Authors: Stephen Zimmer
“There may be hope yet to keep our homelands,” Ayenwatha said to his brother.
“A force of sky steeds? Another force arriving on boats with bear-shirts and wolf-skins amongst them? There is a chance,” Hawk Eyes replied confidently. “Leave here now, and hurry to guide them in, before any more time is wasted. We will give the enemy reason to slow further.”
Ayenwatha smiled back at his brother, striding over to the riderless steed by the message-bearing warrior. Bracing his hands on the back of the creature, he displayed the limberness and strength within his body as he sprung up lightly to the back of the creature.
The messenger released the tether into Ayenwatha’s control, as he adjusted himself in his own saddle. Ayenwatha tugged on the reins of his Brega, and the two maneuvered their steeds to a place where they could launch themselves off the hill. Finding a short stretch of open ground, they spurred their steeds, which sprang into motion and bounded forward.
Once in the air, looking back, Ayenwatha could see that there were a number of enemy sky steeds far to the west. Many were flying low in altitude, but they were too far away to interfere with Ayenwatha’s travel.
With an icy stab of trepidation, Ayenwatha saw that off to the south were the enormous flying beasts that had served to level so many tribal villages. He could see the streams of heavy rocks falling from them; a black, deadly rain that he could only hope was falling upon emptied villages. From what he could tell, the winged titans looked to be heading north.
Even more troubling, the beasts had delved much deeper into the woodland realm, flying far away from the front lines of the invading forces on the ground. That recognition brought one baleful thought to the fore of Ayenwatha’s mind, and his heart sank as he fathomed their purpose; the Darroks were being used to target masses of people, and not villages. The staging areas for the tribal refugees would be disernable from the air, and highly vulnerable.
Dismay wiped away the enthusiastic burst that had gripped him only moments before. Not a thing could be done to slow or stop the Darroks, as there were not enough sky warriors of their own left to present any obstacle to the beasts. Ayenwatha hoped desperately that the report of approaching Midragardans upon sky steeds was indeed true, as that represented the only real chance to halt the deadly hail falling from the behemoth terrors.
Angered in helpless frustration, he guided his steed on a lower course, as the warrior behind him followed suit, steadying his path at a height a short distance above the tops of the trees. There, the forms of the two Onan were not set so starkly against the sky. At the very least, it would be a little harder to be discovered by enemy sky warriors. The pair of riders accelerated their pace as they continued forward, speeding on their way towards the Shimmering River.
*
Dragol
*
Dragol and a couple hundred Trogen warriors adhered strictly to their given orders, as the gigantic Darroks cruised uncontested through the skies over the Five Realms. Renewed bombardment with heavy stones had commenced, and there was ample evidence that they had struck their long-sought targets this time.
Loud cries and wails, and large numbers of tribal people scattering through the sporadic breaks in the forest’s dense ceiling below, indicated that the Trogens had uncovered one concentrated gathering of their enemies. The stones thudded amongst people this time, rather than the empty villages that they had encountered on their most recent foray.
The heavy tree cover allowed Trogen observers to only see flashes of movement, but it was very apparent that a considerable number of humans were fleeing in all directions below the Darroks. The falling stones crashed through the trees, breaking branches, and spreading chaos and death.
A few small squads of Trogens had already taken to the air upon their Harraks, leaving the backs of the Darroks that had ferried them eastward. They had been dispatched to loose arrows into the tree cover, wherever they saw any signs of significant movement. The archers were careful to keep their steeds high in elevation, positioned safely away from any chance of return arrow fire. Not even the unknown bowman back in Saxany would have had enough range to threaten the Trogen archers where they hovered.
Following orders, Dragol drew no satisfaction from the one-sided affair. He could not deceive himself, or soften the bile he felt building within him. There was absolutley no honor in such a manner of fighting. Something felt terribly wrong deep inside him, a matter of spirit, and not flesh.
He was still chafing with envy regarding the Trogens who were taking part in the invasion of Saxany. They were likely engaged in a truly honorable manner of fighting; warrior against warrior, face to face.
