Power and Pride III: In Our Blood
#3 of Power and Pride
1.
The clatter of metals and the thud of flesh rained on his ears, fresh dew in the conflict from the southlands.
Around him dust fell in layers, a snow born of cannon fire and burning maegiks. The wolf dashed across the open stretch of field before him, feet crunching on once green grass. He dove into a trench yet wet with mud from the digging and not bloated by the bodies of the dead and the soon-to-leave. He crouched, armor padded knees, thighs, chests, and arms giving him difficulty hiding himself. He breathed in and out in measured takes; the words of his years dead master burnt in his mind: Do not panic do not run do not move do not breathe out your life, but take theirs if they force you to reaccount what I just told you.
The wolf snorted, listening to the world tear up at every side. The earth growled, the dirt beneath his pads shook and rocked in place. Sharp cracks and the noise of escaped air rent at the skies, the air just above him.
"Charge!" the cry echoed across the valley. Somewhere, out there, his father's voice. "Out of your pits, out of your blocks, soldiers! Go and die or show them what death is! For our land, for our families, for all our ways!"
The wolf took in a deep lungful of air. Bunched his muscles tight.
And burst from below earth, onto grass wet with early morning but on fire. "Come on, guards of Pangaea and the West , by me!" He waved his bastard sword in an arc above his head; the blade, cleaned this morning by his own hands, shimmered in the fingers of the sun that danced along it. The troops hustling in tunnels that weaved about the plains, labyrinthine in their nature and older than certain gods. "To me, to me!" He waved his sword again, and this time the motion and the way the light struck it made a burst of brilliant sun and fire. (Like maegik. Had he any more than his wits and common sense.)
His soldiers, his father's soldiers, erupted behind him, others from elsewhere on the field linking up with their force. Rushing to blood. "For Pangaea!" a panther growled, rattling his halberd. "For Lord Orphiel! For us all!" a stallion screamed, swinging his battle ax though the enemy before him waited two hundred yards out, his arms exploding in sinew and muscle. Over the battlefield, once, of course, a lane for lovers and riders, now a hell, the army of Westland Pangaea surged. To crush, to kill, to cut--and to find themselves peace.
2.
The plains, alight by nature's fiery ball, by columns of flame and towers of lighting crafted by mages on both sides, sounded with impending violence: the trample of hundreds of feet against dead grass, the dissonant song of metals (armor, against their fur; spears, swords, axes, halberds in paw), and the rising noise of voices.
Screaming.
******
Dainil, son of Orphiel, ran to meet his enemy. Legs pumping, left paw holding his bastard sword in a death grip, he went to die or to live another day. Fate's choice.
He felt the body of hundreds, the army of his people, move at his back just as he meet with a squad of Langaea Eastlands soldiers, wrapped in armor dyed midnight blue. Their blades and cutters in hand, they pressed into his forward pushing troops.
Close quarters fighting would end this war.
Thank the gods, Dainil thought as he met his first opponent, they had no archers.
Followed by: Yet...neither do we. They all coughed up their lives last battle.
******
In a circle of death formed by his soldiers and the enemy, Dainil burst. Twenty or no, he had a lifetime of experience in swordcraft and battle, violence and death. He let it pour out.
He let it flow over the enemy
He dropped to the ground, a saber singing past where his head stood seconds ago, his blade driving forward to lance into a half inch gap just under the enemy's armpit. His blade point plowed through fur and flesh, drilling out the fox's back above the spine; blood dripped onto the ground.
Dainil yanked back, putting a footpaw on the fox's stomach, and drew his sword free.
Not a second done with his first kill that day, he spun to throw his blade against that of a bear's claymore. The bear, a grizzly, let out a growl that almost rose above the din of battle, spittle falling from his muzzle, flames in his eyes. "I'll cut you a-fucking-part, runt. Then I'll fuck every whore female you have here." They pressed blades with all the force in their arms. "Don't open your mouth when you should be using that piece of steel first," Dainil hissed. The bear found his sword edging back, his arms in pain from the force that Dainil pressed with. Under his armor, the wolf's arms bulged with sheer strength built by a life of fighting; the bear's, built by birth but destroyed by drinking and sitting around, toppled under Dainil's power.
The bear's own blade was rammed back into his throat, slicing his throat open to drool red and slicing him from this life.
Dainil brought his blade to the next one, a fellow wolf. Gritting his teeth, he swung in a high arc to free the traitor's head from his body and to paint his own armor just a bit redder. He lunged towards a panther, slashed at his spear, and stepped out of the way of the return strike. He spun, the blade hitting his foe's knees. Tears flooding his eyes and groans flowing from his mouth, the feline hit the dirt, clawing at his broken legs. Dainil brought his foot down, cracking the panther's neck with a loud snap.
He turned to face more and more and more and more soldiers. His blade and body talked for him. He moved through the battle, eyes growing misted over by scarlet; his heart pumped and pumped; his breath went in and out unnoticed; he killed and he lived.
It is what he had been shaped to do.
******
Dainil, armor covered in blood and a dozen bodies later, grabbed a black fox by the neck, tugged his helmet off, and smashed his face to the ground. Breathing heavily, he barred his teeth and turned to kick the next enemy--only to find air and have his ears cut by the sound of a trumpet.
His father's voice rose as the sound of battle lowered to a murmur of those in a school hall. "Soldiers of Pangaea, we have won, as I had known we would. Soldiers of Langaea, you have lost, as you had known in your sleep but would never say in the open. Soldiers, it is time to go home. For the Pangaea, we shall march back to town, to our Oakridge, and we shall at last have peace. For the Langaea, what sadly few of you remain, you shall accompany us back, as prisoners, and work the land until our debt is paid for in full.
"Now, I've said enough. We are all tired and aching. We all hunger.
"Let us rest."
Chest heaving, eyes cloudy, Dainil stood in the middle of a field of corpses, waiting for the world to get back to him. Waiting to wake up, out of his death song. Knowing this place would never accept crops, wheat or otherwise, for a score of years, so choked was dirt and the dirt they had made into mud.
3.
When he at last, stumbling through the fog of forgotten wars, found his father alone on a tree stump, overlooking the field, he went up and hugged him. Glad. Living.