Ferndale's Second War of Independance VIII

“You swear he’s nothing but a foot solder?” the major asked. Liz seemed to consider this for a moment and then shrugged.

“No.”

“She’s honest, and won’t swear anything that isn’t true. I’ll swear for her,” John said smiling. He was blowing his cover completely he knew, but it was fun and that counted a lot for the spies.

“So you’re telling me that you’re a liar then?” the major asked.

“Cut the chitchat. I’m serious about the throat cutting,” Liz cut in. “Does keeping John, no matter who he is, amount to your life?” The major looked at Liz up and down and then shook his head. Liz took the knife she had been threatening the major with and used it to cut John free.

“Expect a flag of truce around daybreak tomorrow. Now that we have given you the chance to see what we could do to you, we thought you might be interested in surrendering,” Liz told the major. “If you are you can step forward and negotiate, we’ll give you good terms. If you don’t step forward then John will be back with more explosives, and this time he won’t let himself get caught. Tom found out that you intentionally got yourself caught by the way John, he wants a word with you.”

“Can we not talk about internal problems in front of the enemy?” John asked, uncomfortable. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Good idea, I will say this much though, you are so in for it. Frendral, Tom, Kerma, they’re all going to be on your case tonight.” The two of them left the tent and headed in the direction of Ferndale, with a large crowd coming from all directions to join them. Frendral and Kerma had been forced to admit that while he hadn’t been following their plain he had done everything in the name of Ferndale and therefore had been willing to use Ferndale troops to free him.

That night the major paced his tent well into the wee hours of the morning, he found that he couldn’t sleep. He had the repeated image of the fiery explosion that had heralded in John. It had been one of the most frightening experiences of his life, the attack of the unknown. That such an attack could be intentionally aimed at his troops with in the next couple of days seemed nightmarish. However he had no idea how he would explain it to his superiors. They had probably never seen an explosion; he could be the laughing stock of the army, from people who had never seen what he had.

The major had only just gotten to bed when there was a timid tap on his tent. He got back up and admitted the sentry, a boy about half of the age of the rebels of Ferndale. Once again the major found himself wondering why it was that everyone thought of the people of Ferndale as being kids.

“There’s a flag of truce from Ferndale,” the boy said, his voice hadn’t even changed yet and he was acting a sentry the major thought. Suddenly he had an image of the boy being blown into the air by an explosion and shuddered. Surrender it was, definitely, who cared what anyone said about him. They didn’t know any better.