An airborne boulder ripped over Ventre’s head and slammed into the earth with a concussive blast that knocked soldiers from their feet–they were far luckier than their comrades who hadn’t been able to get out of the way in time. The visceral scene of carnage and chaos unwittingly transported Ventre back to a similar scene from two years earlier, when his small, border village had been invaded by the Ileshian army. He had been at the forge in his father’s blacksmith shop, which had been located near the center of town, when they arrived. The rhythmic song of his hammer had been loud enough that he didn’t hear anything at first, not until his father interrupted his work. He could still feel the painful way his father’s meaty hands had effortlessly pulled him from the forge, shaking him urgently to get his attention.
“Ventre, take your mother and sister and head West towards Relaford. Don’t take the road, but cut through the woods as soon as you leave town. You are going to need to push them through tonight. They won’t be used to it.” The command had been more jarring than the 8 pound, iron hammer striking cold metal, but even that paled in comparison to the agonized cries he could suddenly hear now that he wasn’t working.
“What’s going on… What about you?” he managed to get the question out, even as his father pushed him from the shop and across the yard towards the house.
“I’ve got to go for Nelly. She and the baby won’t be able to make it on their own.”
The statement had made so much sense at the time, obviously his sister would need help, and Ventre hadn’t even questioned whether or not he would see his father again. Less than a minute later and without packing so much as a blanket, Ventre, his mother, and his younger sister Elise were running down the street, the crashing sounds of a looting army echoing behind them. They weren’t alone in their bid for escape, the small dirt streets of their town were teeming with everyone he had known from childhood: the baker and his wife Sarah, his childhood crush Lucy with her mother, father, and siblings, as well as some of the young men in the village that had he hung around with before his internship with his father had started. He remembered noticing in a detached way that every family was only focusing on their own kin, which was completely opposite the values the town had shared when he was growing up.
Upon exiting the town proper, Ventre had heeded his father’s council and steered his mother and sister towards the woods. A few other families followed them, but the majority hurried up the road. He was already in the trees when the enemy soldiers caught up with the townsfolk and continued their looting in earnest. A braver man might have turned back in a suicidal attempt to save some of the people he had known his whole life, but Ventre had simply tried to push the noises aside as he urged his family deeper. The few families that had also come into the woods peeled away from them over the next two hours, until his family had been truly alone.
There had been a few moments, around an hour before dusk, when his mother and sister had almost convinced him to stop, their bleeding feet doing more than any verbal complaint they had waged, but he had persevered, his father’s words crisp in his mind despite, or maybe because of, the trauma. He recognized now that it was purely due to shock that he had managed to stay so detached and keep going, something that had caught up with him a few days later.
Twenty four hours after their forced march started, Relaford had come into view, the timber and stone walls calling the weary travelers like a bastion of safety. It was there that he had met Palantire for the first time.
A hand latched onto his shoulder, pulling his body downward and breaking him out of his reverie as another boulder crashed behind him, much closer to his position than the previous boulder had been.
“You may be as good a swordsman as any, lad, but with your daydreaming, I don’t understand what Palantire sees in you.” Bealeford screamed at him over the cacophony of the battle. “Keep your wits about you or the next boulder may have your name on it. Besides that, you don’t want to look the fool. You are part of a sword bearer’s guard now after all.”
Duly chastened, Ventre pushed himself to his feet, determined to do better. He hadn’t spent the last two years training just to fail in his first major battle. Another few boulders crashed around him, and he focused on slowing his breathing as he waited for the signal to advance. Eventually Palantire had had enough and he called to the men who were with him.
“The King has yet to arrive on the field. But we are being beaten to pieces by this artillery, and if we wait much longer, the battle will be lost. What say you, men? Are you willing to ride with me? Some of us may die, but if we are victorious, we will be protecting thousands of refugees who are fleeing to the capital as we speak. They won’t make it if this army passes us.”
