by Paul Yoder
Metus looked around the screaming, bloody, horrific scene that was unfolding all around him. The sight of war was overwhelming. So much death. The carelessness at which whomever had ordered the attack was disgraceful, the casualties on the enemy’s side already stacking up to half their troops, mostly from the fire from the Shadow and Shield companies.
He did not doubt Set was on the other side of that wall. Metus knew no life that man valued, aside from that of his late brother. To him, five hundred lives meant no more than any other tool he used to make his way up the ranks of power.
“Naldurn!” Metus yelled, looking to the rooftops for her. She appeared, drew her bow in a flash, firing an arrow past Metus just as another rider leapt over the wall at Metus’ back.
Metus didn’t have time to thank her. “Your sharpshooter! Have her focus on the commanders! No one else till their leaders are dead!”
She nodded and vanished over the rooftop, Metus hoping that without orders, the enemy force might lose heart for the bloodbath.
“They’re over the walls now. We need to fall back,” Tau said, after rushing up next to Bannon and Metus.
“Order all Hyperium to fall back to the left wall! Send the remaining dolingers on the attack at any that come over those ramparts,” ordered Bannon, Tau rushing off down the line to gather the troops on the ground and rooftops.
Thirty Rochatan soldiers formed up in the streets along the right side of town, the Shadows that had been keeping the invading troops at bay, falling back upon orders.
The company captain marched through with twenty other troops down a ways closer to the front gate, joining up with the other thirty men, pushing back the already retreating Hyperium that had remained along the right flank.
Both sides merged into other groups of their allies as they traveled along the right side of the town, each exchanging attacks, both by blade and missiles, but with the Hyperium’s tighter aim and better trained blades, the Rochatans were the one’s losing on the advance.
Their captains knew well enough that the only chance they had at not losing the battle was to keep pressing until their enemies’ backs were against a wall. They only hoped they had enough men to last through the brutal advance.
Ganlin scanned the warzone for high-value targets, loosing an arrow once or twice, taking out mounted soldiers moments before a horseman brought down, what would-be fatal, blows on her comrades.
She grinned as she noticed a man, flanked by two others, off to the side of a troop of twenty riders. The man in the middle had dressed similar to the common soldiers, so did his two companions next to him, but she noticed he was sitting back, quite calmly, sending the other two to and fro, conversing with them upon their return.
“You wear no colors, eh?” she whispered to her newfound target, seeing through the common Tarigannie military custom to not dress up their commanders to make her job that much harder.
“No matter, my little man,” she said, nocking an arrow, drawing the heavy longbow back, taking in a deep breath as she did so, holding it as she lined up her shot.
He was a good distance away, but not further than she could reliably shoot.
Her well-developed bow arm bristled with tension, the smallest quiver of a tremble as she loosed the arrow through the skies, it easily arcing over the front wall, soaring towards her target, striking right between the man’s legs, sinking deep into the saddle and horse’s spine, dropping the beast at once as it was left paralyzed.
The horse collapsed with the man still hooked into the saddle, it pinning his leg beneath the hundreds of pounds of horse.
The two men at his side sprung into action, dismounting, helping to lift the beast off of their senior ranking officer as Ganlin lined up her next shot.
Eyes emotionless, she let another shaft fly towards the panicking group of men, the arrow slipping straight through one of the aiding officers, dropping him on top of the man he was in the process of helping up.
She could see now the other man yelling up the ranks, and another leading officer heeding the call, looking to the horsemen that had just burst through the second gate, barking orders at them before rushing back to aid the two officers that she had centered out.
She drew her bow back again, waiting for a moment when the men’s movements were less erratic. With the distance being so great, she had to know where her target was going to be a few seconds ahead of time, and now that they knew they were marked, her task had become that much more difficult.
The second gate exploded off its hinges, a grotesque wave of blood and corpses spewing out into the small courtyard, frantic horsemen spurring on their mounts to make it through the sickening terrain, some horses losing their footing, getting trampled by those that were behind, champing at the bit to get out of the claustrophobic gate corridor.
Riders began to flood out of the narrow corridor and into the Shield company, who had formed a small phalanx, mixed within the barricades they had thrown together in the minutes before the battle.
Their long lances had been firmly planted, and as the riders bounded out of the mass grave that was the gate corridor, they sprung straight into the network of spears, all being skillfully guided to end either a horse or its rider before it could break through their lines.
Down the street marched forty Rochatan soldiers, their troops thinning, but still pressing firmly the assault, squeezing Hyperium of all three stakes together, flanked between the incoming horses that were breaking through the phalanx and the approaching platoon of troops picking off lone soldiers one-by-one in the streets.
“Fall back! Form a line with Hathos!” Bannon shouted, his raw voice completely stripped, getting his men to maneuver around the incoming horse units just in time before the line broke, which would have cut off ten Blood and Shield troops that they could not afford to lose.
“Bloods! To the front!” Hathos shouted, everyone linking up now but a few Shadows along surrounding rooftops, still picking off troops as they were able, being bombarded with javelins constantly.
