One day, the rebels, led by Reth, and the main army, led by the king, met at the bridge that connected the village of Deso to the nearest city. It was a bright day with barely a cloud in the sky. The two lines of troops stopped for a few moments of silence on either side of the bridge, both calculating the strength of the other, and waiting for the leader to give the command to plunge into battle.
Then, the king and Reth simultaneously ordered, “Charge!” and the armies clashed. The mass of bodies and beasts collided on the relatively narrow bridge, and then spread out into the sky above. No amount of advance intelligence or preparation could’ve helped Reth to a positive end to that bloody battle. The rebels were outnumbered twenty to one. They had weaker weapons, and within minutes their death toll skyrocketed.
“Stop!” Reth finally screamed out. “Mercy! We surrender!” He saw that too many of his close friends and colleagues were falling by his side. He could’ve kept fighting and might have taken hundreds of lives from among his enemies before he was likely to fall himself, but he couldn’t stand another death of another close relation, and couldn’t imagine winning a battle that saw the death of his entire troop.
The king heard this cry, and raised his hand to signal a temporary ceasefire. Both sides stopped fighting, and listened to what the king and Reth would say next.
“You surrender!” the king said mockingly. “The terms will not be favorable.”
“We have done our best to fight to prove the righteousness of our cause, but I see no path here towards a victory on this battlefield. So, if there is a way for me to save the lives of some of my men, I’ll take it,” Reth said, resigning himself to a certain death, but hoping to save a few men on his side, who might carry on with the fight on future battlefields.
“A trial by combat!” the king announced. “We fight to the death, and the man that dies has been found to be guilty by fate. All the others can go free. If I win, your rebels still have to pay their taxes or face the consequences. If you win, then you can try and change things.”
The king was bored with massacres and he was curious to fight this powerful militant magician that rose up from obscurity to challenge his rule. Reth accepted the challenge knowing that the king had the advantage of a set of the best magical potions, spells, and weapons in the kingdom under his armor.
“I accept. I will fight in the trial by combat in defense of the justice of my cause.”
The few surviving rebels stood aside, as did the knights. The bridge was cleared for the battle. Reth fought with valor and skill. He threw out every move, jump, sword-thrust, spell, and trick he ever invented or learned. The king simply had more firepower on his side, and he tossed explosive magical grenades and bullets at Reth in quantities that even the best magician on Laruta couldn’t have blocked. Reth fought longer than seemed possible before he finally fell from an explosive potion through the air, off the bridge, and into the deep river below it. The rebels watched the water, hoping he would resurface, but the ripples around the spot where he fell smoothed over, and there were no signs of life.
Because Reth would’ve been sentenced to death if he did not die, but lost the battle, the rebels agreed silently to let the river be Reth’s final resting place, and did not retrieve his body, letting it rest in relative peace among the waves. The king honored his promise to refrain from punishing all surviving rebels with death, and let them return to their village. The king would send new armies of levy collectors, and the peasants would concoct new plots, and the fight would rage on a different day, while that day was already too overflowing with blood to bear another drop.
Ronela cried quietly on her walk through the castle’s garden that evening when the news of Reth’s death reached her. As she cried, she thought about Reth’s fight for justice, and about the fact that his passing left the rebels without a leader, and that she had a responsibility now to lead these good people, and not merely to sneak in the shadows and reach out a hand when it suited her.
Chapter 3: The Bewitching Power of the Land
The victory against the peasant rebels was too narrow for the king’s taste, and he took it as a sign that he needed more supporting advisers to carry the day. There was also a need to show the peasants that he was not solely responsible for their woes, but that he had supporters and advisers that wisely guided his course. He gathered his advisers together and with their nudging he created the Great Council that he proclaimed would meet regularly in order to debate executive laws and judicial matters, and to assist the king with making informed decisions on matters of policy.
The Great Council began meeting immediately, and promptly began writing extensive book-length reports on every matter that the king mentioned he wanted to be more informed about. Holding official positions on the council somehow made his advisors more hesitant about rebelling against him, as they felt they had more of a say in the kingdom’s affairs than with any prior ruler, who never had a similar council.
There were some obvious inequalities about the operations and organization of this Great Council, but most of the members ignored these, focusing on its radical “democratic” qualities. Only a few of the most radical Great Council members were acutely aware that the king frequently supervised the Great Council’s deliberations by sitting on a higher throne than the rest at the center of the gathering. The richest dukes sat in prominent positions at a respectful distance from the king, and then the rest of the Great Council’s members sat in narrow, cluttered rows at the back of a long table, as far away from the king as could be.
“What about our great war against the Olden?” an adviser named Moc asked at one of these council meetings.
“We have put it off, haven’t we?” another council member echoed.
“The Teag Islands are still under the Olden’s control. I was outraged that we stopped the battles with the ceasefire a couple of years ago without recapturing them. It’s simply a matter of having pride in our country. They’ve been historically under our control for centuries, and to lose them sends a signal that we are weak and will let the Olden have our territories. Next, they might try to invade our continent,” Moc warned.
