Chapter One: Of Missed Opportunities
It was insane. Flashes of color and sound exploded cheerily both in the distance and only a few dozen yards away, sending chunks of dirt, blood and bodies up into the air. The smell of ozone, copper, iron and steel was palpable. An overpowering stench so willful it could blot out other senses if a person let it. If he'd closed his eye, Aris could have imagined it was all a happy magical display gone slightly awry during the yearly fair. Dangerous but something to laugh off later when the smoke cleared and he found his friends hiding under food-laden tables. He wanted to imagine that, but if he closed his eyes now the young man would see nothing but ropey, congealed blood and fiery dirt.
He thought momentarily of simply running, careening off in the opposite direction of the battle he was soon to enter. The thought brought weakness to his knees, transforming them into unreliable jelly in seconds. Feet in overlarge boots spasmed while standing rooted to the spot as Aris' mind tried to plan an escape route. Others in his company knew the suddenly blank look, had all felt as helpless as their young, inept companion. The slap to back of his head forced him forward. Towards what, honor or death, the boy wasn't quite sure.
Though his platoon leader whispered, his marble smooth voice cut through the din.
"Don't waste energy on trying to escape, young Mr. Alzader. There are only two ways you are going to leave this field of battle. Dead or limping. Running, unfortunately for us all, is not an option. Now would be a good time to choose." The platoon leader enunciated each word with care. Aris had no doubt he was merely the latest in a long line of undertrained sixteen year old soldier's to hear the small speech, but he felt the sentiment behind the words and understood their obvious meaning. A different way to say a Faerunian adage as old as time: 'honor is measured in the limp not the run'. Honor to the dead and wounded but none to deserters. Yes, running never gets you anywhere, Aris conceded. The concession, however, didn't make marching onward to face a horde of orcs and giants any easier.
Realizing he couldn't leave freed his senses, his mind. Aris' attention focused on everything save what was about to happen. Those overlarge boots made squelching, sucking sounds. His platoon mates smelled horrible. He felt the scabbard of the longsword strapped to his side scrape against his armored thigh and wondered what else the blade inside would soon be scraping against. Aris was content to let the steering wheel of his mind spin out of control, unhindered by the grasping hands of his consciousness. Worries slipped away, concerns for his life bubbled into the ether.
Dead. That was his choice. Limping away from this scene of insanity was too much for Aris to try and comprehend. Months of training boiled away in the face of fear, overwhelmed by the listlessness the horrors he saw now induced. Aris watched the orcs in the distance, no more than a mile away now, disembowel his countrymen. Hack apart men. Men. And despite whatever he told himself, Aris was only a boy. Frightened of things now far worse than the dark. Dead because if he died Aris wouldn't have see anything else. Dead.
Though the boy moved forward his head remained stationary, obsessing about death. He couldn't help wondering what that first length of steel being knifed into him would feel like. Pain, surely, but was there more? A cold vacuous feeling as the steel slid in? Did your body become one single torch of agony after the pain swept through it? A star of torment whose heat poured into the brain. The second time the sword plunged into him might almost be a relief. A relent from sensation for a moment. Only a moment. Then the pain would come back, fizzling and snapping and exploding until the very end. The End.
The screams shocked him back to life.
Death was seductive; hearing grown men scream had the opposite effect. Like a bolt of lightning, shocking him back to life, those screams forced Aris to be aware. Reality sprang back into being and it what just as oppressive as the boy remembered it. His hands clenched absently as Aris asked Dulard Regald, an old veteran, what battle was going to be like for the thousandth time.
"Why ask me, Aris? You can see it right now." He was correct, but the man knew what the boy needed to hear. Dulard possessed no ability to read minds or break them; he wasn't even smart by the farthest stretch of the word. He had no supernatural power over life and death. And he certainly couldn't make Aris a better warrior in the short time they had before battle. From deep within himself, though, Aris' anxiety resonated. He knew all too well what the boy was really asking of him. Reassurance, perhaps. Preparation.
"Tell me, Dulard." Aris attempted nonchalance and failed extravagantly. Strained enough to crack, his voice had a brittle edge to it.
"If you do not die within the first few minutes, you will lose yourself in it. You will give yourself over the swing of the blade and its bite. All around you will be madness, and on some level you'll know you are part of it. Beyond that, though, the strain is too great. You won't realize the consequences of what you've done until after. Until it keeps you up at night." Dulard's rolling voice ceased for a moment. He simply didn't know what to say. "But that's only if you make it through. Hope for those sleepless nights, Aris. Hope for them hard."
One mile, now. Aris wasted no time asking his next question, screaming it above magical explosions. "Do you think I'm ready?" No double meanings to this question.
