellow guards was to be an object lesson to those who remained: NEVER let a slave escape alive!

Damn them. Damn the fiends with their discipline, their hierarchy, their twisting of everything to make everything into their image, even us. We will defeat them. Someday, somehow, we will defeat them. Her eyes stung knowing the torture, the pain that the twenty slaves would suffer before their deaths. The tears blurred her vision a tiny bit as she sought to retain control confronted by the three squirrels. But a moment of distraction, the extra blinking, was enough of a signal for the squirrels and the first of the squirrels jumped at her. She twisted away just before it reached her, her blade slicing across its stomach, creating an eruption of intestines and blood. Warm blood splattered her armour. As she twisted, the other two jumped at her. One latched onto her thigh, digging its teeth into her, its claws trying to rip through her leather clothing, the third met with her boot, its head splintering from the metal capped toes that staved in its skull, leaving blood and brain matter on her boot.

Her leg felt like it was on fire, her blood pumping around her body like boiling lead penetrating every segment, every pore. Her thigh was slick with her blood, not a lot, but it flowed as the squirrel latched onto her refused to let go. She moved to detach the fiendish creature, only to watch in horror as it fell off, lifeless. She could see blood flowing from her wound and, knew that it had done something to her, but she did not know what. The pain in her leg increased, her senses blotted out by a wave of pain. She could not hear herself scream, she could not see where she was going; all she did was flee, heading blindly, panicked into the depths of the forest.