“The wars with the Olden haven’t moved onto either of the two continents in a century. They have constantly concentrated on islands and islets in the waters between our continents,” the king commented.
“The Teag Islands was where Niton landed when he was escaping from the Country of the Olden. They have special historical value. If we let the Olden hold them much longer, it’s simply sacrilegious. They are using that land for farming and animal grazing,” Moc continued.
“We agree it’s important for us to take a step to reclaim those islands, and with the battles with the peasants dying down, now seems to be the right time to pull together a fleet and take them by surprise,” the king concluded.
Most members of the council knew that those who agreed with the king and with the few members of the council who had an active political agenda survived in the long term, while those who questioned and objected typically did not. So, they did not object now, even though most of them thought the ongoing conflicts with the Olden diverted funds from their pockets to military commanders, knights, shipbuilders, and military spell makers.
“We’d like to go on the campaign ourselves,” the king announced, to the surprise of many at the meeting.
“It will be a long journey by ship,” an adviser suggested.
“We have reports that they’ve built a naval base on the Teag Islands, so there is also likely to be a very strong reply to our attack. It might be a good idea to send less essential commanders into the first battles,” another council member, who was sitting on the king’s right, said.
“We think it’s crucial for us to be personally present even at the first battle, so that we can redirect the fighting towards a quicker resolution. Our success in the battles with the peasants proves that we are keener at that sort of thing than our predecessors. No, we will lead the first charge.”
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That argument resounded like the final word on the matter, so the council members agreed without raising additional alternatives.
The king ordered the construction of a new fleet of fifty military ships for the journey, on top of the hundred ships he already had at his disposal. Manual laborers invaded the forests around the nearest port and cut down enormous quantities of trees, which were all rapidly processed for the purpose of shipbuilding by a group of magician construction workers, who worked spells and magical tricks on the wood, and then worked with the manual laborers to arrange the wood into the shape of ships.
The harbor was soon crowded with brand-new ships, ready for navigation, and armed with magical cannonballs that had the power to fly after a target, instead of simply exploding at the point specified by the barrel.
The king and members of the council that went on the journey were assigned to the newest and most luxurious ship in the fleet, one with two stories below deck, one of which was equipped with spacious bathhouses, and all the other luxuries that the king was accustomed to when he lived at his castle.
At the last moment, Queen Ronela expressed an interest in joining the king on this mission, and since she hadn’t asked him for anything of this sort before, the king obliged her, assigning her spacious quarters next to his own. He was surprised when the queen did not visit his rooms on the first night of the voyage, but meetings with the commanders and council members regarding the upcoming battle distracted King Lohsa from her strange absence and disinterest.
In the middle of their trip towards the Teag Islands the armada stopped at a string of pleasure islands, called the Derland Islands, to tan, swim and enjoy the local buttocks dancers and seductive singers. This was officially called a resupplying stop, as the captains also used the night at that bay to load the ships with additional provisions for the second lap of the trip to the Teag Islands. The people of the Derland Islands let the king’s army take all of the provisions, goods, and women for free because within their lifetimes the Derland Islands were caught several times in the warfare between the Kingdom of Kyllary and the Country of Olden, and each time their islands were left pillaged and raped, as control over their government passed from one side to the other.
After the fleet resumed their approach towards the Teag Islands, the king put his best magicians to the task of intercepting military communications at the Teag Islands. They attracted birds from the islands carrying messages between the Teag ships to fly into their hands at the Kyllary ships instead. Most of the communications were spell-bound to be unreadable, but Kyllary’s magicians cast spells to demystify these notes. Before long, the king and his commanders knew how many ships and infantry the Olden had at the Teag Islands, their positions, and the types of weaponry, and the volume of the supplies at their disposal. The commanders used this information to present an intricate plan of attack to the king, which he tweaked and edited until it was as complete as it could be before they actually landed on the islands.
There were several different unit types in the Kyllary fleet, and it was decided that they would be used in waves to create terror in the Olden, as they were attacked from various directions in unpredictable intervals.
As a safety measure against the possibility that the communications the Kyllary spies intercepted were put in place by the enemy to provide false information, the king sent in special recognizant beasts with stealth riders to detect the exact position of the Olden fleet and to double-check their numbers. These bird-beasts were clothed in an invisible fabric that disguised both the craft and the rider from being observed as they sped through the night sky. A couple of these beasts were enough to circle the islands on all sides in an hour, and they soon returned with maps that indicated exact positions of the enemy and their numbers. These showed that there were around five thousand militia members on the Teag Islands, who were housed in military barracks, on ships, and on a couple aerial platforms. The Kyllary fleet had similar numbers with them as advance intelligence predicted how many were likely to be guarding the Teag Islands. The Olden were scattered at a few bases and positions, so the attacks had to target different bases with appropriate responding units.
