Chapter 4: Storm Wind

The forward scouts arrived to meet the commander. It seemed quick words were exchanged and a general call to readiness was issued from the column captains.

Lord Eiver approached the front of the column and road across lengthwise. “The enemy approaches!” he shouted. He slowed, placed his helmet on his head with one hand and added, “Prepare for battle!” His horse turned nervously in the sand, prancing this way and that and kicking up a disturbance before he booted his animal and road to the back of the column.

A horn was blown as a flag from the archer columns went up, indicating enemy contact.

“I don’t see any giants!” Joros said.

“They’re here,” Falinor assured. “If they’re smart, they won’t attack us directly. Not at first.”

Shouting of orders and calls between the flag bearers went up. Most of them Falinor couldn’t see from his position.

“LOOSE!” a voice bellowed from a distance. The thrum of hundreds of bows went up as the archers released shafts into the sky and over the dunes. “LOOSE!” Another pause. “LOOSE!”

“We’re hailing them with arrows!” said Joros excitedly as he glanced to Falinor.

“Won’t do no good,” said another man beside him.

“What, why not?”

“Our shafts are like twigs to their tough giant hides—don’t you know?”

“They are?”

In truth, the giants were much the same as any man, just far larger and more powerful. At least, that was what he had heard from warriors who had fought them. One man he had met in a tavern a time ago even claimed fighting with giants.

I am still uncertain that story is even true.

Ahead in the archer lines, shouting erupted. It was different—not the bellow of orders. Men screamed and behind the general line of swordsmen and mages, the commanders kicked their horses.

Another horn was sounded from those forward columns as flags went up. The horn was altogether a different sound, which Falinor knew to be a signal that meant losses were being sustained.

The archer columns raised flags indicating a general retreat.

“They’re coming back?” Joros asked.

Swiveling his head in annoyance, Falinor said, “Is this your first battle?”

“Well… no,” said the other man, though he stammered out the words. “I fought in the Killing Fields of Sagrivel.”

That’s why, Falinor thought with a nod. The Killing Fields of Sagrivel was not a battle—not really. More like an intense skirmish.

Then he offered, “The archers are being pulled back behind our lines.”

“They’re no good out there still,” said the other soldier to Joros’ right.

Something crashed up ahead and Falinor’s eyes caught the thick spray of sand into the air atop the dunes.

“What was that?” the man on his left said suddenly. “Did you see that!”

“It was an explosion!” someone said down the line.

Another crack, followed by a plume of sand. Archers flew through the air as the columns beat a steady retreat.

The long and ponderous call for their own lines went up. “Prepaaaare to advaaaaance!”

And then the captains repeated the order.

“Prepare to advance!”

“Prepare to advance!”

“Prepaaare to advaaaance!”

“Gods—this is destroying my calm,” said Joros.

“Accept that you will be fighting giants on this day,” Falinor said. And as he uttered the words, a knot formed in his stomach.

He had never fought giants before.

The warrior and mage did not know what to expect.

More explosions rocked the beach on their left flank and archers flailed to the ground, but they were making good headway in their retreat and their losses were minimal. A horn sounded and their columns split up and narrowed as they moved to advance between the ranks of swordsmen and spears.

A flag nearby in their own column went up.

“That’s us,” Falinor said. “And now the—“

But he was cut off when the horn was sounded.

“Advaaaaance!” the captains shouted down the lines.

“Advaaaance!”

“Aaadvaaaance!”

The line of men in front of them stepped forward, and so did Falinor, followed by the men behind. They moved in lockstep, marching forward.

“Draaaww swoorrds!”

A general conflagration of steel and iron scraping scabbards sounded in the air as a general battle cry went up. Falinor uttered no sounds, but Joros cried out angrily.

“We have each other’s backs,” he said. “Right, Falinor?”

Through the repetitive thunder of their marching it was hard to hear the other man, but he shouted, “Aye!”

Just as he uttered the words, the horned helmets of the giants appeared as they began to crest the dunes where the archers had taken losses just some time ago. There were dozens of them, perhaps thirty or forty—but not more than that.

Each giant stood on his own with space between each of their members. Falinor wondered if the army’s tight-packed formations was a good idea.

But because of the lack of numbers with the giants, he thought perhaps they did have a chance at winning this engagement.

And then something landed in the sand, followed by several more. Men in their ranks cried out and died as the javelins fell.

“Shiiiiieeelds!”

The men in front of Falinor raised their shields and he hunched in on himself to gain the best protection possible from the men in front of him.

In their lines every other rank had been equipped with them. Falinor’s rank did not have them, though they were protected from the rank of shields at the front.

Something pounded against the shields to his left and Falinor glanced down the line where a shield bearer had died in a spray of gore and blood, the javelin in the sand the size of a ballistae arrow.

“Did you see that?” shouted a soldier.

“Watch out!” cried another.

The sounds of moving men bristling echoed through the lines. “More are coming!”

“They have siege engines!” a man shrieked.

“Silence you fools!” bellowed the captain. “Maaaaaarch!”

Falinor held his sword hilt close to his chest, his long blade raised straight into the air as javelins punched through their lines, killing shield bears and swordsmen alike.

They had no defense against the size of those missiles, but like an implacable storm wind, they advanced upon the giants, their speed not slowing or stopping.

“Where are the mages?” a man from behind said allowed.

“Prepaaaare to chaaaaarge!”

Falinor took in a deep lungful of air.

“Here we go, friend!” Joros said.

“Here we go!” bellowed Falinor in response. “Good luck, Joros!”

“You too!”

When the call to charge sounded, the men screamed. A chorus of bloodlust and excitement filled the air as though the winds of the sea had all joined together to fill the beaches with a storm.

The front rank broke and charged.

Gripping his sword tightly, Falinor screamed and followed.