As the horn call rang through the valley, Gorons, Gerudo, and Hylians alike began to ready themselves and their weapons. Link stopped his practice swings and rushed to remount Epona. Azeru sprang up from where she'd been sitting, playing a game of dice with a fellow Gerudo, and grabbed her glaive. I drew the longsword from my back and prepared to charge into action.
I heard a sudden rattle behind me as one of the ten Gerudo in the Iron Knuckle suits tried to get up too fast and landed on her rear end, requiring several Hylian soldiers to help her up and garnering a round of laughter from everyone around her. Even I laughed; it might be the last thing I'd laugh at, I realized, and I may as well have enjoyed it.
My laughter brought up the memory of Kaylee. Of her sitting on her bed playing Zelda games, laughing as she talked about her day. I realized I might not see my best friend again. And so I mentally held on to the last thing she had ever said to me - Go get 'em, Brian - as I steeled myself for battle.
But it was over too soon. The Gorons, led by Darunia, were already rolling down the valley, and Link was starting to lead the knights after them. I turned to the infantry, holding the cumbersome longsword aloft in one hand. "Now's the time, lads!" I yelled out, doing my best to sound like I wasn't completely terrified. Those Gerudo who were with us lifted their voices in a fierce battle cry, grinning widely, which surprised me; I had known they had a strong warrior ethos, but I had no idea just how eager for battle they actually were. Their cheers were taken up by the rest of the infantry. I let them cheer for a few seconds, until the last of the mounted knights had passed us. Then, after a quick, silent prayer to the Lord to keep me alive, I rushed after them, with Azeru and the rest of the infantrymen behind.
We reached the archers and pikemen in two seconds flat. Zelda and Impa were still alive, and only a few of the pikemen were down. They all had parted to let us through, though many of the archers, who I recognized as my horse archers, were running back, probably to grab their horses.
Beyond the pike line, the valley was almost carpeted with the broken and bleeding bodies of Ganon's minions, many of which were thrown to either side, likely by the charging Gorons. I looked up to see that the crossbowmen had not been hurt at all. Nabooru was rushing back, probably to try and follow us into battle. Mido was up there too, looking more than a little frightened, as well as relieved for whatever reason.
Another four minutes later, we emerged from the valley. The Gorons and the knights had driven a wedge through a seething mass of all manner of fell creatures. In fact, they were still pushing through the enemy, threatening to break through and split the enemy apart.
And then the infantry made contact.
The first casualty of this close-quarter battle was a heavily-armed Moblin that just had the unfortunate luck of standing too close to Azeru; the Gerudo warrior cleaved it in half promptly. My longsword cut through a few Bulbins in one swing. Behind me, the ten Iron Knuckles were absolutely smashing their way through every foe imaginable, making a beeline straight for a squadron of Darknuts.
And so we battled before the entrance to the valley. I faced so many different foes that I lost track - Bulblins, Moblins, a few Stalfos warriors, and innumerable others. The longsword Link had given me was lethally effective, as I often found myself scything through multiple enemies in a single devastating stroke.
That isn't to say that Ganon's forces didn't put up a good fight. More than once, Hylian or Gerudo soldiers would fall dead near me. Each time one fell, though, it filled me with rage, and I would stop at nothing to wreak terrible revenge on whichever creature had dealt the killing blow. Sometimes, of course, an enemy weapon would break through my guard and strike at me. But the armor intended for Zelda's late brother was of top quality and held firm. My arms got pretty cut up, though.
