Those who hide in plain sight

According to legend, a fortune teller once told the king,

Your kingdom will fall to those who hide in plain sight.

The king slid the fortune teller’s throat on the spot and cut out her tongue so she would not tell anyone, not even the dead.

With age, the king’s paranoia grew. He saw revolts and conspiracies everywhere, so he sent on a mission to expand the kingdom’s borders any noblemen who could challenge his divine claim to the throne.

Everybody profited from expansion. Artisans crafted weapons, soldiers pillaged, military officers advanced their careers, citizens felt safe, slavers gained property they traded at markets for landowners to have cheap labor. So when the giant and the raven killed all the people in the city near the mountain and the news reached the capital, there was only one course of action: seek and destroy.

The northern army marched south.

Meanwhile, the girl that the raven had freed from the manrabbits now volunteered as a scout. She performed several high-risk missions, but the raven never paid any attention to her because he could only think about the nurse. During a mission, the girl had a terrible nightmare where she watched the raven die alone in the city under the mountain.

She screamed so he would turn around and look at her. But when she woke up, she found instead northern soldiers pointing at her with spears and weapons. Her group was arrested and interrogated. She, blinded by envy, told the northern soldiers everything they wanted to know and more. Two scouts escaped back to the city under the mountain, only because they were out hunting when the rest of the group was caught. The rest were executed.

By then, the raven had come up with a plan to assassinate the northern king and he was ready to execute it. The two surviving scouts rushed through the mountains to report to the leader.

Sir, thousands are marching, and they captured our scouts. They will know how many and where we are.

The leader sounded the city alarm. The whole city prepared for the worst.

The northern army arrived the next day to the plateau in front of the main entrance and camped there, setting up a siege. The bulk of the army occupied the plain which the mountain overlooked. The general and the captains were gathered in a large tent also in the plain, protected by soldiers at all times. A small group permanently kept watch on the city’s entrance, trying to hear something.

There was no sign of life inside the mountain. After the first week of siege, the soldiers began to get anxious, especially after the rumour that it was the fabled city of gold. But even more anxious was the northern king, who desperately needed a victory.

He clung to power by a thread. The nobility was after him, as they had always been. He had murdered entire dynasties whose members had been bold enough to make attempts on his life. But the annoying noble families continued to crop up and gain political momentum and influence to threaten him. So now, in a time of crisis, the city under the mountain was his chance to prove he and he alone was king. He had to kill those responsible for the destruction of the city. He had to prove he was the kingdom’s iron hand.

The moment the northern king heard the reports about the city, his orders were clear:

Take it at any cost.

So the soldiers scouted the mountains over those weeks looking for weak spots or hidden entrances. All they managed to get from the captured scouts after torturing them was that there was a secret entrance somewhere, though the scouts didn’t know where. They found the giant’s hut, but it was empty. The net result of their scouting was sixteen injured soldiers and four dead after falling into pits or slipping with the moss that covered the treacherous rocks.

The main entrance seemed the only reasonable way in. They had no idea of how many people were inside nor where they would be waiting. But they knew the citizens were inside because the northern army’s scouts had seen many of them rush inside to hide before the siege had started.

During the first day of the second month of siege, the general discussed the strategy with his captains. He had just received a letter from the king ordering the immediate capture of the city. Scared to death, he gathered his officers and explained the situation. One captain said,

We have to bust open the main door and charge in.

Another replied,

We can’t, it’s a trap. Can’t you see? They know we’re here and we don’t know what’s in there. For the Greater man’s sake, we can’t charge in blindly!

The general intervened,

Nonsense. The enemy is surely bunkered up and waiting for us in the heart of the mountain, in a bottleneck. The troops will advance in shield wall formation to defend against archers. Once we know where they are, we’ll block the exits and smoke them out. Prepare the explosives.

The captains, some of them reluctantly, agreed to the plan. The soldiers placed the explosives at the city’s gate, and after several attempts, it was finally blasted open.

The city was immersed in utter darkness.

Soldiers stood at the city’s gate. There was something eerie about the city. Finally the torch-bearers arrived. A wall of shields and pikes covered the northern army’s archers, which were in the rear. The formation penetrated the city under the mountain slowly but surely.

The soldiers were expecting to be ambushed in the dark when they heard a ghastly little girl’s laughter echoing through the halls. After listening to the tales of the raven demon and his power, the younger soldiers were terrified. The soldiers fired their arrows prematurely in all directions. Their captain screamed,

Hold your arrows!

A chilling voice whispered into their ears,

Leave or die.

The soldiers pushed forward.