Authors: Stephen Zimmer
“A nap sounds very, very good,” Kent agreed, pushing himself up to his feet, and getting his own pallet from the small storage room. He returned to the chamber, and came back with a woolen blanket and a couple of furs.
“I’ll take this side, so we have some more space,” Mershad said, claiming the other raised earthen platform for his own bedding space. He felt more comfortable with that arrangement anyway, as Derek and Kent knew each other so well, and he preferred being more solitary.
After a couple of trips, he had a woolen blanket, fur, and a down-stuffed mattress set up on the opposite side from Derek and Kent. He lay down upon the mattress gingerly, but found it to be surprisingly comfortable. Then again, a lot of things would have felt very comfortable at that moment, after having endured sitting in the saddle of a sky steed for so many hours.
Kent’s light snores a few minutes later were the first indications that the weary travelers had begun to succumb to the welcome invitations of sleep. It was not much longer before all three of the otherworlders were deep in slumber. Mershad drifted off smoothly, descending down into the fathoms of a dreamless repose.
Svein found them all fast asleep when he returned a few hours later, to summon them for the feast called by the king. Mershad woke up groggily, though immensely glad for the hours of precious, continuous rest. By that time, his stomach had built up quite an appetite, and he was more than ready to go to a feast.
First, though, he would attend to prayers, the undertaking of which had gone haphazardly over the past few days of travel. It was important to him to reestablish his routine as much as possible, knowing that under the circumstances it would be very easy to forget about his obligations. Following prayers, though, food would be the very next thing occupying his thoughts.
*
Dragol
*
Dragol was filled with anxiety and discontentment as he sat upon the back of his steadfast Harrak. As always, Rodor stood with a proud bearing, supporting its brave rider with a strong posture that seemed to exude great esteem in being the steed of such an honored Trogen warrior.
The creature was larger, bolder, and more aggressive than most of its formidable brethren, traits that Dragol took no small amount of pride in himself. The exceptional nature of his personal steed reflected the growing standing of its master among his own kind, a matter that all Trogens familiar with Dragol could readily agree upon.
The beast growled and shifted, highly impatient, and eager to be relieved of the tedious journey that Dragol had again forced upon it. Restrained from stretching its wings and flying, it had become exceedingly restless. As with the previous Darrok raids that had leveled so many tribal villages, Dragol was saving his steed’s energy for what was to come.
Nearby, Tirok and over twenty other Trogens sat astride their steeds in full readiness, spread down the upper back of the hulking Darrok. Likewise, numerous Trogens on the other Darroks were saddled and armed, as the moment of attack approached at last. Rested and refreshed, they were all eager to set into the skies, and challenge anything that might come up to oppose them.
The lands populated and ruled by the tribes of the Five Realms were spread out directly beneath them, following the short flight from the encampment located a few leagues west in Gallean lands. Their formation had just drawn over an open break in the trees, exposing the top of a broad ridge revealing yet another one of the enemy’s palisade-surrounded villages.
Dragol heard the curt horn blasts carrying through the air, drawing his attention forward. Just ahead of him, dismounted Trogen warriors on the other Darroks began to levy a massive bombardment of stones down upon the exposed village.
Peering ahead, it was yet another trying experience for Dragol to watch the methods of war utilizing the gigantic Darroks. Before coming to Gallea and the Five Realms, he had never witnessed a weapon with such devastating potential. Once again, he witnessed the assault unfolding with a look of awe spread across his face, as the incredible power of the Darroks was unleashed.
Attached to the Darrok’s carriages were connected panels of curved timber, riveted together with iron fastenings. They could be pulled up to the carriage in flight, and lowered when needed. Each series of panels was carefully shaped and formed into flexible chutes, which guided the stones of various sizes into a vertical free fall as they were discharged. The extending length of the rough chutes released the stone loads safely below the wing level of the Darroks.