A rousing cheer of agreement rose from the throng and Palantire turned back to face the enemy, pausing briefly when his eyes met Ventre’s and nodding as the lines around his mouth tightened into a smile. It was no secret that Palantire loved him like a son. His wife had died giving birth to their stillborn daughter and he had never married again, devoting himself instead to the King. It wasn’t for lack of options, but a lack of love. He had once told Ventre that he still loved his deceased wife Moira and always would. Raising his shield in front of him, Palantire gave the call to move forward, and the procession advanced.
Ventre’s training stilled his rattled nerves as he marched in position. Palantire at the head, with his 10 guards splayed behind him in a v-formation, and the battalions filling in the space behind that. It was a soft sprint, slow enough that they could stay in formation, but fast enough that the enemy wouldn’t be able to train their catapults on them before they closed ranks. Ventre was situated in the third position on the right side of the “v”, close enough that he was able to watch the sword bearer engage the enemy. When they were still ten steps away, Palalntire drew the silver, seemingly glowing Katana of Speed, and his form blurred as he crossed the distance in an instant, falling upon the enemy before they were able to cross shields and form a proper defensive line.
It took barely 3 seconds for Ventre and the rest of the force to close the distance, but by the time they had, there were already 7 men on their knees. Ventre knew from experience that this was as much a testament of Palantire’s prowess with the blade as it was the blade itself, since all members of a sword-bearer’s guard were required to have some experience with the sword. The training allowed them to understand the limits of the bearer, as well as having trained individuals who could wield the sword in a worst case situation. He estimated that the sword increased the wielder's speed two-fold, almost the difference between a child and an adult for most tasks, and that metaphor held true in battle as well, Palatire was cutting down the veteran enemy as if they were no more skilled than untrained children. With each flash of his blade, he swooped around a defending weapon, shield, or armor, perfectly aiming his strikes to neutralize an enemy. Sometimes that meant outright death, but for the most part, it was cutting a ligament or removing an offending appendage. Though he had seen it before, Ventre was once again surprised with how effortlessly Palantire’s mind kept up with the strain of moving at twice his usual pace, something that usually caused Ventre to trip up in under a minute. Years of experience and disciplined training had made his lord a true sword master, and the enemy wasn’t ready.
Running past downed bodies, the v-formation wedged themselves around Palantire, capitalizing on the momentum he had created and preventing the enemy from flanking him. Ventre found himself facing a sea of unknown faces, and he swung his katana forward, curved edge down to batter the shield protecting the man in front of him. With his arm still ringing from the strike, he twisted the blade sideways and slid the interior edge across the shield surface before it cut into the defender’s neighbor’s neck, killing him instantly. It was brutal and gruesome work, and he relied on the breathing techniques he had been taught to maintain his headspace. He heard from other soldiers that it made war easier if you saw the people who had wronged you in the faces of your enemy, a teaching that Palantire publicly denounced. Ventre found that all he could see were other men who had been caught over their heads in the current of their king’s greed. These men weren’t truly enemies, they were farmers, blacksmiths, fathers and brothers.
Ventre snapped his neck sideways, dodging the spear head that almost took him in the eye and bashed his shield forward, flexing through his feet, legs, and back to heave forward and disrupt the enemy in front of him. Due to the densely packed enemy around him, he was forced to rely on the traditional infantry line tactics, rather than his prodigious skill in swordsmanship he had spent the bulk of his training on–only someone like a swordbearer could function differently in these kinds of conditions.
As his shield caused the enemy to stumble back, his sword fell again for the second time, taking a man’s leg off at the knee and drawing a wail of pain from the victim's lips. Before he could withdraw his blade, the battalions running behind the v-formation had caught up to him and three swords stabbed forward, using the disruption he had caused to further break into the enemy lines. His shoulders already heaving, he spared a glance around him, their wedge had worked.
The braying of a bugle cut through the air behind them and Ventre knew that the Bulshok Bear, wielder of the Claymore of Strength was coming to join in their attack. A close friend of Palantire’s, Ventre was on a first name basis with the legendary Ithius, and he couldn’t help the eagerness he felt at seeing such a man in battle. While Palantire was widely regarded as the brains behind many of the kingdom's best decisions, a close friend and advisor to the king, it was Ithius who was seen as the kingdom’s greatest warrior. It was said that if he wielded the King’s blade, he was formidable enough to fight the other six sword masters by himself.
