Noble warriors brave and strong,
Long they rode through hill and fen,
To meet their doom, to glory and song…
- From The “Battle” of Auburn Dale, by M.K.
An Except from History of the Greenreach
In the twelfth month of the year 967, tragedy struck the kingdom of Galin when her monarch was struck down in a brazen assassination. Spurred on by the belief that First Prince Ramon had murdered the king, Second Prince Marco fled to the holdings of one of his father’s loyal retainers and started gathering allies. The country began to splinter as nobles began to take sides depending on whether they believed that the rumors about Prince Ramon’s parentage were true.
Outraged at his brother’s rebellion, Ramon rallied the nobles who remained loyal and mustered as many forces as were available to crush him. The armies maneuvered for many days, hampered by strange inclement weather and sudden changes in the landscape. The tacticians on each side were playing an intense game of high-stakes chess, each attempting to give their chosen king an advantage on the field of battle but neither seemed capable of moving their forces into their chosen position.
So it was on the thirtieth day of the twelfth month that the two forces finally met face-to face in Auburn Dale. Both armies were lined up on opposing sides of an open field, each some twenty-thousand strong, with the supply trains encamped among the nearby hills.
Seeking to send a message and to keep up troop morale, Ramon commanded the center personally: this consisted of approximately 8,000 men-at-arms and 1500 elite footmen. Grand Duke Joaquin commanded the right wing with 3500 heavy knights, and Lord Francisco commanded 3,000 light cavalry on the left wing. Ramon’s champion, Roy, was positioned in the front of the center together with a thousand shock troopers. Magical troops included twenty or so novice mages attached to the light cavalry unit and High Court Wizard Velasco, who remained with Prince Ramon and his personal guard. Some 3,000 levies under Baron Esteban were positioned as a rear guard to protect the supply camp.
On the opposing side, Marco was likewise positioned to personally lead his men into battle; he stood with Count Bruno and his ten thousand heavy infantry, largely halberdiers. Additionally, there were a few novice mages providing protection magic for Marco’s elite guard. Count Aurelian Halfelven commanded the left flank from a slightly elevated position: this consisted of some 3,000 longbowmen and just over a thousand spearmen. Meanwhile Baron Dario commanded 4,000 heavy infantry, largely swordsmen with shields, on the right flank. Barons Fernando and Alvaro commanded approximately 2,000 medium cavalry positioned behind the center line in reserve. Illorio, the best swordsman on Marco’s side, took the vanguard along with several hundred defenders.
Thus began what historians consider to be the second battle of the Black Order War. Officially, the battle started when the horns of war sounded an order to start marching: but then, as the men pushed forward, something unexpected happened…
Prince Ramon
The time was come and the realization hadn’t fully manifested in my heart: I was going to face my own brother in battle. I had to kill him, my own flesh and blood. The silence on the field was just as oppressive as the air was heavy. All of my lands were emptied - I could only hope to end this battle quickly. Velasco, my court mage, was on a brown pelfrey near at hand; his features were pale and drawn. The scrawny wizard wasn’t built for battle, but he had insisted on coming to my aid; what had I done to deserve such loyalty from my followers?
I sighed. This was a nightmare.
O brother, why? How could you believe such ridiculous rumors? Did we not play together in the forest, pretending sticks were swords until we were old enough to hold real ones? Have we not the same eyes as our mother, and have we not our father’s strong features? But lo, I did see him running in a panic that night…he claimed the same of I, that he had seen me, but ‘tis not possible - I was abed after a long day’s work. I pray I am wrong, that he is not the slayer of our father. But the fact remains he ran the moment I, in a fit of anger, pointed the accusatory finger back at him.
The elf detective had no theories but he did admit that it was unlikely to have been an intruder, since none of the guards saw anyone leave the castle. It seemed like he couldn’t believe that my brother, or I, could have done it…but even he had to sigh, shoulders slumped, and admit he was stumped. I’d never heard of any case that Sarian Eloyd couldn’t solve, and yet…“If not either of you, then who?” Bernardo had said - and he was right, though it hurt to admit it.
We had been trying to lure Marco into a place where we could crush him with our cavalry, but he has that wily Aurelian on his side who made that difficult. Captain Bernardo was able to counter some of his maneuvers, but somehow we always seemed to run into an unseasonable rainstorm or ran into difficult terrain where it ought to have been flat - until we finally found ourselves in our present position. We had no high ground to charge down from, just an open field where we could see one another plainly. It was high noon, and we weren’t expecting it to be overcast but the sky was covered in an unusually low mantle of clouds; where’d they come from?
