by Winfred Wong
“We have reliable information from a spy that the resistance is organizing a massive offensive tomorrow night to take down our castle, with multiple battering rams and bombards, but no scaling ladders. So, in order to repel their attack effectively, I want ambush forces of valiant soldiers to attack their exposed back from here and here when they commence their attack,” Pancho explained, pointing to the silver pins. “Legate Haylan, legate of the legion one, will be responsible for position one, and, Legate William here, legate of the legion two, will be responsible for position two, and the rest of us will be shedding our blood on the ramparts, defending the walls at all cost.”
“Brilliant, Pancho,” Morph complimented, and Chavdar almost yelled out as he found the fact that this amicable man was Pancho hard to believe, gaping at Pancho like he had just discovered something unprecedented. “See what I mean when I said there is nothing you can’t do?”
“I hope it’s that easy. There is still a problem with this plan,” Pancho said remorsefully. “Our castle gate faces southeast, so if they are planning to breach through the main gate and the portcullis, they will have to go all the way around the city, and there are exactly two routes they can take. First, the longer route to the right side of their camp. Second, to the left, where we will be ready to catch them off guard.”
Then Legate Haylan, a man apparently older than Pancho with a goatee, added, in a deep voice, touching his beard incorrigibly, “Therefore we need a decoy to make sure they will take the route to the left, and the Knights and you, Consul Morph, are more qualified than any of us for this mission.”
“And Barnett, the leader of the resistance, is a very cautious man, he won’t fall into the trap if you just show up in front of him suspiciously and head directly to the ambush positions,” Pancho elaborated in a stern manner. “Hence, instead of luring him directly to the ambush points, I want you to take the opposite route, take the longer route, so that he will be deceived into thinking that we are going to ambush him on that side, and, hopefully he will then decide to take the shorter route.”
And, with an irresolute look, eyes squinting like a snake, Morph returned, “But nobody can guarantee they will take the bait. I mean what if they jump to the conclusion and chase after me? What if he is not a man scrupulous enough to think in the same way as we do? It’s too risky. A legion should be deployed on the longer route as a safety measure as well.”
“Well,” Pancho said, staring at Chavdar, who had been focusing on him for quite some time. “Personally I am quite optimistic that Barnett will take the shorter route if you do as I say, but, if you insist, then so be it. Legate Gladwynne, you will be responsible for the ambush on the longer route.”
“Yes, consul,” a short man with unusually long limbs replied. “And if I may, I would like to know where exactly should my legion await the arrival of the enemy.”
Then there was a pause when everyone was viewing the map concentratedly, looking for the best spot to hide an entire legion.
Legate William, who looked hideous with one-third of his nose cut off and had broad shoulders that were even broader than Chavdar’s, broke the silence. “It’s a flatland! A flat flatland!” he stressed. “There’s no way we can hide some four thousand men on such a piece of flatland.”
“No, there is one way,” Levi quipped, biting his nails, and they all looked at him. “The moat.”
“The moat!?” returned William at once. “With all due respect, you, as a centurion, must know that’s not even realistic.”
“Wait, I think we should listen to what he has to say first,” Gladwynne said, regarding at Levi eagerly. “Centurion Levi?”
“As Legate William has just told us, it’s a flatland, a flat flatland,” Levi repeated twice, not being sarcastic, but only emphasizing – though it sounded ironic to William, who flushed red immediately. “Since it is impossible to have a legion of soldiers concealed on the ground, the only option left to us would be in the moat.”
“For real? The moat? The moat?” William interjected vulgarly, imitating his manner. “Are you even being serious? You want our soldiers drown painfully in the moat?”
However this blunt succession of undue reproval that had stifled his idea, Levi continued like he didn’t care. “Our men don’t have to stay in the water for hours if we send out a lookout man. The lookout man, riding the speediest horse, will tell the legion when to leap into the moat right before the main force of the resistance can see them so as to minimize the time they have to spend under water, and, Legate Gladwynne, for this to happen, you’ll have to assemble a group of courageous soldiers who swim from your legion.”
