The Women's Army

Decurion Agata led the nine Sauron elites he had handpicked, slipping away from the main battlefield where the clamor shook the sky like venomous snakes vanishing into shadow, and turned into the narrow side alley that looked as if it could circle around to the rear of the barricade.

However, the complexity and chaos of the Iron Islands' Shantytown Area far exceeded anything they had imagined.

There were no clear roads here at all. Everywhere stood low, crooked, dilapidated plank shacks and mud-and-stone houses, all pressing against one another. The narrow passages were blocked by junk piled at random, trash, and even collapsed ruins, twisting this way and that like an enormous maze.

The air was thick with the sharp, choking stench of feces, rot, and gunsmoke mixed together.

They tried to rely on a rough sense of direction to feel their way toward the core area where the shouts of killing were fiercest, but before long, they had lost their bearings amid the crisscrossing, utterly disorderly alleys.

"Damn it! This cursed place!" Agata cursed under his breath, irritably kicking aside a broken clay jar in his way.

They darted about like headless flies, occasionally running into a few trembling, sallow, emaciated refugees huddled in corners.

Agata tried to grab one and ask for directions, but the civilians, frightened out of their wits, took one look at their fiendish faces and blood-dripping weapons and either collapsed to the ground, babbling incoherently, or let out terrified screams and turned to flee.

In a towering rage, Agata swung his saber and cut two of them down, but aside from venting his fury and adding to the smell of blood, it did nothing to help them find the way.

"Chief, listen! The sound's over there!" A keen-eared soldier pointed to the left front.