Landing in Panafau: A Young Man's New Perspective

[Wolfsong]

Expect this thread to be updated periodically as RP progresses.

To keep updated on House Graves and its newest son:
One Graves Digs His Own; The Rise of a Mercenary

Soon to come:
Dueling Women, a Life Lesson Learned
Origins of the Girl
The Many Adventures of Puke the Magnificient
The Mother I Never Knew

--

A Beautiful Country

The sun had set on a chaotic scene - troops landing in longboats and smaller skiffs, rushing ashore, sloshing the surf and churning up sand. But there had been little blood, and fewer deaths.

Acting-Captain Puke had crewed the longboat Waldor rode in with violence and apathy, barking low-toned orders at men and laying about with the flat of his scabbard - beating on shields, shoulders and helmets. The sailors were terrified him, and bent to the oars with manic desperation. Puke was as expressionless as a dead fish, mechanical, fearless because fear was something only thinking men felt. In a way, Waldor envied him. He could not stop thinking about the day Lord Tarkus had died. Ranulf had elected to stay behind in Fissoa, head of the household guard, and Waldor missed his company, his reassurances. Puke offered no such wisdom.

And then there was the Girl.

She had sat beside Waldor on the small craft, fussing with the leather straps of his baldric and the cinch of his belt. The shield - his shield, though he hadn't used it before - rested against her knee, as did another scabbarded sword, a hook-barbed spear and a smaller buckler. How she intended to carry it all was beyond him. When he had asked, she had shrugged and, with an angry set to her mouth, told him it was a squire's duty. He had left it at that. When he had been her age, he had gut-knifed a mercenary who had raped his mother.

Now he strode across the beach, kicking at arrows that had been fired in defense of the coast and still jutted, broken-shafted from the sand. Rumors were filtering up from the other companies that cavalry had been spotted a little further inland. Memories of the charge that had broke them - killed so many of his men - came back to him. The spear in his shoulder, the long wait, feigning death, while his soldiers had wept and cursed and bled out beside, above and beneath him. The heartfelt prayers and bitter screams. The agonized squeal of a horse impaled by a pike, crashing forward onto itself, the broken flop of its rider. The blood and bile that had churned the sand into sludge. His hand clutched at the hilt of the longsword that rode at his hip, taking comfort in the weapon, if not his own skill with it.

His grip on the blade only relaxed when he reached the scouts. He'd sent them on ahead to wait near where the beach met tangles of grass, vine and thornbrush. Both were hidden when he arrived, but a rustle of underbrush and a quiet, hissed call led him directly to where they crouched, their quilted armor decorated with thorns, leaves and smears of dirt. Waldor had shed his own chainmail back at their makeshift camp, and wore only his padded under-armor, too. He was more comfortable in it, anyway.

He crouched nearby after a mindful look about, then started to smear the cloth with dirt, leaves and rotted plant matter. It stunk, but he was used to it.

"Patrok," he whispered, greeting the elder of the scouts, a man nearly twice his age. "Gren." The younger, who could have easily passed as Waldor's twin in poor lighting. "I only need one of you tonight. The borderlands have most been canvassed, but I don't want surprises. There's rumor of cavalry hiding in the woods somewhere." He'd drilled these soldiers in use of the shortsword and pike, and they had all left their bows at home, but that changed little. A cavalry charge still set him on edge.

"Let me come with you," Gren spoke up suddenly, earnestly, and Waldor had to bite back the urge to clasp him on the shoulder as he may have once, to embrace him like a brother. He was no longer a sellsword captain. He was a knight, and there was distance between them that could never be broached. Instead, he looked questioningly at Patrok, and nodded when that older man nodded his own approval.

"Granted." Waldor murmured, lifting his head to stare about the thornbrush and scrub. "Patrok, keep patrolling about here, see if you can't get a bead on those horsemen. We'll be back before dawn. If you get the chance, pass back to Puke that I want the nearest village plundered. All the food they have, strip it. We'll need the provisions. Nothing else. I don't want a single serf harmed, or a single bit of gold taken. Not by my men." It would be cruel enough taking their harvest from them.

"Come on, Gren," he added softly, pushing past the two to creep further into the brush along the beach, skulking like no noble had a right to. The boy - his own age, he had to remind himself - followed with a pleased grin that quickly melted into professional seriousness. They did not speak during the entire patrol. They did not have to.