Nodded in admiration, Gladwynne replied, “You know, this plan sounds crazy to –”
William interjected again, “No, Legate Gladwynne, no. It isn’t crazy. This is madness – complete madness.”
“Argh...yeah, is it? Because I can’t come up with a better idea,” Gladwynne said discreetly. “And, to me, I think I can pull it off.”
Gaping at Gladwynne, “Huh?” returned William, rigid with astonishment.
“Yes. To be honest, I’m confident,” he said. “Consul Pancho, I am totally fine with this crazy proposal. Just one thing. Centurion Levi, I think it will be better if one of the Knights can be my lookout man tomorrow since you and your men will be at the frontmost position. What do you say?”
“No problem,” Levi said.
“All right then. So be it,” Pancho approved, and William flung up his arms like he couldn’t believe what he just heard. “Any questions? The operation will begin when the sun falls tomorrow. Good luck!”
“Legate Gladwynne, you don’t have to worry about the lookout man. I have a
Then, with the armor chinking, all of them sauntered toward the door as the soft twilight faded into night, except Morph, Levi, Pancho and Chavdar.
Looking at them, “Good job, Centurion Levi,” Pancho praised and cracked a warm smile. “I bet they will be surprised to find a legion of men in the moat!”
“I’m glad that you like it, Consul Pancho,” Levi said when two men, both had eagle tattoos on their necks and armored like other soldiers, one taller, one shorter, came in and bowed.
“Consul Pancho, there’s something you have to see,” the taller one reported, gasping and gaping, but still able to maintain a calm tone of voice. “Please follow me onto the wall.”
“Of course,” Pancho said. “Please lead the way. Morph, do you three want to come with me?”
“Sure, would love to,” Morph replied.
Darkness had already enveloped the world again when they stepped out of the keep, and everything was still the same way it was. Tramping along to and up the staircase, with the two tattooed men leading, they went atop of the west side of the walls, where a row of patrols gathered, facing precisely in the direction of the resistance’s encampment, and looked beyond the moat at the grass field that ended when the greenery met the foot of a rising ground, and from up there, they all had their eyes pinned on an eye-catching, moving light source that glistened like the an incandescent meteor in the sombre sky at somewhere close to the foot of the rising ground.
“Consul Pancho, we rushed to report this to you at once when we caught sight of it,” the same breathless man claimed. “It hasn’t stopped moving ever since it popped up suddenly. Whoever carrying the light must be one of them, I think.”
“Well done, well done,” Pancho said and stared at the centaur. “What do you think, Morph?”
Gazing afar with a puzzled face, wondering what kind of trick was this, “I am not sure,” Morph replied. “What do you think?”
“Arcas!” Pancho called forth. “What is the effective range of our cannons?”
Then, the other tattooed man, Arcas replied, “Consul, the largest culverin we own is capable of hurling big ball for about half a mile, and the target is now beyond the effective range of it.”
“Pancho,” Morph suddenly said. “Why don’t you send your eagles out if you wis
h to take a closer look at it? I bet you are well aware of what your beloved birds can do.”
And Pancho laughed, “Good idea!” “Jakes! Bring me Hector!”
Then, the shorter man, Jakes, headed for the stairs and pounded down, but he halted midway and stood still, staring at the unknown light source, realizing that it was dwindling and eventually dying off. “Look!” He ran back up and pointed squarely at it, directing everyone’s attention to it. “It’s gone! The light is gone!”
“It seems our enemy has already acted,” Pancho said naturally.
Emitted a dissatisfied sound, Morph said, “Well, in this case, I shall leave with my friends now.”
