Weekly Short Story

"The Fields of Dran" by E.S. Hudler (continued from the newsletter)

"We were ambushed yesterday, at the point where the valley narrows between the river and the mountains." Though he was wounded, the invoker officer refused care until after he had reported. "When I left the fields, the ones in front of the Ragnall Pass, the defending forces there feared being overrun at any moment. Hundreds of Ragnall scouts are coming through the forested part of the mountain range. Every night Ragnall roam from one side of the pass to another. They seem to be searching for something. Every night, vast ranks of Ragnall try to get into the fight. They move to flank the defenders at Ragnall Pass. The city has gathered forces numbering fifteen thousand men. They have many northern Giants with them. The defenders of Dran are facing an estimated force of one hundred fifty thousand Ragnall."

"What!?" screamed Thandor. "That’s impossible! Ragnall have never attacked in anything like those numbers!"

The invoker scout continued, "All agree, this is like nothing anyone has ever seen before. It is as if the filthy Ragnall nation has been lifted like a rug, spilling the entire Ragnall population onto your doorstep, onto the Fields of Dran." He paused to swallow and to recover the courage his report had lost to him.

"These Ragnall are different!" The rider shouted to make his point.

"There is an Astori leading them! He is said to be like the one at D’While, but of the utmost high rank! Thandor, your Fieldguard are among the defenders plugging up the Ragnall Pass! I am sorry, sir, but they WILL be forced back! I have seen the fighting! It doesn’t cease! The Ragnall attack at night, all night, and all the next day! They attack over the piled bodies of their own dead and dying! They attack and attack and attack!" The officer fell from his saddle, exhausted. Strifus grabbed a fistful of the man’s tunic before the exhausted man hit the ground.

"Brother fighter!" Strifus hissed. Strifus dismounted. He gently lowered the unconscious rider to the grass.

Strifus spoke up toward Thandor, who was still mounted upon the white stallion Traveler. Strifus spoke through clenched teeth. "We’ll be too late! After all that's been done are we going to get there too late?" He shook his head in a slow denial of his own dark question.

"No! They will not have my city! They have defiled enough! We will march through the night and fight without sleep, but we’ll not quit!" Thandor's fist shook with fierce intent.

Thandor’s words reached into the bruised soul of Strifus. With a strength that had been lost, the invoker regained his battle fever. "My men will lead us through the swamps with made light!" Strifus pledged, "The others will follow with torches! You are right, Thandor! We cannot let happen to Dran what happened to D’While! I care not that another king of Hell is waiting for us. We will not let it happen again!" What happened that night was a form of heroism not often sung of in songs. Man and Dwarf, hard pushed already, reached inside themselves and found more. Every well, however, has a bottom. They worked until they fell into the muck, where their fellows picked them up and carried them on their backs. All night they fought the land, knowing that they were hacking their way to certain death. Moving faster than a sane man would move on sunlit day on dry land, they passed through darkness, through snake-infested swamp, at night.

By the next morning, all were exhausted. Strifus was afoot beside Thandor. The men's mounts didn't wander. Those animals were war horses and stayed nearby. Strifus spoke the morning's first words. "It is a hard thing to ask a man to fight and die after working like this."

Strifus frowned. There was pain behind his eyes. The invoker looked at Thandor. "It won’t get any easier, will it Thandor? It never seems to." "No, my friend. The longer you live, the more you realize the value of life. It is never easy to ask a man to forfeit his life. Thank the gods that it is not easy, for the world would be a horrible place indeed if death was a small thing. Strifus, it is the struggle, not the victory, that counts."

Upon the newly laid corduroy road, a rider in red surrounded by a scout guard of invokers rode into sight.

"Thandor!" said the man in red, "I can hardly believe that it’s you! We had heard you were coming, but few believed it! All hope for help had long since died!"

The lieutenant was the same man that Thandor had left in the Castle Dran so many days ago. Thandor smiled despite his urgent concern, despite his immediate need of news. The smile went away.

"Report!" Thandor said.

"Sir, we have begun a retreat from Ragnall Pass! We are being pushed back to the banks of the river Drew! Tens of thousands of the enemy move boats toward the water! There is something else being moved onto the fields, some huge device of war. The enemy fight and die as if their deaths were a feather. The Landguard have drawn a final line at the river. The Ragnall will have to cross over us to get to Dran!"

"Damn it! I hoped that by the full of morning we would have been on the field ourselves!" Thandor stared into the distance as if it was the enemy too.

"You are there, sir! It is mid-morning now! Day has yet to come! The Ragnall Astori-General has blotted out the light of day! Your forward scouts stand on the fields before the Ragnall Pass! If you could attack the enemy's flank and stem their flow into the fields..." He ended his report with this pause. "There are so many of them, sir."

