A Warrior's Legacy

by Guy Stanton III

  They were celebrating with abandon now, perhaps sensing the hard times that still lay ahead in their path to freedom. I couldn’t help but feel removed from the festival like atmosphere going on all around me.

  I was responsible for leading this nation down a path to victory. I hoped I was up to the task, but I certainly didn’t feel like it. If success came out of the situation it would have to be of the Creator’s doing. I didn’t even really know the whole story of the situation facing these people’s continued survival. I only knew fragments here and there.

  My heavy thoughts were interrupted as Gavin sat down beside me. We were somewhat alone, as alone as one could be in the noisy banquet hall anyway. I looked at him curiously as to why he had searched me out in the crowded room. He had been completely absorbed all evening with his lovely lady.

  “What are you doing over here Gavin? Get back over there with your queen and enjoy yourself!” I said good humouredly.

  He looked worried about something. He looked around somewhat furtively and then back at me, which made me even more curious why he was here.

  “Zevin?” He began haltingly, “What do I do tonight?”

  I blinked and then blinked again, “Do you mean?” I asked pointing towards Zalisha who was laughing over something someone had said.

  “Yes!” Replied Gavin his face going completely red.

  Mine probably was too for that matter. Where was mother when you needed her most?

  This was a question best suited for her or father and not the equally inexperienced twin brother. I probably did know more about the intimate relations between a man and woman than he did, but I wasn’t about to go into explaining what I did know. Surely Gavin knew at least something!

  Clearing my throat and after doing my own looking around I asked, “You don’t know what to do?”

  Gavin exploded in an angry whisper, “Of course I know what to do! The main thing anyway, but I don’t know what all the other stuff you do along with that is! I want to.....” Gavin’s words trailed off as he looked across the crowd at the head table, where Zalisha was.

  “Make it special for her.” I finished softly for him following his gaze.

  “Yes!” Gavin affirmed softly.

  An idea came to mind. “Gavin when is the earliest time that you began to remember things as a child?”

  Gavin looked back around at me puzzled, “Probably two or three why?”

  “Think back over all the years that you’ve been around mother and father. If two people were ever more in to each other passionately I don’t know who they are Gavin. I think if you employ the loving, respectful, and even playful ways you’ve seen our parents treat each other for years you won’t go wrong in your own experiences with your woman. You may not know all the other stuff, but if you approach your time together confidently and you take your time you’ll probably discover all the rest for yourselves in time. There’s no rush to be perfect Gavin! You have the rest of your life to discover what the Creator has gifted you both with.”

  Gavin looked toward Zalisha again and then back at me, “Thank you Zevin! You’ve helped me out a lot! I know this was awkward for you.”

  My gaze drifted down to the table, “Awkward would have been the time when we were hiding in the grape arbor as kids and mother and father started making out about eight feet away from us!”

  Gavin gave a snort of laughter, “I had forgotten about that. I snapped a stick accidentally and they found us and we were sent to our rooms the rest of the day!”

  Gavin moved off towards the head table patting me on the shoulder heavily as he went by.

  “Gavin!”

  He looked around, “What?”

  “Remember how strong and hulking big you are in comparison to her so be careful when you are with her to be gentle!”

  He nodded his face reddening a little at my words and then he was gone.

  I glanced around to see if anybody had heard. Talin sat several seats farther down from me. He was studiously picking out bones from the fried chicken in front of him. Too studiously.

  “You heard all that didn’t you?”

  Talin looked up with laughter in his eyes, “I thought it was pretty good advice actually.” He said chuckling.

  I ignored him. I saw Holon further down the table picking at his food. “What’s the matter with him?”

  Talin looked up again, “He’s moping about that girl, with the broken leg. He doesn’t know where they’ve taken her.”

  I nodded.

  Where was Lohan? He was standing at attention twenty feet behind me ready to be of service. I motioned to him and he quickly came forward. I explained the situation and he smiled and nodded.