“See you tomorrow, Consul Morph,” Pancho replied, in a magnetic but very unpleasant tone that didn’t match his compassionate smile hanging on his tender-looking face, a sense of suffocating depravity emanating from his mouth. The vast contradiction had seemingly frozen the air when a breath of wind blew by, and the ambience became so queer that some of the men around even forgot to breathe, literally striking terror into people’s lungs with words.
Enduring the flow of peculiarly bitter blood chilled by the freakish atmosphere, the three of them quickly whooped down the staircase as fast as possible.
“What was that!?” Chavdar exclaimed, panting, and hunkered down, when they returned to the courtyard. “I almost suffocated.”
“I was going to ask the same thing! What was that – pressure!? I’ve never experienced anything like that, not even when I was challenging the mightiest foe,” Levi said and took off his helmet, mimicking Chavdar, rubbing his sweating forehead. “Do you know anything about it, Morph?”
“It’s his vision,” Morph said, in a normal tone, as if unaffected. “He injected some kind of terrifying illusion he created into us through our ears. He controlled our feelings with his phantoms.”
“So,” Chavdar said, “how are we going to fight a man who can control our feelings?”
“Not now, not now, Chavdar,” Morph said. “We have to focus on tomorrow’s battle for now. Pancho clearly knows the resistance has got the staff, nonetheless, he still wants us in the front line, confronting them directly, giving us the best opportunity to seize hold of the staff. But I just don’t think he is that foolish to not realize this. I’m sure he is up to no good.”
“It is strange,” Levi said. “On second thought, it is indeed very strange to have us go for the longer route to lure them into the shorter route. It makes sense only if that Barnett is really such a careful man as he described. But what if Pancho is lying? What if Barnett isn’t a cautious man?” Levi questioned. “What if the resistance is the bait, and he wants us dead in the battle so that he will be the only dominating consul left in the country, distorting the system of checks and balances of having two consuls?”
With a crazed look, Morph inhaled a breath of overwroughtness and said, “If this is what he wants, then we will head for the shorter route tomorrow. We must not fall.”
“Defying order from the person in charge will undoubtedly get us all hanged,” Levi reminded, paused and smirked. “But he never said that we can’t alter his plan a bit.”
“Then it is decided, we will go for the shorter route first, then back to the longer route. Prepare your knights, Levi,” Morph concluded. “What about you, Chavdar? You don’t have to come with us. You’re not a soldier.”
“No, please let me come with you,” Chavdar said after vacillating, touching the pendant he had been wearing all the time gently. “I would like to help. I want to help.”
It was a heedless decision. He knew that he didn’t even know how to wield a sword properly, nor what to do when facing the enemy, nor what he can actually accomplish in such an armed confrontation, but the traumatic grief that carved an invisible, incurable scar in his bleeding heart when he saw the bodies of his parents and learnt the death of Malo impelled him to go.
“All right,” Morph said. “Then we shall meet at the gate by sunset. Levi, bring Chavdar a horse and a set of armor tomorrow. Now go get some rest. Tomorrow will be a long day.”
And they dispersed, except Levi, who hurried to Morph when Chavdar was walking to the keep.
“Consul Morph, are you sure about this?” Levi queried.
“What?”
“Are you really letting him come with us? It will be a one-way trip for him. And I don’t even know who he is. Can we trust him?”
Morph laughed conceitedly, “Don’t worry, Levi. Don’t worry about him. He will live longer than any of us will. I can at least assure you that it won’t be a one-way trip for him this time. He is a mind-wielder.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
* * *
Sunset wasn’t the snug crack of dawn in the morning, instead of the inspiring crowing of cocks, there were hauntingly lingering birdcalls uttered by the flapping and flitting eagles in the anaemic sky and the nickers and snickers of the war horses assembled and prepared to gallop into a rock-hard block of enemies.
Three legions of soldiers, three thousand men for each of the two legions, all armed and equipped with full suits of armor, and one only consisted of a thousand, all without proper protections, lining up in rows and columns, were awaiting the order from their legates, who were pulling themselves onto their horses’ back, in the open courtyard before the keep. Among them, some were green, some had survived many battles, and some were talented in different aspects, but, despite the fact that they were all very different individuals, they all had a common goal on that day.
