Heroes

The Battle of Johanna Valley

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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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Tackling Death

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Have you ever killed a character? Why did you do it? What purpose did it serve in the story? Was it to help grow your main character? Was the main character the one who died? In my time telling stories, death has never been meaningless. I have never had my characters kill another character, outside of select short stories, and have it have no impact. Every death has had a deep effect on the characters who witness it. Even if it’s only in my head. For example, on a pitched battlefield, it’s hard to give every dying character a meaningful send-off, but in my mind, I know who that character was, I know their name, their lover’s name, their best friend’s name, and how each one of them is affected by it.

There are cliches you should avoid: rainfall at a funeral, this can be distracting to the reader if your story has never had rain affect the story in any way before; explosively meaningful deaths, in a speculative story, especially fantasy or sci-fi, sometimes, people just die; and meaningless death.

The Sky Weeps?

No matter how important your character is, they do not have a metaphysical connection to the weather patterns. Unless you have developed some kind of really cool weather-magic system that forms a bond between the sky and the wielder of the power, in which case disregard this section. For most of us, however, when we are writing a powerful funeral scene that defines the MC’s next arc, the sky should not bend to the whim of the story. If you’ve already set up this place, this region or planet, as a rain-heavy place, go for it, but sudden and violent rainstorms can garner an eye roll from the audience.

I’ll end each section with this: these are not hard and fast rules; they have not been written in the literary laws of the Medes and Persians.

Ned Stark or Tony Stark

In A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, there is a heroic character called Ned Stark, who, I am told, was a fan favorite. Very much a man of honor, virtue, and nobility, when the time came, however, one plot thread led to another, and he found his neck on the butcher’s block. Some other authors might have had a last-minute hero jump from the crowd and prevent this in justice, but not Martin. The axe came down, and the head of Stark rolled. There was no great revolt in that moment; there was no huge battle and revolution in the name of the just man who was wrongly executed. There were, however, other major characters in attendance when he died, and his death did have a lasting impact on the story and those other characters, but it wasn’t explosive; it was smoldering.

Does Tony Stark need an introduction? I don’t think he does, but for some who may not know, he is the climactic hero of the Avenger’s Endgame movie. The character of Tony Stark, who many know as Iron Man, is one of redemption and heroic acts. The fellow had ten years of cinema and 7 (some might argue 8) movies of time to develop his massive impact. So when he stole the weapon of destiny from the villain Thanos and snapped his fingers, winning the day and sacrificing himself in the process. The explosion of worldwide story impact had been earned. Could you imagine if the first or second time we see Tony Stark on-screen, he beat a galactic-level threat with a snap of his fingers? Sure, it might mean something to long-time comic-book fans who understand what’s going on, but for the regular viewers, it would have been an explosion of meaning that would have ultimately been meaningless.

Sometimes people die, and this is the way of things. Not every hero gets to snap his fingers and resolve a decade-long plot thread, not every hero die on a tyrant’s chopping block. I think, while it is a bit crass, the Epic Rap Battles of History battle J. R. R. Tolkien vs George R. R. Martin does a fantastic job of giving a lot of literary advice if you can read, or listen, between the lines. Their battle mostly consists of disses and promotions, disses of their opponent’s writing philosophy/style and promotions of their own. Below, I have linked a clean version that should give you an idea of what I am talking about. The line “All your bad guys die and your good guys survive,” from the characterization of Martin in the video, is partly what inspired this article.

These are not hard and fast rules; they have not been written in the literary laws of the Medes and Persians.

They meant nothing?

While it is important to not overblow your character’s death, it is also important to not underplay it either. Sometimes this will come up in a hero vs villain story. The classic example of a dark lord vs a farm boy might play out something like this.

“You, at last, I’ve found you.” The young hero said as he stuck his sword’s razor-sharp tip under the monster’s chin.

“Who are you, child?” The villain asked uncaring.

“You killed my mother, you’ll die for what you did.”

“Oh, I’ve killed hundreds of mothers; you would have to be more specific, boy.”

In this exchange, we see that part of what has ruined the villain is their lack of empathy. This is juxtaposed against the hero’s memory. The hero has likely remembered every person they have had to kill to get here. If not, that could lead to some interesting dialogue between the hero and the villain. A great example of this is early on in the 3 Musketeers movie, where one of the titular musketeers, Aramis, after getting into a deadly fight with some of the cardinal’s men, prays over their bodies and closes their eyes out of respect. Death, especially for that character, never went without meaning.

These are not hard and fast rules; they have not been written in the literary laws of the Medes and Persians.

Now you!

What do you think? Have you ever written an impactful death scene? If so, tell me about it! I want to hear how you’ve tackled death. One of the next few posts here will be about what comes after. Do you have any rules you live by when discussing the afterlife? If you do, I’d love to hear about them!

Like Knights of Old

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How many of you grew up reading faerie tales? I would venture to say quite a few of you. The one that inspired me the most as I grew into the author I am today is King Arthur. Did you know the name is used in reference to the legendary warrior-king in history once? Well, at least once that we have preserved. That one reference has now inspired thousands upon thousands of great works of fiction. Imagine if, one thousand years from today, only one reference to your main character exists in a review of another work, and that reference inspires thousands of authors and storytellers for centuries to come.

The reason I bring up Arthur is because of the mythic “Knights of the Round Table.” These legendary heroes inspire ordinary men to do the extraordinary. They were just your average men of the day, within whom the great King Arthur saw such mighty potential. A potential that he called upon by elevating them to the rank of Knight. The group is known for legendary feats like finding the Holy Grail of Christ and searching for the fountain of youth. However, some of the most widely read stories are of individual knights and their stories of heroism. One such is “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”, where the young Knight Gawain volunteers to answer the call of a mysterious and ominous character who invaded a party that was being held at Camelot. Through adversity and eventual failure, Gawain learns a lesson he will never forget.

What does this have to do with writing, Al? I hear you asking. Well, as writers, we can really view ourselves as these individual knights. We go on lone adventures where we attempt to win the day against evil and publish our own work all on our own. This is great. There is nothing wrong, however, with finding a round table of sorts, a legendary collection of colleagues who, while fighting their own battles, will come together and help lift you up. This group does not have to be in person, true, but it should exist. Perhaps check out your local community college and take a creative writing course, or see if they have a writing guild. Go to your local library and ask if you can start a monthly gathering of creatives and writers who wish to discuss the nitty-gritty of the trade.

Who knows, you might find a close-knit group of authors that you can form a critique party with.

At the end of the day, keep writing and keep networking. Grow! You’ve got this!