Drake led his small group forward through the thick brush and darkness of the region at a quick pace. By definition, the scout class of soldiers were light and agile so Drake was able to move quickly around the terrain with his men. Unfortunately, the training his men had had in the floors beneath the city neglected the more subtle aspects of scouting. Sure, they were fit and battle ready. But they couldn’t march through a forest quietly to save their lives. Despite their best efforts and experience from the last three months, they moved with a ruckus that frustrated Drake.
“Move quieter!” he hissed continuously at them at every snapped twig, broken branch, and loud grunt they made as they moved. Heath and Ashton tried to comply, but they only succeeded in moving slower and being louder. Michael didn’t even bother.
“We were not trained for this Drake and trying to now would not be helpful.” Michael spat back, holding a branch up with her left arm. The night was hot and humid and the cool breezes weren’t enough to alleviate the discomfort. Trudging through the forest took a lot of effort and they were hot and bothered. She wiped the sweat off her forehead and continued, “You’re making just as much noise as we are, anyway!” Drake didn’t respond because she was right and there was nothing to say. He turned and continued his march.
Like everybody in the scouting unit, Drake had on little armor for protection and no helmet. Small guards on his forearms and shins were the only defense he carried on him. Unlike most, he did not carry a small buckler on his back. He only had a long spear as his weapon that was also used as a staff while marching. Ashton carried a bow and quiver with him and had a short sword strapped to his side. He too, did not carry a shield.
Heath was more standard with his armament; along with the guards on his forearms and legs he had a small chest plate, a shield and a spear. Most men carried either a sword or a spear depending on their preference, weapons they had all been trained in from the halls. The dark grey cloaks that had been issued to them as part of their uniform had been abandoned quickly; it was too hot on the frontline for such things. They all had on, instead, dark grey sashes across their torso with an accompanying insignia that stated what class and unit they belonged to. Drake hadn’t had much contact with other units anyway to see what they wore, but he appreciated the mobility of their uniform.
They had been moving for a few minutes and Drake asked Ashton again with irritation, “Still no sign from them?” Ashton only shook his head. Drake swore.
There should have been a signal from nearby men soon after Ashton had shot his violet arrow into the sky. The other groups should have seen the light and responded in kind with some sort of affirmation. Ashton had the best eyes out of all of them in the dark, naturally, and he kept his eyes searching for the cues. But here were none to be seen. Drake’s stomach twisted with his emotions. He was convinced now, there was something wrong afoot. Where was everybody and why couldn’t he communicate with them? Drake growled in frustration.
There was sudden movement in front of them, soldiers were approaching fast. It was too late for them to hide so Drake gave the signal for ambushing. The men fanned out in a horseshoe shape ready to strike at the new guest, whoever it might have been. Micheal and Heath each withdraw their swords sharply and Ashton fell back with his bow ready. Drake brandished his spear, ready to plunge it into the lead barbarian, if need be. He gritted his teeth in a snarl.
To Drake’s shock, Vanyor and Horbour appeared, stepping through the brush carelessly but hurriedly. Drake cried out in surprise and lowered his weapon. “Hourbor! What are you doing back here, you should be part of the 1st line!”
Neither man responded, nor even halted on their march. As if they didn’t see Drake, they passed on by, almost knocking into Drake. He reached out his hands and grabbed both of them on the shoulder, “Hey! Where do you two think you’re going?”
As soon of Drake touched them, Drake felt a cold current of static travel up his arms, then fade away. Both he and the two men jumped at the touch, Hourbore and Vanyor as if the very claws of the enemy suddenly appeared behind them. They turned around fast, Horebore bringing his spear around and Vanyor wiping his shield and barely striking Drake on the side of the head as Drake dodged the sudden blow. Quickly seeing the mistake, Heath rushed forward and supported Drake as he fell over. There was a small cut on Drake’s temple now.
“Drake! Heath!” Hourbour cried out in surprise once he recognized them. “Why are you here?”
Heath yelled at the two, “What do you think you’re doing? You nearly knocked his lantern out!”
“We’re sorry!” Vanyor apologized anxiously. “You scared me, I was just acting instinctively! I didn’t mean to hurt you!”
“You should have sneaked up on us like that!” Horebour added, helping Drake up. “It’s dangerous to do that.”
“I didn’t sneak up on you!” Drake said angrily, holding his cut with his right hand. “You nearly ran us over! We were not hiding; we were standing right in front of you! How could you have missed us?” At his words, Hourebor and Vanyor noticed Ashton and Michael with them as well. Drake continued, “Explain yourselves; what is going on? Why have you left your posts and why haven’t there been any signals?”