Ithius stood head and shoulders above most men, and nearly twice as thick front to back and side to side, a true giant. Despite his size and the earth shaking, bear-like gait with which he moved, he was as light on his feet as any other swordsman, giving him a deadly skill set that was without peer. Ventre noted how his massive size and strength allowed him to hold the nearly, six foot claymore in one hand as he charged across the deadzone to join in the fighting. Matching its bearer, the legendary blade was both longer and wider than the claymores that Ithius’s guard used. It was only due to its ability to increase the wielder's strength that most men would be able to use it all. All this was processed in a moment, before Ventre turned back to the fighting, he and his compatriots struggled desperately against the enemy’s greater numbers for the next two minutes, while they waited for the reinforcements to arrive.
Not long after Ithius, three of the other sword bearer’s and their battalions joined the throng. The Wakizashi of Balance wielded by Earl Oswald. A blade and wielder who were perfectly aware of their own bodies, allowing them to duck and weave in an impossibly intricate dance of death. The Rapier of Regeneration, wielded by the Duke of Blood–second in line to the throne. So named because his own blood rained down upon his enemies as he willingly took hits in order to leave his opponents open to his counter attacks. The rapier allowed him to heal almost instantly, and the masses postulated whether he could be killed in battle at all. Ventre knew that the blade had limits, but the Duke was a master of tactical sacrifice and meticulously skirted those limits without going over the line. Finally, the Arming Sword of Memory, wielded by Okagwe, a pilgrim from a far off country who was now the kingdom’s master at arms. Though it was a commoner’s blade and the most generic of all the song blades, its all-rounded nature enhanced the gift it bestowed–allowing the user’s mind and body to remember and act upon all forms of fighting the wielder had experienced. The dark-skinned foreigner had more experience with different weapons than anyone else in the kingdom, and in his hands, the blade seemed an extension of his own body. Indeed, his enemies were just as likely to be taken out by a punch to the throat or a leg sweep as they were to be skewered by the mythical artifact.
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While the other six sword bearers had grown into manhood together, learning tactics and strategy to make them the strongest force on earth, Okagwe hailed from distant lands. He was a master fighter with almost any weapon. When the previous sword master had fallen, the honor of wielding the blade hadn’t gone to any of the guards, but Okagwe. At the time, he had been the palace’s trainer in arms, and after proving how vastly superior he was as a sword bearer, the King had bestowed the position on him, despite him being in his late 40s, twenty years senior to the other masters.
The only blades missing were the Ninjato of Perception and the King’s Blade. The wakizashi was wielded by the Bloodhound. While the Wakizashi of Balance allowed the wielder to know their own body perfectly, the Ninjato allowed its wielder, the Baron of the mountainous region of Bathgaurd, to be perfectly aware of where his enemies were in his surroundings, making him an assassin without equal. Tavern songs were sung of the deeds he had done, allegedly killing over two hundred bandits by himself in a pitch black cave system. It was said that the only thing he loved more than a fight to the death was his wife Alaina, and it was her who kept his bloodlust in check.
The other blade missing was the two-handed greatsword wielded by the King. The Blade of Melody. Unadorned like the rest of the song blades, its long size and versatile nature made it the perfect vessel for all six of the song blades abilities. Though it was rare that all the blades were together on the field of battle, and Ventre had never heard it himself, the stories indicated that when the Blade of Melody was drawn on a field, all of its brethren joined voices in the Blade Song, a polyphonic chorus more beautiful than any other, which built into a crescendo as the blades advanced.
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Despite their initial progress, the Cremean forces slowly gave ground, retreating until Ventre and the pocket of survivors surrounding Palantire were further back than before they had charged. Though the sword-bearers had fought boldly, and far more Ileshian soldiers had fallen than Cremean, the Ileshian forces outnumbered them nearly two to one. Sweat dripped down Ventre in rivulets as his fatigue mounted. His strikes were gradually slowing, while the soldiers he fought were ever fresh and energized. He wasn’t sure when the change had occurred, but somewhere in the last few hours, the faces of his enemy had changed from fearful to determined.