“Your majesty,” said Velasco.
“Stop. My father hasn’t even been buried - I am not yet your king.” I rebuked. “What is it?”
“Apologies,” he adjusted his messy hair just a little. “I believe I’ve spotted Prince Marco - his elite squad stands with him at the center line.”
Velasco had a knack for divination magic, and so I’d had him use eaglesight to scan the enemy lines; this spell was just as good as a spyglass if not better.
I sighed. “So he knows that our conflict is inevitable, and wishes to lead from the front - just as I would.” I clicked my tongue. “Very well. Let us join the center ourselves.” I cried out to my elite defenders, brave men with heavy shields, and bade them move us further up the line.
“There’s more sire - er - I mean your highness,” Velasco continued as we repositioned ourselves. “I spotted something strange in the center of the field.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was red, seemed to be made of metal. There’s also a number of tents nearby.”
“A nomad camp, out here? They’d best flee lest they be trampled under our cavalry.” I sighed. “It is of no consequence. Come. Let us sound the horns of war…and finish this terrible business. The sooner ‘tis over the sooner I can mourn the fact it needed be done in the first place.”
Velasco nodded and signaled to my herald - a mighty trumpet call rang out, and we heard answering calls from our side, and also from the enemy. We were ready to begin in earnest, and so we started moving forward. Our armies were just outside of arrow range when I saw it myself, the curious red object that the wizard had spotted - aye, it was a metal thing on wheels; ‘twas not as tall as a carriage but it was longer. There was, of all things, a man wearing a brown coat reclining against it.
Velasco said, “He’s not alone either, there’s several down there - he has a back-scabbard on, I think he might be an adven-”
Suddenly, there was a terrible clamor - no, wait, this was music, issuing forth from the red metal object. Both armies stopped dead in their tracks. I had never heard such an instrument before in my life; I supposed it must have been a stringed one. Moreover, the man appeared to be singing along to the piece in a deep baritone, and in some language I’d never heard of before.
“Velasco! Have you a potion of comprehension?”
Flustered, Velasco searched through his magical haversack and then cried, “Yes!” He tossed it to me, and I quaffed it immediately.
“...and the home of the brave.” He stopped singing and began speaking in plain Common, though with an odd accent. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m glad I got your attention - I reckoned that since that song worked at Woodstock it’d work here too. First let me say sorry, but not sorry, for interrupting your bloody but utterly pointless battle.”
There were murmurs among the men. The audacity of this treasure-plundering vagrant!
One could argue that all battles are pointless, and I don’t enjoy the idea of fighting my own countrymen, but this is a matter of honor and the decoction must needs be swallowed regardless of how it turns my stomach!
He continued, “Yes, I can hear your objections, honor this, justice that - ah, phooey. It’s pointless because your whole reason for fighting is based on a lie.”
What? What does he mean by that?
“Could this be some ploy by my brother?” I wondered aloud.
Velasco said, “Nay your highness, he seems just as confused as you are. Plus I’ve never seen livery quite like his.”
I nodded, “Keep eaglesight up and tell me if they make any moves.”
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
The stranger kept speaking. “Let me go ahead and spell it out plainly: Prince Ramon isn’t a bastard; he and Prince Marco are full brothers. Moreover, I intend to prove this - along with the fact that neither of the two brothers killed the king.”
What?
“I know, I know, this doesn’t change the fact that Prince Marco rebelled, but bear with me - I’d like to at least prevent y’all from stupidly allowing half or more of your men to die in this pointless conflict. Which is why I now cede the floor to my good friend, Meli Karga.”
“Your highness,” said Velasco. “Their magic-users are doing something do you want-”
I held up my hand. “Wait.” In my despairing heart, a slight spark of hope was beginning to smoulder. I could see a man, dressed in wine-colored gambeson raising his hand towards the heavens. From his palm, a cone of light issued and there was presently a large glowing square of light reflecting off of the clouds above - it was enormous! There was a moment of silence, and then I saw her: the face of a voluptuous rabbit-ears beastfolk woman with a bright smile on her face.
“Howdy y’all!” She said, exuberantly. “Miss ‘Faena, can they hear me?” She waited for a moment before bringing a pair of fingers to one of her ears. “Oh that’s great, sug! All right, my name is Meli Karga, speakin to y’all live from Caer Caradon!”
