The rest of the shift passed quietly, after waking another guard, a man named Kevin Mulsett, for his shift, Syrus quickly fell asleep on his bedroll. A full day of walking behind him, and it felt like no sooner had he gone to sleep when he was awake again, eight hours later. James had done another shift without waking him, it seemed, and while he was grateful for the extra sleep, he resolved to ask James for his own shift before the day was over. They ate the rest of the turkey for breakfast as well as an apple each from the provisions they’d brought, fed and watered the horses before removing them from their picket line and harnessing them to the carts. Soon there was little to show there had been anyone there at all, except for a few ashes from the campfire, spread around the camp, and the trampled grasses and swept-aside leaves from where they had slept and walked. They set off once more, and the day passed much like the one before it, until Syrus, walking alongside the second cart, heard Davus’s son, Blake, begging his father to tell him a story to help pass the time. “Well what do you want to know, boy?” he had asked, and Blake was quick to answer. “Tell me about the Simerian war!” Davus choked at this, turning a light shade of red, before hurriedly looking towards James, riding his horse a mere span away, then down at Syrus, walking next to his cart. “That’s a story for another time, son, you’ll not ask me to tell it again while we’re o-“ but he did not finish this admonishment, as James interrupted from the front. “Don’t mind me or the boy Davus. He should know, and I’d like Syrus to hear it from another as well.” Davus looked at him searchingly for a moment, craning his head to look over the front of the cart, before calling out “very well then. Climb on up here Syrus, if you’re to hear it then you might as well sit.” Syrus did as he was told quite eagerly, spread his travel cloak around him to sit across from Blake on one of the chests inside the cart. As he did so, the sun glinted off one of the handles of his throwing knives, it caught the eye of Blake, whose eyes widened as he caught a glimpse of the weapons underneath, before the cloak closed once again. Davus seemed not to notice, and Blakes attention was soon ripped away as he began to recount the history that had been the Simerian war.

“Well” he started, clearing his throat again “where should I…yes, I guess I’ll have to explain the how and the why, as well as what” Blake looked at him questioningly here, but Syrus merely sat and listened, and Davus began the story in full. “To understand the story, you have to understand who the Simerians are. Now, we don’t know a lot, they’re not talkative people these Simerians.” James snorted at this, still a span away but seemingly able to hear just fine, and Davus continued. “The Simerians are the desert dwellers of the far north-east. They’re nomads, as they travel through the desert known as ‘the Cap’ or the Simerian Desert, scavenging for food and traveling between places where water can be found. They trade amongst each other and live in great tribes, and often these tribes fight each other for survival.”

Syrus frowned at this, he had never heard of the nickname before. “Sir?” he interrupted, “why is it called ‘the Cap?’ Davus stopped abruptly, looked at him for a moment as if unsure if he should answer, before finally responding. “It’s called the ‘Cap’ because many people believe it’s the ‘cap’ of the world. Most believe that the Blighted One resides in the dangerous lands east and north of this desert, which are known as The Blighted Lands. No one from Tardis has ever travelled there and survived to return and tell us if this is more than just a rumor, however.” He raised a hand to forestall any more questions, and continued. “A year before the both of you were born, Yggis year 1190, the Simerians banded together for unknown reasons. No one knows what drove them to it, maybe they collectively decided they wanted out of the desert,” he shrugged his shoulders at this. “So they gathered their warriors and mages and formed a plan.”

He paused again, it seemed this time however, it was more for the added suspense than anything else. “The Simerians fight from horseback, you see, they’re mobile archers. They probably don’t have access to large amounts of metal for swords, and they spend much of their time in the saddle anyways, they get their wood and wands from the edge of Miller’s Folly, which extends over the mountain range that borders the desert. Most of their mages tend to be women, you see, and they came in spades.” He said this in a matter-of-fact tone of voice, and Syrus looked over his shoulder to see James silently nodding up ahead.

Davus continued his story-turned history lesson, now discussing the tactics of the Simerians. “They're fierce people, now, they’ve been fighting among each other for many years, and they were smart about it. Instead of crossing the Great Plains to the west and facing King Fellis’s garrison stationed at the wall, they travelled much farther south, around the great plains. They managed to find a pass around Miller’s Folly, somewhere in the mountains south of the plains known as Yggis’s Shield, which normally protects us from invasion. They crossed the mountains in small groups until they had men stationed all across southern Tardis.” He paused here for a sip from his canteen, and Syrus knew Davus had them both enraptured. He told the story well, and had many details Syrus had never heard before.

“They started with single man scouts. The first we saw of them were reports of farmers spotting a lone man on horseback with a bow, seemingly more tanned than normal from a distance but no great cause for concern. There lie our first advantage.” He raised a finger up and smiled to give it significance. “They did not know how to hide from us in these lands, so different from their own, they stood out. The white and brown tabards so common in the desert were a novelty in these lands. Most of the common folk did not recognize what they were seeing, but soon enough, as their scouts spread further and further through our lands, those who knew enough to recognize the threat started gathering their forces. Soon enough the game was up, we knew they were there, and they knew that we were wise to their presence. So they started raiding in full.”

Davus reached into his cloak, withdrawing his pipe and packing it to smoke, he talked while he worked, and soon accented his words with puffs of smoke and gestures with his pipe for added effect. “The first of our troops to arrive found nothing but smoke, the burnt out remains of farms and the bodies of the farmers who had lived there, and many hoof prints. Soon word had reached King Fellis, and it was not just the baronies searching and fighting in small brutal skirmishes. We were losing at first, you see. Their arrows penetrated our armor, and they would fight from a distance, sweeping past our men who could only stand tall with shields, helplessly waiting for an arrow to strike them down.”

James looked back and gave Davus a pointed stare at this, which Davus seemed to physically feel as he looked back at James, cleared his throat, and hurriedly continued. “Well that’s how it was, at least, for a while, until King Fellis made it south and joined our soldiers with twenty thousand of his own.” Syrus nearly choked at the number, that’s five thousand more than the whole population of Jeim! He thought to himself, momentarily awed. “He brought with him many mages from the University, untested in combat though they were, they soon made all the difference. They raised earthen walls, preventing the sweeping attacks the Simerians had used to such great effect. They overwhelmed the mages brought by the Simerians, rained fire down on their soldiers, harnessed the wind to send their arrows harmlessly down into the ground, and made traps, preventing the once mobile Simerians from escaping from the battlefield. Battle after battle we won this way, until we had more than halved the thirty thousand soldiers they had brought into our lands, nearly all of their mages dead.”

He took a long pull from his pipe, a nostalgic look on his face as if he was retelling his own story. A moment later his expression turned somber, before he continued. “We drove them out of the land they had conquered and sent them back over the mountains, though unfortunately they hid their tracks well, and we never found the pass or passes they used to get through the mountains.” It seemed his story was over, but Syrus wouldn’t let him off that easily. “But sir… did we never capture any of them to ask them why they came? Or what their plans were?” Davus seemed surprised, this sort of question was not one you would expect from a nine year old, but he was spared answering by James, who had slowed his horse to walk beside the cart at some point in the last few minutes. “We captured quite a few. None of them talked. We know that they speak the same language as we do from our past dealing with them as well as their shouted orders during combat, but they only laughed at us when we asked them why they did it. Most died under questioning without ever saying a word.” James kicked his horse back up to the front of the formation, and Syrus noticed that Davus, as well as several of the surrounding guards, even the cart driver, were staring at his armored back.

It wasn’t until a few years later that he thought to ask himself how James had known they laughed during questioning, that they didn’t break. Davus and the cart driver both had turned pale, his pipe forgotten in his lap as he stared.