Bannon, Hathos, and Metus made their way to the center of their troops, everyone converging in a section of yard between the outer wall and a longhouse the town used as a lodge. Now it was they who were trapped in a corridor, though this corridor was forty-foot wide as opposed to the fifteen-foot-wide gate entrance.
It gave them enough space to form up and reorganize themselves into a strong formation, Blood soldiers at the front, Shields behind supporting the front-line Bloods with spears and, the ones that still had them, crossbows.
The Shadow company was half on rooftops, but the other half, as they had lost ground in the town, had joined up with the other companies on the ground and now formed around the commander’s huddle, ensuring them some degree of safety as well as being at good range to lob arrows over the heads of their allies into the enemy ranks.
Rochatan blocks of ten soldiers were splitting up through the streets, closing in on the main fight at the lodge yard, but the Shadows’ constant arrow fire was making their progress through the streets slow.
The rain of arrows halved at once, and Bannon ordered Naldurn to get topside to find out what happened to their support from the rooftops.
The incoming rush of thirty horses quickly ate up what spears the Shining Stakes had on the eastern flank, and the infantry made way for the healthy dozen of riders to plow through the Hyperium’s line, breaking into the heart of the force, creating an immediate problem for Bannon and his men.
“Close that gap behind those horses! Don’t let the footmen get in behind their cavalry!” Hathos yelled, Bannon’s voice now completely gone from constant shouting the whole battle.
A Rochatan captain shouted orders to get through the gap left by the horses, but Blood soldiers rushed in, slashing down those that tried to take advantage of their misfortune so ferociously, that even with the barking commands from the captain, the footmen failed to secure the advantage, falling back to form a line aga
inst the fierce Blood soldiers, keeping them at bay while the internal troops began the dangerous task of dismantling the fifteen horsemen that had rushed through their lines.
Forty Rochatan soldiers continued to press the east end of the yard, their numbers bolstering from more troops that finally made their way past some of the rooftop archers.
Seeing their sides numbers growing emboldened their leader, causing him to call for a charge, sixty men rushing the small line of the ten Blood and nine Shining Spears that had been holding off the growing threat.
From behind them, a pack of dolingers rushed them, plowing into their exposed backs and ripped what troops they could snatch at with their maws before the rear line could recompose themselves to defend against the ferocious beasts.
A volley of arrows devastated the large troop in the midst of the distraction, felling a dozen men within moments. The Rochatan captain yelled orders for a unit of ten to face the seventeen or so archers that had snuck up along their flank, while the remaining forty men continued to focus on the charge, which had lost its steam all at once.
Naldurn was among that group, at the head of her Shadow sisters. Seeing the captain barking orders to reposition his men marked him as a clear target. His rank was on display now.
Lining him up in her sights, she loosed an arrow, immediately drawing and firing another, and another…and another.
Four arrows, only moments apart, stuck into the exposed parts of the captain’s armor, two sticking through his skull, one in his neck, and one in his sword arm. He dropped, dead before he hit the ground, leaving the men he had been commanding panic-stricken as the Shadow Stake continued their brutal volley of arrows twenty yards down the street.
The east flank of Rochatan soldiers had dwindled quickly, shockingly so for the group that had been halved within a minute’s span, the fight and steam for battle quickly leaving the group.
The horsemen that had broken through the Blood ranks had been halted by the spears of the Shields, three large dolinger’s backing them up, and once halted, the six Shadow archers guarding Metus and the other leadership had begun picking the force off.
They threw their hands up in surrender, dropping their swords and javelins, Metus quickly calling for a cease fire from his archers, Hathos ordering an unconditional surrender to the east group of thirty soldiers as well, seeing the panic that had begun to set in amongst the enemy.
The troop attempted to retreat at first, but Naldurn’s Shadows had relocated, blocking both alleys that would have been their escape.
“Drop your arms!” Hathos shouted, breaking through to the front lines so that he could be heard and seen.
With no captain, no leader threatening them with a death sentence for them and their family if they ran or surrendered, thirty soldiers dropped their weapons of war, holding hands aloft. They were ordered to move over against the wall, away from the weapons at their feet, to which they complied.
Undine ordered the riders to dismount and join the other prisoners, which they did readily.
“See to the others, I’ll see that the Shadow Stake and a few Bloods will hold these in order,” Undine said to Hathos, Hathos quickly moving to take all soldiers that were not guarding prisoners, rushing over to the west side of the battlefield, which still raged.
Hathos pushed and maneuvered his way to the front lines, finding the enemy troop falling before the Bloods much too quickly for them to even have a chance at winning this encounter at any odds.
Slashing an approaching soldier that rushed him, sidestepping to allow the Shield soldiers behind him to finish the job, Hathos heard someone in the enemy ranks ordering another charge.
He saw him, though, he was down the line twenty feet, too far to make it to.
Another wild swing came in at him, his armor blocking the attack this time thankfully, then a javelin blew past him. He slashed his blade head height, slicing through the soldier’s neck.
