Last Stand of the Blood Land

by Andrew Carpenter

  The massive griffin turned deftly and jumped into the hidden air of the box canyon. Wotan watched in silence for a moment as the Rider circled lazily, hidden below the rim, and then, with the great white wings pumping, drifted down the canyon to coordinate the attack. Continuing his journey alone down the narrow goat path into the canyon, Wotan remembered the ambush on Parfey, Pathmaker of the Giants, when he had first faced the Blood Born. In his mind he could still see the violence in those daemons as the Cherub who would later become his own blood brother defended his wounded companions. Ignatius. Those enemies were now his allies and he remembered slaughtering hundreds of Southlanders with them on the battlefield this new army from the South would soon occupy. No Angels to save us today, but a Rider in the sky.

  When he had told the tale of that battle, how the Guardian’s that had slaughtered the Centaurs in ages past had come to their aid, many among his people had refused to believe. But he had been there, he had seen it, and now winged warriors would once again help them to destroy their enemies. After a short time on the trail, he caught sight of his forces below. The sandstone walls of the canyon ended at this bluff and there, at the end of the canyon, the entrance to this secret path lay hidden by the foliage that surrounded a small spring. Hundreds of Centaurs stood in the cool shade of small grove of oaks that grew around the spring, preparing for battle. Wolves kept a nervous watch down the canyon. The great grey companions of the Horse-Men could sense what was about to come.

  The warriors were ready when he arrived, their stoic faces painted in vicious blacks and blues. He surveyed the sharp points on their racks, the armor they had applied to each other’s flanks, and the swords, spears, and bows adorning their backs. He nodded his approval and felt the power arrayed here, hundreds of battled hardened Centaurs ready to unleash the full power of the North on their enemies. They gathered in the manor of their people, in a large circle facing in, surrounding their war chief. He spoke in their native tongue, looking down at the spring that had for centuries made this the staging ground for raids in the area.

  “AAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!”

  “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!” they answered as one, the war cry echoing off the canyon walls.

  “They come to bring their order, their walls, to our lands,” bellowed the black furred Centaur. “We have faced the order of their phalanxes and we have fought their Companion Cavalry along their wall. We will always run free because we are not afraid!”

  “HHHHHHUUUUUUUUUUAAAAAAAAAA!” came their reply, a monstrous bellow breaking again and again off the walls in the late morning light.

  “We will break their order with the death that courses in our veins,” he shouted. “Today we will see what fear does to order!” They had stampeded into battle behind Wotan for many seasons, and they trusted the strength of his medicine. They stomped their hooves in approval.

  “The real enemy isn’t the army we face today; the real enemy is an idea. It is an idea they carry in their minds, about what we are willing to do to make our own order. They think their order puts them above us, gives them the right to decide the fate of our land. But we are this land, and the land comes before them. The only way to stop an idea is to destroy the vessel that carries it. Today, as we go to war, remember that with each soldier you kill, an idea dies.”

  Silence fell over the Horse-Men then and they felt the power flowing from the earth into their hooves. They hadn’t heard their leader speak in such abstract terms before, but they knew this was their land and they recognized the Men from the South had to die for them to keep their freedom. For a moment there was only the sound of the bubbling spring. Then came the slow death rattle of the wind rustling the blood red leaves in the oaks. The oldest Centaur in the group, his long grey hair adorned with a headdress of feathers, tapped a solitary note on his war drum and Wotan lifted a single hoof. The war dance had begun.

  The wolves howled along as the warriors whooped and sung to the beat, tails flickering as they spun and bucked around the circle in a fearless crescendo. The dance only lasted a few moments, but Wotan knew that it was critical to keep the old ways alive even as the actions they took today with the Northern Alliance changed things forever. Today we fight with our minds as much as with fear.

  The war chief led the way, jumping the spring and setting off down the canyon towards their fate. His warriors took their turn leaping over the small pool of water before following him in a long line with the drumming elder bringing up the rear. Though it was late morning the sun hadn’t yet crested the canyon and when Wotan summited a small rise he could see the steaming breath of hundreds of bucks back along the dark trail. This is as it should be, warriors going to battle for what they believe in.