Absurd - Caer Caradon is almost three hundred leagues away from here!
“Y’all might not believe that we’s all the way in Cara Kingdom, so I asked her majesty real nice if she could make what Mister K calls a cameo appearance.”
The image swung to the left, revealing two women - one in her forties, and one who didn’t seem much older than twenty. They waved, and the view returned to the rabbit-ears woman. Well she certainly looked like a queen - did she imagine I’d recognize her though? I’ve never even met the monarch of Cara!
”As for me, I’m a gen-you-wine sorceress specializin’ in pattern magic and a darn good tailor if I do say so myself! Welcome to Meli Karga’s magickin’ lesson - today we’ll be talkin’ about the latest innovation in the pattern discipline.”
The face shrank as more of her body, and some sort of slab, was revealed behind her. Upon it, there were various rectangles, circles, and other figures inscribed in white.
“Just as there’s patterns in the weather, an’ in magical notation an’ the maths, I recently found out that there’s a pattern inside of all of us - not just people, sugs, but in every livin’ thing includin’ the trees. This pattern is why babies have their mama’s eyes and why brothers look similar enough. You see, when parents make a baby they each give half of their personal pattern, called the genes, to their child! When I cast Meli’s Matcher, I can compare two people’s blood to see if they’s related!”
She went into greater detail about this alien concept, this DNA - what the long-devil does that even stand for? Or am I misunderstanding it and it’s some Carran word, like Diénét with a silent T or something to that effect? That having been said, she put it into simple enough terms that even the low-born men at arms seemed to be following, with nods of understanding. At last, she paused and received what I assumed was a transmission spell judging by how she touched her ear and nodded - Velasco should learn that spell, I think - and then she spoke once more:
“All right ‘yall! Now I’m gonna let Miss ‘Faena show y’all that the spell works just dandy! By the end y’all will realize that ain’t nobody been all up in the queen’s poochiba?ana but the king himself! Bye y’all!”
Her visage vanished, and the man in the brown coat spoke again. “Thank you Meli. Now, that was a live feed as I call it - I didn’t have to do it that way, truth be told, but…anyway, I’m going to show you a pre-recorded video, wherein we will demonstrate the efficacy of Meli’s Marker.”
“Surely this must be an illusion…” I said.
But Velasco shook his head, “Nay, your highness, the magical energy cost of an illusion this elaborate would be astronomical.” He leaned forward, chin cradled, “Gads…but how?”
The bright square on the clouds changed again - it was the royal castle of Rivercrown City. There was an elvish woman with bright aquamarine-colored eyes and golden hair arranged in two ponytails; she was eloquently dressed and had a scholarly appearance to her.
Velasco said, “Huh, she looks somewhat familiar.” He was stroking his chin.
“Greetings,” said the woman, “I am Sylfaena Ardenalia tael Anaura - though my status as third princess isn’t important for today’s purpose. I can assure you that my credentials are solid - having graduated from the Grand University of Magic with honors.”
“It…it really is her!” Velasco said, stunned, “It really is Princess Sylfaena!”
I said, “You know her?”
“I didn’t know her personally,” said Velasco, “But she was something of a legend among the student body while I was attending the Grand University, and my transmutation teacher spoke of her often. When I was just a boy, she visited the University and we spoke briefly. I recall seeing her face once or twice after that but I was very ill at the time, and delirious from pain - I almost died.. But by the grace of the divines her mother, queen of the elves, arrived and saved my life.”
Wait, I remembered this…Velasco had mentioned once that he had a near death experience when he was a student.
“So you’re saying we can trust her word?”
He nodded, confidently - an unusual expression for him. “With absolute certainty.”
But then suddenly someone from within our center cried “Wait, did she say she was a princess of Anaura?”.
Someone else shouted, “That makes her Valyrian’s sister!”.
Then another, “Oh! Valyrian!”
And all of a sudden there was an uproar, oohs and ahhs and other unprofessional ejaculations of that sort ensued and there was much murmuring among both sides of the battlefield. Everyone had heard of Valyrian of course, myself included - that said, I knew nothing about his family though, apart from Sir Illorio being named after the first King Illorien.
The woman stopped moving, as in, froze stiff. The man in the brown coat said, “Okay, okay - wow, if that ain’t a two nickels moment. Sorry, sorry; yes Sylfaena is Valyrian’s sister, and he's really cool, but we’re not talking about him right now. I’ll have to rewind this sucker…”
“Oh,” said Velasco, “That’s right, I forgot that part.”
