Icarus's blog: "Somantics"

The plan was quite simple.
Send one deligate to the front gate, unannounced, unplanned, and declare victory.

Robert, tiny, tan, spindly Robert, new to the boot-outs, and only a little damp behind the ears stood before a full honor guard of white chargers and very shiny armor that glittered in the morning light. The captain had to give his army some credit, at least they knew to attack with the sun at their back.

The regular army disregarded Robert, this one straggler as a potential deserter or turncoat, only lobbing a few casually insulted missiles and insults at him.

Robert stammered, introducing himself to the assembled enemy knight-captains.
"My master has a message..." he stuttered and fidgeted with his cap, trying not to look directly at all the spikes, muscle, and stamping horses. He only stood barely over a man's elbow, but what he lacked in stature he made up for in...
actually no one was quite sure what Robert was good for yet. He had only just arrived in the band a few weeks ago, fresh off the boat and gibbering his bizzare accent that apparently dropped the end sound of most his words, as was evidenced by his name, and the tip of his tongue flicking over his teeth for each emphasis.
For the first week everyone just thought he was dirty and simple, but as it turns out, all of his countrymen spoke like this.
Though there was one instance where he was used as a human catapault to lower a tower gate.
That may have been the greatest moment of mousey Robert's life. Even better than the time he beat the captain in a game of poker for this really nice hat he had worrying in his hands.
He wouldn't want anything to happen to his prize from his captain, and so he plopped it over his head, shadowing his face for all but one terrified quivering eye.
"My master says that he shall break fast on the battlements of your great fortress under his employer's banner".
The knights spat laughter from behind their steel masks. Cackling and guffawing, their whole bodies shaking with mirth.
"In 100 years the Steel garison had never been flirted with, much less penetrated." One knight stated leaning down patronizingly to the tiny underarmed man.
Robert pointed behind them. The laughter faded as shoulders pulled comrades to turn and stare dumb as their flag burned and was tossed off the highest rampart of the fortress. A middle aged man in dingy armor was waving energetically took another bite of crispy bread.
The banner of the great white griffon waving a similar, comical hello behind him.

It was at this point that Robert turned, and started running as fast as he could back to his allied infantry line.
Two solid, full thumps landing as he turned to run, but this went unnoticed over the outrage and insult of the knight's flag being burnt and cast to the earth.
They began to come about to charge the fortress but the faint, searpentine sizzling stopped where Robert had been standing
and two great iron balls packed with powder detonated in shards of smoke, fire and sharp metal- lodging several fragments into the skulls of the nearest knights, stirring and overturning the chargers at the very least crushing the remaining honor guard.
"I might be short, but I've got big b-"
"CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGE!!!!"
Robert wasn't all the way back in formation before his army came like a wave of pikes, blades, shields and thundering testosterone.
"Damn it!" Robert turned with the stampede, swept up in the assault despite the stitch in his side and the burning in his lungs.


---------------------------------------------

The captain pulled back from the rampart smirking.
The enemy army now pouring out of the fortress like panicked ants staggering from their nest set afire by oil.
"Why the hell did that work?"
His men were still dressed as flotsam and driftwood, covered in muck.
The first diversion being Robert's message, the guards in their curiosity and pride turning from their post to watch the break, thinking perhaps this was the innevitable ceasefire. There had been weeks of thundering cannon and catapault falling impotent against the garrison's walls, all attacks being turned and routed against the main gate. They had barely noticed the keen blades in their throats and exposed ribs.

The garison of steel was a chokepoint sandwiched between river and mountain. A quaint, winding road to the most overbuilt fortress his lordship could afford protecting the threshold of his lands.
The lord of this region had such great confidence in his fortress that he had taken residence to oversee this latest petulant saber rattling at his gates. Accompanied by his closest attendants advisors and his three youngest daughters.
A fat, oily old man, built on a throne of gold and not strength.
A merchant lord, not a man of any stature or deed.
The kind of man that thought to buy what he couldn't have, and burn what he couldn't buy.
The kind of man that would surely build a viewing room at the central tower, gaudy and guarded, overlooking all he possessed even in chaos, even in inconceivable defeat.