He and Tirok, as Trogen commanders, still remained on the backs of the Darroks, along with a few clusters of mounted warriors that were being held in reserve, just in case the enemy had any airborne surprises waiting to throw suddenly at them.
“We have the insects stirred up,” remarked Tirok, with some apparent disgust, as he looked out over the side of the wooden railing.
Dragol knew that Tirok was also miserable about the manner of war that they were engaged in. It was never the way of the Trogens to avoid facing an enemy blade to blade. The cold truth was that this form of war, levied from high in the sky against defenseless targets, was a coward’s war.
The only thing that had kept Tirok and Dragol from turning the Darroks about was the promise that, at the end of the war, many generations of torment and tragedy inflicted upon Trogen kind would finally be brought to an end. Yet even with that momentous bargain with the Unifier, set to secure the long-awaited help that was needed to overcome their terrible oppression, Dragol still felt very uneasy inside. He knew, without asking, that Tirok did as well.
Close by, a number of Trogens labored to offload a pile of moderately-sized rocks over the side of the Darrok. Each rock was fairly heavy, even for the considerable strength of a hale Trogen, lifting with both arms. The rocks had been selected for a strictly Trogen crew, as no human crew would have been able to maneuver the heavy missiles.
“Yes, they are moving about under the trees, but you and I know that nothing will come up to challenge us … they do not have the steeds to fight in the sky. Their warriors can only fight on the ground,” Dragol bitterly replied.
He knew that the limited number of Bregas left to the tribesmen would not be sacrificed futilely, trying to stop the formidable array of Darroks and Trogens. The tribesmen had already shown that they were warriors with the courage to embark upon a flight in the face of death, but they were not foolhardy. They would not carelessly throw their lives away, certainly not while they had their elderly, women, and young to guide forward.
“It is hard to say how the enemy warriors fare upon the ground. They may be overwhelmed, or they may put up a good fight. The attack is a powerful one,” Tirok replied, referencing the immense border attack that had been initiated, just shortly after the Darroks had taken to the skies.
The Darroks, with their numerous Trogen escorts, had been sent to the furthest edge of the attack to the south. They had begun their strike deep over the woods to the east, proceeding in a line that worked back up north. It was very difficult to observe what was happening within the woods, or to gain any insight regarding the fighting occurring further to the north.
“Do not worry yourself, Dragol. Very soon, you and I will be flying together in the skies over Saxany,” Tirok continued. “There are enough sky steeds in the Saxan ranks that we will be challenged blade to blade.”
“May your words come true, soon,” Dragol practically hissed, glaring in his frustration at the older commander whom he had such immense reverence for.
The chance to fight alongside one as honored among Trogens as Tirok did not come often. Dragol’s current predicament would be little different if he and Tirok were chained to the Darrok’s back. The effect was the same. He was held back from the Trogen way of war, and an opportunity to go into battle by the side of one as eminent as Tirok.
“Dragol, Tirok!” an insistent Trogen interrupted, with obvious urgency.
“What is it?” snapped Dragol, now engulfed in a black mood.
The Trogen, wide-eyed and excited, pointed out towards the horizon, off the right side of the Darrok. He shouted his words, as he directed their attentions. “Out there! Look! In the skies!”
Dragol and Tirok followed the insistent gestures of the Trogen warrior. To his great surprise, Dragol saw what appeared to be a dark cloud moving steadfastly towards them.
It was no cloud of the natural order, as the sky around them was very clear. In truth, the skies were largely devoid of cloud cover, all the way up to the heights that a Harrak could not reach. What little could be seen was snow white in hue.
“What is that? A cloud that moves towards us?” Tirok asked, as a grin started to spread across his face. He cast a knowing glance towards Dragol, as sparks erupted within his deepset eyes.
“I would guess a great number of sky steeds, Tirok,” Dragol observed, squinting towards the apparition to the east. “We must find out whose side they are on. They are still too far away to tell.”
His hopes for redemption from the current, loathsome way of conducting a war were rising.
“Are there any more Harraks in this area? And why would they come from the east?” Tirok asked.
“Are we to be allowed an honorable fight at last?” Dragol offered, giving voice to his escalating hopes.
