Rot and Rise, CHAPTER FIVE : IRON ON IRON

CHAPTER FIVE : IRON ON IRON

Multi-coloured fields and planes spanned across many hills. What before I could only see through windows in the Great Wall or atop my nest of the roof, I could see with just a turn of my head.

I looked upward. In my time inside the Great Wall, I would often look up to see the various birds flying overhead. Owls. Crows. Eagles. Now, as I looked up, I saw ravens and many curiously coloured birds swooping close to the ground. So close, in fact, that they could have touched the ground with their beaks had they nodded their heads.

I found that the land outside Hillcrest was not as warm as inside my beautiful town.

As I marched alongside the column of Soldiers just behind Knight Lev Moonbane, I noticed that while the reeds outside my home were green-yellow, the ones around me were a pale, sick white. The only fertile plants there were, were being ravaged by ravens. It was not beautiful. It was a wasteland. But there was something liberating about having my face brushed by the same wind that flew over the lands of the Vai Kings, over Stargorod, over many a plane.

The way the Soldiers marched took me some time to adjust to and learn to imitate. Their right legs went up in grand gestures while their left legs clipped up afterwards.

I felt honoured to be able to march at the side of a Knight. His indigo cape billowed behind him like a flag billows upon a great pole looming about a city or army.

His armour gleamed, catching the daylight so that he looked like like a piece of night itself torn out and mixed in with the light of the day. His sword stretched out like the beak of a crow.

After a few hours of such marching, I began to tire. I was used to standing in the field all day, working the bushes and crops. I was not used to running after an army.

Fortunately, I would not have to go on panting and sweating for long.

We came upon a wilderness of bushes. Lev Moonbane ordered that we push through it. So we did. The many twigs and thorns ripped at my plain tunic and trousers, tearing the fabric, scratching the skin open, leaving bleeding cuts. I gritted my teeth and pushed on ahead of the troop, following my Knight.

As the bushes began to clear, Knight Lev Moonbane ordered that we should stop by putting out his right hand. He lowered it slowly, so we all crouched down.

Peering out from the bushes, we could see a hill. Atop the hill, like a wreath upon a bold head. But the wreath would be made of wicked, crooked thorns.

The Tsereg Horde moved around a lot. They lived off the land. Naturally, they left behind no solid architecture. They moved with mobile tents that could be laid out into homes, armouries, kitchens, gathering rooms, and workstations.

We couldn't make out how many tents or Tseregs there were, for they too had a wall protecting them. It wasn't much of a wall though. Not like that of Hillcrest. It was a wooden fence made of tree trunks with sharpened ends. Atop that wall, Tseregs manned the defences.

Archers clad in furs and leathers looked out with distant eyes at the horizon, looking out for any threat. My blood chilled as I shrunk back into the shadows of the bushes, thinking that these beasts could see the very movement of mice through grass, every feather falling off an overhead eagle.

Lev Moonbane turned his head. There, in the bushes, at the very tip of his troop sat the Knight, sat his most trusted men, and sat I.

"My Sire, what is the plan of attack?" I asked, keeping my voice a quiet whisper.

"My men! Cowards do not win wars! We, brave men of iron, do!" came the Knight's reply. He spoke with excitement, his baritone voice carrying might and the promise of glory.