Another day, fog-clad, gave voice to a rude awakening for the tired and aching soldiers in the form of a siren – loud and foul in the quiet – and made Anriin curl up tightly in a ball on his bedroll.

He hated the further-flung outposts, when they were unstable as this – so uncomfortable, and the food was rarely any good. The racket droned on, rising and falling as it blared out, announcing incoming trouble, and he muttered curses under his breath in fluent Nacrenic, tugging on plate boots wincing as he found them to still be wet on the inside from the fiasco that had been the night before.

Stupid bloody battlemages, summoning elementals outta the water.

Stumbling tiredly out of his tent, ramming his helm down on his head – a helm specially crafted for him, as one of the Dark Ten, to fit around his gazelle-like horns. Finding his fringe, which was long, cut diagonally across his face, to be trapped in front of one of his eyes within this helm, he swore under his breath, and tore it off again – grumbling as it rattled along his horns – and chucked it rather viciously back into his tent. And the siren was still wailing out.

Alright, so we got the fucking noise, where’s the enemy?

A soldier, in uniform chainmail; an insignia on his right shoulder plate declaring him to be fighting under the Lord Eltir, in Maraso’s – Anriin’s – division; came staggering past, rubbing sleep from his eyes. The commander sighed, catching hold of his arm – a hint of pity flashing across his face as he realised this soldier was little more than a boy, eighteen years old at the absolute most – and shot his questions at him, demanding to know what the alarm was sounding for; and also ordering  him to clean his sword, for it still bore blood from his last battle. The boy nodded weakly – even as he whimpered that he didn’t know why the sirens were screaming at such an early hour – his shaven head already darkening with mouse-brown stubble.

Anriin let go of him, scowling, his long red hair already dark with moisture from the air, and made a mental note to check over each and every induction into his division, so as to avoid such incapable brats making it into his forces, and putting everybody else at risk. There was no room for incompetence here; not for the last eighty years, and not for the next either.

He walked briskly to the gate, the weakest point of the hastily thrown together wooden wall around the outpost, and found a squad of archers stood with arrows strung, up on the unsteady battlements, aiming at some unknown foe – but also, he found his horse; a swift flaxen chestnut stallion that certainly wasn’t the largest horse around, but one of the quickest; stood waiting, tacked up, pawing impatiently at the ground.

As he swung up into the saddle – without so much as a crop, nor spurs – the sirens finally died, and an uncomfortable silence  dropped over the outpost, soldiers shifting uneasily at their posts, the horses tossing their heads and stamping at the sodden ground nervously. The commander’s fingers tightened a little on the reins, the creak of the leather of his gloves seeming almost painfully loud to his ears, the stallion taking a few steps back – taking the action as a command – and whickering, a sound that was almost a thunderous bray in the stillness.

The quiet before the storm…

The blast from the horns smote the air so loudly that many soldiers flinched and cowered back, even Anriin wincing away from the racket. Only the screams of the archers as flames poured over them and sent them crashing from the battlements as flailing masses of fire reached the ears of the soldiers – and indeed their commander – over the intrusive, almost offensive, horn blast.

“Dragons!” The shout went up, and Anriin dug his heels sharply into his stallion’s sides, sending him leaping forward, spear in hand, mobilising the soldiers quickly – not wishing to lose the outpost quite so soon after gaining it. He had no wish to lose his esteemed Lord’s favour, after so many years of carefully polishing it to the degree it now rested at.

Within four minutes, the soldiers had been driven back from the gate, and the enemy were pouring in, dragons belching fire down onto those on the ground; and Anriin, with three squads of horsemen, was trying valiantly to push the foes back again. He would not lose this outpost.

                                                             ~

Louis’ hooves thundered on the damp earth, his master’s spurs digging hard into his sides – flanks lathered with blood and sweat – and he tossed his head, letting out a wild scream, plunging on through the sea of the enemy. Magnus Eltir, black cloak billowing out behind him, led the charge, having received news of the impending attack on the outpost, a force of ten thousand men at his back.

It was a long ride, and one ridden hard this time, and many of the horses were flagging, but the warlord – helm nowhere to be seen today, his face instead half-concealed by a length of black silk; wrapped up round his neck and over his mouth and jaw, tucked down into the fastenings of the wargear that’d become almost his signature.

Bare-chested, with his arms wrapped in torn lengths of black silk – like bandages – and heavy articulated gauntlets made of an unknown black metal, with sharp, almost claw-like fingers, on his hands. Black jeans, close-fitting, comfortable – metal plating concealed beneath them – and boots that extended unseen to just below his knees, similar in design to his gauntlets. And with the halberds, crafted of bone, quick-silver, and more of the strange black metal, their blades eternally glowing scarlet with a thirst for blood… He was entirely unmistakable.

He was also very easy to shoot, theoretically, but he didn’t seem to care for that, as he refused to change his attire.

Their ride to the outpost had been fast, considering the distance, but now that they’d reached the bog of the enemy, things became far slower – and with most of the horses exhausted, the battle that joined was ugly. It took mere minutes for the blood to splatter the pale skin of the warlord so thickly that he was barely recognisable, and his yellow eyes shone with a fierce bloodlust, plunging recklessly into the thickest of clusters of the enemy.

In the air, dragons tore into each other, hurling flames down onto the earth to incinerate those that were unfortunate enough to get in the way, and eventually the corpses of all but two – Eltir’s – came crashing down, their riders dying as they hit the ground, even more soldiers crushed beneath them.

Ten thousand became five hundred before the enemy was no more, and Magnus clopped in through the shattered gates of the outpost on Louis, his halberd banished from sight, one hand now at his stomach, to try and slow the blood flow from a gash there, half an arrow embedded in his shoulder, the fletched end long since snapped off – and though he had emerged victorious, the outpost had been under siege for hours before he and his ten thousand men had got there. The casualties, as of yet, were uncertain.