by Kay Murky
Chapter Two
Marteen studied the heavens. The stars were different here in the north, the familiar constellations of the Southern Kitran sky nowhere to be seen. He wondered if he would ever find out if these people also had astrologers, and what their stars told them. Would he even still be alive after tomorrow’s battle?
Originally the eight hundred men on the large hill with him were part of a rear ambush on the Allied armies, sent forward by the mad king of the Essians to be in place before either of the main armies met. Then, earlier on in the day, an out of breath messenger had arrived to tell them that their orders had changed. That the Imperial Adept, Lord Rikkelan, had taken over tactical control of the Essian army, and that instead of a rear attack as the enemy forces passed by, it had been decided to meet the enemy in the valley where the ambush had been planned. Instead of attacking the enemy from the rear, they now had to wait until the two opposing forces charged each other, and then attack the enemy from the flanks.
That did make a bit better tactical sense than the ambush had made. But still. What about the dragons? In all the tactical decisions either by the Essian king, or the Imperial Adept, the dragons’ presence had been ignored.
As he stood there watching the sky there was a whisper in his mind such as he had not heard since he had tried to contact the grey dragon. The words he could not understand, but the hair on his neck stood on end. There was something only too familiar about the cadence of the words. He had uttered similar sounding instructions too many times in the last few years.
“Men! Listen up. Have your weapons ready!”
Those closest to Marteen immediately responded, his own men first, the Essians slightly slower. Even in the dark he could feel their disbelieving looks on him, but how could he explain? Once again he scanned the sky, this time noticing the black shadows moving among the stars, straight towards their hill.
Dragons! He knew it. He had known something was wrong from the beginning. His damn bad luck again. Dragons… dragons supposedly breathed fire… they were in the crevices, but so was the sparse plant growth, all dry from the singeing summer heat. A trap indeed. They would be trapped in the fire among those rocks… He did not wait for the beasts to start circling.
“Move out of the crevices, get ready to defend!”
The mage was suddenly next to him, only recognisable in the dark by the swish of his robes. “Captain! What’s going on? Are you going insane?”
“Look up, dammit! Those are dragons up there, and…
This time the voice in his head was not a whisper, but a loud command. {: Hockan! Ginuni! En… si… kat… USH! :}
“GET DOWN!!! Drop where you stand! Cover your heads!” Marteen’s voice, even though he screamed as he had never done before, was barely audible over the roar of the dragons and the yells of their riders as they attacked. He himself barely had enough time to throw himself down before the sheet of flame started spreading from the top of the hill.
Scarcely had the dragons drawn up again at the bottom of the hill when the shouts, screams and clashing of steel against steel told him that they were not only being attacked from above, but from below as well. “UP! If you can move, get up! Stay away from the flames. Have your weapons ready!”
Marteen lost track of what was happening as the thick smoke billowed out from the crevices. It flushed out the men who had not heard his orders, most of them unarmed. The smoke also started running up any clear channels through the rocks, being pulled up as in a chimney, and soon it was not possible to distinguish friend from foe. By the time the enemy sword bounced off his chest armour and bit into his side, he was so overcome by the smoke that he mercifully blacked out immediately.
Slowly Marteen drifted back to consciousness, even in his semi-aware state once again damning his bad luck.
It had started long before he was born, when the Empire had invaded the small far southern mountain country of Cistorri. Imperial schools had sprung up, taking the place of the traditional teachings of the Elders. In these schools they had been taught that the Empire saved them from hunger, poverty and illiteracy, but they knew better, as The Wise Ones had taught them the truth.
For three hundred years the Wise Ones had been hiding away in the most inhospitable parts of the mountains, only coming down among the people to teach in secret the true histories, and to find among the youngsters those who were gifted, to take back with them for training. For those three hundred years the true history of his people had survived. A history filled with much wisdom, but few heroes.
Everything had been fine, until the summer after his tenth birthday. Out of the blue he had started to feel any pain another person in his vicinity was feeling. If his little brother fell and scraped his knee, Marteen’s knee would burn in sympathy. The worst was when one of the women went into labour… the young Marteen would lie in bed screaming too.
And he started hearing snatches of other people’s thoughts. Not much. Just whisperings, but it was scary for a ten year old boy. That’s why the following year his mother had taken him to the Wise one, on one of her visits.
Even now, he remembered it well. The Wise One had laid her hands on his head.
“Close your eyes, Marteen.”
Obediently he had done so, but nearly opened them again when her voice had spoken directly inside his head. {: Tell me, Marteen, with your voice, what do you see? :}
“I see a mountain top, with steep cliffs, and a stone building on top of it. There are three rope ladders hanging down the side of the cliff, and two people climbing up to the building.”
She had lifted her hands away and he opened his eyes again to see her smile. “That is good, Marteen. Next year, I’ll come for you and I will take you there. For now, I will teach you how to shield yourself so you don’t feel and hear the things you don’t want to.”
He had been eleven years old then. A scrawny young boy dreaming dreams of being the hero that would free his people from the Platar Empire’s yoke. A scrawny boy who learned too fast and too well, and whose thirst for knowledge brought the wrong attention upon him. Before his twelfth birthday, the Imperial Prefect’s examiners had visited his little school, and the next thing he knew he was shipped away to the city to attend one of the Imperial schools for gifted children. They had barely allowed him to say goodbye to his parents.
Now, fifteen years later, he could barely remember what his family looked like. In his dreams he often saw their faces, but those dreams faded quickly in the stark reality of day.
He had no say regarding anything in his life. Bloody bad luck.
He became aware of his surroundings, the pain in his side, the smoke in his throat and nostrils. But the moment Marteen started to make sense of what was going on around him, the pain and desperate mental screams of the injured hit his consciousness like a hammer, and he drifted off again into that world of memories and partial consciousness.