  He left me and went down to Holon and told him something. Holon looked up at me gratefully and got up. Talin said something and Holon turned back to the table and grabbed a big plate of food off of it and took a flower from a table display that Talin handed to him. Holon left following after Lohan.

  I leaned towards Talin, “What did you tell him?”

  Talin leaned back in his chair and said, “I mentioned that it’s likely they’ve only fed the girl a little bit of broth and that she might like some real food if given the opportunity. Flowers never seem to go unrewarded by the fair side of humanity either.”

  Laughing I sat back, “You better watch out Talin you’ll be labeled as a matchmaker.”

  “If you can double as a marriage counselor than I should be allowed to double as something else as well, something preferably to do with women.”

  Late the next morning I stood staring down at the map table that delineated my brother’s new kingdom or at least what should have been his kingdom anyway. There wasn’t much left to it. Just the city and the small peninsula below it and a few small islands. The rest had been destroyed.

  Zalisha had the map pointer and was ready to point out the characteristics and places of Assoria.

  I looked up at her, “Just what did happen in Assoria a hundred years ago.”

  She gazed back at me sadly, “A tragedy began. It all started with one man’s lust for power.”

  “The sorcerer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did I understand correctly that he is not of your people?”

  “No he is like your people are, but he did not come from your lands.”

  “Where did he come from then?”

  “He said he was sent from the world’s beyond the sun to show us perfect judgment and leadership. His judgment and his absolute leadership of our people into one nation.”

  “And your people didn’t go along with that idea I’m guessing.”

  “No they did not and neither did the Northern Kingdom. We already had a working system in play. The central city of Unasa in the mountains was a city that all three kingdoms built with each of us occupying a third of it. Our dignitary emissaries were all represented there and had equal voice in matters that affected any two or all three of the kingdoms. We had a representative form for settling disagreements. Since its inception we had not had a serious war in over three hundred years. The sorcerer changed all that. He said things could be better if we got rid of our differences and accepted an absolute leader instead of our different kingdoms. We tried to get rid of him seeing him as a threat to the peaceful continuance of the kingdoms. The guardian’s did not care for him either and they helped us. He was powerful, but together we thought we had destroyed him, but he survived. We did not know it, but he had been in conference with the Western Kingdom, who were supportive of his plan. They were the weakest of the kingdoms and they were spiteful to both the North and the East. Long before the sorcerer came to our shores the West was guilty of a treacherous act that almost got them wiped out by the Northern Kingdom. They blamed the North for their lack of development and picked on us because we were supportive of the North’s action against them. They betrayed us to the sorcerer. A scheduled conference of the kingdoms was convened at Unasa. There was no word heard from them and we sent runner
s to see why. The city had been destroyed and the West and North dignitaries were utterly slaughtered as were all the inhabitants of the city except for our people. We could not find them or explain what happened to them. The West claimed to have eyewitnesses to attest to the fact that we had done this atrocious act. The North acted impetuously and sent almost their entire army down through the mountains to attack us in retribution for our perceived actions. They never made it to us. They were ambushed by the entire Western Army that the sorcerer had arranged in a clever trap in the mountains. It was a massacre that took three days to complete. The pride of the Northern army lay dead to a man over 100,000 of them, while the Western Kingdom hardly sustained any losses at all. We learned of it too late to rush to the aid of the North. The guardians tried to intercede on behalf of the North on the second day, but the sorcerer destroyed them all in a way we do not know of. We mustered an army to attack Westerners, but the sorcerer had already gained control of the Blue Castle and he unleashed its powers against us. Our land was plunged into darkness and rain and the seas raged against us. Our crops were destroyed, while in the rest of Assoria everything was normal. The Western Kingdom took Sartorga and burnt that great city of the North to the ground with all inhabitants. The Northern Kingdom begged for a truce with the Western Kingdom desperate to avoid being wiped out by them. The sorcerer made them a deal and they agreed to betray us as the Western Kingdom already had.”