  He led them through the twisting canyon, watching as the cactus and sage of the arid inner canyon began to give way to brown prairie grass where the canyon opened up. He scouted in a crouch now, hunching his torso forward, so the grass would cover more of his frame, and scanned the horizon for signs of the enemy. The Centaurs began to zig and zag to keep them lower in the grass, searching for any bit of a ravine that would hide their forces. Then, just before the war party would become exposed to enemy scouts on the open prairie, Wotan turned his bucks North towards a narrow defile in the canyon wall. The crack in the wall was so narrow that he could feel the armor on his sides scraping the sandstone. The chief pushed through, ignoring the pain in an effort to prevent his warriors from bunching up at the choke point. Once through, he was alone in a shallow, sandy pit surrounded on all sides with steep walls. As he surveyed the walls he felt panic rising in his normally stoic chest. Betrayed. Centaurs and wolves were pouring into the narrow pit, forcing him out into the center of the small open space where he spun, his hooves kicking up eroded sand from the beige, white, and red-layered walls. The Centaur knew that Fort Hope sat just south, as the crow flew, over these walls. The army of the South would be slowly assembling on the flat plain there where Centaurs had once burned the farms of men and Giants. They would have found the bodies of their scouts and, if Oberon’s plans were to be believed, would be sending a major force into the canyon that lay directly west from the fort to secure their flank. I must be there to play my part.

  Then, just when he was considering turning their forces around, he saw a young buck on the other end of the pit seeming to climb straight up the wall. He moved forward across the sand, but he didn’t see the stairs until he was just a few feet from the wall. As the Dwarves said they would be. The Centaur looked on in amazement as his forces began to climb into the sky on the freshly carved stairs. The way was hewn ingeniously into the stone so that, unless he were right on top of the wall, a scout would never realize Centaurs could use this way to climb out of the pit onto the ridge above. We will make it over. He performed a half pirouette, racing back across the cavern. When he reached the opening, he could see that there were still ten bucks waiting to enter and he watched, anxious lest their force be discovered before they could get into position. He pushed past the last warrior and moved slowly through the narrow gap in the rock walls, leaning forward with his torso before he was fully through so he could peer out through the gap. His sharp eyes took in the grass and he felt a chill as the air rushed around him, channeled by the gap in the rock. There they are.

  He could see the army on the horizon, silhouetted against the oranges and yellows of the hardwood forest. They moved with precision and he wondered if the Giants village, just a few leagues South, had already been captured and sacked. He squeezed slowly backwards through the gap, thankful that his force had made it in undetected, and returned to supervise the next stage in their journey. He found the warriors making slow, steady progress, and involuntarily stomped his hooved in impatience. Climbing up cliffs is not what we are built for. Still, he knew that this trick of the Dwarves would allow his force to achieve what no scout of the South would ever believe he could achieve. Finally, when the sun was directly overhead, he became the last of his warriors to make the
climb. He felt an anxiety he never felt in battle as he made his way up into the sky along the narrow stairs, a steep drop on his left, but he never stopped putting one hoof in front of the other as he made his way.

  When he reached the top, he found his forces packed tightly into a narrow amphitheater of stone. The wind blew softly around their dreads, shaking feathers slowly in the bright light. He made his way between them, careful not to knock any of his brethren to their deaths. Finally, he came upon a cluster of his bucks where they stood around a piece of rock wall. One of them had his ear pressed against the stone, listening intently. When Wotan approached he removed his ear and nodded silently before pointing his finger at a specific spot in the rock. The chief leaned in, looking closer and closer at the layers of sediment that made up the stone. Each layer was separated cleanly from the next, gritty grains of sand comprising a solid totality. And then, just inches from the Centaur’s face, a hole appeared. A second later, it grew, knocking sand out and forcing Wotan to jump back in surprise. A chisel poked through. He leaned back in and found himself staring into the black depths of a Dwarven eye.

