Authors: Stephen Zimmer
The first ones to penetrate the line of trees marking the edge of the forest were the Atagar. Though few in number, in comparison to the main force, the nearly two hundred Atagar located at the invasion’s spearhead were more than enough to execute their appointed tasks; serving as both a vanguard and scouting force.
With their lengthy arms, sharp claws, and light, elongated bodies, the deft creatures could scurry up the trunks of trees and move along high branches, or nimbly navigate the varying contours of the forest floor. Their darker fur blended extremely well with their immediate surroundings, as they skillfully kept to the shadows, avoiding sunbeams and larger pools of direct light within the forest’s sun-dappled interior. Fast and dexterous, they were soon well ahead of the main attack force.
After piercing the outermost reaches of the forest, the Atagar invaders barely had time to sense the presence of the land’s defenders before they were attacked themselves. A few Atagar frantically blared upon signal horns, as arrows streaked in amongst them, sending their resonant warnings back towards the commanders within the forces coming up right behind them. Bounding and diving for cover, most sought protection behind trees, or in the beds of a couple of streams in their path. A few concealed themselves behind lower brush.
The Atagar carried small, simply fashioned crossbows, or straight bows, using missiles sized somewhere between a dart and a bolt for a human counterpart. They also carried long, curved daggers for hand to hand combat, with the blades sharply honed on both edges.
A few of the Atagar were felled quickly during the first outbreaks of resistance, but most managed to reach places of relative safety. Swiftly, if not fully accurately, they loosed a flurry of missiles back towards those that had ambushed them.
There were a few that hastened up the trunks of high trees to gain a better line of sight, as the tribal defenders were well concealed within the trees ahead of them.
After the first wave of Atagar had encountered the enemy, at a signal, a mass of regular Gallean soldiers, joined by a few Gigans, trodded forth. The Galleans marched forward with shields up and lances angled forward, combing over the surface of the forest as they neared the area where the Atagar advance had stalled.
More archers and crossbowmen behind them peered upward, into the branches of the trees surrounding them. The dense formation promised to ferret out any Five Realms warriors that tried to maneuver around them, or endeavored to conceal themselves in the foliated upper boughs of a tree.
The early resistance was sporadic in some parts, and fiercer in others. With limited numbers of warriors at their disposal, the Five Realms war sachems had planned their defenses strategically, and cautiously. The bulk of the tribal defenses centered around protecting access to the Shimmering River, the great water channel by which the open seas to the east could be reached.
In the best of circumstances, it provided a route for any potential help to arrive. At worst, if it could be held, it allowed the tribes a way of escape.
Swiftly moving squads of tribal warriors traversed the woodlands, all along the front of the invaders, harassing their enemy with arrows and adroitly fading away, before any concentrated response could be mustered. The tribesmen wended through the forest growth as if they were an extension of it, giving no warning to the probing enemy fighters that fell victim to their ambushes.
A heavier blow would not be delivered, as there were no efforts to engage the enemy in a massed force. The tribesmen also avoided recklessness in contesting the lithe Atagar.
The tribal warriors quickly recognized the capable nature of the unfamiliar beings. Looking to the warriors like huge rodents, the peculiar creatures ran equally well over the ground on two legs or four, and their ability to flow between the trees using the overhead maze of branches was stunning to behold. They could even make use of branches that would not hold the weight of a lighter human, giving them an even further advantage.
If the Atagar had come in great numbers, the tribal warriors knew that they would have presented a tremendous challenge, but their overall threat was negated to a marginal level as they began to suffer losses to their already small numbers. Knowing the Atagar’s value to the invaders, the leaders of the Five Realms defenders began to station more sharp-eyed archers in the trees themselves, wherever they believed the Atagar would try to move.
Whether surprised from above while moving along the ground, or jumping into view on a branch level with an archer waiting in a nearby tree, several of the Atagar toppled lifelessly to the forest floor, with an arrow protruding from their bodies.
The tribal war sachems did not dare to blunder into the main strengths of the oncoming force. The war bands of tribal fighters gave way wherever the primary line of invaders moved forward, after claiming a few of the attackers with skillfully loosed arrows.
