Hope and Darkness

Chapter 10

The leader of the shadowy group, William from the Church of Hope, that had eliminated the 3 archers sent to hit the palisade’s flank stared down at the crowd of people outside the palisade. It was pretty easy to distinguish who was who, as all of the black soldiers were dressed in, well, black. What he found puzzling was that there was a rag-tag bunch of people on the black soldier’s right flank. They seemed to be fighting against the black soldiers, except there was no visible way to get to that area except jumping over a ditch with a series of pikes thrust in it, and before that climbing over a wooden wall with sharp pointed ends. “Should we move, sir?” a young soldier asked. William held up his hand for silence, and then surveyed the battleground. There was no point wondering, only that they were there now. He pointed to a clump of trees. “Archers and crossbows set up there, and infantry with me. Let’s move people!” Instantly the dozen or so archers and crossbowmen set off at a rapid pace. The crossbows had already loaded and the quivers of the archers were packed, and also some of the infantry carried extra quivers for them. The infantry moved into a column, two abreast, and some of the soldiers were already removing throwing spears from their quivers, miming throwing the missiles. “GO!” William shouted, and then launched into a war cry. He led the right hand column and knew every man’s name in the group. “Jacob! I want you upfront with your axe. Stuart! Use your round shield to protect him from flanking attacks. You too, Jack.” The three men he had singled out charged up to the front of the column. Jacob was a massive man, with an imposing presence. His axe was no different. He smiled at the thought of the terror the little blackies would feel when they saw him charging toward them. He finally passed the final bush that led to the clearing, and brought his axe over his head. “HOPE! He screamed. Those around him grinned at the pun.

The battalion commander of the black soldiers was nervous. His men weren’t crack troops, but most of them had been in the fight with a mountain bandit and a forest bandit village. Two fights. He knew that fighting against real soldiers was very different to slaughtering harmless villagers, so he’d thought nothing of it when the high commander of the church of darkness (the commander had always thought that such a long title was useless) had ordered him to destroy another village. The only thing that was different was that the high commander had sent an observer and some crack troops to accompany him. Even that hadn’t stopped his bad feeling that something was wrong. Now, by his estimates, at least two companies of 100 men had been killed. His flanking squad of 3 men to pick off the village leaders had failed to appear, and it seemed that the peasants weren’t interested at throwing down their weapons and pleading for mercy. The observer spoke a word to one of his companions, and then walked to the battalion commander. “Sir, I would like your permission to lead my men on an attack as reinforcements.” The commander looked at the eager observer and grimaced. 2 dozen men weren’t going to make a difference, but he waved a hand weakly in the direction of the village. “Go.”