Part Fourteen

"If we're both alive when this is over, I'll take you,".
replied Nevsky, staring half-dazed at Illari.
Hideoshi glanced at his companions, then motioned towards the heap of goods in a far corner of the hall.
"Let's get our stuff and go," he said.
Hideoshi, Nevsky, Takashi, and Galen shuffled over to the corner, and began to pick through the heap of sleeping bags and stuffed canvas bags to find their belongings. For a moment Illari stared after them, then crept back upstairs. Several other soldiers from the Third Company also dug through the heap, muttering various complaints.
"I don't understand why we had to get picked for this suicide mission!"
"We were supposed to git back home in the summer, and now it's dead of winter! We're just wastn' our time, gettn' killed for nuthin!"
"Five thousand reinforcements! Bah! Against a hundred thousand?"
"Hey, Hideoshi!" Called one after glancing up from a sack he was rummaging. "What do you think about this mission?"
Hideoshi's narrow eyes contracted together as he thought of a reply.
"How should I say this?" He mused, when words began to form themselves together in his mind, demanding to be spoken.
Hideoshi raised his eyes, and surveyed his companions.
"I don't mean to disrespect the generals, but this plan appears to be a waste of manpower, another desperate gamble to stave off defeat."
He sighed, hoisted up his canvas sack onto his shoulders, and continued, "But we've got to do it, anyhow."
The other soldiers finished packing in silence. Only the plodding and shuffling of feet echoed in the hall, as the soldiers of the Third Company began to depart to the western wall, which rose above the western edge of the plateau.
"How are we going to climb down?" Whispered Nevsky to Hideoshi as they stepped out into the tingling cold.
"Didn't they train you-" Hideoshi began to snap, when he realised the absurdity of what he was about to say.
"He-and many others-haven't been trained at all," thought Hideoshi. "They've just been snatched up from their homes, had a weapon thrust in their hands, and sent off to this chaos! A farmer from the Andre Swamps may be strong, but he's not trained in warfare. Not much, anyway."
"Can you climb at all?" He whispered back to Nevsky.
"I used to climb trees," Nevsky whispered.
A patter of feet, alternating between crunching on snow and slapping stone, sounded behind them. Hideoshi turned to look, and saw a boy, thin and pale, stumbling and bare footed, in pale brown bespattered coat that engulfed him, trailing them.
"Illari!"
"Let me show you the way! Let me show you!" Cried Illari, panting as he adjusted his draping coat with his one hand.
Galen narrowed his eyes and tilted his head slightly while asking, "What way?"
"There's a way down to the bottom, without climbing down. I've been there. I can show you. It's a secret."
Illari turned his face upwards towards the four. Hideoshi glanced around him, placed his hands upon his knees, bent down so that his face reached the level of Illari's, then spoke.
"Are you sure that it's secret?"
"Yes."
Illari rapidly withdrew his eyes from the piercing scrutiny of Hideoshi's dark green ones, and hung his head.
"It's true! I know! Will you believe me?" He said, suddenly clutching Nevsky's arm.
"You all are supposed to be moving! What's going on?" Shouted Sergeant Degmah as he stormed up to his men. His thin, almost transparent eyebrows twitched vigorously, his pale hair bristled, his cheeks puffed in and out, and his pale blue eyes appeared to have melted into their whites from the heat of his fury.