Once, I was rallying a group of Hylians to push into the enemy when I saw, in front of us, a pair of tall, gaunt, skeletal creatures bearing massive swords and light armor. I had encountered beings like these once; it was called a Redead knight and was the source of much fear among the Hylians. The foremost of these emitted a terrifying scream that caused several of the soldiers around me to freeze in fear, some covering their ears and crying out in horror. To be honest, after hearing that unearthly scream, I was half-tempted to do the same. Thankfully, despite being extremely unnerved by the scream, I managed to plunge forward and engage this first nightmare. It managed to bring its heavy sword around to block mine. Its partner emitted a similar scream, but by this point, I was already roaring out a war cry, so this scream didn't induce so much fear in me. I sliced the first in half vertically, then turned just in time to parry a ridiculously strong downward swing from the other Redead that would have split a thick log. The force of the blow drove me to my knees, but I lived through it somehow. It was then that Azeru came leaping in and decapitated the zombie-like warrior with her glaive.
As I got back up, I looked back and saw, to my alarm, that the whole group of Hylians that had followed me had been overwhelmed and massacred by a flood of Bokoblins. Worse, Azeru and I were completely surrounded and cut off from the rest of our troops. We stood back-to-back as more heavily-armed enemies rushed at us, sensing an opportunity to kill the commanders of the infantry force. I could see, in the distance, Nabooru cutting through the enemy, trying to fight her way to us.
But that sighting was blocked out by at least five Moblins as they charged at me. Hard-pressed to face them all, it was all I could do to parry each of their attacks. It took me at least a minute to bring them all down. When they were all dead, I quickly decapitated a lone Stalfos rushing towards me and looked over to see how Azeru was doing.
Admittedly, she had fared better than me. There was a pile of disarticulated bodies around her, and she was still cutting through enemies with broad, sweeping strokes of her weapon. But all was not well; she was limping, with a stone-tipped arrow embedded in her right thigh, and her left shoulder was bleeding heavily from some unknown weapon. Quickly I turned back to fighting, cutting down a few Bokoblins and another Redead knight with no problem.
But then I heard a cry behind me. I turned back to see Azeru dodging the massive sword of a Darknut, probably the only one to escape our Iron Knuckles. As I watched, the heavily-armored foe stepped in close and swung down on her. Unable to back up in time, she tried to block with her glaive, but the shaft snapped like a twig at the stroke. Without hesitation, the Darknut brought its sword back and cleaved the Gerudo commander apart from the sternum up.
I could hear Nabooru's despairing cry nearby, but didn't even look at her as I sprang at the Darknut, regardless of my own safety, only concerned with taking swift revenge on the overpowering hulk. The Darknut, imposing as ever, prepared to bring me down next to the Gerudo as I charged it.
Somehow, I managed to see where its armor thinned out around its neck. With a desperate battle cry, I leaped at the monstrous Darknut and swung down as hard I could for its neck.
If I had been wielding anything other than Link's old longsword, I likely would have perished then and there. But the long, hefty blade connected with devastating force and severed the Darknut's head from its shoulders. It certainly didn't have long to celebrate killing Azeru.
But I was still cut off. Nabooru was slicing her way with some of her fellow Gerudo towards me, but not fast enough. I was in danger of being overwhelmed by countless smaller, but no less formidable monsters.
Then a horn call sounded not far away. In front of me, I could see Ganon's creatures being thrown into the air. It seemed as though the Gorons had managed to get through the enemy lines and crash into the rear of one of the two halves that remained. I imagined Link and the cavalry were doing the same on the other side.
The enemies around me faltered, seeing this new danger behind them. Many of them fled in random directions, some towards our remaining infantry, some towards the unscalable cliffs, even a few straight into the oncoming Gorons. But most of those who fled did so across our infantry line towards the only opening to safety, to the west. More and more of the creatures fled as our infantry redoubled their efforts and began to push through them. Eventually, enemies were flooding for safety.
Not that they would find much. At this point, our horse archers had burst out of the valley and were riding down fleeing monsters and shooting them down. Link and his cavalry also rode enemies down once the retreat became a general rout.
By evening, very few of Ganon's creatures had escaped into the western valley. We had taken victory, but we had taken heavy casualties - somewhere around three hundred and fifty of our force - and victory hadn't come to us quickly enough to follow up with an attack on Ganon himself. So we all pulled back into Kakariko for the night.