The man fell back, headless, and Hathos snatched the deadman’s longsword, hefting it, hurling with all his strength up the line, through multiple combatants, sticking in the captain of the unit through the ribs along the side, just under the arm.
The captain fell, and Hathos shouted just as a slight lull set in over the front lines, all seeing that they were now leaderless and losing badly. “Lay down your arms and you’ll be spared. Keep fighting, and you die, every one of you!”
“There has been enough death this eve. Let us be finished with the bloodshed,” Metus called, his voice stern, but with promise of reprieve if cooperation was their choice.
They chose cooperation, the twenty-four men still left alive in the western front slowly beginning to drop their weapons as their captain weakly ordered, gravely wounded from the ground, “Arm and fight.”
An anonymous arrow silenced the remaining captain.
Another arrow shot through the skies, taking everyone’s attention, this one destined for far beyond the walls, and far off, they all listened as the arrow landed, the dying cries of a horse shrieking, adding its cry to the moans of the injured and near dead.
“Bannon, Hathos, six Shadows, find a mount. Ganlin’s prey may not have escaped yet. If it’s Set…” Metus left off, a dangerous edge of murderous intent lining his countenance.
The nine riders bolted past the rest of the Hyperium and prisoners they were corralling, horses leaping over the mass of bodies at the front gate entrance, landing along blood-soaked sands as the final light of day washed itself of the canyon. They rushed ahead, Metus seeing another arrow fly over them, landing solidly in a soldier fighting with another over who claimed the only mount that had not been scared off or ripped apart by dolingers in the field.
The soldier finished the job, slashing the other one down, arrow in back, fatal cut in front, as he laid down to accept his end, gasping for his final breaths. The other soldier took the horse, mounted, and spurred it towards the canyon’s entrance, Metus in fast pursuit with his posse to reach the anonymous rider.
Another arrow whistled through the air past Metus, ripping into the flank of the rider’s horse, sending it toppling, throwing the man harshly to the ground. The man stood up right away, though his shoulder slumped, either out of socket or broken.
Metus rode up behind the fleeing man, kicking him hard in the injured shoulder, spinning him to the ground on his back, the two locking eyes, Set’s eyes full of pain and anger at first, but as soon as Metus’ rage registered, the fear of death fell upon him like an angel of passing.
Metus said no words to him, but leapt from his mount, pouncing the man that had plagued him so terribly the last few days, striking him with gauntleted hands, ripping slices in Set’s face as steel gouged soft flesh. The blows landed, again and again until Set no longer moved or attempted with his one working arm to squirm away.
The others rode up, watching their leader in his fury, none sure if they should intervene or allow the mutilation to continue.
Seeing the life draining from the one that so carelessly threw so many lives away, Metus stood, issuing out a hand, tersely demanding, “Rope.”
One of the Shadows tossed him a hempen rope that had been lashed about the saddle, Metus snatching it, setting to work at tightly binding Set’s wrists, finishing the knot so forcefully, that everyone watching the enraged sultan’s punishment heard bones snap like twigs along Set’s wrists.
Taking the other end of the rope, Metus tied it to the horn of his saddle, mounting up, and spurring his horse back to the town at such speed, Set’s broken frame was not long able to withstand.
Getting snagged along the dead that littered the battlefield, Set’s hands ripped off, releasing him from his hellish leash, Metus throwing off the rope from the horn, turning back around to continue unloading his anger on the man that laid very still in the dark of the battlefield, who blended in so well with the dead beside him, that it took Metus a few moments to find him.
“Enough,” a voice from his ba
nd hoarsely said, and Metus knew it was Bannon that had called him into check.
“The man’s dead. If not, soon will be. Tarnishing your name and title will not make right all that he made wrong. We still have injured within the town to tend to, and prisoners to deal with,” Bannon croaked, riding up to Metus, who listened as his eyes remained fixed on Set’s unmoving body.
Trotting up to his sultan, out of earshot of the others, Bannon hoarsely whispered to his friend, “Collect yourself out here. Do not enter those walls still carrying this anger. Your people need a clear-minded leader, not one driven to madness in the face of the horrors of war.”
They left him in the midst of the field of dead, the moans from the dying the only sound to comfort him, and the inescapable ripe smell of hundreds of bodies open and lifeless overwhelming his senses.
He dismounted, staring off into the dark night, the stars beginning to appear in the heavens, Kale’s green moonlight the only illumination of the slaughter that lay on every side of him.
He dropped to his knees, horrified at what had transpired that night. Had he needlessly ended hundreds of lives? What could have been done differently? Why had Set not even attempted negotiations?
Question after question bombarded his mind; though, no answers would be realized that night.
That night, away from all of his men, only visible by the hundreds of dead around him, he wept.
48
Farewell to an Old Friend
The rare sound of birds chirping along the Imhotez mountainside accompanied the session of silence the group held over Matt’s burial that sunny morning. A light breeze rustled the nearby sagebrush as the group paid their respects.
They had found a hewn slab along the cliffside, presenting a striking enclosed area that harbored a bit of verdant greenery not common to the arid region. They all agreed it was the perfect place to lay the old trades master to rest.