Dream of Legends

by Stephen Zimmer

  From their lofty height, the showering bombardments reduced the wooden edifices within the village of the Five Realms to little more than piles of shards and splinters. Even the great trebuchets that Dragol had seen, the mightiest of the siege and war machines of Avanor and Gallea, could not wreak so much damage within such a very short amount of time. The thunderous display of destruction was undeniably impressive, daunting, and even intimidating to observe.

  Tirok looked over towards Dragol, raising a clenched fist to his right ear. Dragol responded to the gesture in similar fashion. The two senior Trogen warriors then took up the large signaling horns hanging loose at their sides, swiftly raising the ends to their lips. With a deep intake of breath, both of the chieftains blew forcefully upon the narrow ends, and the horns blared in loud unison.

  The deep, resonant blasts loosed the mounted Trogens off the back of the Darrok. In moments, many riders and steeds had lifted up and spread out into the surrounding air. The signal from Dragol’s and Tirok’s Darrok was spread quickly amongst the other Darroks in the formation. Several other groups of Trogens rose up upon their Harrak steeds, and all of them slowly converged, forming a veritable cloud of sky warriors. If there was to be any response or sudden surprises coming from the defenders, the Trogens were ready, and more than willing to meet them.

  Dragol gave another distinctive signal upon his horn, and guided a small detachment of Trogens up and away from the main Darrok formation, in order to survey the lands immediately below them. He seized upon the benefits brought by the high, unobstructed altitude, giving him a tremendous vantage from which to scan the tree-shrouded land.

  He momentarily eyed the tight Darrok formation proceeding ahead of them, now a good distance away, underneath the position of the hovering sky riders. The slow-moving brutes looked to be creeping forward to Dragol’s perspective, and the Trogen chieftain had no worries about closing the distance if they got too far ahead.

  Dragol’s new position also lent him a full view of the unfolding destruction. Deadly, weighty stone missiles continued to be sent hurtling towards the earth in a pummeling cascade by the diligent strain and exertion of Trogen muscle. Yet all was not in harmony as he watched the pulverizing attack.

  He worked to stifle the return of revulsion at the barbaric method of warfare. He still found it so very hard to even conceive how the Unifier and the humans that had developed the new war tactic saw any honor in such a practice. More than ever, he could barely stomach Trogen warriors serving upon the Darroks, made to execute such a craven manner of attack.

  In the deep privacy of his heart, Dragol hoped that the enemy tribal warriors had vacated the village that was being assaulted, and would soon be coming up to match their martial skills against Dragol and the other Trogen riders. That was a method of warfare that he could sanction, where enemies looked each other face to face, and matched blade against blade.

  He did not want to face the rising notion within him that the Darrok bombardment was, in truth, a cowardly way of making war, striking from such a high altitude with the enemy having no means to defend itself. The ways of Avanor and those of the Trogens were so very different.

  Dragol’s head turned slowly from side to side, distracting his mind a little, as he passed his intensive gaze across the rolling landscape. Trees within the older regions of the forests covering the Five Realms grew thickly together, their upper tangles of foliage serving to cover hilltop, slope, valley and other terrain elements alike. The natural, largely unbroken mass of dense growth also served to make the enemy villages much easier to spot from the higher skies.

  With their locations on higher ground, in areas extensively cleared of trees, the tribal villages were very easy to idenfity, from leagues away. Virtually any significant break in the forest canopy revealed the presence of telltale corn fields, or the villages often located very close to them. Both were easy, static targets for the voluminous loads of stone being jettisoned by the Darrok onslaught.

  Dragol hovered and watched as the Darrok formation flew onward, nearing another intact, vulnerable village. He spurred his steed into a slow rate of flight, bringing it a little closer to the vicinity of the doomed village.

  Though disliking the manner of attack, Dragol could still not help but be almost mesmerized by the utter ferocity unleashed in the new type of warfare. He had never witnessed such blistering, quick destruction, other than the unpredictable times when the earth itself shook from terrible, unknown forces deep within it.