Flexible and fast striking, the defenders were able to instill some caution in the invaders, and effectively slow their advances. Using the quick, bursting attacks, they threw several segments of the invading lines into momentary panic and disarray.
The brief stabs into the enemy lines revealed some further areas for the defender’s exploitation. The men coming up just behind the foremost contingents were nowhere near as resolved as their companions.
While fairly well-armed, with an assortment of short-hafted axes, longer guisarmes, spears, and hand bows, they were more lightly armored, in quilted jerkins and iron caps. On the few occasions when Five Realms warriors broke through far enough to engage some of the men in the second rank, the invaders exhibited a swift tendency to break and pull back. Like the porcupines that the tribesmen were so familiar with, it became apparent that the enemy had a softer underbelly. The challenge lay in how to expose it.
*
Ayenwatha
*
Within one of the more heavily contested areas along the front lines, Ayenwatha, along with several Onan warriors, fell back hastily, to regroup and await another enemy surge. They took up a position on the top of a small hill. Far behind them, a few leagues away, was the first of several locations where the refugees from the various tribes and villages were gathering. Gratefully for Ayenwatha, the rendezvous site was still far away from the battle, and it would be quite some time before it was threatened.
Nevertheless, Ayenwatha knew that everything possible had to be done to inflict delays on the invaders. Enemy probes had to be cut off, and where flanking a forward advance could be executed, the defenders had to be ready to maneuver rapidly, to maul the softer ranks behind the tough, mailed enemy fighters in the forefront.
Ayenwatha carefully notched an arrow, lowering himself to one knee. He espied some movements in the trees just beyond the base of the hill. Steadying his body and hands, he focused himself, training his sight upon an Atagar skittering nimbly across the low branch of a tree. The dexterous creature jumped down to the ground as it neared the base of the hill, landing with perfect balance. Ayenwatha had to admit that the creatures were extraordinary, but they were invaders. The Atagar must have thought that it was safely behind the protection of a tree trunk, as it came to a halt, and began working to load a small bolt into its crossbow.
From his position, Ayenwatha had an unobstructed angle on the creature. His body remaining rigid, he let the arrow fly with his breath, as if the feathered shaft were an extension of himself. The arrow tore through the air, and the Atagar emitted a muffled cry as the iron tip embedded deeply into its body, driving the shaft far into its flesh. The creature slumped over, and its crossbow fell harmlessly to the ground.
As a number of combatants moved into sight below, Ayenwatha realized that the Atagar had been skirting around a small, pitched battle, presumably intending to pick off some unwary tribesmen with its crossbow. A number of Gallean soldiers were locked in a struggle with a fair number of tribesmen in the melee, one of the few points along the broad front where the numbers were fairly even.
The Five Realms warriors involved were falling back in relatively good order. Swinging war clubs, they cried out with righteous fury. The wooden clubs, their slender handles arcing outward along a shaft culminating in a dense, heavy ball of wood, were deadly in their impact upon the heads and bodies of Gallean warriors. Other tribal warriors wielded hand axes, and a few used spears, but above all the attackers were quickly coming to fear, and respect, the devastating effects of the unique war clubs wielded by the heavily painted defenders.
A pair of huge forms then crashed through the brush, bellowing as they stomped forward. Their sudden appearance brought an outcry from the Onan on the hill-top around Ayenwatha. Without a further thought, archers readied arrows and let them fly, loosing them in a dense hail at the two Gigans heading swiftly towards the swarming melee. Several arrows found their large targets, as the two hulking Gigans stumbled, and then crumpled down in lifeless, arrow-ridden heaps.
“It is fortunate that they make such big targets,” Ayenwatha remarked dourly to his brother, Hawk Eyes, who was standing to his right.
Ayenwatha retrieved another arrow from his corn-husk quiver, and soon took another careful shot into the fighting below. The arrow whizzed by the body of a Gallean fighter, almost grazing him. The warrior was oblivious to the miss, unaware of just how close to death he had just come. In what turned out to be a quite fortuitous move on his part, he had lunged forward just a split second after Ayenwatha had released the tension on the bowstring.
