Phil rolled his eyes. “We better get to class, the bell is about to ring and Felicia and I have fencing practice first period, so we need to go change. Take care, we’ll see you at lunch,” he said with a cheerful wave as he and his sister broke off down the hall toward the gym.
“I’ve got a calculus exam, so I better get going too,” Ted said and left his two friends next to their lockers as they stowed their stuff and took out the books they would need for the morning’s classes.
Chase and Drew had nearly identical schedules, which was one of the only reasons Chase was actually passing his classes and not being expelled for truancy. Their first class was world history, a subject Drew felt was nothing more than the exultation of humanity’s long history of depravity and abuse.
“Drew, can you tell the rest of the class what Christopher Columbus contributed to the new world?” Mr. Lowbosky asked his student.
“Hm, let me think,” Drew said, leaning back and tapping an extended finger against his lips. “Christopher Columbus’s contributions to the new world… Let me see… he contributed to,” he began ticking off the examples on his finger, “the destruction of a world that was already there thousands of years before he discovered it, the near genocide of the indigenous populations, and the destruction of an entire people’s beliefs and way of life. He brought war, death, slavery, sickness, and syphilis to a people who built monuments on far grander a scale than that known to most of Europe, and who also knew more about the movements of the stars and planets and their place in the universe than the greatest of western astronomers. Oh, and he also destroyed nearly every written work they created,” Drew answered in disgust.
“That kind of attitude is precisely what creates radicals whose sole purpose is to disrupt an orderly society. Christopher Columbus is one of the world’s most renowned men whose accomplishments led to the creation of one of the greatest nations on earth!” his teacher declared emphatically, angry at what he perceived was the perversion of accepted western history.
“How can you celebrate a man who tried to find India by sailing west when the Greeks had already made a pretty good estimate of the circumference of the world centuries before the start of your Christian calendar? That would be like celebrating Isaac Newton as the man who discovered gravity by jumping off a cliff,” Dour Drew scoffed.
This statement got a good laugh from the other students, but his humor was entirely unappreciated by his teacher.
“Young man, that is the most ridiculous analogy I have ever heard, although I suppose I should expect such a thing from someone like you,” Mr. Lowbosky smugly returned.
“You’re right, it’s totally off base and ridiculous,” Drew agreed, pausing just long enough to allow his teacher’s look of triumph to spread across his face. “Isaac Newton would have had to crush two entire continents of indigenous people on his way down to come close to Columbus’ accomplishments.”
“Go to the principal’s office right now! I will not have you disrupting my class with this kind of talk, do you understand me?” the history teacher demanded.
“Da, comrade, loud and clear,” Drew replied in a thick Russian accent as he goose-stepped out of the classroom leaving a fit of laughter behind him.
First period and I’m already going to the principal’s office, he thought to himself. I’m off to a good start today!
When he arrived, one of the office administrators told him to take a seat outside Ms. Burnstrom’s office. About fifteen minutes later, one of the office workers told him the principle was ready to deal with him and to go on in.
The principal glared disapproval over her horn-rimmed glasses as he entered. “Take a seat, Drew,” she snapped at the troublesome student. “Mr. Lowbosky told me what happened over the intercom.”
Ms. Burnstrom was a slim, grey-haired, hatchet-faced woman who had been the principal of the high school for the past fifteen years. She wore a grey skirt suit with a white ruffled blouse and a pair of black rimmed glasses that she often let dangle around her neck by a silver chain affixed to arms of the spectacles.
Her office was furnished in the typical principal décor: brown leather furniture, overly large hardwood desk, dark wood bookshelves full of thick, random books, and an antique style globe cradled in a polished walnut stand that probably concealed a hidden liquor cabinet.
Drew took a seat in the small chair directly centered and a few feet in front of her desk. She tried to skewer him with a stare over the top of the rim of her glasses
“You know that you cannot disrupt class with these outlandish proclamations. What do you have to say for yourself?” his principal demanded.
Drew let out a sigh of exasperation and answered her.
“He asked me a question but didn’t like the answer. I guess it went too much against the ingrained programming of the establishment.”
“That right there is why you are here to see me today. When you come to school, you need to park your personal feelings about rules and order and your conspiracy theories right at the steps, young man. Do you understand what I am telling you?”
Why do people who think they are superior always ask you if you understand them? Just because someone disagrees with them, they think you are unable to comprehend the same language or something, or that you are somehow mentally deficient, Drew thought to himself.
“Yes, Ms. Burnstrom,” he answered simply.
“Very good, Drew, remember what I said,” she reminded him with a look of superiority.
“Yes Ms. Burnstrom, I’ll park my personal feelings about rules, order, and my conspiracy theories at the schoolhouse steps,” he recited as he walked toward the exit. “Right next to my first amendment rights,” he finished as he darted through the door.
Ms. Burnstrom called after him, but Drew was already down the hallway before she could react and pull him back into her office.