“But, Drake,” Vanyor said shakily. Now that Drake was looking at them calmly, he saw that both of them were very frightened. “We did send a signal. Lots of them! We never got a response from anybody, no matter how many we shot up. We used up all of our arrows, look!” Hourbore displayed his empty quiver for them to see.
“Impossible!” Ashton cut in. “I have been keeping a watch on the sky all night! There have been no signals from you or anybody else all night. That’s why we came forward in the first place. Tell us, what happened up there?”
Vanyor and Hourbor looked at each other uneasily. Hourbour replied, “There are ghosts!” Drake snorted loudly. “No, really!” Hourbour pleaded. “We sent up scores of red arrows! Something terrible is happening, a new plot of the enemy or something! These woods have been strangely misty, we haven’t been able to contact any of the other soldiers, be it visual or otherwise. They are all simply gone!”
“Get a grip on yourselves, that doesn’t mean there are ghosts out there!” Drake replied contemptuously. “We need to push forward and find Dravis, now! Ashton,” Drake said turning to him. “Let loose a red signal now, and then a white one to gather everybody here. We need to regroup and organize ourselves. The enemy has yet to be seen and we are all lost in our own territory for, Kami’s sake! The enemy could already have passed us. What are the scouts doing?”
Vanyor reached out and grabbed Drake’s shoulder, “There is more Drake, don’t be so hasty yet! We did not say we hadn’t met the enemy, we did! Three soldiers in a group together, came right up by us. We ambushed them as planned, but when my sword touched their bodies, nothing happened. It was like cutting through a fog!”
“What?” Drake asked in disbelief. “What are you saying?”
“It was like they were there, but not there.” Hourbour added. “The soldiers didn’t even notice us, but went by as if nothing happened. I tell you Drake, they were ghosts! We immediately sent off the red signal but nobody answered. Then another group of enemy soldier came by and the same thing happened. It was like slicing through a candle flame. The soldier flickered for a moment, and then reappeared as if nothing happened! I tell you, it is a trickery of the enemy. We panicked after that and tried to alert everybody, with signals, with our voices, anything! But you are the first people we have seen, and you are from the rear guard! There should be hundreds of men in these woods, but we can’t find them.”
Drake felt like the world was spinning for a second. He grasped the nearest tree for support. This incursion was falling apart and a deep fear rooted itself in Drake’s stomach at his men’s words. He didn’t want to believe it, but before he could say anything, Vanyor spoke bluntly. “We think it might have been magic.”
Drake recoiled in horror at the word. So far, there has been little magic involved in their fights. Only the small magic their spell caster could produce was there, they never met any enemy spell casters. Which was fortunate because Drake knew the power that such creatures possessed. A single strong magician could wipe out every man in the scouting legion with a single voice. He suddenly understood what the static was when he had touched then men in the beginning; it was his ring breaking a spell.
Drake gathered himself and turned around to the group, “Ashton, do as I have said! We need to try to pull our forces back and regroup. We need to find Dravis, now!”
“What’s going on?” Heath asked, visibly shaken by their story.
As Ashton readied his arrow Drake explained, “The enemy must have magicians with them! They must be interfering with our senses, getting us to see things that aren’t there and to not see things that are there. Those ghosts Vanyor described were just illusions created by magic. Decoys! And the reason that we can’t see all the other units’ signals is probably because they aren’t letting us! Vanyor and Hourbour almost passed by without noticing us when we were right next to them, they must have been under a spell as well.”
Micheal responded in horror, “If the enemy was just a decoy, if they can just mess with our sight like that….” She didn’t finish her sentence.
Ashton was ready with the arrow aflame and his bow taunt. He said quietly, “It means that our communication network has been destroyed, our senses cannot be trusted, and that the real enemy is probably surrounding us as we speak.” He let loose the arrow. “It also means that nobody will probably see our signals. In fact, for all we know or can know, everybody else could be dead already.”
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Heath cried out, “Isn’t there anything we can do?”
Drake pounded the tree he was leaning on and swore. The more he thought about it, the more he realized just how helpless humans were against magicians. He felt himself once again, on the long march of the zombies from back in the wilderness, helpless and afraid. His head was spinning, making it difficult to concentrate. “We need to find Dravis,” He said again. “He will have the spell caster with him; he will be able to block the enemy influence. From him, we should be able to get a signal out to any men still alive. We need to fall back.”
Michael started, “How are we supposed to find him-.”
She was interrupted suddenly by the death born cries of the enemy. Two soldiers burst in behind them, their war cries startling the group and taking advantage of their carelessness. During the discussion, they neglected to keep a look out, letting these two men come up close somehow. Drake cursed himself for his failings as one bore down directly on him. With a defiant yell, Drake turned to meet him. The man was too fast though, coming up close to Drake, his sword glittering in the weak golden light of the city as it rose for the strike. As if in slow motion, Drake watched the blade fall, passing inches away from his guard and falling down upon his right shoulder and slicing him neatly in two. Drake screamed as a horrible sensation of liquid nitrogen poured through his insides, promising to end his miserable life.