“Soldiers!” Legate Haylan cried out when the heavy gate and the portcullis were being heaved open. “Tonight we are going to end this month long conflict once and for all! Let us stampede and trample them down like mud on the road! Now march! March into victory!”
As his voice dwindled in the wind, the three legions began marching robustly out of the castle one by one, pounding tread reverberating across the sky. It took them about half an hour before all of them left the castle, and they then immediately swaggered toward their ambush positions when they set foot on the land of the borderline.
“Ready?” Morph, standing near the gate, with the Knights around him, asked Chavdar, who was wearing the same armor as the marching soldiers, and he gulped with excitement.
“Knights! Ready to ride with me?” Levi cried.
“Of course!” they returned.
“Let’s go,” Levi commanded.
Trailing the tail of the last legion moving out, they trotted their horses toward the gate, passed through the entrance and cantered along the drawbridge. The rattling hoof beats of the hooves hitting the surface of the bridge were like a steady drum played by nine men at the same time, and, when they reached the end of the bridge, they circled right toward the south of the castle along the moat, to where Legate Gladwynne and his men were.
“Hey, best traveller, have you ever met a centaur before?” Rogen asked. “I thought centaurs only existed in history books.”
“Never seen a real one with my own eyes before today,” Haddon admitted. “Levi have talked about Consul Morph for many times, and I know that he is a centaur, but this is the first time I see him.”
“What about that young man? He doesn’t seem quite like a soldier,” Rogen mumbled, staring at Chavdar’s back, who was riding alongside Morph. “What’s his name again?”
“Chavdar,” Haddon said, and Chavdar looked over his shoulder at him as if he heard what he just said.
“I wonder why Levi would let him ride with us. He might be a burden to us. What do you think?” Rogen continued.
“No idea.” Haddon shrugged, as Chavdar slightly reined in his horse to slow down. “A friend of the consul that will help us in this fight.”
“That’s what Levi has told us last night!”
“Yes,” returned Haddon, and Nuada, who had been riding in front of them, reduced his speed until he was side by side with Rogen. “And that’s all I know about him. Go ask him yourself if you want to know more. I’m not interes
ted.”
Then Nuada said, “Hey Rogen. I’ve always wanted to ask you a question.”
“Well, go ahead,” Rogen said.
“What happened to your right hand?” Nuada asked curiously. “Your pinkie?”
“See,” Rogen lifted his right hand up and said. “I lost it during the civil war. On that night, King Iain’s army annihilated the feeble and poorly-trained soldiers of the Ustron’s party and drove them to Cretone, my homeland, and surrounded the place like a prison.” And Haddon and Nuada cast a strange glance at Rogen simultaneously. “Knowing their impending defeat was unavoidable, and there was no hope for them to turn the table around. They became very agitated and irritated, so agitated that some of them had to let it all out, the stress, the fear and the hopelessness, by dismembering and maiming innocent people. I was only eleven, but I had to defend myself. I gripped the sword that Lee gave me tightly and confronted them, and, of course, they knocked me down effortlessly, laughing scornfully, making fun of me, and even cut off my finger, joint by joint. It hurt so bad that I could only scream. I almost passed out because of the unendurable pain. At that time, I thought it was the end of my life, but then Lee showed up and saved me like a hero.”
Then he stopped dramatically, with a doleful look, as his heart thudded, drawing in a deep breath, and Chavdar stared at him, imagining what would happen if there were a man called Lee in Ayrith.
“So you joined the army because you want to be a hero like him?” Chavdar asked suddenly.
Surprised, “Yes,” Rogen admitted after a brief hesitation.
“I thought you were born without it,” Haddon said when he saw the end of the moat, indicating that they had arrived, and halted when the sun gave off its last radiance before it faded into utter dimness.
