“Till the day we hunt again,” Ayenwatha whispered, glancing towards the stars above.
Wiping his eyes, he looked around for the other Darroks, to see what had befallen the defenders and the attackers. There were three others moving away in a tight formation, following the Darrok that had suffered the heavy damage to its carriage harness.
Ayenwatha made the best appraisal that he could. The Trogens had taken many losses, had witnessed the vulnerabilities exploited by Ayenwatha and Sky Arrow, and were clearly not in a position to sustain the attack. Ayenwatha felt an instant sense of relief despite his personal sadness, knowing that the assault upon the village was over for the time being.
With a throbbing pain in his shoulder, and now feeling the warm blood trickling down his back, he guided his wounded sky steed back towards the village. It was distressing to take in the sight of all the wreckage as he flew in, but there were no good places to land in the immediate areas surrounding the village’s hill. Numbly, he eyed the scattered flames that still licked at the night, guiding Arax towards a patch of open ground. Shortly after Arax had alighted upon the ground, several other surviving warriors set down within the remains of the village, the fighting now over.
On foot, Ayenwatha guided Arax and the others through the village. He ignored the arrow protruding from his body, keeping his eyes fixed straight ahead, not wanting to look towards the broken bodies and shattered remains of the buildings riddling the village grounds. The fires still burning in different sections of the village were not a threat. They were already beginning to die down, having expended their fury as timber was turned to ash.
Once out of the front gate, they carefully started down the slope. Arax exhibited a slight limp, and the hardy sky steed whined with the biting pain that it felt from its wound, aggravated further while walking on the ground and supporting its body weight with its legs. Ayenwatha paused a couple of times and spoke soothingly to the beleaguered creature, the arrow shaft still embedded in its blood-matted haunches.
Nearing the base of the hill, a number of villagers came out from the trees and hastened towards the warriors. Their eyes were laden with sorrow and fear, the burden growing even heavier as they noticed the absence of many warriors who had not returned.
Villagers trained in healing arts, including those of the Healing Societies, were immediately summoned to help injured warriors and steeds alike. They guided those who had suffered significant wounds to open spaces amid the trees. Ayenwatha and Arax were helped over to a space in between the prominent roots of an ancient oak tree.
In moments, the arrows in Ayenwatha and Arax were taken out. Ayenwatha was dizzy with the intense flash of pain that he incurred, but he kept his body under control. His steed thrashed madly about, knocking over a couple of villagers that were laboring to restrain the beast. At a few soothing words from Ayenwatha, spoken through gritted teeth, Arax calmed down enough to be led away to where the rest of the sky steeds were being tended. The wounds were then dressed in a makeshift manner, as there was little access to either material or sacred healing herbs.
Litters were hastily fashioned for a couple of the warriors that were very badly injured. The two warriors would likely require the full rituals of the masked Healers, those of the Healing Societies who wore the sacred masks carved from living trees. Ayenwatha and the others were soon relieved to learn that most of the sacred masks in the village had been salvaged, and that most of the members of the Healing Society had survived.
Ayenwatha lay to one side, his wounded shoulder kept off of the ground. He quietly endured the moans of the injured warriors close by, wishing that he could not hear the sounds that brought him more pain than his physical wound.
It had been all that he could bear to suffer the horrid shriek emitted by Arax, when the beloved steed’s arrow had been pulled out. His ears now conveyed without mercy the incessant sounds of crying and lament pouring from his fellow villagers. His heart grew heavy, along with a deadening fatigue that slowly enveloped his body. It took all of his concentration just to confer with the warriors that began to visit him, or to bring him new information.
The word of the extent of the attack and subsequent battle in the sky slowly reached his ears, as he finally rolled over to lie upon his stomach.
Of over thirty courageous riders that had gone into the skies to the defense of the village, only eleven had returned. A couple of riderless Bregas had found their own way back, though the rest of the missing steeds were presumed dead or strayed. The Darroks had indeed been diverted and stymied, but it had been a very costly defense.
The village had taken incredible damage, with nearly every structure absorbing an irreparable amount of destruction. Longhouses had been smashed into so many bits of wood, far past any hope of repair.
The number of killed and wounded villagers, most stemming from the initial onslaught of the unexpected attack, was extensive. Not a single survivor had escaped the devastation without having lost a member of their family, a friend, or a child.
As the various dire tidings continued to stream in, Ayenwatha tried to make some sense of the dreary situation. His understanding of it brought to bear a sobering notion.
With the first shadow of the Darroks falling upon the village, and the first large stone to crash into the village’s midst, the people of the Five Realms found themselves in a full state of war with the Unifier. Ayenwatha could not deny that his first thoughts were melancholy, if not devoid of hope. He could not see how the tribes could defend their realm against a power that commanded such hellishly fearsome weapons of war.
The war would likely become one of attrition, a struggle that would be impossible to sustain for the tribes, which had never been great in numbers. The losses suffered in just one melee had been devastating to the village’s sky steeds and warriors.
Their losses could not be replaced, while the Unifier could draw upon the warriors of many rulers and lands.
It was inconceivable to think of rebuilding, as the villagers could not begin to think of any reconstruction when winged titans could manifest at any moment to reduce a village to splinters in such an incredibly short span of time. Nonetheless, the fight would have to be fought, come whatever may. It would be an existential battle, waged against annihilation or capitulation.
Ayenwatha clenched his teeth as a spasm of pain wracked him, prompting him to shift his body a little.
The handful of sky warriors had indeed been successful in driving off the attackers. They had also been able to limit the casualties to far below what they would have been had the enemy been allowed free reign in the skies above the village. Once the village had been destroyed, the enemy could well have searched out the villagers as they fled and tried to regroup away from the hill, levying even more carnage and death.
While it was true that a great number of the enemy Trogens had been slain, all of the huge flying beasts that they had arrived on would be returning to their camps alive. The Darroks would soon be outfitted with mended carriages, fresh supplies, and rested warriors to ride them. It was also likely that new precautions would be taken, bearing in mind the approach that Ayenwatha and Sky Arrow had used to render the one Darrok’s harnessing unstable.
What was certain was that the next time a force of Darroks came there would be little to nothing that could stop them from raining a torrent of destruction down upon all of the forest villages.
Ayenwatha had also not forgotten that just beyond the western borders of the Five Realms’ lands, large columns of enemy warriors had been arriving and assembling. His own war parties had shadowed such formations, and he knew that they were not just a demonstration of force meant to intimidate. The Unifier’s emissaries had been unequivocal when the Grand Council had rejected the demand to submit to Avanor’s insatiable ruler. The Five Realms were declared hostile enemies of the Unifier, and all those in His burgeoning alliance.