by Pedro Urvi
They faced the great gate of the city and began to maneuver.
Haradin watched the advance from the half-ruined outer wall of the city. With him were the five Bearers, nervous but brave. The three thousand Rogdonians, bows in hands, flanked them, ready to shoot against the enemy. At their backs, protecting the entrance, the five thousand Norriel waited to enter into action. Behind them loomed the dying city, much of which had been razed to the ground, and those few quarters which had survived the siege weapons and fires now sheltered thousands of frightened innocents. Most of the fires had finally been put out, and the smell of smoke and death pervaded the city so that the air was almost unbreathable.
“The enemy is coming!” cried Haradin so that all could hear him. “He seeks our death, but we shall not yield! He seeks our blood, but we shall not fear! Greed and savagery guide them, but we will stop them! We will fight against the enemy hosts, for we must defend the innocents behind us! Remember, all of you: if we fall, they fall; men, women and children will be put to the sword. There will be nothing left, such is the evil that rules the enemy armies. We shall defend this last redoubt, and however many come to take it, they will be destroyed. They come for our lives, but we shall not give up! This dawn, for this glorious land, we shall shed our enemy’s blood! We will not yield to fear but remain firm! We shall fight! We shall fight! We shall fight!”
“We shall fight!” roared the eight thousand throats in unison.
Turning to the five Bearers, he said:
“We must be brave, look the enemy in the eyes and end their lives. There’s no room for doubt today, no room for pity. Otherwise we shall all die. I can assure you that both Norghanians and Noceans have been ordered to leave no one alive, and for that reason they must be exterminated.”
The five Bearers met Haradin’s gaze and nodded.
Haradin assessed them. Of Komir and Iruki he had no doubt. They were fighters, with warrior spirits. Even Aliana the Healer, under the pressure of what she had been through, had turned into a strong fighting spirit. She would fight without a second thought. But the Librarian and the Usik… that was different. He was hoping they would act bravely, but he could not predict it. The blood, the cries of pain and the horror of battle might unsettle the determination of even the most hardened soldier. Would the two young Bearers stand up to it? He would soon find out.
The enemy troops finished taking up their positions before the wall, facing the great gate where Haradin and the five Bearers waited. They were about three hundred paces away. The moment had come. The morning was cold, much colder than the days before, and for some reason the temperature seemed to be falling. Haradin eyed the morning mist which covered the forests to the northeast and south extending behind the enemy lines. Yet the area in front of the wall was free of it. This seemed suspicious. Was Zecly planning something? Or could it be some maneuver of the Norghanian Ice Mage? He did not know, but he did not like it one bit. Something in that mist and the dry cold which bit his flesh had an arcane origin, not a natural one.
“Do you feel this cold?” the Mage asked.
Komir was rubbing his arms. “Yes, it’s getting colder by the moment.”
“It’s not normal for it to be so cold,” Aliana said.
“Norghanian Ice Magic?” Sonea wondered.
“It might be, yes. Conjure your protective spheres,” Haradin said. “I don’t like this at all, and I don’t want to fall into a trap. You must seek the source of power inside you, the pool of energy which holds your Gift. Concentrate, search for it, embrace it, for you are the Chosen, blessed with the Gift of Magic. It’s a talent you must embrace and welcome, make it your own, care for it, for it’s both wonderful and unique. Search for it now…”
The five concentrated, closing their eyes and following Haradin’s instructions.
“When you find that inner energy, you must focus on the Ilenian medallion, to protect yourselves against the enemy’s magic. Talk to it, not with words but with your mind. You must get it to interact with you. You must ask it to conjure the sphere for you, as your magical knowledge is insufficient for that. Long study and training are needed for this kind of spell, and time is what we don’t have. But the medallion can do it for you, for its power is great and it will respond to its Bearer’s requests. Try it, try it with conviction until you can do it.”
Komir, Aliana and Iruki had no trouble in raising their spheres, which after a moment shielded them completely, but Asti and Sonea could not manage it.
