Mission:
The woodlanders had made no means to hide their main fort. They were foolish enough to believe that none could penetrate them though in truth it was only the size of the fort that looked formidable. They lacked true strategy and commanders. Their fort was situated on a hill at the curve of a cove where the land began to bend back on itself to form the inlet itself. The small group of beasts I had chosen to come with me and myself landed out of sight just beyond the mouth of the cove, we had each taken a longboat, assuming we would be able to fill them with the recruits we were rescuing. Our ship, the Plunderer was out to sea and east a small ways. We laid wait on one of the many paths in the trees that led to the fort until a merchant and his family with a cart came into sight. We rushed upon them and destroyed the small escort they had come with. My own longsword claimed two heads and I gathered the coins they had with them on their bodies, thus far it was a rewarding venture. We left the merchant and his family alive however. Taking his small children we hid underneath his goods as he had more than one cart, asking him if he would rather have our heads or his children's. He seemed to be a good actor however for the foolish guards let us pass without going through his goods. Such a thing would never happen on the Emperor's isle. We waited patiently until the night turned dark then left our hiding. We slew the merchant and his family, leaving their strangled bodies around the woodland holding, some in alleys and some in ditches. We also retrieved their silver and precious stones, setting aside the greater part of it for the Emperor. We found the warriors housing and parade ground easily, we needed but to follow through our nostrils the scent of death. Corpses of fellow corsairs and buchaneers were stacked as cordwood around the parade ground. Un speakable things had been done to this and I could feel the hot flush of anger on my face even as I saw it on my fellows. One of my number, a keen-eared rat heard the moaning of our captives in an unearthly pit in the grounds. Furthermore showing the folly of the woodlanders we saw no guards and easily released our own beasts. I left three to find a way from the fortress to the longboats while me and the other two would take the Emperor's vengeance on the woodlanders. We did not aim to kill their leader, let him pay the consequences for what he had done. Instead we went into the commanders lodgings, seeing only four sentries, most of which seemed blurry-eyed, I took the head of one, but there was no glory in it as his limbs were too tired to lift and his voice to feeble to call out. We entered the commanders lodgings as I have already said, we tied vines and ropes around their muzzles to keep them from calling out. I ordered their ankles tied together then we dropped each onto their heads from the windows of their housing. The ropes tied to their ankles we tied to their own bedposts then left them with their skulls crushed (although some need to be lifted and dropped more than once). We pondered for a few minutes whether to a-light their bodies or not but decided that seeing the death in the eyes of the commanders would lower morale more than seeing bones. From there we crept over the wall, using rope to lower ourselves, only seeing a few sentries. We did not kill them, they would be punished enough for letting us get through and they should suffer long in this world before going to the suffering of the next, we decided. The other longboats had departed and so we made swift our own departure, hoping for a decent reward.