Chapter XXX

Chapter XXXII




Early in the morning, not long after the sun has risen over the hills, all Brandia lies at peace. All Brandia, save the valley of the white cliffs, lies at peace. Within this valley are three parties, two preparing to make war upon the other. On one side of the valley is the sword and anvil on scarlet, denoting the position and camp of King Valun III of Corridane, blowing proudly in the freshening breeze. On the far side is the banner of the usurper Damerson, which is completely black, and has no charge or emblem of any kind upon it. Between these two opposing camps, there is a third, that of the followers of the officially condemned and exiled king of Brandia, Meltran, which flies no flag and lies well hidden, as the men of that party are well-versed in being. All of them wait to see who shall order the first charge and strike the first blow. In order to discover the thoughts and plans of the commanders of each party, we must enter each man’s tent and hear them for ourselves. We will first visit the tent of Valun of Corridane, where he is discussing his plans with his favorite servant, David.

“If you, David, were the absolute ruler of twenty-five thousand men, and were about to send them into battle, as I am, what would you do?”

“If I were you, my lord, I would first discover how many men there are in the force that opposes us. Only then would I act. If there is a man who can tell us our foe’s numbers without deserting from his own force, it is king Meltran. We must send for him.”

“Precisely! We must send for him, but how are we to discover where he is? He left us no message.”

“If men go out to search for him, they may be caught. We can not risk that. We must assume that he is in this valley, with his men, waiting for the armies, which, you must remember, are each at least a hundred times larger than his band, to clash, so that he and his men may ply their skill by ambush.”

“You are using many words to say very little; that we can not find him, and therefore can not know the size of the enemy force.”

“Yes, my lord, I am afraid I am. But you must remember and think upon this; would it be better to have three hundred more bows on the front line, or some five thousand bows on the front, and three hundred more on the flank? For that is what you are faced with.”

“That is simply a part of the more pressing question I am faced with. The question I must really give thought to is how to fight the battle that is coming.”

“Do you mean to attack, or wait for the black Brandians across the valley to do the attacking?”

“I would prefer to attack, but if I do not know the size of the foes’ force, I must command my men to wait.”

“Would you have your footmen or your cavalry support the archers?”

“I will commit them when I see fit to do so.”

At this, David moved as if to leave. “Give the word. I go to find Meltran.”

“Go, if you must.”

We will here take leave of the camp of the Corridanes, and cross the valley to hear what is being said in the tent of Damerson, commander of the black Brandians. At the moment, he is in counsel with his spy, Salium, to determine what should be done to insure victory in the coming battle. It appears that they still disagree on some points.

“I say that we must be the first to attack, for if we do so, we may catch the Corridanes unawares, but if we wait for them to make the first move, we may well hear their war-cries within the bounds of our own camp before we are prepared to defend ourselves.”

“If you will restrain yourself, man, you will hear why I have not already ordered the attack, as I told you before! I am content to wait for the Corridanes to throw themselves upon us, for I have no doubt that our force is greater than theirs, and if that is true, then we may defeat their whole force with half of ours. Moreover, if they were to reach our camp unnoticed, as you fear they might, they would be swift indeed, and running through the air also, for to reach our camp across the valley they must be invisible, and silent too. But they are mortals, and therefore we are able to defeat them.”

“We are mortals ourselves, and therefore they are able to defeat us. You disregard two points which every commander must acknowledge at all times; that skill can counterbalance numbers, and the feelings of the men who do the fighting. I feel it my duty to tell you that your men do not love you, and if you push them too hard, or if the old king Meltran, whose presence in the valley I have not confirmed to anyone, were to reappear, many of them would desert.”

“I do not care whether they love me or not, they will attack or defend according to my orders alone, not according to the whims of an upstart spy! You must return to your place in the lines. I have no use for advisers who persistently oppose my views. I will send out orders within the hour. We will use a three-pronged attack. You are dismissed.”