He knew she would probably not bother to call him back for his departing shot, but he walked hurriedly anyhow, having suffered enough totalitarian dictatorships for one morning. The rest of the day went about as well. He was hammered by dodge balls in gym class, berated for his paper on the subjugation and oppression within the vowel family for the “i before e” rules in English class, and was remonstrated in math class about his dealing with absolutes even within the rigid confines of mathematical law. The math teacher, Mr. Wilkinson, got so mad he choked on the mint he always had in his mouth to try to hide the whiskey tonics he drank in the morning to take off the edge and help him deal with students like Drew. Fortunately, his coughing fit lasted so long the bell rang before he could send Drew to the principal’s office once again. Overall, it was a pretty good day for a Monday.
CHAPTER 2
General Haskins sat upon his warhorse overlooking the battlefield. His archers were deployed in five lines of one hundred men behind more than three hundred pikemen, which were arrayed three ranks deep. Behind his archers, were two thousand footmen wielding swords and spears. As the battle was joined, his footmen would advance to stand directly behind the pikemen while the archers simultaneously retreated once they became vulnerable. His rear-most elements consisted of five hundred reserve troops and his artillery.
Five ballistae hurled six-pound javelins over five hundred yards, while his six onagers lobbed stones the size of a man’s head. His heavy cavalry, which was in the very capable hands of Captain Acadis, numbered nearly five hundred horses, and was cleverly hidden in a large depression behind a tree-covered hill less than a quarter mile away. There they would wait until the battle horns ordered them to charge into the enemy’s flanks.
Though he was outnumbered nearly two to one, he was confident that he could drive the horde of goblin kin back, at least this time. The monstrous army was normally undisciplined, and their only cavalry were wolf-riding goblins. Although quite swift, they were lightly armored and easier to bring down than an armored man on a warhorse. His greatest concern was the ogres. If those huge beasts closed with his men, they would
wreak havoc on his lines with their tree limb-sized clubs and brutish strength.
A horn sounded shrilly from across the valley as the goblinoid army advanced, slowly at first, then in an all-out charge. The wolf riders quickly outdistanced the rest of the evil host as they bore down on the humans. The goblins shouted out their guttural battle cries while their huge wolf mounts slavered at the jaws, eager for the taste of human flesh.
General Haskins watched as the wolf riders reached the first pile of stones his men had stacked for use as a range marker and allowed them to pass as they quickly ate up the ground toward the next marker.
“Hold it, hold it…!” the general commanded, keeping his arm raised above his head until the wolves reached the second range marker. “Now, loose!”
At his command, his archers let fly with a flight of five hundred steel-tipped arrows at the onrushing wolf riders. The onagers and ballistae launched their deadly payloads at the advancing enemy infantry that were just now reaching the farthest range marker.
The archer’s shafts were the first to find their targets, and the rain of wood and steel splashed down among the goblins and their mounts, sending scores of the monsters crashing to the earth with wooden shafts protruding from their wounded and lifeless corpses.
The heavy javelins and stones crashed down upon the enemy foot soldiers. Some of the rocks landed directly on the enemy; other shots fell short but skipped and rolled over their targets with equally lethal results. The ballistae-launched javelins were just as devastating, skewering multiple enemies on a single shaft where they landed amongst the horde. When they fell short, they tumbled viciously through the air, sowing chaos and disorder.
The wolf riders closed within range of their own shortbows and let fly scores of shafts into the humans’ forward troops. The archers fell back as arrows from the goblins found their mark amongst the pikemen, or the shields carried by the footmen as they slipped between the ranks of retreating archers blocked them.
Most of the wolf riders wheeled away, loosing more arrows in a strafing run across the frontlines of humans, but scores of others charged into the pikemen, swinging shortswords and hand-axes while impaling themselves on the long, steel-shrouded spears.
The footmen advanced to stand with the pikemen, fending off those enemies that were able to avoid the pikes and render their lengths less than useless. Swords hacked and shorter spears thrust into the goblins and the snapping jaws of their wolf mounts as the archers retreated farther uphill to send their shafts against those wolf riders that continued to harry the footmen from range.
The artillery lowered their aim to continue to pound the advancing army until they were too close for such heavy weapons. The wolf riders finally drove their mounts back behind their infantry kin. The goblins and orcs threw themselves against the human infantry, hacking with axes, swords, and bashing with spiked clubs. The human archers concentrated their fire on the slightly slower lumbering ogres in hopes of thinning their numbers before they could engage the much smaller and weaker humans.
General Haskins watched the dreaded ogres advance even through the hail of arrows, some striding forward with as many as a dozen shafts sprouting from their thick, knotty hide, but they seemed unperturbed for the most part.
“Sound cavalry charge!” the general ordered, his command immediately answered by two long blasts from a brass war horn.
“That’s our signal, men!” Captain Acadis told his men. “We’ll hit them hard. Aim for the ogres and wheel about for a second pass once you’re clear!”
Within seconds, the sound of two thousand horse hooves pounding the earth thundered above the din of battle. The heavy cavalry smashed into the flanks of the ogre ranks less than one minute after the battle horns called for the charge.
Long lances capped with steel pierced the tough hides and organs of the ogres. Captain Acadis and his men crashed through the spread ranks of the huge brutish creatures then wheeled their horses around in near perfect precision for another pass of destruction. Once all his horses came abreast, he ordered another, merciless charge, a charge nearly as powerful as the first since he had lost only a few riders and horses in their initial attack.