But then the soldier exploded into thousands of shards of light and disappeared like smoke in the wind. Drake stood paralyzed in shock, unable to comprehend what had happened, letting out unnatural grunts. He heard laughter behind him and he turned his head to look at the source.
Ashton was laughing at him, bent over and wheezing at Drake’s perplexed face. Drake could only repeat, “What…what?”
Ashton answered him between fits, “That wasn’t… a real sol-soldier.” He tried to stifle his giggles with his hand, “It was one of the phantoms. It was a ghost!”
Drake looked around wildly. Ashton was the only one laughing; the other people had taken the encounter much more seriously. Drake saw the other illusionary soldier march away, not noticing his missing companion. Drake panted out in wonder, “An illusion?”
“Yes,” Michael said casting an angry look at the still laughing Ashton. “Just an illusion. You are not as dead as you might have been. That is what you get for letting down your guard! If that had been a real soldier, you would be in Kami’s halls right now!”
“And he would be in a better place for it!” Hourbour said. He looked shaken; it looked like the other phantom had attacked him in turn. “We still have a major problem here! Our men are still out there with no idea what is going on. Real enemy soldiers could be coming at us any moment in force; we do not have any communication or coordination. We need to have a full retreat!”
“Right.” Drake said, collecting himself. He massaged his chest where he thought he had felt the slicing of his flesh. It still hurt. “That is why we need to find the lieutenant and his spell caster. When we do, we will send the retreat signal, and regather at the fort.”
“And then what?” Vanyor asked. “We still can’t fight the magicians or the enemy. The situation would not have changed!”
“The reinforcements should be here soon!” Drake said eagerly. “They will have brought spellcasters with them; they always do. At this point, we need to hide and let them handle the enemy. We just need to survive until the reinforcements come! That’s what we should have done from the start.”
A strong and clear voice cut in from nowhere, “There will be no reinforcements this time, I am afraid.” The six soldiers jumped and looked around anxiously for the source for the sound. There was none. Then slowly, their magician, Horace, materialized in front of them, his figure coming into focus. He said softly to all their shocked faces. “What? I am a spell caster too, am I not? Making myself appear invisible to you is easy, especially when strong spell work placed upon this regain already like it is now.”
“Curse you magician,” Drake shouted. “We have had enough surprises tonight, don’t sneak up on us like that or we would be liable to kill you!” The magician snorted in contempt.
Getting over his surprise first, Ashton asked, “So it is true then? There are magicians with the enemy?”
The magician nodded solemnly, “We are already surrounded as it is; the first sighting of the enemy was a trap, to spread us all out. They have also intercepted all of our arrows, keeping us all in the dark, so to speak.” He added bitterly, “most of the legion has been wiped out already.”
Heath and Michael gasped in horror. Horubour and Vanyor muttered prayers silently and Ashton was quiet. Drake challenged the magician, “How do you know all this? How can you know that if communication has been cut off?!”
“Because,” The magician replied angrily. “I was with the lieutenant the whole time. I received the signals; we knew what was going on from almost the beginning. But we couldn’t find a way to communicate back. The enemy knew where we were and came after us directly, blocking my efforts entirely. I barely managed to escape!”
“You were attacked by the real enemy? What happened? Where is the lieutenant, what happened to him?” The magician didn’t respond. “What happened to the lieutenant?!” Drake pressed with intensity.
“What do you think happened!” the magician shouted back. “He’s dead, along with everybody else in his guard! I told him from the beginning that we couldn’t win this time; that the enemy probably had magicians with them. But he didn’t listen to me. He never listened to me! And now he has paid with his life. I saw him get restrained by the enemy spell caster and strangled by his own hands working against him. That is the power of our enemy; it’s not something we could have handled from the start!”
“And you ran away, LIKE A SNIVELING LITTLE RAT, YOU COWARD!” Drake screamed. “How did you get away, did you hold the lieutenant out as bait and turn invisible? Did you make a deal with the enemy to turn over you soldiers positions to save your life?!”
The Magician’s face turned red in rage and he said with a gravelly voice, “You dare suggest treason from me? You dare suggest that I sold out the legion?” The magician screamed, “IT WAS DRAVIS, WHO SOLD OUT THE SOLDIERS HERE, IT WAS DRAVIS WHO BETRAYED YOU ALL! HE, AGAINST ALL COUNSEL, SET FORTH IN HIS ATTACKS AND HIS IDEALS. HE LED YOU ALL TO HIS DEATH BECAUSE OF HIS INCOMPETENCE AS A LIEUTENANT AND HIS BELIEF IN THE STRENGTH OF THE PATHETIC RACE OF HUMANS!” Hourbour looked stricken at his words, and the rest bowed their heads. Drake didn’t know how to respond. The magician continued after a moment, “But Dravis was proved wrong tonight, for all his faith, he is now a dead man, along with the rest of the men here. We have lost this region, we need to fallback.”
