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They had taken heed of his voice, shown initiative. They had turned and run. Run far from those things that had shown themselves in the dead of night, snarling and hungering for their flesh; creatures that discriminated not the might of a single man, rather showing equality in the moment that they would kill. What foul Empty Men had conjured such beasts from mere piles of ragged flesh, torn from an innumerable and uncountable myriad of hapless wanderers of a land that was beyond the hellish conditions of even Hell itself. Truly, this place was the end of all things. 

Yet he stood defiant in the hope that maybe they, hopeful and together, would break the cycle of endless sorrows. 

The bell-wearer had yet to turn and leave like the others had done. The Turncloak King did not immediately understand why until, behind his back, the unusual looking man fastened one of his own jingling bells to the length of the Turncloak's weapon. It was a sign understood by all, especially in the wake of the Jester's last words to him. The Turncloak King nodded, staring the Blood Golems once again as they approached in their animalistic fury. 

"Listen for the tolling of bells," he whispered to the bell-wearer. "I will see you again when the night is darkest and the black sun breaks over the mountain. Do not let them go astray, and trust not the wandering man." 

One of the Blood Golems began to charge, kicking up clouds of hazy dust in its wake, and the canyon shaking with the reverberating echo of its running hoofsteps. It screamed with the voice of a thousand men all amalgamated together, bound by the force of foul magic that tortured their very souls - their very beings - with every passing moment.

"Go! You must leave!" he urged the Jester, shoving him backwards, setting him on a running path with the others toward the Shaded Forest, the first step in their journey. 

[i]Crash.[/i] Was the next audible sound in the valley. The deafening connection of Golem and raised shield. The Turncloak King was forced backwards as he struggled to maintain his stance under the strength of the beast, who latched onto his aegis with a grip of iron. The King was a large man by any standard, but the Golems stood at twice his height, if not taller, and were augmented with inhuman, magical strength that the Turncloak dared not test. He steeled himself, gathering his strength and beating the Golem from his shield with a single push, feeling the sickening crunch of bones before it. The Golem stumbled back, shaking its head in animalistic confusion before regaining its composure. The Turncloak King had already lowered his body, taking to a single knee and striking with the stabbing point of his Halberd behind his guard, puncturing the Golem's mid-body. He drove the weapon hard into the beast, driving it deep, turning with his wrist, tearing the insides of the creature to pulp. It screeched again, its mouth like a gaping gateway to some realm of torturous screams. 

For a single, fleeting moment, the Turncloak King thought that he stood a chance to be free from the beasts, that he could find the others in due time, and they would all be free of the Land Betwixt together. But as the second Golem circled behind and drove its bony claw into his back, burying it just as deep as the halberd in its brother, the King's briefly hopeful thoughts had been shattered. The first Golem collapsed, but it mattered little as the Turncloak was thrown to the dirt by the wound in his back by the second. 
The pain was unbearable, indescribable. It was every time he died. 

He looked up through blurry, bloodfilled vision, past the prowling legs of the third Golem - and remembered that the fleeting souls behind him had spoken of somebody lurking behind in the rotted shrubbery. 

[i]And he thought that, from this angle, he could see the stalker too.[/i]