The hill on top of which the Company of Cats had lain their camp was chosen after a lot of thought.
Three sides of the hill were completely barren while the tall grasses on the fourth side had been regularly culled for about 200 meters away from camp so that anyone approaching them could easily be spotted from afar.
And even though the hill wasn't too high, it was still steep enough that anyone thinking of attacking them would have to climb an uphill battle while the defenders would have the advantage of downward momentum.
Jon and Sam were crouched and hiding among the tall yellow grass on the fourth side. They were at the very end just before the grass stopped, so they were easily able to watch the camp from their position while the sellswords up there couldn't notice them.
"She's back," Jon suddenly whispered, and Sam immediately looked up with searching eyes and sure enough not even a second later he caught sight of a colourful little critter flying towards them from the direction of the camp.
When Tweety reached above their heads, Jon extended his right hand and a moment later he caught a thin earthen bottle in his palm thrown by the bird before she perched on his shoulder.
Jon silently handed the bottle to Sam, who immediately placed it on the ground alongside five other empty ones, before putting his hand inside his armour to take out a new bottle.
"I think that should be enough bottles for now, Sam," Jon said stopping Sam from pulling out another bottle of poison, "I don't think Tweety needs to make another trip,"
"Are you sure? I mean what if she missed or spilled a little outside the pots? Shouldn't we pour a little more just to be sure..." Sam asked fidgeting with the bottle in his hand.
Chirp Chirp
Tweety answered Sam before Jon could even open his mouth as she squeaked out in an indignant melody while puffing up her chest and ruffling her feathers angrily.
Usually, Jon left most of the heavy work and long-distance things under the purview of Frost, so Tweety rarely gets the chance to shine. But when it comes to sneaky things like this, she was the only expert he had among his wargs as because of her insane speed and small size, she could go in and out of most places without anyone noticing, so the little birdy was quite proud and defensive of her work.
"Fine, Fine, I believe you," Sam apologized hastily while raising his hands in surrender towards the fuming hummingbird.
Jon suppressed his chuckles to save Sam the embarrassment before he cleared his throat, "Sam, I don't think I'll need you for the next part, so you should—Oh!" Jon abruptly stopped mid-sentence and raised his head towards the sky as if someone had called him.
"W-What happened, Jon? D-Did someone find out?" Sam asked nervously as his eyes involuntarily went towards the camp to see if he could make out any commotion.
"Hmm...Maybe..." Jon murmured with a frown on his face.
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"Well, two people just left the camp on horses and they are moving away at quite a fast speed as if they were running away from—Oh!" Jon stopped midsentence once again as he finally caught sight of the faces on the horses.
"What? Why did you stop? Did they really notice us? Should we run away? What should—Wait! Why are you smiling like that?" Sam asked in a bewildered tone as he saw a wide smile appear on the young northerner.
"No, Nothing," Jon quickly shook his head while trying to suppress his grin, "We don't need to worry about them."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. Even if those runaways found out about the poison, they probably decided to not share their findings with their friends and run away alone since most of the sellswords in the camp are still laughing around and happily eating their food."
"But why would they—"
"Don't worry about them," Jon repeated in a firm tone, "Now, as I was saying before, the next part only needs me so you should go join the others," he pointed his thumb towards the back where they had come from.
Jon and Sam hadn't ventured on this adventure all alone, three more from the Company of the Rose had joined them, namely, Bran, an experienced guard and a young stable hand. Jon didn't want to answer too many questions so he made them stop some distance back giving the excuse that more people would mean less stealth, which wasn't false.
"Yes, I understand," Sam finally nodded his head before raising himself from his crouched position but still making sure to remain hidden in the grass. But just before leaving Sam turned to Jon and asked something he was really curious about, "But how are you going to get past them, Jon," he pointed his finger towards the camp where two sellswords acting as look-outs were standing right at the edge.
While even Sam could see from afar that the guards weren't particularly alert or diligent about their jobs. He was sure that even those slackers would notice if Jon ran straight towards the camp through the open ground ahead of them.
"Using a simple magic trick... Why, Do you want to see it?"
"Yes."
"Well, then Tweety, show him your magic," he turned to his friend with a mischievous smile, who chirped happily and immediately took off.
...
The two guards on the lookout were barely looking out as most of their attention was back towards the camp where they could see the fires from the dinner rising high up in the sky.
"Sss! I can already smell the soup all the way here," one of the guards groaned as his stomach growled loudly.
"Don't do that, you idiot. The more you think about it, the harder it is going to be to endure the wait."
"Argh! But why! Why do we have to wait..." the guard replied in a disgruntled and envious tone, "I just hate those lucky bastards. While we are stuck here guarding this barren land where nobody has stepped a foot in years, they are out there happily enjoying their food..."
"But what can we do about it? We can only get our food after they have had their fill and the next shift arrives to relieve us. So you should suck up and—Argh!!" the guard abruptly covered his eyes and screamed before bending down.