A warhammer swung towards his right side, where his comrades had fallen in greater numbers, and he pivoted in order to get his shield between himself and the deadly weapon. He was successful in blocking the attack, but his feet slipped on the wet earth beneath him and he found himself stumbling backwards, tripping over fallen bodies, and sprawling on his back, where he looked up at the malicious grin of his attacker. He scrambled to find purchase and get back to his feet, but with every attempt, the enemy lazily swatted Ventry with his hammer, forcing him to scoot backwards and defend with improper blocks that jarred the bones of his shield arm.
A blade pierced through the man’s chest and Palantire appeared in front of Ventre, pulling him to his feet as if he weighed no more than a small child.
“Up you go, lad.” He said with an easy smile. “The King will be here soon and this will all be behind us.”
Though Ventre nodded in return, Palantire must have seen the fatigue in his eyes, for he added after a moment, “It helps to remember who you are fighting for, the villagers who would be massacred were it not for our efforts.”
The thought reminded Ventre of his own village, and he felt his strength and will to fight returning. “Aye, sir!” he said with only slightly more gusto than he felt, and together they moved back to position,
For the first time in the battle, Ventre fought directly alongside Palantire, and the man’s prowess and foresight continued to bolster Ventre through his fatigue. He moved like a whirlwind, keeping the enemies around them thin and allowing Ventre to fight as an actual swordsman, all the while, leaving enemies in precarious positions that Ventre could easily exploit. For 30 minutes, they fought in this manner, until it became apparent that they would once again be forced to give up ground. The Ileshian numbers were too great, and the Cremean forces were getting too tired to continue fighting.
Recognizing the precarious position, Palantire signaled a strategic retreat, and began cutting a path towards their left flank where Ithius was stationed. The other sword-bearers saw what was happening, and their diminished forces put on a burst of power as they fought to assemble themselves together. If less prolific fighters had been leading the charges, the maneuver likely would have been futile, but despite their fatigue, the blade-bearers were all masters of the sword with enhanced physical capabilities, and within 10 minutes, the five were fighting side by side, creating an impenetrable bulwark.
Ventre was tapped out by a less weary soldier and fell back, heaving from his exertions as he watched the masters fight. Ithius swung his claymore in massive arcs, always seeming to have a longer reach than the enemy anticipated. His swings were so powerful, that they cleaved through helm and mail alike, often taking down multiple soldiers at once. Okagwe seemed to dance, as his sword blocked strikes and his armor covered legs struck out in a fighting style that the enemy wasn’t used to. The Baron of Blood taunted enemies into attacking him with insults and aggression, blood-flecked spittle gleeking from his mouth. Palantire and Duke Oswald flowed around the perimeter of the other three, dispatching anyone they missed in movements that seemed choreographed. The formation proved too formidable and the enemies willing to attack the blade-bearers thinned, until the two sides stood only 10 feet apart, facing each other. The silence seemed to echo after the thunderous sounds of the battle for a few moments, before the Ileshian commanders began shouting new orders to their troops, who began rearranging themselves to comply.
A horn sounded from behind Ventre, clearer and more pure than any instrument he had ever heard before, and the Baron of Blood began to laugh, “That’ll be the end of this fight, whelps,” he guffawed loudly, “the King has come!”
A cry sounded from the Cremean forces, “Long live the King!”, even as a song began to emanate from the blade-bearers. A dancing flute, the pounding of a bass drum, a viol, and instruments that Ventre wasn’t familiar with joined together, as the ranks of the Cremean forces split apart and King Alaric rode through their ranks, sword held aloft, the Bloodhound following only steps behind him. He didn’t pause at all as he reached the masters’ position at the front, simply yelling, “Attack!” as he dove headfirst into the enemy, the blade-bearers falling into formation behind him.
Ventre and the rest of the Cremean soldiers chased after them, their energy building with each beat of the bass drum, and their feet striving to run as fast as the notes pouring from the flute. The unprepared Ileshian forces began giving ground instantly as those nearest the front were cut down by the ferocious charge. The rout had begun.