The first wave of Kyllary’s attack came with a flotilla of flying beasts that stormed a couple of the land bases. The beasts typically had two riders on them, one who was skilled at firing at the enemy from the air, and a second that would jump off the back of the beast in mid-flight and would land to do magical or knightly battle with the enemy on the ground. Those that would come down to the surface frequently were tasked with specific targets that they had to destroy that could not be hit from the air. Many of them set up booby traps in invisibility cloaks that the Olden later stumbled into while going about their daily business without suspecting that a walk across their base could be deadly. The wave of flying beasts achieved most of their objectives, striking dead dozens of Olden troops with bursts of fire and other violent attacks from the air. The Olden became aware of the attack within the first few blows and did their best to defend their soldiers and bases. Some of them reined in their own flying beasts and met the attackers in the air, taking a few out of commission. But, the Kyllary succeeded in engaging in a surprise attack, striking in the early hours of the morning before the Olden were awake enough to be in command of their responses.
Just as the Olden were beginning to organize into units and were launching a response to the attack, the Kyllary sent out the second wave of the planned attack. The Kyllary ships were accompanied by a troop of sea creatures that had been trained by a group of magicians into performing military operations with the magicians on their backs. The magicians would create magical bubbles around their heads that allowed them to breathe under water and would saddle these creatures and charge on them at the enemy. They used magic to create pressure that forced water into massive streams that hit the underwater bellies of the Olden’s docked ships, either bursting through the wood and causing catastrophic leaks, or causing hits that threw the passengers off-balance, and in some instances even overturned an entire ship by the massive impact of the pressurized water. These underwater attacks were horrifying because they could not be seen from the decks. The Olden attempted to send divers underwater to determine where the next impact would come from, but by the time these divers were put in position, the Kyllary had finished that wave of the battle.
Only after those two sneak attacks caused serious devastation and confusion among the Olden, did the king and his fleet of ships sail at the key naval bases on the Teag Islands for the more direct attack with magical fire. There were wizards at the helm of every Kyllary ship that fired blazes at the shore before them; one such firing demolished and exploded a hospital that was unlucky enough to be placed near a navy base. The hospital held very few navy personnel, as it was the major civilian hospital on that Teag Island. Another fiery attack on the Olden exploded potion storage tanks at a major military base, and this explosion was so massive that it wiped out not only the entire base near it, but also the attacking Kyllary ship that had hit this sensitive target.
Aside from this particular misfire, once the bay and the base that the Kyllary ships were heading for were ablaze, they could send infantry knights and magicians ashore in small boats to follow the initial impacts by massacring those on the shore that survived.
The Olden defenses on the Teag Islands might have been entirely wiped out if they hadn’t regrouped suddenly and gathered their best magicians to launch a response. One among these top magicians was Sergeant Gerp. He was a tall, muscular man with long black hair and a long sharp nose, who had took pride in his diverse achievements. He believed that a good soldier had to be fit in both mind and body, and his skill in military operations and magic was what got him his high sergeant post at that key Olden location. To keep his mind sharp, Sergeant Gerp also edited the Olden army newspaper, called the Teag Weekly.
Despite the early morning hour, when the attack started, Sergeant Gerp was in the newspaper’s office, wri
ting up a piece on some local tavern fight that involved some army officers, which he witnessed on the night before. He heard the shots of the aerial attack and jumped on his private flying beast to explore what was going on. His initial guess was that there was a new internal squabble or some crime afoot, but when he saw the dots of the attacking troops in the sky, he immediately knew that it was the Olden attacking the Islands. He had been stationed at the Teag Islands years earlier when the Olden managed to retake them from Kyllary’s possession. He knew that this day was inevitable, and it didn’t take him long to think of several urgent tasks he had to perform to help his side recuperate from this surprise attack. He flew over to the headquarters base, but it was the base where the potions tanks were hit and that was ablaze. So, he flew to the secondary base, where the leaders were told to meet in case the headquarters was inaccessible.
This base was deliberately not discussed on regular military communication channels, and was kept secret in case of an emergency just like this attack. So, Sergeant Gerp approached what looked like an abandoned hut from both the sky and the sea. Only when he landed next to the hut did the multiple levels of this underground structure become semi-visible. He gave a special call as he approached to keep the lookouts from mistaking him for an oncoming enemy. He landed safely and threw the reins to an officer that was stationed at the gate to assist with similar arrivals and departures. That officer attached Sergeant Gerp’s beast to a general docking station where a few dozen other beasts were already parked. Meanwhile, Sergeant Gerp went over the winding staircase and scaled it down to a lower level of the underground tower. He went down a hallway and entered a high-ceilinged chamber where the Olden leaders were already engaged in a heated debate about the best way to wage a counter-attack.
The Kingdoms of Laruta: Book 1: Campaigns Against the Olden (Grim's Labyrinth Series) Page 4