Night fell.

Waldor eventually returned, caked in dirt and debris, to where his men had set up under Puke's dull, watchful gaze. He stood near one of the pitched tents and stared at the forest that cropped up in the distance, cleaning mud from his hands.

"Your father's duchy," a soft voice said at his shoulder, and he turned to see the Girl staring out at the trees with a mixture of solemnity and expectancy. Clearly she wanted a response from him, but he had none to give. He nodded a little, returned his attention to the woods, and ran calculations in his head: stores of grain, injuries, the cost of hiring sailors to crew them back to the warships anchored off the coast. Logistics a captain should always worry over. But she was persistent. "You are home."

That gave him pause.

Home?

Waldor Graves thought of a stretch of coastline to the southwest, where bones bleached in the surf.

"It is a beautiful country."

[Shizzle]

It's great to see some quality roleplay in Fissoa, thanks :)
^{[not that the other rp in Fissoa is not of quality!]}

[Wolfsong]

Thanks!

---


Tigers

"You know," said the Girl, trotting at his heels, "it's your right - your duty - to press your father's claim. What when we reconquer the whole duchy and some other lord is elevated in your place? Or, even worse, what if we never reclaim it? What if the Falkirks hold it for the next hundred years? No honourable man could stand the shame, and the dishonour would sink House Graves. It's the whole reason we're at war, to defend your House's honour from brigands and thieves." She held her buckler on her arm, and her sword was strapped to her hip. A spear, and his shield, rode against her back. The lack of horses had not killed her dour devotion to duty. She would squire for him until she dropped dead of exhaustion, and she would nag him every step of the way, disapproving of his muddied blood to the grave.

It had bothered him once, but Waldor only nodded tiredly now, pacing alongside the one pack mule they'd brought on the expedition. Strapped to the animal's back were bags full of flour, bandages, casks of fresh water and salt beef. He strode at the front of the formation of men, and left Acting-Captain Puke to prowl the columns alone, silent and frog-faced in the muggy night air. He was not half as oppressive as the heat, though. This far from the coast, the woodlands bled moisture as fog and mist and everything smelled like dust and sap and pine. No one had the energy to cause trouble, or so he thought.

"You don't even care," the Girl accused hotly, abruptly, and Waldor faltered mid-step, caught himself, and continued to pace down the trail as if she hadn't spoken at all - ahead of him, the vanguard of the army, and behind him more marching soldiers. He could see their torches glistening in the dark like specks of starlight on lakewater, waving and hazy and almost as insubstantial. He could smell the smoke. The enemy would be able to, too. Farther still, along the horizon, stretched the lowlands of Panabuk. He thought he saw starlight there as well, and hoped he had not - campfires would look as small from this distance, but should not have been so numerous.

"Mind your tongue," he warned, and left it at that. He did not look at her; he strode on ahead and let his thoughts wander.

The Girl fell silent, as sullen as the day he had first met her on the road, travelling to the tournament in Morek, and for awhile all he could hear was the wheezing snort of the mule, the breathing of the men surrounding him, the stamp of their feet, and the jangle of his chain tunic.

She was right, of course. A true son of Graves would have raged at the injustice, and fought tooth and nail to secure the Duchy of Madina. A true son, and maybe even a bastard, too.

Inexplicably he thought of Skyndarbau Melphyrdd, of a practice match in the courts of Fissoa, and of familiar frustration and uncertain rage. He thought of cats - the large sort he had only heard described once before, with orange and black stripes, vicious claws, finger's length fangs. He could almost picture one stalking him now, just out of sight and crouched where the torchlight failed to fall, its lazy prowl a match for his own tired march.

"I will fight for my father's honour - but on my own terms," he growled at that shadow-cat, jaw tightening, and strode on ahead. His squire stared at his back in confusion, but did not pursue. Someone had to tend to the mule.

For the rest of the night, he could feel that silent spectre stalk him through the forest, the price of honour weighing heavily on his shoulders. He was not ready yet. Not yet.

[Wolfsong]

Vanguard Ambushed

During the night march, in the indistinct gloom, they had overtaken the vanguard of the army and outpaced the Marshal's own men. Waldor didn't realize until it was too late; stalked by the heavy weight of his own moral responsibility to the dead - to the honour of the dead - he kept a punishing pace, and his men dutifully followed behind, oblivious to the tigers that lurked in the shadows of their liege-lord's thoughts.