Even as the commanders of the two armies at either edge of the valley are speaking with their aides just as we have heard, the aforementioned King Meltran is also discussing his plans regarding the impending battle. We find him in the center of his camp, which is situated some two or three hundred yards to the right of the battlefield, speaking with his two nephews.

“Eldarn, how many men do you think Damerson has in the field?”

“I can not give their numbers with any degree of certainty, my lord, but I trust I would not be far wrong if at one time I had at least a thousand men after me.”

“Tell me again. What did you hear Damerson and the spies say? Did they sound ready to attack the Corridanes or not?”

“Judging by what little I heard, I would be surprised if they have come to an agreement yet. Damerson was in favor of attacking, but the spies assured him that the Corridanes were many and prepared, so that attacking them would be foolish.”

“Do you think Damerson has more men than King Valun or not?”

“To find that he outnumbers king Valun two to one would not surprise me.”

As Eldarn was speaking, a man ran up to the group, stopped short, and announced “My lord, a man has just come from the Corridane camp. He says he was sent to request your presence there.”

Meltran rose in an instant, replying “Very well. I come. We do not have a moment to lose. Eldarn, you come with me. Dranulf, you shall remain here. Be ready to take command at a moment’s notice if Damerson charges.” With that, Meltran departed with the messenger. When he reached the edge of the camp, he found David waiting for him there. Without a word, the three men continued to run until they reached Valun’s tent in the middle of his camp. As they stepped inside, David announced the Brandians.

“My lord, I have found the lord Meltran’s camp, and he has come swiftly, with a companion.”

Then Meltran spoke for himself. “My companion is my nephew, Eldarn. If your question concerns the black Brandians, as I am confident it does, he is better prepared to answer it than I.”

“You are right again. David actually went for you on his own account, but I need to ask you precisely what you have thought of; what is the size of the force opposed to us?”

Eldarn stepped forward and bowed before Valun. When he straightened up, he also spoke up. “As I told my uncle soon before we came before you, it would not surprise me to find that our enemy has twice the men you do.”

“Why do you believe this?”

“Last night my uncle sent me into the foes’ camp to discover their plans. The distance between the edge and the center of their camp and the hundreds of men spread out throughout that length convinced me that what I say is true.”

“If that is the case, how are we to fight the battle, outnumbered as we are?”

Meltran replied “There is no question of how. We will fight because we have come to fight. You must fight, for otherwise, you would lose the respect of your people. How would you like to call them together now only to tell them that you are turning and retreating before the enemy you came so far to fight? The question is will you order your men to attack, or wait for the black Brandians to make the first move? I advise you to move forward at least one hundred yards, for your camp is placed in a narrow passage which would impede your men in pitched battle.”

“Where are your men?”

“My men are some hundred yards to the left of the battlefield, where we may easily harass that flank of the enemy.”

“Very well. I will order my men to move forward. We will concentrate our strength upon the right and the center, leaving the left open for your men to take down at will. If we cause them to retreat, we will give chase, then fall back once more and wait for them to charge again.”

“Very well. May it be the will of The Great One that we feast together after the battle is fought.” The men saluted one another, and the Brandians departed to return to their own camp.

Valun wasted no time, immediately ordering David to dress him for battle. Twenty minutes later, Valun, wearing full armor, was mounted upon his charger and riding through the camp giving his orders. “Forward until I call a halt! We shall wait for the black flag to strike the first blow! No horns, no cries! We must still try to surprise them! I will not hide from you that we are outnumbered! But we shall prevail despite that! Why? Because we fight to avenge our honor! Those men across the valley under the black flag fight to uphold dishonor! We fight to restore honor! If The Great One has chosen a side in this combat, He is with us! Archers, to the front and wait till I give the word, then let shafts fall like rain upon the foes of honor!” At the conclusion of his speech, Valun rode to the front of the lines, bringing his horse to a halt in the center of the line of archers. His visor was still raised, but he made no move to lower it as yet.