“A lucky one,” Hawk Eyes replied, having watched Ayenwatha’s shot, before letting an arrow of his own fly at the attackers.
Ayenwatha watched his brother’s arrow strike one of the mailed spearmen in the leg. The man howled in pain, and fell onto the ground, clutching at the arrow shaft impaling him. A tribal warrior leaped at the man with a shrill cry, his war club swooshing through the air in a great arc that ended with it smashing into the Gallean’s head.
The two siblings had not fought together in combat in many years, ever since Hawk Eyes had married, and gone off to live in another village, residing in the longhouse of the mother of his wife. The last time that they had stood together in a time of war was years ago, when the tribes of the Anishin had pushed an ill-fated conflict into the demesnes of the five tribes. The shattered Anishin tribes had since been confined to a more remote part of the forest lands to the far north, no longer a threat to the Five Realms.
It was not lost on Ayenwatha that his people would soon face those remnants once again. He was aware that the Anishin had formed friendly relations with the Galleans, even allowing monks and priests of the Western Church to come into their villages, to convert them to the western faith.
Though not yet present in the fighting, the remaining warriors of the Anishin would undoubtedly be seeking chances for vengeance in the midst of the maelstrom caused by the invading army. For them, it would be an irresistable opportunity.
“Ayenwatha!” called a voice from a short distance behind him, coming from the other side of the hill, opposite the fighting.
Ayenwatha swiveled in time to see a young warrior mounted upon a Brega, with a bow in one hand, trotting around the summit of the hill towards his position. At the warrior’s side was another Brega, without a rider. The young warrior led the second Brega on an elongated tether of hide, which had been tied to the creature’s simple harnessing.
“Speak, what is it?” Ayenwatha implored quickly, his eyes darting back to the battle on the other side of the hill. The tribal warriors had driven the enemy back again, and those that survived were now trekking steadily up the hillside to join their comrades, some laboring to help the wounded get up the slope.
“Atotarho seeks help in guiding the Midragardan force, to take them where they will be most needed,” the warrior stated, as he neared Ayenwatha.
A sudden surge of energy and anticipation filled Ayenwatha as the words sounded in his ears. Atotarho, an elderly Onan Sachem with a place on the Grand Council, had been sent away earlier with a small escort of warriors. Their task was to watch for the arrival of any possible reinforcements. The words of the young warrior conveyed great hope to Ayenwatha, which raced through him, instantly invigorating his belabored spirit.
“Midragard has come?” Ayenwatha asked. Having yearned for even a shred of favorable tidings, he wanted to hear everything that the young warrior had to report.
The young warrior did not disappoint Ayenwatha in the least. “Our scouts report that many sea vessels, bearing a large force of armed Midragardans, has already entered the Shimmering River. The dragon ships row up its waters even now. Many, many boats.”
A strange look came upon the young warrior’s face, and Ayenwatha recognized it as a look of fascination. The warrior looked almost giddy, and his eyes gleamed with excitement.
“What is it? What holds your tongue?” Ayenwatha urged the young man, impatiently.
The warrior paused a moment, taking a deep breath before replying. “There are also many Midragardan warriors riding Fenraren, coming through the skies. But that is not all. It is said that there are even several wolf-skins, and a bear-shirt or two, among those arriving on the longships … Wolf-skins and bear-shirts … here in our lands, answering our call!”
The look of wonder had grown further upon the young warrior’s face as he related the last words regarding the legendary wolf-skins and bear-shirts of Midragard. Ayenwatha’s own eyes grew wider as he listened to the news, as even more hope welled up within him.
“And it is true that our friends of Midragard have sent a force upon sky steeds?”
The warrior nodded again, looking pleased to see the optimism reflected in the face of the heralded war sachem. “Yes, Ayenwatha. Of this there is no doubt. A good number of riders on Fenraren cross our skies.”
Ayenwatha glanced over towards Hawk Eyes, to see his brother grinning broadly by his side. The shining smile on Hawk Eyes’ face, displayed on a hardened visage painted half black and half red, looked almost surreal.