  His eyes drifted, as if in a detached daydream, towards the numerous varieties of longhouses within the large village that was situated along the crest of a sizeable ridge. There were no signs of movement within the outer palisades, and his ears picked up no sounds of alarm or terror at the imminent approach of the giant airborne formation.

  That did not come entirely as a surprise to Dragol, for he had not believed that they would have been able to catch any villager unaware after so many attacks. The first Darrok raid would have taught a harsh lesson, eliciting wariness and perhaps even the instigation of a full lookout system among the tribal peoples of the Five Realms. The following attacks would have solidified and reinforced such efforts.

  The longhouses were nothing but deathtraps for the kind of attack that the Darroks brought. Dragol had mused that the tribes would have long since left their villages as a precautionary measure against the spreading air attacks, seeking the safer harbor of the sheltering woods.

  Despite his burgeoning misgivings concerning the tactics, Dragol implicitly understood the dispassionate rationale of the Avanorans. The tribal villages would have to be destroyed, so that the enemy would have no fortifications to return to once the ground assault into the forest region was underway. The air assaults were preliminary attacks, employed to uproot and soften the enemy.

  It would save the impending invasion forces substantial amounts of time and numerous lives, both of which would otherwise have been consumed in much greater measures over the course of a multitude of difficult village sieges. The campaign to subdue the tribes and take their lands would be rendered swifter and smoother if the Five Realms were cast into fearful disarray, almost a surety with the widespread destruction of their villages. Displaced and scattered into makeshift communities, the tribal people would be left with no significant fortifications to use in resisting the invasion force sweeping in from the west.

  While there was little denying that the greatest honor for a Trogen, or any type of warrior, was in single combat, Dragol could not argue the logic and effectiveness of the strategy in attaining the Avanoran goals. The Avanorans were merciless and coldly practical in Dragol’s estimation. Even if they embraced methods that he viewed as dishonorable, and difficult to understand, the huge Trogen still realized that great passions for war burned within the blood of Avanor’s warriors.

  The Darroks slowly passed directly over the second doomed village. The first large stones crashed and thudded amid the trees farther down the slope, and then the buildings within the outer circumference of high timber stakes. Bark panels, rough planks, framing poles, and many other elements exploded into jagged bits with each ruthless impact.

  The vicious sounds of collision between rock and timber transformed swiftly into a cacophony of bark and wood shattering, as the elongated village structures were relentlessly crushed under the hail of rock.

  Dragol brought his steed into another hovering, static position, in close proximity to the stricken village. He watched as the Darroks looped about in a wide, ponderously slow arc, for another ruinous pass over the village. A very small number of structures that had somehow avoided the destruction of the first pass were annihilated by the second.

  A spotter upon one of the Darrok carriages, deeming the destruction to be thorough enough, loosed a distinctive horn signal of several deep, staggered notes. The large behemoths then continued onward, leaving the wrecked village behind, as the enormous, airborne flotilla headed away to search out the next village to t
arget.

  Dragol then cried out a firm command to the small formation attending him, leading them into a wide arc that shadowed the ponderous Darrok formation at a distance. They descended a little lower, though they remained well out of the bowshot range of any enemy archer lurking amongst the trees below.

  The keen eyes of Dragol and his Trogens scanned the trees intensely for even the slightest sign of the tribal people. They kept in mind the spirited resistance that had taken to the skies the first time the Darroks had attacked.

  Dragol was careful not to stray too far from the Darroks, speeding his group onward before the gap between the winged juggernauts and the escorting sky riders grew too much. He refused to be caught unawares, or too far away from the Darroks, if resistance did emerge.

  It was not long before a host of loud cracks filled the air once again, as yet another Five Realms village was relentlessly demolished under torrents of plummeting rock. Not a building was spared, and only a few trees in the immediate vicinity avoided being broken, smashed, and snapped apart by the unforgiving, indiscriminate attack.