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The Ileshian commanders, including the king, had slowly been cornered by King Alaric’s and the other sword masters’ machinations. It wasn’t solely due to their prowess on the battlefield that had enabled the kingdom to flourish. Each of them, excluding Okagwe, had been trained from birth by the kingdom’s finest tutors in tactics, mathematics, and politics, and their minds were as sharp as their blades.
For two arduous days, Ventre’s world had consisted of running down the enemy. There were frequent, intense, yet also very brief skirmishes that punctuated the weary march, always ending in the Cremean forces taking any willing to surrender and killing the rest. It was grim and bloody work, the grotesqueness of which filled Ventre’s dreams during the few hours of rest he got each night.
But it will all be over soon. He reassured himself as he fought in place next to Palantire and the rest vanguard, which had spent the morning wedging itself into the enemy’s encampment.
He stabbed out around his shield, feeling his blade strike flesh even as an arrow impacted his defenses with a ringing clang. Gone were the daydreams that had plagued him two days prior. If nothing else, he would walk away from this conflict a seasoned veteran, no longer green behind the ears.
Ithius straightened and delivered a powerful overhand blow at the shield wall in front of them, taking down two soldiers, whose falling bodies tripped those around them. Palantire capitalized on the moment of weakness, dashing forward and taking down a few others. In a matter of seconds, the final defensive line had been breached, and only two minutes later, it had withered completely.
A hush fell across the battlefield as the soldiers on both sides watched what would surely be the end of the war.
King Eldwen of Ilesh marched forward, his sword held out flat against both hands in a clear sign of surrender, and Ventre couldn’t help but feel that such an easy out shouldn’t be possible for the one who had caused so much death and destruction.
King Alaric strode forward, leaving the masters behind him as he went to receive the blade, but when he was still several yards away, Eldwen ducked down, creating an unbroken path between Alaric and Eldwen archers who were stationed behind him. Ventre watched in horror as several other pockets of archers rose up at the signal, their arrows already leaving their drawn bows.
Palantire flew forward like a gust of wind, and together, the two masters capable of inhuman speed cut the shafts out of the air, except one. Two archers had waited, timing their strikes for when the king couldn’t possibly intercept both.
The world seemed to slow as Palantire saw the arrows, and unable to intercept both with his sword, he dove forward, slicing one from the air even as he caught the other with his chest.
“Long live the King!” his wheezing voice easily carried across the still battlefield, reaching Ventre’s ears even as their eyes met for the last time.
Rage filled Ventre and he ran forward. His actions broke the stillness and both sides renewed the battle in earnest, but all he could see was another father figure taken from him. Reaching his fallen master, he picked up the Katana of Speed and joined in the frey, losing himself in an anger that only blood could satiate.
It was a sentiment that was shared by the masters and soon Ventre stood shoulder to shoulder with the figures he had grown up revering as they carved a bloody path to where King Eldwen had retreated. The king’s cries of surrender and mercy fell on deaf ears as the executioners approached.
“Enough!”
The command was given with such certain authority that Ventre found himself obeying even before he realized that the order had come from King Alaric. But several of the masters continued forward, unheeding.
“Would you have us not redeem Palantire’s name?” Earl Oswald asked.
“Would you sully his name through blood? We both know he wouldn’t have wanted that.” The king replied in turn, before continuing in a softer, yet still commanding voice, “No brothers, enough. Enough blood. Enough carnage. We came here to put a stop to the killing, and so we shall. Recompense can still be collected, but it won’t be through any more death.”
Earl Oswald and the Duke eyed each other, before they both angrily fell back. Uncaring of his treason or whether he lived or died, Ventre tensed his muscles, preparing to run forward and kill the man who had murdered his liege. A large hand gripped his shoulder, light enough to not hurt him, but firmly enough to eliminate any thoughts he had of escaping.
Looking up through tearfilled eyes, Ventre saw Ithius standing next to him. “The king is right, Ventre. Palantire would not have wanted this.”
The words doused the anger that had consumed him, and he found himself weeping bitterly. The hand on his shoulder was replaced with a heavy arm as the giant guided him back towards the king.
The War of Beacon Rock had ended.