Chapter 13
Defending Garner
Adam slung off his blanket and nearly tripped as his foot got caught on something, but the darkness forbade his ability to see. When he finally got his feet underneath him he noticed that the campfire was out with small pieces of charred, smoking wood, the vapor streamed off the embers and snaked through the air in silvery tendrils.
Nolan, Connor, and Trey had already woke and were in the process of taking defensive stances. Adam reached for his sword, but his palm slapped against his thigh. What, he thought. Then he remembered removing his sword before he went to sleep. A foolish thing to do. He trudged quickly to his now tossed and tangled bed spread and felt the damp ground for his sword.
By then he heard the loud clash of metal and shouts as each side met in the fiery dance of combat. His hand touched a smooth object and he wrapped his hands around it and felt for the handle of his sword. There.
He ripped the sword free and charged at the attackers with a fierce yell. He engaged the first enemy with several swipes of his sword, which were blocked without accuracy, but did not apply damage to his target. Suddenly a wooden pike with stone spikes lodged into the thick end of the log flew at his face, which he dodged with ease.
But before he could react a shield smashed into his body, knocking him to the ground. Then as the figure went to jump on top of him, Adam lifted his leg and kicked the man in the stomach. Without hesitation Adam rolled across the ground in order to elude a sword in poor condition, its metal was dented and scratched as if it has been used many a time.
Why are all their supplies in bad condition? Adam told himself. He stood quickly as the sword buried itself in the ground and took hold of the man's arm, disarming him and knocking him down.
It wasn't an Aroughian soldier; it was a normal man, most likely a poor farmer due to his choice of clothes. "Stop!" He yelled, "Stop fighting, they're not Aroughians, they're villagers!"
The fighting men soon settled as they realized that their opponents were not reacting to them with violence.
Nolan backed away and looked at each of the men; his eyes grew remorseful as his gaze was led to a body lying on the ground.
"I apologize. We thought ya'll were Aroughians." Said Nolan, going to the body and checking to be sure that he was dead. His head hung low and he forced to hold back tears. It disheartened him most when an innocent was killed, especially by his hand.
A man from the group of villagers rushed towards the body and knelt before it, then started crying. After several seconds he stood and looked at Nolan, "What have you done? This was my son."
Hm some rhyming going on. Nolan thought, "I'm sorry I didn't mean to…"
The man screamed then, sword in hand, charged Nolan.
His teammates yelled at him to stop while Nolan's members ran forward to protect their fellow soldier. Then time seemed to slow for Adam as he watched the man jump into the air and bring his sword in a downward arc towards Nolan, who didn't even seem to budge the entire time. Adam also noticed an arrow whizzing through the air at the man.
Then at the same time the man's sword bounced off Nolan's wards and the arrow plunged deep into his unarmored chest. The force with which the sword struck the wards was tremendous and caused the man's arm to snap out of place and fling him across the area they were gathered in and smack into a boulder.
Everyone grew silent as they gazed at Nolan with fear. Quietly Adam looked around for the one who shot the arrow, and was surprised to find that Connor had his bow held up.
A man detached himself from his group and walked up to Nolan, "Are you magicians?" Was his only words.
Nolan nodded, "From Xeon, sorry for the inconvenience, we meant no harm."
"We were guarding the village when one of my lookouts report seeing a small fire near the woods. So we being noble fighters, left thinking ya'll were them pesky Aroughian soldiers. But clearly we be mistaken." Said the man, "The names Duncan." He held out a hand which Nolan shook firmly.
The rest of Duncan's men still stood with fear as they pondered whether to have friendship or a feud. But none dared compete with Nolan after his display of power. "Okay, we should get started on finding the Aroughians and not dwell on past occurrences." Said Nolan, "We cant unchanged fate."
Duncan seemed to cower a little then agreed when he felt that nothing else was going to solve their dilemma. "Okay."
Over the next few hours, Nolan and Duncan talked about attack strategies and possible locations for the Aroughians. They often walked around the boundaries of the village and sometimes sent out scouts into the surrounding forest, after which they would continue their search. The scouts mostly came back with no find.
Soon Adam watched as the large, glowing sphere rose slowly into the dull morning sky. Casting sunbeams in every direction, creating columns of golden liquid when the light pierced the heavy clouds overhead, illuminating the small town with every amount of glory anything could have. The colors of the sky became more vivid as the sun rose into the sky, making it even more radiant than before. But as beautiful as the morning was, Adam felt that the day would go wrong and that something would happen, this feeling originating from the witch's prophecy.