“Don’t worry, keep trying. It’s a question of conviction and concentration. You’ll get it, keep trying,” the Mage encouraged them.
After a few long moments Sonea managed to raise her sphere. She cried out ecstatic.
“Come on, Asti, you can do it,” said Aliana to the Usik.
“No can,” she said with a frown of pure frustration.
Aliana came to her side and held both her hands.
“We’ll do it together,” she said. Closing her eyes, she began to help her. A few moments later Asti managed to conjure the sphere.
“Thank you,” she said to Aliana with a wide smile.
“Get ready for the fight,” Haradin warned, seeing the enemy hosts advancing.
The archers nocked their arrows and drew their strings back to their cheeks. They aimed at the enemy. They were ready to let fly.
Something strange caught the Mage’s eye. That fog… now it seemed to be almost solid, as if a cloud had fallen to the earth. But there was something else. The Mage half-closed his eyes and stared until he made out something under the fog, something black…
“Now… what can that be…?” he muttered.
Suddenly a deafening roll of drums broke the tense silence. The din was so impressive that Haradin thought it would reach as far as the east coast at the other end of Tremia. The drums fell suddenly silent, and the fog began to fade until it disappeared before their eyes.
What he saw now left Haradin speechless.
Thousands of men were revealed: men in black laminated armor, bearing red standards.
“By the ancient gods of Tremia!” Haradin exclaimed, completely taken aback.
A sea of soldiers in black, spotted with the red of foreign banners, stretched as far as the eye could see. There were more than seventy thousand men there, and they were neither Norghanian nor Nocean.
“The abysmal evil, the endless suffering, has come at last,” Komir said as he watched the colossal army from beyond the seas. “My destiny is drawing near.”
Looking at Komir, Haradin began to understand what the young Norriel was referring to.
The Norghanian-Nocean army came to a halt upon hearing the drums, and realized the danger at their back.
The drums thundered again and the black swarm from beyond the seas launched itself against the troops on the plain, attacking rearguard and flanks without warning. The impact on the Nocean legions was shattering and bloody. The hardened desert warriors stood up to the troops of slant-eyed men. The fierce battle which ensued took on epic proportions in a matter of moments. The Noceans held the flanks, but the rearguard was cut down in the blink of an eye under the horde’s overwhelming superiority in numbers. Nothing could prevent the red standards making their way through from behind.
While the Noceans were attempting to stand their ground, the Norghanians maneuvered to face the invading army.
“Kill them all!” shouted General Odir in the midst of the fray. As commander of the mixed army he was trying desperately to stop the enemy advance. He was covering the Norghanian rearguard, and the enemy was cutting them in pieces.
“Attack! Kill! Kill them all!” he shouted, half-crazed by now, hacking away like a man possessed. His men meanwhile were doing their best to break the enemy onslaught, but for each slant-eyed soldier they killed another five took his place.
“Odir, form a line to keep them at bay!” General Rangulfsen yelled over the deafening battle cries and the din of the fighting. He was trying to lead the defense a
mid the chaos.
But Odir was not listening, he was fighting frantically together with his men. Soldiers fell by the thousands, never to rise again. The boots of desperate soldiers stepped on the innards of those who had fallen and the savage mutilations increased the horror of this most brutal of combats.
A spear with a red banner struck Odir in the stomach.
“Bastards! I’ll kill you all!” he yelled, and went on delivering stroke after savage stroke. Three enemy swords cut him open. The General fell in the midst of a sea of blood and with him, one by one, all his men.
Rangulfsen shook his head. “Bloody imbecile!” The rearguard had fallen and they were exposed to the enemy. Either they closed the gap or they would be lost. “Invincibles of the Ice, close the rearguard!” he ordered. The elite of the Norghanian troops advanced in perfect formation and began to wreak violence on the enemy soldiers. We still have a chance, he thought.
Towards the south, on the left flank, the Nocean legions were barely able to resist the assault of the black army. Sumal watched the fighting alongside his lord Zecly a short distance from the fierce battle.