It was only at sunrise, when the enemy encampment was painfully obvious stretched out across the plains, that Waldor realized his error - but by then it was too late. He could see troops massing, the dark smear of a cavalry wedge as it cut across the grasslands. His first impulse was to take cover back amongst the trees, but they were too far behind. On top of that, other companies hedged his men into formation. He could not move them without creating a gap in the line - and that would have meant death to anyone on his flanks. He couldn't, in good conscience, let that happen.

"Puke!" He shouted hoarsely, drawing the heavy longsword at his hip, "Puke! Get the pikes up front, brace for a charge!" The entire unit melted into a chaotic mob of soldiers as his men repositioned themselves, arming with what they could pull off the panicked mule, or what the had on hand. The Acting-Captain was nowhere in sight and his squire looked like she was going to be sick - he could hear her speaking, but didn't pay attention to the words. Instead, he grabbed his shield from her and the short spear, too, then pushed her back roughly toward the center of the company - third or fourth file would keep her safe.

He noticed other companies pulling back, arranging themselves behind his own unit, and cursed bitterly when he realized his mistake - it was too late to pull his own back. He demanded they hold fast, pacing up and down the first line of them, and watched the enemy break and charge. To his right, further down along the makeshift front line, he noticed a banner go up - just out of the corner of his eye. Aran Ivansen? What was he doing -

"Horsemen!" The cry went up, and he took a knee behind his shield, hunkering beside one of the pikemen at the front. He could feel the thunder of hooves on the ground, crashing through the grasses. Almost at the same time, arrows fell, piercing men from all sides. One grazed along his armored back, chipping against chain, and Waldor uttered a quiet prayer to gods he still only half understood.

Horseflesh met a solid wall of pikes, and the cavalry charge crumpled. Riders were thrown screaming, and then Waldor was among them, pushing past the bogged down spears, hacking and slashing with a longsword that flashed silver, and then red, as he cut. He saw a glint of metal armor, saw finery - a noble - and made for the man, scoring a long gash across the enemy knight's chest when he'd closed on him, and would have brought his sword down for a deeper cut but something punched into his side while his arm was lifted.

He looked down, saw a broken arrow jutting from his side, and felt more rage than fear. From the right, Ivansen's men had flanked the remaining cavalry and for those horsemen, at least, it was a bloodbath.

"Damnit," Waldor swore, backing toward the safety of his company's center, and saw that most of his front line had collapsed - not from lance wounds, after all, but arrows. The horsemen had barely touched him, and for that - at least - he felt a swell of pride. They had survived the charge, if nothing else. "Puke! Girl!" He didn't call her by name, but she appeared out of the thick of men, thirteen years old and terrified but still stubbornly sour toward him, gripping her own sword with a dull determination to prove herself. Puke did not appear, though he thought he saw the man weaving in and out among the men, silent save for the beatings his fists gave to those who feared to fight. "The arrows are chewing us to pieces, we need to fall back!"

Another hail of arrows from above, shredding his second and third ranks as men dropped screaming to the ground, clutching wounds that fountained great gouts of blood, or did not bleed at all. His earlier pride at breaking the cavalry faded. He understood now why noblemen hated archery so much, why they loathed and feared the men who practiced the art in war, and hated that he did not have his own bow with him. Killing from afar was dishonourable. It was also effective.

Fewer than ten of his own men were left standing when their men-at-arms closed. The fighting was brutal, and swift, and ended in a staggered retreat back behind the screen of friendly archers. His shield had been shattered by a maul, and he had left it behind. He'd even sheathed the longsword during the melee, and pulled a gutting knife, favoring that over the knightly sword in close quarters combat. And as he pulled wounded soldiers after him, his own side aching, Waldor knew the archers they retreated past would be slaughtered, but also knew that it would buy him valuable time to pull his own survivors to safety. His squire was there at his heels, her own sword bloody, her armor in tatters.

"Poor bastards," he whispered, wheezing for breath. His head swam.

The ground lurched toward him with startling speed.