  The area showered by the massive deluge of stone, though crudely targeted, was as devastated as the previous village in only two passes. Dragol quietly witnessed yet another validation that a Darrok bombardment was thorough and comprehensive in its maleficent effect.

  Just moments later, another few short blasts of a horn filled the air, following the dissonant signals coming from the spotter responsible for determining that an attacking run had been completed.

  The newer blasts were signals from Tirok. The other Trogen’s group was located on the farther side of the Darrok formation, though they were situated much closer to the core of the bombardment site than Dragol’s war band was.

  Dragol reacted to the distinctive signal by rallying his Trogens around him. With Dragol at their lead, they soared through the skies to position themselves closer to the main formation.

  Several were then distpatched from his group, and Dragol looked on as these warriors alighted carefully upon the backs of the Darroks, so that the winged leviathans could ferry them to the next chosen attack site. A portion of the steeds would be kept well-rested, but a small number remained to keep up the escort of the formation on both sides, shadowing the flying titans.

  Dragol spurred Rodor forward, drawing up to the frontal areas of the lumbering formation. Leaning forward at the base of the lead Darrok’s neck, where the handlers were located, a very sharp-eyed Trogen named Dagorda, of the Forest Wolverine clan, peered towards the far horizons. Dragol patiently waited, as the keen-eyed Trogen remained motionless, studying the skyline and terrain intensively. Dagorda abruptly straightened up, and called out vigorously, after just a few moments of assiduous scrutiny.

  A hulking Trogen standing just to the right of the highly regarded searcher shifted the Darrok’s great reins that he held in his hands. Following Dagorda’s directive, he adjusted the creature’s path towards the next unconformity sighted within the dark, green sea of tree cover.

  Though it took a moment, Dragol finally saw what Dagorda had espied. The patch of cleared ground was a good distance away, but Dragol had no doubts regarding its nature.

  As they drew closer, it was indeed revealed to be another tribal village site. Extensive areas cleared for crops sat just off of the base of a very large hill, which was surmounted by one of the largest villages that Dragol had yet seen. As with the last village, Dragol saw no signs of life within the crop areas, or amid the village structures.

  With a few more signals, all of the warriors that had rested their steeds for a short while lifted off the Darroks to rejoin Dragol and the others. Once regrouped, they all fanned outward, keeping a tight vigil upon the areas being bludgeoned by the new assault.

  The villages were being destroyed well beyond any reasonable hope of utilization. A tremendous amount of destruction was also levied upon the areas abundant with nascent growths of crops, which were undoubtedly ruined.

  Despite the unobstructed, methodical achievement of Avanor’s objectives, Dragol continued to chafe at the method. The Thunder Wolf chieftain’s hopes of engaging the enemy in an honorable way were fading precipitously, with every new encounter of an abandoned village.

  With numerous horn signals echoing far across the forestlands, their massive formation was certainly no secret. With the long span of time spent in the skies over the tribal lands, and the distances that they had covered, Dragol highly doubted that their presence was not well known to the enemy by then. Somewhere underneath the trees, perhaps in a number of locations, the enemy’s eyes were watching them.

  As was the growing trend, the enemy warriors had not been engaged that day. The only conclusion that Dragol could come to was that they were intentionally refusing to come up into the skies to challenge the Trogens. Perhaps they did not have enough steeds, as all reports indicated that the tribal warriors were fierce, brave fighters.

  Of even further frustration, there was still no sign of the non-combatants of the five tribes either. A couple of false alarms had been raised, brought on by overanxious warriors, perhaps espying a bounding deer herd that had been startled by the formation’s passage. Yet no signs had been found to indicate the whereabouts of the great numbers of villagers undeniably dislodged from their villages. Where they had sought refuge, Dragol and the other Trogens had not an inkling.

  To Dragol, it was a very unsettling, increasingly tense atmosphere to endure, fraught with uncertainty. It was not a matter of fear, but rather the inner conflict in Dragol that was sustained by the enemy’s refusal to challenge the Darrok formation.