From their lofty height, the showering bombardments reduced the wooden edifices within the village of the Five Realms to little more than piles of shards and splinters. Even the great trebuchets that Dragol had seen, the mightiest of the siege and war machines of Avanor and Gallea, could not wreak so much damage within such a very short amount of time. The thunderous display of destruction was undeniably impressive, daunting, and even intimidating to observe.
Tirok looked over towards Dragol, raising a clenched fist to his right ear. Dragol responded to the gesture in similar fashion. The two senior Trogen warriors then took up the large signaling horns hanging loose at their sides, swiftly raising the ends to their lips. With a deep intake of breath, both of the chieftains blew forcefully upon the narrow ends, and the horns blared in loud unison.
The deep, resonant blasts loosed the mounted Trogens off the back of the Darrok. In moments, many riders and steeds had lifted up and spread out into the surrounding air. The signal from Dragol’s and Tirok’s Darrok was spread quickly amongst the other Darroks in the formation. Several other groups of Trogens rose up upon their Harrak steeds, and all of them slowly converged, forming a veritable cloud of sky warriors. If there was to be any response or sudden surprises coming from the defenders, the Trogens were ready, and more than willing to meet them.
Dragol gave another distinctive signal upon his horn, and guided a small detachment of Trogens up and away from the main Darrok formation, in order to survey the lands immediately below them. He seized upon the benefits brought by the high, unobstructed altitude, giving him a tremendous vantage from which to scan the tree-shrouded land.
He momentarily eyed the tight Darrok formation proceeding ahead of them, now a good distance away, underneath the position of the hovering sky riders. The slow-moving brutes looked to be creeping forward to Dragol’s perspective, and the Trogen chieftain had no worries about closing the distance if they got too far ahead.
Dragol’s new position also lent him a full view of the unfolding destruction. Deadly, weighty stone missiles continued to be sent hurtling towards the earth in a pummeling cascade by the diligent strain and exertion of Trogen muscle. Yet all was not in harmony as he watched the pulverizing attack.
He worked to stifle the return of revulsion at the barbaric method of warfare. He still found it so very hard to even conceive how the Unifier and the humans that had developed the new war tactic saw any honor in such a practice. More than ever, he could barely stomach Trogen warriors serving upon the Darroks, made to execute such a craven manner of attack.
In the deep privacy of his heart, Dragol hoped that the enemy tribal warriors had vacated the village that was being assaulted, and would soon be coming up to match their martial skills against Dragol and the other Trogen riders. That was a method of warfare that he could sanction, where enemies looked each other face to face, and matched blade against blade.
He did not want to face the rising notion within him that the Darrok bombardment was, in truth, a cowardly way of making war, striking from such a high altitude with the enemy having no means to defend itself. The ways of Avanor and those of the Trogens were so very different.
Dragol’s head turned slowly from side to side, distracting his mind a little, as he passed his intensive gaze across the rolling landscape. Trees within the older regions of the forests covering the Five Realms grew thickly together, their upper tangles of foliage serving to cover hilltop, slope, valley and other terrain elements alike. The natural, largely unbroken mass of dense growth also served to make the enemy villages much easier to spot from the higher skies.
With their locations on higher ground, in areas extensively cleared of trees, the tribal villages were very easy to idenfity, from leagues away. Virtually any significant break in the forest canopy revealed the presence of telltale corn fields, or the villages often located very close to them. Both were easy, static targets for the voluminous loads of stone being jettisoned by the Darrok onslaught.
Dragol hovered and watched as the Darrok formation flew onward, nearing another intact, vulnerable village. He spurred his steed into a slow rate of flight, bringing it a little closer to the vicinity of the doomed village.
Though disliking the manner of attack, Dragol could still not help but be almost mesmerized by the utter ferocity unleashed in the new type of warfare. He had never witnessed such blistering, quick destruction, other than the unpredictable times when the earth itself shook from terrible, unknown forces deep within it.