The second attack would be far more costly since many of the mounted warriors had lost or snapped their lances in the bodies of their enemies and would have to engage with swords. The men and horses once again slammed into the ogres, but this time the ugly creatures were better prepared.
As the knights swung razor-sharp swords, the ogres unhorsed them with their huge clubs, knocking them from their saddle and crushing them once they were on the ground. Several ogres simply struck the riders’ mounts in their broad heads, bringing down both horse and rider at once.
“Reserves, engage the ogre and goblin kin’s flank!” General Haskins commanded, seeing his cavalry hard pressed in the rear of the battle.
The five hundred man reserve ran down the hill, sweeping to their right as they bore down on the enemy’s right flank. Spearmen harried the ogres with their eight-foot heavy spears while swordsmen hacked at them from closer range by darting in and retreating, each assault drawing more blood.
Fifty crossbowmen wielding arbalests fired heavy bolts into targets of opportunity from only a few yards away. At close range, the arbalests inflicted far more damage than the archer’s longbows and wreaked havoc even against the monstrous ogres.
Seeing the monster army finally beginning to break apart, General Haskins charged ahead to personally lead the final assault and bloody his blade on the merciless attackers. “Push forward men, follow me!”
Rallied by their supreme commander, the footmen let out a cry, pushed forward with renewed effort, and savagely cut into the enemy. The goblin kin finally broke and ran back toward the thick woods. Shafts from the archers fell amongst the retreating foes, and the horsemen continued to cut down and harry the fleeing monsters, especially the slower, gruesome ogres.
Once the surviving creatures made it to the relative safety of the dense trees, the cavalry broke off and returned to their own battle lines. Captain Acadis rode his lathered mount up to General Haskins who was regrouping and hailing the bravery of his men.
The cavalry leader pulled up next to his commander and saluted smartly. “Sir, I report that the invaders have fled into the woods with less than a quarter of their original force, and only a score of ogres surviving the battle. My men have suffered the loss of some two score riders and mounts. My lieutenants are tallying the wounded at this moment.”
“Excellent, Captain, your men did an outstanding job,” General Haskins said. “As much as we all feel the loss of each of our men, I feared a much heavier toll at the beginning of this battle. Our own losses were not light, but we are still an effective fighting force, and we saved the city of Kanea. We will have to maintain a strong garrison, however. Several hundred orcs and goblins are not something we want to allow to roam free. We will regroup back at Kanea and implement heavy hunting sorties to flush them out, exterminate them, or drive them back from whence they came.”
“Yes, Sir. Once the wounded are tended to and loaded for travel, I will order my men to lead our return to the city,” replied Captain Acadis.
The general waved absently. “Very good, Captain, carry on.”
The small army received a grand welcome upon their return to the large city of Kanea. Women threw kisses, children threw flowers, and men made sure the throats of the valiant warriors were never dry at the inns and taverns that night.
There was an entirely different celebration occurring at nearly the same time in a much smaller city some one hundred miles away in the town of Faluna. Ogres and goblin kin ran the streets, looting everything of value, and drinking every bit of wine, ale, and spirits they could find. Many homes and shops were burning, and although most of the former inhabitants had already fled or been killed, the occasional human scream could still be heard from people that prayed fervently for the release of death.
A dark-robed figure strode
through the ashes and destruction of the town. He was short man with grey hair and steely eyes hidden beneath his deep cowl. Although he was much smaller than the ogres and appeared almost frail, every one of the creatures bowed before him and gave the man a wide berth.
Next to him walked an armed man in black mail with a deep red cloak fastened at the neck with a silver clasp in the shape of a skull. He was speaking to the robed man, one of the few who even dared do so.
“My Lord, your army has achieved a great victory here; however, my sources tell me that we did not fare so well at Kanea. They were routed and fled back into the woods while the city still stands,” the armed man said hesitantly, fearing the reaction from the deadly man he walked with.
“Fear not, my faithful Lucien, it is as I expected. I had no real intention of sacking Kanea—at this time. They were simply a necessary diversion for my goals here,” Lord Darkrell replied in a quiet, raspy voice.
“Forgive my impertinence, My Lord, but had we committed the troops here at that battle we may well have taken Kanea, a much larger and richer city,” Captain Lucien hesitantly suggested.
“Lucien, how many warlords have used the evil races to further their goals, power base, and wealth over the centuries?”
“I am not sure, Great One; dozens at least, I would imagine.”
“And how many have succeeded for any appreciable amount of time?”
“I know of none, Master,” Lucien replied after giving it a moment of thought.
“Of course you do not. That is because there is none. Oh certainly, there have been tyrants, warlords, and conquerors who carved pieces of the human kingdom out for themselves, but they never held it for more than a single generation. Most of them reigned only a scant number of years, if they were lucky. No, the brutish forces of the goblins, orcs, ogres, and other dark races are simply too chaotic, ill-disciplined, unintelligent, and too socially weak to make an effective army capable of not only conquering, but occupying and settling the rich, human controlled lands,” Lord Darkrell explained, educating his war leader.
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