  The day laboriously dragged onward, as the Trogens continued to strike at a couple more of the empty villages, while others such as Dragol continued in their assiduous search for the location of the tribal people’s havens. Many villages and crop fields were ravaged by the time that the ample stores of stones carried upon the Darroks were finally emptied. Yet the day ended to no avail, as far as Dragol was concerned, centered as he was on the declining hopes of encountering the enemy defenders, and meeting them in a clash of arms.

  The lack of fighting left a feeling of disgust in Dragol and the fiery Trogen warriors at the end of the day, in addition to the tremendous sense of frustration that was being multiplied with every passing day. It was a gloomy, irritated mood that encompassed the Trogens returning from the skies back to their new encampment, when the day’s raids were declared over.

  Anyone viewing the snarling, brooding warriors climbing down from the carriages on the Darroks would not have guessed that they had just dealt another heavy blow to the tribal lands. They would not have suspected that the Trogens had just accomplished all the aims that they had been sent to execute, without losing so much as one warrior in the process.

  The encampment itself was located a good distance away from the forests of the tribal lands, as a large expanse of open, treeless ground was necessary for Darroks to take off and land. The swathe of terrain was positioned at the midpoint of the Five Realms’ outermost, western border, within Gallean territory. Open, rolling grasslands spread westward from the edge of the Five Realms, broken up randomly by copses of trees.

  The designated site was a superb place to ward the Darroks, as well as being situated favorably for the missions at hand. The encampment was almost impossible to approach undetected, as important an attribute as the fact that it was within relatively easy reach of the enemy targets.

  A modest force of Trogens had come loaded with supplies, weapons, and materials to set up the encampment. A broad mass of hide tents, erected in the Trogen style, was now fully arrayed. Armed Trogen sentinels were positioned around the outskirts of the camp, and a couple of small patrols were circling in the skies overhead.

  There were no Andamoorans in this camp, only Trogens, which was one thing that gave a small shred of comfort to Dragol’s greatly troubled mind. The Andamoorans seemed to be fairly skilled with their horses, but their strange rituals, which they
performed five times each day to their strange god, were thoroughly alien to him. He had found himself becoming increasingly more aware of their hardened stares, and had never been entirely comfortable while in their midst. The feeling was quite mutual, as the Andamoorans were always on edge when he was in their immediate presence.

  He was not afraid of them in the least, but it was far more palatable to know that the new encampment was entirely populated by Trogens. It eliminated distractions and tensions that were not necessary in the first place.

  Dragol and the other mounted Trogens took their Harraks up off the Darroks and into the sky, as they approached the sprawling grounds. Beyond the encampment was a tremendous length of open ground used for the quartering, launching, and landing of the Darroks. Hovering high above, Dragol and the other Trogens watched as the Darroks slowly descended to land.

  The expanse of open ground was great enough that the creatures could come in two at a time, spread far apart from each other. The Darroks making up the second and third rank in the approach were staggered a good distance apart by their handlers, allowing for each of the gargantuan beasts to land without undue risk of collision.

  Despite all of the precautions and care, the winged giants still set down somewhat awkwardly, lumbering forward as their four clawed appendages touched down on the solid ground. Dragol noticed that more than a few Trogens on the carriages completely lost their footing, as each of the behemoth creatures alighted upon the ground. The carriages were jarred violently from side to side before the Darroks fully steadied themselves, and Dragol had little doubt that keeping balance was a harrowing task for the carriages’ occupants.

  Fortunately, each of the Trogens was secured by a single hide rope that they had tied about their waists, which in turn was tied to the carriage railing. If they lost their grips on the carriage rails in the process of being violently jostled about, they would not get thrown off to the ground, which was a far distance from the back of the titans that they rode upon. It was a method that also helped if the Darroks were caught suddenly within great turbulence while airborne. Dragol noticed a couple such individuals pulling themselves back up, after having been thrown over the side of the railing during the tumultuous landing.