  “What was the deal?”

  “The sorcerer asked for the daughter of the Northern Kingdom’s king for his own use and the use of their military that remained to aid the Western Kingdom in their fight against us.”

  “And they agreed to that!”

  “Yes, they were desperate. The darkness and storms affecting our lands ceased only for us to find out that two kingdoms were now at war with us. Then the disaster happened. Our city of Lancosa was emptied of life overnight. A large part of our army had been encamped there to repel the Western Kingdom. Whatever the sorcerer unleashed upon Lancosa killed most of the people instantly and the rest it turned into the soulless brutes that you encountered in the forest. Weakened by the loss of that city and the part of our army that had been stationed there we had no choice but to fight a defensive action. One by one our cities and towns fell under the combined pressure of the two kingdoms. Our cities were not designed for defense and as a last-ditch effort our people built the great wall that protects the remainder of our lands, while we used our other cities on the plain to slow down the enemy’s advance. Many of our people were taken captive or killed in the defense of those cities and towns to buy us the time we needed to build the wall to protect this last city. Our wall had just been finished, when the enemy forces came against it. We were just barely able to hold out against their assault, but the wall held. Since then the wall and the will of our people to survive have been all that we have had to sustain us against our enemies.”

  I gazed at the map pondering on how little a thing it took sometimes to upset the entire applecart. I looked at the northern area of the map and asked, “Why are all the Northern cities shown destroyed?”

  “After it became clear that we possessed no significant threat backed into the sea as we were the Western Kingdom again turned on the Northern Kingdom. They dug a channel to the sea and redirected the Yasana River into it diverging it from its natural course through the northern lands. Without the reliable water source of the Yasana River the northern lands dried up. In their weakened state the Northern Kingdom was unable to gain control of the river back from the Western Kingdom. In the years that followed most of the Northern Kingdom’s people died from either famine or from raids from the Western Kingdom. The remnants of their people that persist are hard and bitter. They are filled with hatred for the people of the West and the sorcerer. They thirst for a chance at revenge against them both. We’ve tried to give them what food that we can, but it is difficult.”

  Again silence reigned supreme in the room. It was hard to imagine how these people could still have a heart to care for their northern neighbors at all. It spoke well of them as a people that after all they had come through that they were still trying to help.

  “What became of the princess?”

  “It is said that she betrayed the sorcerer somehow and that he cut out her heart and sent it to her father. Her father killed himself that same day.”

  I gazed at the map. There wasn’t much to work with to achieve victory out of the ashes of two once powerful kingdoms now reduced to fragments of their former glory.

  “Why doesn’t the sorcerer just wipe you out? Surely he has the power to do so?”

  “This is something I have wondered also. For the last eighty or so years the sorcerer has acted like his powers are in short supply and has limited the use of them and instead has used a small army of assassins to do his bidding. Perhaps it is true that the princess damaged the powerful technologies at his control in some way. In any case we do not know for sure why he has left us to a gradual downfall instead of just simply eliminating the threat of us and the Northern Kingdom all in one fell swoop.”

  I nodded my head as my eyes drifted over the map before me. I looked up knowing what they expected of me, but not sure that I could deliver on it. Captain Sargas, Gavin, General Lasho, Holon, Lohan, Talin, and Zalisha were all gathered around the table waiting to hear what I would say.

  “The illness that affects your people they can’t go on much longer under the burden of it can they?”

  “No the plants we need are growing scarcer every year and you yourself saw how dangerous it is to gather the few plants that remain. In another fifty years time my people will all be dead except for those who turn into mindless brutes like those of the Dark Forest.”

  I nodded meeting her gaze squarely, “The plan I have in mind could possibly shorten your people’s existence to just a few months instead of years, but it might give your people the one chance they have at achieving victory and ultimately their freedom from the sorcerer’s grip. I want to emphasize though that my plan could cause you to lose everything very quickly.”