As the day passed they spent their time fortifying the village, adding on to the impressively built trench that circled the entire town. Then they helped make better weapons for the men and for some time fought with them in order to prepare them to fight professional soldiers. But as night speedily approached the town settled down and Adam and his companions retreated to an inn which was gracefully offered by the inn keeper. They fell asleep with no time to waste, for they knew that the next day would be tough as their search for the Aroughians would continue.
Adam woke with a start as the inn shook viciously, dust streaming off the ceiling beams above. Connor fell from his bed, rolled across the ground while grasping his sword, stood ripping his sword from its sheath, and took a defensive stance. Shouts and screams echoed throughout the city, along with the sound of clanging metal.
Adam jumped out of his bed and snatched his sword and rushed out of the room as a group of ruff-looking men ran into the lobby. Somewhere a woman screamed. How did they get into the town? Adam asked himself.
The men looked at Adam and pointed at him. "He will make a fine slave." Said one of them. Then he pulled his sword out and charged up the stairs towards Adam.
Without a seconds hesitation Adam slashed his sword outward striking the man against his unprotected head. With a scream the man fell limply to the ground. The others glanced at him nervously then ran out of the inn.
Connor meet him on the stairs and, together, they exited the building and onto the street. Aroughians ran everywhere, mixed between Garner's men. Explosions rang randomly around the city, light flashed as fire burst against buildings.
They rushed throughout the city striking helpless victims as their party grew. Trey joined their group, along with Nolan and several members of the advance group sent from Xeon. They roused some of the men they found around the city and slowly pushed the enemy towards the gates of the city. For several hours they fought mercilessly until the attackers finally retreated.
When they returned to the heart of the city they found a pile of seven men, dead, surrounded by people who loved them. Adam gazed at the pile until he turned and left, followed by Connor, Trey, and Nolan. They entered their room in the inn.
Adam sheathed his sword and sat down on the edge of his bed, fighting the urge to vomit.
Nolan sluggishly fell onto his bed, Trey slumped to the ground, cleaning his bloody axe on an old, gray rag, and Connor leaned against the wall next to the door.
Adam lifted his leg and then slammed it on the wooden floor, a low bang echoed through the planks. "We were sent here to protect these people!" He shouted. "And now… there are seven dead, and probably more. If we aren't going to protect, perhaps we can defend."
Nolan sat up and said, "We've already done that."
Adam stared blankly at the ground until he finally looked up and said, "Then let's go after them."
The reply wasn't a question just as much as it wasn't a command. A simple statement, Adam figured that if they weren't going to eliminate the enemy, then they might as well scare them away.
When no one replied Adam continued, "They won't be expecting resistance. We can catch them by surprise."
Nolan sighed and rubbed his hand through his hair. "Then if we are going to do this then we can wait till tomorrow. The men here are too tired to fight."
Adam stood and protested, "No! We go tonight. While the enemy are still separated, we can easily defeat them."
Nolan stood and walked towards the door, Connor moved out of his way. "I'll go talk with Duncan."
Then he left the room, his footsteps receding down the stairs. Connor returned to his position next to the door. Trey stood and sheathed his clean axe, and said, "I've already planned another attack on the Aroughians before we came back here. The few military units here in the city are going with us. We are to meet them on the northern part of the city."
Adam smiled at Treys slyness. He always seemed to be a step ahead of him when it came to battle. "When do we leave?"
"Whenever, the group that is going with us is guarding the northern gate. But when they leave they are going to be replaced by another group so the gate will still stay guarded."
Adam thought for a minute, then said, "Okay. Let's go."
They exited the inn and out onto the streets, where they kept an eye out for Nolan. The roads were busy due to the preparations getting done as they prepared for another attack, and another night defending them. But they soon reached the North gate where they were instantly acquainted with nineteen men each welding formidable weapons, each in their mid-twenties.
"My name is Jacob. And this is Tilrv," Said a tall, hallow-eyed man who must have been Jacob's son who was a young man with blondish-brown hair identified as Tilrv. "We are to team up and go after the remaining idiots that have ravaged our village."
Adam nodded approval and asked, "How many Aroughians do you think there are left?"
