Only once every house was firmly set ablaze did Vol give the order to move, and the men did so with a good two hundred villagers being pushed out ahead of them, all of them bound together in different rows of ropes, moving across the plains like snakes.
Chapter 21 – The Escape
By the time they made it back to the forest with their new quarry, it was full dark, as they had expected it to be.
They arrived to see the slaves just where they'd left them, though they were suspiciously cleaner than when they'd last seen them, and the eyes revealed by the torchlight seemed to have a trace of humanity in them, as though they'd been subject to some small amount of goodwill.
It was not difficult to guess what had happened, not when Penelope was still there with a bucket and a cloth, tending to each slave one by one.
