A Warrior's Legacy (13 page)

Lohan couldn’t contain himself anymore,
“How?” He burst out excitedly.

General Lasho looked at Lohan disapprovingly
for his sudden outburst, but he too looked excited to hear the
plan.

“I’ll need all twenty thousand cavalry
General, by tomorrow night.”

“It will be done, but how do we take one of
their cities with nothing but cavalry?”

“The element of surprise General. We’ll do
what they least expect us to do. Tomorrow night we will head out
towards the Dark Forest. We’ll camp in the ruins of Lancosa by day
and stay out of sight, which shouldn’t be hard as no one goes
there. As night falls we will enter the forest. We will ride all
night and all the next day and by that day’s evening we should be
at the edge of the forest and only a few hours ride from
Boratasa.”

I looked up to see that they were all
watching me spellbound by my words.

“Then what?” The General asked
excitedly.

“We’ll rest for a little while and then head
for the city. We’ll come through these gates here in their outer
wall. While I was there I had the chance to notice that they don’t
even bother closing those gates at night. We will split up and
charge our way through the city to the other side, once there we
will set the city on fire and make our way back out the way we came
forcing the fleeing panicked residents of the city out before us.
In their panic they will no doubt head for the open fields and the
dark forest beyond, where they will fall prey to the brutes, who no
doubt will be gathered in greater numbers because of tracking us in
the night through their forest. We’ll use the diversion caused by
the brutes feeding frenzy to slip past the West’s defensive forts
on the plain and head for home. Then you tell me what happens
General.”

I looked up at him expectantly.

He glanced from me to the map, “They’ll be
madder than a wet hen! They’ll mobilize everything they’ve got to
destroy us once and for all!”

“How long will that take them General?”

“At least two weeks if they do it right and
then it will be another two weeks before they have a complete siege
set up.”

I nodded and said, “This is what I want you
to do General. When we arrive back at the city I want you to start
preparing the city for besiegement. I also want you to build
shelters and accommodations that would house and care for the needs
of twenty thousand additional troops. That’s right we’re going to
make their spies believe that the Northern Kingdom has thrown their
lot in with us in the defense of the city. It will make sense to
them that we should seek help because of the numbers between our
two armies being so insignificant to theirs. Going along with that
idea General I want you to send every available ship we have
northward empty to carry through with the illusion. Captain Sargas
your two ships will accompany the others on the voyage north. When
you’re out of sight circle back, but stay at sea until after the
siege has begun then come back. They will commit all the harder to
the siege thinking that they have the opportunity to destroy two
kingdoms in one fell blow. You must hold them at bay General Lasho,
until I arrive with help.”

“The Northern cavalry behind enemy lines!
But how will you convince them to come and then how will you
maintain a surprise attack to the enemy’s rear?”

“The burning and destruction of Boratasa
should be enough to convince the Northern Kingdom of our
seriousness and this plan should give them the opportunity they’ve
been waiting for to fulfill their revenge. We will come by night
down the mountain passes, through the very pass their Northern army
was massacred in years ago. No one would ever expect the Northern
army to tread on that ground again and beyond that they would not
expect us to go so near to the sorcerer’s castle, which is why it’s
the perfect route for us to take. We will come up on the enemy from
behind and take them by surprise. When the surprise attack has
begun I need every able-bodied warrior to spill out of the city and
attack the enemy from the front.”

The General looked at me, “What if the
Northerners choose not to come to our aid?”

“You still have your battle and an honorable
way for your people to die.”

He nodded his head, “I will see that all is
made ready. It is I think a good plan and one that might work, but
if it doesn’t I thank you for the opportunity and hope that it has
inspired anyway.”

He left to prepare the troops I had
requested of him in an impossibly short amount of time.

Gavin asked me, “Do you really think your
plan has a chance at working Zevin?”

“It might if you do what you’re good
at.”

“And what’s that?”

“Pray Gavin! Pray like you never have
before!” I said slapping him on the back and walking out of the
room, as Lohan and the others followed.

Gavin looked over at Zalisha with a worried
expression on his face and was surprised to see Zalisha smiling
serenely back at him.

“You don’t seem concerned about this
plan.”

“No.”

“You don’t mind me asking why that is do
you?”

She looked into his eyes deeply, “Do you
really think that our Creator would bring you so far to reach my
people in order to save us and show us the way to our eternal
destination only to forsake us to our enemies before it can be
accomplished? I do not think so!”

Gavin smiled feeling the slight reproof of
her words in his soul as at the same time he felt his faith built
up by his wife in a moment when his had been low.

“Well then shall we pray together over the
likely success of the Creator’s plan for our people?”

Zalisha stepped up to Gavin, “Yes, and then
maybe something else?” She finished seductively.

Gavin huskily responded, “You can count on
it!”

The night was cool and silent with only the
jangle of harness and the rustling of woolen cloaks to mark the
passage of the long unbroken line of horsemen exiting the city’s
less populated south gate. When they were through the big doors,
the doors creaked shut, as the silent convoy of horsemen
disappeared into the darkness of the night.

Night sentry watchmen prayed to the God of
their new found faith for the safety of their brothers and sisters,
who were embarking on a mission that most saw as a death sentence.
To enter the Dark Forest at night was an untold act of either
bravery or stupidity, but the master of the army was to be followed
wherever he went, even if it was to death’s door.

I peered over the top of the broken down
wall of what had once been someone’s house. Looking out into the
forest that had creeped its way up to the edge of the deserted city
I felt a chill of apprehension for what lay ahead.

The forest was busy in the process of
reclaiming the city grounds back into its forest lands, even now
trees were rising up all throughout the deserted city.