Jacob seemed to look into his mind as he estimated the enemies' death toll, and the number they appeared with. "Maybe about… uhm, thirty, thirty-two."
"Okay, that's fine. If we still have the element of surprise, then we should be able to defeat them easily."
Jacob nodded and turned to his men. He spoke with all the authority of a king, issuing commands that were instantly carried out. He must have done something worth getting full command over these people. Thought Adam, he was concerned that Jacob had too much power, but still, at least the men did listen to him and not someone else. Jacob seemed to have, at one point, had military experience.
Then, pointing down a field towards a cube-shaped building, he said, "See that building." Adam nodded, "The man who works there is a friend, he is generous enough to provide us with rafts that we will use to sail down the river."
They now set sail as the first lights of dawn broke the horizon. During the night they resided at the raft store, where they ate and rested as they prepared for the journey.
Adam sat against the raft's cabin, watching the changing landscape as they sped down the river. Around midday they passed the mouth of a valley, and another river melded with Carevl, doubling its size and speed until the shores were a mile apart. The men from Garner had to struggle to keep the raft from being tossed like flotsam before the inexorable current and to avoid smashing into the trees that occasionally floated by.
A mile after the rivers joined, Carevl turned north and flowed past a lonely cloud-wreathed peak. Then around sun set, they stopped the rafts as a light glow up ahead. In actuality it was many fires, but due to the distance between them and the campfires it looked like one large mass.
Jacob took Tilrv and they snuck towards the fire in the distance. The men shifted nervously as they waited for their return. While they waited Adam had them tie rags over their weapons and what little armor they had to prevent detection. This assignment took about an hour, and by that time, Jacob came back with exciting news.
"There are thirty-two Aroughians, as I predicted." He said as the group stood and headed out. "Most of them are asleep, besides the sentries, but they shouldn't be a problem."
"Great lets head out immediately and eliminate this problem." Said Adam, they left their present campsite and walked towards the camp. Tilrv and Jacob fixed their armor and weapons with old, rust-colored rags and then dispersed the fire by pouring water from their water skins onto it, they had to, silently, run to catch up to the group that receded towards the enemy's camp.
Adam, even in the dark, examined his surroundings by casting a spell that allowed him to see the setting around him as if it were daytime. A grove of gnarled juniper trees grew in clumps between the two hills that they now passed through. The shallow depression gradually deepened into a narrow, flood-carved gully lined with crumbling, gray slabs of shale.
Dodging the juniper trees, Adam glanced up and noticed the first constellations that adorned the black sky. They seemed cold and sharp, like bright shards of ice. Then he concentrated on his footing as he and the group trotted east, towards the enemy's camp.
Each individual bonfire brightened and became more clearer as they neared them, each flame was full of detail, tongues of the conflagration licked the air as if trying to taste the different scents that wafted past it.
Torches bobbed up and down as the sentries went about issuing the safety of their fellow members. The guards wore little armor, mostly cow hide skins and tough materials with fur coats to protect them from some imaginary breeze, for the temperature was nowhere near cold, but in between, not the type of weather to where heavy clothes. The camp was made up of leather tents, most painted with different designs and symbols.
Adam stopped his team behind a coppice of willows. The trees creaked eerily as the soft wind made the translucent leafs of the willows whisper to the breeze, their cry of loneliness. The many cracks that ran vertically down the trunks, opened up and, in the moonlight, revealed their true identity, that they were living beings to, not just plants that grew and then died on the same patch of dirt that they were born on.
Adam peered between two separate branches that grew in a V shape, spreading apart and, in unison, bent in different directions, one pointing to the north, the other to the south. From his perspective he could clearly make out three sentries standing guard twenty yards from where he stood, each bearing large, leaf shaped swords, both gruesome and ugly in appearance as if their maker were an inexperienced, rushed apprentice. Beyond them another cadre of sentries took watch.
Adam turned back around and informed the impatient group of the sentries' whereabouts. "Okay, there is a group about twenty yards in front us. And then another farther down into the camp."
"Let's get them now, they killed my brother. I want my revenge." Whispered one man to Adams right.
"Calm down. We have to prepare and plan our attack carefully." Replied Jacob, once again proving his air of command. The previous speaker silenced and awaited orders from him.
Another man spoke up, but with a flash of his eyes Jacob also silenced him too. Now wasn't the time to argue, nor was it the place. Adam told this to him, who, with complete dominance, convinced the group to leave their initial safeguard behind the willows and head down the eastern side of the southern most of the two hills until the fires left their sight.