“They’re decimating us!” cried Mulko, Regent of the North of the Nocean Empire, behind them. “My legions are being annihilated! This is an unthinkable catastrophe!”
“There are too many of them, my lord, we won’t be able to hold,” said Ukbi, his Military Counselor.
“I don’t understand… we were on the point of taking Rilentor, conquering all Rogdon… What’s happened? Where did this black army come from? Who are they? I don’t understand… It’s impossible! Hell and damnation!”
“My lord, we must get away,” Ukbi insisted. There was a definite note of urgency in his voice.
“Zecly, stop them,” Mulko ordered. “Gain some time for me so I can escape.”
“My lord, escaping south isn’t a sensible decision,” the Great Sorcerer replied.
“I’m ordering you to stop them. You owe me your loyalty.”
Zecly turned his gaze on his lord. He was about to speak, but in the end said nothing. “Your wishes will be obeyed,” he said, and gave a small bow.
Mulko, Ukbi and a hundred guards of honor mounted and rode south at a gallop, while at the same time the Nocean legions fought to avoid succumbing to the enemy’s clear superiority.
Sumal approached his master. “Will you use your power against the enemy, my Lord?”
Zecly pointed at the Invincibles of the Ice. “Watch,” he said.
Sumal watched the splendid Norghanian fighters closely. In their midst he could see the Ice Mage who was casting spells on the hosts of the black army. His spells of ice and frost were wreaking havoc among the enemy soldiers, who fell frozen to death or impaled by ice missiles. Suddenly, a massive black shadow, like the veil of death herself, surrounded the Ice Mage. The defensive sphere of the Mage seemed to reject the attacking blackness. The blackness enveloped the Mage as if it were a living entity, an evil entity, voraciously attacking the Norghanian’s defense.
Sumal tried to pinpoint the origin of the attack but was unable to amid the seething mass of the black army. An agonized scream made him turn towards the Mage again. The blackness had penetrated his defenses and was devouring him, absorbing the essence of life itself from his body. In the space of a few heartbeats he fell to the ground dead, his body completely drained of life, his face twisted in agony.
Zecly spoke. “It’s time to leave, Sumal. The enemy’s magic is very powerful. I can feel it in me. A magic of colossal power, such as I could never in my life have imagined I’d meet. It is hiding in that sea of blackness.”
“More powerful than your magic, my Lord?” Sumal asked in disbelief.
“Yes, Sumal, more powerful. I must not confront it, not in these conditions, not without the assistance of other Mages of a high level in Blood or Curses beside me. It would be suicide. There is a time to fight and win, and a time to draw back and await a better opportunity. Today we face the second situation. Get ready.” He cast a spell with dizzying speed. A toxic cloud spread over the enemy troops in front of them, who began to fall dead immediately.
“That will delay them long enough,” Zecly said, and withdrew with amazing speed for a man of his age.
Sumal followed him at a run.
“Where are we going, my Lord?”
“West, Sumal, to the sea.”
The Invincibles of the Ice stopped the carnage, forming an unbreakable defensive line at the rearguard. The fighting seemed to slow until it almost stopped. Rangulfsen watched uneasily. The war drums rolled again, and suddenly the enemy lines opened up to form a wide corridor. Accompanied by a terrifying roll of drums, a formation of strong men in black wearing horrendous masks began to advance toward the Invincibles of the Ice.
“Moyuki! Moyuki!” thousands of throats roared.
Now Rangulfsen understood: the enemy was sending their elite forces to meet the Norghanians’. The Moyuki advanced in close formation. They wore laminated armor, black as night, polished like ceremonial steel. Their faces were hidden behind grim masks, and on their backs were tied poles six feet high bearing red banners, the color the Dark Lady shed on her path.