“Zevin?”

I looked around to see Holon standing there.
He indicated a large group of warriors standing within the confines
of the old broken down house. I’d asked for all of the company
commanders to be in attendance at this meeting before we headed
into the forest.

I approached the group as the shadows began
to get noticeably darker around us. In the forest it would already
be as dark as night and at night it would be pitch black. I glanced
at the faces of my commanders. Most of them were older than me, but
that was nothing new in my life.

“I know you all have extreme reservations
about this mission and in particular entering this forest, even
though you haven’t spoken them. I don’t blame you for your thoughts
of apprehension, but I expect you to do your best and commit to the
mission fully or what little chance of success this mission has
will be entirely lost!”

I paused for effect studying them. They were
a hard people to read, but I think I had gotten through to
them.

“When we enter this forest we are not
stopping! If we are attacked we do not stop! If a horse goes down
the rider gets pulled up behind another rider or left behind. If a
large body of the brutes attacks we keep going on, pushing through
the attack. We do not stop for any reason! Am I understood clearly
on this?”

All of them nodded stoically.

“Sazen.”

I addressed a woman warrioress, who looked
to be in her late 30s.

“Yes Sir?” She said respectfully, while she
herself was held in nothing but respect by all the others.

She had led more successful missions than
anyone else into the Dark Forest for the precious roots that
everyone else needed to remain sane.

“You are to have your archer brigade spaced
intermittently all along the whole column. The soldiers riding
between your archers on the outside of the column will carry
torches to help light up the forest. Your archers are to put an
arrow into anything that moves or any flash of eyes you see in the
castoff light. Tell them not to worry about sparing their arrows.
We have no use for extra arrows when we reach Boratasa, if we do
not reach it at all. Understood?”

“Yes Sir!” She said firmly.

“You will be in the front with me. Make sure
that you have a few alternates with you at the front who know the
way in case you should be lost to the brutes or through some other
injury.”

She nodded approvingly being herself a very
pragmatic woman.

“You all have your orders see that they are
relayed to the rest of the warriors. We leave within the hour.”

They lifted their fists to me abruptly and
then they were off to their individual commands within the cavalry
brigade.

The soldiers may be dreading this, but what
they probably didn’t know was that I was dreading this part of the
mission as badly as they were. Who in their right mind wanted to go
knocking about in a pitch black gloomy wet forest at night?
Especially one that had brutish humans roaming through it that now
lived only to feed upon their own kind.

I felt a headache forming in the back of my
head. It had to be something about this place! It completely stole
my peace.

Sazen rode by my side torch in hand, as we
plunged into the darkness of the forest. There had once been roads
through the forest in friendlier times and it was these forgotten
and overgrown byways that Sazen was leading us down.

She must have the vision of an owl to see
where we were going in the dark at the pace we were moving at. The
column of riders was four wide and trailed out behind me through
the forest like a brightly banded snake, as torches blared forth
giving their light into the inky darkness of the forest.

It was easy to let a sense of dread close in
around one’s soul, because that was what the forest had become, a
dreadful place filled with darkness.

We’d been making our way through the forest
for several hours now without mishap, but the horses were growing
unsettled and only the fast pace of the column and their training
as creatures of war kept them from baulking and falling out of the
line. Any mounted warrior knows to trust the senses of their mounts
for any hint of danger, as they would sense it before any human
sense could pick up on the danger.

The beasts were near. I heard the sharp
twang of a bowstring and the resulting smack of an arrow into
flesh, involuntarily followed by a choked off roar of pain. More
arrows were shot out into the darkness at shadowy fast moving
targets or the flash of a pair of eyes in the brush. Muted roars
could be heard following the arrow strikes followed by the sound of
thrashing in the brush and then the sound of flesh being ripped
apart.

The sounds were unnerving, when encapsulated
with the darkness of the forest and the knowledge of exactly what
was happening.

A horse went down back along the column
squealing in fright, as it was hauled into the brush by unseen
hands. Its frightened rider was snatched up by a passing
warrior.

An arrow silenced the horse’s screams, as no
Easterner liked to see a horse in pain, as they respected and cared
for them too much to see them suffer needlessly.

Through it all we kept moving steadily
through the forest. Our swift moving column seemed to puzzle the
brutes as to how to stop us to get more food. Sort of like how a
swift moving shoal of fish moving together in unison confuses a
predator in the sea.

Light again began to trickle into the forest
and it was with relief, as we picked off the brutes more easily and
kept them farther back from our column. The day wore on and our
horses grew tired, as were we from the constant vigil of looking
out for the beasts and just the act of being within the oppressive
forest environment.

The shadowy forest became dark again and our
torches flared up once more, but we saw nothing of the brutes.

Where were they?

Had they given up having satiated themselves
on their fallen number and the few horses they had managed to pull
out of the column? I doubted it, but I hoped so.

We were fast approaching a particularly old
growth section of trees ahead of us according to Sazen. Once
through that we should be out of the heaviest growth of this
accursed forest and within an hour we would be back out on the open
plains.

We rode through the massive trunks of the
old growth forest. It wasn’t as cluttered with undergrowth here as
it had been in the rest of the forest due to the even more intense
shade cast off by these giants of the forest we rode under. Up
ahead I could see the end of the growth of the big trees giving way
to a brief spattering of smaller trees, with even a few stars
filtering through gaps in the canopy.

I was so focused on the fragments of bare
sky up ahead that I jumped slightly as Sazen shook my arm sharply.
I glanced at her and saw her eyes were wide with horror, which
horrified me because I knew it would take a lot to scare her.