---- There is a sound nature hates most. It's men, clothed in steel, marching in the rain. It's the beating of war drums in a peaceful village. It's the sound of needless death, and nature would suffer this day.
A new oaken skin enwrapped their transient fortress. They had torn down homes and hopes to shield themselves within. The men hammered, and shattered, and tore through a thousand childhood memories while the women worked to sturdy their new walls.
They worked as a community on the brink, as the best of humanity.
"It won't be enough."
"Ash," a little voice whispered, breaking through her anxious haze for a heartbeat. She turned to look. Evara stood so small. She had stripped her armour in favour of a thick smithing apron and gloves. An emerald stain slashed across the apron like the stroke of a brush, or a blade. "It's done."
"Good," Ash grimly replied.
It was a resin, more golden and thicker than honey. Her father, Tilak, and the Smith worked together. They hefted grand barrels over the near ancient walls and coated them as evenly as they could.
Rain beat down hard, but at least it kept them cool as they worked.
"Can-" Evara eked. Her voice failed her as she watched the ravenous horizon, and the vile horde it pedestaled.
"What?" Ash nudged, stroking her right hand over Evara's cheek and forcing her gaze from the killers... to herself.
"Ca- Can we win this?" Ev choked.
"I don't think so," Ash said in as warm a way as she could handle. "But I think we can survive."
Her smile wasn't quite forced, but it wasn't easy to maintain. "Go back to the Elder's home," Ash quietly ordered.
"No," Ev jolted. In an instant, she was a new woman. Near furious, her eyes set aflame. She didn't quite stamp her feet, but she did look unusually petulant beneath the rain.
"Go back to the Elder's home," She slowly repeated, much more severely this time.
-- "But..."
"Go back to the Elder's home," she quietly repeated a final time. It was enough, Evara gave in. She grunted and stormed away, back to their impromptu keep.
"She's a great shot," Carolet whispered from beneath the alure. "We need her."
"They're going to kill us, Caro. Her being a good shot won't save her, but her being a good shot from behind those walls may." She hopped down and met him beneath the wall.
Within a little nook, he sat, blade across his lap. The scent of some foreign oil carried in the damp air as he dabbed it along the flat of his halberd. It was a strange method of maintenance; one he must have picked up during the far travels of his distant youth.
"It's a waste of her abilities," he insisted, though with a notable dearth of vigour.
"You said the same of me, then you complained when I was given charge," Ash grunted. She took a seat atop an empty barrel beside him, and he wordlessly passed her an apple from his pack.
A grunt came as thanks, and she sliced it in half with her boot-sheathed dirk.
"That posture will kill you when you get to my age," he chuckled. She sat with one leg dangled over the barrel and her cheek resting on the other. Her back was bent and arched like some raging feline.
"I have many things to fear in the future, getting to your age is not one of them," she teased, though she did straighten out somewhat. They sat quietly for a moment while he oiled his halberd, and she crunched away at her apple.
"Any word from your little pet spies?" Caro asked after a moment.
"Nope," was all he suffered in reply.
Then it was a while more in silence, muted contemplation even.
"I... I'm sorry," the old knight finally said with as much pride as he could muster, despite his sincerity.
"F- for what?" she spluttered, choking on a chunk of her apple.
"You were right," he sniffed as he spoke. "I said you wasted your abilities, and then the Elder forced you to act upon your potential and I was petty.
-- "Oh, I-"
"-You have done more than I would have. Should Temujin have given me the command, we would have fought and died honourably. Under your command, many may yet live... I will not be amongst them."
His voice took a grim turn at that, but he wasn't done.
"I would have fought how I have always fought. The time-tested methods of honourable combat. You fight in a new way, in a necessary way. Remember that when you take your Championship, but also remember what comes next. I want you to watch them as they burn. I want you to remember the effects of your choices. The skin melting from young boys who fight only because they must. The pops as bubbles beneath the flesh burst. The heat of hellfire. Remember what you have inflicted, and what you have the potential to inflict upon this world. Then, I beg you, give a thought to honour; to the right way of war."
"I don't want to fight wars, Caro," Ash whispered. She tucked her knees into her chest and buried her face. "I don't want to watch them burn. I just want to go home."