A moment later, as the Corridanes settled into their positions, silence fell over the whole valley. No one said a word. They tried to restrain themselves from moving. Men could hardly tell whether the man beside them was even breathing. A bird living in the forest above the valley could be heard twittering. A larger bird replied with screeching cries. The men remained silent. Then, suddenly, the horns began to sound.

Long, deep, notes issued forth from the midst of the black Brandians’ camp, rolling like thunder as they reverberated off the cliffs on either side of the valley. Before the last echoes had died, the Corridanes caught sight of men in the opposing camp preparing to charge. Suddenly, they began to run across the valley as fast they could go. The Corridanes stood watching them with bated breath, waiting for their king to order the archers to fall back before they were massacred by the oncoming troops. But Valun remained silent, watching the enemies. Finally, the moment he had been waiting for came.

The black Brandians who had been charging forward stopped abruptly when they had left their camp three hundred yards behind. They fell to the ground as the archers who had been running behind them nocked shafts to their bows. An instant before they raised the bows and fired, Valun simultaneously turned his horse back toward his own camp, jumped off, goaded the horse to safety, and shouted “Every man down!”

The men had noticed the danger at the same moment as their king. The moment he threw himself off his mount, every man on the lines had dropped flat as if the very ground had opened beneath them. Because of their swift action, very few men were hit, though many more came perilously close. A moment passed before a lookout that had been stationed beside the banner upon a hill close by the camp winded his horn to warn the men to rise and face new danger, which they could hear the approach of well enough themselves, as the thunder of the charging foes could be heard from several hundred yards away.

“Up! Make them pay for every shaft and then fall back! Right and center!” In an instant, the Corridane archers had risen in a body, and an instant later had sent their shafts speeding toward their closely packed opponents. They did not wait to see what came of them, but turned and retreated back to their camp as fast as they were able. As they archers retreated, the footmen charged toward the front, with Valun at their head, his cloak billowing out over the back of his mount, which he had remounted swiftly while shouting his orders.

But they had moved too swiftly. As most of Valun’s men charged toward the center of the black Brandians’ line, the flanks Damerson had ordered opened out behind them and threatened to surround half the army. When he saw this, in the midst of the melee, Valun cried to his men “Leave the left! Leave the left! Come to the right!” As many men as were able heeded his words and fought their way back toward the center, and a moment later Valun heard over the din of the battle the piercing notes of hunting horns and the sound of hundreds of shafts speeding toward the enemy’s left flank, just as had been agreed between Meltran and himself only an hour before the battle. This sudden attack on their rear by hidden foes threw the black Brandians into brief confusion, but the loss of three hundred men was not enough to cause them to turn and run. Instead, the men on the right and in the center began to fight harder than they had before the ambush. In consequence, the Corridanes had no time to appreciate the fact that, due to the skill of Meltran and his followers, the black Brandians stopped fielding a left flank only five minutes after the exiled Brandians had shown themselves.

A consequence of this, though, was that the two flanks which remained drew all of the black Brandians’ remaining force, which was still considerably larger than that of the Corridanes. In a last desperate move, Valun called on the cavalry to charge, just before the Corridane was forced back into the tight space they had left before the battle on Meltran’s advice. The Corridane cavalry, ten thousand strong, broke upon their foes like that last wave which dooms a ship in a storm at sea. But even that was to no avail. After their initial charge, which did deal heavy damage to their foes, the Corridanes were forced back once more. As the Corridane cavalry and footmen retreated, the five thousand bowmen began to rain shafts down upon the black Brandians. Every shot felled a man. They kept this up for as many as five minutes before their adversaries turned back to return to their own camp.

At long last, the battle had come to a halt. The valor of the Corridanes had cost their foes many men. Nevertheless, the overwhelming numbers of the Brandians had taken their toll. The Corridanes had lost so many men themselves that they could not hope to defeat their opponents as the balance now stood. Valun thought he would be unable to bear the shame of it. The valiant Corridanes, who had marched for three days and more to arrive at this place, had been soundly beaten by the forces of an evil-minded usurper.