His eyes drifted, as if in a detached daydream, towards the numerous varieties of longhouses within the large village that was situated along the crest of a sizeable ridge. There were no signs of movement within the outer palisades, and his ears picked up no sounds of alarm or terror at the imminent approach of the giant airborne formation.
That did not come entirely as a surprise to Dragol, for he had not believed that they would have been able to catch any villager unaware after so many attacks. The first Darrok raid would have taught a harsh lesson, eliciting wariness and perhaps even the instigation of a full lookout system among the tribal peoples of the Five Realms. The following attacks would have solidified and reinforced such efforts.
The longhouses were nothing but deathtraps for the kind of attack that the Darroks brought. Dragol had mused that the tribes would have long since left their villages as a precautionary measure against the spreading air attacks, seeking the safer harbor of the sheltering woods.
Despite his burgeoning misgivings concerning the tactics, Dragol implicitly understood the dispassionate rationale of the Avanorans. The tribal villages would have to be destroyed, so that the enemy would have no fortifications to return to once the ground assault into the forest region was underway. The air assaults were preliminary attacks, employed to uproot and soften the enemy.
It would save the impending invasion forces substantial amounts of time and numerous lives, both of which would otherwise have been consumed in much greater measures over the course of a multitude of difficult village sieges. The campaign to subdue the tribes and take their lands would be rendered swifter and smoother if the Five Realms were cast into fearful disarray, almost a surety with the widespread destruction of their villages. Displaced and scattered into makeshift communities, the tribal people would be left with no significant fortifications to use in resisting the invasion force sweeping in from the west.
While there was little denying that the greatest honor for a Trogen, or any type of warrior, was in single combat, Dragol could not argue the logic and effectiveness of the strategy in attaining the Avanoran goals. The Avanorans were merciless and coldly practical in Dragol’s estimation. Even if they embraced methods that he viewed as dishonorable, and difficult to understand, the huge Trogen still realized that great passions for war burned within the blood of Avanor’s warriors.
The Darroks slowly passed directly over the second doomed village. The first large stones crashed and thudded amid the trees farther down the slope, and then the buildings within the outer circumference of high timber stakes. Bark panels, rough planks, framing poles, and many other elements exploded into jagged bits with each ruthless impact.
The vicious sounds of collision between rock and timber transformed swiftly into a cacophony of bark and wood shattering, as the elongated village structures were relentlessly crushed under the hail of rock.
Dragol brought his steed into another hovering, static position, in close proximity to the stricken village. He watched as the Darroks looped about in a wide, ponderously slow arc, for another ruinous pass over the village. A very small number of structures that had somehow avoided the destruction of the first pass were annihilated by the second.
A spotter upon one of the Darrok carriages, deeming the destruction to be thorough enough, loosed a distinctive horn signal of several deep, staggered notes. The large behemoths then continued onward, leaving the wrecked village behind, as the enormous, airborne flotilla headed away to search out the next village to target.
Dragol then cried out a firm command to the small formation attending him, leading them into a wide arc that shadowed the ponderous Darrok formation at a distance. They descended a little lower, though they remained well out of the bow-shot range of any enemy archer lurking amongst the trees below.
The keen eyes of Dragol and his Trogens scanned the trees intensely for even the slightest sign of the tribal people. They kept in mind the spirited resistance that had taken to the skies the first time the Darroks had attacked.
Dragol was careful not to stray too far from the Darroks, speeding his group onward before the gap between the winged juggernauts and the escorting sky riders grew too much. He refused to be caught unawares, or too far away from the Darroks, if resistance did emerge.
It was not long before a host of loud cracks filled the air once again, as yet another Five Realms village was relentlessly demolished under torrents of plummeting rock. Not a building was spared, and only a few trees in the immediate vicinity avoided being broken, smashed, and snapped apart by the unforgiving, indiscriminate attack.
The area showered by the massive deluge of stone, though crudely targeted, was as devastated as the previous village in only two passes. Dragol quietly witnessed yet another validation that a Darrok bombardment was thorough and comprehensive in its maleficent effect.