-- "I know, child, but this is the consequence of this kind of victory. If the Elder is correct – if you are the Champion – you will never go home again. I'm sorry."
---- The sun set over the soon-to-be sanguine grasses. A horn had blown as the sun had sunk, and a dark horde marched in vile tune. They marched without discipline, without order. They marched as a thousand when her birds had reported them to be fewer than two hundred.
A white raven arrived and pecked at Ash's arm. It sang in tunes only she understood, tunes of troop formations and bloody intents. She sent the thing away. White wings needed not be bloodied this day, not on her account at least.
No words were wasted once the horn blew. Wives, sons and cowards - one and all - took their battle posts. It was a dozen fearful versus two hundred killers.
Each of her own men and women wore crude beaten chest plates and helms. Some were so hastily crafted, she might have confused them for pots and pans. Beaten iron held together by thin leather straps and a measure of hope.
Ashtik took up a bow and strung it quickly, taking her place between Carolet and Vamet.
"Carolet?" She whispered.
"We hold until they are close," he whispered to her.
"Tell us what to do," she said with complete determination.
He bound a bow of his own and stood to the far side of the alure.
"Friends!" He called. "We loose only when I give the order. We retreat only when Sai-Weleg gives the order. We surrender only in death! We die only when the day is won! Nock your bows, bolt your quarrellers and prepare yourselves! We do this together, or we die together!"
They drew arrows and held them to string. They racked back the crossbows and loaded bolts. They drew terminal breaths and made final glances at their homes. They readied for death.
---- It wasn't so dignified as to be a march. The bandit bastards more-so sauntered along the waterlogged fields as if on some beachside stroll. Sixty men or more, all armed and armoured in stolen valour, ready to pillage, and kill, and worse.
"Draw!" Carolet called, and they did. It was a painful second before he called again. "Loose!"
The arrows tore true; half even hit their targets.
"Draw!" Caro called again. "Loose!"
They repeated on and on, and the inexperienced quickly grew fatigued. They held war bows, meant for piercing steel. The draw proved too great for the farmhand's young daughter. Then the gouty baker dropped his bow as he loosed an arrow of his own. Next to fail was a pale and skinny woman. Her elbow bent inwards too far, and the bowstring tore and shredded the skin from her forearm.
The order came to fire at will, and the women who could stood back and kept hailing arrows and bolts while the men took up steel and held the bandits from climbing the walls.
The smith's sons had true steel, blades and pikes meant for war. They pushed away any ladders and climbers atop them.
The rest of her militia held tools and farming equipment. A pitchfork pierced the first marauder to crown the walls, and a sack of rocks collapsed another bellow.
Ash picked and jabbed with her spear at all who came too close while Caro used the short of his halberd to slash along the ladders that had been placed on the wall.
"The full force approaches!" Carolet called. She saw the truth of it in an instant. They charged like ravenous beasts. They gnashed fangs of steel as the rain rolled from their brigandine flesh.
The horn sounded again. Once, then twice then thrice.
"Thrice for blood," Carolet shouted. "This is our chance!"
"Fall back!" Ash called over the clash of steel and iron. Her little band of unblooded levies fell at once from the wall, leaving only Carolet and Ash to hold back the tide.
"Ashtik. Go!" Carolet ordered. A man in chainmail managed to get between them and Carolet sliced him near in half. He traded his halberd for a longsword discarded by a foul-smelling corpse and used it to grand effect as he carved his way towards her.
Ash danced and pranced along, ducking blows and bounding over stray strikes. After a few minutes of slicing, the alure was so slicked with blood that she could no longer maintain her footing.
"Let's go!" she called out once the others had found their way back.
Ash bound from the walls, rolling gently once she reached the ground. Caro was less graceful, pulling a bandit close and jumping down with the fresh corpse to act as his cushion. Ash slowed herself to his pace as the two made for the inner wall.
"Fire!" She cried as they drew close. A dozen burning arrows tore the air apart as they charged with even greater ferocity than the bandits had. The wall caught, but not enough. The rain slowed the spread and barely a quarter of the wall had been afflicted. Men dove over by the dozen; all screaming out for blood.
Dread and defeat had her, until she saw a little white beacon standing atop of the Elder's hillock.
