Chapter 13 - Part 3

They moved in teams of five, maintaining a rough X formation in each group. The teams were about twenty to thirty feet from one another, spread out in a wide grid. Warforged tended to think in evenly balanced geometric shapes. Captain 7824FB led a group in the center, to better be able to coordinate things. The new lieutenants, 0039DN and 0038DN, each had a flank. There were three newly minted corporals, one at the rear, and two commanding front formations. Each of the officers had carefully been drilled on avoiding congregating in one spot and alternative routes and modes of attack had been carefully planned. So far there had been no serious encounters, the most tense moment coming when four warforged wasted their javelins on a fleeing deer.

On the front edge, near the eastern end of the grid, four soldiers and one corporal stopped suddenly and readied their swords as a figure stepped out from behind a thick tree. The figure was a warforged, like them, but without any armor plating. Instead a simple rope belt was tied around its waist, and its body was painted with odd pictographs. It had its hands atop its head in surrender.

“Who are you?” the corporal asked. According to what they had been told, the nearest warforged units were hundreds of miles away in Aundair.

“I am no threat to you,” the warforged said. “I do not fight in the army of the Eldeen Reaches.”

“What do you do here then?” asked the corporal. The warforged seemed nervous, unsure. It had not been an officer for even an hour, and it was uncomfortable with responsibility.

“He has no unit number on his shoulder!” said one of the soldiers.

“No, I do not,” the strange warforged said. “And I am here to keep your commander from making a grave mistake. I would like to speak with him. It will not take long.”

The corporal thought, then nodded. “Points form up around the prisoner!” he ordered. The four soldiers did so, holding their greatswords barely half a foot from the strange warforged. “Come, and do not attempt an attack,” the corporal said. He did not bother to take the rope belt. Choking weapons were not dangerous to other warforged, and that’s what it surely was.