  The Centaurs watched in silence as the little warrior enlarged the hole, then tumbled through in a sandy mess. Wotan reached down and shook his arm, a custom he had learned from the other races, before shooing away a snarling she-wolf. The Dwarf spoke with a thick accent and Wotan struggled to understand what was also a second language for this new ally.

  “There is still time,” said the Dwarf. “Everything is in place. The main army is assembling right where they should, your force is the last to get into place.”

  Wotan took a deep breath, watching as two more Dwarves worked to enlarge the passageway that would take them to their final attack position. Something is wrong. He could sense it in the Dwarf, and so he looked at him, waiting. The Dwarf was nervous, looking up the at the ancient enemy of his people, taking in the eighteen-pointed rack on the black skinned war chief and shuddering at the sight of his curved scimitars. Finally, he mustered the courage to speak.

  “They fell for the bait.”

  Wotan said nothing, and the Dwarf paused before continuing.

  “More of them feel for the bait than we expected.”

  “Show,” said Wotan.

  The Dwarf nodded, scrambling up the wall to a smooth, roofless passage. Wotan had to pesade, lifting his front legs so he could make his way up and into the passage. The way was uncomfortably narrow and awkward for a being built to run wild across open plains, but he was through it quickly. He emerged onto a grassy knoll at the base of a bluff. Where the bluff met the rock wall he had just emerged from there was just enough room to hide a few hundred Centaurs. Happy to be back on the grass, he followed the Dwarf up the bluff while his comrades began to file slowly along the final leg of their journey. As they crested the slope, a familiar battle ground came into view.

  Wotan recognized it as the ground where his bucks had joined with retreating Dwarves and Giants as they pushed south from the wall. Together with Ryogen’s men, and the help of the Angels, they had slaughtered hundreds of southern soldiers from Therucilin and Fort Hope further down this very canyon. Surveying the ground, he knew they would be in a perfect position to thunder down a gentle slope and smash into the side of any enemy formations that wondered up from the staging ground further to the west. He also knew that any Southern scouts would never suspect that a force of Centaurs could attack from this angle; the cliffs they had just traversed would have made it impossible. Now, at this perfect vantage, he could see why the Dwarf was concerned. To the West, he could see large numbers of soldiers pushing their way up the canyon in search of the forces that had killed their scouts. They had expected many hundreds of soldiers, but to Wotan’s eye, he suspected he was seeing at least a thousand men. There were four phalanxes flanked by cavalry and small units of soldiers to protect their rear. The Men were not taking any chances. An ambush isn’t an ambush if they walk into it on purpose. The Dwarf looked at Wotan expectantly.

  “All forces ready?”

  The Dwarf nodded.

  The war chief looked back to the sun baked canyon and watched the dust softly swirling above the approaching enemy. Too many to risk. He didn’t have a massive army to match the South and he knew that the North couldn’t afford to lose large numbers of its limited forces in a single pitched battle. Oberon had made it clear that they were to hit and run, ambush and surprise, but only when they knew they would kill far more of the enemy than they would lose. Here, the ambush was set so that the surprises they had planned as well as the terrain gave them an advantage. But their numbers make it a fair fight. Wotan wasn’t interested in a fair fight.

  He could see them now, row upon row of hoplites with their deadly spears pointed straight into the air. He could make out the massive golden shields each Man carried, the shields they would have to break through to defeat the strength of the phalanx. The mounted cavalry were easier to defeat for no horse and rider could match a Horse-Man’s single minded coordination. Fighting a strong phalanx, with fresh soldiers constantly rotating forward, was a death sentence for his bucks on open ground. No, we will have to fight another day.

  Just as he had made his decision to stand down, he heard a drum. The thumping came from the west and from his vantage he could just make out a banner flying from the watch tower at Fort Hope. The Dwarf at his side looked on in amazement, speaking without taking his eyes off the fort.

  “That banner means the fort is attacking.”