"Burn," she whispered much too quietly for Ash to hear. What flew was partways between a bolt and a starlet. Golden flame and bleeding crimson shards. It slit a path through the night sky, like a shimmering slit in the firmament letting slip the hidden daylight above.
The magical little thing slammed into a man's chest and burst forth with an impossible pressure. A wave of heat blasted even as far back as the elder hut... Then the scarred sky glowed green, and each ember took up its own hue. The stalwart became pyre, and the men became deathly silver sparkles.
The soaked wood grew brighter, then brighter, and brighter. The silver exploded into a brilliant blue, then a violent green. Then all was blue and green, and all was aflame.
Her home burnt like a beacon, a bonfire. Some sacrifice to some starved gods.
---- A voice cried out quickly, "Get inside," it ordered. She didn't hear them. She didn't see Carolet being carried away, blood-stained and dying. She didn't feel her father tugging at her arm to pull her back.
No... She felt the heat of hellfire. She saw teeth falling out as the gums around them boiled away. The screams... the terrible screams. Men howled like wolves. The lucky ones begged for their deaths. The rest took matters into their own hands, pulling molten daggers and slitting their own throats, unless the molten steel simply stuck to their flesh instead of slicing.
A man in the midst of it had the worst, by what she could see. His chest plate had melted inwards, and his helm had done much the same. Yet he lived. He ran, though his greaves had melted into the ground, straight off the alure. The helm boiled over his eyes and set his skin alight and the new air around him set a second flame from his flesh. He was writhing, and gagging, and dead. He was her victim, and her conquest.
It was only as they had all screamed their last – and the flame buried itself in their lungs, choking their breath from within – that she managed to pull herself away.
"Snowy!" Tilak urged. "Get inside!" He left her no choice, grabbing her over his shoulder and taking her along without protest.
"I am unhurt father," she said from deep within her haze.
"No, you're not," he fussed. "Ev!"
The younger appeared in as much of a daze as Ash was. She wobbled more so than walked. Each step seemed conscious. Each step seemed like the first she had ever taken.
"Ev, we need you," Tilak insisted. He poked and prodded over Ash's various cuts and bruises. One took the full force of his mothering, a slash she had caught on her waist. It looked worse than it was, and it didn't look particularly bad. The leather padding of her armour had held almost all of the damage.
"You're hurt?" Ev dreamily asked.
"No," Ash insisted.
"Yes," Tilak corrected. "Please, Ev. If you are well enough."
"Of course," she answered. Evara moved closer to Ash and placed her little hands on her bloody wounds.
"Stop!" Ash shouted. She took Evara's shoulders into her hands and forced her gaze. Evara couldn't meet her, she was half a dream. "Keep your energy, Ev. You'll need it."
"But Ash-" Tilak tried to protest, but he was quickly snipped off by a dagger-filled glare.
"-She's not well, father," Ash grunted.
"I'm fine..." Ev breathily whispered, pushing her hands out again to heal. Her eyes couldn't find purchase and drifted lazily across her sister. Ashtik took her hands into one of her own and dragged the child into a hug.
"This isn't on you," she whispered. The words destroyed Evara. They ran through her shock and pulled her back into the dirt and rain.
"They burnt," she whimpered. "I said 'burn', and they burnt." She collapsed into the hug and held tighter than her little form could possibly give her strength enough to.
"It was my plan, my order. My burden. None of this is on you," Ash whispered into her now silently weeping sister.
"It was my flame. My fuel and my spark," Ev said from Ash's belly. "I said 'burn' Ash. I wanted this."
Words didn't find her. Words wouldn't be enough. The night had only just begun, "What more sins can it drag from us?"
-- "I'm sorry, Ev. I gave you no choice. All you did was protect us."
-- "I saw them burn. I saw the seared flesh. Gods, just listen to them die... Can you smell it? Burn meat. I watched a man roll in a puddle, but all it did was boil him... Ash, what have we done?"
-- "You've done nothing, Ev. I did what was necessary. They would have hurt you. I'll kill them all before that happens, in ways much worse than this."
Her mother took the child from Ash's grasp. Miel looked as though she intended to protect her... from Ash. The look in her eye told that she saw nothing of Ash anymore, just the crime and the criminal.