Another young man, a farmer, was stricken with fear, wailing for his mother.
“I don’t want to die. Please, I don’t want to die. We are going to die.”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Rilan whispered to Tomas sarcastically.
Next to Tomas stood his good friend, Rilan. They had been conscripted together on the same day, given that they lived in the same village and were young, able-bodied men.
He looked to Rilan, paralysed with fear. Rilan’s nervous eyes spoke louder than any words.
All their lives, Tomas and Rilan had wished to leave Brittlepeak. They daydreamed of mysterious travellers, an alchemist in need of his aid, or veteran knights seeking young apprentices.
Conscription was initially a source of excitement, until they realised that their dreams had no basis in reality. This wasn’t what they had wished for in the slightest.
“This doesn’t bode well,” Rilan muttered. Strands of his bright blond hair stuck out from beneath his father’s old helmet he wore. His scared eyes were narrowed ahead.
“If we stick together, we will make it out of this,” Tomas said. But did he truly believe those words?
The Akurai army had many more soldiers than the levies that Tomas’s regional command had put together within the week. They had sallied forth out from the town they had been stationed at to defend from the invaders- a small village named Barrowtown.
Ironic.
Many of the mounds and hills scattered amongst the field were ancient barrows, filled with countless dead. Nature had taken them back with hundreds of years’ worth of soil, rock, and vegetation coverings.
There they stood, a battalion of levies, made up of regional farmers, fisherman, stevedores, and smithies. Forced to wield spear and shield and sword for their kingdom against the foreign invader.
Tomas himself was the son of a butcher. He had no experience in fighting and had no will to die on some far away field. Rilan was only a mason. Despite Brittlepeak being many miles away over the horizon, Tomas was longing for the comfort that home brought. He always felt at the very least guarded in his home village, sitting in a valley at the base of Mooncrest Mountain.
The clatter of armour from someone fainting in the distance snapped Tomas back into the moment. He took a deep breath in; he knew he had to be strong if he wanted to live to see the next day.
“What chance do we stand?” an older man whimpered a few rows back. Tomas turned to look at the man. His white beard and pale eyes underneath the leather skullcap atop his head hinted at a long life behind him. “This is one of the Empire’s armies. How many more they got? We’re outnumbered, they got better weapons, better armour-”
“Quiet, old man,” another interrupted. “Nobody wants to hear your ramblings.”
“He’s right though! We are gonna die!” a boy with brown teeth called out.
Just like that, morale began to shatter.
The crows in the sparsely separated oak trees began squawking excitedly.
The men and boys all around muttered to each other. Some threw their weapons down. One ran the opposite way. Tomas and Rilan looked at one-another. They were young, naïve. They didn’t want to be here. They didn’t know what to do.
All the while, the Akurai units before them marched closer. They would soon be within distance of their archers.
Tomas stood strong. Perhaps it was from fear; perhaps it was confusion. But it certainly was not out of courage.
He tucked his hand under his collar, making sure the key was still hanging around his neck. Thankfully, it was. He held it tight, as if it were giving him the ounce of resolve he needed.
Dissent spread through the vanguard like the pox before a booming voice howled out over the chaos.
“Enough!” It was the field captain. Tomas only knew of him by the name of Gharland.
Gharland approached towards the front line on horseback, his steel armour looked fresh-forged. Flowing behind him in the wind was an exquisite ocean-blue mantle cape; Tomas had never seen anything like it. A longsword sat comfortably in the scabbard on his hip, the pommel of which had the sigil of the Broken Coast engraved into it. A shark’s open jaws with serrated teeth, encircled by a border of seaweed.
Gharland stared at the approaching invaders, then turned back at the quieting vanguard. “Your unruliness sickens me,” Gharland bellowed. His eyes were small and beady, and his moustache twitched as he spat at Tomas and the other levies.
“Here I am, forced to lead a band of destitutes and scroungers in defence of the Broken Coast. Look at you all. A sorry mob of cravens.” No one wanted to be here, no one more so than Gharland, by the look of things.
Snickering at Gharland’s rear on horseback was one of the field officers named Britus.
Tomas lowered his eyes, not wanting to draw attention to himself as Gharland paced back and forth throwing insults at his men.
The Akurai forces took positions several hundred metres ahead, waiting. They did not want to lead the charge yet. The longer they waited, the more fear and dissent they would spread in this ravel of levies.
“You, there?!” Gharland spat. Tomas felt shock run through his body, thinking he had been called out. But Gharland was pointing at another young lad down the line, who must have been a few years younger than Tomas.
The boy’s lower lip quivered. “A-aye, ser?” he stuttered.
“What is your profession?”
“B-b-baker, ser.”
Gharland snickered, before sitting upright on his horse. “We are here to defend our homes and our land from these heretic sacks of shit. These Imperial scum do not speak Alyrian. They know not our ways of life. They are barbarians from across the sea, sent to destroy us. House Stoneheart wants these bastards
