A Short Story by: A.B. Timothy

The armies of Farthia and the armies of Horatia gathered on either side of the great valley of Johanna to do battle therein. The light of heaven besieged both sides before a sword could be drawn; according to the alchemists, it was over one hundred and twenty degrees that day. Zennith, a man of age from one of the great Farthian cities, stood watch over the battlefield yet to be battled in. The bird of prey that floated above his head gave his graying hair some much-needed relief from the blistering sun. Zennith’s breastplate of iron weighed heavily on the old, rusted, and reluctantly patriotic man’s chest. He stood watch to warn his people in the event of an attack by the Horatians. The last time Zennith had held a sword, his wife and child burned for it.

Though he was only a mere carpenter for many years, Zennith had been pressed into service by the desperate Council of Farthian Lords. After he first refused, claiming his lack of interest in fighting a war and his desire to teach, the Lords breathed a convenient sigh of relief when a Horatian arson burned half of Zennith’s city. Zennith had come home that day to find his daughter burned alive in his blackened workshop and his wife half naked with a split throat, surrounded by her own blood.

Zennith had once been a Captain of the armies of Farthia, but that was a lifetime ago. Now he had joined the military as a mentor, training young men in the best way to die and to kill. The old man taught them how to use their Warp Lances, their Jump Crossbows, and their Air Daggers to the greatest effect in battle. Now the day had finally come, the armies, too massive to number on either side, would soon turn this beautiful, lush, green, and yellow valley into a field of air-holes, craters, and streams of blood. Just like his younger days as the mentor of great adventurers, Zennith would again watch as most, if not all, of his proteges die. The man was callous; who could blame him? Seeing so many proteges come up and die under your watch did something to a man. He’d never trained a Koran the Great or a Hapthro the Destroyer. He was always the one to train the heroes no one wrote about.

This was all his past, however. On that day, he stood and watched the battlefield with a horn of violet glass dangling at his side. “Korin!” He called up to the bird of prey above him.

“Yes, Captain Zennith?” The bird replied. “Have your eyes spotted something beyond my perception?”

“No, my friend, but is it not time for you to move to the next guard post?” Zennith wanted to keep his schedule as best he could. The cold-blooded bird might freeze if kept so stationary for so long.

“Yes, perhaps it is, but I do enjoy watching over you,” Korin said.

“I understand, I am quite the conversationalist.” Zennith’s words were dry and matter-of-fact.

“That is exactly right.” Korin laughed. “Everyone else is too busy asking everything there is to ask about me and not watching the enemy; you are stalwart.” The great winged beast rolled his shoulders and jumped off the resting pole. “I’ll be off then, until we meet again, Captain.”

“In this life, or the next,” Zennith called. The bird leaving his pole let the sun beat down on Zennith again. His already grey-blonde hair began bleaching even whiter, immediately.

Minutes stretched into hours. Finally, at the setting of the sun, Zennith could, along with his fellow guards, put that violet horn to his lips and give a single long and loud note. Horatia had begun to move, and the men of Farthia would meet them. But Horatia was too fast… with a unspoken word passed between the men of the guard towers, the foreguards, each stepped up to a platform that protruded from his guard tower, a railless balcony of sorts, and threw himself therefrom in a leap. Zennith reached up and snatched the legs of his giant transport. The bird, a different bird than he had spoken with before, which he grabbed, floated him down to the middle of the valley before any of the main troop could begin their march. There he stood with the other foreguards’ spear now slung off his back and planted into the ground.

The line he made with his fellow foreguards quickly burned blue when they began to sing a song. A song of protection and deliverance. The space between each guard and his spear exploded in a line of blue energy from the earth. Their grand song made manifest in the world. Almost as soon as the mile-long wall had sprung up, it began to falter under the barrage of cannon shot, boulder droppings, and spell lobbings. The spearhead of the Horatian forces was held at bay, to their great dismay. The deceitful speed of the Horatian horde, now brought to a screeching halt. Tens of thousands, brought to a standstill by the efforts of one hundred guardsmen. The ground shook, and Zennith smiled as he knew the march of the great Farthian hosts had finally commenced. Beasts, Men, Winged Beasts, and Giants all now descended on the field of Johanna.

The foreguard’s song now rang like a gong in the midst of a screaming horde. The Horatians tried, and failed, to drown out their songs with their war cries, and while the cries gave their speakers a strengthening red hue—made purple by the blue of the shield wall—it was not enough to beat the shield song.

At the climax of their song, the foreguard cried out in a sound that shocked the earth, sending a wave of blue energy out in front of them. This wave washed over the Horatian forces, shoving them back, allowing the surge of the Farthians to meet their enemy. Now the battle had begun in earnest.

Over the next seven hours, the armies surged back and forth, great swathes of both dying in fire, water, blood, or air. Zennith left his post in the foreguard after slaying his dozens and took command of a battalion of cavalry. He led his battalion in the Great Counter Surge of the West Valley, a maneuver that, despite costing nearly three hundred men, almost certainly won Farthia the day. Three hundred more fallen heroes, never to be written about by name. Oh, the historians will laud their brave charge, but their names will be quickly forgotten. Zennith knew them all by name; however, he had trained them after all. Perhaps he would ensure their names are remembered… or perhaps that was too much for one man. Either way, he would visit each of their families and tell them how their boys—No, he thought to himself, their men—fought and died there that day. Once again, the old man was left alive by a cruel act of fate, only to stew in his own regret and guilt.

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