A Warrior's Redemption

by Guy S. Stanton III

  *****

  The retrieval of the dead and wounded went quickly. I stumbled slightly after having heaved a dead warrior onto one of the last departing wagons. The burning oil was almost at an end. It was time to get back to the relative safety of the wall. That I was tired was putting it mildly. The circular shield formation strategy had taken all the energy I had. I stumbled over the bodies of the slain making my way back towards the wall. I made my way across the ditch now filled high with the bodies of horses and men, where we had made our first stand. I sensed that I was being watched and I looked around more closely. I found a pair of eyes in the shadowed darkness of a deeper, less filled section of the ditch, that I was crossing over. I moved slightly toward them and I saw that it was one of our own that had fallen into this deeper section of the ditch. The smell of death was high as I made my way down to him over the bodies lying there.

  He was a young, blond haired warrior that I remembered seeing briefly. He had been a part of one of the formations that hadn’t made it.

  Weakly he tried to wave me off, “No sir! They’ll be coming soon! I’m not worth your life!”

  This young man, just out of boyhood, had been planning to lie here in this dark hole waiting for the end to come and not call out to me for fear of risking another life. Talk about a special brand of courage. I wondered if I would ever possess such courage as that.

  “Nonsense! Your life, and what you choose to do with it, is every bit as important as my own! Come on, we’re getting out of here.”

  I quickly undid some of my armor to lighten the load.

  “What’s your name warrior?” I asked as I picked him up.

  “Tannis Rologan, Sir,” he responded painfully.

  The movement of picking him up hurt him I could tell. “Well Tannis, after you mend up from this you’re going to be assigned to my private retinue. I need more warriors like you around.”

  It was tough going on the uneven squishy terrain. Tannis’s face was ashen white. “Do you have a special girl somewhere, Tannis?”

  “Not really, Sir. There’s one I wish was mine, but she doesn’t see me like that, if you know what I mean, Sir.”

  “If she knew what I know about you Tannis, she’d be begging to be your girl!”

  He smiled wanly and then gave a little gasp of pain and grunted out, “I’m sorry. I don’t think I’ll be able to serve with you, Sir. I would have liked that more than anything.”

  Tannis died then in my arms, going completely limp. I sunk to my knees, holding him to me. So young! He had deserved to live on merit alone. He didn’t deserve to die like this before the fulfillment of his days in this squalid dark hole of death! He was dead and I had helped kill him. It was my plan, my strategy that had put his life at risk and put an end to it. Bitter tears streaked down my face as I closed his wide blue eyed stare forever.

  “May you be at peace in the arms of your maker, Tannis Rologan. I am unworthy of your sacrifice.”

  I laid him down gently and stumbled the rest of the way up out of the ditch, not looking back. Suddenly Rolf was by my side tugging me along and I let him, too numb inside to much care about anything at the moment. At some point, consciousness of my surroundings returned and I glanced back. The battle field was empty except for the bodies of the slain enemy and one who should have gotten a better deal in life than he had.

  No more enemy troops had advanced into the pass even though the burning oil had stopped. The sounds of the drums had intensified however. Hopefully that meant that they were bringing their heavy siege equipment to the front on the double. It was an odd battle plan that called for the destruction of one’s best defensive fortification to be accomplished as fast as possible, but that was the plan. It had worked so far, maybe our success would continue, but at what cost?

  How many more Tannis’s would have to die to achieve victory? The corresponding thought came that answered that question. If we lost this war all the Tannis’s would die, of that I was sure, which was why we had to fight and keep dying so that perhaps some would live. I was one of the last to enter the city. As I came out of the darkness of the tunnel passageway and back into the light and the city of Kingdom Pass, I saw massed ranks of warriors gathered to either side of the road and as one they shook their fists into the air repeatedly, shouting a timeworn military cheer of glory to a warrior they deemed fit of the honor of receiving it.

  I didn’t deserve this! It seemed as if every warrior of the army had gathered and was shouting my praise. I was overcome with the feeling of wanting to throw up.

  “Don’t you dare!” Rolf said harshly to me.

  “I don’t deserve this praise, Rolf. Why are they cheering me, when I lost so many of them today? I’m worthy of scorn more than I am praise!”

  Rolf continued tugging me along, “They cheer because you have given them hope. They cheer because as warriors they have the honor of being led by the greatest of warriors and that warrior is you! Master, you have never sought your own glory and yet it has been given to you abundantly by the Creator we both serve. Let them see the man that you are inside! Let them see the man they believe can lead them to victory, even if you do not believe it of yourself! Reward their faith and let them have peace, whether it is to the grave we go or to stand triumphantly over the graves of our enemies!”

  I didn’t feel like doing it, but I recognized the wisdom of Rolf’s words and so I lifted my fist into the air and excepted their praise, even though I was less than worthy of receiving it. I would have preferred to slink into a dark corner and lick my wounds and have some time to heal before I again had to face the light of day and the gazes of men’s faces that stared sightlessly out into the void of space and time, because I had led them to their death.

  I stopped where the central stairs started up to the wall ramparts high above and motioned for silence. Reluctantly the impassioned warriors grew silent one by one, with still a few giving scattered cheers in the background.