Ugh, “Silence!” I commanded my men.
Once everyone was calmed down, the motion picture continued.
“What I have here is a hairpin found on the queen’s body,” she said, “I am here with Galin’s minister of justice, the royal secretary, the royal chirurgeon, detective Sarian Eloyd, and Sir Rey of the Lucan faith. They have all signed a sworn document stating that this item hasn’t been tampered with; all were present when I conducted my examination of the hairpin.”
She took a breath and continued. “Even though it had been wiped clean, DNA from blood can persist on an object for years; there was enough of it left on the hairpin for me to use Meli’s Matcher. I compared it to the blood of the king and the queen; now, if this blood had belonged to either of the two brothers I would expect to find a match…in this case not only did the sample not contain any markers from the king or the queen, it didn’t display any of the expected markers at all: that means the blood isn’t even human.”
“The ladder of humanity,” I muttered. “That’s what the sorceress meant.”
Detective Eloyd spoke next, “Ah, greetings noble lords. I um, and you’re sure this apparatus is safe?” A man’s hand came into view, a single thumb erect, and then withdrew. “Ah good, good. As you know, I investigated the scene of the murder. I found some peculiar things which I didn’t understand at first but given the presence of non-human blood, I’ve come to realize their meaning.” He brought forth a large black feather. “Prince Marco reported spotting some odd feathers on the ground, along with more drops of blood where he allegedly saw his brother running.”
Princess Sylfaena said “Once Sarian showed me where the blood had fallen, I was able to confirm that the blood found in the hallway did match the blood on the hairpin, and moreover, I examined one of the feathers found hidden behind a suit of armor. I suspect that your culprit is a shapeshifting monstrous humanoid with impressive illusory powers, avian being the most likely sort. Now, for a demonstration,” she smiled and motioned to the side. The image shifted again, to a group of people.
“I’ve had each of these persons provide me with samples of their blood,” she said. “The royal chirurgeon will hand each pair of samples to the minister of justice, who will have no knowledge of from whom the samples came, and nor shall I. Here we have random unrelated pairs, brothers, cousins, fathers and sons, and others.”
The princess sat at a table, and cast a spell upon two small glass vials, “These two samples are from a mother and daughter,” she said.
The chirurgeon said, “Yes, I helped deliver Roberta’s daughter myself and can confirm.”
This went on for a while, as a score of tests were performed, until the moving picture cut out and the man on the ground spoke again. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Thank you all for paying attention. Special thanks to Malcolm Kavian, for his excellent work with light magic.”
Wait! Malcom Kavian as in, the playwright? What’s he doing here?
The man with the white streak in his hair bowed, and projected his voice with what I can only imagine was sonic magic. “Thank you all, thank you! I’d be happy to answer questions from curious prospective illusionists on just how I performed these acoustic feats! But before that, we have just one more announcement before we conclude! Your highness?”
From the largest of the tents came an elf woman wearing a regal gown. The bard put down what he was holding and started casting a spell in the woman’s direction - after a moment, the woman’s face appeared in the clouds.
“O princes and generals of Galin, hear me! I am Princess Illiana Verissa Tael Anaura. I am come on behalf of my father, Illorend II, who desireth an opportunity to open up relations between our two kingdoms. If the commanders of both armies would kindly come down here, we would be much obliged - my darling knight Sir Victor has prepared a delightful meal and we’ve procured some of the finest libations available. All shall be explained, I assure you - matters of dire importance must needs be discussed at length.”
The man said, “The more the merrier, and if you could bring a couple of random people who’re known to be related that’d be great too - I assume y’all wanna see the proof of the pudding yourself.”
“Ha.” I suddenly found myself laughing spasmodically.
“Your highness!” Said Velasco, “I can see Marco and Illorio dismounting from their horses - Count Aurelian too!”
I smiled for the first time in weeks. Very well. “Then so shall I. Come, Velasco - it seems that we’ve a luncheon to attend.”
History of the Greenreach (cont’d)
Thus did the battle of Auburn Dale conclude just as abruptly as it had begun - with not a single casualty on either side - and thanks to the unexpected arrival of a party of unusual adventurers.
Red Lightning had struck again.
Speculate: Who Would Have Won? Optional: comment your reasoning!