The fighting between those superb elite forces was epic, one to be written down in the annals of history. The warriors fought like demigods. Feints, sword-thrusts and back-strokes were executed with a precision and skill bordering on the inconceivable. The battle was so finely-balanced that the casualties occurred on both sides at almost equal rate. For every Moyuki who fell dead, an Invincible soon followed. The dead soon began to get in the way of the fighting. Both sides struggled to gain the initiative, but neither managed to gain the upper hand. Little by little the heroes of each army fell under the expert swords of their opponents until no more than a hundred men were left alive in each band.
At that moment the war drums thundered again so loudly that earth and sky shook with horror. The soldiers of the black army charged feverishly with furious battle-cries, and all hell broke loose upon the men of the snow and the children of the deserts. They began to fall by the hundreds, and soon by the thousands, under the awesome ferocity and greater numbers of the men from beyond the seas. The black tide swept the battlefield clear, and both Norghanian and Nocean armies were hacked to pieces with no way of escape.
A short distance from the front, Count Volgren was desperately searching for his horse. This was a holocaust; they were being destroyed by the black army. I’ve got to get clear, get away from here immediately. The battle’s lost. Those foreign demons are going to finish us all off!
“To me!” he called his guards, and the dozen well-tried Norghanian body guards immediately rallied round to protect him.
Several soldiers in black tried to reach the Count, but were brought down by his bodyguards.
“To the horses, quickly!” he ordered, and ran to the trees where some thirty horses were tethered.
Behind him Volgren could hear the yelling of the combatants. He had to secure his escape.
“Fight to the last man!” he ordered his men, hoping to gain time and get away.
“Fight like Norghanians! Win or die!” he shouted from his horse to the sea of combatants, and spurred his mount.
In the middle of the fray General Rangulfsen heard the order and saw Volgren escaping at a gallop, together with his guard,
“Damned traitor!” he cried in fury.
General Olagson was leading the Thunder Army on his left. “He’s leaving us to our fate!” he shouted.
Rangulfsen looked to his right. The Noceans protecting the flanks had been cut down by the enemy, who were clearing a route toward them. The Snow Army was also falling and would not withstand the enemy pressure much longer.
“We must retreat!” he shouted at Olagson.
The voluminous Norghanian General nodded.
“Close formation! Square of shields!” Rangulfsen ordered his men.
The lines moved together until his men formed a perfect square. Ran
gulfsen and two of his officers remained in the center.
“Close shields!” Rangulfsen ordered. At once the four outer lines forming each of the sides of the rectangle became a barrier of shields.
Each side of the rectangle protected them from any attack. The officers began to set the pace with shouted commands and the formation retreated, slowly moving away from the enemy. Several groups of enemy soldiers managed to reach the right-hand side of the retreating formation.
“Shields up!” ordered Rangulfsen, and the black-clad enemy crashed against a wall of Norghanian shields.
While the first line held back the attack with their shields, the second knifed the attackers tirelessly. Several Norghanians in the first line fell and were quickly replaced by men from the second. The inner lines in turn took the place of those who were advancing.
“Forward!” Rangulfsen ordered, and the airtight square advanced again, repelling the attacks as they retreated. Rangulfsen peered out and saw Olagson’s square of shields following him closely. Very good, my friend. Let’s retreat now while we still have a chance, or else there won’t be a single Norghanian left alive on this battlefield.
“We’re heading east, my lord,” his Captain warned him.
“I know. That’s where we have to go.”
“But sir, the Mountains of the Half Moon are to the east. Shouldn’t we be heading for the pass, for the Fortress?”
“No, Captain. That’s exactly where the enemy army is coming from. They’ve taken the Fortress, so we can’t cross the mountains by the pass. The patrols we sent never came back.”
“Then we’re trapped. The enemy’s all around us and the mountains are behind us. How are we going to get out of here?”
“The way the highlanders of eastern Rogdon do. We’ll look for the narrow passes and we’ll climb the mountains. An army couldn’t get over them, but that’s something we aren’t any longer. There’s no other option. Let’s pray to the Frozen Gods, Captain, because if we don’t find the paths across the mountains, we won’t get out of Rogdon alive.”