The Price of War
With Fastaqui's defiance announced to the Midnight Horde, the Herald retires frowning. As he re-enters the host the soldiers beat spears on shields and began chanting loudly, whipping themselves into a frenzy. Anon, out from the ranks of the crowd, men and women in long robes emerge. They lead a line of dirty bedraggled prisoners, civilians obviously controlled by some foul sorcery. The eyes of the victims are blank whites, visible even from the top of the grand wall, and they stand very still as one after another their throats are slit by the Horde mages.
A foul feeling fills the air, and then in a moment, like a thunderbolt, it passes like a physical thing between the line of mages and corpses and the mighty wall of Fastaqui. Lightning lashes the sky, fire falling from the heavens. Where it strikes the defenders of the wall they perish screaming in flames, and under their feet the earth recoils at the fell magick of the invaders.
But the wall stands firm. Some parts of the parapet crumble down, shaken loose by the sorcery, taking soldiers of Fastaqui with them into death. But the vast part of the immense fitted blocks are preserved from the onslaught, though worse for wear. This appears to cause some consternation in the ranks of the Horde, but their confusion does not last long. With the defenders disrupted, and their hearts shaken by the sight of their comrades consumed by fire mere feet away, the soldiers of the Bloodright surge forward.
The moment the defenders had been waiting for. Javelins and stones rain down from the high wall onto the foe as he approaches, crushing skulls and sending men spiraling down into death even as they move against the masonry of the defense. But most of those who fall are blank eyed, or in a wild battle frenzy - not the black-skinned marauders of the Host, but slave-soldiers driven forward by fear of their captors, desperately trying to earn their survival through obeying the commands of their masters.
And with them come the ladders. Ladders which spring up like a thicket, cut high to be able to reach even the top of the fitted wall. Many are cast back down only moments after they are raised, but others are set and held firm by the weight of many hands as soldiers bearing the sigils of the Midnight Horde and the Lord of the Earth swarm up them hand over hand. Against such defenseless targets the javelins and stones of the Fastaqui defenders work a dreadful toll, but the invaders are many, many times in number that of the paltry hundred which hold the wall. Soon the attackers gain the summit of the wall, and fighting rages along the top of the parapet, though the base of the wall is already littered with the dead and dying in their hundreds.
It is time, and the position of the hammerblow is now known. By shouted command and roar of kettledrum, all those who hold Fastaqui dear rush forth to partake in red battle. The force holding the gate from one side, and the force lingering at the Military Square from the other. That parapet must be held at all costs, come hell or high water.
Stiffened by reinforcements from the rest of the city, the defenders of the walls redouble their efforts, coating the stone with the bodies of slain slave-soldiers. But, with the apex of the wall contested, the commander of the Horde unleashed his true assault - the warriors of the Bloodright. They come across the fields singing harsh battle-hymns, skin as black as night, bodies scarred with red symbols. Those few men who manage to loose arrows and javelins against them find the projectiles repelled by shields which glint a lurid blue in the smoke-air, and soon the soldiers are climbing the ladders.
Where they enter the fray, few can stand against them. Men already tired, bodies brought low with wounds from the initial onslaught, fall like wheat before the thresher. Weapons of glinting bronze cut through wicker and wood like a knife through fat, and though the men and women of Fastaqui might have been their equals in open combat, worn down by the slave-legions they are easy prey. In the matter of an hour even the reinforcements are driven back down from the wall, and the black-skinned warriors of the Midnight Horde press them ever further into the city under the weight of both numbers and fresh troops...
The Crones rang it out, by drum and voice. A solemn call for every son who has ever loved his mother, and for every mother who has ever loved her children, to take up arms and stand firm in defense of home and hearth.
The foe has come now, here - into their very city's street - and he must be driven back. He must. So let every citizen stand firm and fire-eyed, slice them full of holes and drink their fill of glory. There is nothing now, if not this. No end nobler. No act more proper. And for those that cannot heed this call? Let them instead fire the forges, that they might give their valuables to the fire. Let them slit their children's throats.
Let them look to the sky, curse the gods, call down the cold and the dark and be damned. Let it be said that the Many Mothers fell fighting.
As the few remaining warriors of the Ashen Oath fall back stubbornly into the city, their eyes are desperate, their faces pale. Loud and harsh are the war-chants of their foes in pursuit, black-hearted barbarians come to pillage and despoil. Even as the soldiers of the Many Mothers looked on, the gate was opened from within, and reinforcements poured into the city.
But then a curious thing happened. The Crones has issued a call for volunteers in the last defense. And from one clan-house came warriors, barely bearded youths, craftsmen holding tools, ancients wielding weathered axes and leathers of dubious provenance. Mothers with children yet to weaned, and fey-headed women not yet married. They fought with no particular skill, but with fire in their bellies.
Let it be said that the Many Mothers died fighting.
First it was dozens, barely enough to staunch the tide. They died where they stood, killed with almost contemptuous ease by the Bloodright warriors. Bodies hacked down with bloodstained bronze in a few strokes. But they did not stop coming, and they fought for their homes. For their children and men and wives. And the first black-skinned warrior fell; eye pierced through by a rusty carving knife.
In the streets they fought, and the marketplace, choking the thoroughfares with their bodies and grim determination. It was as waves battering against rock- but the foe, caught unawares mid-triumph, was not so durable as stone. Men who had given themselves over to looting and the joy of arson fell surprised by mobs of howling townsfolk. Though they slew as they fell, they fell nonetheless, and victory turned to ash in that dark desperate struggle.
By nightfall the Horde has unceremoniously fled back outside the walls of Fastaqui, whatever intelligence which commanded the host determining the cost in lives to be too great to subdue the populace. The Many Mothers had paid the butcher’s bill for her victory, but in the end, the Midnight Horde departed her lands in dishonor. The first failures of the Lord of the Earth.