"W-What? What happened?"
"A b-bird! A fucking bird just shit on me, argh!"
"What?" he barked trying to suppress his laughter while pulling his friend's hand away from his face only to see that both of his eyes were completely covered in white goo which immediately made him lose his control, "Pfft! Haha!!"
"Don't laugh you bastard!!"
"But h-how can you be so unlucky as to—Argh! Fuck!" halfway through mocking his friend, the guard screamed as he got served the same dish as his friend.
"Hahaha! Serves you right for laughing at me!!"
"Shit! Fuck this! I am going back to my camp to clean this filth!" he cursed and then made for the camp without looking back.
"But the captain—Ah! Curse you!" he screamed before immediately chasing after his friend.
...
"T-That was brilliant, Jon. Jon?!" Sam exclaimed in awe before he turned around but he got no answer as Jon had left his place and was already halfway towards the hill.
"Good luck, Jon," Sam mumbled to himself while looking at Jon before he turned and ran back through the grass to join the others.
...
The Camp of Cats had long wooden fences surrounding it on all sides like any other long-term sellword camp in Essos. But while these fences were usually supposed to keep the enemies out, in this instance they were mighty helpful in keeping Jon hidden.
Jon ran silently along the border of the camp while making sure to remain crouched at all times so that unless someone was looking directly at him through the fences, they wouldn't be able to spot him through the crisscrossing fence.
He ran past the empty ground where most of the sellswords were eating their dinner and then past the big tent that he knew was the food storage, and then past a few smaller tents before he finally reached his destination—the stables.
The fences surrounding the stable were a bit higher and had spiky sharp ends sticking out of either side so that horses didn't vault over it and run away. But Jon didn't have much of a problem jumping over the fence with his athletic body.
He landed on his hand and then rolled to stop his forward momentum before standing up and the moment he did, he was hit by the pungent smell of horse shit.
Jon was surrounded on all sides by horses of all kinds, some were brown, some were black, some were standing in their place and chewing hay while others were looking curiously towards him and others still had their eyes closed and were taking a nap.
It only took a single glance for him to see that there were something like 40 horses here and all of them were of excellent breed and in battle-ready condition, "This is quite the haul..." Jon murmured with a satisfied expression on his face.
"Now where is your caretaker, my friends," he asked distractedly to a nearby horse while taking out a dagger from his waist. The horse looked confused for a moment before jerking his head towards the entrance of the stable.
Jon nodded his head and began to move sneakily towards the entrance but it didn't take him more than a few steps to find that someone else had gotten to his target before him.
"Oho! Looks like someone ran afoul of the red viper..." Jon only needed a single look at the clear spear wound in the stablehand's throat to see who had done him in, "Well all the better for me," he shrugged while sheathing his dagger.
Jon knew that the time was tight so he immediately went to work on his next task... which was to get all these horses to agree to run away with him.
He went towards the nearest horse and after looking it in the eye for a few seconds, he created a faint rudimentary connection. Only a few moments later, he was done with his task as they came to an agreement, so he didn't waste any time in cutting open its rope and moving on to the next one.
One after the other, Jon freed the horses after spending a few seconds bonding with each of them. And not a single horse tried to create a clamour or escape from the stable using their new-found freedom, instead, they all patiently stood in their place while waiting for Jon to finish with the others.
A few minutes later, Jon was finally done communicating with the last of the horses and had gotten an agreement from every single horse in there to come with him.
And unlike what it looked from the outside, Jon wasn't actually trying to control all these horses, because even he with his robust mental strength would not have been able to control more than a few horses at the same time, but if it was just a short-term agreement to follow his orders then it was a bit more doable given enough time.
"Phew! That's finally taken care of." Jon sighed while wiping a bit of sweat from his forehead, "Now, for the last part..."
He took out a thin wooden makeshift torch he had prepared beforehand from his waistband, before pulling out a small bottle of alcohol from his pocket. He then proceeded to pour all the alcohol slowly over the torch end, to make sure that the fire wasn't doused by the wind.
A small stove near the stable entrance took care of the fire part, as with Jon's years of outdoor camping experience it only took him a few tries with the nearby tools to get the fire running.
He quickly lit the torch using the small fire in the stove before hurriedly dousing it just to be safe. A few seconds later when the fire was completely stable on the torch, Jon stood up and went towards the side of the fence he had entered the stable from before looking towards the sky, "It's your turn next, my friend..."
'I'm ready,' came the immediate reply from Frost, so Jon didn't waste any more time before chucking the burning torch straight into the sky as high as he could. Not even a second later a blue flash of light passed by and the torch disappeared from his view as if it had never been there, "Let's get the heat up, Frost,"
///
I am really sorry for the delays!!!
I had a very severe allergic reaction two weeks ago and was hospitalised for a week and was on bed rest for another. But thankfully I am a lot better now so hopefully I should be able to upload chapters starting this week once again.
Thank you for your patience.