[Wolfsong]

The Price of Honour

"Cyabr Carmine has been spotted in the field," the Girl murmured softly, watching him as he struggled awake, his side on fire. Her arm was in a sling, but her face was hard. She was angry, he thought. "And there will be a battle at sunset, when the main force arrives. So they say, sir." He didn't understand why she was telling him this; he knew these things.

He was laying down on a blanket in a small tent, and in the distance he could hear the pathetic cries of wounded men. Blood and sweat clogged his nostrils; he cleared his throat, and there was blood in his spit, too. But his side was bandaged, soaked with ointment and oils. He sat up, winced as the interior of the tent seemed to shift and warp around him, then placed a steadying hand on the ground at his side.

"You must challenge him."

The words cut like steel.

He looked up sharply, meeting the gaze of that young girl, and he could see the accusation in her eyes. To her, honour was life. To all of them, perhaps. He could almost hear the sound of brush crunching underfoot, the lazy pad of a tiger, the guttural wail of its mocking, lonely greeting. He said nothing. He stared at the girl who had begged to be his squire, because no one else would have her, and then looked away. Wind made the tent flap snap, ruffled the walls of cloth around him. The storm that howled across the lowlands continued, spending its fury in impotent gusts.

"You must challenge him," she repeated, and he felt her eyes on his face, felt her disbelief at his reluctance growing, "or you will have no honour left at all. You must find him on the field today, and challenge him there."

You must.

The laughing chuff-chuff-chuff of a wildcat, half-remembered, dream-like, ghosting the edges of his vision.

Waldor closed his hand into a fist.

"I need to see to my men."

[Wolfsong]

Eleven survivors out of forty-three. Eleven men, all of them wounded, all of them bristling with arrows like hedgehogs and Puke among them, sitting on his upended pothelm, his bald head glistening and bloody from a swordcut. It had taken off the majority of his ear. His dull eyes were dazed, but he grunted when he saw Waldor, acknowledging his presence like he acknowledged all things. None of the injuries, though, seemed life-threatening. There were many severe ones, gut wounds and punctured eyes, but Bret seemed confident - even happy. Eleven of forty-three, Waldor thought, and ran the math. Thirty-two of his men, some of them survivors from the carnage at Lugagun, killed.

The pack mule had been lost during the fight, and most of the supplies with it. The flour, the spare swords and pike, the billet-tents for his men, most of their medicinal herbs.

"Gods below," he murmured, wiping sweat from his face, and winced as the motion pulled at his side anew. First his shoulder, and now this. The squire had not followed him out of the tent, though, and for that he was glad. He couldn't handle her earnest nobility right now. He needed to mingle among the men and let his common blood bleed with theirs.

But her words chased him. You must challenge him. You must.

Always that word. Must.

"Who can stand?" He asked quietly, looking aside at Bret, and touched the bandages at his side. The walking hadn't helped, he thought, and felt blood bleeding through the tight fabric, staining his fingers. "And who can't? We'll need the best aiding the worst, we'll need pallets, splints. Retreat to the ships. There's no point to us continuing the fight here today. It'll just get more of us killed."

Bret gave him a look, an odd one, the bowed his head and limped off. He, too, was injured. No one had been spared from the arrows.

You must.

Waldor shook his head to clear it and limped on, passing hastily erected cots and pallets, rows of injured men. Those who he knew by name, he called out to, offered what encouragement he could, showed them his own injury and made light of it. It did not take long to make the rounds, and when he was finished, he crouched beside a man who had blood drying in his hair. No poultices or bandages had been made available to him, which suggested to Waldor that the wound - while not fatal - was disabling, as head wounds often were.

"I'm sorry, captain," the old man was babbling softly, "we ain't able to secure your heritage yet. When some of us heard that you was actually a lord's son, we wept for joy. It explained everything, though. We was so happy to know that you was our little lord. And a proper, good one. You never shirked us our pay not once, even when times was bad."

Waldor sat and listened, numb to most of what the man said, and watched as another man - a younger man, a courier, perhaps? - wove through the bodies of the wounded toward him. The boy bowed low when he reached Waldor, and then his soft, thready voice broke in over the older man's rambling.

"...have been ordered to rally and fight at sunset. None are excluded from these orders that can still fight."