  Wotan knew that Fort Hope’s strength lay in its defensive position against the mountains. For its small number of defenders to attack was senseless. Unless it’s a feint. The army of Men couldn’t risk an attack on its main forces when they hadn’t yet mustered, when they were strung out along the trail and vulnerable. They would have to pull back any forces that were prepared to defend against an attack or risk being overrun. They don’t know that the fort is hopelessly under strength.

  An enemy rider appeared, as if to confirm Wotan’s assessment, galloping up the canyon. Wotan watched as the messenger argued with a mounted officer and heard orders being shouted shortly after. He stole a glance back at his warriors down the bluff and noted with pride that they awaited his order, unable to see the drama unfolding below in the canyon. Looking back, he felt a surge of hope as the phalanxes split, two of them turning back and heading West towards the fort at double time. The warrior looked down at the Dwarf, who was shielding his light sensitive eyes with his dark, reddish hand, and simply nodded. The Dwarf nodded in return and dashed down the bluff before disappearing into a hole with his sole remaining companion. It begins.

  He stepped back down the hill and signaled for his warriors to start the ascent out of their hidden kettle. They came slowly, moving up towards him with disciplined silence. When they were arrayed just behind the crest on the steep hillside he turned, advancing slowly so that the first ranks of warriors stood with their racks just below the line of site of the remaining phalanxes. He felt the wind and could see rustling the grass, sensing the moment, then moved forward so he could just make out the scene unfolding below. The remaining phalanxes still contained several hundred battle hardened soldiers, but the soldiers that protected their flanks were concentrated on the exposed northern approaches to the force where rolling hills, rather than sheer cliffs, would make it easy to attack the soldiers below. Scouts had climbed the hill below Wotan’s forces to gain a better vantage of the terrain, fully believing no attack could come out of the impassible southern bluffs above the canyon. Archers and wagons followed the phalanxes, which marched up the canyon in an attempt to engage whatever rebels had attacked the advanced scouts that morning.

  The Centaur struggled to contain his excitement as the front rows of the phalanxes began to lose their tight formation when they moved into the boulder strewn ambush site. At that moment, Wotan felt a tingle in his palms as he brushed them against the handles of his swords, knowing what he would see on the horizon. Skagen. His f
ellow war chief appeared across the valley, a long line of bucks arrayed along the top of the hill there just where the Southlanders had expected them. Their racks looked terrifying against the blue sky, the heavy weight of their armor-plated chests preparing to pull them down the easy slope towards the awaiting Southlanders. Wotan knew this was the fight the South wanted, the fight they needed, to wipe out resistance to their re-conquest and pacification of the North. He could almost taste the Human’s adrenalin, feel their anticipation of an early victory against their Centaur enemy. Though there were several hundred Centaurs on the ridge, they were not nearly enough to challenge the phalanxes. They don’t know that they face more than the Centaurs today. The men scrambled to put themselves into position, maneuvering around the boulders to face Skagen’s charge. After a moment of quiet, the thundering of hooves filled his ears. He paused briefly, allowing Skagen’s forces to fill the minds of his enemies. Then, without a thought, his swords were in his hands and his hooves were pushing him up to the peak where he reared onto his hind legs and kicked the air, pointing both swords down at his hated enemies. Then he was off, charging down to bring death to the idea that his people could be tamed.

  He ran faster than he had ever run in his life, nearly toppling end over end down the steep embankment. His momentum was stupendous, and his hooves seemed to barely kiss the grass. A human rider was turned, watching the battle below, and never saw Wotan’s scimitar as it sliced through his neck. The Centaur didn’t slow his pace or deviate towards the scouts to his left and right. He knew the tide of warriors washing down towards their prey would sweep them away. Instead, he focused his eye on the unguarded rear of the phalanxes just a few hundred yards ahead where the land grew flat in between the bluffs that made of the canyon walls. He could see the guard that had protected the northern flank, now the front, sweeping backwards in a hurry to get out of the path of Skagen’s charging warriors. When they spotted the tide of Wotan’s warriors they began to shout, urging the soldiers in the rear ranks to turn and lock shields to defend against this new attack. Arrows began to fall around Wotan, but he charged on, desperate to hit the soldiers while they were still out of position.