“Must be an urgent message to brave disrupting the column,” the captain said to no one in particular.
“If it’s not important,” the rider next to the captain chuckled, “he will find himself walking tomorrow. You can be sure that the colonel will hear earfuls about the rider at camp tonight. You just don’t disrupt a column, especially in hostile territory.”
Sudden shouts came from the riders far ahead of the captain, and he initially dismissed them as more complaints about the messenger, but he then realized that the shouts were more alarming than curses, and they were getting closer. The captain rose up on his stirrups and peered into the fog. He frowned as he saw men falling off their horses in the distance. He stared intently and focused his listening on the column ahead. The riders before him were falling off their horses like a wave flowing towards him, and the shouts were now recognized as cries of pain and surprise. And then he heard the telltale song of bow snaps.
The captain gave no conscious thought to his actions, but he instinctively dove off his horse and rolled into the forest as the bow snaps grew louder. He heard the surprised cries of pain from his comrades as the wave of death passed by, and he quickly crawled under the cover of a large bush. He peered out at the road as the sounds of cries diminished, the wave moving away towards the bridge they had crossed earlier.
At first, the captain saw nothing other than riderless horses milling about, but eventually he saw the attackers. He gasped softly as elves silently exited the forest and began checking the bodies of the soldiers. Judging from what he could see, there were very few survivors of the attack, but the elves spared none of them as they gathered the horses and led them away. The captain quaked with fear the whole time, and his body continued to shiver long after the elves were gone. Vowing to remain hidden until the rest of the column appeared, the captain waited for hours before realizing that the rest of the column was not following the vanguard. By that time, the fog had burned off, and the sun was high in the sky.
Captain Plaggor crawled out from under the bush and hesitantly made his way to the edge of the road. He looked in both directions and felt his stomach grumble. Whether the feeling was from hunger or disgust at the sight of all the bodies, he was not sure. The bodies littered the road as far as he could see in each direction, and none of them were stirring. Gathering as much courage as he could, the captain eased out of the forest and turned towards the bridge. He started walking.
As high sun approached, the captain heard the distant sounds of lumbermen. He eased towards the side of the road and slowed his pace, not wanting to stumble upon the elves. Eventually, the river came into view, and the captain realized the woodcutting was coming from the Federation camp. He breathed a sigh of relief and felt the tension drain from his body. He walked boldly down the center of the road, his relief visibly evident in the spring of his step. Unexpectedly, two men emerged from the trees on each side of the road, their swords drawn. Captain Plaggor grinned broadly at the men. They were riders of the 2nd Corps.
“Plaggor?” one of the men asked as he recognized the survivor. “Are there any others coming this way?”
The grin fell from the captain’s face, and he shook his head. “They are all dead,” he said sadly.
“You need to get across the river,” one of the men said to the captain as he pointed to a rope stretched across the river. “General Fortella will want to know what you have seen. Be careful. The logs are not very stable yet.”
The captain nodded and moved towards the riverbank. The Zarans had felled trees and shoved them into the river where they rested against the stone pillars that had supported the original bridge. A rope ran across the river directly above the logs, and the captain grasped it firmly before stepping onto the crude replacement bridge. He moved slowly, but the danger of the temporary bridge never registered in his mind. He was just thankful to be alive, and things that might have frightened him before no longer seemed so scary. Within a few minutes, the captain was across the river and was escorted to the large command tent. General Fortella waved him to a chair.
“I understand that you survived the attack,” opened the general. “Tell me what you know about it.”
The captain thought the general was asking him why he had survived while the others had died, and he felt compelled to lie.
“There was a messenger trying to speed his way through the column,” stated Captain Plaggor. “We bumped and I was thrown off my horse. That is the only reason that I survived the attack.”
“I sent the messenger,” a voice said from the side of the tent. “Where in the column were you, Captain?”
Captain Plaggor turned to see a colonel off to his side. “I was somewhere in the middle,” he answered.
“So the messenger never made it to the vanguard,” sighed the colonel.
“He did not make it far past me,” confirmed the captain. “I fell just as the attack reached my area of the column.”
“Reached your area of the column?” questioned the general. “What do you mean?”
“It was like a wave, General. I could hear the cries of surprise and pain rippling down the road towards me, but there was no time to react to it. The men never knew what hit them.”
“That would take thousands of archers for such an attack,” frowned the general. “Your column had to be over a half league in length. Has the whole Alcean army taken the field against us?”
“It wasn’t Alceans, General,” reported the captain. “It was elves.”
Chapter 33
Meeting the Enemy
General Mobami, governor of the province of Sordoa, sat on his horse atop a hill in the middle of the Coastal Highway between Caldar and Trekum. Next to him sat Sergeant Musaraf, his long and loyal confidant. Before them, the road rolled down the hillside, across a wide valley, and up another hill. The valley and the hills were treeless with grain fields that had only recently sprung to life. The two men sat motionless, waiting for the enemy to appear.
“I don’t like this plan,” complained Sergeant Musaraf. “These people are invaders. We shouldn’t expose ourselves until our swords are drawn, and even then the enemy should be caught unawares.”
“King Arik requires that we capture as many of the enemy as possible,” replied General Mobami. “That requires giving them a chance to surrender. Besides, I am loathe to commit my forces while another enemy army marches up from the south. We may yet be forced to flee from this army and defend the walls of Trekum.”
“That has never been the Sordoan way,” frowned the sergeant. “We are riders of the plains, not Targans who hide behind their walls.”
General Mobami smiled. “You have yet to lose the mentality of the old days. The Targans were never that predictable. We were just led to believe that they were. Perhaps that is why they bested us in every war.”
“How can you speak against your own kin like that?” scowled the sergeant. “We are Sordoans.”
“And now Alceans,” retorted the general. “You misunderstand me, Musaraf. I am proud to be a Sordoan. There are no better horsemen in all the world, but I am not so insecure as to deny the successes of others. We did not lose the wars against Targa because our fighters were inferior. We lost because our leaders were men of privilege rather than talented strategists.”
“Well, now you lead,” Musaraf pointed out. “Why do we not attack the enemy?”