Valun sat sullenly silent in his tent, refusing to speak to anyone, even David. Accordingly, David stood outside the opening, deterring anyone from attempting to come close. Those who were not engaged in properly burying their numerous fallen comrades were behaving in much the same manner as their king. After several minutes of morose silence, Valun rose from his seat and called “David!”

David entered hurriedly. “Yes, my Lord?”

Valun returned to his seat, his disappointment weighing all the more heavily upon him since he had made the effort to rise and speak. “David... I must send the men home while they can still get out of this place. As neither Richard nor Robert is here, I must put you in command of the return march.”

David was shocked by this announcement. “Me? In command?! My Lord, what will you be doing, that you will be unable to lead the men back yourself?”

“I... will be doing what I came to do. Looking for my father. I pledged my honor to find him and bring him back to his country, and if I do not accomplish that I am shamed forever! I tell you that I will not return to Corrandion, no not even to the borders of my country, until I find my father or his grave! Now, listen, and commit these words to memory; as soon as you return to Corridane, seek out Richard and Robert, and tell them both that they are to rule together in my name. They are to decide between themselves whose heirs shall begin the new line of kings. Go now to carry out my orders.”

“Yes, my lord.” David turned to go, as Valun had fallen silent once more, leaning forward and covering his face with his hands. But he was not yet done speaking.

“David, you must strike my tent along with the rest. I will abide with the king Meltran.”

“Yes, my lord.”

So it was that, acting on orders given by David, the remainder of the Corridane army broke camp and began to march away, back toward their own land. Their king, Valun III, stood watching them sadly as they marched slowly past him, staring at the ground. When the last man had passed him, Valun drew his sword, which had been cleaned thoroughly by David since the combat, and raised it so it caught the sunlight and flashed brightly toward the retreating army.

David caught sight of the movement and the flash as he was turning to make sure that the last stragglers had caught up. As soon as he saw what Valun had done, he called a halt. “Salute your king, Corridanes!”

Heeding his words, the army stopped abruptly and shouted with one voice, weapons raised, a great cry which could be heard nearly a mile away. “Valunariaaa!”

Sheathing his sword once more, Valun turned away from his men and began to make his way toward the camp of the exiled Brandians. He was not long in reaching the place, where he was met by a sentry who conducted him into the presence of Meltran.

Meltran rose to greet him, expressing surprise that he had not left with his men. “What is this, Valun? You are remaining behind while your men depart? Have they grown dissatisfied with you already?”

“No, thanks to The Great One, they have not deserted me yet. I sent them away.”

“And why is that?”

“I did draft the men, I will say that, but the ones who followed me to the field of battle came willingly, driven as I was by the desire to see the Peacemaker live out his life in his own country, as he deserves.”

Meltran could hardly believe what Valun had just told him. “Because they gave you unquestioning loyalty, you are sending them away? Do you expect that three hundred men, which are of course yours to command, will be better able to defeat our enemies than the ten thousand you sent away?”

“You saw yourself that another attack would have destroyed them. As their king, I ordered them to follow me. As their king, I ordered them to leave me. I would rather that the men who survived think less of me, than that they all die through my folly.”

“But what of you? Why have you remained?”

“One man can avoid an army. Ten thousand must fight or be shamed. I can not find my father through conquest, so, with your aid, I will find him without fighting.”

“Very well. That is the best that you can do in your situation. All I ask is that you heed my words when I wish to advise you, for as you might have determined from my story, I was grown and ruling when you were only a young prince.”

“I know the value of the words of my elders. I will do as you ask.”

“I in turn respect you for your deference. It is not often that a young man shows the growth of wisdom which you have. Cole! Prepare a place that the lord Valun may use while he abides with us!”