Just as he asked, platoon leader stepped up the pace. Jogging made thinking markedly more difficult for Dulard, but think he did. The answer didn't seem adequate to Dulard. It was simply the only one he had. "You've trained for three months. If you weren't ready to fight I'd kill you myself. Since I was ten years old," Dulard huffed out, "my father told me to trust only those who I thought competent enough to watch my back. I can tell you this Aris, I trust you. I hope the answer is enough for you. Its more than anyone ever gave me at your age."
It was enough. Determination had gotten him this far. Trust would carry him the rest.
Aris' platoon had been training under their platoon leader Levin Bowden and Dulard Regald for the last three months out in the barrens a little past Ironspur. Cut off from Damara's hierarchal military system, the platoon-in-training had been operating independently as planned. The three months of training flue by without a hitch. No deaths amongst the new recruits and thankfully few major injuries.
Aris considered those few months the best of his life. Away from his overcrowded home and nagging, insufferable parents, the boy had blossomed into a perfectly balanced warrior. His talent for spear and swordsmanship seemed so natural it was as if he'd been born into the trade. He was even a fair hand at archery and close-quarters knifework. To Aris training was an exhilarating escape instead of a chore. Not that it didn't come without its pitfalls. Waking up before sunrise each morning, the platoon leaders yells, three solid months of fatigue and the constant threat of accidental mutilation were just a few less than positive points of the ordeal.
At least he had training. Many boys fighting today would not.
Drawn away from their farms and small town streets, they wouldn't know how to make battle with the fierce adversaries rallied against them. They wouldn't know how to use the large bulk of an orc against itself. They wouldn't know how to use a weapon any better than Aris had three months ago. Chills swept through him. Any courage he might display here today would pale in comparison to a boy his age wading into battle without a lick of preparation. The hand clenching his spear tightened to a white-knuckled embrace at the thought.
Children killing.
Children dying. Nothing different from he'd be doing today.
Within a mile. Aris' platoon approached haphazardly. Thanks to being in the wastelands during the beginning of the invasion, there was no real direction from the chain of command. Aris didn't understand how his platoon leader analyzed the mess almost a mile ahead of the group when on ground level, but apparently there was a large unit of men on the western flank of battle being sorely pressed by three giants and a large contingent of orcs. Aris saw the giants but any other attempt to try and section of the huge miasma of destruction he gaped at proved an exercise of futility. Good with a spear or a sword but I have the tactical brain of a baby, Aris reflected, the corners of his mouth turning down suddenly.
Aris tried to separate steadily increasing sound. Screams from explosions. Giant laughter from Orcan roars. He strove to hear whistling steel, the grunt of a blocked attack and the labored breathing before the next strike. Aris tried to hear what he knew of combat. Instead what found its way into his strained ears was a sound congealed as the old blood he was about to be walking on.
Discovering the current invasion had been almost been a tribulation itself. The three months of training up, the new platoon made its way back Ironspur where their orders would be waiting. Upon arrival, however, no military presence could be found. Not a single resident of the spit-stain little town could explain why or where they'd gone. Just that they had in the dead of night. Levin Bowden had come close to pummeling some of the more insolent citizens.
Town after town, no one could explain the disappearance. Saying only that several days past they had woken to streets devoid of enforcement and empty garrisons (not that many of the minuscule settlements the platoon passed through had garrisons). It took nearly two weeks before the war came to them.
Aris remembered hunkering down with his entire 30 man platoon in a dank little building on the outskirts of Deosa, yet another small town on the popcorn-string of them dotting Damara's cold lands. They awaited word from Bowden. The platoon leader was asking the leaders of the small community about the military absence across the northland. The screams were soft at first, distant like the call of a wounded bird. Four Orcan outriders had come to Deosa. In moments the cramped building was emptied of men, now rushing towards the screams. Eyes wide, Aris went along with the tide of flesh.
In the scant moments between the first scream and the scrambling men's rush towards it, Bowden cut down four orcs, sustaining only a small nick on his forearm for the effort. Dead eyes greeted Aris when he came to a stop. They weren't accusing or full of dread. Just dead, everything once there flown away like it'd never been. Bowden, breathing deeply, announced, "We march to war." In a single moment war had come to Aris', intent on destroying his new, dangerous paradise. Ignorant of what the action would lead to, he went forward to meet it.
Half a mile. An errant lightning bolt arched towards Bowden and his men, narrowly missing them by a margin of two or three feet. Scorched earth blasted up and spewed down upon them. Singed them with pent up heat. The few who flinched did only that, continuing a moment later. Hot soil stung Aris cheek, spiraled down into his brain. Sensation. The boy cherished the prickling dirt. One more experience he could claim. Looking at the mass of roiling flesh and pain before him, Aris realized now how many he would have to miss out on.