  “Brothers and sisters, hear me please. You have not only pledged your swords and arrows to me, but now I see that you have pledged your hearts also. I am unworthy of the honor you bestow upon me. I am but a man as you are with the same weaknesses that you struggle with, the same problems. But I am also a man that has faith! I believe in the Valley Lander way of life. The right to serve our Creator as we please! The right to protect our families and our lands from those who would take them from us! The right to live free and accountable to no man, other than those we appoint over us and the sovereignty of our Creator, who reigns over all creation! The enemy beyond those walls wants to take all of that away from us! As I have been elected as your leader in war, I swear that as breath and the strength remains within me to lift my sword, I will fight to preserve all that we hold sacred. I will fight to preserve our freedom and not only ours, but our children’s children as well. This is my promise to you and may the Creator judge me ever so severely, if I fail in anything I have promised you!”

  The applause that erupted was deafening, but again I made the gesture to be silent. When I had it I said, less heatedly than before, “You have given me your hearts, but I tell you that is not enough. I must have your trust also! Orders will be given that you will not understand and will certainly question, but yet I ask you to obey every one of them, as I believe that the route we must take is the only one that can lead us to victory. Sacrifices will have to be made, even as they already have been, and more will be asked of you than ever should be and hopefully never will be again. I do not risk any one of you needlessly and yet I have risked all of you and our entire people to attain total and complete victory over the enemy. What say you? Are you with me no matter the path taken?”

  There was a ground swelling roar that culminated in one word being repeated over and over; ‘Lata!’ which simply put, means master or commander.

  I saw Romnan make his way through the crowd flanked by generals Sanjo, Nadero, and Santaran. They stopped before me and the crowd of war
riors grew silent.

  Romnan spoke loudly in order to be heard by all, “We Valley Landers have always been a race of warriors! We have had many proud warriors to call our own over the course of our history. Such a warrior stands before you now in the form of Roric Ta’lont. Well is it said, if one wants to know how the progress of a battle is fairing, look around to see if a Ta’lont is still fighting. If so, then there’s reason to hope yet that the battle might be won.”

  There was a general chuckle throughout the crowd at that statement, which apparently was only new to me as I had never heard it before now.

  “You, the warriors of our people, are faced with making the greatest sacrifice that one can in this life and it is because of this that you speak for all of the Valley Lands. As you have accepted this man, who humbly comes before you as one of you and not one better than you, I ask that you will not only appoint him as leader of our people in this present struggle, but also in the peace to follow!”

  There was a deafening roar of approval and all I could do was stare in shock at Romnan. What was he doing? Why was he unseating the long held power of the council and transferring all the power to me? Again silence was called for and Romnan stepped forward toward me and answered my unspoken question.

  “These are uncertain times that we face as a nation. A time when firm leadership is needed, as well as the act of will to commit to what needs done. Our nation has had such a moment before. Roric, it was your great ancestor, Tadias Ta’lont, when he first came to these shores, who took the reins of control and steered a fledgling nation out of the path of certain destruction by greater forces than we, at that time, could muster the will to withstand. It has become quite evident to me and all those gathered here that the blood of the greatest of our ancestors still runs strong within your veins and the humility by which you govern the actions of your heart. Your walk in faithful obedience to the Creator makes you worthy of the responsibility that has been given to you freely by those who speak most for the people; the warriors that stand gathered in this place. May the Creator help you and bless you more abundantly than any honor a man can give and may we as a nation prosper under your leadership now and, I pray, well into the future.”

  More applause erupted, louder than ever before, and abstractly I wondered what the Zoarinians must be thinking about all of what they surely had to be hearing. General Sanjo stepped forward. I hadn’t noticed it before, but he was carrying something in his arms that lay on a purple velvet cloth. Flanked by both of the other two generals, he approached me and all three kneeled down before me.

  It was a sword, an unimaginable sword. It was more beautiful than any other sword I had ever seen, but there was something more to it than just beauty. I couldn’t define what it was about it that made me think so. It was almost, in some way, familiar to me, but I had never laid eyes on it before.

  General Sanjo extended it up to me, “As the councilman has said, these are desperate times in which we find ourselves. As we have elected you as our leader, as once the great patriarch of your family was during the long years of his lifetime, it is only fitting that the oldest of the relics that have been passed down to us from our much storied past should go to you. Behold the sword of Tadias Ta’lont! May you wield it as nobly as he did and may it serve you well all your days as it did him. To God be given the glory this day that the warriors of the Valley Lands have a leader once again to lead us into battle against our enemies!”

  His words seemed to fade from my consciousness as my hand reached out toward the sword, as if inexplicably drawn to it. My fingers touched the cool steel of the handle and immediately I noticed a warm pulsing sensation as my fingers closed about the handle. It was as if the sword itself had closed about my hand. Tendrils of colored vapor peeled off the blade to dissipate into the surrounding air.

  There were many colors and the sword would pulse indiscriminately with multiple combinations of colors at a time. What kind of a sword was this? I glanced at councilman Romnan, the clear question of what I had just thought in my eyes. He, like everyone else, was mesmerized by the shifting colors of the blade I held in my hand.

  He shrugged, at a complete loss for words, “I don’t know. There is no record of such an occurrence, but little is known of that long ago time. To my knowledge it has not done this for anyone else over the years.”

  Not only did it emit the curious waves of colored light, but curious symbols would briefly flash and then be gone up and down the entire length of the blade. I sheathed the sword and hung it on my waist and it abruptly stopped glowing, but I distinctly felt the presence of it by my side.

  There was much to be discovered about the curious family heirloom, but not right now. I directed my attention back to my three generals, who gazed at me expectantly.

  “You have your orders, see to them.”

  They nodded curtly and disappeared into the crowd which soon began to disperse as the attention was redirected back to the very present and menacing army that was gathering in force beyond our great wall.