"Rosie!" Thandor called to the woman that led the Dwarven army. She had been nearby. "Close the distance to the Ragnall Pass! Take Strifus and the invoker cavalry with you. They will shock the Ragnall line and you will pass through the break! Strifus! Charge! I ride to the defense of the river and city. My men await me!"

"Go, Thandor," said Rosie. "After death, be us in heaven or hell, we will rule there together, you and I!"

"Strifus! Fight the good fight! I go now, blood brother!" Traveler leapt forward. Thandor leaned into the ride. Horse and rider blistered the dark morning day with their speed.

All the armies had moved into the field. They fought a bloody fight at the mouth of the Ragnall Pass. Strifus held good ground, up slope from the pass. Rosie was at his side. She looked into the valley and saw thousands of glimmering torches in the hands of Ragnall. Edwin, Destiny and Dercy stayed on the heights above the fields with a hundred invokers. Their foothill high ground sloped down to dip a toe into the waters of the river Drew.

An angry, red sun shone through the blackened sky. Smoke from a thousand fires, billowing and thick, blocked the warmth from above. Light was being blotted out. Darkness and death combined to make the Fields of Dran an unspeakably offensive sight.

The invoker cavalry, having evoked their fighting forms, sliced into the flank of the Ragnall. Marines of Onserf and Dwarves of Clanggedin fought their way across the enemy horde. They split the Ragnall mass like a wedge splits firewood. The defenders turned and hammered at the Ragnall's opposite flank. The bottleneck of Ragnall Pass was squeezed in a pincer movement. Nonetheless, countless tens of thousands of the enemy had already moved onto the field and were advancing toward the river. The Ragnall were hopelessly outclassed in martial skills. The human and Dwarven armies were hopelessly outnumbered. The result was a bloodbath. As a killing madness overcame both sides, each took their savage toll in its own way. No matter how many Ragnall died, and thousands died, the enemy showed no fear. They attacked, and attacked, and attacked. When five Ragnall fell, ten more marched over the dead to replace them. Invokers cast fire into the Ragnall ranks. Invokers scythed the enemy down with their scimitars, or simply led their mounts to stomp the enemy underfoot. Ragnall died in dozens, hundreds and thousands, and still their ranks swelled.

This was the Ragnall Pass. Somewhere under the still warm and twitching bodies of the newly dead lay the cold, lifeless dead of the previous night’s fight.

Defenders failed to staunch the bleeding into the open fields. To this swelling dirge of death, a song for the dying was added. The death of countless Landguard, northern Giants, common soldiers and citizens of the city added a melancholy refrain to the dirge. The casualties among the ranks of invokers, dwarves and Onserf's marines mounted.

Caring not of the force that made to divide the Ragnall horde, that enemy did not turn to fight the new threat. Ragnall seemed not to care that their numbers were being divided. With myopic intent, the isolated Ragnall marched for the river Drew. The Ragnall only cared for what was ahead.

Invokers on horseback, used to the open field battles of the deserts of Eue, found themselves in an ocean of Ragnall. They cut through the enemy like a knife through summer melon. Yet no sooner had they cut that line than their own line was bowed back by the pressure of the enemy forces trying to get into the valley and onto the river.

Dwarves charged into the hole cut open by invoker cavalry. Dwarven hammers beat against the pressing Ragnall. Crossbows on both sides, meant to be fired across a great distance, were discharged at point-blank range. Fierce dwarves were hit numerous times by the black bolts of Ragnall weapons. Several dwarfs sprouted an absurd numbers of the bolts, but they fought on. In one bloody example of the fighting, a marine died after taking five Ragnall to the ground with him. In another, a Dwarf died when a Ragnall ran a sword into the dwarf's chest. The dwarf denied the Ragnall the return of its sword when the dwarf gripped the hilt of the blade as he died. Even in death he would not let go. Such as this went on until there were no more marines, and no more dwarves. There were only countless legions of Ragnall. The enemy pushed stubbornly forward through the pass.

Finally, the pincer attack divided the Ragnall. The dwarves, the marines of Onserf and the invoker cavalry pinched in from one flank. The defenders of the city, the northern giants and the Landguard pinched in from the other flank. Together they had stopped the enemy army from going through Ragnall Pass and into the valley, the Fields of Dran. Those Ragnall already on the field were fully divided from those trying to attain the field.

No time for glory. All defenders turned to face the tidal wave of Ragnall boiling over in front of them. The city's hope was a thin line, perhaps three fighters deep. The bleeding of attackers into the valley had been stopped. The defender's line bent in. It thinned. Ragnall pushed and fought with a maddening calm, caring not if they died. They moved forward, always forward. Ragnall reserves were thrown in. There was a power behind the Ragnall, but no one knew what that power was. Invokers fought until their magic was gone. Marines fought until their strength was gone. Dwarves fought until their hope was gone. When the magic, and the strength, and the hope was gone, the line was destroyed, and the Ragnall once again poured onto the Fields of Dran.

 

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