  General Lasho spoke up for the first time, “We have already lost almost everything and we will lose the rest if this war is not won. Better to die with honor while fighting the enemy than to wait and let death find us in our beds or worse than even that to live on as crazed brutes feeding on one another.”

  Enough said I thought.

  “General how many troops do we have?”

  “We can muster seventy thousand but that’s everyone including the older men and capably trained women. We have twelve thousand heavy cavalry, another eight thousand light cavalry, thirty thousand foot soldiers, fifteen thousand female archers, and five thousand militia.”

  “How many troops can the Northern Kingdom muster?” I asked.

  “Perhaps twenty thousand at best. All of them cavalry, a mixture of heavy cavalry and lighter archer cavalry.”

  “How many can the Western Kingdom field?” I asked.

  “Leaving their cities properly guarded probably around one hundred and sixty thousand.” General Lasho said finishing in a depressed tone.

  It was tall odds against us, even if I got the Northern Kingdom to throw in with us, but I had been raised as a boy in conflict with worse odds than that. It could be done, my father had proven it, but was I up to my father’s level?

  The answer was no, but I hoped the Creator would make me so anyway. “Alright this is what we will do. Your strategy of defense at all costs may have saved you temporarily, but it is destroying you in the long term, while you’re enemies sit back and watch. We need to get them riled up and make them come after us in force and the best way I know of to do that is to burn one of their cities to the ground. Trust me I’ve done it before and it works.”

  Lohan couldn’t contain himself anymore, “How?” He burst out excitedly.

  General Lasho looked at Lohan disapprovingly for his sudden outburst, but he too looked excited to hear the plan.
r />   “I’ll need all twenty thousand cavalry General, by tomorrow night.”

  “It will be done, but how do we take one of their cities with nothing but cavalry?”

  “The element of surprise General. We’ll do what they least expect us to do. Tomorrow night we will head out towards the Dark Forest. We’ll camp in the ruins of Lancosa by day and stay out of sight, which shouldn’t be hard as no one goes there. As night falls we will enter the forest. We will ride all night and all the next day and by that day’s evening we should be at the edge of the forest and only a few hours ride from Boratasa.”

  I looked up to see that they were all watching me spellbound by my words.

  “Then what?” The General asked excitedly.

  “We’ll rest for a little while and then head for the city. We’ll come through these gates here in their outer wall. While I was there I had the chance to notice that they don’t even bother closing those gates at night. We will split up and charge our way through the city to the other side, once there we will set the city on fire and make our way back out the way we came forcing the fleeing panicked residents of the city out before us. In their panic they will no doubt head for the open fields and the dark forest beyond, where they will fall prey to the brutes, who no doubt will be gathered in greater numbers because of tracking us in the night through their forest. We’ll use the diversion caused by the brutes feeding frenzy to slip past the West’s defensive forts on the plain and head for home. Then you tell me what happens General.”

  I looked up at him expectantly.

  He glanced from me to the map, “They’ll be madder than a wet hen! They’ll mobilize everything they’ve got to destroy us once and for all!”

  “How long will that take them General?”

  “At least two weeks if they do it right and then it will be another two weeks before they have a complete siege set up.”

  I nodded and said, “This is what I want you to do General. When we arrive back at the city I want you to start preparing the city for besiegement. I also want you to build shelters and accommodations that would house and care for the needs of twenty thousand additional troops. That’s right we’re going to make their spies believe that the Northern Kingdom has thrown their lot in with us in the defense of the city. It will make sense to them that we should seek help because of the numbers between our two armies being so insignificant to theirs. Going along with that idea General I want you to send every available ship we have northward empty to carry through with the illusion. Captain Sargas your two ships will accompany the others on the voyage north. When you’re out of sight circle back, but stay at sea until after the siege has begun then come back. They will commit all the harder to the siege thinking that they have the opportunity to destroy two kingdoms in one fell blow. You must hold them at bay General Lasho, until I arrive with help.”