Drake felt punctured by the magician’s words and didn’t respond. Ashton piped up in his stead, “The reinforcements are still coming; they will have the proper strength to repel the enemy. You are right we should not have attacked when it was not our place. But surely, this region isn’t lost altogether, yet.”
The magician looked down on Ashton in contempt, “There will be no reinforcements, didn’t you hear me earlier?”
“But the lieutenant said you go the message out,” Heath protested, looking up from his prayers. “He said that they were coming!”
Drake answered Heath instead. He said in a low voice, leaning on his spear for support, “He knew there would be no reinforcements from the beginning, didn’t he, magician? He went out anyway. He lied to us.”
The magician nodded, “All fronts in this area have been attacked, not just ours. There were not any extra forces to be sent here. All the attacks so far have been nothing, this is the main assault of the enemy, they will have swept away the majority in the edge of the frontline by now, it had been predicted by the generals. Key regions to the west of us had been fortified, but we were told to simply withdraw. As usual, the lieutenant stubbornly refused.”
Vanyor said painfully, “It was predicted? How can that be? How can he still send us out here if he knew…” nobody answered him. He grew hot, “What about the salvation of Kami, what about his faithfulness to those who trusted him, how can it end like this?”
Hourbour answered him, “it hasn’t ended like this, do not be upset.” Everybody looked at him, “We are only a small part of this story; that is, the story of Kami’s triumph over evil. It is not our place to try to understand the depths of Kami’s will and plan, only to trust and believe in him. Do not despair Vanyor.” There were tears in Horebor’s eyes and he said peacefully, “for their essential efforts in the fight, Dravis and the others are now in the Halls of Kami, waiting for the day with Kami stands triumphant over the enemy. At that time they will be resurrected and all men will enjoy the kingdom of Kami in peace and freedom. Do not lose faith yet, and not over something this small.”
Vanyor nodded and accepted his words. Drake wanted to scream out at them, that they were wrong, that they have been deceived and brainwashed. That there was no salvation of Kami… But he couldn’t break the hope they had, so he swallowed his rage and his tears and said, “There is no way to know whether or not everybody is gone, many could have survived like we have. They must have also realized that there is no communication available to them either. The only sensible thing to do is to return to the fort, the other survivors will have gathered there as well.”
“Shall I send the full retreat signal, anyway?” Ashton asked.
“Don’t bother. At this point you would only be alerting the enemy to our position. Let’s head back quickly!”
Micheal spoke suddenly in an eerie voice. “We can’t do that either,” she said pointing back towards the fort. They all looked in the direction she directed to. There was a strange flickering light coming from that direction and as they listen closely now, there were also soft screams… “The fort is already burning.”
They stood paralyzed for a second, the magician spouted quickly to Drake, “They are already behind us! We need to move now! We need to leave this place before all escape routes are closed. They are not an enemy we can fight!”
Drake didn’t respond, but stood frozen at the sight of the burning fort. The flames burned strangely, reminding him of Drfuil’s flames on the throne. He swayed slightly as he realized the sudden destruction of his home for the last three months. How could this have happened so easily? Only yesterday, the whole legion had stood proudly in Kami’s Lantern, joyous at the deeds they had accomplished for their god. Now, in a sudden whirlwind that had bypassed him completely, it was all over.
“Drake!” Ashton shouted, bringing him to his senses again.
Drake took charge immediately, “Follow me! We should the magician’s advice now; I don’t see any other alternative! It seems we are saved by luck today; may god have mercy on our souls for leaving this place. We are going to make a break for it, and we need to be fast and quiet! Magician, we will need what cover you can provide, if only to stifle our noises. The rest of you, keep your weapon on you. We will not be the heroes today, we are going to run and cut down any enemy in our way!”
The soldiers responded in unison and followed Drake as he broke way to the east and north in full retreat. With his men behind him now, he let the tears spring up in his eyes and fall. Despite himself, he had come to love his place with his comrades in the fort.
The group escaped noiselessly now, thanks to the magician. Before they had gone completely out of sight, Drake turned and looked back at the fort they had built together. It burned blue and yellow, strange colors used only to display the spell work used. With a curse, Drake turned back and doubled the pace. Somehow, the oppressive world of magic was going to pay for how they toyed with the lives of humans!