Tirok cried out, with no hesitation, “To the skies, Dragol! All forces, to the skies!”
The two Trogen commanders hurriedly issued directives that were conveyed by horn signal to the mounted Trogens upon all the Darroks to take to the skies. The short blasts were a welcome music to Dragol, and the orders were disseminated quickly along the backs of every Darrok. Within moments, several streams of Harraks were flying up into the air, taking positions above the huge creatures.
On the backs of the Darroks, most of the other Trogens stopped carrying the great rocks, or pushing them down the timber chutes from the carriages. They scrambled to grab up their longbows, readying quivers of arrows as they prepared for defense.
The sky warriors then converged together, gathering into one great mass. Dragol and Tirok hovered side by side in the air, set just in front of the assembling muster.
The Darroks were then guided away from the area by their handlers, who altered their courses sharply to the west and north. The shift placed the Trogen sky formation squarely before the unknown, oncoming force, in a perfect position to intercept them.
The two commanders were content to maintain the buffer zone between the Darroks and the approaching cloud of unidentified sky warriors. Dragol kept straining his eyes to ascertain the nature of the approaching riders, but the distance was still too great.
“And if what is in that cloud outnumbers us greatly?” Tirok asked.
“Then we should fly closer to the Darroks, and draw the attackers in, to where our warriors on the platforms can loose arrows at them,” Dragol suggested.
Like Tirok, he could discern how the Trogens could be split and engulfed if the enemy numbers were overwhelming. Still, he far preferred such a concern over what he had been forced to endure while idle on the back of the Darroks.
“We must protect the Darroks, at all cost. Those are the orders,” Tirok reiterated.
Tirok echoed the primacy among the commands that had been delivered to the Trogens just at the onset of daybreak, while the sky warriors were busy double-checking the harnessing on their steeds. The priorities had been made perfectly clear, repeated to the point of irritation.
“That can be done best if we have the help of the archers on the backs of the Darroks, if the enemy numbers are too many for us to entangle here,” Dragol remarked. “The enemy will not be able to do much harm to the beasts, as long as we are also flying amongst them.”
Tirok grew silent, staring off at the swiftly approaching cloud, while he pondered Dragol’s suggestion.
“If the numbers look to be too great, then we will draw back,” Tirok replied firmly. “Until then, we will remain here, to give them a proper Trogen greeting.”
Dragol nodded as he sat back in his saddle, grasping the leather grip on the hilt of his Trogen longblade, sliding the weapon purposefully out of the scabbard. The smooth movement felt reassuring, and as the blade was freed he felt a surge of anticipation course through him. In his left hand, he took up the grip on his wooden shield, from where it had been resting on his back by the guige strap. He grasped the iron bar in the center, along with a segment of his Harrak’s reins.
Everything depended on the identity of the approaching sky steeds. Dragol was all but certain that they would be foes, but he still did not know what kind of warriors constituted their numbers, or what manner of weapons they wielded.
Shifting his full attention back to the nearing cloud, Dragol allowed the fires of anticipated battle to build up within him. They burned throughout his being, flaring up as all of his thoughts narrowed towards a singular focus on the impending combat.
Ahead, the dark cloud kept increasing in size, as it grew closer. Finally, individual shapes could vaguely be made out.
There was the faintest possibility that it was a contingent of Harrak-mounted Trogens that Dragol and Tirok had not been aware of, coming in to reinforce their efforts over the Five Realms. Further numbers would certainly increase the havoc that was being wreaked far behind the enemy lines, spreading it over a much wider area.
A few Trogens were now engaged in executing scouting duties over other areas of the battlefront, either alone or in pairs, but the overwhelming majority of available sky warriors had already been concentrated in the task of protecting the valuable Darroks. Dragol strongly doubted that there was even a shred of a chance that the incoming force would be Trogens.
The possibility that it was a horde of defenders from the Five Realms, mounted upon Bregas, also seemed quite unlikely. If there had been a large contingent of Bregas still available to the defenders, in numbers that could constitute any real threat to the Darrok juggernauts, then they would have long since made their presence felt. The tribal warriors had already demonstrated their mettle, and it was not lacking in any measure.