Adam and the leaders; Trey, Connor, Jacob, and Tilrv, went to a deserted shelf of cracked sandstone that rose above their settlement and began to talk about what they intended to do.
"Now what do you want to do?" Asked Jacob, looking out over the vast plains that spread beyond their vision, few bushes grew and trees dotted the fields, placed randomly as if a farmer scattered seeds in the fertile dirt.
Tilrv looked down to the smooth sandstone below his feet, then scrubbed his boots across the flat surface, crumbling small sand rocks into smaller particles. "We could send our most deceptive men to the main layout of their camp and have them take out their sentries placed on the border of their encampment. Then with that done we can send in the rest of our men and take them out."
"Aye, but, we need to plan for every possibility, say one of them sees us, or they end up overwhelming us. We need to be prepared for anything." Said Trey, fingering his axe's curved blade.
Adam remembered similar sieges he had been a part of long ago, and taking strategies from those battles, he put them together and came up with one full proof plan. "Ok, we need someone, or several people, to perform some type of diversion. Then while the enemy are distracted we come in full force and wipe them all out."
Jacob seemed to like the plan, for he nodded at the ground three times. "Good, but what kind of distraction are you wanting?" He asked after confirming that the envisage was a good one. "I could get a reasonable number of my militants and have them a' hoot and holler, get the Aroughians to chase them, then we come up behind them and attack."
Adam shrugged, "It's a good thought, but what if the distracters are captured… or worse? What will you do then?"
"I could choose my fastest men and have them do the job."
"Yes, however, what if the Aroughian soldiers are a tad bit faster?"
"Then we make sure we get to them before they kill our men."
"But what if we don't?"
"We will."
"But what if we don't?"
"I'll make sure we do."
"How?"
Jacob grew silent, Trey was right when he inquired that they formulate a plan that goes along with every possibility. If not they would have lost already. Now came the hard part, deciding what to do and what might happen if they do what they planned. They were outnumbered by thirteen men and if they were to win they couldn't make any mistakes.
The darkness weighed down on their eyes. Adam looked through his mind until he found the right word, which he whispered to himself. A spark flashed in the air. Then another. And another. Then with a flash of light a ball of flame popped into existence in front of Adam, lighting the area with a pool of golden light.
Jacob's eyes seemed to glow brighter than the light as he stared in amazement at the fire, Tilrv too. "You're a magician?" He asked, eyeing the fire with fearful yet shocked eyes.
Adam laughed shortly, then said, "No. I can use magic, yes, but I'm not a magician. Magicians are old men with long white beards and a pointed hat with stars imprinted on it."
This description brought laughs from the group on the sandstone shelf.
Jacob replied with, "Oh, Okay. Well with the magic you can use, then you can help us with the trouble makers down there, we could defeat them easily."
"I would be more than happy to use magic to help, but like most everything else, it has limitations and rules. To use magic one must understand that he must have the power capable to withstand its effects." Adam said in a hushed voice, "Some spells, they will leave you drowsy, others, as a lot of people find out, will lead you to be unconscious. And some spells, if you use them before your ready… can kill you."
Jacob remained quiet for some time, he never paid attention to magic, nor has he witnessed it before, but now it seemed to be more important than the most precious gem. The things I could do with magic. Thought Jacob, greedily.
Suddenly a warning cry echoed across the field, originating from their camp. It sounded like a man who tried to hold in an unbearable amount of fear which exploded because of the force.
Silence enveloped the sandstone shelf. Above, the stars gleamed cold and white. A wind sprang up from the north and raced across the plains, battering the grass and wailing with a long, thin voice, as if lamenting the loss of a loved one. As it struck, the ball of fire burst and a twisting mane of sparks trailed off to the south. Adam hunched his shoulders and pulled the collar of his tunic close around his neck. There was something unfriendly about the wind; it bit at him with unusual ferocity, and it seemed to isolate him and everyone else from the rest of the world. They stood motionless, marooned on the tiny island of light and heat, while the massive river of air rushed past, howling its angry sorrows into the empty expanse of land.
Hope ya'll like this chapter. It's kind of long, but now I have the authority to say that He Who Travels' challenge has been completed when he requested a 3,000 word chapter. To be exact, this one is 3,787 words long. Please review, it helps a lot, and most of all, enjoy.
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