The captain kicked his disguise aside, the main force was in dischord from a few well placed explosions and fires within the fortress. Did they put the flames out, or did they meet the enemy at the gates- what of the shadowy forces within? Where were the defenses breached?
Who was to blame?
What of the cascade of soldiers without?

"No quarter, no spectacle, no sound" The captain said over the din of the battle far below. "Ransom any noble for immediate surrender".
The dozen or so men under his command nodded and dispersed a few taking a moment to dress in guard's dress, partially for the armor, mostly for the disguise, placing a bloody palm over their left eye to distinguish friend from foe, in the madness that is battle, its hard enough to know, behind enemy lines its nigh impossible.
The more agile and veteran killers simply fell out of sight and sound, dropping as soft as sashes against a virgin's waist over the garrison's wall anchored by hooks, rope and sinew.

The advantage of such an ecclectic group being that there were many answers to the same question, all of them valid.

One particularly terrifying man stood just at the corner of the captain's eye.
If he was the captain, this was the lieutenant. Another foreigner, in the strange garb of unforgiving sun, long chorded limbs, a killer's glint in his eyes.
"Questions?"
"You're too old for this, too direct."
A great powerful pulse went from the captain's heart all the way to the tips of his swordhand. A threat. With this man, not just to his authority.
"I can kill you here, or you can step down after the job is done"
"It's my plans Matthias, my rules, my squad, my job" the junior officer took a step back, not out of fear but caution as the captain rounded, drawing his blade from his back.
"This is not to be my last war Matthias- you've yet to even see what I'm capable of." That same pulse, had become a throb, his fingers strangling the grip of his sword as leather protested.
One unarmored man, one unarmored snake was all he had to kill today.
The hum of his arm now began to overtake his whole body, drowning out all vision but that of his enemy, only his breath, his distant heartbeat could be heard, and despite appearances, his heart began to quicken. His muslces were coiled, prepared to riposte. One quick flick and Matthias had drawn his curved backblade.
But he staggered backwards, what was this darkness? This stifling hatred? This omnipresent hunger drawing nearer.
"Despair." Came the answer from somewhere close to Matthias' mind, but not the air around him.
And as the captain took a step forward all Matthias' dreams and ambitions stirred within him, grandieur, fame, wealth, women, allies, friends, land, but never smiles, never love.
Just a warrior riding the current of skill and strength ever higher- but what of old men? What of old warriors? Soft-toothed dogs baying in the night at figments.
Gone deaf and simple years before.
They were to be discarded after their brilliant light had faded.
They were to be the next king, and raise the next warlord tyrant to trample the weak in their stead.
But Matthias saw none of this in his future... only more wars, more fire, more piles and piles of gold unspent, unfulfilled, and his blade, body and mind ever growing duller
duller
until they faded into the sands of his home.
Like the millions before him.
"Such petty ambition" the captain dropped his sword with a resounding clang "cannot taint my covenant!" His hand darted out for the younger man's throat and slammed his body against the jagged ramparts flinging his uncrowned head against sharp, wedged stone, shattering the bones with a meaty thwack, breaking off a piece of the wall, and spattering them with thick pinks and reds.
Matthias' eyes rolling into the back of his head as his body shuddered a final time and went still against a gasp of protest
as if to say
"I wanted so much more..."
but there was no time left... no greater tower to climb, no greater garrison than this one.
"And it was I that brought you here."
The captain released his lieutenant's now concave throat, and watched as blood and sick tried to catch the body plummeting to the unsuspecting war below.
His remains swiftly swarmed and plowed into the noise and dirt underfoot and forgotten.
Devoured by the oblivious and uncaring war machine.