Waldor nodded wearily and when the young man had departed to seek out another tent, gave the babbling old man at his side another look. He had stopped rambling by this point, and stared straight ahead with bleary, unfocused eyes. Waldor wasn't sure if he saw anything at all, anymore, and with all the subtlety he could muster, rose to his feet to take his leave.

The old man's hand clamped down on his arm with surprising strength, and Waldor felt pain shoot up his side. He winced, bent over to mitigate it, and the old soldier's breath hissed into his ear.

"Milord," the man said, "you must."

The pressure eased. The wounded man let go, and Waldor staggered upright, lurching away with a sudden queasiness he could not place roiling his gut.

I won't, he thought, I won't. I'll die if I do.

When the drums started, though, he was there with two volunteers, men who had known him as Captain, and advanced to the front rank with a dutiful fatalism.

[Wolfsong]

He couldn't remember their names, but he knew their faces. They advanced alongside him, surrounded on every side by companies of men in formation, with banners streaming overhead. But he couldn't remember their names. He limped, overtaken in the ranks by fast-marching men from different units, and his two volunteers followed him quietly, just as slowly. One had his arm splinted. The other had lost an ear. They might have been brothers.

The sound of drums changed, and a few trumpets blared. Ahead of him, Waldor watched as the ranks who had just previously overtaken him crashed into the enemy line, their marching dissolving into a short, sprinted charge for enemy swords and pikes. Cohesion vanished.

And then suddenly he was among them, pushing past people, elbowing at friendly soldiers in back ranks to make his way to the front. Something prowled at his back, shapeless and terrible, and he needed to escape it. It drove him relentlessly forward. A sword swung nearby, crashed into a shield, scraped and chipped along the bronze-studded rim. Waldor watched as if the world had slowed to nothing. A man at his side called out in warning.

And then a banner caught his attention wavering above the enemy ranks.

Cyabr Carmine Umpeta Perticta, Margrave of Madina Gardens.

"There!" He called out hoarsely, pointing so that the men with him could see, then broke into a stumbling run. Tigers lashed at his heels, chasing him the whole way. "Get me close enough to challenge him, and we'll end this!" If he could just get close enough, just close enough to the nobleman he was sure served in that cluster of militia, he could issue a challenge and - win or lose - would be free.

Swords stabbed at him, shields and men threatened to trip him. He ran doggedly forward, grasping the shoulders of the men who ran with him, propelling them forward with raspy shouts of encouragement - or bitter curses. His side was bleeding again, soaking the bandage where the arrow had pierced him, and his breath came in short gasps. Black specks danced in his vision.

"Carmine Umpeta Perticta!" He shouted, but the name didn't carry. His throat constricted. The man to his left buckled, curling around a sword that had stabbed deeply into his belly, and Waldor's grip on his shoulder fell away as the man dropped, screaming, to the ground. "Carmine Umpeta Perticta!" He swung his clumsy longsword about and cleaved the arm from the man who had stabbed the volunteer, ran on oblivious to both of their fates. His other soldier disappeared, savaged by several blades at once, and a shield which sunk half of his head inwards.

"Carmine!"

Waldor screamed the name like a wounded animal, trying to get past the enemy soldiers and - each time - was driven back with a new wound, a new gash, some new torn link in his armor or pale scratch on his helmet. Rage welled up in him, suicidal and terrified violence.

You must. You must challenge him.

The words echoed, chasing him forward into the ranks of men again, where he slashed and cleaved with his sword. No one else dropped, though. Black spots danced everywhere, now, and his wounds wept. His swings were wide and clumsy, touching only air.

Then, another hand on his shoulder, wrenching him back. A faceless man shouting at him that the retreat had been called.

"Carmine Umpeta Perticta!" He howled again, the cry inarticulate and desperate, but he was being pulled backwards, and men around him were breaking to run for their encampments by the forest. He could feel something hot breathing against the back of his neck, could almost feel the rough rasp of fur against his thigh. The insidious, patient, watchful eyes of a predator.

Another man had grasped his arms, and was pulling him backwards, shouting into his ear. Waldor couldn't understand him. He didn't even try to. He struggled weakly, trying over and over to break free and rush toward that distant unit and that unbloodied banner.

The sword slipped from his hands, hit the ground and lay there, glinting with rubies and silver-work along the hilt.

Exhaustion claimed him, and he let himself be pulled away.