Rearguard

She leads the company of White Shields streaming through the open gate, dragoons reinforced by heavy lances with a reconnaissance detachment from the Bloody Reds. These are her few remaining veterans, proud wives and mothers with silver mail and graying temples. Pennants dance from our spears as we ride to harass the retreating grendel, eager for the wind in our hair and reclaimed territory beneath our feet.

We track the grendel by the swath of beaten ground his decaying legion trails behind. Cast off equipment, backpacks, shields, helmets, anything that speeds their retreat, marks the tract like discarded toys strewn along the path of a petulant child. Through the rising dust, we spy the first stragglers strung out down the road. The grendel's forces lack cohesion now, his units dissolving into clumps and clusters. We preserve the discipline of our formation, a column abreast behind a thin screen of advanced and flanking scouts. Shadowing the horde, we maintain close contact, keeping ever-present pressure from barely out of crossbow range.

As the trail descends into the enchanted forest, the scene of so much of our recent fighting, a contingent of heavily armored hemogoblins emerge to form a shield wall across the road, their flanks anchored on well-treed knolls rising to either side. These gnarled and bandy-legged monsters hiss and taunt us, raising a roar of defiance accompanied by the cadence of their falchions ringing against the rims of their tower shields.

She studies their disposition, formulating a plan of attack as our horses shy and skitter at the noise. We could feint to either side, dismount and outflank them, force them to retreat through a series of set engagements. Instead, she chooses confrontation, a battle royal to end the grendel's final organized threat. Forming her heavy cavalry behind a vanguard of dragoons, we advance upon the enemy's line in tight formation, horns and gentle voices raised in a harmonious rendition of the company's battle hymn to counter the cacophony below.

Quickening to a trot, a canter, and finally a gallop, the sound of our hooves rolls down the hills like thunder from a swiftly advancing storm. Hemogoblins brace behind their sturdy shields to receive our charge. Just before the wall, scouts and dragoons peel away to either side, thrusting their spears at any exposed faces to sow distraction. Hemogoblins untense thinking this a probe, a mere demonstration until our hidden, heavy lances crash into their slackened shields, smashing their formation. The cresting wave of steel and horseflesh sends them reeling into uncontrolled flight, easy targets for the dragoons circling back around.

Red scouts stalk the pockets of survivors with sanguine glee. For months, the hemogoblins have predated their numbers, ambushing patrols, assassinating officers, raiding the settlements where replacements gather. While our pickets will skirmish with the dispersed clans for weeks, the war band's annihilation marks an end to the conscription of widows and orphan girls to fill her Red Company's meager ranks.

Though the grendel's remaining forces have melted into the sanctuary of the forest, we celebrate the destruction of his rearguard. Laughing and singing, we return to the keep victorious.

Our revelry is broken by a waiting dispatch from a distant sister in a land of gold and honey, a fellow amazon herself besieged. We read in dismay that her walls have been breached and most of her white company slain in a delaying tactic to secure her retreat to the great donjon tower. She endures six hard days of siege before a relief force can be raised to counterattack and reclaim her fragile walls. The breaches have been bricked over, but her walls remain weakened. How we wish we could spare our veteran column to aid our sister in arms, her allies and family now also under siege. We are reduced to sending messages of solidarity, smuggling through a handful of surplus supplies, exchanging strategies and tactics hard won in the prosecution of this devastating war.

Alone or in twos, our veterans drift away to prepare themselves for the next day's ride with only the crows on the battlements continuing to laugh.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III