Brothers of Osa

The Tragedy of Lefhalas and Ellisdur

Chapter 1

A valley in northern Edrite is busy with the movement of branches.  The sun caps the eastern hills and pushes around the stagnant night air, which has settled in a cold bath of fog and in communities of drops between branches.  Bees lightly cover flowering landscape: a nimbus of soft greenery.  Footman Wedge is on duty in an isolated guard tower, forty feet high placed on the pinnacle of a clear cut hill.  At the bottom is a small fort of timber.

Wedge faces away from the fort into the wildness lazily watching the bees.  He has never seen them before, his shift is usually long completed before the sunrays awaken them.  Today his relief is late recovering from a hangover and so Wedge gets to appreciate this newly discovered business.  

Near the ground Vicks has both hands on the ladder but removes them.  He then puts a hand onto the ladder.  He removes his hand from the ladder.  He puts his boot on the ladder and then he takes his foot off the step.  Then back on.  He groans, holds his breath.  Wedge is giggling with excitement, the bees captivating his attentions he takes no notice of his relief's arrival.  Vicks reaches the top, “Is my armor on straight?”

Wedge glances back, “Nope.  Laces.”

Vicks checks each set of cord laces under his armpits, “And my boots?”

“Untied.”

“Oh... right,” Vicks sorts out his uniform and then screws together the three shafts of his spear.  “Okay.  I’m ready.  Get outta here.”

Wedge disengages from the landscape and gets his first full look at Vicks.  “You get in a fight?”

“No.”

Wedge walks past, climbs on the ladder, and on the third rung down, “You get drunk and black out?”

“Shut up.  I spent the whole night with Duana.”  Vicks reinforces his posture and proudly, officially admits to his vigil.

“That’s terrible.” Wedge descends.

“Wha—?” Vicks looks back over his right shoulder.

Wedge is not seen.  “It’s terrible that you don’t remember.”  

“Oh.” Vicks sees the bees and the rough motion of the green flood.  He lowers his sights and scowls, “Right.”

Vicks notices motion at the base of the hill apart from the wind’s torment.  It stops abruptly.  Vicks leans over the rail and sees someone slipping through the brambles below, metal catches the new sunlight.  The glimmering intruder jumps closer.  Vicks reacts instinctually to the aggressive movement and steps backwards.  The blurred shaft of a whistling arrow passes  through his previous location and is forgotten high above.

“What’s going on?”  Wedge looks up after Vicks’ fall onto the planks of the tower nest.

“Arrow!”

Wedge pans the environment, “Arrow?” A bolt jets at his face between the web of tower poles and supports, “Arrow!”  Wedge ducks his head and the arrow breaks on his thick and heavy helmet.  His head picks up velocity leading his body in a dive off the ladder.  He recovers with his sweaty palms flailing and thirsty for safety.  Wedge slides down the ladder rails, hits the ground, his feet sting and he sprints down the hill.  Vicks is close behind.

They meet at the closed gate of the fort, two doors of rafted spiked logs.  Wedge pulls, they open slowly, and seconds later he squeaks through with Vicks pushing at him with the blunt end of his spear.  Vicks catches two arrows in his back.  He falls over, his upper torso secure inside the fort.  Wedge grabs his outstretched fingers and slides his comrade through the gates.

“Did they go through?”  Wedge’s hands hover over the two arrows.

“Don’t touch them.  Shut the gate!”  Vicks rolls off his belly onto his side and Wedge pushes back on the gates.  Just as they are shut a weight batters them open again.  An armored soldier, masked in metal, charges into the ward.  He is screaming unintelligibly.

A fellow soldier Gery shoots an arrow from his short bow and it pegs into the intruder’s hip.  He reloads and fires a double volley, both impact into the chest.  The intruder melts and gasps sways and collapses directly in the three foot crack in the main gate.  Wedge salutes his friend, pulls the dying soldier from the doorway, and shuts and latches the gate.  The scene is quiet for a moment but heavy bludgeoning soon bombards the wooden plank latch.  Vicks groans and Wedge returns his attention to his wounded comrade.  Gery sets his bow down on the dust path next to Vicks and together they help him up.

Wedge speaks over Vicks to Gery, “Is he going to die?”

“Wedge, if you don’t shut up—The arrows aren’t too deep.  Leave me here and go defend the wall. Defend the wall!”  Vicks pushes both soldiers away harshly.  They speed to the parameter.  Vicks crawls across the ground toward the only building inside the wall and lies his shoulder against the barracks.  Whole messes of soldiers half dressed explode out of the building.

“What’s going on?”

“Are we being attacked?”

“Vicks?!?  You have two arrows in your back!”

“I know.  To the wall!  Get your asses to the wall!”

Meanwhile a dozen warriors in heavy armor carrying rope, ladders, and an assortment of brutal iron armaments assault the front wall just as another company approaches scream in from the west.  Gery and Wedge have armed themselves with bows but have fired every arrow in their quivers.  Wedge reaches over the front of the parapet and pulls several enemy arrows from between planks and tosses them on the deck.  Gery scrambles for the pile and releases them into the mob.  The awakened soldiers from the barracks arrive to the scene.  The veterans move with mechanic precision maintaining a surpressing fire while the odds and reality of the situation shakes the constitution of the younger defenders.  Victory is not a possible outcome.  In their eyes a life span of infinite horizons has landed at their feet.

On the hillside a catapult has been set up and tied down.  Next to the light siege weapon is a line of archers.  A soldier out of armor runs in front of them lighting black tipped arrows with a torch.  The footmen are laying ladders onto the wall, all of which are pitifully short but they stack onto each other’s shoulders and they claw nearer the lip of the fort with every added body.  The number of attackers doubles.  Higher up the hill a tree falls to be prepared into a battering ram.  

More defenders man the walls, more arrows are shot, and yet the onslaught gains speed.  Most of the missiles from the fort wall snap on the opponent’s heavy armor.  A couple of defenders named Stevano and Duana raise a net full of fused explosives up a winch to the walltop.  The defenders turn away form the front and reach for them as a line of flaming arrows hail down on them.  Wedge recovers a fiery arrow near his foot and lights his grenade.  He waits a few seconds, takes a moment and looks along the wall at his comrades.  All ready to volley.  Gery nods and they fling the bombs over the wall.  Dirt and smoke erupts.  Tiny grains of soil shower the scene.  Wedge looks over the wall with a bloodthirsty grin happy for revenge.  All he sees is a mess of flaming boulders catapulting toward him.

Elsewhere, Vicks has removed the shallow dug arrows out of his own back and wrapped his bare torso in a cotton wrap.  Numerous other scars lace his body which have trained him to tie a proper bandage.  Vicks has also acquired a bulky crossbow and a flask of whiskey.  He pulls on the flask as he limps up the ramp to the wall turret.  He sees the flaming boulders and spits a mouthful.  He recovers in a breath and races along the wall pushing a mess of white eyed soldiers out of the attack spread.  Some get to the feet and some are just tossed off the wall.  All are clear including Wedge as the boulders meet the row of timber.  Splinters and beams of wood shoot past the huddled mass of defenders.  Fire rolls and settles in the debris and smoke fills the compound.  A rush of screaming warriors cut through and cover every wall and building.  Most defenders dropped their weapons escaping the catapult explosion including the half full net of explosives which lies hidden in the flaming wreckage.  The attackers’ victory is faltered by a series of devastating explosions.

Vicks waves his crossbow, “To the back gate!  Everyone retreat!”